Once there, they spent well over two hours walking the aisles of a computer superstore. Evie felt dizzy with all the talk of memory capacities and CD ROM drives, of Sound Blasters, fax-modems, high resolution monitors and surge protectors. Part of her dizziness, she was sure, could be attributed to the effects of her never-ending cold. But not all of it. Pete was smiling from ear to ear the whole time. The sight did Evie’s heart good.
Her euphoria faded a little when it came time to pay for everything and Evie discovered firsthand what a major acquisition a computer could be. As she plunked down her credit card, she realized she was glad she still had those certificates of deposit that Erik wouldn’t let her cash in. She was probably going to have to use one of them to cover her credit card bill next month.
But then her heart grew light again. After all, what was a few thousand next to the stars in Petey’s eyes? They loaded everything into the back of the van and headed for the nearest taco stand.
They arrived home, where Darla was watching a slightly sulky Jenny and Becca, at a little after two in the afternoon. Erik was still over at the town hall; he’d snared the contract to paint the newly constructed building and he was working on the interior now, planning to save the exterior for next spring when the weather became dependable again.
Evie pulled up in front of the house and left the kids to unload the mountain of hardware and software and user manuals on their own. She went inside and knocked back another dose of cold medicine. That done, she gave permission for Pete and the rest of them to start setting everything up in the living room. She hugged the girls, careful not to breathe on them and pass on her cold, and waved at Darla, who’d generously agreed to stick around at the house for a while longer.
At last, with everyone happy at home, Evie headed over to Wishbook to relieve Tawny and see if she could drum up a little business to help pay for the technological monstrosity she’d just bought.
Outside, the underbellies of storm clouds lay heavy in the sky. There would probably be rain by evening. But Erik had his truck over at the hall. If Evie walked over to Main Street, she could hitch a ride home with him should it get too wet.
However, she really wasn’t feeling all that great. She decided not to waste the energy the short walk would demand of her. She slid in behind the wheel of her van and started it up.
Main Street was almost deserted when she got there. It looked like the promise of rain had kept everyone indoors.
Evie pulled into the narrow driveway on the side of the building and parked in the tiny lot in back. When she got out of the van, she had to pause with her head against the cool metal of the driver’s door frame while a slight bout of dizziness rolled over her and faded away.
Maybe she really should go on home and go to bed…
But after a moment, she felt a little better. She’d jumped down from the van too fast, that was all. And tomorrow was Sunday. If she could just get through today, she could skip church for once and keep to her bed. Why, if she could only last another couple of hours, she could go home and hit the pillow right away. Let Erik handle dinner. That might not thrill the kids too much, but the man needed practice cooking—and Evie needed the rest.
Something rustled to her left. The sound set off a flash of memory inside of her. She heard her father’s voice, from a month and a half ago, when he’d called her on the phone to taunt her with his knowledge of her whereabouts.
Don’t steal an old man’s hope away…
Evie pushed the memory from her mind and looked toward the sound. It seemed to have come from somewhere out in the small, scrubby field between the parking lot and Rambling Lane, to the east.
But when she looked that way, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just a tangle of nearly leafless willow clumps, some dying blackberry brambles and a lone crabapple tree. The tree was a sad sight, much of its wasted fruit already fallen, its branches gnarled and twisted, drooping toward the ground.
With a tired shrug, Evie concluded that the sound must have been some small animal—a jackrabbit or a squirrelstartled as it foraged around in the underbrush. Why it had made her think of her father, she had no idea at all.
Evie pulled open the door she’d been leaning against, grabbed her shoulder purse and hooked it over her arm. She let herself in the back way. In the store, she found Tawny standing by a front window, staring out at the street.
Tawny turned when she heard Evie’s footsteps. The smile of greeting that lit up her pretty face faded when Evie moved closer. “You look awful.”
“Thanks.” Evie went behind the counter to stash her purse in the cabinet under the register. “How’s it been?”
“Not bad in the morning. Olive Devon came in and bought a tunic and leggings. And then Betty Brown brought her mother in. They each bought a dress and shoes. And there were even some tourists. I sold that milk glass sugar-and-creamer set.”
“Great.”
“But I haven’t had two customers since noon. Look. Why don’t you just close up for the day and go home to bed?”
Evie shook her head. “We’re open till five.”
“Then let me stay for you,” Tawny volunteered. “At a special sister-in-law discount.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’ll work till five for free.”
Evie was touched. Tawny was so thoughtful. But she waved away the girl’s offer. “Don’t be silly. Now get out of here. Go on home.”
Once Tawny left, Evie cleaned up the wrapping area and rearranged a few things. But when three o’clock came and went and the bell over the door hadn’t tinkled even once, she gave up playing the busy shopkeeper.
With a weary little moan, she dropped into the rocker in the book nook and rested her head on the back rail. She really was letting herself get run-down. Tawny had been right. If she had any sense at all, she’d close early and go on home.
However, now that she was sitting, she just didn’t feel like mustering the energy to get up. Maybe she’d just stay here for a bit, rocking in this old chair and letting her mind wander wherever it wanted to go.
