by Laura Alden
Oliver nodded at his cornflakes. Jenna shrugged. “It’s all done,” she said.
I looked at her. Twelve years old now, she’d measured five feet tall on her birthday in June. Just five inches shorter than her mother. I flashed on an image of a seventeen-year-old and six-foot-tall Jenna in front of the goalie net. Six three on skates. No. She wouldn’t grow that tall. Would she? “I didn’t ask if it was done,” I said. “That I knew last night. The question was, is it packed?”
She stuffed a large spoonful of Cheerios in her mouth, her go-to stalling technique since she knew I wouldn’t force her to answer with a mouth full of food. Which led me to an obvious conclusion. I pulled her bowl out from under her chin. “Jenna, you know the rule. No breakfast until all your work is packed and ready to go.”
“But I’m hungry!” Small drops of milk splattered across the table.
I pointed to the ceiling. “Go to your room and get your homework. Your hunger can wait two minutes.”
“But—”
“Go,” I said.
Her lower lip rolled out. “I don’t see why I can’t finish eating.”
“You know the rule.”
“It’s a stupid rule! Why do I have to go by stupid rules?”
For a half second, I considered entering into a debate about the importance of rules and regulations and laws and ordinances. But since I often had debates with myself over that very issue, I quickly decided to leave it alone. Maybe when we had more time. And less preadolescent angst. Which meant we’d talk about this in ten years.
“Go,” I said. “Your breakfast will wait.”
“It’s getting soggy.”
“And whose fault is that?”
I saw her mouth start to form that dangerous word—“Yours”—but luckily for all of us, she stopped before it got out. “Fine,” she snapped, shoving her chair back. “But if I’m late to school because of this, I’m going to need a note.”
She stomped off. Oliver and I tracked her movement with our eyes. Up the stairs. Down the hall. Into her room.
I looked at my son. “Are you going to have any fun in school today?”
He shrugged and aimed an overloaded spoon at his mouth.
Briefly, I wondered why it was that bad habits spread so easily. Good habits, on the other hand, took root so slowly as to be invisible. Why did it all have to be so hard?
Then I heard an echo of Marina’s voice in my head. “If it was easy to be good, everyone would be doing it.”
Once again, she was right.
• • •
The morning continued to be marked by a series of accumulating annoyances. Stoplights turning red in front of me, dropped keys at doors with rain dripping down, typos found in a store flyer after I’d printed five hundred copies, the bottom falling out of a box of books, sending them thumping onto my toes, and worst of all, sour milk for the tea.
I took one sniff of the milk and slammed the carton into the small sink. “Can anything else possibly go wrong today?”
Yvonne glanced over from her self-appointed job of dusting the light fixtures. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing.” I rinsed out the carton. “Or everything. Some days it’s hard to tell.”
There was a faint groaning noise as Yvonne stood on her tiptoes, her arms stretched to their limit. Since I’d done the job myself for years, I knew for a fact that it was the worst job in the store. If you didn’t use the ladder, you ended up straining your neck and wearing out your shoulders. If you did use the ladder, you ended up spending an hour traipsing up and down the ladder’s steps . . . and wearing out your shoulders. When Yvonne volunteered to take over the dreaded duty, I’d protested halfheartedly, saying we should rotate the chore. When she’d said she didn’t mind, the rest of us gave her a standing ovation.
“I think it’s a pretty good day,” Yvonne said cheerfully.
Shame flooded my face. Of course it was. My children were healthy, the rest of my family was fine, I had good friends, great employees, the store was turning a small profit, and I was keeping off the weight I’d lost last spring. Why had I let my mood be colored by things that didn’t matter?
“Thanks, Yvonne,” I said.
“For what?” She stretched to reach the far side of the light fixture. “I didn’t do anything. Did I?”
I grinned. “Nope.” Nothing, other than kick my priorities back to where they should be. Nothing, other than show by example that whining never did anyone any good. Nothing, other than be yourself. “I’m off to get some milk. I’ll be right back.”
