Orchids and Stone

by Lisa Preston

  Then she called the police department and went through two dispatchers, explaining at length who she was and the numerous contacts she’d had with the Department and how she was hoping for an update.

  “We have Officer Taminsky on the street on another call, Ma’am. We’ve relayed your request and he’s telling the dispatcher on that radio channel that he has no new information for a Daphne Mayfield at this time.”

  Daphne fell back on the bed, phone on her chest, and wept.

  When she heard Vic drive up, park, come in, and speak to Jed, make a small fuss over Grazie, then climb the stairs while ushering the dog along, Daphne pressed her lips together. When he opened the door, she felt a valve release as her mouth opened, but he spoke first.

  “I think I’m going to put her down,” Vic said, looking down at the dog. Doubt and resignation marked his face. “She’s so delicate. And we don’t know how old she really is. Nine? Younger? Twelve? Older?”

  Daphne knew she could make this a short conversation. Determination surged through her mind. “She deserves another chance.”

  Vic’s lips twisted. “It would be hard, the recovery. Demanding on all of us.” They talked about doing the hip surgery in oblique terms these days, as it had all been hashed through before and the decision was waiting to be made.

  She made her decision. “I get that.” Her voice was harsher than she meant it to be and her hands shook. Then she started to cry and said, “I found her.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Vic turned his attention from the dog, straightened up and let Grazie steady herself the last few feet to her bed. “You found who? Minerva Watts?”

  Daphne felt her shoulders drop, felt gratitude ooze through her core over his guessing right, remembering Minnie’s name and using it. “Yes. I found her and I was helping her escape and they got her back, and they got away.”

  He gaped while she related her tale, pulling the flier for the Rainier Court Vacation House out of her pocket, flailing her hands while she described everything. When she finished, he opened his mouth to reply but blew out a long exhalation instead.

  “If I ever see that couple again,” Daphne said, her voice resolute, “I’m going to kill them.”

  A sad, wry expression played on Vic’s lips and he jostled her shoulder. “Really? Are you a good killer?”

  She pushed his hand off her shoulder and gave him a sour look. “Do I need to be particularly good at it?”

  He shoved his fists in his pockets and studied the floor. “One possibility is that couple is victimizing a little old lady—”

  “Minnie Watts.”

  “And another possibility is that they are taking care of this … Minnie, or Minerva Watts, and some stranger broke into the house and talked a confused old woman into sneaking off into the woods. They found her, alone in the woods, and a strange woman ran at them, screaming and—”

  “No. Don’t. I am not listening to doubts. I’m through with that. I am done.” She made her warning as close to a threat as she’d ever made.

  “Can we talk about something else? Please?” Vic rolled his eyes and drew his fingers through his hair. “Josie’s all pinchy and you’re upset—understandably so—but I’d love some peace.”

  Daphne listened harder to the hum of noise downstairs now and realized there were two voices, a girl’s with the boy’s. “Why is Josie even here?”

  “Because she is my daughter and this is also her home,” Vic said, his voice level, trying for evenness.

  She glared at him for the little lecture. Although the kids lived at their mother’s home far more than his, Vic’s adamant position that his home was also theirs echoed from her first days of couplehood with Vic. She’d long backed his position and knew he was aware of her support. “I mean, why isn’t she at her sleepover?”

  He threw his hands up in dogged exasperation. “Some kind of mix-up. No one there, no answer on the home phone. Now Josie’s cranky and—”

  “Does this sleepover mix-up have to do with that little bitch Lainey?”

  “Who?” Vic stared at her. “Lainey? The lady we saw yesterday who knew your sister? You’re calling her a little bitch?”

  “That was Lindsay, Suzanne’s friend. Supposed friend. No, I’m talking about the girl who hurt Josie’s feelings, but you know what? You act like I don’t connect with your kids and yet here you are way behind the power curve, because I know. I know and you don’t, do you? About what happened to Josie at school on Friday?”

  Vic’s gaze flicked away. “I know all about it. Cassandra told me. Some girl, Leslie or something—”

  “Lainey.” Daphne allowed herself a satisfied smile.

