"I never understood how it was with her." The sound of George's voice startled the women. It was the first time he'd spoken since Julia had put the rifle to his head.

On the table, the untouched food on the dishes was cold and unappetizing, and a thick scum had formed over the gravy. But Ruth didn't look as she filled the coffee mug from the chipped porcelain pot. She took a moment to stroke the rose-colored tea kettle on the summer stove and smile at the parakeet screeching in its white cage before carrying the mug to the front room. As she placed it on the table next to George, she glanced at Julia, still standing straight as an oak, the rifle grasped in her hands with the barrel pointed to the floor like George had taught her.

"You alright?" Ruth asked.

Julia's eyes didn't shift from the back of George's head. "Couldn't be better."

Ruth settled into her usual chair facing George and watched as he shoved a sun-browned hand through his thinning hair. She sensed a difference, not in the room for it was still the same tired, uninteresting place it been when George's mother darned his socks in this very chair. No, the change was within her -- an independence -- like she had already taken possession of the house. Ruth straightened her usually rounded shoulders, narrowed her eyelids, and an unaccustomed smile penetrated her usual dour expression. No, it was more than that, more like she had taken possession of herself.

As she gazed at the bent figure of her husband of sixteen years, it crossed her mind that he and his father had always lived in this room as adjuncts, willing flies trapped in the comfortable web their wives had built. Ruth thought that she and George had been content with their dullness. Now she knew that she alone had been content.

"It's like I was only there to help her get somewheres else." He squinted out the window through the falling night, out toward the pig sty.

Ruth had never heard him discuss Sylvia with anyone. She studied her husband's sharp, weathered face, turned the color of the Dakota soil in the dry prairie sun, and tried to remember why she had loved this man. How ironic, she thought, Sylvia had taken George away from her while she lived, and now, in death, she was doing it again.

George was mumbling again through his clenched jaws. "I couldn't just talk to her. She'd never sit still and let me think how to say things. She'd squirm like she couldn't wait to be gone. I wanted to tell her things." His head dropped into his hands. "To tell her . . . ."

Ruth saw him as if for the first time. When had he gotten so old? He'd always been shy, silent, and alone. In high school, he had never hung around after class. He would climb in the old gray Hudson and head straight for the farm. The only interest he had ever shown in town was Sylvia.

Ruth remembered the first day Sylvia moved to Whitewood with her grandmother. Like all of the townsfolk, she had been suspicious of Sylvia, with her flaming Veronica Lake pageboy and more sophistication than any fifteen year old this town had ever seen. Rumor was that her father had been killed in '44 when the Japs sunk his ship in the Philippines, and a few months later, her mother was shot by a jealous boyfriend in a hotel in Denver.

Any pity that Ruth had ever felt for Sylvia died that day she had resolved to ask George to the Sadie Hawkin's Day dance. Since none of the pretty girls would ask him, she thought she had a chance. She liked his shyness. It matched hers. She approached him as he slouched in back of the staircase, his hands in his pockets, devouring the sight of Sylvia. It was his look � that of a hungry animal � that had stopped Ruth dead.

****

Ruth looked at the clock that hung beside the door to the kitchen. "It's nearly seven o'clock, Julia. You've been standing there for nearly thirty minutes. You must be tired. Give me the gun and get some rest. Go watch for the sheriff. He should be here in another fifteen minutes or so."

"I'm fine, really Ruth. I'll sit down." Julia dropped onto the straight chair next to the radio and laid the rifle across her knees. She still hadn't taken her eyes off of George.

Ruth tucked some loose strands of her graying hair into a bun that nestled on the back of her head, just above her neck, then reached for the rose and white afghan she was knitting. Rose was her favorite color, and she decided to use it to cover the dreary sofa that had been George's mother's. She wouldn't have to worry now about his reaction. He fretted over everything that she had done on this farm that his grandparents had homesteaded.

