The Last Breath

by Kimberly Belle

  “It means you were lying when you said you didn’t peek.”

  He laughs, but he doesn’t deny it. “Your keys are under the welcome mat,” he says, right before he disconnects.

  I throw back the covers, and the cool air in my bedroom practically hisses when it hits my skin. Jake neglected to mention where, exactly, he spent last night, and contemplating that answer makes me hot enough to fry an egg on my bare belly. Downstairs on the couch? Next to me in my bed? Almost certainly somewhere in this house. Town is exactly a two-point-seven-mile hike, mostly uphill, and Jake would be crazy to have walked back in the freezing dark.

  I slither across the bed to the window and spot my car parked neatly in the driveway, its windows buried under a light dusting of snow, as is the driveway. No tire tracks either, which means my car has been there a good while. By the looks of things, most of the night.

  At the end of the driveway, a red Jeep Cherokee slows to a crawl. The driver, a middle-aged woman with hair the color of traffic cones, stops to check the number on the mailbox against a piece of paper in her hand. She does a sloppy three-point turn and careens into the driveway, thrusting the gearshift into Park right before her bumper slams into mine.

  I hop out of bed, scrounge around in my open suitcase for a pair of sweats and last night’s sweater and pull them on. By the time I make it to the front door, she’s standing on the welcome mat with a crate of medical supplies and a hurry-up-and-let-me-in grin.

  “Lordy me,” she says, “it’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra out here.”

  “You must be the hospice nurse.”

  She doesn’t wait for an invitation, just barrels past. “In the flesh.”

  And there’s plenty of it. Her curves have been stuffed into clothes that almost fit her, and her permed and pigmented hair has been teased to unnatural heights and sprayed into submission. Add to that shiny blue eye shadow, watermelon lips and eyebrows that look as though they’ve been drawn on with a brown magic marker. The woman is pure Appalachia in yellow-and-lilac nurse’s scrubs.

  She thunks the crate onto the floor by the living room and takes a good look around. Her gaze lands on me, and she grins. “You must have had one wild night.”

  “Oh! Um, no, I...I mean, we...”

  Her laugh is more like a cackle. “Honey, it may have been a good spell ago, but I remember that look. Wild hair, even wilder eyes. Plus, your tank top’s on backward.”

  Yeesh. I wrap the sweater tight across my chest and thrust out a hand. “Gia Andrews.”

  “Fannie Miles.” She waddles off as if the house is her own. “Sweet holy Jesus, I need a cup of coffee.”

  In the kitchen, Fannie gets the pot going with practiced efficiency. She digs around in the cabinets until she finds two mugs, then motions for me to follow her back into the living room.

  “I’m gonna have to do some rearranging in here,” she says, taking in the hospital bed pushed to the corner. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all.” This is clearly the Fannie Miles show, and I’m happy to let her lead.

  “Great.” She settles her ample behind onto the couch, casting an expectant glance around the room. “So where is everybody?”

  “You’re looking at them.” I try not to feel sorry for myself as I say the words, or think about the knife of resentment I feel jutting out of my back, somewhere in the vicinity of right between my shoulder blades.

  Fannie lifts a crayon brow. “I thought Cal said there would be three of you.”

  I nod. “There goddamn better be. But for now I guess it’s just me.”

  She wraps a warm palm over my arm and gives me a kind smile. “Then right now, sugar pie, you’re the only one who matters.” Fannie pulls back her hand, sits up a little straighter. “Okeydokey, then. How much did Cal tell you?”

  “He filled me in on the basics. That you’re responsible for my father’s care and comfort, that you’ll manage his pain without prolonging his life, that you’ll stay until the end.”

  The end. A growing ball of nausea takes root in my belly, one that has nothing to do with last night’s liquor.

  “But more important,” I continue, “how much did Cal tell you?”

  “I assume you’re talking about your father’s legal issues?”

  I shake my head. “You’d have to be dead to not know about those. I’m wondering more what he could have possibly said to make you agree to take this job.”

