“It’s probably a dead deer carcass,” Mumsie’s wobbly voice announced from the kitchen doorway. She pushed her walker with its tennis ball feet onto the linoleum. Her green eyes were vibrant. Behind her, a young aide from the senior center hovered as though Mumsie would collapse at any moment.
“A deer carcass?” Collin’s mouth twitched. He did seem to find Mumsie amusing, whereas Aggie struggled to accept the sharp edges to her grandmother’s sweeping declarations.
“Of course.” Mumsie shuffled across the room toward the lidless kitchen garbage. She’d spotted something, it seemed, and was on a mission. “Hunters will often dump the remains of their hunt after disembowelment.”
Aggie grimaced. “I highly doubt it’s a deer carcass, Mumsie.”
Collin seemed to agree. “At the risk of offending you, sweetheart, I would have to argue a hunter would dispose of animal remains where he cleans the carcass. Typically, in the field or woods where the animal is harvested.”
“This is all a bit violent, don’t you think?”
Mumsie waved off Aggie’s aversion. She reached into the garbage, lifting a plastic zip-seal baggie from its innards. “I became immune to violence years ago.”
An instant quiet fell over the room. Collin exchanged a raised-eyebrow look with Aggie. Aggie glanced at the aide, whose blue eyes were wide with innocence and not a small bit of shock.
“This one here,” Mumsie said and waved her hand in the aide’s direction with a cheeky grin, “she’s unsure of me. I don’t blame you.” Mumsie directed the tail end of her sentence to the aide. “Poor Rebecca, you do try and all, but when you reach my age”—she shook the plastic bag in Aggie’s face—“you realize there’s no point in changing.”
Aggie snatched the delinquent, crumb-filled bag from Mumsie’s hand, but Mumsie speared her with a stern eye.
“We wash the baggies. We do not throw them away.”
Aggie crumpled it in her hand. “Mumsie, they’re less than a few cents a bag.”
Mumsie shook her head and shot poor Rebecca the aide an exasperated look that must have been intended to gain Rebecca’s mutual agreement. The smart girl remained expressionless.
Mumsie pursed her lips—newly rouged in red lipstick, it appeared—and returned to lecturing Aggie. “A few cents go a long way. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?”
Again, silence. Even Mumsie seemed tripped up at her own words.
Aggie’s rush of unexpected emotion and hurt sent a flush into her cheeks, and she squeezed her eyes closed to compose herself.
Collin cleared his throat.
Rebecca shifted her feet, her tennis shoe squeaking on the linoleum.
Mumsie’s hand reached out and cupped Aggie’s, her skin cool and the baggie crumpling even more between Aggie’s fingers.
“I’m sure your mother did.” Mumsie’s response was belated. But there was also a tremble in her voice that made Aggie look up and into the old woman’s eyes. Hurt reflected there, like a mirror, mimicking the image seen in Aggie’s eyes. That deep, dark kind of hurt that held on to the tail end of any potential happiness a person could find and dragged downward until succumbing to the weight of it was the only option—and to survive it, one must build up a good defense.
Aggie had no desire to try to make amends. Mumsie might be ninety-two and almost adorable to the naked eye, but she had sharp edges that sliced so fast and quick, one bled before they even had time to feel the pain of the wound.
“Excuse me.” Aggie pushed back in her chair, made a point of dropping the baggie back into the garbage, and hurried out the back door.
She heard Mumsie’s choked “Agnes!” Whether from tears, worry, concern, anger, or annoyance, Aggie had no intention of trying to decipher it.
Her feet planted her in the middle of the fenced-in backyard. This time, it was void of a fake skeleton—much to her vague relief—and her flats sank into the cushiony green grass and crunched a few early fall leaves that had floated to the earth.
Mill Creek was worse than Chicago for getting away from people! At least there you could go for a walk and get lost in the throngs of passersby you’d never see again—never care about. But here, the backyard was adjacent to a young family whose mother now played in their own yard with her toddler, lifting her hand in a wave that demanded a polite wave back. One could find aloneness in a crowd, but in Mill Creek? A small town? The place suffocated Aggie.
