by Anne Hagan
“It’s the weekend hon’ and it’s summer.”
“Yeah; I guess that makes sense. Anyway, am I too late? Do you still have an apartment available for me?”
“I sure do but there are others on our list who call in here daily. You’ll have to commit quick because otherwise it’ll go fast. When do you think you can come and look at it?”
“I don’t need to. I’ll take it. How late are you in the office tonight?”
“Till nine but you’ll need to be here by 8:30 to get the lease all signed if you want to take it tonight.”
Janet glanced at her clock radio by the bed; 7:44. “I’ll be there.”
9:10 PM, Sunday Evening, January 21st
Clear Creek Apartments
Zanesville, Ohio
Janet walked along the row of garden apartments on the first level until she found unit 117. Being on the bottom floor of the three tiered building wasn’t ideal to her, but she figured she could make do until she could find a house with some property like she’d originally wanted. Barb’s property included more than a little land and it would have been nice to put some of it to use but she knew she couldn’t dwell on that. What was done,was done.
She got the door open, stepped inside and dropped the two bags of clothes she’d been carrying then flipped on all the light switches she found near the door. Now somewhat illuminated, she could see that the partially furnished place laid out before her was barely that.
She walked into the living room. There was a small sofa, an armchair, a coffee table and a single end table with a lamp.
Janet shook her head. ‘As long as there’s a fridge, a microwave, a bed and a shower curtain, it’ll do and I can probably make do without the last. No need to go and take anything out of storage just yet,’ she thought.
She went back to her car for what was left of the items she’d kept at Barb’s house, locked it up and headed back inside. Once back, with the door secured, she did a quick circuit of the place.
There was a lack of windows for natural light. One in the front near the door facing into the center courtyard and one in back in the bedroom were the only ones. She had neighbors to either side and neighbors above she could already hear walking around. She shuddered and hoped for the best.
Chapter 19
10:10 PM, Sunday, June 21st
Cross Creek Apartments
Zanesville, Ohio
She tossed and turned in the bed she’d made up with the blankets that had been in the trunk of her car since she’d spent a couple nights living in it. She hadn’t thought about sheets and towels when she was packing quickly. She wouldn’t have taken any from there anyway. They weren’t hers to take.
Sitting up, she flipped her legs over the side of the bed and turned to stare through the slotted window blind out at the dark parking lot. Tears welled in her eyes and she just let them fall. ‘I’m such a coward she thought. I’m so afraid to lose out on love yet again, I can’t even act like an adult.’
She swiped at her tears.
On the tiny nightstand beside the bed, her cell phone rang. Reaching for it, she saw it was Barb. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
Several seconds later, she heard a ping from it. Voice mail. She couldn’t help herself. She pushed the key for it and listened as Barb spoke.
“Hey, I just got back home. I, uh…Mom and Dad are staying in Zanesville tonight and probably from now on. I just thought you should know. I guess you’re still at work or you got called back in or something.”
“We, ah, we need to talk…I guess, I don’t know. Any idea when you’ll be…be back? Give me a call when you can. I’ll be up.”
She didn’t say ‘be home’, Janet thought as she listened to the message a second time. She blew out a breath and dabbed at her eyes some more. She knew she should call her and come clean, not leave her hanging not knowing, but she couldn’t get her emotions in check.
Sniffling, she got up and went into the little bathroom where she splashed cold water on her face and then remembered she had no towels as she wiped at the dampness with the short sleeve of her t-shirt. She glanced at the toilet. No paper.
“I really didn’t think this through,” she mumbled, to herself. “I don’t seem to think anything through anymore!”
Back in the bedroom, she started pulling on clothes. Since sleep was elusive and she needed basic necessities, she figured she could at least take care of that. The Superstore she’d called home base for a few days before was only a couple of miles away and open all night.
A text message buzzed her phone as she locked the door. She glanced down at it as she walked to her car. Barb.
“Where are you?”
Janet ignored it and got in the car. The phone buzzed again.
“You’ve cleaned out your room.”
She wasn’t done.
“The only thing left in here is a note from my mom.”
“Crap,” she said aloud.
“So, this is how you’re going to play it?
“I should have known.”
“I shouldn’t have expected any better.”
Janet stopped reading. She left her phone in the car, put on a ball cap, pulled it low to shield her eyes and then went into the store.
She slunk up and down the aisles, avoiding eye contact, as she collected sheets, towels, paper products and a few basic food items, throwing things into a cart without really seeing them.
The cashier tried to strike up a conversation as she rang up her purchases, but Janet only nodded and avoided looking at her. She didn’t want anyone to see the pain she knew was clear on her face or to hear it in her voice.