Everyone in town said that George took after his father, as far as anyone could tell. It was hard to find anyone who knew the old man enough to talk about. Fewer knew his mother, and nobody ever could say what happened to her. She just seemed to fade away. Last anybody saw of her was one Easter in church, alone. A few days later, she was dead and buried. After that, in his Junior year, George quit school. A couple of years later, his father was killed in an accident that was the source of jokes around Whitewood for years. She'd heard her uncles tell the story that when George was a little boy, he had witnessed his father kill a horse with a club in a fit of temper because it wouldn't come out of the stall. Then, one fatal, cold day, the old man went to get the tractor out of the barn. The gear box on the old machine had frozen, and just like that horse, it wouldn't budge. The old man screamed and hollered at that hunk of machinery like it was a living thing, and when it refused to move, he jumped down from the seat, picked up a two-by-four and began whacking it. That must have loosened up something, and the thing popped into gear and backed right over him. Killed him on the spot.

Ruth would see George often after that when he started going into Whitewood on Saturdays to hang around wherever he could find Sylvia. Sylvia would only laugh and make fun of him, but he hadn't seemed to mind. He'd just look at her in that hungry way and not say anything. It wasn't to long after that, George and Sylvia up and married. After that, Ruth resigned to being an old maid.

****

"Any more coffee?" George snarled as he sat on the edge of the sofa, his head laying heavy in his hands.

Out of habit, Ruth put her afghan aside and reached for his cup. The parakeet whistled as she pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, and she whistled back, and again filled the cup from the blue pot she'd always hated. It was an ugly thing that had also been George's mother's. Before setting the cup on the table next to George, she rubbed a water ring from its polished surface with her apron, and as she straightened, she thought that maybe she'd paint this whole room pale rose. Cheer it up a bit.

"Wasn't too bad when she was carrying." George's words again startled Ruth. Already his presence had become a shadow.

"She'd let me get her things and take care of her. We even talked some. Got lonesome, I guess. But after the baby came, she was more restless than ever." George paused to take a noisy sip of the coffee then continued, faster this time, as if anxious to get it finished. "One day, she just up and left. Said she was going to Omaha. I couldn't sleep none with her gone. Things just kept going through my head. She left the baby here. Took care of her the best I could."

The women had not asked him for an explanation, but they became absorbed in his words. It was a story told for the first time, and one that had touched both of their lives.

"Then I found a bank deposit book she'd hid in the flour bin. Didn't know I could bake," George sneered. "When she came back a few days later, she was all kind of cheery-like, and I asked her about the book." He took another noisy sip of the coffee and slammed the mug down on the table. "She lied about it. But I had found out how she was taking the money. Hadn't missed it before. She'd taken it slow-like � smart. Oh, she was smart alright." He looked straight at Ruth, and she saw bitter hate in his eyes. "I only meant to tell her to get out, 'til she laughed at me in that way of hers. Made me crazy." George pushed the hair back from his forehead and started to rise off the sofa, forgetting that his feet were tied.

Julia raised the rifle to her shoulder as he stumbled back on the cushion, "Didn't know I'd hit her so hard." He spitted his words through clenched teeth. "She stole from me. From the farm." He punched the padded arm and gazed again toward the pig pen.

Ruth knew the hogs were always his favorite animals most of all because they brought in the most money for the farm. But he also liked the sounds they'd make over their slop, and the way they'd get ecstatic in the wet muck. He didn't even mind their smell. He said it was "kinda earthy and natural-like." He'd never lost his temper and beat them like he had the other animals. Whenever Ruth caught him hanging over the fence, just looking at them, she had figured that it was the pigs he was contemplating.

As George gazed into the darkness out the window, Ruth examined his thin, high-arched nose that she had once thought attractive, and wondered if she'd have married him had she known that Julia was not his. Julia was nearly seven-months-old the first time he'd asked her to come out here.

"I need you Ruth," he'd said. "My wife was killed by a thief in Omaha, and there's a child that needs taking care of."

That would have been reason enough for a woman like Ruth to agree to marry, but for her, a proposal from this man was what she had been praying for, and what she had been biding her time to hear. Ruth had taken to baby Julia right off. She was such a darling little thing considering she'd never had much care. Ruth would sometimes imagine that Julia was her baby, her's and George's. The evenings alone, rocking and singing her to sleep were some of the happiest Ruth had ever known.

