by Julie Howard
A smile crept to her lips in recollection. They’d been best friends for a year before he gathered the nerve to kiss her. Then her mother got sick and there was no time for school, or Sam, or anything. When she returned to classes after her mother died, Sam was gone. A note in her locker explained his family planned a move to Tennessee. There was no forwarding address. Neither of them was the type of people who stayed anywhere long enough to have permanent addresses. This was understood.
Then there was Brian, and their marriage didn’t end well. Maybe she was fated to be unlucky in love, attracting men who would leave her. Maybe she was doomed to repeat her mother’s life of drifting and poverty, and never having a place to call home. Her life wasn’t like Jacob’s, who loved his wife since grade school. Not like this sheriff sitting next to her, who lived in the same town nearly his entire life.
Curtis cleared his throat, halting her musings. “I thought we both needed a bit of a drive. To reset our thoughts.”
“I needed to see her,” she explained. “After what Jacob told me.”
“Meredith, my hands are tied. There’s no evidence of murder. The doctor confirmed a heart attack, did an autopsy. I don’t have a murder investigation without a murder. Trust me, I believe what you’ve told me, about what Jacob said. I believe he said those things to you, but a man’s fear isn’t evidence.”
He turned the steering wheel hard onto another road which angled them back toward Twin Lakes. “I’m more worried about you right now,” he added, glancing at her. “Just so you know, I didn’t sign the death certificate before visiting Brooke, but now I have no choice. This is how my job works.”
His words made sense. Of course, there was no murder. There’d just been a sick man obsessed with murder fantasies, leaving a grieving widow. Jacob’s anxiety was the last straw for an already stressed heart.
Meredith gave a short laugh. “I’m a little crazy, right? Showing up out of the blue?”
He kept his gaze on the road in front of them and she took his silence as agreement. Crazy. Yep. “I’m not sure there’s a normal for all you’ve been through,” he finally said. “My impression is you’re handling it all pretty well. Definitely not crazy.”
They rounded a corner and parked in front of the library, next to her car. The windshield was covered in a sheet of white, and its tires were frozen against the pavement. She didn’t want to get out of the truck, a foot away from a man she was more than half in love with.
“Be careful driving down the mountain. Remember to turn the wheel into a slide if you start slipping. It’s the cardinal rule of driving out here.”
She couldn’t help but smile at him. “You’ve told me already, a few times.”
Curtis returned her smile, and then his gaze dropped. “Like I said, I worry about you.”
It took everything she possessed inside not to throw herself into his arms. Instead, she opened the door and stepped into the cold.
****
Honey’s head poked deep into Meredith’s refrigerator as she examined the expiration dates of mayonnaise jars and milk cartons. “How long are you going to keep your husband in a box?”
Meredith nearly spat out her coffee.
“It’s high time you buried him,” her friend continued, as she stacked containers with remnants of moldy cottage cheese and old leftovers on the counter. “It’s not healthy to keep those ashes sitting around.”
Brian’s ashes were in a plain cardboard box, the cheapest container offered, which was the only affordable option at the time. She had no money for a cemetery plot, a stone, or a niche in a wall to place his ashes. Now she had a small sum in the bank, enough to do something modest and more respectful with his remains. The other woman was right. Certainly, it would be better than having them in the back of her closet, where Jamie and Atticus could come across them. The idea made her wince.
Meredith blew out a breath and set down her coffee cup. “I’ve been thinking about burying him back by the tree in our yard. Where the kids can visit him.”
Honey made an exasperated sound and closed the refrigerator door with a thud. “You absolutely, positively are not.” Her tone was firm. “You want to frighten your kids? Having their daddy buried in the back yard?”
She still wondered if her friend was behind Brian’s murder, even in some subtle way. Even though Honey’s long-ago ex-husband readily confessed to the murder, Meredith continued to get the vibe someone prodded him into killing Brian. Shorty, who scarcely knew the family he treated poorly so many years ago, didn’t have enough reason to murder someone hurting a granddaughter he barely knew. Her friend, though. The unshakeable woman was someone who would do anything to protect her family…even, she suspected, encouraging her off-kilter ex-husband to murder someone.