  “Gave Jose the brush-off at school yesterday.”

  “It was in the cafeteria. She didn’t want to let Josie sit with her.”

  “It was just a little thing between little girls. A little rivalry. It was inconsequential, Daph, it doesn’t matter,” Vic said.

  “It matters to them,” Daphne said. And when he said nothing, because he was an expert at letting a stupid argument die, at not engaging wrath or other hard emotions, she said, “Well, at least you won’t lose a precious night with her due to a sleepover.”

  “If you weren’t being sarcastic, you’d realize you’re right,” he said.

  “I’m not being sarcastic. I’m serious. I’m extremely serious.”

  But Vic didn’t look convinced.

  Downstairs on her way to the kitchen, Daphne tried a smile at the kids. Josie looked the other way. Daphne pretended not to notice. The milk was still on the table.

  “Jed, don’t leave the milk out.” Daphne made her tone light. She turned just enough to make sure the boy shifted off the couch and slouched toward the table.

  Josie shot her a look.

  The answering machine showed no calls. Daphne swallowed and stepped through the kitchen to the laundry, opening a can of dog food, mixing it with kibble and water and aspirin. She took pains to stay hidden when she heard Vic come downstairs. The kids mumbled to him, then the front door opened and shut.

  She was alone. “Grazie? Dinner.” Remembering that Vic had brought the dog upstairs, Daphne guessed she was asleep in their bedroom.

  The phone rang and she snatched the receiver, praying for good news. “Yes, hello?”

  “It’s me,” Thea said.

  “Hey.” Daphne walked through the kitchen, checking the table. It was tidied. She heard a noise behind her and voices outside, then spied Jed on the couch. Vic and Josie must have gone out front.

  “You sound down,” Thea said. “And I don’t think I’m going to be cheering you up.”

  “What is it?” Daphne asked.

  “That guy, Ross Bouchard. His last address was the same one I gave you for Lindsay Wallach, but a few years ago outside of Madras, Oregon, he was found—”

  “I know,” Daphne groaned. “He’s dead.”

  “You know? How’d you find out?” Thea’s surprise was at the edge of offended.

  Daphne made a dull-voiced explanation of seeing Lindsay Wallach and remembered to thank Thea again for having come up with an address on Lindsay in the first place. In fits and starts, Daphne described going to Rainier Court, then backed up and reviewed going to the impound lot, the car rental agency, everything that led her to the tangled woods behind the vacation house, and how that had turned out. An unlawful entry, a chase, a police response, and yet another failure.

  Waiting in Thea’s silent pause, Daphne stood at the kitchen sink. Water pooled onto a dinner plate in the sink, turning a bread crust to goo. She scraped the crust off the plate, trying to tune out Jed cranking up the TV volume in the living room. Through the window over the sink, she could see Vic and Josie with a volleyball.

  Vic had strung a white rope between two trees and worked either side of the line, opposite his daughter to receive her serves, or on the same side, setting up the ball for her to spike.

  Sighing, Daphne asked Thea what she thought about the Rainier Court
debacle. There was no response. “Thea?”

  “Still here.” The sound of typing rattled in the background.

  Daphne wondered if Thea was working on an article or surfing the net or what. Thea wasn’t interested in her drama. And there was too much going on at home anyway. “You ought to have kids. They’re great for having someone to clean up after,” Daphne said.

  “Yeah, sounds like fun. Someone to clean up after.” Thea snorted.

  Daphne wondered aloud about the odd phone message and then listened to Thea marvel about the strangeness of the threat, something from ten years ago.

  “I mean,” Thea said, “ten years ago …”

  “Right,” Daphne said, casting about for focus.

  The milk sweated on the kitchen counter next to the refrigerator. She’d been so intent on checking the table for the jug, she’d missed it right on the counter. Bread crumbs littered the counter next to the milk, and the mayonnaise jar sat behind the milk. Gritting her teeth, she yanked the fridge door open and returned the warm milk and mayo to the fridge.

  “So what’re you doing?” Thea asked in the tone of someone making a weak conversational effort while she was otherwise engaged.

