Roseanna nodded. She knew what he meant.
“I know my priorities now,” she said. “I figured them out in the night. I’ll make us some coffee. And breakfast. And then when it’s office hours, I’ll slog up that nasty hill and call my attorneys. And I’ll give them a new figure to offer Jerry.”
“Why don’t you let me go up the hill, Mom? You haven’t slept.”
“Shouldn’t I talk to them myself?”
“I don’t know. Do you have to? Isn’t the only thing that’s changed just the bottom-line number? If you were still working in your office right now, on somebody else’s case, wouldn’t you just have Nita call and give the attorney the new number?”
“Probably not,” she said, pulling to her feet and walking the short distance into the kitchen. “I’d probably make the call myself, out of respect to the client. But in this case I’m the client. And I really don’t relish hiking up that hill after a night of no sleep. So I’ll take you up on it.”
She pulled a small pad of paper out of a kitchen drawer. The one she used to make shopping lists before driving into Walkerville. She scribbled a number on the paper. One it pained her to write. Literally. It created a pain in her belly and chest that felt like trapped gas.
“Here,” she said, folding the paper and sliding it across the counter toward her son. “Tell him to tell Jerry I’ll go this high if it will make the whole thing go away.”
Lance had only been gone for fifteen or twenty minutes when Roseanna began watching out the window for him. Which was silly. Because it would take him longer than that just to reach the top of CPR Hill.
In the better part of an hour she grew tired of the waiting and checking, and walked to the barn to look in on Earnest and feed him his breakfast.
“So, you survived,” she said to the horse as she tipped a flake of hay into his new plastic feeder, which Nelson had installed just the previous day.
Earnest nodded his head briskly, which almost looked like a response to the question but was more likely a response to the hay.
Roseanna stepped out of the barn.
In the bright morning sunlight she saw that Lance had returned. He was lying on his back in the dirt, roughhousing with the dog. Buzzy was straddling Lance’s chest, tail wagging furiously, and Lance was half hugging the dog, half wrestling with him. There was something touching about it. It almost made Roseanna feel that she wanted to cry.
She moved closer, and Lance lifted the dog off himself and sat up.
Roseanna sat in the dirt with her son, overcome with a tangle of emotions she had not begun to identify.
She squinted to look into his face, but the sun was too directly behind him. So she didn’t see his expression clearly. But from the energy that hung around his huge frame, Roseanna sensed that he had no good news to share.
“I’m sorry, Lance,” she said. “I am so, so sorry.”
“For . . . what?”
“I should have gotten you a dog.”
A silence, during which Buzzy came back and licked the air in the direction of Lance’s face.
“Yeah,” he said. “You should have. But thanks for saying that, anyway. I appreciate it.”
“It didn’t go well with the attorney, did it?”
“No.”
“He was able to get Jerry on the phone?”
“Yeah.”
“And Jerry didn’t accept my counteroffer?”
“No.”
Another silence.
Roseanna felt the summer sun bake her neck and warm her scalp right through her hair. “How much does he want to settle the thing?”
“A little more than twice what you offered.”
“Twice my second offer? Twice what we offered him just now?”
“I’m afraid so.” Silence. “Could you give him that much and still keep this place?”
“No,” Roseanna said. And left it at that.
“Right,” Lance said. “It’s a high number. I didn’t really think so.”
Chapter Seventeen
Selective Evictions
Roseanna slipped on the loose dirt of the steep hill and almost went down hard on one knee. But she caught herself, calmed the startled feeling in her belly, and climbed on.
A moment later she arrived at the top of CPR Hill and gazed, panting, over her beloved property.
Lance and the dog were playing Willa’s dog game. Lance chased the dog around in a wide arc, then turned and ran and allowed the dog to chase him in return. Nelson trotted and cantered around the barn area like a show horse, Willa on his shoulders. Roseanna briefly wondered why the little girl didn’t ride the actual horse. Probably because no one could coax Earnest into a trot or a canter, not even under threat of nuclear annihilation. Earnest was willing enough, but he was one slow carnival ride.
Melanie was washing her clothes in the creek while Dave lay shirtless, sunning himself in the grass.
It was more than time for those two to go, Roseanna thought. They were definitely the squatters she liked least. The rest were charming, and, much as she hated to admit it, she had positive feelings for them. But Melanie and Dave were just pests. Maybe she would have Lance evict them.
At her fence, she saw a couple of strangers leaning, snapping pictures of the animals. The zoo-goers were thinning out a bit since the publication of that article. Still, Roseanna was not surprised to see a few stragglers now and then.
She sat down hard in the dirt and pulled her attention back to the task at hand. She had bigger fish to fry, she thought, and the words made her painfully hungry for a trout breakfast.
She hit the stored number for her attorney’s office, then quickly tapped to end the call before it could ring.
The idea had been to call and say that a countersuit against Jerry would be an appropriate next move. It might even have been nice if Franklin, her attorney, could have helped her brainstorm the direction of the suit. But she couldn’t just call and say, “I want to sue Jerry but I don’t know what for.” How could he proceed on such instructions? How could the call not end in embarrassment over its own prematurity?
