St. Francis Society for Wayward Pets

by Annie England Noblin

  “Mr. Rose!” Alice said. “What are you doing?”

  “I warned that boy,” the man, whose name was apparently Mr. Rose, said. “I warned him yesterday he was on my property!”

  “The fence isn’t on your property, old man,” Abel said. “You got the survey same as Alice over here did.”

  “That survey is a steaming pile of bullshit!” Mr. Rose spat. “You’re damn near five inches on my property!”

  “Mr. Rose,” Alice pleaded. “You can’t just come out here and smash my fence.”

  “Like hell I can’t,” Mr. Rose said. “You sent this behemoth of a man to intimidate me.”

  Abel sighed and pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Rose, you’ve known me for years. You know that I help Alice keep the house up. Why would I want to intimidate you?”

  Mr. Rose was no longer paying attention to Alice or Abel. Instead he was concentrating on me, his bushy eyebrows knitted together. He let the sledgehammer fall to the ground as he said, “My God. You look just like Annabelle.”

  “Maeve,” Alice said, taking hold of my shoulder. “This is Silas Rose. Silas, this is Maeve Stephens, Annabelle’s daughter.”

  I stuck out my hand automatically. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said.

  Silas blinked. And then, remembering his manners, took my hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know Annabelle had a daughter.”

  “I was adopted,” I said. I’d realized by now that this was something I was going to have to get used to saying.

  “But you look so much like her,” Silas replied.

  “She didn’t adopt me,” I said. “She gave me up for adoption.”

  Now Silas looked really confused. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Annabelle never would’ve done something like that.”

  Beside me, Alice stiffened. “That’s a discussion for another day,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I said, hoping to break the tension. “Really. I have great parents.”

  “I just thought I knew her, is all,” Silas continued. “I never figured she had a kid.”

  “I never figured she wanted a kid,” I said, only half joking. I could feel Alice’s eyes boring into my back, but I didn’t turn around to look at her.

  Just then a woman came flying down the steps of the house next door. She was wearing a hot-pink terry-cloth robe that scarcely covered her behind. In one hand she held a lit cigarette, and in the other, a cordless phone. I recognized her instantly as Charlene, the woman I’d met at Three Sheets the other night.

  “Daddy!” she said, hurrying over to us. “What are you doing? You said you were going on a walk.”

  “You didn’t notice he had a sledgehammer in his hands?” Abel asked, holding the instrument up for Charlene to see.

  Charlene glared at Abel. “I didn’t see him at all,” she said. “I was in my room, getting ready for my date tonight.”

  “They’re on my property,” Silas said, but with much less gusto than he had before.

  “Daddy, we’ve been through this,” Charlene said, sighing heavily. “You have the survey.” Then, turning her attention to me, she said, “Oh, hey, Maeve. What are you doing here?”

  “You’ve met her?” Silas demanded, looking at his daughter. “You met Annabelle’s daughter and didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t hardly have the time,” Charlene replied.

  “Are we good here?” Abel asked. “I’d like to fix this damage before I have to pick the girls up from school.”

  Silas looked from Charlene to Abel, and then to me. “I still say you’re on my property,” he said.

  “Is the fence going to hurt anything, Mr. Rose?” I asked, glancing up at Abel. “If Abel doesn’t get the fence up, Alice will have to give her mother’s dog, Mitzi, away.”

  Silas’s face softened. “Well,” he said. “I would have appreciated being consulted is all.”

  “Why don’t we just quit for the day?” Alice asked. “Abel, you can’t work with that arm the way it is. I demand you see a doctor before you come back here.”

  Abel opened his mouth to protest, but Alice gave him a look so fierce, he decided against it. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go home and get cleaned up.”

  “Good idea,” Alice replied. “And, Maeve, we need to get to lunch.”

  Silas took my hands in his. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Maeve.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Alice said as we walked away from Silas and Charlene. “Silas is a bit of an old coot. I should have known he’d try to start trouble when we began to build the fence.”

