The engine gunned in a pickup truck that had been parked across the way, and the vehicle slid past her as she turned onto Bernie and Betty’s front walk.
She’d barely raised a fist to knock when the door swung wide from within. At the sight of Helen standing on the welcome mat, Clara’s face broke into a relieved smile.
“It’s tuna casserole,” she said, handing over her offering.
“Thank goodness it’s you,” her friend said, quickly ushering her in. “I do appreciate how concerned the town is about Bernie, but even though the sheriff spread the word to leave us in peace, it’s been one visitor after another. I’ve been turning them all away, though they keep leaving things, of course.”
“Things” being the baskets and Tupperware containers holding muffins and cookies, enough to feed an army. Helen spotted the load on the buffet in the dining room as they walked through to the kitchen.
She wondered where Bernie was, as she didn’t see either him or Betty. She did catch the white noise of a TV on in the back den, and she heard a child’s voice. Sawyer, she assumed.
Clara turned on the oven to Warm. She didn’t speak until she had the casserole out of its sleeve and had slipped it in. “We’ll have this for dinner,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her friend motioned her toward the breakfast table, and Helen settled into a chair. “Would you like coffee? I’d just poured myself a fresh cup when you knocked.”
“No, I’m good.”
Clara grabbed a cup from the counter and brought it to the table with her. “Ellen’s staying overnight,” she said as she sat down. “Having her and Sawyer around definitely helps lift the mood.”
“How is Bernie?”
“He’s as crazy as a loon, but he’s fine otherwise. I think he’s going to outlive me and Betty both,” Clara muttered before blowing on her brew. She started to take a sip but set it down with a sigh. “I do believe it’s time for Betty to take a different tack. This can’t go on, or she’ll lose her mind, as well.”
“How is Betty?”
“She’s a basket case. She’s popping antianxiety medication like candy so she doesn’t fall apart.”
Clara paused to blot her eyes with a napkin.
“I’m sorry,” Helen said, for all the good it did.
“I know you are, and I’m so grateful that—” Clara stopped midsentence as Betty appeared in the archway.
If Clara’s older sister was surprised to see Helen, she didn’t show it. Her eyes were on Clara alone.
“Sissy,” she said. Her voice sounded dull. “Could you help me with Bernie? He won’t let me change him, and he’s soaking wet.”
“Yes, of course.” Clara instantly rose, pushing back her chair, and headed toward the doorway as Betty disappeared.
Before she got out of the kitchen, Ellen popped in from the den. “I heard Mom,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” Clara told her, waving a hand. “You sit and keep Helen company for a few minutes until I’m back.”
“Sure.”
Helen smiled half-heartedly as Ellen came around the table and sat down. The younger woman pushed mud-brown hair behind her ears. She had soft creases at her eyes and mouth, but her skin seemed unlined otherwise. Good genes, Helen thought. Both Clara and Betty had looked youthful well into their early sixties.
“Sawyer’s watching The Lego Movie for the hundredth time,” Ellen remarked, and her gaze shifted toward the den. A high-pitched laugh tickled the air, and Betty and Bernie’s daughter smiled fleetingly. “She’s a good kid.”
“Does she understand what’s going on with her grandfather?”
“I think she does. She knows he’s got a disease called Alzheimer’s that affects his brain. She gets that he can’t remember who we are most of the time. She likes to say that Grandpa has faulty wiring.”
Helen nodded. “That’s a smart thing for a young girl to realize.”
Ellen put her elbows on the table and set her chin in her hands. “She’s more accepting than I am. I’m not finding it as easy as I thought to just roll with whatever happens. Strangely enough, at first it was kind of fun, like playacting, going along with whatever he said. We were traveling to coal mines or at a cocktail party, or some random person at the grocery store was the president of the company and we had to go chat with him.”
“It’s got to be hard.”