Her own childhood had been bereft of song and even simple conversation. There were times, she remembered, when days would pass before she'd hear the sound of a human voice. Her mother and father had been raised in silence. Hard work and prayer were enough for the soul. It had been only a few months into the marriage that she realized that she, George, and Julia were becoming a mirror image of her own family.

Ruth looked up from her afghan to peek at Julia, still mute, still staring at the back of George's head with unblinking eyes. How strong she is, Ruth thought. By the time Julia was five, it had become impossible for Ruth to pretend that Julia was her child. She'd acquired Sylvia's flirty, bouncy ways. During the last few years, Ruth found that more often than not, she had to clench her lips tight and leave the room so she wouldn't say hurtful things to Julia.

****

As Ruth knitted in the room gone orange in the last moments of twilight, she shivered at the viciousness with which she had reacted to Julia that Sunday morning. Was that really only ten days ago, she thought?

****

Ruth, a starched apron protecting her church dress, had been at the stove pouring gravy into a gold-rimmed bowl. This was her favorite chore of the week, preparing Sunday dinner on the delicate cream and green porcelain gas stove she used only in the summer.

Julia burst into the quiet kitchen. "Do you know the old woman who lives in that broken down house on the corner of Pine Street -- you know, the hunched-over one who always smiles so funny at us when we walk by."

As she neared her stepmother, Julia knocked the gravy bowl from Ruth's grasp, and it crashed to the floor, spattering gravy onto the spotless stove and soiling Ruth's clean apron.

"Oh god Ruth, I'm sorry. Here, let me . . " Julia bent over to pick up some of the glass, but Ruth shoved her aside.

"Look what you've done." Ruth yelled. "You're just like your mother. Careless and self-centered. Neither one of you ever thought of anyone but herself."

Ruth's words echoed as if they'd been shot from a gun. There was no thought to bite her lip as she had done so many time before. And the words came faster and louder as she wiped at the greasy mess on the stove. "Sylvia wasn't happy either, until she'd made a scene. Until everyone was looking her way. How I hated her." She was screaming now. "Get out of my kitchen. Get out of my house. Get out of my life." Ruth's words detonated in the silent air.

Julia had backed up and was leaning against the sideboard a few feet away with her mouth agape.

"She was nothing but a redheaded whore. And you're no better," Ruth had shrieked at the stunned girl.

Julia's mouth clapped shut, and she grabbed the salt box off the sideboard and flung it at Ruth's head. "My mother was no whore, you dried-up old prune."

Ruth had thrown her head back, and the box whizzed passed the tip of her nose and slammed into the parakeet's cage, breaking lose the metal bottom, and sending it clanging to the floor. The shocked bird was knocked from its perch. It flopped out the open bottom, thrashing its wings in the unfamiliar freedom. Amid wild screeches and squawks, it flapped to the top of the window blind and found a claw-hold on the rough surface.

Ruth sobbed into her hands as she fled to the solitude of the parlor. Julia followed and sat beside her on the old sofa. "I know you never liked my mother, Ruth, but I didn't think you hated me too." Julia's voice was barely audible. "I have never wanted to hurt you, Ruth. You've been my only mother."

Ruth sobbed uncontrollably, now. Unfamiliar tears made her try to recall the last time she'd cried. Her mother's funeral? Her father's? No. Crying was something done in private, away from curious eyes. She couldn't remember.

"Forgive me, Julia," Ruth struggled for composure as she blew her nose on the handkerchief she had pulled from her apron pocket. "I had no call to be cruel." Ruth didn't know what kept her from hugging Julia. Lord knows she wanted to. Sylvia would have, she grudged. "You look very much like your mother right now," Ruth put her hand to Julia's hair, "except the hair. She had the brightest red hair you've ever seen."

"Ruth, do you know that woman I was asking you about? You know, the one in that old house on Pine Street?" Julia had not noticed Ruth's attempt at tenderness. "She gives me the weirdest looks sometimes."

Julia's persistence had always amazed and irritated Ruth. She had often said that Julia would insist that God answer all her prayers before she'd agree to go to heaven, so there was little to gain by trying to put her off now.