Evie closed her eyes and sighed—a shallow sigh, since a deep one would have brought on a bout of coughing. She rocked slowly and imagined what must be happening at home, where the Mountaineers probably had the computer up and running by now and the girls would be watching, wide-eyed and wondering, as Mark and Pete tried to best each other at Space Death.
A furtive sound cut through her thoughts, like a floorboard creaking, near the back of the shop. She sat up straight and looked that way.
But there was nothing. Evie rested her head and closed her eyes again. She was just too tired to last until five. In a moment, she would get up, close the shop and head on home…
Chapter Thirteen
At five-thirty, Erik called it a day.
He took twenty minutes to clean his brushes and rollers and to stack his supplies in the corner of the big downstairs room of the two-story town hall. Then, at ten to six, he threw a paint-spattered tarp over everything and locked up the hall. Outside, it was already dark. The rain that the heavy clouds promised had yet to start falling. The evening air was cool and moist.
Erik grinned to himself as he climbed in his truck. He was anxious to get home. If the trip to Sacramento had gone off as planned, there’d be a new computer on the desk in the living room when he walked in the house. He couldn’t wait to see it.
Well, more to the point, he couldn’t wait to see the pleasure on his son’s face. Or to be the recipient of the smugly innocent looks that Evie was going to be sending his way for the next few days.
Erik knew what his wife was up to. The computer was more for Pete than for herself. But she couldn’t have told Erik that because then she was sure he wouldn’t allow her to buy it.
Erik’s grin turned to a frown. Hell. He shouldn’t let her buy it. If he had any pride at all he would have nixed the computer idea the minute she started making noises about it. He had a good notion how much some
thing like that cost. She was going to end up cashing in one of those CDs she was so damn proud of to pay for it. And he shouldn’t let her do it. He should—
The mental exercise in self-rebuke ended abruptly as Erik saw that the lights were still on inside Wishbook. He hit the brakes just in time to make the turn into the driveway that led to the parking lot in back.
He grunted in disapproval as he pulled into the space beside her van. What could she be up to now, a good half an hour after she should have been home? She didn’t think sometimes. That cold she had was nothing to fool with. She shouldn’t be working overtime. But she just wouldn’t slow down. She loaded up her schedule with the thousand and one things she wanted to do—most of them for everyone else but herself. And then she just wouldn’t give anything up.
Erik got out of the truck and went to the back door of the building. He found it unlocked, which neither surprised nor worried him. In other towns, leaving back doors open might be an invitation to robbery. But no one ever robbed anyone else in North Magdalene.
Erik traversed the short hall at the back of the building and entered the main part of the store. A quick scan of the room showed him that it appeared to be empty.
“Evie?”
She didn’t answer.
He walked to the register counter, in the center of the room. “Evie?”
Nothing.
He went to the front door. It was locked, the Closed sign facing out.
He realized she was probably up in the storeroom, or perhaps in the vacant apartment up there. He started for the back of the store again. When he reached the stairs, he took them two at a time.
But when he got up there, the storeroom was locked and so was the apartment. For a moment, he was sure she must have gone on home, a thought that sent his heart racing in his chest. Was there something wrong at home then, for her to have left in such a hurry that she forgot to turn off the lights and lock the back door?
But then he remembered her van. If she’d gone home in a hurry, she would have driven the van.
Though he was reasonably sure she wasn’t upstairs, Erik knocked on both doors and called her name. As he’d expected, no answer came.
More puzzled by the second, he returned to the lower floor, where he went to the phone behind the register and dialed his own number. His mother answered. He told her he was at the store and couldn’t find Evie, then he asked, “Is she there with you?”
“No,” Darla said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been starting to wonder what could be keeping her.”
Erik was standing in front of the ornate antique register. He punched the Sale button. When the drawer slid out, he saw twenties, tens, fives and ones, as well as plenty of change. The extra set of keys to the store and the rooms above was right where it should be, in a spare change compartment. Everything looked undisturbed, it didn’t appear that the store had been robbed. He took the keys and stuck them in his pocket, so he could lock up the back dead bolt when he left.
“Erik,” his mother said, “is something wrong?”
“No.” He pushed the drawer back in. “No, of course not. Look. Could you hang around over there for a little bit longer? I want to make a few calls.”
“Certainly. But where is Evie?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
His mother was speaking again as he hung up.
He bent to look for the phone book Evie always kept near the phone. He found it, in the cabinet beneath the register. Her purse, which he knew she always stowed there, was gone.
A half an hour later, he’d called everyone in town who might possibly have heard from Evie or know where she’d gone. He’d called all of her cousins and all of his own brothers and sisters. When he called Delilah Fletcher’s house, he also asked to speak with Oggie Jones, Delilah’s father, who lived with her and Sam. Evie thought of Oggie like a second father. If anyone might know where she was, it would be Oggie.
“What’s the problem there, boy?” Oggie called every man under the age of eighty either “boy” or “son.”
