Desperate Measures by Kate Wilhelm

store in Roseburg, an hour out of Eugene. She had never lived in Opal Creek and wouldn’t be likely to know anyone there, or at least not more than as an acquaintance. Maybe she would want to talk to someone not in the family, not grief-stricken.
    The property looked different, she thought when she pulled into the driveway of the Marchand house. It was as obsessively neat as it had been before, but the feeling persisted that something had changed. Or was that what a death did? Strike and leave an uneasy feeling behind, something that hovered unseen and inescapable.
    When she rang the bell at the front door, it was opened promptly by a middle-aged woman whose face was puffy from weeping, her eyes bloodshot.
    â€œMrs. Dufault? My name is Barbara Holloway. I just wanted to stop by and tell you how very sorry I am about your sister and her husband. Dr. Minick said you’re a stranger here, and I thought you might need something.”
    Ruth Dufault opened the door wider. “Dr. Minick? He’s a kind man. He came by offering to help. Please, come in.”
    What Ruth Dufault needed was to talk to a sympathetic listener. They talked in the living room, then out in the kitchen, where Ruth made coffee. “You can see the place where they put the skillet down,” she said. “It burned the porch. I can’t bear to look at it.”
    Barbara looked at the perfect black disk. Murder left its mark, she thought distantly. Everything else was scrupulously neat and clean, inside and out. White woodwork inside gleamed, the polished floors gleamed, the curtains at the kitchen windows were white enough to be dazzling. She turned her attention back to Ruth, who was talking nonstop.
    Rachel was at a friend’s house, she said. Her girlfriend’s mother had come and picked her up, to get her mind off the tragedy. And Daniel was out with Mike Bakken, talking to him about the orchard. Neighbors had offered to help with the harvest, and Daniel said he had to stay that long. They would need the money, but after the harvest they would sell the place.
    â€œI don’t know what to do,” Ruth said, taking cups from a cabinet. “I thought they would go home with me, but Daniel has to stay for the harvest, and then he’ll be at OSU, and Rachel just cries and cries and doesn’t know what she wants to do. One minute she says she’ll go with me, and the next she’s crying or, even worse, just staring at nothing.” She poured coffee and brought the cups to the table.
    â€œShe was like that the night Leona died, just staring, dead white, in shock, I guess. Daniel was crying, he ran off to his room, crying, but she didn’t say a word, didn’t cry, nothing, not until I got some milk out for her, to take with a tranquilizer, you see. Then she broke down and ran to the bathroom over there and cried. But she does that now, stares and stares.”
    She began talking about Leona and Gus. “She was such a pretty girl, just like Rachel. And so fun-loving, full of laughter all the time. My little sister. She was only twelve when I got married, and that’s all she talked about afterward, how she wanted to get married and have children. I had my first a year after I got married, then two more. She wanted a baby more than anything. And Gus came along when she was seventeen. We tried to talk her out of marrying so young, but she knew what she wanted. And Gus seemed to be crazy about her those days. She was eighteen when they got married. She was such a beautiful bride. I don’t know what happened. I just can’t understand what happened to them. One time she said that he believed that women who enjoyed sex were depraved, that it wasn’t natural, that was why she had such a hard time with pregnancies. She never talked about it again, and if I said something like that, she denied ever thinking such a thing. I used to think it was because of her trouble, you know, miscarriages. She had