"The little green house is next to that one in which your mother was raised, and the woman that lives there was the only friend your great-grandmother had in Whitewood." Ruth was calm now, grateful for the distraction. "I drove you by there one time, but maybe you were too young to remember."

"Well," Julia had begun, "this morning after church, I was walking by her house, and she stopped me at her gate. She was saying things about my mother, and me, and Father too. Strange things. Like she knew how my mother really died, and asked me if my father is good to me. She made me so upset that I hurried away from her. But I have a bad feeling about what she was saying. She's probably just a little funny in the head, but I don't like people saying bad things about Sylvia."

Ruth had stared down at her hands remembering the whispered conversations she'd witnessed over the years. The first time was about ten years ago when she and George had taken Julia to enroll her in the first grade. The three of them had never been seen together in Whitewood, and she could see that wherever they went, people stared and whispered about them behind their hands. It was not her imagination that she had heard Sylvia's name several times that day. George had rushed them through the process and almost pushed them into the Ford for the trip back to the farm. No one has seen them together since.

Julia interrupted Ruth's reverie. "What she said made me remember things the kids at school sometimes say to me -- things I don't understand. I mostly just put it out of my mind."

Ruth had always been able to either ignore or half answer Julia's questions about her mother, but she knew it was not going to work anymore. "Ok, Julia, its time we find out where she's buried and maybe put some flowers on her grave. We'll start tomorrow."

Julia had clapped her hands and kissed her on the cheek, "Oh thank you, Ruth. I'm glad we're not angry anymore."

Ruth absently brushed her kissed cheek, then caught Julia by the arm before she could bounce out of the room. "One more thing," Ruth had said. "I think this should be our secret. Your father might not understand."

****

Ruth laid the afghan aside and glanced up at the clock, "Seven-twenty. The sheriff should be here by now."

George was getting restless. He had been eyeing the knots on the rope that bound his legs with a look that made Ruth uncomfortable. "If you're thinking about getting away, just take a look at Julia's face. She's not going to give you a chance."

Julia got up from the chair, the rifle firm in her grip, and walked around the sofa to Ruth's side. She had not said a word to George since they had tied him and called the sheriff. Ruth figured that everything had been said out by the barn, and Julia was exhausted.

The ten days they had searched for Julia�s mother�s grave took its toll on the women. George had been suspicious of their absences and they were running out of excuses, but there was no stopping. " Oh, Ruth, we can�t quit now," Julia pleaded. "I�ve got to know about her."

Each inquiry they made gave them more leads to follow up, and each discovery further confirmed their suspicions about Sylvia's death. They had begun by talking with the old women in the green house who had given them the name of Sylvia's lover. They went to Omaha to meet with him and had discovered that he, not George, was Julia's father, and that he had seen Sylvia only once after Julia was born. As far as he knew, she had returned to the farm and George. Julia left that meeting with tears in her eyes.

Then they had gone to the police station and the newspapers and could find nothing about a woman being murdered during that time, and they could find no grave in any cemetery in the area. They decided to confront George that evening.

At supper, Julia had leaned across the table toward George as he lifted a fork to his mouth. "Where's my mother?" she had demanded in a low, threatening voice.

The fork clattered to the table, scattering its contents on the clean, white cloth.

Ruth's first question was barely audible. "Did you know that Julia is not your daughter?"

George's face was reddening. "I'm not listening to this tripe," he yelled as he shoved the table away from him and rose from his chair and went to the door. The slammed door shook the hanging cage, and the startled parakeet screamed making the women jump. They could see George through the window, glowing pink in the early sunset as he strode toward the barn.

Ruth pulled Julia from her chair. "Come on. We aren't going to let this drop tonight." She had never before left the kitchen with the table uncleared.

"Why did you lie about Sylvia? She wasn't killed in Omaha, was she?" Ruth shouted at his back as she struggled to catch up to his long strides.

"Where's my mother?" Julia was screaming and running, leaving Ruth behind. "What did you do with her."

George had stopped and turned at the door of the barn, his body now appearing on fire in the fierce Dakota prairie sunset. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"Julia has a right to know about her mother, and we don't intend to leave you alone until we find out," was Ruth's reply.