Chapter 20
9:45 PM, Sunday, June 21st
Morelville, Ohio
Janet’s car wasn’t in the driveway Barb noticed, as she crested one of the small rises in it and proceed up. Sighing, she hit the button for the garage door, stopped and waited at the top for it to finish opening. ‘Still out. So much for having any sort of conversation with her right away and airing some things out,’ she thought.
The house was so quiet. There was no TV blaring an action flick in the family room with Dad and Janet calling out the good lines, no radio playing country oldies in the den while Mom chatted on the phone with this friend or that one. She missed her folks and the life they’d brought to the big empty house already.
She wandered into the kitchen. It was spotless. If Janet had been home at all, she hadn’t eaten. Barb doubted she’d even been there. Not hungry herself, she sank down on a bar stool at the island instead, took out her cell and tried to call Janet. Her call rolled to voice mail. Frustrated, she left a halting message for the other woman then hung up.
In the family room, she tried for a few minutes to watch television but the picture of her father and Janet sitting there, evening after evening, when she’d managed to make it home from her bar at any sort of a reasonable hour, was stuck in her head. Though she rarely joined them, preferring to go and chat with her mother instead, it had been a comfort to know her dad was right there. They were right there. Safe. Happy.
It was nearly ten. She went upstairs. It was so late, she knew when Janet came home, she’d probably head straight to bed. She usually took the earlier shift on Monday.
Barb thought, ‘I’ll just leave my door open and listen for her. If she gets in soon, maybe we can still talk a little.’
She dreaded that and wanted it, all at the same time. She didn’t remember much from after they’d left the bar the night before but she knew she’d made an ass of herself when she got home. Her mother had made that doubly clear to her. She knew she at least owed Janet an explanation…an apology, something.
She couldn’t help herself. She wandered back up the hall to Janet’s room. The door was just slightly ajar. She looked in through the crack but then she threw caution to the wind when she could see little in the darkness. She decided she’d wait for her in there. Not in her bed; no. She wouldn’t go that far. She’d sit in the chai
r and just wait. Wait patiently.
She opened the door, went to the bedside table and flipped on the lamp. Instantly, she knew Janet was gone. Her clock radio was gone. One of the pillows was gone…her pillow. The dresser top had been emptied of all personal belongings. The only thing laying there was a folded up piece of paper.
Instinctively, Barb went to it. Like Janet’s hands had shook before, now Barb’s did also as she read it.
Janet,
We ran into Zanesville with Barb to get the house aired out. Barb will be back tonight but we probably won’t be, for tonight. Hopefully, you and Barb can chat a little without fear of interruption while we’re gone.
Amy
P.S. There are sandwich fixings in the fridge.
The realization dawned on her that Janet had come home, found the note and, by taking everything with her, left for good rather than even talk to her.
Barb cast about but there was nothing there at all to latch onto. Nothing she could touch. Nothing she could hold for comfort. The room, as nicely as Chloe Rossi had decorated it, seemed cold and sterile to her now.
She texted Janet and prayed for a response. Any response.
“Where are you?
“You’ve cleaned out your room.”
“The only thing left in here is a note from my mom.”
After a couple minutes standing motionless, waiting, trying to force back tears, nothing came back. In anger, she vented with the only medium she had.
“So, this is how you’re going to play it?
“I should have known.”
“I shouldn’t have expected any better.”
She regretted the texts as soon as she sent them and that’s when the dam broke and the tears began to fall.
Stumbling to the bed, the sheets the only thing in the room that still carried the scent of Janet’s cologne, she sunk down and lay, clutching a pillow for comfort as she wept for what she knew she’d lost.
When she regained control of her tears, she started beating herself up for pushing Janet away. ‘I wouldn’t let her get close,’ she thought. ‘I compared her to Lisa and that wasn’t fair. She came here and tried to help and I did nothing but act like a total ass…’
“Self awareness really sucks,” Barb called out to the empty house as she got up. She took the cases off of the remaining pillows, stripped the bed, balled everything up, gathered it into her arms and carried it downstairs.
In the laundry room, just off the kitchen, she put it all in the washing machine, poured detergent in and, before she could change her mind, set the whole thing going.
The will to pick herself up and press on left her as she stepped out of the laundry room into the short hallway that led back to the kitchen. Her gaze was drawn to the cabinet where she kept her wine, rocks and shot glasses. Swallowing hard, she moved over to it, reached up and opened it.
With a shaking hand, she took down an old bottle of scotch someone had given her dad years before that he, not a scotch drinker, had given to her when she’d returned to Ohio. Because she’d quit drinking while going through the civil case with the hospital over Lisa’s death, she’d put it away and never said a word to him. Her lapse the night before had been the only one.
Now, as she carried it and a rocks glass to the island, she contemplated drinking it and drowning her sorrows.
‘I’m at home, I’m alone…all alone,’ she thought. Who would see me now and who would care anyway?’
She stared at the bottle for several minutes then pushed it away unopened, put her head down on the island and cried.
