Coming Home to You

by M. K. Stelmack

Fran opened her mouth in protest but the wail of sirens preempted her, and she sighed. “All right. Let’s do this.” She turned to Daphne. “You still not in clothes?”

  Oh. Daphne glanced at Mr. Greene-on-Top, who suddenly found a great interest in the geometric floor tile. Oh! She clapped the book over her chest. To assist Fran, Linda edged closer to Daphne. Daphne shuffled out of the way, only to bump against her hide-a-bed, which was still folded out. Off balance, she plunked down on it, or more precisely, on a bag of chips, which crunched ever so finely under her bottom.

  Linda eased her hold on Fran to lower her onto the bed.

  “I’ll sleep here over my dead body!” Fran said. “Granted, that won’t be long from now, but still, I will not lay my bones on this refuse heap. My room’s at the back.”

  More crunching, rolling and crawling of the three women ensued, ending when Daphne pressed against the small dining table to allow them to pass down the hallway.

  “Just so you know,” Fran said as Linda ushered her through the bedroom door, “the second you leave, I’m back at the wheel.”

  “That’s fine,” Linda said, “since I will have the keys.”

  Oh, heavens. Fran thrived on adversity. Her fragile health always seemed to rally just so she could rail against someone who dared to oppose her. Which probably explained her deteriorating state on this trip, since Daphne avoided controversy the way a mouse skirts open spaces. Still, Daphne now had a reprieve to face—

  Mr. Greene-on-Top was gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, she slipped inside the bathroom, which doubled as her dressing room.

  She set her book by the sink. It wasn’t easy; her hand had gone into a kind of rigor mortis, and she had to pry her fingers from the cover and then flex her hand repeatedly to regain motor control.

  She peeled off her nightie. Yes, the apparel was unseemly and impractical, but Daphne had been in desperate need of inspiration. Writing a book required some.

  Unfortunately, all the nightie had served to do was embarrass her. Which was par for the course. Nothing on this sweaty, bumpy, boring, mosquito-tormented, quarreling, pill-driven, five-week and are-we-there-yet? excursion across the True North Strong and Free had turned out as intended.

  She’d spent the past month secretly hoping they’d head home to Halifax. Back to her university office, crowded with shelves of silent, stationary books. Back to her apartment, with its full bookshelves and thick curtains and a quiet so profound that the starting of the fridge fan could jar her.

  Well, with their means of transportation now stuck in the wall of a Tim Hortons in some Albertan town, her wish had partly come true. Not exactly a return to Halifax, but they wouldn’t be moving forward. At least, for a day. Longer, if at all possible. If not for Daphne’s sake, then for Fran’s. The accident had proved that neither of them were in any shape to continue.

  Over the loud sirens outside and through the thin wall between the bedroom and the bathroom, Daphne heard Fran’s voice. “Rest with you here, ready to rob me blind? I might be dead tomorrow but neither was I born yesterday.”

  Oh, dear. Maybe if the nurse could get Fran to the hospital, the doctors there could make her stop this insane trip. Maybe the police could strip Fran of her license. Surely, it was clear she was a hazard on the road.

  The sirens cut out, signaling the police’s arrival.

  “The cavalry’s here,” Daphne muttered. Still in her underwear, Daphne scanned the littered bathroom floor for suitable clothing. The university tracksuit she’d bought on a whim before leaving to wear in a pinch was lying in a heap on the floor. Five weeks in, every day was a pinch. The tracksuit reeked of campfire smoke, mosquito spray and her deodorant.

  “Hello?” Mr. Greene again.

  Daphne scrambled into the tracksuit, its stench wonderfully clearing her muddled mind, and then she exited the bathroom to the front.

  This time, Mr. Greene was accompanied by a police officer.

  “Hello. I’m Corporal Paul Grayson,” the officer stated from the other side of her bed. “Daphne, is it?”