  Fannie shrugs. “That’s easy. He’s paying me two dollars more an hour plus a whopper of a bonus if I stay until the funeral.”

  I don’t respond. In my job, I’ve met plenty of people for whom money is a legitimate reason to do just about anything—dig a community well, disappear without a trace, murder a business partner. Tending to a dying man is as good a job as any, I suppose. And depending on the size of the bonus and how long Dad lasts, the amount could be substantial. Fannie doesn’t look particularly hard up for cash, but who am I to judge?

  “You’re worried that money ain’t proper motivation, aren’t you?”

  “I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into. We aren’t the most stable of families, as I’m sure you can imagine. Quite honestly, though, our dysfunctionality is the least of your problems.”

  Fannie catches my meaning instantly, making me think she’s already considered the consequences of taking this job. “You mean my being here isn’t going to get me elected the next Miss Rogersville.”

  I nod.

  She barks out a laugh, slaps a palm to a meaty thigh. “I hate to tell you, honey, but that train left the station ’bout twenty years ago.” When she sees I’m not ready to join in her hilarity, her expression sobers to half-serious. “You must be the one living way off in Australia.”

  “Africa.”

  “Africa. I coulda sworn it was Australia...anyway, my point is you weren’t here, so you couldn’t have known folks are already blabbering about me on account of my rat bastard ex-husband. I swear, how I stayed married to Lester Miles for fifteen years without catching a venereal disease is one of God’s great mysteries.”

  I can’t help but smile, but there’s a warning buried in the gesture. “This job is going to take gossip to a whole new level.”

  “Sugar, if I’da cared what people thought of me, I never woulda married that no-good snake back in ’95, and I sure as hell never woulda told everybody he spent our retirement fund on cocaine and hookers after I left his sorry ass.” She lifts her entire upper body in a shrug. “Not only do I need this paycheck, I also don’t give a flying pile of pig shit what people think about my being here.”

  I sit for a long moment, trying to process what Fannie just told me. A lying, cheating, thieving spouse would certainly feed the Rogersville gossip mill. Not on the scale of a father who may or may not be a murderer, but still. She must be well-acquainted with how it feels to walk into a room and be greeted with silence, even though every person in there has plenty to say about you behind your back.

  The bigger question is, how can she stand it?

  “How do you do it?” I ask. “How do you not care?”

  Fannie looks at me with kind eyes. “You just don’t, sugar, that’s all.”

  She pats my arm again and hoists herself off the couch, following the scent of freshly brewed coffee into the kitchen. Halfway there she turns back with a soft cackle. “Otherwise give ’em the line about the flying pile of pig shit. That one always works.”

  * * *

  After a second cup of coffee, Fannie refuses my offer to help her rearrange the room or cart in her busload of medical supplies. She shoos me off, ordering me into a hot shower and something more proper than a backward tank top. Once upstairs, it’s not the shower knob I reach for but my phone. Cal, Bo and Lexi, in that order.

  Cal picks
up on the first ring. “Good mornin’, baby girl. How you holding up?”

  “I’m okay. Fannie’s here.” I sink onto the foot of my bed and wait while Cal takes in my meaning behind those four words, which he does pretty much immediately.

  “Where are Bo and Lexi?”

  Nothing slips by the Tennessee Tiger.

  The hurt comes flooding back, this time with the tears I managed to fend off last night with alcohol and Jake. Alone in my old room now, I don’t bother to check them. “Lexi ditched me last night, and Bo still hasn’t called me back.”

  Cal curses under his breath. “I’ll call them on my way into court, and I’ll use my lawyer voice. Don’t you worry, darlin’. I’ll make sure they get their asses over there pronto.”

  Part of me, and not a small part, wants to believe him—Cal’s lawyer voice is certainly something to be feared—but the realistic side of me knows better.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot more than a stern talking-to to get Lexi over here, and same goes for Bo. But that’s not why I’m calling. When I was in town last night, I heard about some protesters. A local group of Bible-beaters, and it sounds like it’s going to be a shit storm.”

