The Mill River Redemption

by Darcie Chan

  “Howdy, miss,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I’ve got a flat tire, unfortunately,” Emily said. “I’m not sure what caused it. Are you Bob Russell?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, good. My name’s Emily DiSanti. My aunt Ivy Collard recommended I come see you about it.”

  “Ivy’s your aunt, is she? How’s she doing? I haven’t talked with her in quite a while.”

  “She’s my great-aunt, actually, but she’s doing fine. Same as always,” Emily said as he followed her back outside and grabbed the tire. It was a relief that Bob didn’t mention anything about her mother’s death. She followed him as he rolled the tire along, leading her from the door of the office around to an adjoining work bay. He gave a loud grunt as he hoisted the flat onto a low workbench next to a large tub of water.

  “Let’s see if we can spot the problem,” he said, switching on a bright floodlight over the tire. “If we can’t, I’ll blow it up and give ’er a dunk in the tub.” Bob moved the tire around carefully under the light for a few minutes and then looked up at her. “Bad news, I’m afraid,” he said. He pointed to the edge of the sidewall of the tire, near where it joined the shoulder. “Your tire was slashed. See here?” Emily squinted down and saw a thin, clean cut a little under an inch long.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  “Positive,” Bob said. “If it’d been in the tread, I wouldn’t be able to say for sure, but there’s no way anything you ran over would’ve punctured it there, on the side. No, it was probably some teenaged hooligan and his trusty pocketknife.”

  Or a thirty-something hooligan with a taste for designer clothes and Bacardi Gold, Emily thought. Struggling to hide her rage, she muttered, “And since the cut’s in the sidewall, it can’t be repaired.” Bob looked at her with surprise. “That’s right. The pressure’s so high there that you’d be risking a blowout if the patch didn’t hold. It’s interesting that you know that already, though. Most ladies don’t.”

  “I know just enough to be dangerous,” Emily said with a resigned smile. “I guess I’ll have to replace it, along with the other front one. How much would that be?”

  “Come back to the office with me, and I’ll check for you. Just need to look up the different brands that’ll fit, and you can decide which kind you want.” They returned to the office, where Bob began typing on an old computer that sat on the far end of the counter.

  “By the way,” Emily said, “I’d like to keep one of my old tires. I was thinking I’d make a swing out of it for my nephew.”

  “Um-hmm. You know, I wouldn’t use a radial for a swing,” Bob said as he continued to type. “The steel wires could come loose and hurt a kid. But, I’ve got some old nylon tires in the back. You’re welcome to swap one of yours for one of those, and if you do, you’d have to pay the disposal fee for only one tire.”

  “That’d be great,” Emily said. “And thanks for the tip about the wires.”

  She leaned against the counter. Bob’s hands were large and dirty, and his fingers with black grease caked under the nails seemed out of place as they slowly negotiated the keyboard. She was struck by how they contrasted with her sister’s perfect red manicured nails. The contrast highlighted exactly what was wrong with Rose, what had always been her biggest problem.

  Her sister was obsessed with appearances—how she looked, what she wore, what she drove—to the detriment of internal qualities that were truly important. She’d never been able to acknowledge her faults, and from what little Emily had seen this summer, Rose had gotten worse as time had passed. She was like a helium balloon that had been released into the sky. At some point, her shiny exterior would be stretched to a point at which she would no longer be able to contain what was inside.

  Emily couldn’t prove Rose had been the one who slashed her tire, but she could think of no other person who would do such a thing, especially since Rose’s own car, parked just ahead of hers, hadn’t been touched. She remembered her sister’s smirk as she’d been working on the tire and decided to file a police report about the incident. As she shifted her position against the counter, she slid a hand into her pocket and felt the sharp tip of the blue-jay feather there. It gave her an idea, one that prompted a small, wicked smile.

  Weren’t balloons meant to be popped?

