The sun turned the ice coated tree limbs into fairyland crystal, like something out of a fantasy movie. And here I’d thought those sets were make-believe.
Inside the library was golden oak paneling and deep set windows and heavy furniture and a super furnace, plus a friendly librarian.
“You’re visiting us this time of year? Oh my,” she said. She was blond and plump, dressed in slacks and sweater. When we explained our search, she said, “Yes, we have all the local newspapers clear back to 1915. It was a weekly back then. Now it comes out twice a week.”
Tom and I avoided looking at each other to keep from laughing. A town this size had enough news for twice a week? Wow.
“I won’t guarantee the condition of the papers. Occasionally a student sifts through them for a school report, but with the internet, not so much any more. Come on, they’re down in the basement and we’re open until six.”
We followed her down a narrow staircase to a basement of small storage rooms where she flipped on a row of light switches.
“They should be on these shelves. What exactly are you looking for?”
“Articles about a local girl who went to Hollywood in the 1920s.”
“What’s the name?”
“Millie Pedersen,” I said. “She died in California, fairly young, but she came from here.”
The librarian pulled out a large box from a lower shelf, then waved at the wall of shelved cardboard boxes. “Okay, here’s January, 1920, and keep working to your right, then down. Go ahead and take the boxes out onto the table, but I would really appreciate it,” she said, looking up at Tom, “if you would put them back on the shelves when you’re done.”
“Will do. Any idea where else we might find information?”
“About a Millie Pedersen who isn’t in our cemetery?” She tapped her pencil eraser against her lip. “Let’s see, obviously, there wouldn’t be anyone who knew her at the high school but they might have yearbooks. I don’t think they did those individual pictures back then, but there might be some group photos. Tell you what, I’ll call the Ladies’ Kaffeeklatch, it’s a club that grows smaller every year because the youngest members are in their eighties. Could be someone remembers the name.”
She left us alone in the basement, a long room full of metal shelves and linoleum floor and high above us, narrow windows. The window wells were filled with snow and the only light source was a ceiling of fluorescent tube fixtures.
Tom lugged boxes to the metal work table and then we both dug in.
Two hours worth of grime later, we’d scanned our way past 1920 and clear into 1923 and eyestrain. The papers were yellowed, faded, slightly wrinkled, not always in order, and there was no shortcut, no way to google.
“I’m getting cross-eyed,” I said.
“Time for a dinner break? I’ll go for that. I think our only choice is the hotel. I didn’t see a hotel bar, did you?”
“No, but we could always go out later. The two bars in town have a kind of nice pub feel. I bet the locals hang out in them.”
He grinned at me. “We can bar hop. Back and forth across the street.”
“Make a vacation of this trip,” I agreed.
We lugged the boxes back to the shelf. Our hands and faces were streaked with printer’s ink. When we trudged upstairs and said good night to the librarian, she said, “I’ve started a chain.”
Tom and I blinked at each other. “A chain?”
She twinkled. “I phoned Abbie Thornton who has lived here since God laid the first cornerstone, and I gave her that name, Millie Pedersen. She says she knew the family. She said for you two to drop by any time.” The librarian slid a piece of paper across the desk, with a neatly printed name and address and phone number. “Two blocks that way, turn right, about in the middle of the next block.”
“That’s very kind,” I said slowly, looking at the name and address. “Does she really want strangers dropping by?”
The librarian smiled. “Dear, the hotel has your husband’s credit card and car license and home address and valid driver’s license.”
I was so startled by the word “husband” that I went dumb. Tom laughed at what she obviously meant as a joke, not the husband part, but all the rest, and thanked her. “We’ll be back in the morning.”
“We open at eleven. Earlier in the summer, but this time of year, we don’t get much traffic before noon.”
As we left, I told Tom, “Forget noon. If I lived in this climate I wouldn’t crawl out from under the covers until June.”
