Winterkill

matter. She’s not your child. She’s my child.” Chile.

Marybeth realized that Jeannie was trying to bait her, trying to get her to lose her cool and say or do something that would look bad if they ever ended up in court. Jeannie had even brought a witness with her.

Again, Marybeth forced back her rage, and spoke softly.

“Jeannie, I do understand what it’s like to lose someone. I lost my baby four years ago. Did you know that? Remember when we met at the doctor’s office when we were both pregnant? I lost that baby when a man shot me. He was the same man who killed your husband.” Marybeth’s eyes probed for a sense of connection or compassion, but neither was forthcoming. “After I got out of the hospital, we found out about April. We took her in as our own. She’s part of our family now. She’s got wonderful sisters who care for her. Joe and I care for her. Can’t you see that . . .”

Marybeth needed to be careful here, and she tried to be. “Can’t you see that April is happy, and has adjusted? That the greatest gift a mother can give is to make sure her child is loved and cared for?”

Jeannie Keeley took her eyes off Marybeth, and seemed to be searching the snow for something. Absently, she dug in her coat pocket for another cigarette and placed it in her mouth, unlit.

Marybeth noticed that the man driving the pickup had finally turned his head to look at her. He was severe- looking, older than Jeannie, with an unkempt growth of beard. He wore a dirty John Deere cap. His eyes were sunken and dark, his pupils hard dots.

A match flared, and Marybeth looked back to Keeley as she lit her cigarette. Was it possible she was reconsidering, that Marybeth had touched her?

Keeley let two streams of smoke curl out of her nose. “Fuck you, princess,” she hissed. “I want my April back.”

Marybeth clenched her teeth, and her eyes fluttered. She thought that in four steps she could be on this horrible woman, pummeling her head with the hay hook that hung within easy reach on an upside-down horseshoe inside the door.

It was as if the man behind the wheel could read her mind, and he quickly opened his door and walked around the front of the truck. He stopped and casually pulled open his coat so that Marybeth could see the faux-pearl grip of a heavy stainless-steel pistol stuck into his greasy jeans.

“We best go, honey,” the man said to Jeannie Keeley.

Keeley snorted, her eyes locked in hatred on Marybeth. The man reached up and put his hand on Keeley’s shoulder but she shook it off.

“We best go.”

“Look at that bitch,” Keeley said, her voice barely a whisper. “Look at her standin’ there like some kind of goddamned princess. She loses her baby so she thinks she can just steal mine to make up for it.”

That tore at Marybeth, but she stood still and firm. Four steps, she thought.

The man moved behind Keeley, and put his arms around her, squeezing her into him, his head close to her ear, “I said let’s go. We’ll get April back. The judge said we would.”

Jeannie started to resist, but was obviously overpowered. She relaxed, and he released his grip. She never broke off her glare at Marybeth.

“What was that about a judge?” Marybeth asked, not able to stop a tremble in her voice.

Keeley smiled, shaking her head instead of speaking. “Never mind that,” she said, and backed up past the man, never taking her eyes off of Marybeth until she bumped up against the door of the truck. “You just better be packing her stuff up so’s she’ll be ready when we come get her and take her home.”

Jeannie Keeley turned and opened the door, climbed in, and slammed the door with a bang.

The man looked vacantly at Marybeth, his face revealing nothing. Then he patted the butt of the pistol without looking at it, turned on his heel, and climbed back behind the wheel. Neither looked over at her as they drove away.

Marybeth stumbled into the barn and slid the door closed. Her legs were so weak that she collapsed on a bale of hay and sat there, staring at the door handle, replaying the scene in her mind, disbelieving what had just happened.

A judge, she said. Joe’s experience with Judge Pennock had shown how nonsensical the courts could be in these cases, especially when it came to decisions involving a biological mother.

She could call the sheriff and report the incident, but she knew it would be her word against theirs, and it would go nowhere. Marybeth had not actually been threatened in any way she could prove. Maybe Joe will have an idea, she thought, and she tried to call him on his cell phone. She cursed out loud when he didn’t pick up. He must have turned it off for some reason. He was due to pick up Sheridan at practice within the hour, and Marybeth would keep trying.

The mare nickered aggressively and she looked up at her.

“You’ll get fed,” Marybeth said aloud, her voice weak. “Just give me a minute to think and settle down.”

After feeding the horses, she slid open the barn door again. She looked at the tracks that the pickup had made, saw the cigarette butt and spent matches that Jeannie Keeley had dropped in the snow. It was almost as if she could see Keeley standing there again, squinting against the smoke, putrid with hate, spewing filthy words. The dirty man stood next to her, his handgun stuck in his pants.

These two reprobates, these scum, wanted her April with them. The injustice of it filled her with violent passion. Children were not pets, not furniture, not items put on earth to bring pleasure to people who owned them, she raged to herself.

She clenched her hands into fists and shook them. She threw the now-empty bucket across the barn, where it clattered loudly against the wall and sent the horses scattering back to the outside runs. Her eyes welled hotly with tears that soon ran down her freezing cheeks.

Seventeen

Sheridan Pickett stood in the brick alcove of the school and waited for her dad. Her hair was still damp, so she pulled her hood over her head. The basketball tryouts had been