  CHAPTER 18

  1987

  ON HER ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SELLING THE CHALET, Josie resigned her position with Ned’s office and began working for herself out of her home office. By October, she had enough saved to lease a small commercial space along Center Street in Rutland. It was a good location, surrounded by other businesses on one of the most picturesque streets in the city.

  One gorgeous Sunday afternoon, Josie, Ivy, and the girls went to take a look at the new office. The phone lines were hooked up. All of the furniture and files were moved in and ready for the opening of business the next day. The sign above the entry read HOME AT LAST REALTY, and under that, in smaller letters, “Proudly helping buyers and sellers find happiness.”

  Driving back to Mill River, past the preternatural reds and oranges that filled the landscape, she silently acknowledged the passage of time. She was thankful that she could finally think about Tony without being completely crushed by her sadness, thankful for being able to keep him in her heart and help her beautiful girls grow and thrive. Time was slowly helping transform her from a grieving widow into a strong, self-sufficient single parent.

  Ivy was quiet as she sat in the passenger seat, but Josie knew her aunt had been thinking about time recently, too. More than once over the past few months, she’d commented about Josie’s relationship status.

  “You know, you’ve been up here a while now. You’re smart and good-looking, and you’re still so young,” her aunt had remarked one evening. “Have you ever thought about trying to meet someone?”

  “Aunt Ivy,” she’d replied with an exasperated sigh, “even if I had the interest, even if I were to find someone I wanted to date, where would I find the time to do it? I’m home less and less now, and what time I have is left for the girls.”

  “You’ve got to take care of yourself, too,” Ivy replied. “I know you still love Tony, but I think you might be able love someone else now, too, if the right person came along. You could be lonely for that kind of a relationship and not even realize it. And the right somebody could offer you a lot … the girls, too.”

  Josie knew her aunt was right, at least in some respects, but it still bothered her to imagine any man other than Tony as her husband or as a father figure for Rose and Emily. Yes, it was partly because she still loved Tony. She would always love Tony. But, she was also terrified of investing in a relationship. She feared what would happen if the relationship didn’t work or, even worse, there was a repeat of that awful day of the fire when she had lost the love of her life unexpectedly.

  No, she figured that if she was meant to meet someone else, it would happen in its own good time. If it didn’t, well, that would be all right, too. She wouldn’t have to worry about being hurt, or her girls being hurt, again.

  When they arrived back home, the Johnson and Weider kids were running and laughing in the yard across the street.

  “Mom, can we go over and play?” Rose asked.

  “Please, Mom?” Emily chimed in.

  “Fine,” Josie said. “But, wait, so I can watch you cross the street. You and Emily hold hands and look both ways, and I don’t want any dillydallying when I call you for dinner.”

  Rose and Emily scrambled out of the car. The neighbor kids called to them and waved, and it was only a few seconds before the girls were integrated into the group.

  Josie said goodbye to Ivy and unloaded a few things from the car before going inside. It didn’t take her long to straighten up the kitchen and fix supper, and she soon went back to the front door to call the girls. She shielded her eyes from the early evening sun as she watched the children playing across the street.

  The girls were
on the tire swing, Rose on the top and Emily in the hole below, as other kids stood on either side, taking turns pushing them. Instead of yelling to catch their attention, Josie just leaned against her front door and watched. The girls were squealing and laughing, hanging on to the swing for dear life as they were pushed and spun in different directions. She touched her locket. The girls were so much older now than they had been when the tiny pictures she kept inside it had been taken. It was time at work again. Before long, they won’t play like that anymore, she thought.

  Josie watched and listened with greedy eyes and ears, trying to capture and commit to memory every detail of what she was seeing. The deep orange leaves of the oak tree glowed in the sunlight, forming a brilliant awning over her swinging girls. She saw Rose’s ponytail and Emily’s curls swept back and forth by the motion of the swing and their heads thrown back in delight. Their laughter, so familiar and easily distinguishable to her from that of the other children, carried across the street. Finally, one of the Weider boys grabbed the swing to stop it, and Rose and Emily climbed off, teetering with dizziness and still giggling. The girls clutched each other as they regained their balance and caught their breaths. Overcome with love and gratitude, Josie felt a little dizzy as well.