  Cal half groans, half sighs. “I’m not particularly surprised. People in that town sure loved Ella Mae, and sixteen years isn’t nearly long enough to heal their wounds. Especially with that damn garden to remind them every time they drive through town.”

  My uncle is right. If the Ella Mae Andrews Memorial Garden on all four corners of Depot and Main doesn’t prompt folks to remember Ella Mae, the women of her former garden club, who make sure the plot thrives all year round, will. Even in February, when the trees are bare like they are now, it’s kind of hard to miss.

  “Is there any way we can stop them?”

  “Folks have a constitutionally protected right to engage in protests, assuming they’re peaceful. As long as they stick to the street and don’t disrupt traffic, we have to let them.”

  What traffic? I look out my bedroom window over the front yard and the empty asphalt that dead ends into our driveway. With only a handful of homes on a stretch of almost a mile, Maple Street isn’t exactly a major throughway.

  “What about noise ordinances? I heard they’ll have bullhorns.”

  “Noise amplifying instruments are a different story. They’re not allowed without a permit. I’ll have my assistant check if any noise ordinance waivers have been issued, but without those, they can sit out there all the livelong day if they want.”

  Cal’s answer heaves and swirls in my stomach.

  “Have you talked to the officer in charge yet?” he asks. “He should be able to tell you how much preparation the protesters have made, if any.”

  “Not yet. He’s coming an hour ahead of Dad, so I’ll ask him then.”

  “I knew I could count on you to keep things under control.”

  The absurdity bubbles in the base of my throat, and I want to laugh and cry and scream. Control? What control? Maybe Cal somehow got me confused with Fannie or his power-shopping assistant, because I have nothing—nothing!—under control.

  “I should have this case wrapped up in a few weeks,” he says, but the distracted quality in his voice tells me the only thing he’s eager to wrap up is this conversation. “Once I do, I can move into the house with you. I sure hate that I can’t be there today.”

  I don’t respond. Seems to me if Cal had wanted to be here for my father’s homecoming, he would’ve damn well been here. Surely he’s not the only lawyer in the entire freaking state of Tennessee.

  “But I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning, okay?”

  I make a humming sound.

  Cal takes it as his cue to go. “Keep me in the loop, okay? I’ll do the same with you.” He hangs up before I can agree.

  My calls to Bo and Lexi are even less successful. Both their phones go straight to voice mail without ringing, not even once. The idea they’ve turned their phones off today of all days shoots a firestorm of fury through my veins. Instead of leaving yet another voice mail, I settle on a rather snarky group text.

  No worries, I’m not alone. The protesters will be here soon to keep me company. You better not fucking be one of them.

  I hit Send and fling my phone onto the pile of clothes erupting from my open suitcase, flop backward onto the bed and try—and fail—not to feel sorry for myself. In just a few hours, my dying father will walk through that door for the first time in sixteen years, and my siblings aren’t here. Cal isn’t here. My only buffer is a woman wearing too much makeup and scrubs smothered by tiny yellow ducks.

  Something bangs and shakes the walls downstairs, and I picture Fannie heaving the couch onto her shoulders and hauling it clear across the room. The racket reminds me of all the things I should be doing. Helping Fannie rearrange the living room. Showering and unpacking. Hunting down my deadbeat siblings and dragging them back to help. Every single one of those options exhausts me.

  I yank on my comforter, pull it across my shoulders and wrap it around me like a cocoon. A gust of wind whistles at my windowpane, and I burrow deeper into the down. Somewhere outside, a car door slams. By the time I reach the far side of a sigh, I’ve found temporary peace.

  7

  A CLOWN.

  That’s my first thought when I open an eye. Why is there a clown standing above me, poking me in the shoulder?

  “Go away.” I pull the comforter tighter and roll toward a window I vaguely recognize as mine, but from a lifetime or two ago.

