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“She doesn’t take medication!”
“Well, maybe it’s something more serious. But Ms. Dugan, it’s something.”
The passenger door opened. “Are we going?” Lois wanted to know, that impatient edge back in her voice. “I could have been home by now!”
Mr. Fulbright crossed his arms. “Or in Seattle,” he muttered under his breath.
“Yes, Mom. Coming.” Then, feeling protective of Lois, she glared at the grocer for his cheek.
“Goodbye, Lois,” Mr. Fulbright said. “See you soon.”
“I doubt it,” she said, slamming the door.
“Well, thank you,” Charlene said. “Though I really think—”
“When you run a neighborhood market in an area with a large retired population,” he said, “there are some things you learn to watch for. They’re my charges. It won’t be that many years before I’ll benefit from having people watch after me now and again. Just as the postman keeps track if the mail stacks up, merchants keep an eye out for their regulars.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Get your mom to the doctor now. We don’t need a senseless tragedy just because it’s hard to think about Lois getting older.”
As Charlene fastened her seat belt, she muttered, “God, he’s annoying.”
“Tell me about it,” Lois said.
“I guess he knows what’s right for everyone, huh?”
“I never could stand that guy. He’s a hoverer, you know? Always looking over your shoulder when you pinch the grapes. Probably a pervert. I’m not shopping there anymore.”
“I can’t say I blame you, Mom. Especially if you’re going to find yourself held hostage in the back room.” Charlene shuddered, but not for thinking about Mr. Fulbright’s back-room office.
“The rhubarb stinks. Smells like fish and tastes like rubber.”
“Rhubarb?” Charlene couldn’t remember ever having rhubarb at her mother’s house.
“Let’s get moving. I think I have a hair appointment.”
“When did you start caring about rhubarb?”
“My mother always had a rhubarb cobbler on the Fourth of July. I wish I could remember if I made that hair appointment for today or next Tuesday. Damn!”
Charlene drove in silence for a moment. Then, with a sigh, she asked, “Why did you decide to walk to the market today of all days? It’s cold, and it’s drizzled on and off since morning.”
“I needed the exercise.”
“Really?”
“Why else would I walk?”
“Well…I don’t suppose a checkup would hurt,” Charlene suggested.
“I just had a checkup.”
“Well, another one won’t hurt.”
“I’m not going to the doctor and that’s the end of it.”
“Mom…”
“I said no.”
“Mom, I’m not going to argue with you—”
“Good! That will be a refreshing change.”
“I’m worried, that’s all.”
“Waste of energy. Worry about something you have some control over. This is out of your hands.”
She pulled up in front of Lois’s house, parked, killed the engine and turned to regard her mother. “Why are you acting like this?” she asked in a gentle voice.
“I’ve had a rough day,” Lois said, looking away from her daughter, out the window.
Haven’t we all, Charlene thought.
“I have things to do, Aida, so let me get my groceries and get busy.”
“Aida? Mom, you called me Aida. I think I’d better get you in the house and—”
Lois groaned as if in outraged frustration and threw open her car door. She pulled herself out with youthful agility and, once extracted, stomped her foot. “You’re starting to get on my last nerve! Get me my things and get out of my business!”
That’s when she knew. She wasn’t sure exactly what she knew, but she knew. The only Aida Charlene had ever known was an old cousin of Lois’s who’d been dead over thirty years. And while Lois was admittedly a frisky character, Charlene was unaccustomed to such anger and temper in her mother. Lois was going through some mental/medical crisis.
Trying to remain calm, she went to the trunk, pulled out two bags and handed one to Lois. She followed her mother up the walk to the front door. Lois got the door unlocked easily enough, and they went inside and put the groceries away without speaking. When the bags were folded and stowed on a pantry shelf, they stood and looked at each other across the butcher block.
“I’m very sorry,” Lois said. “I’m sorry you were bothered, sorry I was rude to you and sorry about what’s happening.”
“What is happening?” Charlene asked.
“Well, isn’t it perfectly clear? I’m losing it.”
