by Roger Bray
“No, I guess not.”
“Why would I take her bags with me? If I even knew that they were there. We know the Volvo was moved and dumped so even if I took her and she had the bags out of the car why wouldn’t I throw them back in when I took the car and leave them in there?”
“Maybe he had already touched them and was worried about leaving evidence behind on them or maybe he didn’t realize until after he dumped the car. He came back and saw the bags, maybe on the side of the road and had to take them.”
Steve shrugged, “Both good ideas. The fact remains that we don’t know. There are a lot of loose ends here and I would like to follow through with them for a while.”
“Fair enough. Do you think that it might go somewhere?”
He shrugged again.
“No idea. I have my semester finals coming up in a couple of weeks and I need to catch up a bit on my study for those. Once they’re over, I will have a clear couple of months to work on it and if I feel I’m getting somewhere, I can defer next semester and we’ll see.”
“Where do I fit into this?”
He smiled the big grin that she was starting to love.
“You can be Watson to my Sherlock Holmes or, what’s the name of that cute little white dog that Tintin has. Snowy? You can be Snowy.”
“Gee, thanks!” she squinted at him in mock anger, then punched him in the shoulder. “That’s what you think of me?”
“Definitely cute,” he laughed, “with a bit of a temper though.”
He rubbed his shoulder as if she had actually hurt him.
“Cute? Well I suppose that’s a bit better.”
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. She broke away and looked at him with the look that he now knew meant that any plans he might have had for the evening had changed for the better as she turned and led him toward the bedroom.
Chapter Five
Alex had cleaned the patio and Jim had come over to help him take the wraps of the outdoor furniture and set it up. Steve dropped over with a propane tank and helped set the barbecue up, giving it a good clean after it had spent years under a cover. Satisfied, Steve left Alex and Jim to pick up meat and beer and pick Alice up on the way back together with the salads she was preparing. Ron dropped over a key lime pie that Audrey had made and even Miss. Muir came through the gap in the hedge that divided the two properties carrying a large bowl of egg and potato salad. Moth came with her alternating between walking next to her and trying to weave between her legs. She made it to the patio with the bowl and Moth jumped up onto a chair.
“Here you are, Alex, put in in the fridge until you’re ready to eat.”
Jim smiled and nodded to Alex while he grabbed the bowl and took it inside.
“That’s kind of you Miss. Muir. You are staying, aren’t you?”
“I am if that’s OK with you?”
“Of course, it is, you know that you’re always welcome. You and Moth.”
“I hope that he hasn’t been disturbing you, I know he’s been over here a lot since you,” she hesitated, “came back.”
“He’s most welcome, and truth be told he’s been a great comfort to me. He’s good to have around and has helped me settle in again.”
“Good, I’m glad. He can be a little needy, but he is a good companion to have around.”
They both looked at Moth, who was sitting with his eyes closed and his head cocked to one side while he was scratched. When Miss. Muir stopped for a moment, he opened one eye to see if she was still there and when he found that she was he head-butted her hand gently for her to continue. Alex took over the head scratch and Moth closed his eye again and purred contentedly, not caring who was doing the scratching as long as somebody was.
“I’m so glad that you were released, Alex. I never believed them for one minute. I was so angry when you were convicted I wrote to the DA and told him that he was a fool.”
“Thank you,” Alex laughed.
“I certainly did. I got a reply from some assistant which was full of rubbish and basically told me I was a silly old woman who didn’t understand the process. Well let me tell you, I understood enough to know that the DA was an idiot and wrong.”
Alex laughed again.
“Thank you. It was good knowing that people believed in me.”
“I’m so sorry that we still don’t know what happened to poor Hazel though. You must be devastated, even now.”
Alex stopped laughing as the thoughts came back to him.
“I am, I suppose I always will be. Going to jail was bad, but it was nothing compared with how I feel about Hazel.”
“If you need anything at all, you let me know and if you need Moth here to stay with you for a while, that’s fine as well.”
She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. The moment looked comical to Jim who, at that moment, came out of the door back onto the patio.
He laughed, “Gee, I leave you two youngsters together for a moment and find you making out when I get back.”
Miss Muir let go of Alex and they both stood back, laughing but Jim could see the tears that both were nearly shedding. The old lady stepped up to him and smacked him on the arm.
“That’s enough cheek out of you, Jim Fletcher, you know well enough that was not what was happening.”
Jim laughed again holding his hands out in front of him.
“Whoa, I know, I know. There’s no need to beat me up over it.”
Alex was smiling again and nodded his thanks to Miss. Muir.
Ron and Audrey arrived and Audrey gave Alex a big hug and like Miss. Muir had, welcomed him back. Ron shook his hand and then ripped open one of the six packs of beer that he had brought with him. He offered one to each of them and to everyone’s surprise even Miss. Muir took the offered bottle, which Ron opened for her. She took a sip while they all watched.
“What?” she asked wiping the beer from her lips, “I’m old I’m not dead, I enjoy a beer now and then. Today is a good reason to celebrate. I can only have a couple though or I’ll be up and down all night.”
