Free The 37th Hour by Jodi Compton Page A

This train was too far away for me to hear the three-part rhythm of its passing on the tracks, but the whistle blew again, a faint comforting sound of Minneapolis.
     
    Genevieve agreed to go for a run with me in the morning, two easy miles. We returned to find Doug and Deborah getting ready to go out, to meet friends for a late Sunday breakfast. “There’s coffee on,” Deborah advised me, hurriedly, when Genevieve and I arrived in the kitchen, and its scent did fill the house.
    In the kitchen, shortly before Deborah and Doug left, I managed to talk with both of them while Genevieve wasn’t in the kitchen.
    “Listen,” I said carefully, “I was talking about something with Genevieve last night. . . . Do you keep any guns in the house?”
    “Guns?” Doug said. “No. I don’t hunt.”
    “Why?” Deborah asked.
    “I’m just worried about Genevieve,” I said. “You live awfully close to Royce Stewart. And sometimes I wonder if she’s always thinking straight.”
    Doug gave me an incredulous look. “You can’t seriously think—”
    “No,” I said. “I’m probably just being paranoid. Goes with the job sometimes.”
    Genevieve drifted back into the kitchen, and I fell silent. Deborah busied herself before the refrigerator, surveying its contents.
    “Honey,” she told Doug, “I thought we had more Diet Coke than this. Don’t let me forget to stop on the way home, all right?”
    While her husband was warming up their car in the garage, Deborah pulled me aside.
    “Come upstairs with me for a minute,” she said.
    I followed her up to their bedroom and watched as Deborah pushed aside the hanging clothes in her closet and took a small black purse from a peg in the back. Although the bag looked empty to me, with its sides caved slightly in, she handled it with delicacy. Sitting on the bed, she unzipped it and reached inside. Made curious by her caution, I moved closer.
    She paused with her hand in the purse and looked up at me. “I guess Doug didn’t know I had this,” she said. “So I’m sure Genevieve doesn’t, either.”
    She withdrew a small handgun from the bag, a .25 with cheap, bright plating.
    “When I had my first teaching job in East St. Louis,” she said, “the school was in kind of a rough neighborhood. A friend who’d lived there all his life gave this to me. It’s not registered to me. . . . I don’t know who it’s registered to, actually.”
    Deborah Lowe wore a white blouse and a black straight skirt, and her lips were limned tastefully with pale red lipstick. I marveled.
    “Teacher’s got a Saturday-night special,” I said.
    “I know, it’s awful. That’s why I wanted you to take it. It’s not necessarily because of Genevieve. I just want it gone, and I don’t know how to get rid of it.” She offered it to me.
    Doug’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Deb! We’re burning daylight!” he yelled.
    I took the little gun from her hand. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”
    I stayed awhile with Genevieve after they had gone. I tried to interest her in department news and gossip, to the extent that I knew any. The truth was, I’d always counted on her for that sort of thing. She’d been my branch of the grapevine.
    When I left, Genevieve followed me as far as the front porch. I stopped there and spoke to her. “If you ever want to talk, just give me a call. You know I’m up late.”
    “I will,” she said quietly.
    “You should think about coming back to work,” I added. “It might help you to be occupied. And we need you.”
    “I know,” she said. “I’m trying.” But I could see in her eyes that she was in a dark place and a few rallying words from me weren’t going to help.
     
    The first raindrops speckled my windshield only minutes after the house disappeared from my rearview mirror.
    I thought I’d left in plenty of time to get back to the Cities. I should have known better. You should always expect bad luck on the road. Particularly when it