  “But he and Annabelle were friends?” I asked.

  Alice nodded. “Silas was five years older than us in school. He’s always been an odd duck, but your mother had a way with him. She had a way with all people, really, but people like Silas, like Abel, were drawn to her.”

  “Abel?”

  “Oh, Abel isn’t anything like Silas,” Alice said. “But he’s got a temper on him. He’s never been one for small talk or formalities. And since his wife died, it’s only been that much worse.”

  “Charlene told me he gave up writing to be a handyman,” I said.

  Alice laughed. “Well, ‘carpenter’ is more like it, but he’s a jack-of-all-trades, really. He’s good with his hands. He’s been good to me,” Alice said. “He’s been good to my mother. I suspect it was because he admired your mother so much.”

  I didn’t say anything as we got back into the car. It felt overwhelming and strange to be here, almost in place of Annabelle. Everyone seemed to love this woman whom I’d never met but was related to by blood and the rather broken bonds of daughterhood. I was in her house, taking care of her business, meeting her friends, and now sitting in the passenger seat of her car. Always before, being adopted was just something that had happened to me. It wasn’t something that I thought had any effect on who I was or what I’d become. But now, sitting next to Alice, driving down the roads of a town that I might’ve called home if things had been different, I wasn’t so sure.

  Annabelle

  April 1984

  ANNABELLE STUDIED A SPOON AS SHE MADE HER WAY around the table, setting the pieces of silverware in their proper places. Judging from the spots on everything, Alice had been the one to wash them.

  Behind her, humming about the stove, was Alice’s mother, Lillian. She was a slight woman, like her daughter. Annabelle was sure she’d been a beauty in her time, but now she was as faded as the blue knit shawl she wore. To Annabelle’s eyes, she looked at least twenty years older than she was, and Annabelle figured that had a lot to do with the way William acted when he got drunk. She’d still not been able to get that conversation out of her head or the feel of his hand on her leg to go away. He’d not said anything to her since that night other than a few pleasantries in passing, but she felt his eyes on her all the time, and she wondered if Lillian and Alice noticed.

  “Stop looking at the silverware like you think I washed it,” Alice said, coming in through the doorway. “Mom did it, not me.”

  Annabelle grinned. “I don’t believe you.”

  “She knows I wash dishes better than that,” Lillian said, flipping over a pork chop. “Where is your father? Dinner will be ready in five minutes.”

  “He’s in the garage,” Alice replied.

  Annabelle looked over at Alice. They all knew that William being in the garage was code for drinking.

  “Do you want me to go get him?” Alice asked her mother.

  “No,” Lillian replied. “I’ll go. You just stay here and watch the meat.”

  Alice nodded and took over at the stove.

  “Did he have a bad day at work?” Annabelle asked.

  Alice nodded. “He got laid off at the factory,” she said.

  Annabelle stopped setting the table. “What?”

  “Got caught with whiskey in his coffee thermos,” Alice said. “He says it’s because the foreman doesn’t like him, but I poured out his coffee after he gave me his lunc
h pail. It almost made me puke.”

  “What will he do now?”

  “He’ll find another job,” Alice replied. “He always does, but he’s blaming Billy over this one. Says he poisoned the foreman against his own father.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Annabelle replied. “He’d never do that to you or your mom.”

  “Or to you,” Alice said.

  Annabelle didn’t respond. The yelling coming from the garage was getting louder and louder, and both girls went to the doorway to listen.

  “Should we go and check on them?” Annabelle asked.

  Alice shook her head. “We need to get dinner on the table,” she replied. “If we don’t, it will be worse for her.”

  “Finish with the table,” Annabelle said. “You always burn the pork chops.”

  A few minutes later, Lillian limped back into the house, missing a shoe and her cheeks tearstained. Behind her came William. He sat down in his chair at the head of the table and said, “Go get cleaned up, Lillian. You look like hell.”

