Chapter Twenty-Eight

Stella’s head was pounding. The doctor said that she might have a bad headache for a few days. She’d said it as if the feeling of a spike being shoved into your cranial wall was no big deal. Of course, the alternative was that she could be dead right now.

Adam was curled up in the bed against her, his thumb in his mouth. He hadn’t sucked his thumb in ages. She looked at the cast on his left hand, which ran halfway up his arm and then she lightly kissed the scratches on his face. He was okay. Besides a fractured wrist he walked away from the accident with just some bruises and banged up from being thrown into the cushion of trees. He had indeed been flung from the vehicle.

She closed her eyes and fought back the image of the alternatives, the car rolling over on him, or God forbid, him landing twenty-feet to the ravine below. The guilt at being the person who might have killed them resurfaced. She saw her mistakes while driving the hill, the way that she had bear down on the gas to get past the patch of ice…

The door opened and Riley came in carrying a tray. It contained ham sandwiches and tomato soup.

“You ready to try to eat something?” he asked.

They were in the bedroom of his house where Riley had taken her after Dr. Wolf had given her a clean bill of health. She had a case of whiplash, bruises where the seatbelt had trapped her and of course a gash on her forehead where she’d received four stitches; a permanent reminder that one misstep could result in lasting damage.

Her car was totaled and that meant she and Adam were spending the next few days with Riley. She had told him that she was okay with staying in the cottage but he had explained that he had a renter.

She remembered the story about Riley being fired because he had supposedly said something to get his co-worker deported. Riley explained that it had all been cooked up by this fella’s no-account wife who had reported him to immigration just so that she could run off with another man.

But the surprising turn of events is the letter writing campaign that the entire town of Cobb Hill had initiated. Nearly every resident had signed it, including many of the residents of Irvine and Ravenna. After Pete’s little boy was left with no guardian the immigration judge took in to account the number of signatures and instituted something called prosecutorial discretion—meaning that they just stopped the process of deporting Pete.

Riley didn’t exactly understand it, but the way Pete explained it to him is that the courts were too busy searching for felons and violent criminals, and sending him back to Mexico was not worth their time. So, for the time being Pete was just being ignored by ICE. Not that he was completely safe. He didn’t have a green card and once all the dangerous undocumented individuals were deported they would make their way back around to him. Of course he would probably be long buried by then.

“Your town did that for him?” Stella had asked as they made their way back up the dangerous hill.

“Yep. We aren’t all bad.”

She had ignored that comment. At the time she was too busy trying not to be sick at the sight of the winding road that had so recently nearly killed her.

Riley had driven it slower than he needed to, out of consideration for her. Adam was thankfully asleep.

“How did it happen?” He had asked when they reached the spot of the accident. There were emergency cones still set up on the edge of the embankment.

In all honesty she wasn’t quite sure. They’d hit a patch of ice right before one of the many sharp turns. She hadn’t been afraid until then. She had just wanted to get to the house as quickly as possible. She remembered pressing hard on the gas and that’s when the car began to zig zag. They were going forward but she couldn’t control the wheel and then she tried slamming on the breaks and that only made it worse. They continued to zig zag toward the edge of the embankment and there was nothing that she could do but scream.

By the time that she had told the story they were a long way from the accident site and her nerves were in a lot better shape. Bodie listened intently. He had reached out and held onto her hand. In that moment she didn’t want him to let it go…even though it would be nice if he had both hands on the wheel.

“A vehicle wants to naturally right itself. If that should ever happen again, just release the wheel and the gas. If it’s a real bad slide then you can try to gently turn the wheel but never jerk it.” He had squeezed her hand once again and then returned it to the steering wheel.

Riley was being very kind but she was still uncomfortable being under his roof. She just decided that she would be quiet and unobtrusive and let her son enjoy what was left of his Christmas with his dad.

Riley placed the tray on the bedside table and then gently lifted Adam and placed him on his own side of the bed. He pulled the covers up over him making sure that he placed his broken arm up over the covers. He did it with so much care that Stella’s eyes began to glisten. She was reminded that she wasn’t alone in this fight to protect Adam.

He took the tray and propped it on the bed before her. “It’s just Campbell’s soup. Nothing special. But this is a really good Virginia ham.”

“Thanks Riley. I’m not sure if I can eat anything. My stomach is kind of queasy.”

He sat down on the side of the bed and spooned soup towards her mouth.

“Uh…what are you doing?” She asked.

“Open,” he said threatening to spill it down her mouth if she didn’t quickly comply. She did.

“Good.” He said. “One more.” He spooned more soup into her mouth and then patted her lips with a cloth napkin.

She frowned at him. “That wasn’t just a little weird.”

He smiled. “That medicine is going to make you feel like crap if you don’t have something on your stomach to act as a buffer.”

He spooned more soup into her mouth. She almost pursed her lips together and turned her head away but at the last minute she decided that she liked the soup too much, so she opened her mouth for it.