  Daphne frowned, listening to Thea’s occasional keyboard punches in the background. “I’m cleaning up after the kids. They’ve left a little mess for me. Isn’t that sweet of them?”

  “Yeah, sweet. Makes you want to drown them in frosting or maple syrup or something.”

  “Jell-O,” Daphne insisted.

  Thea cleared her throat in considered assent. “Okay, pink Jell-O. Listen, Daphne, I’ve got to check some stuff …” More typing clattered in the background.

  “M’kay, bye.” Daphne tried to keep the disappointment and abandonment out of her voice.

  Two-handed now that she was free of the phone, she took the plate, holding it just under the counter’s edge, sweeping the ceramic clear of crumbs with her other hand. Her palm felt hot and sticky. The mundane tedium of doing housework while wondering about Minnie Watts’s safety made her want to cry, made her hands tremble. She took a breath and considered her situation, the reality of living one moment then another. The past. The present, with all its worry about Minnie. The kids, the dog. Vic.

  The summer she met Vic, Daphne heard about Jed and Josie but didn’t meet them for two months because of the kids’ trip to Cassandra’s parents’ home. Daphne saw their pictures, saw Vic miss them, and felt a natural empathy to a good person wanting a good thing: to be a good father.

  Once the kids returned from visiting Cassandra’s parents, Jed and Josie were home every Wednesday night and every other weekend, Friday through Sunday, sometimes Sunday night, too, with Vic taking them to school Monday morning. He called them every night. He e-mailed them. He helped them with their homework and listened to them. And Daphne felt her admiration grow for Vic, even as a remoteness seeped into her while she learned the kids’ wants. Awareness of this emotional stepping back came with a realization that she didn’t want to examine her own offhandedness.

  She didn’t want to look at how reluctant she was to spend time with her own mother, how she avoided the combination of clinging and coolness served up on Mapleview Drive. Shaking her head, Daphne made for the stairs with the dog’s bowl, but hesitated and found Jed in his bedroom. She knocked on the half-open door and waited for him to look up.

  “Jed, the milk was on the counter. I put it away for you.”

  “Talk to Josie. I put it away.” He pulled his glasses off and looked at her bleary-eyed. “Will you talk to my dad about getting my eyes fixed?”

  Daphne swallowed, counting to three, then four. Jed hated wearing glasses, had wanted his eyes lasered ever since he’d learned about such surgeries.

  He closed his book. “Will you? Mom says Dad could afford it, but she can’t.”

  “It’s not a matter of affording, I don’t think,” Daphne said. “Your dad—”

  “If one person says one thing and another says something else, how can you know what to believe?” Jed leaned back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

  “Listen to me, Jed. Your dad does not have stacks of extra money, no matter what you may be told by anyone else. But your dad wants you to be happy. I think you and your sister are the most important thing to him. And that’s how it should be. He wants you to be happy and have what you need. And he knows you want to have your eyes fixed and he’ll pay for it for you as soon as you’re old enough.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  “When?”

  She waved her hands. “A long time ago, when I first heard about this. About you wanting to get eye surgery. But you’re still too young for it. Your eyes aren’t done growing so they just can’t do it now. When you’re old enough, it will happen.”

  “I wish I could have it now.”

  “I know you do …” Buddy. Daphne stopped the endearment from rolling off her tongue, knowing she’d just picked it up from Vic, and Jed might blow up at her for using it.

  The front door opened and slammed, Vic’s voice booming, “Where is everybody?”

  Jed grinned and threw himself out the door, waving for Daphne to clear his bedroom, shutting the door as he went to whisper to his father.

  In the living room, still holding Grazie’s bowl, Daphne edged to the stairs. Josie had a smile or two and was red-faced from her volleyball exertions. Vic looked happy and Jed was giggling some secret in his ear.

  Then Vic gawked and said, “You told her what? Listen to me …” And then Vic’s voice sunk too low for Daphne to hear what he said to his son, but it was done with intensity and an arm around the boy’s shoulder.