  Annabelle lay awake late that night, tucked into bed and staring out the window facing the street. Every once in a while a pair of headlights would shine into the room, illuminating the twin bed where Alice was sleeping. Usually the two friends stayed up late into the night talking, but Alice had a cough that wouldn’t go away, and Lillian had given her cough syrup with codeine. She’d been asleep since eight thirty p.m.

  Lillian was asleep in her bedroom, and William was passed out in the recliner in front of the television set—his nightly ritual. Sometimes he would still be there in the morning when Alice and Annabelle got up for school. Annabelle thought that was probably the reason he got fired from the factory. She knew a few boys who hadn’t been able to keep their jobs after high school graduation, because they couldn’t get to work on time. They’d complained about it at parties—high school parties—and Annabelle always wondered why being an adult was so hard for some people. She couldn’t wait to graduate and get a job. She couldn’t wait to be on her own.

  Just then a car drove down the street and stopped just past the old oak tree in the front yard. The headlights went off and then on and then back off again. Annabelle threw off the covers and stuffed her feet into her tennis shoes. As quietly as she could, she opened the window and climbed outside.

  Billy was waiting in the car, and he opened the door when he saw her coming.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m late. I got caught up.”

  “With what?”

  “Joe and a couple of the other guys from the plant are having a party,” Billy replied.

  “Are we going?” Annabelle asked.

  Billy shook his head. “It’s not your type of party, trust me.”

  “Well, where are we going?”

  “Back to my place?”

  Annabelle shifted in the seat. “Okay.”

  “We don’t have to,” Billy said quickly. “We can go somewhere else. It’s okay.”

  “No,” Annabelle replied. “I want to. It’s just the last time we were there—I don’t know, I don’t want your dad to come busting in again.”

  “I thought you said he was passed out?”

  “He is.”

  “He won’t wake up again. The only reason he came by that night is because he’d been at the bar drinking and came home and you and Alice weren’t there,” Billy said. “Once he’s in that chair, believe me, he’s not getting out again.”

  “Alice said he got fired today,” Annabelle replied. “Did you have anything to do with it?”

  Billy sighed. “He came to work drunk, Anna,” he said. “I could have told him to go home, and I could have covered his shift, but I didn’t.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s your fault he got fired.”

  “He won’t see it that way,” Billy replied.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Annabelle asked, putting her hand on his arm. “He and your mom had an awful fight before dinner.”

  “About him losing his job?”

  “I don’t know,” Annabelle said.

  “Did he hurt my mom?” Billy asked, pulling into his driveway.

  “She went to bed right after dinner,” Annabelle replied. “She seemed pretty shaken up.”

  “I’ll go by the grocery store and check on her tomorrow,” Billy said. “She won’t want me coming by the house. At least not for a while.”

  Annabelle got out of the car and followed Billy to the door. “I’m sorry it is the way it is,” she said, taking hold of his hand. His eyes looked so sad, and all she wanted to do was wrap herself around him and tell him everything was going to be okay, even if they both knew it wasn’t true.

  “I’m not sorry,” Billy said, pulling her closer to him. “I’ve got you, and that’s the way it is for me. Nothing else matters.”

  “I’m glad I’ve got you too,” Annabelle whispered against his chest, and then she allowed herself to be pulled inside, where their own private world awaited them.

  Chapter 16

  LATER THAT DAY, AS I TOLD MY MOTHER I PLANNED TO stay in Timber Creek, I paced in the hallway of the house, opening up random drawers and looking inside them, lifting up towels in the bathroom, and smelling old perfume bottles. As I’d anticipated, my mother was less than thrilled with my decision.

  “Why do you need to stay?” she asked. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “No, I’m telling you everything,” I said, sitting down on the side of the bathtub. “It’s just that I think it would be a good idea to spend some time here. Maybe clean out the house and get it ready to sell. I don’t know. I want some time here. That’s all.”