Outside, I ran from store awning to store awning, trying to stay out of as much rain as possible, wishing I’d thought to bring my umbrella. “Dumb,” I told myself. “It may be only a block, but you’re not that good at dodging raindrops.”
“Excuse me?”
I came to an abrupt halt. It was the salt-and-pepper-haired man who’d caught me talking to myself last week. “We have to stop meeting like this,” I said, laughing. “And it’s absolutely not true what they say about people who talk to themselves.”
He looked at me with eyes far too sad for his face. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said politely, and walked away.
I watched him go. “You know,” I said, “I don’t think he believed me.”
• • •
The grocery store was crowded with morning shoppers. In addition to purchasing milk, I’d wanted to see how Flossie was doing, if she was suffering any ill effects from the incident with Lou’s dogs. When I walked in, though, she was at the cash register, ringing up purchases and chatting with customers lined up three deep.
I watched her for a moment, then wandered over to the dairy case, thinking hard as I checked the sell-by dates. I could discount the dark circles under her eyes as the result of a night or two of poor sleep. Understandable after a scare like she’d had. But her shoulders were sloping, and that made her look . . . well, old. Never ever had I seen her with anything except perfect posture. That alone told me—
My hearing twitched and a prickling went up the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right. Not right at all. But what was it?
I turned slowly, oh so slowly, and saw nothing but grocery store. Brandishing the plastic milk jug, I peeked around the end of the cereal aisle. Nothing. I walked softly to the next aisle and peered through the racks of bread loaves. Nothing.
Huh.
The tension leaked out of me. Once again, I’d given in to my overactive imagination. I paid Patrick for the milk and walked back to the store, talking to myself all the way.
“Chill,” I said. “No one’s out to get you. Maybe it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you, but there is no ‘they,’ so just cut it out.”
Then again . . .
I started making a mental list. Dennis Halpern was dead. His office lay in smoking ruins. Flossie had been attacked. Not that those dogs would have done anything more than cover her with canine saliva, but someone had taken advantage of Flossie’s fear, and to me that counted as an attack. Lou Spezza was hiding something. And . . .
As I came in the front door, jingling the bells, Lois slammed the phone into its cradle. “That’s the third time this week,” she growled.
“What?”
“The third time someone’s called and breathed at me.” She made huffing and puffing noises. “I tell you, it’s creeping me out. Why is it we don’t have caller ID?”
“Find out how much it costs,” I said. But while I listened to her go on and on about how crank phone calls were the first sign of serious psychological disturbance, I was finishing my mental list.
Lou Spezza was hiding something.
And we were getting anonymous phone calls.
Chapter 14
Late that morning, I hauled a half dozen boxes of books out to the trunk of my car and sailed off into the wild blue yonder. Well, I drove, and the sky was a low, leaden gray, but my spirits were more in keeping with the freedom of the high seas.
; Thanks to Yvonne’s unintentional intervention, I’d cast off my feelings of doom and gloom in spite of my fears about an unknown enemy. It wouldn’t last, of course, but that was no reason not to enjoy my current perky frame of mild.
My mood endured through the deliveries to various homeschooling mothers and parochial schools, survived the deliveries to three day-care centers, and made it all the way through to my entrance into Sunny Rest Assisted Living.
“Morning, Beth,” the receptionist said. “No, wait, it’s afternoon, isn’t it? Are those for Judy?”
Judy Schultz was Sunny Rest’s activities director. We’d come to know each other fairly well over the course of last spring’s story project. When I’d mentioned my selection and delivery service, her ears had pricked up and I’d added the facility to my regular route.
I hefted the box. “The whole kit and caboodle. Is Judy in her office?”
“Probably. But you could leave them here, if you want.”
I clutched the box tight to my chest. “Um, no thanks.” While I fully trusted that Judy would fulfill her job responsibilities in a prompt manner, if Mr. Meagher didn’t get his copy of the latest Lee Child thriller as soon as was physically possible, my head would be on the chopping block. “I’ll see if she’s in.”
