It rained the following morning. Gabby napped in his
room, seldom a part of the strategy meetings, but always in the
background pulling his own weight. Francis locked herself in her room.
Emily kept Sally company, and Bertha joined the two briefly, helping
Sally to pack. Sally had made it her part of the mission to do the
packing and unpacking to keep nervous tension at bay. “We’re never going
to see Jennifer ever again,” Sally said quietly. “Something terrible is
going to happen to her.”
“John won’t let anything happen to Jennifer,” Bertha
said.
“He’ll die trying, but he’s just a man. He said as much
himself. He’s a dead man that comes to life every time he looks at her.
How can two people so different hope to make a go of it?”
“Better than you might think,” Bertha said bitterly,
knowing they were indirectly questioning her relationship with Gabby.
“You hurt her feelings,” Emily accused her lover from
across the room. “What are you going to do with Gabby when this is over,
Bertha?”
“Gabby’s been getting it on a regular basis,” Bertha
said, not wanting to get maudlin over the issue. “If I cut him off, he’s
liable to sneak over to that nunnery by the castle and raise hell.”
Emily chuckled. “That’s a good one. If I had it in me to
believe in a God, I’d be on my knees this very moment praying for our
safety, not that I think She’d hold it against me for being an atheist
considering the fact that no self-respecting goddess would have put men
in charge.”
“That was pretty good,” Sally admitted, bereft, though,
of a smile.
Gabby was awake when Bertha returned to her room. Gabby
sat cross-legged in a recliner facing a wall-mounted television. He
waved the cell phone that Francis had given him. “Leroy called. He told
me he wants to burn the castle down and collect on the insurance. How
much of a cut do you suppose I should take.”
“God,” Bertha cried out in exasperation, “you’re all such
a bunch of adolescent comedians!”
Novels by
William G. Tedford