* * *
She was pushing scrambled eggs around in a too-big
cast-iron skillet when the phone rang. She turned the
gas flame to low and jumped to answer it.
“No, he’s at work,” I heard her say into the phone.
Then she fixed me with a strange and disturbing look.
I can only call it withering. “Oh, Lucas,” she said. “Yes, Lucas is here.” She covered the mouthpiece of the phone receiver with her palm. “Why is the sheriff’s office calling for you, Lucas? What have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why is some deputy sheriff calling? Your fath-
er will have a fit if you’ve brought some kind of trouble
down on this house.”
Right, I thought. Heaven forbid this house should see any trouble. We’re all really content as it is, with you guys fighting your own personal war and Roy overseas with bullets whizzing by his head in a real one. Be a shame if anybody spoiled all that happiness.
“I just reported something is all,” I said. I kept the
rest of those thoughts to myself.
“Like somebody else committing a crime?”
“No. No crimes. I just reported somebody who needed
help.”
I was starting to worry about the poor deputy sher-
iff waiting on the line, so I reached for the phone. She
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frowned at me, but she handed it over and hurried back
to the stove. I wondered how badly my eggs had been
burned. I knew I’d be expected to eat them regardless.
“Hello,” I said.
“Morning, son,” Deputy Warren said. “Hope I didn’t
get you out of bed.”
“No, sir. I’ve been up a couple hours. Already been
for my morning run.”
My stomach had begun to churn uncomfortably be-
cause it was occurring to me—for the first time, oddly—
that he was calling to tell me the lady died.
“Well, I just wanted to let you know she pulled
through,” he said, and I breathed out a long exhale I
hadn’t known I was holding. “I mean, not that we know
absolutely, but that first twenty-four hours is critical. The fact that she got through it bodes well for her chances.
Nurse at the hospital told me somebody called looking
into her welfare yesterday, but they couldn’t give out any
info because he wasn’t her family. I figured that was you.”
“But you’re not her family,” I said, and then immediately felt stupid.
“But I’m law enforcement.”
“Right. Duh. So … does she have any family?”
I heard a big sigh on the line. “Yeah. More or less.
She has an ex-husband, but I can’t decide if that counts
or not. Probably not. And she has two grown daughters,
but they both got married before they moved away from
here, and I don’t know their married names off the top
of my head. But I’m doing some research on it.”
“I’m thinking they’d want to hear about this,” I said,
and then felt stupid again.
“I’m thinking the same, son. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
Then we said our goodbyes and he hurried off the
phone.
I sat back down at the table, and my mom set a plate
of scrambled eggs and toast in front of me. I poked the
eggs with my fork. They weren’t exactly burned, but they
were awfully dry.
“We got any ketchup?”
She sighed theatrically and flounced over to the re-
frigerator. I was waiting for her to ask me about my con-
versation with the deputy. You know, take some interest
in my life. But she seemed lost in her own head.
“I saved a lady’s life,” I said.
She set the bottle of ketchup down in front of my plate.
“That’s nice, dear.” She said it the way a person says
“That’s nice” when you’re talking to them while they’re
trying to read the newspaper. “I’m very proud of you.”
I got in touch, suddenly, with how nice it would feel
if she actually was. Proud of me, that is. And maybe she
was. Looking back, it’s hard to say what somebody else
is feeling. But the moment felt unconvincing.
* * *
I don’t think it was the next day when I ran out to the
cabin and ran into some of the lady’s family, almost liter-
ally. I think it was the day after that.
I had taken the water bucket off the hook on the dog-
house, and I was carrying it near the front of the cabin,
headed toward the pump. All of a sudden someone came
around the corner and we nearly slammed into each other.
We both let out a yelp of surprise.
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
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Then we just stood a moment, neither one of us seem-
ing to know what to say.
She was a woman in her early to midtwenties, with
short, curly hair. Small and compact. She wore a frown
that seemed to have permanently creased itself into her
face. She was holding a narrow strip of wood, which I
recognized as part of the framing of the door—the part
that had been broken when the deputies crashed through
it. Apparently she had pried it off somehow.
“I was just getting some water for the dogs,” I said.
“Okay.”
I kept expecting her to ask me who I was. But she
didn’t seem particularly curious.
“I’m Lucas Painter,” I said. “I’m—”
But she cut me off in midsentence. “I know who
you are.”
“You do?”