  He must’ve got her name from Mr. Greene. Daphne wished she remembered his first name. She never could remember names when they were spoken to her, which made the first day of classes excruciating. She’d invented a mental game of rhyming names to hurry the memorization process. Hopefully someone would mention the man’s name so she could use her trick. “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Daphne,” he repeated in an extra calm voice, “do you mind stepping outside with me?”

  Was he going to arrest her? Was carelessness a crime? Perhaps so, particularly since there’d been property damage. But she hadn’t been driving. Was she an accessory?

  Her breath caught in her throat. Negligence. Yes, she knew that was a crime, one she’d magnificently demonstrated.

  Then again, her arrest would stop the trip.

  Had things so unraveled that she was actually welcoming the chance to be placed in cuffs?

  “Very well.” With a straight back, she scooted across her bed and down the steps. Mr. Greene was already waiting beside the coach, like a flight attendant. When she reached the bottom step, he pointed at her bare feet with a thick, strong workman’s finger. Not too many of those on the university campus. Or on Edward Ferrars, for that matter.

  “You need shoes. There’s broken glass out here.”

  She blinked at him in the new morning light. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”

  She mounted the steps, searching her mind for where she’d left her shoes. Any shoes. “I saw a pair under the bed,” he called after her.

  “Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

  As she got on her hands and knees, Daphne was quite sure she would beat Fran to death’s door and expire here and now from incurable mortification.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DAPHNE’S MORTIFICATION SWELLED when she viewed the damage to the motor home and the restaurant. One of the Tim’s windows was webbed with cracks, and the RV’s fender was twisted and stuck well into the bashed brickwork. At least Fran owned The Stagecoach, as they’d dubbed it, so they just had to deal with the insurance company.

  A uniformed officer was taking pictures, and so was the Tim Hortons man. Should she be, too? Then again, to what end? Responsibility—hers and Fran’s—was undeniable.

  Mr. Greene disappeared once more into the restaurant. She moved to follow him when Corporal Grayson said, “Can I get your full name, Daphne?”

  Right. Business before doughnuts. “Daphne Merlotte.” She automatically spelled it for him.

  “Date of birth?”

  Daphne stated it, inexplicably relieved that Mr. Greene wasn’t there to hear she was five months shy of fifty. Daphne had always dismissed Fran’s claim that she barely looked forty, but on this particular occasion, considering what an appalling impression Mr. Greene no doubt already had of her, she hoped he’d give her the benefit of the doubt when it came to her age. If he thought of her at all.

  “Address?”

  She gave her Halifax one, and Corporal Grayson moved on to get the same information about Fran. Daphne was rattling off the address when Mr. Greene emerged, balancing a tray of coffees and a box of Timbits.

  “Here,” Mr. Greene said, handing her a coffee. “Have one.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Go on,” Mr. Greene said, taking the Timbits box. “The tray’s heavy. You’d be doing me a favor.”

  He smiled at her, making laugh lines crinkle around his eyes and his tanned face lift and lighten. His expression was one of pure joy and warmth, so unexpected on a man, at least in her experience with the anemic-looking professors of her faculty.

  She obediently took the coffee and two mini cups of cream. “Thank you,” she said.

  He held out the box of mini doughnuts.

  “I couldn’t possibly.” Her stomach squeaked an objection to her objectio
n.

  He must’ve heard because he smiled again. Oh, that smile. She took a Timbit.

  She popped the sugary ball into her mouth because, of course, it was the doughnut making her mouth water.

  Mr. Greene offered the box to the officer. “How about you, Paul?”

  “Mel,” Corporal Grayson said, “we already have to deal with the stereotype of police liking doughnuts without you perpetuating it.”

  Mel! Mel, fell, sell, tell, well. Mr. Greene—Mel—Mel Greene shook the box invitingly at the officer.

  “Okay, one. So you’ll leave me alone.” Corporal Grayson took two.

  “I’ll take the rest and the coffees up to the ladies,” Mel said. Of course, Fran. If anyone, her godmother had proved how much she needed a coffee. “She likes her coffee with cream and sugar,” Daphne called after him.

