Fighting for Anna

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  I sucked air in greedily as my body adjusted to the sudden exertion of running and crying. It tasted dusty, like a truck had passed by too quickly and not long ago. I breathed through my mouth. The dryness of the dust made me feel parched immediately. Mind over matter, I told myself. I was well hydrated. I could wait fifteen minutes before I drank. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have enough fluids for the whole run.

  The music changed to “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” the Dwight Yoakam version. My pulse slowed as my body adjusted to the punishment I was inflicting upon it. Fully warmed up, I lengthened my stride and concentrated on a mid-foot strike with as little contact with the ground as possible. I wanted to float. I wanted to fly. I wanted to ascend.

  Freed from the consuming demands of the beginning of a painful run, my mind started going places it shouldn’t. I hated when Adrian’s absence was sudden and razor sharp. I slipped my fingers down to my necklace. It was hot and damp.

  “Adrian,” I whispered, just as I’d been doing these last ten months, as I’d struggled to find him. No answer.

  Stop it, I told myself. He’s not there. Just stop it. Focus on what’s real. You’re stronger than this. You’re not going down into this pit again. Remember, people count on you.

  Fine then, an evil part of my brain said. What would you rather obsess about? How about being alone, and not just this summer, but after next year, completely alone all the time?

  I ran on.

  “Wide Open Spaces” began to play, and I slowed my pace in time to its rhythm.

  My thoughts continued, bullying me, but I fought back, forcing a change in mental direction. There were people in the community that had helped Gidget for years. If I waltzed into their town, accepted this gift, and moved to her place on a promise I hadn’t kept yet, there were bound to be hard feelings. I didn’t even think it was fair. But it wasn’t like I could say, “No, I think it should go to Jimmy or to Ralph or whomever.” I either took it or I didn’t. And if I refused it, and we didn’t find a daughter, the state would get everything. That didn’t honor Gidget’s wishes. I didn’t know what to do.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to make a decision yet. Probate was just starting. What I would do was start working on Gidget’s story and just let things play out. It was all I could do, really.

  The passage of time worked, as it always did when I was running, and my mind let go of my troubles. Blessedly, I lost track of everything until, sooner than I’d expected, I was back at the entrance to Nowheresville. I began running the final stretch to the Quacker, picking up speed, pushing myself into the best sprint I had left in me. The music was still pounding in my ears, so when a car pulled up beside me, I felt its vibrations before I heard it. I jumped to the side and ripped my earbuds out.

  It was a sheriff’s department vehicle, a Tahoe. Tank.

  He rolled his window down. I stopped, hands on my knees, lungs heaving. I mopped sweat off of my forehead and cheeks with the back of my hand. My mood, which had finally leveled, went south again as soon as he spoke.

  “I hear you’ve had a windfall.”

  I couldn’t read his eyes behind his mirrored shades, and the rest of his face was expressionless. The sun seared my shoulders, and I itched. I reached around to scratch and found a tiny gnat flailing in my sweat. I flung it away with dripping fingers and tried to slow my breathing. “It’s hot,” I said. “I need a drink. If you have a question, please ask it.”

  “We can go in your place if you want.”

  “No, thank you.”

  I detected a slight grin around the corners of his mouth. I’d learned too much about dealing with law enforcement in the wake of Adrian’s death. I didn’t trust them anymore, not until they’d earned it. Even if Tank wasn’t a deputy, I wouldn’t be confined in that small space with him, or any strange man, especially not wearing the tiny garments I had on. My hands slid down the sides of my thighs where the shorts tapered, covering myself.

  He patted the seat beside him. “I can turn the air conditioner up in here.”

  Another non-question. I didn’t respond.

  “Suit yourself.” He turned the air on high anyway. It blew like a norther at him.

  Pendejo.

  “Ms. Becker’s will looks an awful lot like motive. Don’t you think?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not when I didn’t know about it before today.”

  “Who’s to say you didn’t? Know about it before today, I mean.”

  Tank didn’t know Ralph had told me the sheriff’s department suspected poisoning and was waiting on the autopsy. “Hold up. Didn’t Gidget die from a seizure?”