We headed down the library steps into a contrast of black sky above, white lawns below, and bright circles of light from street lamps. Tom caught my arm, leaned down and said, “Do you get the feeling not a whole lot goes on around here?”
“From the papers I kind of gathered its a summer tourist destination, lake and golf course nearby.”
“That explains the hotel.”
“Yes, but how does the librarian know what information the hotel has about you? Lucky guess?”
“You’re joking, right? What do you bet the hotel clerk is a friend of the librarian, and while we were in the basement, she chatted up her pal as well as half the town?”
“Tommy, look out!” I screamed as he dove past me, a hurtling mass with flailing arms and legs.
CHAPTER 20
I grabbed wildly, reflex action, no plan. His arm bumped my outstretched hands. Convulsively my fingers clamped around his sleeve. I flew after him, airborne, boots sliding up and head shooting downward. We both sailed sideways and crashed.
My gloved hands hit first. I rolled on my side in a snow bank. Soft landing. Pushing myself up to hands and knees and then rolling over to sit in the snow, I brushed snow from my face and started to laugh.
And then I saw his face. Tom’s expression was twisted into something meant to hold back a scream because real guys don’t scream, right? Instead he bit his lip and tried to mumble something about being okay.
On a long stretch of carefully shoveled sidewalk, he’d picked the one patch of ice. Unlike me, he hadn’t landed in the snow. He was stretched in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk, his face turned toward me.
“Ummph, ummph, ummph.”
I pushed myself to my feet and hurried over to him, bent down, touched his shoulder. “Hey, big guy, you okay?”
“Ummph, ummph, ummph.” Tears glittered like ice on his thick lashes, while his mouth twisted into a forced grin.
“Oh crap, you didn’t break anything, did you?” I reached down to catch his arms.
He shook his head. Slowly, after pushing away my hands, he maneuvered himself into a sitting position.
“Aren’t you cold, sitting on the sidewalk?”
A nod.
“Then come on, let me help you up.”
Tom rolled onto one hip, very slowly and carefully, managed to get his gloved hands in front of him on the walk, and curled one leg under until he was able to push himself upright. Then he stood bent at the waist, hands on thighs, making those uuugh noises. When I asked again if he was all right, he said, “No, so shut up for a minute.”
I did that, let him catch his breath, let him decide if he wanted me to call an ambulance which I offered to do. He straightened up inch by inch, put one hand on my shoulder, and said, “Think I broke my knee.”
“Can you walk on it?”
He took a small step, didn’t actually scream. “If I keep it stiff,” he finally said.
“Okay, lover, lean on me, that’s it.” I ducked my shoulder under his arm to help support his weight. He was almost six feet of skinny. “You have extremely heavy bones.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled and started to move away.
Wrapping my arm around his waist, I said, “Come on, we can make it.”
And we did. He kept his one knee stiff and managed to hobble back to the hotel. I offered rest stops, got refused.
“Freezing to death in the middle of town would be so damned embarrassing,” he explained.
&nb
sp; We bumped through the entry doors. Tom stopped by each doorway and leaned against the wall until I could actually get in position to hold the door open. He shuffle-hopped, reaching over my head to try to put his weight on door frames and walls, then limped across the lobby. The space behind the desk was empty.
“Where’s that lady when we need her?”
“I’m okay,” he said through clenched teeth.
I wound both arms around his waist because he was not okay and if he fell again, I wasn’t sure I could get him up. We were inside and so I could always let him lie on the warm floor while I screamed for someone to phone the fire department, but I kinda didn’t think Tom would consider that a good choice.
Fortunately the hotel did have an elevator, although we hadn’t used it. Now we did. We step, step, clumped down the hall and back into our room where he dropped across the bed closest to the door and lay there moaning.
I almost said something about big baby, but stopped my mouth just in time.
His face was gray. He lay still, snow melting off his coat. I removed his hat and helped him work his way out of the coat, rolling slowly while I pulled off first one sleeve, then the other. The effort left him exhausted.