“Yes,” Ellen said, and tears came to her eyes. “It’s been especially difficult lately. He’s been saying things that are so hurtful. Oh, I know, it’s not really him. It’s the disease talking, right?”
“Yes.”
“But that doesn’t make it any easier when he tells Mom that he wants to ask the grocery store checkout girl to marry him, or talks to her like he thinks she’s his mother. And he can’t seem to remember at all that I’m his daughter.”
“That’s normal,” Helen said quietly.
Ellen wiped at her tears as they slipped down her cheeks. “It’s normal not to remember people, yes. But he seems to have forgotten entirely that he had a child. He insists I’m not his.”
Helen touched her arm. “You can’t hold it against him. He’s not the same person anymore. This Bernie Winston . . . his life is made up of scrambled pieces, fragments of who he used to be. You can’t fault him for losing his past. Sawyer’s right. He has faulty wiring. Things just don’t connect.”
“I get what you’re saying,” Ellen told her. “My mom and aunt have said the same things when they’ve heard my dad tell me I don’t exist. But it stings nonetheless.”
Helen was patting Ellen’s arm when Clara returned.
“Thank God that’s done,” she said, rubbing hands together. “Now maybe we can sit down to some dinner. Helen brought a tuna casserole.”
“Great,” Ellen said, giving Helen a wane smile as she got up. “Sawyer loves that. I’ll go get her.”
“You’ll stay, Helen, won’t you?” Clara asked as Ellen left the room.
“No, I’ve eaten already,” she replied, rising from the table. “I should go and leave you all alone. You’ve been through enough today. You don’t need guests.”
Clara didn’t protest. Instead she nodded and headed toward the front door, though Helen hardly expected to be walked out.
“If you need me . . .”
“You’ll be there,” Clara finished for her. “I hope that offer’s good forever.”
“There’s no expiration date,” Helen assured her. She would have laughed under ordinary circumstances. But this wasn’t that.
“Good night, dear friend.”
“Good night,” she said as Clara slowly shut the door.
Chapter 20
It was just after supper when Frank finally gave in to Sarah’s badgering. He didn’t have it in him to argue, not with how he’d been working nonstop with the flood lapping at the storefronts on Main Street, dealing with panicked homeowners and the Department of Transportation shutting down the stretch of highway into River Bend, not to mention chasing down a lost citizen.
“Hop in the car,” he told her, setting his napkin on the table. “Forget dessert. We’ll go into Belleville if that’s what you want.”
“We will?”
What Frank wanted to say was: If that’s what’ll get you to pipe down about Luann Dupree, then, yes, we’ll go right now. But he bit his cheek and replied instead, very simply, “Yes, dear.”
He hadn’t been able to enjoy his fried chicken and mashed potatoes with her ranting about finding Luann Dupree’s car in an elderly woman’s garage and insisting he dig deeper.
“She’s my friend, Frank, and she’s been missing for weeks! It’s high time you did something!”
“What the heck were you doing, poking around a total stranger’s property?” he asked, and he felt a familiar twinge in his belly. If it was an ulcer eating a hole in his stomach, well, he’d earned it.
“I took Helen Evans with me,” his wife said, givin
g him an innocent look, as if having a chaperone absolved her of wrongdoing.
“But you lied to me and said you were visiting a friend. Why’d you go at all?”
“Luann pointed me in that direction,” Sarah told him. “I just had to be patient and listen.”
“Listen?” he repeated. “So you’ve talked to her, have you?”
“Not exactly.” Sarah had glanced down at her plate, where she’d been pushing around mashed potatoes and green beans, building a wall around a poor drumstick that that she’d been too busy to eat. The way she avoided his eyes meant either the truth was being stretched or she was embarrassed.
“Luann e-mailed you?”
“No.”
“You got a text?” Frank tried next, only to earn a shake of his wife’s mop of hair.