Honey plucked up their coffee cups from the table and set them in the sink. Her plump grandmotherly face was in sharp contrast to her stubborn nature. “Get up,” she ordered. “We’re going to the city cemetery. That’s where I buried my Milt. You’re going to get something appropriate, where Brian’s kids can visit when they’re older. Whatever that man did, he’s still their daddy.”
She rose obediently. In the few days since confronting Brooke, she’d learned one lesson. Her obsession with Jacob’s death most certainly was connected to her inability to let go of her past. It was time to bury her past, literally and figuratively. It was time.
****
She chose a simple niche halfway down a wall and paid for a small plaque etched with Brian’s name, along with his birth and death dates. It struck her for the first time how young he'd been when he died, even though he always seemed so much older than her in life. Thirty-three was much too young to die. How long would it take her to forgive him for all he did in the few years they’d been together. Was forgiveness even important or necessary? Her book on meditation instructed to let the past go and to focus on the present. Her past haunted her and invaded her present; it would be a relief to be able to let it all go. Meredith recalled the scene at Brooke’s house. She closed her eyes.
“…joint niche?” the man was asking.
Her eyes flew open. “What? I’m sorry.”
The man at the cemetery was all sympathy and understanding, tilting his head to one side with a practiced frown. “This is a difficult hour,” he intoned. “Take your time. I was just asking if you wanted to pre-pay for a joint niche, so you can join your husband when the time comes.”
She shook her head. “I won’t be joining him.” She fumbled in her purse for her wallet. “How much?”
****
Finished with the details, she strode outside where Honey strolled with Atticus and Jamie by the memorial wall. The cemetery grounds were sparse, with fewer than a hundred flat stones and a few older upright markers set into an acre of close-cut yellowed lawn. The wall, rising up six feet, was down a brief sidewalk from the office building.
“I explained to Jamie her daddy’s ashes will be right here, so she can come talk to him whenever she wants,” Honey said.
Jamie studied the blank niche with a frown. “I don’t think so. My daddy’s dead now.”
The five-year-old clutched the tail of her lion costume to her chest as she stared at the wall, full of dead people. She’d refused to take off her Halloween costume for anything except a bath for days. After wearing it to school, serving as pajamas at night, and absorbing various spills at meals, Jamie would eventually have to relinquish the costume to the washing machine. Heaven help us all if the mane unravels or the tail comes off, Meredith thought.
Honey heaved a sigh, her shoulders rising and falling heavily. “Come with me.”
Not looking back, she marched across the grass to a small flat stone at one edge of the cemetery, weaving among the markers. They followed her, Jamie first, then Meredith hand-in-hand with a toddling Atticus, his chubby legs pumping up and down. There was no path so they walked across the dying lawn and likely, Meredith imagined, on top of people’s caskets and bones. Cremation made
so much more sense to her than burying one’s dead. She’d read of one cemetery, so crowded the caskets were buried on top of one another. Someday, those coffins would rot away, raining bones down on others below, all sinking deeper into the earth together. There was no guarantee at some far-off future date, a stranger wouldn’t be buried above her. She’d rather blow away in the wind.
Her friend stopped before a stone and tapped the marker with one foot, like she was knocking on a door. “Hi-ya Milt,” she called out. “You have visitors.”
They stared down at the stone, etched with “Milton Jackson Stohler, Sprouted 1947, Replanted 2015.” Honey’s second marriage was idyllic, and the woman truly mourned Milt’s loss to cancer. People called them “Milk and Honey,” the story went, because they fit so well together as a couple. Even the road they lived on was named “Ham and Eggs Road” because the couple raised pigs and chickens on their small farm.
“Death is a mystery, for sure,” the woman explained to Jamie. “We don’t know if your daddy can hear you or not. But I talk to my Milt all the time and I think he hears me. If there’s even a chance he can hear me, I don’t want him wondering why I’m ignoring him. It’s good enough reason for me.”
