by Jaye Watson
"You can give it to her at the memorial service. I'll make sure she'll be here." Somehow.
Emaline followed her into the living room where Martha patted the arm of Walt's recliner before sitting on the sofa. "I'll get rid of this. It's way too big for this room."
"I'll give you the advice someone gave me when Grandad died. Don't make any changes for a while. It's too easy to make the wrong ones."
"I won't, except for those I've already decided on." She leaned back and closed her eyes, as if deep in thought. After a while she said, "He told me how to do it, you know." Her tone was light, almost blithe.
"Who? How to do what?"
"Walt. He told me how to kill him. Made me promise I'd do it when the pain got too bad. I just didn't wait. I was so mad at him."
Emaline felt her jaw drop, but she couldn't find words.
For the rest of the day, they cleaned. Martha apologized for allowing Emaline to help, but admitted she was glad of the company. "I just didn't care about keeping the place clean for a while, but now I'm embarrassed I let everything got so bad."
Emaline didn't know what to say to that either.
They were dividing leftover pizza when Martha said, "I think you should go home. You've been away for a week, and I'll bet you have lots to catch up on before you go back to work."
For a moment laughter overtook Emaline. "Yes, I have a ton of stuff to do. But there's no hurry. I'm not going back to work."
That meant she had to explain everything to Martha, who had been too self-involved recently to have kept up on the situation at BioLogic. It was ten before she finally pulled herself away and went home, too tired to do anything but fall into bed.
That's one issue resolved. Next is finding something to occupy myself.
And then I'll worry about Harry. On that thought she fell into peaceful sleep.
* * * *
Harry didn't call on Monday. Or Tuesday. He hadn't said he would, but somehow she'd expected...
By Wednesday Emaline had cleaned every closet in the house, sorted the linens, some of which dated back to her grandmother's day, and was clearing out the ground floor room that had been her grandfather's until his death. She was going to turn it into an office.
What she would use an office for she had no idea, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Just in case she decided to be a consultant. Or something.
"What I should really do is get rid of this house," she told herself as she was pulling down the faded, dusty curtains. "I certainly don't need five bedrooms, a parlor, a living room and a formal dining room." And that didn't count the full basement, which was more or less finished, but hadn't been used for anything but her grandfather's workshop and storage. With a chuckle she said, "There's a project to last a while, going through all those boxes." She'd been putting it off for too long. Some of the boxes had been her parents' and one trunk dated back to her great-grandmother's day.
By late Thursday she had the room empty and ready to paint. All the mahogany woodwork had been masked and she'd wiped down the walls. The almost white paint she'd chosen had a peach tint and would lighten the room, with its northern exposure, enormously. She sat on a gallon can of paint and looked around with satisfaction. All this work had kept her thoughts off Harry, mostly. Daily updates from Martha, who had mended fences with Marcie and was planning Walt's wake for Saturday, had relieved her mind.
She'd finally called Fontina and told him where to find the file he wanted--in exactly the network folder where it belonged--and she'd received her last paycheck for the full amount due. That had been a surprise, and a bit of a disappointment. She was spoiling for a fight and had been almost hoping they'd dock her pay in lieu of notice.
Just as she was getting ready to head for the kitchen, the phone rang.
She ran. All the expectations, all the worry came back. That had better be Harry.
Her "Hello?" was breathless.
"Pick me up at the airport around noon tomorrow. I'll call you when we land."
She took a deep breath before she replied. "Harry, I realize you've been dealing with a different class of people recently, and I've tried to be understanding. But I really, really think you need to work on getting your people skills back to what they used to be."
"Huh?"
"'Hello, Emaline. I'm finally coming home and will arrive around noon. Will you please pick me up?' Or is asking for a 'please' too much?"
The silence went on so long that she began to wonder if he'd hung up on her.
"Sorry," he said at last. "I've just missed you so damn much. Em, I-- Shit! We have to talk."
"Yes. Yes we do."
"Em? I've been living in a rough world and I had to be...had to be hard and mean to survive. It's going to take me a while to shift gears. I've seen things-- God, I was helpless to save them, those kids. I had to pretend I was the same kind of soulless bastard as the others were. If I'd shown the smallest sign of mercy or sympathy..."
"Harry, this can wait. Just come home."
"Right. I'll call-- Em, you probably saved my life."
"I'm glad."
"That means it belongs to you. You know that, don't you?"
"We'll talk about that tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," he said, and ended the call.
The first thing she did when she hung up was to go to the kitchen and put water on for tea. While it heated, she washed the coffeemaker and tucked it back into the cupboard. She wouldn't be needing it anymore.
Harry was coming home.
THE END
About the Author
Jaye Watson is the alter ego of a sweet little old lady who doesn't want her grandchildren to know what dark and bloody thoughts she harbors in her heart of hearts. She would rather write about serial killers than romantic lovers, and much prefers a good treatise on deadly poisons to any collection of homestyle recipes. For amusement, Jaye plots new and different ways to kill off the people who cut in front of her in grocery lines and crowd her on the freeway.
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