“I found a note she’d written a while back stuck in her favorite book about pirates,” Sarah said, starting slowly and then building steam. “So I went online, got the address, and drove over there with Helen. While she tried to talk to the homeowner, who was completely off her rocker, I kind of wandered around and saw a car in the garage that looked exactly like Luann’s.”
Kind of wandered?
When Frank shook his head, Sarah snapped at him, “You can’t let this go, I won’t let you!” She had a tight look on her face that he knew meant trouble, unless he desired to sleep on the couch. “My friend needs my help, and I need yours.”
He’d about had it with Luann Dupree. Her belongings took up nearly the whole of their one-car garage. And now his wife was playing detective and bothering strangers in an effort to “help” a woman who, as far as Frank was aware, was right where she wanted to be. Weren’t her e-mails to the city council resigning her job and professing to be on a great adventure proof enough of that?
“Let’s get this over with,” he grumbled. “Now.”
Then Frank did something he rarely ever did except in dire emergencies: he left the table with his meal unfinished. He herded his wife into his cruiser and put the Belleville address of Penny Tuttle into his GPS, and they headed out.
It wasn’t yet dark, but the sky had begun to mellow. The bright blue of afternoon had evolved into a cloudy smear of purplish pink.
As he drove, his wife talked. That was just how it went. She repeated things she’d told him countless times already: about Luann’s mysterious online relationship that culminated in a date with Mr. Maybe the night before she vanished, the ensuing e-mails that were bland to the point of uselessness, the absence of phone calls or selfies, and the abandoned accounts on social media.
Frank had heard it all before a million times. So if it took going to Belleville to get Sarah to let go, it was worth it.
When they finally got off the highway and made their way to the subdivision of the woman named Penny Tuttle, the streetlights had come on, the light they shed dim.
Sarah pointed out the house as soon as they turned a corner.
Frank stopped the car right in front, cut the engine, and turned to his wife.
She had already taken off her seat belt and was reaching for the door when he put his hand on her arm.
“Ground rules,” he said, because he knew they would need them.
He heard the irritated whoosh of her breath as she faced him.
“You let me take the lead,” he began, “and I do the talking. You stay right by my side, and most importantly, you don’t wander.”
“You sound just like her, you know,” Sarah told him.
“Who?”
“Helen Evans.”
Frank’s cheeks warmed, and he grunted.
Mrs. Evans could be a thorn in his side at times, but he had to admire her for trying to keep Sarah out of trouble.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Sarah sat and waited for him to come around to her side of the car. He opened the door, helped her out, and held on to her arm even after.
“Can’t we look in the garage first?” she asked, trying to tug away.
“No.”
The porch light flicked on as they approached, so Frank knew they’d been seen. Although these days folks were as apt to keep the lights off and not open the door when they spotted a cruiser parked in front of their home.
A woman came to stand behind the storm door. She scowled as they came up the porch steps from the sidewalk.
“That’s the nosy neighbor,” Sarah hissed under her breath. “She threatened to call the police on Helen and me.”
With good reason, Frank thought.
He shushed his wife, though he let go, clearing his throat as they reached the other side of the welcome mat.
The woman emerged, letting the storm door slap shut. She stood with her arms crossed, clearly guarded.
“Good evening, ma’am,” Frank said and tipped his hat. “I’m Sheriff Biddle . . .”
“Did you bring this woman for me to identify?” she interrupted, jerking her chin at Sarah. “She was trespassing earlier. Did Jackie call the cops and report it? I told him everything.”
“Jackie?” Frank repeated.
“Mrs. Tuttle’s son. It’s her house, although she’s not well. She’s inside resting.” The woman frowned. “I’m Ezra Bick from next door. I keep an eye on the place while Jackie’s away.”
“I apologize for my wife,” Frank said. Though Sarah snorted, she did not speak. “But she’s very concerned about a friend of hers named Luann Dupree and thought she might be here . . .”