They all laughed while they opened their own beers and Ron proposed a toast to Alex and his return. They were finishing when Alice and Steve showed up. Alice carrying salads and Steve with his arms full of meat and a couple of bags containing more beer and some bottles of wine. Jim jumped forward to help him as he struggled to put everything down without dropping it and between them, they managed to transfer the load onto the table rather than all over the floor.
Alex couldn’t remember the last time he had felt happy. They had the barbecue and Audrey’s excellent pie for dessert as they sat around the table.
He felt good. He wasn’t the center of attention and everyone had got the need to commiserate with him out of the way earlier and now they were a group of family and friends sharing a good evening.
There were even a few moments when he forgot that he was supposed to be feeling depressed. Hazel’s ghost was always there, but to spend the evening with his neighbors and Alice and Steve, he could almost believe that everything was the way it should be. He could almost imagine that Hazel was in the kitchen getting something and would be back in a minute. The thought pulled him up a little, but he decided that rather than let the good feelings that he had slip away, he would fight against the depression. He silently made a toast to Hazel.
“I love you, Hazel, and I always will.”
Alice saw the expression on his face as his mood changed and guessed why. She grabbed his arm and as he looked at her, he smiled sadly and nodded, then winked and tried to shake off the unsettling feeling he had. Steve was in the middle of another of his improbable stories, this time about an air force colonel in drag and a goat which was reaching its conclusion with gales of laughter from everyone including Miss. Muir who was on her third beer and had surprised them all that she was not the staid old neighbor they had thought.
Jim took over the story telling with tales from his life working on the rail roads and what he had f
ound as he had surveyed and patrolled the tracks up and down the state and into Northern California. It was, they all agreed later, an excellent evening and before they knew it, it was well after eleven o’clock. Miss. Muir made her excuses first and Jim escorted her to her back door and made sure that she got home safely. She surprised him by insisting on kissing his cheek before she went inside, and he was smiling as he got back to find that Steve had opened a bottle of wine and was pouring it into glasses. Jim nodded and took the offered glass and they sat again until after midnight when Ron and Audrey rose to leave. Jim did the same and the party broke up as they finished the wine.
Steve and Alice had decided to stay the night as they didn’t want to drive so they went into the spare room as Alex went to his room. Again, the alcohol worked and he fell asleep almost immediately. His last thought that night was not of Hazel as it usually was, but the mundane thought that maybe they should have cleaned up a bit before they had come in so as not to attract raccoons to the back yard.
*****
He didn’t need to worry about raccoons making a mess of the back yard. When he woke up early, he forced himself to get up to get a fresh start to the day, and, he decided, his life. Hazel was the past. A beautiful past with a beautiful woman that he would never forget, but a part of his life that had ultimately ended in sorrow and heartache. He needed to move on, he knew that. Drinking himself to sleep every night would not change anything but would probably, in time, make his life a lot worse.
Cursing Steve for insisting on the final bottle of wine he swore was the reason he had another hangover, he got out of bed and made a mental list of everything that he wanted to achieve that day and into the future. Starting with cleaning up the patio from yesterday’s barbecue to building up enough courage to clean out the garage.
Pulling on some old clothes and boots for a big day cleaning, sorting, and throwing things out, he walked to the patio doors and looked out to see that everything had already been cleared away. The barbecue was covered and, he had no doubt, clean. The outside furniture was neatly set, and the table had been wiped down. All the bottles were gone and the dirty glasses, now clean were all standing in a row on the table.
“What the hell?” he thought, as he opened the door, checking the time on his watch as he did. It was ten past six.
As soon as he opened the door, he heard a low whistling of an unrecognizable tune and saw Jim with a wide yard broom finishing sweeping the edge of the patio.
“Jim?”
“Morning, Alex, I thought I’d pop over and tidy up a bit after last evening.”
“You didn’t need to, you know, I was about to do it myself.”
“I know, I know but it’s a habit I suppose, coming over and tidying the place up.”
“Thank you, but you didn’t have to.”
“I know you still have a lot on your mind so something like this, well it’s what good neighbors do, isn’t it?”
Alex nodded and smiled.
“Well at least let me offer you a coffee. Still white and two?”
“That would be great, let me finish this up.”
Alex carried the glasses into the kitchen and put them away while the coffee machine warmed up. When it was ready, he got his straight black and made one for Jim and carried them both outside to where the sweeping was finished, and Jim was coming back from putting the broom away in his shed.
They sat at the table and Jim accepted the coffee with a smile and took a satisfied sip from it.
“I didn’t want to ask yesterday,” he started, “the evening was going so well and it didn’t seem like the right time.”
“For what?” Alex asked, knowing what was coming.
“To ask I suppose. How you are going?”
Alex actually considered the question for a moment rather than give his usual stock answer of “OK, it’ll take time,” before finally saying, “Not so well, Jim if I’m being honest. I know that nearly four years have gone by since Hazel went missing and this whole awful situation started, but I can’t seem to move on.”