  The image was too intimate to behold. She was an outsider and stepped in silence to the landing, looking back once, seeing Vic lean down. He snugged one arm around his daughter’s shoulder, holding her close, murmuring into her ear. Josie shot Daphne a look, then cocked her head as her father whispered. Daphne went up the stairs, thinking of waking Grazie, feeding her, telling the old girl how the aspirin would make her hips feel better.

  “Daphne?”

  She turned in the upstairs hallway. Josie was almost to the top landing but didn’t climb the last three steps. Daphne kept her arms wrapped around Grazie’s bowl and went back to the top of the stairs.

  Josie gingerly touched Daphne’s wrist. “It’s really sad. I mean, about your sister.” Daphne took a breath to speak but stopped as Josie continued, “And your dad.”

  “Yes,” Daphne said. “It’s really sad.”

  Vic stood in the bathroom waiting to brush his teeth. “I don’t know what we’re fighting about, Daph.”

  “We aren’t fighting,” she said.

  “I know this weekend has difficult and painful anniversaries for you but—”

  “She didn’t accidentally leave the milk out. Jed put it away. Then I had to put it away because she got it out and left it out just to annoy me.”

  “Seems to have worked.”

  “Jesus, Vic.” Daphne smacked her hands on the bathroom counter. A container of bath crystals he’d bought for her several years ago—she’d never used them—fell over.

  Vic swept the little flood of pink crystals into his palm, then let the dust settle into the garbage can. “Daph, I think you ask the wrong question sometimes.”

  “What?”

  “What? Just think about it, will you? Wondering whether a child will sometimes try to annoy you, get under your skin—”

  “Oh, I’m not wondering. I’m announcing it as a fact and getting no support from you.”

  He raised a palm. “I support you. I do. I get that she’s getting under your skin. But she’s eleven.”

  “Eleven is old enough to put the milk away, isn’t it?”

  “You ask the wrong question. Isn’t eleven young enough to get a little bit of a break from you?”

  “You know what? You’re in a bad mood because you’re tired because your sleep schedule’s screwed
up because you went to day-shift hours yesterday. Well, I didn’t screw up your work schedule. That was you. And wasn’t your shift-change-training thing optional? You said that, last month when we talked about getting a long weekend off together.”

  “How often do I change my schedule and go to training? Once a year?”

  “Yeah? Well, my union has a meeting every first Wednesday of the month. But how often do I go? Never.”

  He snorted. “It’s a roofers’ union. They just go to drink.”

  “We’re roofers and waterproofers and allied workers.”

  Vic raised his hands. “Excuse me, madam.”

  Daphne left him in the bathroom, swinging the door shut between them. On the far side of the bed, she knelt and raised the dust ruffle. Their luggage was there but no box nestled next to it. Panic rose, then she remembered moving Suzanne’s papers to the closet shelf. There, she caressed the box with a fingertip. Back at the bedside, she pulled out her suitcase.

  Grazie scrambled and stood quivering, panting. Suitcases meant travel and her natural want was to go along, to be included. But now she panted, hind legs propped wide, and collapsed. The bathroom door opened as Daphne winced at Grazie’s pain.

  Vic said, “I have to put her down.”

  “You give up on her, you give up on me.” Daphne’s shoulders rose in defense.

  “What?”

  She sneered and made a mocking echo. “What?”

  He stepped around the bed, drawing closer to her and stopped dead when he saw the suitcase.

  “You’re … leaving,” Vic said, his voice full of air and defeat and wonder.

  “I’m just …” Her voice trailed. What would she put in the suitcase? What did she need? Nothing. “I’m going to go crash at my mom’s. Just go think. Or not think.” Should she put the suitcase back and take Suzanne’s box? Don’t cry.

  She couldn’t speak, but there was nothing else to say. He followed her down the stairs, dumbly carrying her empty suitcase.

  Josie stood in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes widened. “Daddy?”

  Vic set the suitcase down. With a fixed gaze, Daphne walked past the girl, opened the door, and took a breath on the front porch. When she tried to shut the door, someone grabbed it from the inside. Daphne let go without looking back and moved down the brick steps.