“She didn’t mean to drive you away, Love.” Collin’s lilting voice brushed her ear. Aggie crossed her arms over her chest, avoiding looking at him, and lifted her eyes to the tops of the maple trees in the neighbor’s backyard. She could see her thick eyelashes as she blinked. She could also feel their wetness on her cheeks.
Aggie swiped her eyes, recrossing her arms. “She never means to. She just—does,” Aggie acknowledged.
Collin seemed to be examining the very same treetops. He didn’t demand her attention, yet Aggie could sense him weighing his words carefully.
“You’ve both experienced losses.”
Well, that was an inane observation! Aggie glanced at him, ready to say so, but then realized she’d sound as snippy as Mumsie. Blunt, tactless . . . Maybe they were one and the same after all.
“It’s beyond time you ask your grandmother directly what happened to Hazel. It’s more than apparent that Hazel’s death somehow shaped your grandmother’s entire life. Dancing about and hoping she drops a hint or two is a pathetic way of getting to the bottom of it all, don’t you think?”
Direct. Apparently, Collin could dish it out too.
Aggie bit her bottom lip, then retorted, “I don’t know that I want to get to the bottom of it all.”
Collin nodded. “So I thought. You’re far too assertive otherwise.”
Aggie rolled her eyes at the trees. Assertive. It’d served her well in her last job. But now? It did her no good. It was misdirected into a long-standing family dysfunction and a more-than-confusing exploration of the local cemetery. Neither of which had ever been on her bucket list of things to be assertive about. Which was why she was holding herself back.
“Let yourself do what you’re good at.” Collin’s words rifled through her frayed nerves.
Aggie turned to look at him. “And what is that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know you that well, Love, but I do know you’re the image of your grandmum. Both outside and in. I don’t believe your Mumsie really wants you to cower around her. She needs you to push her. Let’s be frank, she’s not long for this world, and I’m sure she’d like to know what happened to Hazel too. That rose you found was right about one thing—it’s not over. For either of you. Your grandmum can’t teach you how to grieve and heal, not until she’s found out how herself. Until then, you’re both just treading water and you’re bound to get tired.”
Aggie stared at him, surprised by his astute read of the situation, and confused as to where he found his wisdom.
“And you?” she pressed gently. “What are you good at?” Besides suspiciously contrived accents and slang, keeping his private life like one kept secrets of the Vatican, and turning her defenses into mush with one red-lashed wink of his eye.
Collin reached out and lifted strands of her dark hair, rubbing their fineness between his index finger and thumb as he contemplated. “Ahh, well.” A strange shadow flickered across his face. He frowned, the furrows between his brows deepening almost into a bothersome scowl. Then they faded as his features relaxed. He’d come to terms with something in his own mind, she could tell.
Collin met her eyes. “I’m a genius at finding a hidden grave.”
But the humor was gone from his voice, the wit vanished from his eyes.
Aggie didn’t know why she was compelled to, but she moved closer, studying his face. All his insight was directed into her or to Mumsie or others around him, of which he was especially observant and even spot-on with his assessments. But the door to who Collin O’Shaughnessy was remained firmly latched.
“Who are you, Collin?” she whispered.
His eyes dipped to her mouth, then lifted and collided with her gaze. There it was. The same hidden hurt. The same darkness lurking behind his irises. Yet there was something different in them too. A tiny flicker of health, of hope, as though he were mending, and she and Mumsie were left behind in an emotional ICU.
“I’m just an archaeologist, Love.” He released her hair and trailed his finger down her cheek. “I help uncover dead things and bring their stories back to life.”
CHAPTER 25
Dinner was eaten in silence. Collin had departed for a meeting with Mr. Richardson, the cemetery board, and hopefully the county coroner, who was the one who needed to sign off on the disinterment paper work. Apparently, they could all only manage to gather at suppertime. Aggie had a missed call on her cell from Mr. Richardson, but she listened to the voicemail requesting she attend the meeting and take notes. Too late. They’d have to figure out how to do that without her. Aggie knew her devotion to her work was sorely lacking.