  “Haven’t ruled out anything yet. You have any theories or information you want to share with the sheriff’s department? Now’d be the best time to tell us if you do.”

  “I wish I could help, but I thought she had a seizure and died.” I dipped my head at him and picked my earbuds back up.

  “But if that changes, you’ll let us know.” He shook his head. “With the research you’re doing for your”—he made air quotes on either side of his head—“book.”

  “Of course.”

  He put the Tahoe in gear. “Just remember what I told you at Maria’s. There’s a fine line between research and obstruction, and out here, we don’t care who you are back in the big city.” He U-turned in the grass in a circle around me, like he was herding me. I jammed my earbuds back in my ears, my hands shaking. It was Taylor Swift, and her perkiness was jarring. I ripped them back out.

  I was a little worried and a lot angry. Gidget’s bequest was the perfect excuse for the cops to bark up my tree. I stomped back to the door of the Quacker. Gertrude nearly had an attack of apoplexy she was so excited to see me. She’d been cooped up, and I’d been out running and playing. Tank’s visit surely hadn’t helped.

  “Come on, girl,” I said, and started trotting back toward the road.

  She ran in circles in the clearing beside me, her long, low body giving her the appearance of slow motion as she darted back and forth, chasing yellow butterflies. I touched my own butterfly, the one hanging from my neck. The sun was sinking, and its rays were already less direct than a few minutes earlier. My body cooled, and as I breathed deeply, I got a whiff of earth and pond water and cedar. It was a clean smell, and I held it in a few seconds on every inhale. On our way back to the Quacker, I popped around back and retrieved the chip from the wildlife cam. A small wave of excitement coursed through me, chasing away a little more of my tension. It would be my first time to get a look at what was out here when I wasn’t around.

  I let Gertrude up the steps before me, then shut the door quickly behind us. The air conditioner was still running. Gertrude went straight to her water bowl. I showered, luxuriating for the full two minutes of hot my tank held. I threw on shorts and a T-shirt. While sucking almond butter from a spoon, I popped the camera chip into my laptop and scrolled through. Frame after frame showed blowing grass. There was one of a butterfly, and a few others of birds.

  Then the computer cycled through to the nighttime pictures. A rabbit. An opossum. A raccoon. And then—my jaw dropped open—a bobcat. Comparing it to the rabbit a few frames earlier, it was roughly three times Gertrude’s size. I squinted at it in alarm, enlarging it to full screen.

  Just then, the air conditioner cut off again.

  “Dammit!” I yelled. It wasn’t on my list of no-no words from my mother.

  The heat took over like a fast-growing fungus. I wondered if Gidget’s house had cooled off. I thought about the little fence around Gidget’s yard where Gertrude had lived, safer from bobcats. I picked up my phone, hitting a number in my recent calls.

  “Hello,” Ralph said.

  “This is Michele.” I used my serious lawyer voice. “Any chance that the independent executor of Gidget Becker’s estate would like to rent her place to her beneficiary pending resolution of probate?”

  “Wow, that was something,” he said. “Are you okay?”

 
I reverted to my normal voice. “My air conditioner keeps cutting out, on top of everything else. I’m ready to commit hari-kari.”

  He chuckled. “Rental income for the estate. Someone to keep an eye on things. Since you’re the beneficiary, there’s no problem with eviction. Sounds like a great idea.”

  I bounced up and down on my toes. “Hallelujah.”

  “One condition, though.”

  “Anything.”

  “You help me find Gidget’s daughter.”

  I snorted. “Like you could stop me from it.”

  “Good. How’s five hundred a month sound?”

  “Far too little for a place like that, but it fits my budget. How soon can I move in?”

  “You’ve got the keys. It’s all yours.”

  When we ended the call, I whooped aloud and danced in circles with Gertrude in the tiny space. I threw Gidget’s box of treasures into the trunk of the Jetta, then went back into the Quacker. I packed two suitcases of essentials as quickly as I could and gently removed Adrian’s business card from the window and put it in my wallet.