I wanted to ask how, but I was getting lost in
awkwardness.
“You’re that kid who’s been coming to see the dogs.
Taking them running with you.”
“How did you know that?”
“My mom told me.”
“How did she know that? I didn’t even think she
saw me.”
“Oh, she saw you.”
Then the conversation stalled again. I could feel myself
sink into the embarrassment of what she had just told me.
I looked down at the strip of wood trim in her hand.
“Fixing the door?” I asked.
The bucket was getting heavy. The dogs hadn’t drunk
much.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
“Trying. She’ll be home in a day or two, and she has
to have a door that closes. So I took off the lock. Figured
I could take it to the hardware store and get a new one.
But I also have to replace this.” She held up the strip of
wood. “But I have nothing to measure with. And also,
I have no idea what I’m doing. I know nothing about
home repair.”
I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
“Maybe I could help,” I said.
“You know anything about home repair?”
“Not really. But I know where the hardware store is.
And the lumberyard.”
She looked into my face as though I might be stupid,
but she was still trying to decide. “So do I. I grew up
around here.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
I wasn’t sure why I needed to be sor
ry. But it was
something of a default position for me at that age.
“But none of it does any good if I can’t find a tape
measure,” she said. “And I can’t.”
“What about some string or twine?”
“I don’t know about that. But she’s a knitter. So I
have yarn.”
“That’ll do,” I said. “Go get some of that.”
She turned to walk back into the house, and I set
down the bucket and followed her. It was a relief to be
behind her, out of that intense, frowning gaze. I hadn’t
realized how uncomfortable I’d been, squirming under
her stare, until it was over.
I waited on the porch.
The dogs wove themselves around me, softly wagging
their tails. It seemed to have improved their moods to
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see their owner’s daughter. It struck me that I didn’t even
know this woman’s name. She hadn’t bothered to tell me.
I reached down and patted their heads as they
brushed by.
I looked up to see her bring out a skein of yarn, which
I took from her. I tied a knot in the free end and reached
up and held the knot at the very top corner of the door
frame.
“Here, hold this,” I said, tossing my head upward. In
the direction of the knot.
She made no move to do as I had asked. Just snorted
a bitter laugh. I realized that she couldn’t reach nearly so high. She was a small woman. I placed the knot in the
lower corner instead.
She set the broken strip of wood on the floor and then
knelt down and held the knotted end of the yard, and I
ran yarn up to the top of the frame and marked my place
with the tip of my thumb.
She brought me a scissors and I cut it there.
I picked up the broken trim.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take this to the lumberyard, and
you take the lock to the hardware store, and I’ll meet you
back here and we’ll get this done.”
She only nodded. She didn’t thank me. I wasn’t sure
if that felt okay or not. But it was clearly all I was going to get.
* * *
I stood inside the little cabin with her, holding the strip
of molding in place while she hammered in the nails.
I knew it would probably look like hell when we were
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
done, and I was too cowardly to take responsibility for
messing up her place with our bad workmanship.
We stepped back and viewed our work. I frowned.
She frowned. But then, she was always frowning, so it
was hard to tell.
“I guess it won’t look right till it’s painted,” I said.
The other sides of the doorframe were painted an
off-white color.
“I don’t know that it’ll ever look quite right,” she said.
“But it’ll keep the door closed.”
“We don’t know that. We haven’t tried it.”
I walked up to the door cautiously. As if it might be
a spider or a snake.
I saw the dogs on the porch through the partly open
doorway. They tapped their tails at me.
I pulled the door closed and tried the new lock. It was
a deadbolt that locked with a simple turn from the inside,
a key from the outside. I gave it a turn, but it hung up
quickly. We hadn’t positioned the new lock quite right.
The deadbolt pin wouldn’t go all the way in. But it wedged
in enough to keep the door closed.
I turned to find her right beside me, looking over
my shoulder. Well, around my shoulder. She wasn’t tall
enough to look over it.
“It’ll do,” she said. “When she’s feeling better, she’ll
tinker with it. That’s a given. She’ll get it perfect. Story of her life—everything has to be perfect. No matter what
we do with it today, she’ll tinker. Meanwhile it holds the
door closed, so it’s good enough for now.”
She gathered up the tools she’d used and carried them
out to the shed.
I walked out onto the porch and sat on the low edge
with the dogs. The male dog put his head on my thigh.