“Lie still, don’t try to move,” I said and he didn’t argue which really scared me.
I untied his shoes and very slowly worked off the right one to avoid pulling on his knee. And then after a lot of complaining and hollering, he let me work his slacks down over his hips and down his legs.
Okay, pants off and holy hell. The knee was a swollen mess rapidly discoloring.
“That’s it,” I said in my bossiest voice and picked up the phone. Hurray. The clerk was back at the desk.
“I don’t suppose you have a hotel physician?” I asked. “Oh. Okay. Well, he fell on the ice and twisted his knee and it looks really bad. Yes. Sure, that’s fine, he isn’t going anywhere. Uh, does your kitchen do room service? Really? Okay, great.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” Tom said.
“I do.” I hung up the receiver. “My shoulder is busted from lugging big fat you. So listen, here’s the deal. She’ll phone the local MD and he makes house calls, okay, hotel calls, and in the meantime, room service is sending up dinner.”
“What’s on the menu?” He looked pale but he was also hungry enough to perk up a bit.
“They don’t have a choice in the winter because there aren’t that many people here. Tonight is baked chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and biscuits.”
Tom snickered, I giggled, and then we both started laughing. It sounded like Sunday dinner at grandma’s house. Biscuits and gravy. I had heard of that combination but had never actually seen it served.
When dinner came, twenty minutes later, carried up on a tray by the desk clerk, I realized why the combination was so popular here. It not only looked good, it smelled like food that would unthaw our bones.
She glanced at Tom who had managed to haul himself into a seated position against the bed’s headboard, with his long legs out straight in front on top of the quilt because he couldn’t stand the weight of the cover on his knee. Fortunately, he had on boxer shorts, which somewhat decreased his embarrassment.
The clerk stared at his knee and then her round face dimpled into a motherly smile and she said, “Oh you poor thing! That’s just terrible! Gotta watch out for that ice. Now Doc said he’d be by in about an hour and I brought you some aspirin because you need it. Now I’ll just settle this tray right here for you and you enjoy your supper. Call me if you want anything more.”
She put the tray on top of the bed and turned it around until she was satisfied it was well within Tom’s reach while Tom turned bright red.
After she left, we both looked at the tray. Yup, Sunday at grandma’s, heaps of food plus a pot of coffee. It would have been embarrassing to eat in the dining room, the way we both dug in, but it had been a long cold night and day with nothing but airline peanuts and day old pie.
When the doctor arrived, I opened the door for him and pointed at the patient. The doctor walked toward Tom, saying, “What have we here? Looks like you took quite a spill.”
I picked up the tray and carried it downstairs. Examining a knee wasn’t something that required privacy, but us babysitters need a break and I kind of knew this was going to turn into a babysitting night.
“You didn’t need to do that, dear,” the clerk said, gesturing at the tray.
“Yes, I did. I’ll be listening to him moan all night.”
She did the dimple twinkle thing. “Men. All big babies, aren’t they? Tell you what, be sure Doc leaves some sleeping pills for that hubby of yours. Take a couple yourself.”
There it was again, the husband thing. What did I know? Maybe in a small town they presumed that any couple checking into the hotel must be married. Or else they thought, no matter what their personal opinions, it would be rude to assume otherwise. So I let it go. We chatted for a few minutes and then I thanked her, and headed back up the staircase to hear the verdict.
The doctor must have gone down the elevator. Tom was alone and had some sort of elastic and plastic thing around his knee to keep it straight, and several small containers of pills on the bedside table. A cane leaned against the side of the bed, one of those aluminum ones that adjusts to height.
“Are they sending the ambulance or the hearse for you?” I asked.
“The hearse would be okay. My parents would pay. But the ambulance, hmm, you know, April, I’ve got a little problem here.” He leaned back against the headboard and looked up at me. His expression was more worried than pained.