The carpeted hallway kept my footsteps quiet. Most of the rooms were empty due to the noon hour, but the brightly lit dining area was filled with the clatter and chatter of a meal.
I slowed, trying to remember where Judy ate her lunch. The receptionist had said she was in her office, but hadn’t Judy once said something about eating in the employee lounge? I shifted the heavy box in my arms, thinking that I shouldn’t have stayed so long at Tiny Tots Day Care.
But who can resist those chubby little smiles? And since I knew almost all of the parents, it was almost an obligation to stay for a few minutes. Our school superintendent and his wife had had a late-in-life baby—a very late in life baby—and at eighteen months, she was as cute and adorable as any toddler ever.
“Beth!” A voice came at me from the far end of the hallway. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
I squinted and saw a woman and a dog walking toward me. “Hey, Summer. Did you know there’s a great big dog on your left?”
She laughed. “We come here once a week for dog therapy. The residents like Zeppo a lot, don’t they, boy?”
The pair reached me. When Summer stopped, the dog sat and she rested her hand on his black head. He looked mostly black Lab, but the shagginess of his tail and the way his ears were set made me think there was more than one breed in his ancestry. Maybe lots more.
“Zeppo?” I’d known Summer’s family had bought a dog a few months ago, but I’d never met him. Last night he’d been with her husband and oldest offspring at a Boy Scout meeting. Or was it Cub Scouts? Oliver wasn’t interested in scouting, so I’d never learned the age divisions.
“Yup. He’s the best straight man ever.”
I shifted the box again, trying to ease the growing ache in my arms, and looked at the dog’s face. Eyes alert and watchful, ears pricked slightly, he looked the picture of doggy intelligence. “He doesn’t look like he’d miss much.”
“Not a thing. Say, can I ask you a question about the PTA minutes?”
I smiled. This was more like the Summer I knew. Whatever had been biting at her heels yesterday had vanished. “Fire away.” And after that, I thought, we’d have a little chat about how to run a committee meeting. No need for me to worry about having to step in and run the committee myself. She’d be fine with a little guidance.
“It’s when motions are made,” Summer said. “Some of the old minutes have it in bold and centered on the page, but some of them have the motions italicized and indented. Which way should it be?”
I looked at her. This was what she was worried about? Methodical and rut-bound as I was, even I had never thought that how a motion was positioned on a page mattered a hill of beans. “What matters,” I said, popping my hip forward to let the box rest on it instead of my forearms, “is that the text of the motion is accurate.”
“But there’s got to be a right way to do it.” Her brow furrowed. “Isn’t there someplace that says?”
“A handbook for PTA minutes?” I laughed. “Sorry. If there is one, I’ve never—” I stopped. “What’s the matter?”
Summer was staring over my shoulder. “It’s her,” she whispered. “I knew I should have left through the maintenance door.”
I turned and saw Auntie May Werner barreling toward us, full steam ahead in her purple wheelchair. “Hold it right there, missy!” she yelled. “Don’t you move a muscle till I have my say.”
Neither Summer nor I so much as twitched. With all my might, I was hoping that Auntie May was yelling at my friend and not me. Shameful, but true.
“I got a question to ask,” Auntie May called, pushing at her chair’s rubber wheels fiercely, “and I won’t go away until it’s been answered, got it?”
Summer and I glanced at each other. The urge to flee was strong, but the knowledge of Auntie May’s subsequent wrath glued us in place. And still we didn’t know which of us Auntie May had her beady little eyes fixed on.
“You.” Auntie May was close now, close enough that I could see a copy of the National Enquirer sitting on her lap. She rolled right up to us, stopping only when her small front wheels ran onto Summer’s feet. Well, one ran onto one of Summer’s feet. The other would have run over Zeppo’s toes, but he scooted backward out of the way just in time.