“You’ve only just got out of jail, you can hardly be expected to pick up where you left off can you?”
“And I think that’s the problem. If I hadn’t been wrongly convicted, I’d have had time to come to terms with what the hell was going on. Move forward, you know, get past it. Going to jail was bad, but it seemed to put that whole process on hold. I couldn’t think of Hazel like I should that whole time. It was almost as if my grieving couldn’t start until I got out and got back here.”
“Back to familiar surroundings? Where it all started?”
“Yes. All the time I spent in jail was a diversion, connected of course but separate to what I needed to do.”
“Grieve?”
“Exactly, it feels like it has been postponed until I got out of jail. Coming back here, don’t get me wrong this is where I want to be, but when I walked through the door for the first time all the time I spent in jail sort of disappeared and I was back to when Hazel first went missing.”
Jim nodded, “And how are you feeling now?”
“Crap. Distraught and upset all the time. Last night was the first time since I came back that I haven’t thought of Hazel all the time.”
“When Linda died, I was almost suicidal for quite a long time. We went from being happy together and doing everything together, to me having nothing. She was my wife and my best friend, and I missed her so much. Simple things like talking to her, you know. I still do, sometimes if something happens I want to tell her. For a moment, for a split second I think, Wait until I tell Linda, or when I get home, I want to call out to her or the simple pleasure of smelling her baking something when I walked in. Then the reality sinks in and I get a small stab of pain all over again. The house is dark and empty and it’s only me and I’ll never experience any of those things again. It never goes away, Alex, but it does sort of move into the background a bit. I used to love watching her doing mundane things, cooking, washing up even. Her being there is what I miss. Her presence, knowing that she’s in the next room, that sort of thing. The mundane and day-to-day things more than anything else.”
“And how long does that take? For it to move into the background?”
Jim shrugged his shoulders, “Weeks, months, years; who knows? But it does, the pain changes from a constant thing that controls your life to more of a dull ache. The best advice that I got was that you have to accept what has happened and accept that it’s going to be a crap time of your life. Of course, you feel the way you do, it’s to be expected and you have every right to feel that way. So, don’t fight it. Accept that it’s a reality, don’t be ashamed or try to push it aside. You have to live through it like everyone else who suffers a loss does.”
“What are you saying? Pull yourself together and get on with life?”
“No, absolutely not, I wouldn’t be so cruel, not after going through what I went through. At least I had Linda to bury. I know that it must be that much harder for you. The ceremony and internment were probably the start of getting on with life, but it still took me two years to stop me considering that a bottle of whiskey to wash down Linda’s left over Mogadon tablets, might be the best way. Then I became a bit more calculating and decided that if it didn’t work, I could finish up worse off. A failed suicide and maybe everyone would know what a failure I was.”
“Jim, I don’t think anyone would think that.”
The older man shook his head sadly, “I’ve never told anyone this before and I’m only doing it now to try to explain that you are not alone in this. I know that it’s different, but the pain is the same.”
Alex nodded his thanks that his neighbor would share his deepest emotions with him and reveal himself to help.
“What did you do?”
“I bought a gun. A hand gun, an automatic. If I was going to do it I wanted to be sure. The whiskey was still there and some evenings I would sit at my desk with a tumbler of whatever I had bought and by the third or
fourth glass, I would take out the gun and hold it in my hands and look at it a while wondering if that was the night.”
“Obviously it wasn’t.”
“No. I once read that the difference between someone killing themselves or not can be a split second. If I had plucked up the courage and done it, it would have been over in an instant and everyone would have been standing over my grave thinking about poor old Jim and how the grief was too much for him.”
“And what stopped you?”
“Linda. I kept thinking of her and how she would have been so upset with me. That would lead me to think of her and I would have imaginary conversations with her. I know that makes me sound a bit unhinged, but I think that’s what grief is, it causes a mental instability which you can’t treat, you need to ride the wave to wherever it takes you.”
“And it helped?”
“It must have, I’m still here. The conversations would start with imaginary Linda asking me what the hell did I think I was doing and move on to some conversation we had actually had at some time and I would find myself thinking of the good times we had had instead of the bad time I was having without her there. I would stop drinking, put the automatic away back into its box and take myself off to bed. I would dream of Linda and while that would often give me bad nights it gave me some good nights as well. For a time, for those few hours we were together again.”
“I’m not sure I want to go through that.”
“You don’t have to. I had no one to talk to, short of professional help which I don’t think would have helped. Once I realized this was the crap time that was to be expected then things started to get easier. You have me, Alex, if you ever want to sit and talk about anything you only need to ask. Talk about anything at all, I’m more than happy to help. And you have Alice and her new friend.”
“Steve.”
“Yeah, he’s a nice guy and he and Alice seem to have hit it off. And you can’t doubt her love for you. I know when she used to come over I have never seen anyone look so depressed but since she met him and since you got out of jail she looks like a new girl.”