“You’ve got a big, swollen yellow-purple-green problem,” I said.
“Yes, but besides that. See, I should have been at work today. But I figured, hell, I hate that job, so what do I care? If they fire me when I go back, it doesn’t matter. Only, now it does.”
I stared at him. It hadn’t occurred to me he was cutting work. “I figured you had vacation time. Didn’t you leave a message?”
“No. I have to put in for vacation like about three months in advance. So here’s the problem. I can’t give the doctor’s bill to the insurance if I’m fired. And one doctor appointment is okay, I can afford it. But he thinks I’ve strained some ligaments and might even have a hairline fracture. So he says I need to get it x-rayed when we get home. And that could start running into big bills.”
I said a few words that fell into grandmother’s ‘wash your mouth with soap’ category.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “The rest is just bruises.”
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of me.”
I leaned back, looked him up and down. Nothing else on his face or arms and legs except that one awful knee. Bending toward him, I ran my hands around his waist and pushed up the lower edge of his tee shirt.
“I should be enjoying that, but I’m not.”
“Shut up. Ohmygod, Tommy. You’re purple-green all over. You look like you got run over by a truck.”
“Uh. That’s about right. That’s how it feels.”
“So what now? Can you phone in sick?”
“Like flu? And turn up next week with my knee in a cast and an x-ray referral from a Minnesota doc on my insurance claim?”
I edged very gently onto his bed, trying not to make it shake. With my back to the headboard and my blue jeaned legs stretched out beside his bare legs, I murmured, “Poor Tommy.”
“That’s nice. From there you can move on to poor baby.” His attempt at a smile didn’t have its usual glow despite the effort he forced into it.
I patted his hand and said, “Poor baby.”
But that wasn’t going to solve anything. And this was my fault. Think, think, think, back over the whole stupid day. Flight, long drive, hotel, library, accident, go back to librarian. The librarian had mentioned the cemetery.
“Hey, Tom, how about you phone work and tell them a close relative died and the funeral is tomorrow and you had to get the first
flight available?”
“Huh?”
“And you got here and fell on the ice, which is why you’re late phoning in, and the doctor has just been here, listen. Is there anyone at your office who would take this message without screaming at you?”
Tom turned his head and stared at me, those big dark eyes going wider, his thin face tight with pain, and then the grin spread slowly. “God, April, you are something else! Yeah, you know, there is a gal in the human resources office who kind of, umm, hangs over my shoulder sometimes.”
I tried to picture that and couldn’t. “Hangs over your shoulder? What, she’s seven feet tall?”
“No, I mean she comes into my cubicle on lame excuses like, do I know the lunch hour schedule, stuff like that, stuff that’s posted all over.”
“She’s hitting on you?”
That made him laugh. “If she is, I am pretending not to notice. Anyhow, that’s a good idea, I’ll call her in the morning. Guess I’d better call Mom and update her in case anyone checks.”
“Didn’t you say you left a note yesterday?”
“Yes, sure, but I said I was going to visit an old buddy.”
“Tangled webs,” I muttered.
He slid his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “My webs are nothing more than a few broken threads. I don’t remember a past life and I’m not in love with some dude because he reminds me of a vision.”
“Hope not. I was kind of counting on you being one hundred per cent straight, but if you’ve got a few kinks, that’s okay. I never ask my friends about their sex lives.”
“Right.”
“Or why they are running away from their girlfriend stalkers.”
“Touché.”
“So get yourself ready for bed and I will tuck you in and did he leave sleeping pills for you? And do you need help getting to the bathroom?”
“Oh you really are playing nursey. A pity I don’t feel up to taking advantage. Here, let me try this damn thing.”
Reaching for the cane that the doctor had left with him, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. With a fair amount of groaning, he made his way to the bathroom door, then looked back over his shoulder at me. “If I felt better, I’d tell you I needed help taking a shower.”
My Deja Vu Lover Page 12