Erik explained that he was looking for Evie and asked the old man if he’d seen her.
“Not in the last couple of days.”
Erik thanked him and started to hang up.
“Hold on there, son.”
“Yeah?”
“Is everythin’ all right?”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Erik said, trying to convince himself, as much as Evie’s uncle.
“You call me. When she gets home.”
Erik promised he would and then went on to the next call, trying not to remember how worried Oggie had sounded. The rest of the calls yielded no more than the first ones had. No one had seen Evie all day, except Tawny, who’d left her at the shop at a little after two.
When he finished calling all the relatives, he called home again. Evie still hadn’t shown up there. And his mother was getting edgy. She wanted to know what was going on. The kids were starting to ask questions.
“I’ll be home soon, Mom. Please. Don’t worry them.”
“Is there something to worry about?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Never mind,” Darla said gently. “You do what you have to do. I’ll take care of things here.”
He thanked her and hung up. Then he stared into space for a moment or two, his nerves humming like high-tension wires. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do next.
Nellie, he thought.
He hadn’t called Nellie. And he should. Nellie came here a few times a week, from what Evie said. She might know something. It was even possible that Evie was with Nellie now.
Erik dialed the number.
Nellie answered after two rings. “Nellie Anderson speaking.”
“Hello, Nellie. It’s Erik.”
There was a deadly pause, then she said, “Yes, what is it?” as if he were some stranger, a salesman trying to sell her something she’d already explained she had no use for.
He tamped down a flash of anger. She was so damn selfrighteous. She would never change.
He made himself speak reasonably. “I’m looking for Evie. Have you seen her today?”
“No.”
He didn’t know whether he felt relief that he could hang up now—or despair that the last person he could think of to call knew no more about where his wife might be than he did.
“I don’t understand,” Nellie said. “Is she all right?”
He answered more sharply than he should have. “How would I know? No one’s seen her since two this afternoon, from what I’ve found out so far.”
“Oh, dear,” Nellie said.
“Listen, I have go now.”
“Wait.”
The urgency in her voice stopped him. “What?”
“I don’t know if it matters, but—”
“Tell me.”
“Yes. All right. About two hours ago, around four-thirty. I dropped by the shop.”
“And?”
“It was closed, that’s all. And that surprised me, since Evie never closes until five. Also, when I looked in the window, I couldn’t see Evie, but all the lights were on. It seemed odd.” Nellie paused, then added, “I suppose it doesn’t mean anything, but I just thought you should know.”
He turned the information over in his mind. Evie hadn’t been in the shop at four-thirty. Wherever she was now, it appeared she’d been gone for at least two hours.
“Erik? Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Listen. Thanks. I have to go.”
“Erik.”
“What?”
“Will you please call me, when you discover where she’s gone? I…I will worry. Until then.”
“Yes,” Erik said, his own voice gentling in response to the hesitancy in hers. “Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Erik hung up quickly then, trying not to think that Nellie’s Thank you sounded tiny and lost, exactly the same as the Thank you she had uttered a year ago
, when he’d called to tell her that Carolyn was dead.
Still trying to figure out if there was anything he hadn’t thought of, Erik walked around the shop a little.
Everything seemed to be in order. It all looked just as it should—except for a certain emptiness; a feeling that the heart had gone out of the place.
And it had. Because Evie was the heart. Without her, this store that his daughters thought of as magical was nothing but a jumbled bunch of odds and ends. From the carnival glass collection to the display bed with all the stuffed animals on it, it needed Evie to make it come alive.
Just as he needed her…
Erik cut off the self-indulgent thought before it could go farther. There had to be some perfectly logical explanation for this. Evie had gone somewhere in a hurry, that was all—somewhere he simply hadn’t thought of yet. And as soon as she got home tonight, all the questions that kept nagging him would be answered.
Once she walked in the door and he’d wrapped his arms around her and hugged her good and hard, they were going to sit right down together and have a long talk. Before that talk was over, he’d get some satisfaction about where she’d disappeared to for half the afternoon.
The minute Erik stepped in the front door, the kids were on him, wanting to know where Evie was. He told them he wasn’t sure; they’d have to wait till she got home and she’d tell them all.
Darla had made dinner. They sat down to eat as soon as Erik had cleaned up. Then Darla went home and Erik spent a couple of hours with Pete, trying to learn how to play Space Death on the new computer. Pete slaughtered him at the game. Pete had all the experience at it, after all—and Erik had a little trouble keeping his mind on the survival of his own personal fleet of intergalactic ships. He kept worrying about Evie, waiting for the sound of the gate opening out front, listening for the tapping of her shoes on the porch steps.
At a little past nine, Erik put the kids to bed, tucking each one of them in, even Pete, who usually considered himself grown beyond tucking in. He noticed, when Becca’s turn came, that she cradled the stuffed chipmunk she called Chippy in her plump arms. The toy was one he’d allowed Evie to give her when Evie had said she’d be his wife.
The Man, The Moon And The Marriage Vow Page 16