  “Well, I can’t say I understand,” my mother replied.

  “I don’t need you to understand,” I said, sighing heavily. “I just need you to support my decision.”

  “Fine, fine. Do you need your father and me to come up one day next week and bring you some things?” my mother asked. She was clearly upset, but I could tell her resolve was waning.

  “I already talked to Eli. He’s going to bring me some clothes on Friday. Kate is visiting her sister in Albuquerque for a week, and she’s taking Ro and Theo. So he’s got a couple of days. He may bring Dad along, but there really isn’t any reason for you to come. I know you don’t like to leave the city.”

  “I know Kate is going to be gone,” my mother said stiffly. “My daughter-in-law tells me about her plans before she makes them.”

  I sighed. “Mom, cut me some slack. It’s not like I planned on my birth mother dying and leaving me all of her worldly possessions. This is new for me too.”

  “It’s fine,” I heard my father say. It made me laugh that he was listening on his phone in his study. Some things never changed. My father continued, “Don’t worry about your mother. You know how she gets.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with her,” I said. “I’m not trying to make her upset.”

  “That’s precisely the issue,” he replied. “It’s got nothing to do with her.”

  By now my mother was probably huffing down the hallway to call Kate on her cell and complain about how she wished her daughter was as easy to deal with as her daughter-in-law.

  “Will you make sure the first two drawers in my dresser are packed?” I asked. “And the shoes and dresses in the closet.”

  “I will,” my father replied. “If you’ll make sure to stay in Timber Creek as long as you need to stay and promise not to worry about us here in Seattle.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  “So, how are things?” my father asked.

  “Alice invited me to some knitting circle thing Annabelle used to be a part of,” I replied. I thought about telling him about meeting Abel, but I didn’t really know how to say it without it sounding like I’d been stalking him or something. All our meetings had been by chance, and he was nothing more than an interesting acquaintance.

  “That’s nice,” m
y father replied. “I’m sure she’s thrilled to get to know you.”

  “It’s just so weird,” I said. “Being here. I feel like an interloper in someone else’s life.”

  “Try not to think of it that way,” my father replied. “You’re learning more about yourself, and you know, even though I’m very sorry for the circumstances, I don’t think that this could have come at a better time in your life.”

  “Well,” I replied. “I can be an unemployed loser anywhere, I guess.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about yourself that way!” my mother cut in. “You are not a loser!”

  “I better get going,” I said. “I called in an order to the restaurant down the street, and it’s about time to pick it up.”

  “June!” my father said. “Hang up the phone!”

  I listened to them argue back and forth for a few seconds, smiling to myself at the familiarity of it all, before I pressed the end call button and set the phone on the coffee table, my stomach rumbling. I guessed tomorrow I’d go grocery shopping so that I wouldn’t be ordering from Three Sheets every single night. I’d made up a bed in the spare room at the end of the hallway—on the opposite side from the master bedroom. The house was surprisingly barren with the exception of the overfull master, and I didn’t want to go back in there. Not only would the room have to be cleaned out before I could sleep in there, but it also felt too much like I was intruding on a space that wasn’t mine. It was easier if I just shut the door and pretended like the house had only two bedrooms instead of three.

  I picked up my keys from next to my phone and stood. That burger was sounding better and better. Three Sheets was less than two blocks from the house, and when I stepped outside, it was surprisingly cold. Sherbet began to rub up against my legs, and I took a cursory look around the neighborhood. All the houses looked like this one, older, but nice and neat, except for a few across the street. One of the houses was a smaller version of a Victorian-style house with peeling siding and an overgrown lawn. There was a rusted van in the driveway, so I assumed someone lived there, even though there were no lights on inside. The house next to it was split up into a duplex, with two front doors. It also had peeling siding and an overgrown lawn, and two of the windows on the right side of the duplex were busted out. There was an errant tree branch across the roof.