Auntie May thumped the arm of her wheelchair with her fist so hard that the beads of her multiple Mardi Gras necklaces rattled together. It was months past Mardi Gras, but May liked how the colors matched her wheelchair. “I want to know and I want to know right now!”
Now that I was out of the firing line, my voice came back. “How can we help, Auntie May? Is there something we can do for you?”
I was ignored so completely, I wasn’t sure I’d even spoken. “You.” Auntie May pointed a remarkably long and very knobby index finger up at Summer. “I want to know if the talk is right. Tell me true, girl, you know I’ll get it out of you one way or another.”
“T-talk?” Summer stammered. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
The elderly woman aimed her gaze straight along the length of her arm, narrowing her eyes as if she were sighting a rifle. “Don’t mess with me, missy. I’m not going to live forever, and I don’t want to die without knowing the truth.”
I tried again. “Auntie May, why don’t we—”
“Did you do it?” Auntie May shook her finger. “Did you kill Dennis Halpern?”
“I . . .” Summer’s face twisted and crumpled. Zeppo whined and leaned against her leg. “I . . .”
The finger dropped. “Ah, she didn’t do it.” Auntie May sounded disgusted. “That girl,” she said, finally looking at me, “wouldn’t smack a spider if it were climbing up her arm.” She eyed me up and down. “Not sure you would, either. Bunch of lily-livered, namby-pamby, soft-skinned pansies running the world these days, I tell you.”
I thought about all the things we had to deal with that earlier generations hadn’t. The disappearance of pensions. The proliferation of computers. The explosion of information, all of it demanding attention. The rapid change of . . . of everything. Blink once and you’ll miss a news cycle. Blink twice and you won’t recognize the clothes your daughter wants to wear to school.
Auntie May made a snorting noise in the back of her throat. “Now she’s crying. Can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, I say.”
I’d had enough. “You’re the one who fired up the broiler,” I snapped. “Do you do anything productive around here, or do you just make people unhappy? Come on, Summer. There’s a reading room just down the hall.” I tugged on the weeping woman’s elbow. Two tugs, and she and Zeppo came along.
Trailing after us was Auntie May, who was sounding suddenly conciliatory. “Now, Bethie, you know all I wanted was to fi
nd out about Dennis.”
I ignored her. “Just sit a minute, Summer.” I put the ten-ton box on a table and steered Summer to a cushy chair. “I see a sink right over there. Let me get you a glass of water, okay? That’s it; just sit. You’ll feel better in a minute.”
She sank into the chair’s deep embrace. Her dog looked at her, tilted his head, then lay down and closed his eyes.
I gave the purple wheelchair a wide berth, ran the water cold, and came back with a paper cup two-thirds full. The way Summer was still crying, I was sure she’d spill a full cup.
“Here.” I sat in the upholstered chair next to her. “Drink.”
“B-but I don’t want—”
“Drink,” I said, gently but firmly.
Using both hands, she took the cup from me and sipped. Sipped again.
I relaxed a little. Why this worked, I did not know, but in my experience getting overwrought people to drink helped ease the transition back to coherency. Maybe it was the act of holding something. Maybe it was the swallowing. Maybe it was something else entirely, and some researcher would someday spend five years analyzing the cause.
Summer took a few more swallows, then wiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “Thanks, Beth,” she said with a weak voice. “I’m sorry I fell apart like that. It’s just . . . been so hard.”
“What has?”
“Pretty much everything.” Her head dropped down.
Despair spread out from her, great circles of darkness that I wanted to duck away from, to hide from, to run fast and far from. Instead, I gritted my teeth and let it crest and wash through me.
“No,” I told her. “Whatever is wrong can be fixed. No, don’t say it can’t be, because I know it can.” At least I hoped so. But since I was certain she hadn’t killed Dennis, almost all other problems were mere details. “Now. Tell me, in your own words, specifically, what’s been so hard.”
“Besides everything?” The small laugh she managed didn’t last long. “Brett doesn’t know any of this. I don’t want to bother him, he’s so busy . . .”