Still, when you’ve worked with someone as long as she’d worked with Jerry, there’s always something. Some unfairness. Some skeleton in some closet.
But her mind felt blank.
She sat cross-legged at the top of the hill, surveying her kingdom from on high, until the morning sun began to burn.
She stared one last time at her phone, then slipped it into her shirt pocket with a deep sigh.
She began the long slog back to the house.
“Why the long face, miss?” Nelson asked, Willa still on his shoulders.
She was crossing the dirt area between the barn and the house, and stopped to talk to him even though she didn’t feel like talking to anyone at all. A blanket of depression had fallen on her.
It’s amazing when you stop to consider it, she thought, that I was able to hold it at bay for so long.
“Just some . . . trouble, but nothing you need to worry about, Nelson. Thank you all the same.”
He would need to worry about it, actually, if she lost this place. It would be relevant to his situation. But lawsuits take time, and he was due to be moving on to his own place sometime soon anyway. She chose to let it be her problem alone. For the moment, at least.
She turned away and began the slow, shuffling walk back to her house.
“I just hope you’d say if there’s anything I can do, miss. Any of us. Well, not so sure about Melanie and Dave. They seem to be in it mostly for themselves. But any one of the rest of us, why, we’d lay down our lives for you.”
Roseanna stopped and turned back to him, drawn by the earnestness she heard in his voice.
“What a sweet thing to say, Nelson.”
“I mean it completely, Miss Rosie. Somebody gives you a bad time, you come tell me. They’ll have to take it up with me. You need to do something you can’t do, I’ll do it for you if I can. You need to get hold of something you don�
��t have, I’ll get it for you if I can.”
“You’re a lovely young man,” she said.
Willa responded by patting Nelson on the head as if he were a good dog.
Problem was, in this case, Roseanna knew he couldn’t. But it made her feel better all the same. At least she wasn’t in this mess alone.
She smiled at him, probably a little sadly, she thought. Then she walked into the house.
Lance looked up at her from the couch and smiled. He was reading a copy of the New York Times, which was spread all over her coffee-table trunk.
“Where did you get a newspaper?”
“Drove into Walkerville. I brought pastries.”
“How lovely. I wondered where you were when I woke up.”
“Did you call Franklin?”
“No.”
His eyes drilled into hers for a moment. Then she looked away.
He never asked, so she volunteered.
“I couldn’t get my thoughts together on what to say to him. What’s the point of saying I want to file a countersuit if I don’t have all the elements of it together? I would’ve had to slog up the hill and call him again anyway when I got my thinking straight on it. And in the meantime, he would have thought me disorganized.”
“You have got to get a landline,” Lance said.
Roseanna shook her head and headed for the kitchen in search of pastries. “We’ve been through this, honey.”
“Mom,” he said. “Mom.” On the second “Mom” she felt his hand on her shoulder, which made her jump. She didn’t realize he’d crossed the room after her. “Get a phone installed. Then take the little phone line and unplug it so it won’t ring. When you need to make a phone call, plug it in. Make your call from the comfort of your own home. If you’re expecting a callback from Franklin, keep it plugged in for an hour or two. Then disable it after he’s called. It’s utterly within your control.”
Roseanna said nothing for a moment.
She took a bite of a Danish that turned out to be filled with cream cheese and apricot. It was all she could do to keep her eyes from rolling back in her head. It was that good.
She chewed thoughtfully, still not answering.
“Well?” Lance asked. “Your thoughts?”
“I’m humiliated because I didn’t think of that myself. I’m going to finish this amazing Danish, and then I’m going to order a phone.”
But as she said it, her eyes moved to the window in the direction of the daunting CPR Hill. She’d have to climb it again to make the call to a phone company. And she couldn’t. Well . . . physically, she could. Not easily, but she could if she had to. Psychologically, not so much. Not twice in one morning. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Lance seemed to be following her eyes and her thinking. There was something to be said for the company of those who know you well.
“Allow me,” he said, and moved toward the door.
“Thank you.”
Then, just before he was able to get through the door, his cell phone in his hand, Roseanna used his name to stop him.
“Lance. While you’re out there, I wonder if you’d do me one other favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell Melanie and Dave they’re evicted.”
“I’d be delighted,” Lance said. “I never liked those two, anyway.”
Lance had been gone for twenty minutes or so when the knock came.
She crossed the room and opened the door to see Martin standing on her porch, looking more than a little bit humble. The hat he wore to keep his scalp from burning in the sun—a fabric hiker’s hat—was clutched against his belly as he briefly lifted his eyes to hers.
He didn’t look good. He looked sweaty and red and as though he might be ready to drop from exhaustion.
“Morning, Rosie,” he said. A quiet mumble.
“Are you okay, Martin?”
“Eh? I’m sorry, what was the question?”
She had momentarily forgotten how deaf he was. She moved closer, and raised her voice.
“I asked if you’re okay.”
“Yes, ma’am. Why do you ask?”