Jamie bit her lip. “I can tell my daddy about school,” she started in a hesitant voice. “He’d want to know about Karin and the princi-pess. And my rabbit being pregnant. And Laf being a boy chicken, not a girl chicken.”
“Exactly,” Honey encouraged. “There’s a lot to tell him.”
Jamie nodded. “Okay,” she agreed, the subject settled. “I’ll come and talk to him.”
Meredith appreciated how the older woman could talk so easily to her kids. Both of them adored her and the woman soaked in the adoration like a thirsty sponge gone too long without water.
“You can give a hello to Milt too whenever you stop by,” said Honey. “He was always a talker and he’s a great listener now.” Meredith wondered if she was making a morbid joke, but her friend was blinking back tears. The older woman spoke as though to herself. “Milt has a very forgiving nature. I’m not sure I ever deserved him.” Honey shook her head as though conveying herself back to the present and smiled at Jamie. She nodded toward the car. “I always eat some cookies after my visit. Oatmeal or ginger snaps?”
****
Jamie ran into the master bedroom that night and jumped into her bed. Her daughter tugged at the blankets, burrito-ing herself inside them until Meredith possessed nothing but a sheet on her side. Within minutes, Jamie began to snore in a soft rhythm.
Rain pounded the roof, causing a steady drumming above their heads. Meredith rose. She checked on Atticus, who had one thumb firmly stuck in his mouth, and then she wandered through the living room and into the kitchen. The house was taking a beating but the roof Curtis patched for her appeared to be holding and all was dry and snug. It was small and shabby…maybe a shade below shabby…but the house was all hers. Outside, there was a garden, a tree swing and a walking path cutting through the fields to the tall eastern mountains.
My house. My home. Two healthy children. I have a job and I’m taking a college class.
They were getting by, but just barely. Was it wrong to be happy with so little? There had to be more to life than money in the bank. Curtis told her there was no normal for what she’d been through—the years of living with Brian’s cruelty and betrayal, then his murder. She felt safe here in Hay City, with a growing sense of belonging, and this seemed like everything. With Jacob’s death settled once and for all as a natural occurrence, she could return her focus to her own life.
She checked on Jamie again who by now had rolled her mound of blankets to the middle of the bed, taking the rest of the sheet with her. She sighed and then went to Jamie’s room, stepping gingerly over dolls and shoes, before climbing in her daughter’s narrow bed. A lump at her feet made her grope under the blankets and she plucked out a stuffed rabbit Brian gave to Jamie one Christmas. One ear was missing as well as most of the fur on the front legs, but since Brian’s death, Jamie wouldn’t go to bed without it. She dropped the toy to the floor and then, reconsidering, stretched over and retrieved it. She hugged the rabbit to her chest and listened as the pitter-patter of rain on the roof softened and then disappeared.
She closed her eyes and slept, without dreams.
Chapter Ten
“Mom! I’m gonna be late for my bus.” Jamie stood over her, a bedraggled lion wearing a backpack.
Meredith’s eyes flew open to bright sunlight. The stuffed rabbit dropped to the floor. “What time is it?”
“I made my own breakfast.” Jamie’s tone accused her of being a bad mother, once again. “Atticus’s, too.”
She scrambled out of her daughter's bed, stumbled on a doll, and raced to her room, Jamie following. “You don’t have time to get dressed,” she said. “I want to ride the bus.”
“Okay, okay.” The clock by the side of the bed confirmed there was little time to spare. The bus would leave in ten minutes; it took nearly five minutes to drive Jamie to the bus stop in front of the grocery store. It'd be close. “Get Atticus into the car seat. Pack his day bag. I’ll be out in thirty seconds.”
She slid a sweatshirt over her pajama top, tugged on old jeans, and took a quick glance at her hair in the mirror. The stubborn cowlick at the back of her head shot a poof of ash-brown hair up like a geyser. She pawed through the closet and found a baseball cap, which she set firmly in place to cover the damage. Another glance in the mirror assured her she still looked like she’d just climbed out of bed. No matter, she was late. This was her morning to open the hardware store and she’d promised to stay all day. Since she wasn't at her most glamorous, it was a good thing few people patronized the store.