  Gertrude whined to go out. I thought about the bobcat again, and the coyotes I’d heard yipping the night before. “No, ma’am,” I said to her. “Not without me.”

  After I reset the air conditioner and prayed it would cool things off before Christmas, I grabbed the chip, my handbag, and the suitcases, opened the door, and we went out together. After I’d reloaded the camera, we made tracks to G

  Chapter Nine

  The first night in a new-to-me, 150-year-old house with all its creaks and groans and strange noises was like my first night in the Quacker. I barely slept, even after I’d found clean sheets for the bed, taken a bonus ten-minute shower just because (and appreciated every second of it), and had a glass of warm almond milk to chase down my melatonin. When I finally nodded off, it was nearly daylight. That didn’t last long, because somewhere close—like right outside the window, from the sound of it—was a rooster. A flock of roosters, maybe, getting their cock-a-doodle-doos on before dawn. I put the pillow over my head, but I couldn’t block it out. Gertrude was making the transition much more easily than I was. After all, this had been her home. She had ignored her dog bed at the foot Gidget’s bed and claimed her place on the pillow beside me as her entitlement.

  The rooster didn’t let up, so I trudged to the kitchen, Gertrude trotting along with me, too perky by half. I needed coffee, rápidamente. I contemplated the percolator. My Mississippi grandmother had one almost just like it. I took the lid off, and the smell backed me up a few steps. I filled the sink with hot soapy water. After a scrub and a rinse, I put fresh water in it and assembled the chamber and tube. I found some filters in a drawer and a half gallon of Hy-Top coffee in the tiny pantry. I ladled coffee into the filter and plugged the percolator in.

  Gertrude was watching me closely, I suspected for signs that I was going to do the right thing and feed her.

  “Me first.”

  I stared at the coffee pot, but nothing happened. I knew better than to watch a pot.

  “Fine. You first.”

  I searched for her bowls and didn’t find them inside. I decided to check the backyard, and when I turned the doorknob, it was unlocked. So much for not having the key yesterday. Gertrude tumbled into the yard for her constitutional, and I went inside with the bowls. She was back by the time I’d filled her water, dancing around me in a frenzy like she hadn’t eaten in years, her locks hiding the taut, round belly I knew was there. There was a half-full twenty-pound bag of Ol’ Roy dog food on the pantry floor. I dumped some in her bowl, added water, shook it to wet the kibble, and set it beside the water, inside the back door.

  Gertrude gobbled it down without saying thank you. I stepped out onto the concrete patio in the backyard. There was no back porch to speak of, but there was a wooden picnic table—bench style—and enormous fig and persimmon trees. To me they were exotic, and I couldn’t wait for them to ripen. A rust-and-black-feathered rooster strutted by outside the back fence.

  “You look like dinner.”

  He cocked his head without breaking stride.

  There was a trail into the woods behind him. I padded toward the fence in my bare feet. It was too early in the season for burrs, but still I placed my feet down as if I were walking through landmines. My feet sank into the soft grass, ankle-high. Honeysuckle grew up the back fence, and beyond it I saw yellow-blooming cactus by the pump house. Just then, I heard a rustling sound and froze. Something black was moving in an S-curve pattern. Snake. I screamed bloody murder. I tried to get a look at it as I backpedaled full speed toward the house. Those two things were not compatible, especially since the snake was moving away from me faster than I was from it. Thus I had no idea if it was venomous. It was probably just a harmless rodent-eater, but I went back in the house and closed the door anyway. Boots, I told myself. Boots.

  When I reentered the kitchen, the coffee pot was percolating loud and fast. The smell was pure heaven. While it finished up, I studied my surroundings. A business card was stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet that said TODAY IS THE DAY THE LORD HATH MADE. I smiled and opened an upper cabinet to the right of the sink and found cups. The coffee mugs were old and chipped, with little bluebonnets on them that looked hand-painted. They were very different from the broken State Fair cup Gidget had used last Sunday. I peeked around the kitchen. The broken pieces and stir stick were gone. I snagged a bluebonnet cup and set it by the coffee pot, which was still making noise that told me it wasn’t ready yet.

