Page 80 of Return to Telegraph Creek

I could have kissed him as Lizzie nodded and tried to smile through her tears.

“Peter, can I talk to you for a minute?”I asked, gesturing for him to follow me down the sidewalk a ways.Trick eyed me but she didn’t comment and stayed with Oscar and Lizzie.

Peter followed me to a spot in the shadows of a sycamore tree, where we could speak in some measure of privacy.

“Now I need you to tell me the truth.Did your momma kill your pa, like Lizzie said?”

Peter nodded, his face pale and his eyes wild.“Yes, sir.”

I put a steadying hand on his shoulder.He’d gone all pale, and I reckoned this conversation was bringing it all back to him, but we needed to know.

“Why do you suppose she did it?”

“Because—” Peter said, but he only got that word out before tears started to fall from his brown eyes.He was silent at first, then his lips trembled as his face contorted, and he started to sob in earnest.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Truth

I moved forward and pulled him against me.His arms went around me, and he clutched at my jacket, like ’twas the only thing he had in his life that was sure.

“It’s okay.You don’t have to say,” I reassured him, wondering what had driven Cal to an act of such aggression, but knowing the ways of the world well enough to have an idea.I didn’t want to think about it, and neither did Peter, it seemed.

“Come on.Let’s go back to the others,” I said, holding out my hand.Peter let me walk him back to where Oscar was cleaning Lizzie’s dress with a wet handkerchief.

“See?’Tis coming right out.Once this dries, nobody’ll be able to tell.”

“You’re right,” Lizzie said, tucking her chin to her chest in order to see the front of her dress.She gazed up at Oscar with adoring eyes.“Thank you.”

He straightened and flashed me a look.“’Tis nothin’,” he said, as Peter and I joined them.

Trick stood there watching with concern etched on her features.I left Peter with Lizzie and took Oscar and Trick aside.

“He ain’t ready to say why, but he said what Lizzie said was true.That Cal—that she…murdered her husband—their pa.”

“I knew Cal was hidin’ somethin’,” Trick said, as Peter brought Lizzie o’er.Seemed they didn’t want to be far from us, and I couldn’t blame them.“Never thought ’twas murder, though.”

I glanced at Peter and gave him a reassuring smile.

“I reckon she had a good reason for it,” Oscar murmured.“Seems the children think so.”

“Sure,” I said, keeping my voice low.

The children could hear, but I reckoned none of what we said would hurt them any more than they already had been.

“It explains why her husband ain’t around, and why her situation’s so desperate… She’s all alone with these children,” I said.“She ain’t got no help but us.”

“My pa was a terrible man,” Peter said.

We all turned to face him.

“Did he…did he beat you?You and Lizzie?”Oscar asked.

Peter’s face was red, and he’d curled his hands into fists.“No, sir.”

His answer was a surprise to all of us.Oscar was about to say something else, but I held up my hand to stay him as Peter continued speaking.

“Not with fists or his belt.But what he did was worse.”