Jacob's Ladder by Jackie Lynn Page A

rested against the trunk.
    Rose listened to the waves rolling against the shore and considered a family living somewhere hundreds of miles away that could, just at that moment, be finding out about the death of their loved one. Since hearing the recent phone call between Mary and the FBI agent, she knew that the dead man’s identity was known and that at some time during the day or during that evening, someone was breaking the news.
    She thought about how the next of kin would be given the details. She considered a family preparing to gather around a dinner table, expecting to enjoy a meal together, and receiving a knock on the door or the ring of the phone, which would suddenly change everything about the night, their weeks to come, probably even their lives.
    She thought of a grandchild’s grief, the littlest one wanting to understand what had happened to the oldest member of the family, the questions about death that a young person so innocently asks. She considered a wife, though she had seen no wedding band on the dead man. Rose thought of how devastating the news would be of a spouse murdered so far away from home. She thought about a son, his anger at some mysterious killer who had so violently stolen away his father.
    And then Rose thought of the reaction of a daughter to the news that her father had died. She thought of the sadness, the loss. And then immediately she remembered her own father and the news that she herself had only just received. She recalled how it was, not more than a couple of hours before, to hear a grave report about a family member.
    Her father’s condition had worsened and at least one person, a person who had lived many years with her as she struggled with her aging parent, a person whom she felt anger toward but whose opinion also mattered to her, had reported that she needed to go home.
    Rose held the bracelet closer against her chest and peered out to Memphis, the lights shining across the river. Once she crossed the bridge from Arkansas into Tennessee, she realized, she would be only one state away from seeing her father. She would be only one state away from the man she had decided almost a year earlier she would never see again.
    Now she was being asked to reconsider the choice she had made. She sat at the shore of the river she had come to love and wasn’t sure what she was going to do, whether to return to Rocky Mount and her father or not.
    It was true, she knew, that she had made her peace with the man who had treated her with such abuse and contempt. She had made peace with the ghosts of her past. Mostly because of her ex-husband’s kindness and support throughout the years, she had, by the age of thirty, let go of her long-held bitterness at her father. She drove away from Rocky Mount thinking that she had forgiven him. She had also driven away allowing herself the opportunity not to feel responsible for him any longer.
    She had been the one to admit him to the nursing home when his condition had worsened. Later, after making all the arrangements, seeing that he received acceptable care, and helping him settle into his new environment, she had felt released from having to be his caregiver, maybe even his daughter.
    And now, right out of the clear blue, just like Ms. Lou Ellen’s three-legged dog, her ex-husband had shown up at Shady Grove. Rip had appeared from nowhere and tried to convince her that she was still his caregiver or, at the very least, a daughter who needed to see him. He had tried to say that she had one more responsibility to the man she no longer worried about or fought against.
    Rose sat forward, resting her head against her knees, and knew that she wanted to be angry with her ex-husband. She also knew that she had plenty of causes. Aside from his early indiscretions, his affair, now, just after she was starting to heal, starting to make a life for herself, he had come crashing into her new world in his shiny gold Cadillac with his perfect