“You look tired.”
“Just a long, hot slog up the hill is all. Mind if I come in for a quick chat? I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”
Roseanna stepped back from the doorway, and Martin came in. He settled on the couch with his hat over one knee, showing his nervousness by leaning forward, as if protecting his own soft underbelly.
“So Melanie and Dave are gone,” he said.
Roseanna sat close to him on the couch. The better to be heard when she spoke.
“That was fast.”
“Saw ’em hauling their stuff up the hill. They didn’t seem to be in the best of moods.”
“I can imagine. Did they take their chickens with them?”
“No, they left ’em behind. I guess they belong to Nelson now.”
“He’ll like that.”
“He will indeed. I asked ’em if they were headed out of their own accord. Melanie and Dave, I mean. They said no, it wasn’t their idea. They said your son told ’em in no uncertain terms that they were evicted, effective immediately. So that’s why I wanted to come talk to you, Rosie. Before things went any further.”
He paused. Stole a quick look at her face.
“I don’t want you to think—” she interjected.
He cut her off.
“No, you don’t have to say anything, Rosie. It’s your place and you can have anybody here you want and nobody you don’t. That’s just a simple fact of the world, and anybody who can’t understand it wasn’t brought up right. And I didn’t come here to argue for myself, though another month or two would have helped a lot. I came here to ask you to please let Nelson stay on a little longer. Extenuating circumstances, that’s what that boy’s got. But maybe you already know all about the situation.”
Roseanna blinked a few times, trying to organize and gather what she knew. Nothing with Nelson’s name on it came to mind.
“I guess I don’t,” she said.
“He’s in love.”
Roseanna felt her eyes go wide. “In love? With . . . ?”
“Well, who else, Rosie? There’s only one young lady his age around here, right?”
“Oh. Patty.”
“Yes, ma’am. Patty.”
“She’s not exactly his age. Is she? Isn’t she a little older?”
“Four or five years, I think. But he doesn’t mind if she doesn’t.”
“Does she care for him in return?”
“Well, she might. These things take time, don’t you know. She seems open to him, and she appears to like him more as time goes by. She’s a bit cautious, but probably only because she has that little daughter to care for. It helps that Nelson adores the girl. But these things need to develop in their own good time, and it doesn’t work to rush ’em. You remember how it feels to be young and in love, don’t you, Rosie?”
“Barely,” she said, fidgeting slightly on the couch.
“Sometimes the object of your affection needs to get to know you. And you need time to work your magic, and in the meantime, you need the chance to keep bumping into her. You need that access. So I was just hoping you’d have some mercy on the poor boy and let him stay around a bit. Until he wins her over, or not. Whatever fate would have for their situation.”
Roseanna sat back on the couch and mulled over this new information.
“I wasn’t planning to ask either you or Nelson to leave,” she said.
In her peripheral vision, Roseanna saw him sit up quite a bit straighter.
“You weren’t?”
“Not right away, no. I was thinking more like when the snows come.”
Or when I have to leave because Jerry owns and/or sells the place, she thought. Whichever comes first.
“Well, of course when the snows come,” Martin said, pushing to his feet and slapping his hat against one thigh as if to dust it off. Which m
ade no sense, as it could not have gotten dustier since he entered her house. “It’s really summer accommodations here, now isn’t it? Well, I must say that’s a huge relief, Rosie. See, that little pension I was telling you about? It goes in my bank account on direct deposit. And since I’ve been here, I’ve been able to let it. Just let it sit there and collect up, I mean. So when I leave at the end of the autumn, I’ll have me a little pot of savings. That’ll help quite a lot.”
They walked to the door together.
“You sure you’re okay, my friend?” Roseanna asked him.
His face still looked sweaty and flushed red. The rest on the couch hadn’t changed those conditions as much as she figured it should have done.
Martin stood at the door, hat in hand, while Roseanna watched his expression entirely change. As if he were melting from the inside out.
“I might be having a little chest cold, but nothing I can’t handle. I’m your friend, Rosie?”
“Well . . . yes. Of course you are.”
“I had no idea. I thought we were just a bunch of pests to you. A small collection of thorns in your side. Why did you want Melanie and Dave to go and not us, if you don’t mind my asking? Or was that Lance’s idea?”
“No, it was my idea. I asked him to put them off the property.”
“Because . . . ?”
“They weren’t my friends.”
“Got it,” Martin said.
“They didn’t understand that simple fact of the world,” she added. “About how I can have anybody here I want and not anybody I don’t. So they weren’t brought up right. I only want people here who were brought up right.”
They stepped out onto the porch together. Roseanna peered off in the direction of CPR Hill, hoping to see Lance on his way back.
Not yet.
Meanwhile, Roseanna realized she had more resentment to vent on the Melanie and Dave score.
“They were the only ones who never asked for permission to stay here,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun and watching the path to and from the hill. “Or that I never at least offered my permission to. Not even for one night. Nelson, he asked me if he could stay one night, and then we extended it so he could catch a fish and cook it for me.”
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