Not to mention, Aggie couldn’t shake the interlude between them in the backyard that afternoon. Couldn’t avoid the way his whispered words pierced her, wondering if he knew more of her pain than she realized. Comprehending that his story—who Collin O’Shaughnessy was—surely surpassed her initial assessment of him. Archaeologist nerd who studied insects on the side and dressed like an English lord in casual wear from the twenties.
“If you’re not going to go after that nice boy with the glasses, perhaps you should consider finding a man.” Mumsie forked the chicken that balanced on her TV tray as the game show played on the TV in front of them.
Aggie glanced sharply at her, her own fork stopping midway to her mouth. That wasn’t the silence breaker she’d expected as they ate together in Mumsie’s sitting room, Mumsie in her recliner and Aggie on the stiff chair that begged to be tossed on a bonfire.
“You’re making an assumption I want a man.” Aggie ignored the flash of Collin’s image in her mind.
“Now you sound like one of those females who believe men are the spawn of the devil,” Mumsie snapped.
“Not at all,” Aggie responded quickly. “I believe men are a creation of God. I’m just not racing into the trenches to find one.” Although some days, if she were honest, her independence fell just shy of enough and she desired companionship. A partner. Now more than ever, if truth be told. Loneliness was that strange partner to grief. Somehow grief ostracized a person from intimacy of any kind.
“Men are necessary for procreation.”
That wasn’t the sort of intimacy Aggie had been thinking about. Still, she blushed as though Mumsie had somehow read and misinterpreted her thoughts. “I’ve no desire to procreate.”
“How would you know? You haven’t a child to gauge that by.” Mumsie stared at the TV and the word puzzle with the intensity of an actual game-show contestant.
“One doesn’t rent a child to measure one’s disposition to be a parent.” Aggie fumbled with her fork and jammed it into her mouth so she had something to chew before she said anything more snippy to her grandmother.
“And why not? It makes far more sense than bringing an unwanted little thing into the world to fend for themselves.”
“Mumsie!”
“Well?” It was time for the infamous Mumsie stare of condescension. “If you’re not going to find a man—like that Collin fellow—then go help a child in need, for pity’s sake, and stop this infernal loafing about in my business.”
“I’m not—”
“Of course you are.” Mumsie waved Aggie away. “I’ve seen you in my room upstairs when I’m not in it. You didn’t even get the hint when I closed the door on you the first time.”
“That was you!” Aggie glowered.
Mumsie smirked a little. “Well, you’re nosy. I thought perhaps if you thought a ghost was afoot, you’d take your leave.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Aggie retorted.
“So I’ve discovered. However, I know alllllllllll about the fact you interrogated Mr. Richardson about my sister. You’ve probably even looked up town records and know more than you should. There’re other things to do with your life than nose into mine. Find a hobby. Go dancing. Knit a scarf, for heaven’s sake. You need to make something of yourself. It’s pitiful, really, you don’t even go to church.”
“I don’t like churches.” Aggie had stopped chewing and stared incredulously at her grandmother, who had yet to take her eyes off the TV. “I don’t know if I even believe in God.”
“Fancy that.” Mumsie lifted her dinner roll. “Your mother certainly didn’t teach you that.”
The offhanded comment was launched without any attempt at apology or retribution this time. Aggie caught Mumsie’s quick glance from the corner of her aged green eyes. She knew what she was saying, and she intended it to have its impact.
“No.” Aggie remembered the worn Bible by Mom’s bedside. Remembered the years growing up when she took Aggie to Vacation Bible School, enrolled her in church camp one year, and when her father wasn’t around to care—which was often—took her to church on Sundays. Truth be told, while it was nice and all, Aggie hadn’t really needed faith, church, or God. She’d been successful on her own. Until Mom died. Then she for sure didn’t need faith, church, or God.
“God has never pulled through for me.” Aggie heard the words, perhaps the excuse, and at the same time was never more certain she believed it.