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I was thinking I should go home. But there was so
much more I wanted to know. Still, even if I stayed, I
wasn’t sure I could bring myself to ask her all my questions.
She brushed by me again on her way into the cabin.
I looked down into the boy dog’s face. “I should go
now,” I said.
He seemed to know what that meant. He laid his
ears back along his neck and his eyes took on a sor-
rowful expression. Or … even more sorrowful, I guess I should say.
A second or two later the woman—the daughter,
whose name I still hadn’t asked—came out and sat next
to me on the edge of the porch, her jeaned legs stretching
out next to mine.
“Fortunately I know where my mom keeps the te-
quila,” she said, and plunked down a bottle and two
short glasses.
I said nothing. I stumbled over what I even had up
my sleeve to say. Not much, so I was hoping she’d figure
it out on her own.
A second later, she got there. “Oh. What am I say-
ing? You’re just a kid. What’re you, like, fifteen, sixteen
years old?”
“Fourteen,” I said.
She poured herself what looked to me like a very large
serving of tequila. Then she poured just a splash into the
other glass. My glass, I supposed. A couple of tablespoons.
“Go ahead,” she said. “That little bit won’t kill you.”
I just stared at it. I was still petting the boy dog’s head.
“Ever had a drink?” she asked me.
“I had half a beer once at a party.”
“This is nothing like that. This stuff’ll blow the back
of your head off.”
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
I watched her down the whole drink as if it were a
shot, then slam the empty glass onto the boards of the
porch.
I was thinking I liked the fact that my head had a
back to it. You know. Intact and all. But she looked over
at me expectantly, so I sipped at it. It felt like drinking
liquid fire.
“That’s not how you do it,” she said. “You toss it
down all at once.”
I did as she said—I think because I generally did what
grown-ups said. I hadn’t yet learned that I had a right to
refuse. Or not fully, anyway. I guess I knew I could, but
it was so desperately uncomfortable that I usually didn’t.
It made me cough violently, and my eyes watered. I
couldn’t stop blinking and coughing.
She poured herself another glass. I thought it was
strange how we weren’t talking about her mother.
I sat quietly for a minute while she downed her sec-
ond tequila—just stared off into the woods and watched
the breeze move the dappled sunlight around. For that
minute, everything felt nearly normal again.
Next thing I knew she was grabbing me by two big
handfuls of my shirt. Suddenly. Almost violently. I
was
seized by panic, but I didn’t try to get away, except in my
head. My fight-or-flight reflex got stuck in the middle
on “freeze.”
“You have to do something for me,” she said, her
voice intense and full of distress. “Promise me. Promise
me you’ll do it!”
The alcohol had obviously gone quickly to her head.
Mine had kicked in a little bit, too. My arm and leg
muscles felt tingly, my belly hot. Then again, it was hard
to know how much of that was fear.
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“I don’t even know what it is yet,” I said.
Which was brave under the circumstances. Even faced
with that kind of pressure, I was not about to promise to
do something until I knew what I was promising. I took
promises seriously, even then. All these years later, even
more so. That seemed to override my tendency to do as
adults commanded.
“Tell her you won’t take the dogs.”
“Take the dogs? I was never going to take the dogs. Did she think I was trying to steal her dogs?”
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.” Her words had begun
to slur. “You’re not getting what I’m saying. You’re not
getting it right at all. Tell her that if anything happens to her, you won’t take them. Or take care of them.”
“Um…,” I said. And then, because I was extremely
uncomfortable, “Could you please let go of my shirt?”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She unclenched her fists and let go. Smoothed out the
places she had wrinkled. Or tried to, anyway.
I breathed for what felt like the first time in ages.
“I couldn’t take the dogs if I wanted to. My parents
wouldn’t let me have them.”
“Good! Tell her that. Promise me you’ll tell her that.”
“Why?”
“If you use your head, you’ll know.”
I stared off into the woods for a minute, but nothing
came to me. Maybe because I was still shaken.
“Sorry,” I said. “I have no idea.”
“The dogs need her. They would have no one else to
take care of them. If you wouldn’t, I mean. So that’s her reason to stay. Get it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I get it.”
“You sound like you don’t.”
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
She was probably right about that. I probably sounded
like I didn’t get it. Because my head was still so full of the parts of the thing I didn’t understand. I was wondering if
the lady, her mom, had almost left the planet accidentally
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