Free Ada Unraveled by Barbara Sullivan Page A

had left the light on in her bedroom, perhaps when she
last rested. The room at the end of this twisted house. Dead-ahead
and lighted.
    As I neared I could make out Victoria, now
lying on the bed in a rumpled pile of loose clothing and blankets.
I couldn’t make out her face. She was just a messy bump with arms
and feet.
    There might be clues to Jake’s life and
death in there, but I couldn’t get to them while Victoria was
napping.
    And just this side of her was the bathroom I
so desperately needed to visit.
     
    Our little group of women had grown silent
and angry with lack of sleep and hours of monotonous detail
work.
    “We need to hear your secret, Rachel,”
Abigail said.
    My flock, herd, bevy, cluster, school, or
whatever of butterflies lifted off simultaneously.
    “Right. Sure.”
    But not now. I continued sewing,
hoping to wait until I pushed through the sleep-deprivation into
some sort of second wind.
    I rose to get fresh tea. Stalling.
    A clock chimed as I repositioned myself at
the rack, the first two phrases of the Westminster clock tower
music. Big Ben’s song in miniature voice. It was lovely, in a
melancholy way. I looked around and discovered it was coming from
an antique Regulator only a few feet away, high on the wall at the
end of the windows.
    Such a small clock to be making such a big
sound.
    What I didn’t yet know was that I would grow
to hate that clock before the long night of sewing ended.
     
    I bent to my task, concentrating only on the
lovely stitches, not on the torture my fingers were enduring.
    The memory began to coalesce in my sleepy
head, from decades ago. My story.
    I nodded, and looked up at Abigail whom I
caught staring at me again…or still. Smiling like a cherub about to
shoot an arrow. I took a deep breath and began my tale.
    “Frankly, Abigail, I have difficulty
separating my real memories from stories I’ve heard while growing
up and pictures I’ve seen. This memory happened when I was seven
going on eight.
    “In this instance, I’d come to the defense
of a girl a head taller than me. A girl who was basically shy. And
in that defense, I’d challenged another girl for starting rumors
about my shy friend. Called her out. “In the end, the older kids in
our gang decided that the two of us combatants should ‘duke it
out.’ In a fair fight. A fist fight.
    “We circled each other, me with my sister as
my mentor, Erika with her brother as her mentor, Robert
Swansen.
    “My sister Rita egged me on. ‘Hit her,
Rache. Hit her hard!’ I was thinking, No! I can’t hit anyone!
    “Roger did the same, shouting, ‘Hit her
Erika! Hit her in the face. Hit her big nose. Hit her, hit her, hit
her!’
    “So I did. Hit Erika Swansen right in the
eye. Then my sister and I ran away.”
     
    I was thinking my story had been too
personal and too long, until Abigail said, “That was great Rachel.
You’re a natural storyteller. I knew you’d be a great addition to
our group.”
    Victoria said, “Let’s take a second break. I
have fresh pies from my daughters’ bakery.”
    Almost simultaneously the old Regulator wall
clock began sounding out the hour phrase of the Westminster chimes
and one count. One o’clock. Surely now my energy levels would
lift.
    When I asked about it, Hannah said that
three of Victoria’s daughters, Martha, Mary and Anne, ran a
restaurant and bakery that made pies to die for.
    As we slowly filtered into the kitchen, the
pies were pulled from a warming oven and laid on the counter, and
the room filled with apple and peach and berry perfumes. My nose
had an orgasm.
    We spent a half hour enjoying this break. My
hands actually stopped thrumming and began to unclench. And then we
paraded our way back to the sewing room, all feeling much
better.
    Behind me in the pack, Andrea said, “He’s an
innocent. A victim. He needs our protection.”
    Andrea was angrily defending the same
mystery man she and Elixchel had argued about earlier. The man with
no name. The man