Mumsie glanced at her, then pointed her fork in Aggie’s direction. “And that, right there, is the problem with today’s Christianity. Such entitlement. I never.”
“Entitlement?” Aggie drew back. “Is it too much to ask an all-powerful God to save my mother from cancer?”
Her question reverberated in the room. The game-show host announced something. The audience clapped. Mumsie studied Aggie’s face, and they had a showdown between their locked eyes.
Mumsie cleared her throat. “There are some things we cannot explain, Agnes. One being the greater mind of God.”
“There’s a comfort,” Aggie quipped, more to herself than anything.
“No.” Mumsie stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken. “There is truth. It’s why we must have faith and believe in His goodness.”
“What a dreadful way to live. What if His goodness fails us?” Aggie dared Mumsie to retort with wisdom that would trump her own cynical faith.
Mumsie gave her a small smile. “I’ve no Scripture to blubber your way, and I refuse to offer you a biblical cliché, Agnes.”
Aggie stared at her grandmother, who chewed her chicken and then swallowed it. “Needless to say,” Mumsie continued, “your end result changes naught if you choose not to believe in God’s goodness. You’ll still have a dead mother, the same as I have a dead sister, and our grief will still cling to us like a spider web we can’t untangle from. However, your outcome changes significantly if you do believe in God’s goodness.”
“How so?” Aggie challenged, unsure how to interpret this spiritual side of her grandmother.
Mumsie pursed her lips and nodded. “Hope. You have hope. I don’t believe it’s blind hope either, or”—she lowered her eyes—“frankly, I wouldn’t have survived to be ninety-two with a penchant for smiling in the most inappropriate times. I’ve been able to muddle through a life with wounds that still bleed profusely. But muddle through I have. By God’s good hope.”
Aggie stared at Mumsie.
Mumsie eyed her back.
“I’m not getting a man,” Aggie insisted belatedly, avoiding the poignancy of Mumsie’s observation with a weakened tone of voice.
Mumsie tapped the TV tray. “Of course you’re not. You’re too much like me, and someday you’ll die, alone for the most part. Old and persnickety, but precocious enough for people to still care enough to love you a little . . .”
Their eyes met.
Aggie hated it when Mumsie was right. She felt the weight on her chest an
d heard Collin’s prompting in her mind.
Be assertive. Just ask.
Mumsie had all but told Aggie to butt out, but when did Mumsie ever listen to her own advice?
Aggie opened her mouth to ask, What happened to Hazel?, when the phone rang, startling them both. Mumsie’s fork slipped out of her hand and clanked on her plate. Aggie jumped, staring at the telephone that balanced on the table beside Mumsie’s chair, as if the corded, fossil-like form of ancient communication between humans had come alive.
“Doesn’t anyone text in this town?” Aggie muttered, peeved at being interrupted, unnerved by the unexpected spiritual turn in the conversation that left her more bewildered by Mumsie’s very non-evangelical style of faith in comparison to Aggie’s almost complete lack thereof.
She moved the TV tray to the side so she could rise and get the phone for Mumsie. Mumsie stopped her with a look. “I can answer my own telephone.” Her hand reached out gracefully, lifting the receiver from its base. The keypad lit up with the backlight of a 1980s handset. There wasn’t even a digital face for caller ID. Mumsie was going in blind.
“Hello?” Mumsie’s voice was clear. She tapped her finger against her plate as she listened.
Aggie watched Mumsie’s face, as though by doing so she could surmise who was on the other end of the line and what they were saying. The old woman was impassive. She just listened. No sound. Not even a mm-hmm.
Assuming it was a telemarketer, Aggie redirected her attention to her plate of warmed-up chicken and half-eaten, non-gluten-free dinner roll. She had to pull herself together. Find that inner-Aggie who had been a skilled real estate agent instead of a career idiot. Be the courageous, outspoken woman she’d always thought Mumsie must have been, once upon a time. Heck, even seek faith like Mom had so vibrantly committed to and Mumsie seemed to have some remnants of still.
Echoes among the Stones Page 20