The Virgin of Small Plains Read Online Free PDF Page A

bedroom.
    “No!” Abby whisper-yelled into her pillow. “Please, please, please! Not tonight, please, please don’t anybody need him tonight!”

    Thank God the Reynoldses had wall-to-wall carpeting everywhere, Mitch thought, as he crept down the second floor landing, and then down the carpeted stairs to the first floor. And thank God Margie Reynolds believed in night-lights, so there was at least some illumination for his trek. As well as he knew this house, which was nearly as well as he knew his own, he still didn’t know it well enough to move blindfolded in the dark.
    He made himself think about what he could do or say if either of Abby’s parents woke up and discovered him sneaking through their house in the dark. Mrs. Reynolds might forgive him, but Mitch had a feeling Doc Reynolds might not be so easy on him.
    “Mitch?” he’d say in that bass, raspy, rumbling voice of his that made everything he said sound well-thought-out and important, even if he only said hello or good-bye or pass the pie. When Quentin Reynolds told people they were cancer-free, they took it as a pronouncement of Gospel truth; if he told them they had three months to live, they believed it, and tended to follow orders by folding their mortal tents on or about three months later. It was well known in town that you wanted to be real careful about what kind of information you asked Doc to give you, and make sure you could handle hearing it. Mitch’s father said that when dealing with Quentin Reynolds, it was best to be a person of independent mind. Quentin also had a dry sense of humor that confused people who lacked one. Mitch could just imagine him saying, “I could have sworn that I got out of bed and that I’m not dreaming. But there you are, sneaking down my front stairs…”
    Mitch crept through the kitchen toward the door that led into Doc’s office and examining rooms. He’d eaten two pieces of Mrs. Reynolds’s cherry pie in that kitchen that very afternoon while Abby’s father worked on the other side of the wall, but it seemed a lot longer ago than that now.
    Doc Reynolds kept to the old-fashioned tradition of conducting his medical practice at home, instead of at an office downtown, and so Mitch walked in the dark through a compact addition that had been built onto the house before he was born. Padding silently in his bare feet, he passed through a small waiting room, a reception and nurse’s office, and then down a short hall where there were five doors leading to Doc’s office, two examining rooms, one bathroom, and a large supply closet.
    If he thought that explaining what he was doing in the house would be difficult, explaining what he was doing in the medical quarters was going to be impossible.
    “Oh, just stealing amphetamines, Doc. Why, is that a problem?”
    Mitch pushed open the door to the supply closet, and offered up a prayer to the god of young virgins. On second thought, he changed that line of defense, too. The god of virgins might not be too pleased that he was about to lose two of his best disciples.
    That thought made Mitch’s knees go so weak that he nearly sank down onto the tile floor.
    When the phone rang like a tornado siren going off, he jumped as if a doctor had poked a needle in his ass.

    For a few blessed moments after the phone rang, Abby didn’t hear anything from the direction of her parents’ bedroom. She let herself imagine that she and Mitch were still safe. But then she heard their door quietly open, and her heart managed to both sink and to race at the same time. She heard her father hurry down the hallway toward the stairs, and all she could do was hide her face in her hands. Her dad was being quiet, but not
that
quiet, so maybe Mitch would hear him coming and find a place to hide—
    Galvanized by the need to warn Mitch, she sprang out of bed and raced to her door.
    “Dad!” she called out. “What’s going on?”
    He barely glanced back over his shoulder long enough to say,