  The clown gives me a two-handed shove in my back. “Wake up, ’fore I fetch me a bucket of ice water.”

  For a second or two, I get caught up on the way she said that last word—warter. And then it hits me. The thick accent, that frizzy orange hair can only belong to one person. I turn my head, blink up at Fannie. “Oh, sorry. I must’ve drifted off.”

  “Good Lord, child, I’ve been trying to wake you for the past five minutes. It ain’t normal the way you sleep like the dead.”

  I push to a sit, swipe the heel of a hand across each eye. “In my line of work, sleeping is considered a job skill.”

  “What are you, a vampire?”

  I would laugh, but I’m midyawn.

  “Stick your head under a faucet or something, ’cause I just parked one fine hunk of police officer on the couch downstairs. He says you were expecting him at eleven.”

  Her words are like a shot of caffeine to the jugular, and I spring out of bed so fast I see a rain of sparkles around the edges of my vision. “Shit. What time is it?”

  “Sometime after eleven, I reckon.”

  I fall to my knees on the floor and rifle through my suitcase, flinging sweaters and T-shirts and underwear aside until I find my phone, lodged in one of my sneakers. “It’s 11:19. Shit, shit, shit.”

  “How ’bout I fix him a cup of coffee while you get ready, lickety-split like.” She heads for the door, but not before tossing a glance to the contents of my suitcase, now exploded all over the floor. “And, sweetie, if you don’t mind me saying so, you may want to spend a little extra time searching through all that slop for a hairbrush.”

  By the time I make it downstairs seven and a half minutes later, my teeth brushed and my hair gathered into a messy ponytail high on my head, Fannie is holding court on the couch. She’s brewed a fresh pot of coffee and scrounged up a plate of cookies from the stockpile in the kitchen. And she’s seated suspiciously close to the police officer, giggling like a schoolgirl.

  He stands when I come into the room, and with one last bat of her lashes, Fannie heads into the kitchen. Her definition of hunk is light-years away from mine. The policeman looks like an older version of Opie, that kid from The Andy Griffith Show, skinny and ruddy-complexioned. His receding hairline scoops two matching Cs high on his forehead. He wai
ts while I take in the patches and pins on his uniform, the heavy weapons at his belt, the stiff hat tucked under a biceps.

  “For a Halloween costume,” I tell him, “it looks pretty decent. How much did you pay for it?”

  One corner of his mustache twitches. “I see you’re still as much a smart-ass as ever.”

  “I’m sorry.” I push two fingers at each temple and shake my head. “I’m just having trouble processing the fact that the boy who taught me how to funnel beer when I was fifteen has since sworn to uphold the law.”

  “Strangely enough, you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

  I believe it. For the students at Cherokee High School, Jimmy Gardiner was a legend. Mastermind behind every school prank and organizer of every party. He was a straight-D student, an unapologetic pothead and a proven reckless driver who totaled cars faster than his broken bones could set. If it had been a category, he would have been elected Student Least Likely to Become a Police Officer.

  “Holy crap, Jimmy!”

  “I go by James these days.” He grins, lifts a shoulder. “Had to pass on the name to the next generation.”

  “You have children?” I don’t bother disguising my surprise, but I hope I manage to conceal my horror. Jimmy as a father, now there’s a frightening image.

  He nods and reaches for his wallet, flipping to a photo of four scrappy boys in front of a Christmas tree. “Jimmy Junior is six, Ronnie’s four and the twins are two.”

  “Cute.”

  “They’re the devil’s spawn. Last night I caught the two older ones peeing on the living room ficus. Jimmy told me they were watering it.”

  I laugh. “Sounds like karma to me.”

  “Not the first person to tell me that, either.”

  The walkie-talkie on his shoulder hisses, jerking us out of our reunion with a harsh squawk. A man’s voice fills the room. “Approaching Mooresburg, sir. ETA twenty-five minutes.”

  Jimmy slides his wallet back into his pocket, hits a button on the walkie-talkie and tilts his head toward the device. “Roger that.”