Something nagged at the edge of her memory, a phrase uttered or…something…at Brooke’s house. What was it and why did it flash through her mind just then? She paused, frowning.
“Mom!” Jamie shouted one last time before dashing out the front door with Atticus.
No time for coffee or breakfast. It was a rough way to start the morning, this day of all days.
Outside, a dusting of snow covered the valley, the road, and her car. Not so soon. It’s too early for winter. Her feet skidded on the slick gravel as she made her way to the driver’s side of the car, scrambling to keep from falling.
“Mom.” Jamie bounced impatiently in her seat. “Hurry, hurry.”
The car chugged, the battery protesting the sudden drop in temperature overnight, but then started, belching out its usual gray smoke. Meredith raced down the road, trying to make up a few seconds and terrified they’d miss the bus and she’d have to drive Jamie all the way to school in Blissful. The short yellow bus was at the store when they drove up, blaring the car’s horn so the driver wouldn’t leave.
“This is so ’barrassing,” Jamie complained as she jumped out of the car and ran to the waiting bus where her friend, Karin, waved an arm out a window.
Meredith took a few deep breaths to recover her equilibrium as she waited for the bus to pull away in the direction of the Blissful school. She glanced in the back seat. Jamie had dressed Atticus in layers of heavy winter clothing; a line of sweat beaded his forehead.
“Oh, my poor baby,” she said. “You have no say in any of this, do you?”
Atticus wiggled in his car seat. “No.”
She pulled back onto the road, slower this time, and headed to the hardware store. The road was sloppy with melting slush and the fields glistened under the rising autumn sun.
“It gets better,” she promised her son, and hoped this was true.
****
A note lay on the counter when she arrived at the store. “Don’t mind the mess. Don’t touch anything. I’ll be in late.”
Meredith surveyed the aisles. The store was always a mess, but Crusty had outdone himself this time. Snow shovels lay strewn down the length of one aisle; bags of bird seed stacked like cord wood filled another. A washing machine, dented and scuffe
d on one side, sat next to the playpen set up for Atticus which currently held a dozen or so boxes labeled “coffee makers.”
Annoyed, she took the coffee makers out of the playpen and set Atticus down inside. The ordering system was haphazard at best. The only items that made any sense were the snow shovels. New merchandise appeared frequently but she rarely witnessed their delivery. She imagined trucks lined up in the night to drop off random items. She glared at the snow shovels on the floor, blocking all access to one aisle. What would it hurt to pick them up and stack them neatly?
‘Don’t touch anything.’ “Ridiculous.”
She gathered up the twenty-two shovels and nested them together in a tidy display by the front door. It didn’t take a genius to understand these would be in high demand this time of year. She was proved right when two people, the only customers of the morning, both bought shovels.
“Hoot and holler, what the hell is this?”
Meredith jumped. Crusty’s tall figure loomed at the door dividing the bar from the hardware store. He glowered at the shovels and stomped down the aisle where they’d been before she tidied the mess. His head swiveled back and forth, up and down, his gaze raking the shelves. “What did I say? Simple and clear directions. Didn’t you read the note?”
She gaped at her angry boss. “The shovels blocked the aisle so I transferred them up front—and sold two of them, by the way.”
Crusty growled deep in his throat. “Of course, you did. What else? What else did he buy?”
Her gaze darted around the store. Only one of the customers bought anything else. “A garden gnome,” she admitted weakly. “The one bending over, with his pants sort of sagging a bit.”
He leaned over the counter toward her, his face red. “He’s mooning. Trust the stars, the dirty little gnome’ll end up in my front yard, mooning me.” He pounded a fist on the counter and she shrank back. She’d never seen her boss so furious. The sweet puppy dog of a man transformed into a raging pit bull over a garden gnome.