Charlene went back to the office in something of a trance. Was it possible that even though she spent a great deal of time with Lois, she’d been too preoccupied to notice these changes?
She threw herself into the accumulated work on her desk, plowing through briefs, returning calls, writing memos and dictating letters. She also spent some time on the Internet, researching dementia in the elderly and Alzheimer’s disease.
It was getting late and she should have gone home long ago, but she wanted no spare time between work and evening—she wouldn’t know how to handle it. She could research Alzheimer’s, but she couldn’t think about her mother suffering from it. Tonight was dinner at her place with Dennis. And until she could talk to him, until she could take advantage of his cool-headed appraisal of her problem—not to mention his medical expertise—she couldn’t allow herself to focus on it. But when the intercom buzzed and she looked at her watch, she realized she wouldn’t even make it to her house ahead of Dennis, much less have time to cook him dinner. “It’s Dennis,” Pam intoned from the outer office.
If he cancels, Charlene thought, I will kill him and hide the body. She picked up. “Dennis, I lost all track of time. I can leave here in just a—”
“Listen, if you have to work late—”
“What? You aren’t going to cancel, are you?”
“No,” he said calmly. “I was just wondering if you’d like me to pick anything up.”
“Oh.” The perfect man. The most stable and reliable thing in her life. With Lois falling apart and Stephanie making her crazy, maybe the only stable and reliable thing in her life. “Did I just bark at you?” she asked him.
“Pretty much. Bad day?”
“Well, I would reply ‘the worst’ except that I stopped by the hospital and I know you had a terrible day yourself, one that included fatalities. So…”
“Yes, you were gone by the time I realized you had just made a rare unannounced appearance. I was so distracted at the time. So, what is this? Professional or personal?” he asked.
She thought about dodging the question, but then, after a pause, she slowly let it out. “Personal.” It might as well have been a dirty word.
“I should have guessed. I can hear the tension in your voice, and you’re working till the last possible minute. I know what that means.”
She leaned back in her leather chair. “You do? What does it mean?”
“That you’re upset, and you don’t want any time on your hands during which you might think too hard, because you’re afraid you might become distraught. You never have, but you’re still always afraid of that. Of losing control.”
Embarrassingly, unbelievably, she began to cry. The tears had been there all day, just below the surface, but this was the last straw. They suddenly welled up in her eyes, her nose began to tingle and her face reddened and flooded. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, but it did no good. She accidentally let out a wet, jagged breath. She couldn’t remember when she had last cried. Probably years ago; certainly pre-Dennis, but he seemed to know what was happening anyway because he said, “Hey, hey, hey. Charlene, honey, what’s the matter?”
Of course she couldn’t speak. She put the phone down on the desktop, grabbed a fistful of tissues and tried to mop her face quickly and efficiently. She did not want Pam to come upon her sobbing. She blew her nose and picked up the phone. “I can’t talk about this yet,” she whispered into the phone. “Will you…will you pick up something for me?”
“Yes, of course. What shall I pick up?”
“Dinner,” she said. And hung up.
Thank God she had her own private bathroom. She flushed her hot, red face with cold water, but it was a while before her tears subsided. The strange thing was that she wasn’t sure what brought on the flood. She couldn’t tell if it was the picture she had in her mind of Lois sitting hunched and frightened in the warehouse-like office, or if it was Dennis giving voice to her fear of losing control. Or could it be a mental image that she couldn’t let come into clear focus of Stephanie fetching her from the grocer’s back-room office?
When she was finally leaving, Pam was standing behind her desk, putting some things away and other things in the tote she carried to and from work.
“See you tomorrow,” Charlene said, ducking.
“Char?” Pam queried, leaning over her desk to get a closer look at Charlene. “Have you been crying?”
She stopped short but didn’t turn. “What makes you think I’ve been crying?”
“Your eyes are red, your nose is red, your eye makeup is making tracks down your cheeks, I heard a tugboat horn come from your office and—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. And she left quickly.