  Time was passing faster and faster now, and before she knew it, Rose and Emily would be grown up. That knowledge only reinforced the fact that the precious scene Josie had just witnessed would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  1990

  “SO, MOM, SINCE I’M GOING TO BE ELEVEN NEXT WEEK, CAN I please have a sleepover party with pizza?” Rose said one evening at dinner. She used her sweetest voice and her usual wide-eyed, pleading expression.

  “I suppose we could do that, Rose, if we scheduled it for Friday night. I could be home early that night, and you wouldn’t have to go to school the next morning.”

  “Thanks, Mom!” Rose squealed. “I want to invite Jill, Becky, and Sherri from my class, and Jennifer Johnson from across the street. And maybe I’ll ask—”

  “You know, four sounds like plenty,” Josie interrupted. “I know you’d like to have every girl from your class over here, but the house really isn’t big enough to hold them all.”

  Rose crumpled her face into a pout.

  “Can I have a friend over, too?” Emily asked from her place at the table. “Otherwise, I’ll have nothing to do while Rose has her party.”

  “It’s my birthday,” Rose said before their mother could answer. “And you just said there’s not enough room for more than four people.”

  “I said we don’t have room for your whole class,” her mother answered. “And, yes, it’s your birthday, but if your sister has a friend over as well, you won’t have to worry about her bugging you and your friends.” Rose glared at her and then turned to look at Emily, who flashed a smug, taunting smile.

  Rose started to grumble, but the phone rang, and her mother jumped up to answer it before she heard the complaint.

  “Hello?” Josie listened for a moment and then carried the phone into her office. She bustled out a few minutes later with her pocketbook. “Girls, I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to run back to the office for a little while. I shouldn’t be too long, hopefully no later than eight. Make sure you take care of the dishes after you finish supper, all right?”

  “Sure, Mom,” Emily said.

  “You’re my angels,” her mother said as she headed out. “Ivy’s next door, and my office number’s on the fridge, if there’s an emergency.”

  As soon as their mother had gone, Rose jumped up from the table. She left her place setting behind without saying a word.

  “Hey,” Emily called, “Mom said we’re supposed to do the dishes.”

  “You’re the one who said you’d do them,” Rose replied. She bounded upstairs, ignoring her sister’s look of disgust.

  Rose was giggling on the phone with Becky McIntyre when a huge crash sounded from the kitchen. She rushed back downstairs to find Emily and an overturned chair on the floor, surrounded by bits of a shattered coffee mug. The dishwasher and several cupboards were open.

  “What happened?” Rose asked. “Are you okay?” She bent down and helped Emily up.

  “I think so. I was trying to put the clean dishes away, but I couldn’t reach the shelf where the cups go,” she said. Tears filled Emily’s eyes when she saw the sharp pieces of ceramic on the floor. “That was Mom’s favorite mug.”

  “The one we gave her last Mother’s Day?” Rose said, and Emily nodded. Rose reached out and picked up the two largest fragments of the mug. Held together, the writing on the pieces read “#1 Mom.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emily sobbed. “I didn’t mean to break it. Mom’s going to be so upset.”

  Rose stared at her younger sister, but instead of feeling angry, she was only ashamed that she’d left Emily to clean up the kitchen alone and relieved that she hadn’t been hurt. She reached out and squeezed Emily in a big hug, which only made her cry harder.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not upset, and Mom won’t be, either,” Rose said. “Let’s gather up all the pieces. After we get the dishes done, I’ll try to superglue it back together.”

  Together, they collected all the bigger chunks of the mug and then swept the floor to get all of the tiny ones. Rose took the bag of mug pieces up to their room, where she could keep it hidden until she had the glue and the time to reassemble it. Then, she helped Emily put away the rest of the clean dishes and load the dirty ones into the dishwasher.