  “Got it,” he said, not breaking stride.

  He entered the RV before she could thank him, another uniformed police officer right behind him. Through the shaded window, Daphne watched Mel and the stiff solidness of the police officer move to the bedroom. More authority to further enliven Fran.

  Corporal Grayson brushed the sugar off his shirtfront. “Could you tell me what happened here?”

  Daphne dropped her gaze. She’d found only her flip-flops under the bed, and her toes curled from the mild morning chill—or from her guilt. “I—I can’t tell you much, really. We stopped last night in Red Deer and planned—”

  “In an RV park? Which one?” he asked.

  Daphne tried to remember. The campsites were all running together as if Canada was nothing more than a string of campgrounds. “The one by the river?”

  Corporal Grayson nodded and gestured for Daphne to continue.

  “We departed early this morning while I was still sleeping.” She’d woken to books thudding off her bed as The Stagecoach swung onto the highway.

  “How did Fran Hertz—”

  “She’s my godmother.” It somehow felt important to state that Fran was more than a driver or a traveling companion or a full name on a police report.

  “How did your godmother seem to you at that time?”

  Mel Greene emerged from the motor home and walked its length to the rear. The other police officer slid into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The Stagecoach shuddered to life.

  “Do you intend to impound the RV?” Daphne couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice.

  “Just moving it out of the way,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “We were talking about your godmother,” he prompted.

  “As well as can be expected,” she said automatically.

  The officer paused his writing.

  “That is, she seemed fine. She was talking. Coherent.”

  “How did she look?”

  Daphne curled her toes completely under and confessed yet again to her inattention. “I—I couldn’t say. I—I was in bed.”

  From the back of the RV, Mel called for the police officer to put the vehicle into Reverse. As he pulled back, the front grille severed from the restaurant wall with a loud scraping and a crumbling of bricks. The Tim Hortons employee took more photos of the wall and the front bumper, clearly to be used against Fran in a court of law.

  If Fran was still alive to contest it.

  “Sorry. You were in bed?” Corporal Grayson said.

  Daphne pointed to the approximate place in the moving Stagecoach. “I sleep on a hide-a-bed right behind the driver’s seat. I don’t drive so I decided to read.” Today she’d reached for the nearest book, which happened to be Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

  “So...when did you notice that your godmother’s driving had become erratic?”

  About a week into our trip.

  There’d been a terrifying incident where Fran had nearly driven them off a steep riverside embankment in Quebec when she’d momentarily closed her eyes. After that, Daphne had wrung a promise from Fran that she would drive for only two hours at a time and never in the afternoon, when she was especially drowsy. Daphne was clear that if Fran once, just once, broke her promise, they would cancel the trip then and there. No doubt taken aback by Daphne-the-Mouse’s rare display of ferocity, Fran had agreed and since kept her word. She had a tiresome habit of keeping her promises.

  The RV continued its slow reverse. As the rear wheel reached the edge of the pavement, the back end hung suspended over the ditch. Mel flipped up his hand, and the cop halted the RV immediately.

  Whenever Daphne had signaled in such a way to Fran, the older woman had maintained that a minimum five-second delay existed between Daphne’s signal and Fran’s response. It was the way the rig operated, she had said. No, it was the way Fran operated.

  Somehow, she had to keep Fran off the road.

  Refocusing on the officer’s question, Daphne looked to the corner of the highway and the side street. “There. I noticed that we were in trouble when she turned in.” More books had tumbled off the bed and Daphne herself had pitched to the side. Kneeling on the bed, she’d watched in rising horror as Fran had cranked the wheel, screaming her curses as she tried to funnel the motor home into the entrance lane.

  “I told her to stop but—but she kept saying she could handle it if I’d only let her concentrate.”

  With the RV reversed as much as possible, Mel jogged past the coach to the corner of the restaurant where the driving lane curved to the back. Now that rush hour had passed, the crush of vehicles ahead had magically disappeared, so there was space to maneuver. Mel motioned with two fingers and the motor home eased forward.

