The Northwoods Chronicles Read Free Page A

he had to go home, find Regina and nip this
behavior in the bud before it got out of hand like last time. If
she didn’t start acting like a pastor’s wife, he’d never get a
permanent church.
    She was home in bed by the time he got there,
telltale redness in her cheeks and perspiration on her forehead,
her yellow dress tossed over the arm of the chair.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked.
    “I think I better go to the doctor in the
morning,” she said weakly.
    So she’d been in the tackle shop and heard his
fishing arrangements with Sadie Katherine.
    “I’m going fishing in the morning,” he said, “as
if you didn’t know.”
    She turned on her side away from him.
    “You have to stop following me, Regina. Already
the folks in town have noticed.”
    “I’m not,” she said petulantly.
    “I saw you,” he said. “You’re stalking me.”
    Her silence made him want to slap her, but of
course he never would. She was sick, and he needed to get her some
help. He sighed. They’d been down that road a few times before,
too.
    He stood up and went into the kitchen to fix
dinner, worry heavy in his heart. Regina usually didn’t start this
jealousy thing or whatever it was for a good six to eight months
into a new assignment. He’d put up with it for four to six months
and the church would move them to a fresh location.
    But this time. . . . They’d not been here a
whole month yet and already it had started.
    A bad omen for certain.
    ~~~
    Pearce got the hang of fishing fast under the
private tutelage of Sadie Katherine, a wily, gray-haired woman with
a peculiar face and a quick smile. They met at five a.m. and had a
full bucket of fish by eight. Pearce learned enough about his gear
to rig it himself and catch his own from then on out, as long as
the ice stayed off the lake.
    He caught a glimpse of pink in the forest along
the bank of the lake as Sadie Katherine motored them back to the
dock.
    And another flash of pink behind a tree as she
showed him how to clean his catch in the little hut built for
exactly that purpose.
    Pearce paid her, thanked her, invited her and
Doc to church on Sunday, then took his catch home.
    He was rebagging it for the freezer when Regina
came in, legs scratched and bleeding, twigs in her hair, frost on
the ends of her hair. She’d been crying.
    “I saw you kissing her,” she said.
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “I told her husband.”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    “Yes, I did and he’s coming to kill you. With a
big gun.”
    Pearce finished what he was doing, washed and
dried his hands and then went to her and held her.
    She clung to him, sobbing.
    He didn’t know what to do. “C’mon, let’s see to
these scratches,” he said, and she followed dutifully to the
bathroom where he washed off all the blood, kissed each scratch and
put ointment on it. “If you do this in the summer, you’ll be sick
with poison ivy,” he said.
    She nodded like she understood, but he knew she
didn’t.
    When she was all cleaned up, he washed her face
and then took off her torn and stained pink dress and put her to
bed. He took off his clothes, got in next to her and held her
close.
    Her hands began to rub him in a most pleasant
manner, and he let her do that for a while, as he puzzled yet again
over her situation and what to do about it.
    And then it came to him. She wasn’t cut out to
be a pastor’s wife. She didn’t like doing all those pastor’s-wife
social things. Regina had a style of her own and he’d been trying
to stuff her into a mold that didn’t fit. The answer was
obvious.
    “Honey?” he said.
    She stopped what she was doing. “What?”
    “I think you should get a job.”
    “No,” she said, “a baby.”
    “No baby,” Pearce said.
    “Please? I’ll be a good mommy, Pearce, you don’t
know what a good mommy I can be. Please? Pretty please?”
    It wasn’t as if this was a brand-new topic of
conversation, but this time Pearce thought he ought to consider it.
If she had a baby to