“There’s no Luann Dupree in this house,” Mrs. Bick cut him off again, and her eyes narrowed. “There’s only Penny now, and the home health-care people that Jackie hired, who come and go. Penny’s not well. She’s got dementia and diabetes and nerve issues, you name it.” The woman twirled a hand in the air. “I tried to help, but dealing with all her meds got too confusing.”
“I know Luann was here!” Sarah piped up and pointed toward the driveway that ran alongside the house. “I saw her car in the garage! It’s a red Fiat Spider with gunmetal-gray rims. I know it was here. So where is she?”
“May we look in the garage?” Frank asked the neighbor, because it was the one thing that was going to settle this. “We’d appreciate having the owner’s permission, of course.”
“Since you’re so polite, Sheriff, I’ll see about that.” The woman glared at Sarah as she answered. “Give me a minute, and I’ll call Jackie. He makes all the decisions for Penny these days.”
Mrs. Bick plucked a phone from her pants pocket and went back inside. Frank could see her through the storm door. He watched her press the touch pad and put the phone to her ear. She wandered away as she spoke, though Frank could hear mumbles. Then she returned to the door, the phone still at her ear. She nodded before putting it away.
She came back out. “Jackie says I can take you to the garage. So come on.”
With that, she took off, striding down from the porch and marching around the corner of the house. Sarah hurried after her.
Frank hiked up his pants and followed.
“Stay here,” Mrs. Bick told them when they reached the façade with its faux-paneled aluminum door. She took some keys from her pocket and stabbed one into the side garage door. She disappeared for an instant before a rumble rent the air.
Slowly, the metal door rattled open.
Sarah let out a strangled cry, and Frank quickly realized why.
The garage was empty.
The car was gone.
Chapter 21
Wednesday
Helen had stayed up for the late news, waiting for the weatherman to report on whether or not the river had reached its crest. When he’d finally shown the graphics illustrating the fact that they’d already hit peak flood stage at Grafton—the nearest neighbor River Bend had that rated a spot on the map—Helen had let out a whoop that startled Amber off the bed.
“We’re almost out of the woods! Pretty soon you’ll be able to chase mice again,” she’d told the departing cat as she watched his tail end disappear out the door.
<
br /> After a deep shoulder-raising breath, she’d shut down the TV and reached over to switch off the bedside light. Then she’d plumped up her pillow and settled beneath the covers with a smile.
Her final thoughts before she’d nodded off were pleasant ones. Bernie Winston was safe. The spring flood was almost over. The Mighty Mississippi would soon begin to retreat. Within a week or two the creeks would shrink back within their banks, the streets would dry up, and the harbor residents who’d had to leave their homes could return. The pool would need a good scrubbing, and the softball field would remain mushy for a month. But it was enough to know they were about to turn the corner.
It would not be another Great Flood of ’93.
Thank God for that.
Weary to the bone, Helen didn’t wake up once until the sun cut a yellow line around the window drapes in her bedroom.
She blinked drowsily and gave a good stretch before kicking back the covers and taking care of her morning routine.
She had high hopes for the day, even if she couldn’t put on her sneakers to take her usual walk to the river and back.
Humming, she turned on the coffeepot then grabbed a new can of Fancy Feast for Amber. The cat heard the snap of her popping off the lid and trotted into the kitchen lickety-split. While he feasted on ocean whitefish, she refilled his water bowl before grabbing a bagel from the fridge to toast.
She would sit on the porch with her breakfast this morning and do her crossword without interruption. Didn’t she deserve that after yesterday’s insanity?
By the time she’d gotten a mug filled with coffee and slapped a little butter on her bagel, Amber had already settled on the porch table. He sat smack atop the newspaper, one hind leg raised as he preened.
Yeesh.
The best-laid plans and all that.
Helen didn’t have the heart to shove him off, so she settled on the wicker sofa, deciding just to take in the scene beyond the porch screen for entertainment. She’d do the crossword later, after Amber finished giving himself a bath.
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