  “When it was clear she couldn’t handle things anymore, I tried taking over.” And here, not only her toes but her shoulders curled, too. “I accidently hit the gas instead of the brake and—” she looked at the hole in the restaurant wall “—and that happened. Fran turned off the ignition.”

  The motor home glided out of view, undamming the logjam of vehicles behind it. If only her own exit plan could flow so easily. Could she nudge events to her desired outcome? “Corporal Grayson. Perhaps you aren’t aware that my companion has cancer?”

  “Uh...no.”

  “Quite advanced, actually. And taking medication. Perhaps, she should be warned not to be on the road.”

  “Have doctors ordered her not to drive?”

  They hadn’t, and Fran could prove it. Daphne nudged in another direction. “Not exactly, but as you can see, she poses a danger. Perhaps there is some consequence from this accident that would...suspend her driving. Temporarily. For an extended period.” As in months.

  Corporal Grayson frowned. “You want us to charge her?” He spoke as if Daphne was suggesting an act of cruelty.

  Ironically, Fran would flourish under the charge. “No, no,” Daphne said, now with little hope that they could stop this trip. “I suppose we will have to rely on common sense to prevail.”

  Corporal Grayson looked steadily at her. No doubt he saw a small mousy, stale woman who couldn’t stand up to an old, dying woman. Battle of the feebles. Whatever his thoughts, though, he kept them to himself. “I’ll need to see ID for the report. Your driver’s license will do.”

  Not this awkwardness. “I don’t have one. As I said, I don’t drive. I do have a learner’s permit, though.”

  For the first time in the interview, Corporal Grayson turned suspicious. “Have you ever had a driver’s license?”

  Meaning had she lost it due to incompetence or intoxication or criminal convictions. “No. I haven’t. Never.” Three negatives should do it.

  “So...your companion has done all the driving?”

  “Yes.”

  “From Nova Scotia to here?”

  “Yes.” Daphne let the officer chew on that. She had long ago dispensed with explanations about why she had not acquired the ticket to freedom. Truth to tell,
the people in her life had long ago stopped asking. After all, she lived within walking distance of the campus and a grocery store, there was a lovely city park right across the street from her apartment, and for trips to the theater or special events, she took a taxi or Fran picked her up. The annual Jane Austen conference required her to fly to different locales, but once there she didn’t need to drive. So there was nothing amiss with a contained, well-defined, perambulatory life.

  “So—” Corporal Paul scratched his jaw and looked through the window at the counter with its coffee and glass display of doughnuts “—given the condition of Ms. Hertz and that you can’t relieve her, why are you two driving across Canada?”

  “She and her husband traveled coast to coast on their honeymoon, and she wanted to do it with him before she died.”

  “Him?”

  Fran hadn’t told anyone but Daphne and Moshe, her son, about the real reason for her farewell cross-country tour. To everyone she met on the road, she declared she simply wanted to see Canada up close one more time. But if Daphne had to confess to her driving inadequacies, then Fran’s special peculiarity could also go on record.

  “Frederick. He’s dead. She keeps his ashes in...in a fire extinguisher.” Along with his wedding ring, a martini recipe and an old dollar bill.

  Corporal Paul paused in his note taking. “A fire extinguisher?”

  “It’s carefully labeled. She wants to deposit his ashes in the Pacific. As he requested.” Actually, Daphne wasn’t sure if that had been Frederick’s wish. So much of what he wanted had been wrapped in his wife’s whims. “She asked me to go with her. I’m her goddaughter. I’m on a sabbatical, so I agreed.” And had regretted it every day since.

  The officer scanned his writing. “I’m done here. Just need to get your address while you’re in town. Where will you be staying until you sort out insurance and repairs?”

  Staying? Yes, they’d have to stay for repairs. In one spot. For days. Days for her to think of how to stop Fran once and for all from their mutual destruction. Thanks be for small mercies. Her toes uncurled and her shoulders relaxed. “Is there an RV campsite close?”