He thrust his finger at Julia and threatened, "She wasn't worth wasting time on, and I don't want another word from you, I mean it." Because it was part of his evening rounds, he turned toward the pig sty, the women close on his heels.

"George, we're going to follow you until we have an answer. Why did you lie?" Ruth's face was now tense with purpose.

The pigs were snorting at the fence, expecting their evening meal, but George was not thinking of pigs. "She was a thief and a gold-digger."

"Quit calling my mother names," Julia screamed again into his face, "Where is she? I have to know. I have a right to know."

George had backed along the fence, one hand hanging on to the top rail for support the other clenched into a fist at his waist. "The only reason she married me was because of the baby -- because of you." He jabbed a finger into Julia's chest.

She backed up, just out of reach, as he ranted, "I gave you both everything." Sweat was rolling off his face which had turned the color of burnt crimson. "She was going to steal my money. Leave me. What did she think I was? She wasn't going to play me for a fool any more. Wasn't going to steal from me again. I saw to that. I showed her I meant it." He raised his shaking fist and smashed it into the corner post of the pig sty fence.

"Where is she now, George? You bury her somewhere? On the farm, maybe?" Ruth was too wound up to notice that George's face was tight with anger. "In the garden? Nobody would see a grave there. Or here?" She pointed into the sty with a finger turned white. "Your beloved hogs would hide a grave. Yes, that's it. Isn't it? It's not the hogs. It's Sylvia you see in there."

"C'mon." Julia grabbed Ruth's sleeve. "We'd better run. Now!"

And they ran, stumbling across the dusty yard, panting as they dove into the house and locked the door behind them. Ruth called the sheriff while Julia grabbed the rifle off the wall and loaded it. They both jumped when George kicked the screen and slammed his fist against the solid front door.

"This is my house. Get out of there." His voice was shrill. It was not a voice the women had ever heard before. "I'll kill you both. Nobody takes from me and gets away with it."

When they were ready, they unlocked the door and swung it open. George nearly fell into the room, but he caught his balance on the sofa table, knocking the lamp to the floor and shattering its porcelain base. His face had now turned the color of old blood, and unaware of the rifle pointed at him, he raised his fist toward Ruth and roared like a wounded animal. She hadn't had time to move, and the blow struck her just above the ear, and she fell to the floor. She seized his leg and clamped her teeth into his shin. The crunch of skin breaking under her teeth nearly made her faint.

Julia put the barrel of the gun to the back of George's head and screamed, "I won't mind one bit pulling this trigger, you hear?"

George went limp with pain and fear.

"Sit down George." Ruth, surprised at the strength of her command, had pulled herself up, pushed him to the sofa, and tied his ankles together. Only then did she feel the ache in her head where he had struck her. She had put her palms over her eyes and wished this was over.

****

"Here they come." Julia was the first to hear the sheriff's car turn onto the half-mile of dirt road leading to the house.

Ruth pushed aside the lace curtains and peered through the dark at the headlights getting nearer. "It's about time. There's two cars, Julie." It was the first time in many years she had called her step-daughter "Julie," and she wondered if Julia had noticed.

They turned back to George, who was reaching for the ties on his ankles.

"Sit up. I mean it." Julia snapped the rifle toward his face, and he jerked his hands up and laid them in his lap.

Ruth stared at Julia. The day had wiped away the ingenue look of her sixteen years, and it was like seeing Sylvia again. Poor Sylvia, Ruth thought.

When the door clicked behind the last of the deputies, Ruth picked the broken lamp off the floor and laid it on the table while Julia unloaded the rifle and returned it to its rack. The only sound in the house was the parakeet, screeching for its dinner. It was then that Ruth remembered that the pigs hadn't been fed since morning. They could wait, she thought. They'd have to be moved anyway.

Ruth took Julia's hand and led her into the kitchen. "Sit down, Julie. I'll make some tea. Never did like coffee," Ruth said as she patted the still dazed girl on the shoulder. She picked up the blue coffee pot and dropped it in the trash can, then lifted the rose-colored tea kettle off the shelf, filled it with water and carried it to the little summer stove." You know Julie, I've been thinking." She couldn't remember when she'd felt this good. "You should color your hair red. It looked real nice on your mother."