.

she was unhappy. Seeing his wife slip away from reality made him more anxious to help her. Her mind seemed to be fixed on the past mistakes that she had made because she prayed to God to forgive her.

      Their preacher would come by often to pray for her and ask her if she had something that she needed to confess. All she said was “No, it was not my fault, I did all that I could do.” No one had any idea what she was talking about. Sometimes even she did not know what she was talking about. Because of her height and weight, it did not take long for her to start to deteriorate from a lack of food. Even when she did try to eat, nothing would stay down.

      Gracie forced herself to get out of bed, and she took a long bath. She knew in order to keep her secrets, she had to go down to her office to destroy some papers that she had been hiding in a safe. She was too tired to make the trip by herself, so when her husband left the house after eating his lunch, she had her servant drive her and her maid to the orphanage. She was too weak to exit the car, so she gave her servant a key to enter her office and retrieve a box locked in a file cabinet. After giving her the box, she took a book of matches out of her pocket and burned the papers enclosed while sitting in the parking lot, telling them that they were never to mention what she had done to anyone. After they had promised to keep her secret, she told Cornelius that she was ready to go back home.

      When she arrived back home, she saw her husband’s patrol car parked in front of the house, and he was sitting on the steps waiting for her. He held her by the arm and helped her up the steps, making sure not to go to fast. She was too exhausted from her trip to make it up another flight of stairs to their bedroom, so he sat her on the couch and sent the maid to go and get her a pillow and blanket from the closet and he made his wife comfortable on the sofa in the den and then he put more logs in the fireplace to keep her warm. He sat in a chair and begged her to talk to him.

      She said nothing at all. She did not want to look at him.

      After several days on the sofa, Gracie sent for their preacher to pray for her because she knew that her time was coming to an end. Not only did the preacher come, he brought with him a few of her closest friends from church to say their last goodbyes. The preacher led the prayers, asking God to have mercy on her soul, and when they had said amen at the end of the prayer, Gracie closed her eyes and took her last breath, which, to her husband, sounded like a sigh of relief.

      The preacher covered her face with her blanket, and everyone started to cry except her husband—he stood there with his eyes full of water, but he did not let a teardrop fall. All of her friends knew that she took pride in her appearance, so they washed her body and dressed her in her finest nightgown and brushed her long hair and covered her lips with her favorite ruby red lipstick before the lieutenant sent for the coroner to remove her body and take her to the morgue.

      Chapter 10

      Trudy was happy to be with Sydney, but she was still bitter due to her past. For a long time, she was forced to live in poverty, and she wanted to enjoy beautiful things like she did in her past. The people in town knew that he was living in her house, and they did not trust him because they knew nothing about him. She told them that he was traveler in need of assistance, and her heart would not let her ignore him. She said that he helped her around the house by doing repairs on her house and chopping wood for the fireplace and stove. All of the work that he did paid for his room and board. The women knew that was bullshit because they had noticed that she started to look better, and every time that they saw her, she had a smile on her face.

      One evening as she walked down the street on her way home from the butcher shop, two men approached her and demanded that she take them to Sydney because they had heard that he was staying at her house. She denied that she knew who they were talking about, so Lewis pulled out his knife and told her that he would cut her throat. Out of fear for her life, she led them to her house. Sydney was out back chopping wood when he heard Lewis’s voice. He turned around and Lewis said, “Well, well, well if it ain’t the pretty boy.” Then he told him to drop the axe and turn around slowly. Sydney dropped the axe, but he did not turn around.

      He was furious at Trudy for bringing them there, but inside he knew that she did not have a choice because Lewis and his brother were ruthless. He sent her in the house to get them some whiskey. Lewis informed Sydney that while they were in Ohio, some investigators were hanging around the railyard trying to solve the murder of a man that was missing. He told Sydney that he knew he did it because on that night he was there, he saw the whole thing. He told him that they had followed him to the furnace, and they watched him throw Earl’s dead body in the fire and watch him burn, showing no remorse.

      Sydney sat on a stoop and asked him what it would take for him to keep his mouth shut. He told him that he could really use another man in the streets, and also he needed somewhere to stash all of the things that they had stolen. Trudy went in her bedroom, and she prayed for guidance to help her deal with Lewis because she had fallen in love with Sydney, and she did not want to see him get hurt. After sitting in the dark, the answers that she was seeking was revealed to her, so she went into her closet and pulled out her cedar chest and took out a small vial of poison and poured it in a bottle of whiskey before heading back outside.

      She started walking toward Sydney with the bottle in her hand, and Lewis called her a stupid bitch and said that she was supposed to offer a drink to their guest first, so she turned and gave him the bottle. She knew that because of his greed, she nor Sydney would not drink the whiskey that she had poisoned. He opened the bottle and took a long sip before telling Sydney that he would be back in two days, and he had better be ready to go work for him.

      Instead of heading back through town, Lewis and Horace walked along the tracks, passing the bottle of whiskey to each other until it was empty. Sydney and Trudy watched as they started to lose their balance, not able to walk in a straight line. She told him to keep his eyes on them because they would never bother them again. All of a sudden, they heard a train blowing its whistle from a distance, and it was heading straight toward Lewis and Horace. They were too unbalanced to escape from its path, and it hit them both. Lewis was caught under the wheel, and his mangled body was dragged right in front of them, leaving blood along the rails.