  It made sense that the broken mug and stir stick were gone. The sheriff’s department should have processed the scene if they suspected a poisoning, and they would have collected evidence. I chewed the side of my bottom lip, lost in thought. I’d touched the pieces and the stick that day. Not ideal.

  The percolator quieted. I poured a cup to the rim and stepped past Gertrude, who had stretched out on the mat by the back door, a sated glaze to her eyes. I stood over her and took long sips of too-hot coffee. It burned a little, but it was worth it. My wakefulness increased another notch. Evidence. The missing letters. Now it made sense. But I decided to be thorough. I grabbed one of the Quest bars I’d brought with me and unwrapped it, walking around with it and my coffee, looking for the papers in drawers and cabinets with no success. I went to the garbage can to throw away my wrapper, but the bag and contents had been removed. I got a fresh liner from under the sink.

  It seemed like the cops had done a thorough job, and I was grudgingly impressed. I rifled through the mail remaining on the table. I would let Ralph know about it. The letter from Lee County Appraisal District was marked PAST DUE.

  I wandered back to Gidget’s room. I put my second cup of coffee down and collapsed on the bed, just to rest my eyes for a second, and didn’t wake up until it was afternoon.

  ***

  Even though I’d slept past noon, Thursday had been productive for me. I’d set up an appointment for Internet contract transfer and hookups (for Monday, no matter how I begged it be sooner), squeezed in a swim, and worked into the evening on Juniper business, tethering to my phone and using the connection to publish the blog post I had written and saved the previous afternoon.

  Friday was off to a good start as well, despite waking again as the cock crowed. I poured myself a second cup of coffee and took it with me to the bathroom, along with my phone. It was too early for me to call Ralph, so I texted him, remembering I’d forgotten to tell him about the mail the day before. “How about I inventory G’s things? Useful for search for daughter and probate. Also, there’s a stack of mail. Bills, one maybe past due property taxes?”

  I wasn’t going to feel guilty about my day job, because my focused six hours yesterday were like two eight-hour days of productivity in the office. In fact, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about anything. I was meeting Rashidi in Brenham tomorrow, mostly to be a nice person. So I got virtue points. It was also partly because he texted me again the night before, and
Southern women aren’t raised to say “no” except to sex before marriage, and not always even to that. Neither my mother nor Gidget had, that was for sure.

  I planned to stay ragged today, so I only washed my face, brushed my teeth, and applied deodorant. I stepped out of the bathroom and walked down the hall—all three steps of it—to Gidget’s bedroom. I threw on an old pair of Adrian’s boxer shorts and a tank top sans bra and gathered my hair into a ponytail without a mirror. Ready.

  I stood with my hands on my hips and surveyed the bedroom from one corner, making a circuit with my eyes. It wasn’t large. And Gidget had a full-sized bed in it. Well used. I had to roll to the middle to find a slightly level spot. The walls around the bed were shiplap paneled. Most recently, they had been painted an off-white, but an old eggshell-blue color showed through where there was water damage on one of the walls. More exquisite art hung throughout the room. Sun-faded curtains of blue checkered fabric covered the windows, but there were no blinds. A pine chest of drawers, pushed against the longest wall, with photos in a variety of sizes in cheap metal frames on its dusty surface. I picked up one of a young Gidget with a dandy-ish man and brown-haired woman then put it back in place, careful to align it so it re-covered its dustless spot. There was a clothes hamper in the corner just to the left of the doorway, with a sour smell and a pink flowered housedress hanging out one side of the closed lid. A pair of black ballerina-style house slippers was on the floor beside the hamper.

  Closet first, I decided. I opened it to the powerful scent of mothballs. It wasn’t very large—just one shelf with dresses hanging from a full-length rod. The kind a single woman of sixty-five years of age who never left home would wear. On the floor were a pair of rubber boots, some orthopedic-looking walking shoes, and more slippers. The shelf at the top of the closet held folded sweat pants, sweat shirts, and a quilt.