  “I don’t think we have enough Cascade left,” Emily said as she took a green, rectangular box from the cupboard beneath the sink. She turned the box upside down and aimed the pour spout toward the dishwasher’s soap reservoir, but only a few particles of powder came out.

  “Mom forgot to get more when we went shopping,” Rose said. “But, no biggie. We’ve got plenty of the liquid kind.” She grabbed the bottle of Dawn by the kitchen faucet and filled the soap reservoir with it. It took her only a moment longer to close the dishwasher and turn the dial to start the wash cycle. “There. Now, all we have to do is wipe the counters and we’ll be done. Do you know whether Mom has any superglue?”

  “No, but we could check her office,” Emily said. She had picked up the bottle of Dawn and was reading the back label. “Hey, Rose, are you sure we can use this in the dishwasher?”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll work fi—” Rose started to say, but at that moment, the sound of the dishwasher motor took on a strange, muffled quality. She turned just in time to see a thick stream of white suds spill from the crack where the door of the dishwasher attached to the unit. It was like a white, fluffy waterfall, gushing in a steady veil all over the floor.

  “Oh, my gosh, what do we do? What do we do?” her sister yelled. “It’s flooding everywhere!” Emily was frozen in place, watching with a horrified expression as the suds approached her feet.

  “Turn off the dishwasher!” Rose ordered.

  Emily gasped. “We can’t do that. It’s already running. If we break the dishwasher, Mom will kill us.”

  Rose sprinted out of the kitchen to the bathroom, where she grabbed as many towels from the linen closet as she could carry. By the time she got back, suds had covered nearly the entire floor, and they were still being churned out of the dishwasher at breakneck speed.

  She ran back into the kitchen with the towels, took two steps on the soapy floor, and felt her feet slide up and out in front of her. With a great splat, she landed on her rear end.

  “Rose!” Emily said. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  As she gasped, trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of her, Rose shook her head. She was buried in towels, and the warm suds and water on the floor had soaked through the entire backside of her jeans.

  Emily giggled. “I guess we’re even now, right?”

  Her sister’s good humor helped soothe her. Rose slowly, slowly moved her hand under one of the towels to scoop up a handful of suds. “Almost,” she said as
she flung the bubbles at her sister.

  Emily’s mouth dropped open as she inspected the globs of bubbles stuck on her shirt. Then she was bending down, trying to keep from slipping as she used her hands to launch a return assault. It didn’t take long before they were both sopping wet and soapy, continuing to attack each other with the suds and shrieking with laughter as the dishwasher kept up a steady supply.

  “Mom’s gonna be so mad,” Emily said, gripping the breakfast table for support.

  “Hey, at least the floor’s really clean now,” Rose said. “Maybe we can get it all mopped up before she gets home.”

  “Too late.”

  Rose startled at their mother’s voice and looked toward the kitchen doorway, where she and Aunt Ivy stood looking in at them.

  “What in the hell happened here?” Josie demanded. “For God’s sake, what did you put in that dishwasher? Why didn’t you turn it off?”

  Rose watched her mother step out of her dress shoes and into the suds.

  “Be careful,” Ivy called from the doorway. “It must be slicker than owl snot in there.”

  Rose tried unsuccessfully to suppress a giggle.

  Josie slid and sloshed her way to the dishwasher, turned the dial sharply to OFF, and opened the door. A wall of suds made it impossible to see any of the dishes inside, and more suds and quite a bit of hot water poured out onto the floor.

  The expression on Emily’s face was pure panic, so Rose gave her a quick wink before turning to her mother. “It’s all my fault, Mom,” she said. “We were out of the powder for the dishwasher, and I thought it would be okay to use Dawn even though Em wasn’t sure. And, we didn’t know you could turn off a dishwasher once it was started. We thought about doing it, but we were afraid of breaking it.” She glanced again at her sister, who shot back a quick, grateful smile.

  “Lordy, Lordy,” Ivy said under her breath.

  “Well, I suppose you didn’t mean any harm,” Josie said after a long pause. She stared down at the bubbly mess that came well up above her ankles.