She noticed that his knuckles were scratched and rubbed raw. He also had gashes on the pads of his palms. He was limping pretty bad too, but he didn’t complain.

She reached out and took his hand and then she reached for the other. It looked like he had try boxing with a grizzly bear. “You got something for this?”

“It’s alright.” He said.

“Are you planning to take care of us?” Stella asked.

“That’s my plan. Yes.”

“Then you have to take care of yourself first. Go clean that and put a bandage on it.”

He gave her a wry grin. “Fine. You eat the rest of that soup and at least half of the sandwich.”

“Yes, sir.”

He did as she requested. Someone knocked on the door when he was in the bathroom. He hurried down the stairs and looked out the window. It was Mrs. Jameson from up the road. What was she doing out in this weather.

He quickly opened the door and let her in. “Mrs. Jameson, you shouldn’t be out in this ice.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to these roads and the snow stopped hours ago. Plus my daughter Alma is staying with me for Christmas and she drove.” She was holding a bag in her hand and she handed it to him.

“Here. I made you all a casserole. It’s just chicken and rice and some dinner rolls. Stella likes my lemonade so I made up a batch special for her.” The pancakes that he’d made earlier were hockey pucks so he was grateful for the offer.

“That’s nice. Thank you. Do you want to go up and say hi to her?” He asked, gesturing to the stairs.

“No. I don’t want to disturb her. Tell her I’ll stop in sometime later.” She reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You’re a good boy Riley Pranger. Thank God you were there to rescue Stella and Adam.”

He gave her a surprised nod. “It all worked out good.”

She patted his cheek and turned to leave but stopped. “Tell Adam that Brianna put a Christmas card in there for him. She’s still in Cincinnati but when she heard that he was spending Christmas with you she mailed this to me to give to him.”

“That’s sweet. I’ll give it to him when he wakes up.”

When he went back upstairs he saw that Stella had finally fallen asleep. She had indeed finished off most of the soup and half the sandwich. He’d check in on her in a few hours and give her her next dose of pain medicine.

He checked on Adam who was sound asleep in just his undies and t-shirt. Peeking from beneath his shirt was his witch’s finger. Bodie lifted it and placed it carefully on top of his shirt.

The rest of their possessions was still in the smashed up vehicle which Bodie had towed to the garage. He’d go down tomorrow to get their belongings. They at least had the cell phones, their coats and Stella’s purse. But he had been too preoccupied to care about anything else. For a while he hadn’t been sure that Stella would wake up. And hearing his son’s cries of anguish had been nearly unbearable. But this Christmas he had a great deal to be thankful for. He thanked God in a silent prayer for giving him a Christmas with the most important gifts that he could ever wish for—the lives of his child and his child’s mother.

 

 

Over the next few hours the doorbell rang several more times. Bodie came by carrying Adam and Stella’s luggage and the gifts that they had brought to the mountain. Shaun had sent some children’s aspirin since she was sure that Bodie wouldn’t have any—and she was right.

Pastor Tim and first lady came with a toy for Adam and a lemon pie from Miss Birdie. Adam and Stella were awake by then and Stella thanked them for coming by on Christmas day in such bad weather. They only laughed and said that this wasn’t anything near to the bad weather that they were used to.

After they left Pete came by with Jace. The toddler remembered playing with Adam over the summer and the two children sat together playing with Jace’s puzzles.

“I’m happy that everything worked out for you.” Stella said to Pete as they waited for Mrs. Jameson’s casserole to heat up. Riley had planned on the ham and green beans with potatoes and onions and a dish of potato salad, but with all the commotion the only thing that was ready to eat was the ham.

So Mrs. Jameson’s casserole was going to be Christmas supper tonight along with Mrs. Birdies lemon pie for dessert.

The handsome Mexican man gave her a wry, slightly sad smile. “It wouldn’t have happened if not for the kindness of the people in Estill County,” he said. “They surprised me. When I was at my lowest the people here rallied around me without me having to ask. People that I thought looked down their nose at me actually came to bat to keep me here. Even afterwards, they come in to the garage and they’d bring stuff for Jace, toys and clothes. Or they’ll see me at the market or in town and give me stuff that they think might give me some help, a set of dishes, a crib, curtains.”

He shook his head. “And Riley.” The two of them were sitting on the couch watching the children play while Riley finished up in the kitchen with supper.

“He let me stay here rent free until I could get on my feet.  And what he charges me is a steal. He told me that getting some rent is better then getting none, so I guess he’s right.”

Stella listened intently. She looked into the kitchen at the way Riley concentrated so intently on measuring the coffee to add to the coffee pot. She would have never expected so much kindness toward herself and for Pete—not from these people that she had just discounted to be little more than rednecks. She was a firm believer that you learn from what is right in front of your eyes and she knew that she had been wrong to judge these people so harshly.

“You planning on staying in Estill County?” She finally turned to Pete.

“I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”