Chapter 21
8:08 AM, Monday, June 22nd
The phone ringing somewhere in the house, woke Barb from where she slept, still in Sunday’s clothes, on the family room sofa. She’d wandered in there after gathering her courage, opening the scotch and pouring it down the drain in the sink. The smell of the booze lingered in the kitchen after that and she couldn’t stand to be there.
Her cell phone lay on the low coffee table. It was dead. She moved toward the den and the closest phone. The clock on the wall across from the door told her it was 8:09.
“Crap! That was probably Brian!”
She grabbed for the phone and dialed the delivery driver’s number from memory.
“Brian? It’s Barb. Did you just call?”
“Yup,” he answered. “Got a full load for you today ma’am.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Please wait.”
“No problem. I’ll start getting it down.”
She hung up and dashed into the hallway where she grabbed her keys from the bowl on the table by the door. Catching sight of herself in the mirror above the table, she realized she looked a mess.
She ran a hand through her hair but it didn’t do much good. There was nothing at all she could do about the dark circles under her eyes or the fact that they were bloodshot from most of the previous night spent crying.
Giving up, she locked up and left. Her food order for the week from her major supplier was more important than how she looked at the moment.
‘Maybe he won’t notice,’ she thought, ‘or, maybe he’ll be smart enough not to say anything.’
Finished, Brian walked into her office with his manifest and the order for her to sign. He found her sitting at her desk, staring toward the door but not really seeing him or anything around her.
He looked her up and down taking note of her bedraggled state as he waited but then, when she still didn’t respond to his presence, he waved a hand in front of her to draw her attention to him.
She finally looked at him, a question in her eyes, like she wasn’t sure who he was or why he was there.
“It’s all done,” he said. “Frozen is in the freezer, refrigerated stuff is in the cooler.” He held his clipboard out to her.
Barb took it and scribbled her name down then offered it back to him.
As he took it from her, he said to her, “Whoever he is, he isn’t worth what he’s putting you through.”
She nodded. “You’re right.”
As the back door clicked closed behind the driver, her desk phone rang. A small ray of hope lit her face that extinguished when she looked at the Caller ID. It was Chloe. She answered anyway.
“Hi Barb,” she said and then rambled on without waiting for an answer. “I rang your house trying to find your mother or Janet but no one answered. It’s Monday, so I figured you’d be at the bar for your delivery. He comes down here after he leaves your place.“
Barb groaned.
“Is everything okay?”
“My parents are now back in their own home in Zanesville.”
“Really? Wow! When did that happen?”
“Yesterday.”
“I kinda figured,” Chloe said but then she fell silent quickly.
Barb missed her near slip. “They just up and decided it was time.”
“Well, that’s too bad. I’m going to miss her coming down to the bakery for coffee and into the store to chat or to pick up something for dinner. She’s a lovely woman, and her daughter is just like her.”
Barb had to smile at that. “Thank you.”
“So, now you can move back downstairs? Do you need any help with anything…moving stuff around? Oh, wait, what am I saying?” Chloe stopped herself. “Of course you don’t. You still have Janet.”
“Janet’s gone too,” Barb rasped out.”
“Oh.”
“While I was in Zanesville last night helping Mom and Dad get settled back into their house, she packed up all of her stuff and she left too.” She paused and rocked side to side a little in her chair.
Chloe stayed quiet, thinking.
“I’m all alone in that big damn house again.” Barb shook her head then. “I should have known better than to start something before I was ready.”
Skeptical, Chloe asked, “ Do you honestly believe you weren’t ready, dear?”
“I don’t know…I don’t think so…I…”
“Yes,” she answered simply.
“Then you’re ready hon.”
“It’s too late now. I pushed her away and she won’t return my calls.”
‘It’s never too late,’ Chloe thought to herself. To Barb, she said, “Don’t you give up on her or on yourself. These things have a way of working themselves out.”
‘With a little push,’ Chloe thought as they rang off.
As Barb locked up, a car pulled into the lot. She turned toward it and shielded her eyes against the sun.
Her mother pulled her father’s car up near the door. Tom Wysocki was in the passenger seat. He put his window down and called out to her.
“I thought you had therapy this morning,” she answered back as she walked toward him.
“I thought so too but there was some mix up on their schedule. My therapist is off today and the others were all tied up with other patients. Your mom and I thought we’d come down and get a few of our clothes and some smaller things since we were already up, out and about.”
Amy leaned toward her husband. She noticed the day old clothes Barb had on and asked, “Is everything all right, dear? Is this a…a bad time?” Tom shot his wife a look and then turned quickly back to his daughter.
Barb stood up a little straighter so her mother couldn’t see her face.
“Yes. Fine.”
“It doesn’t sound fine Tom said, and you look like hell. What’s happened now?”
“I can’t get anything over on either of you can I?”
Tom shook his head no.