Charlene lived in a new home in a small, gated neighborhood just east of the city. It was under thirty minutes to her office or the courthouse if traffic was reasonable, and only a half mile from the freeway. This gave her quick access for convenience and no traffic noise for peaceful living. The length of drive was perfect for making cell-phone calls, thinking through a work problem or giving herself a stern talking-to.
Tonight’s self-talk was about keeping perspective. About staying cool. She was accustomed to giving herself pep talks—she was a hardworking single mother, after all. She took her issues one at a time, sorting them out calmly, logically.
First of all, the Samuelsons were a perfect example of the bad-divorcing couple. She decided to write them off as the cruel, ignorant people they were and place them in the chilled mental compartment in her mind that she had labeled icebox. She’d freeze out their influence over her mood.
Second, Stephanie was a wonderful girl, a jewel of a daughter, but she was a tad spoiled. It wasn’t her fault, exactly. Between Charlene, who always worried about doing a good enough job as a mom, her ex-husband, Jake, who was a very doting father, and Peaches, who was destined to have only the one granddaughter, Stephie was doomed to play the royal chick. So, she was spoiled. She liked having her way and having people cater to her. She wanted to graduate from princess to queen, and in order to do that she had to find a prince, marry him and turn him into her king. It looked as if she was going to succeed, too. Unless she drove the prince away with all her imperial demands.
Grant Chamberlain was a remarkably good choice for her daughter; Charlene wished she’d been that lucky twenty-five years ago. He was twenty-seven, a disciplined ex-army noncommissioned officer from the Special Forces, getting his degree on the GI Bill and supporting himself by tending bar. He was handsome and genuinely kind. Charlene admired him and approved of the way he treated her daughter, which was with respect and more patience than she usually deserved. Charlene was not totally unsympathetic. She could understand some of Stephanie’s problem, what with their conflicting work schedules. Stephanie got up early to teach English to surly eighth-graders while Grant slept in. When she got home, he had already gone to work, where he stayed until the wee hours. Grant took his days off during the week, which he filled with classes and study groups while Stephanie worked. When Stephanie was off on the weekends, Grant worked his longest hours…and made his best tip money. So this was hard. Work in the adult world was hard. There you have it. Who among us, she thought, isn’t working hard? Long hours?
She let go a huff of laughter. She doesn’t want to end up like me, huh? I’ll bet she doesn’t. I work like a farm hand! But she not only loved her work, she loved her life. She’d much rather be tired at the end of the day than whining that she wasn’t having enough fun or getting enough attention. And that was that.
Next, she thought about Dennis and Dr. Malone, but by now she was in command of her senses again. It had clearly not been passion with which Dennis had touched the young woman. It was comfort. Paternal. There had been a fatality. A child. Barbara Benn had said Dr. Malone was a pediatrician. That explained everything. She settled her mind on that matter as well, and let it go.
But on the matter of Lois, she was at sea. She could feel the sting of tears come to her eyes at the smallest thought of her mother stooped and confused and lost. It was more than she could bear. Had she taken her completely for granted? She was in her late seventies, after all. Charlene knew she was lucky to have had her for so long, and in such excellent health of body and spirit. This time of life, she reminded herself, eventually comes to everyone. As some wise old sage had said, old age is not for wimps.
She pulled off the interstate onto the access road that led to her neighborhood. Within a quarter mile of her house, her car seemed to lurch oddly to the left and drag as if being tugged from behind. It was an ominous sensation. She slowed and pulled onto the soft, muddy shoulder. As she did so, she could feel the left rear tire go flat.
What little sun there was behind heavy clouds was almost gone, so she grabbed the flashlight from the glove box, got out of the car and shone it on the flattened rubber. “I can’t believe this,” she said aloud. At that very moment, she felt the first drop quickly followed by the second. Then the heavens opened up in earnest and a deluge poured down on her, drenching her to the bone. As she stood beside the disabled car, practically drowning, she saw the glare of approaching headlights. The car slowed, pulled to a stop behind her. There was not so much as a single house on this half-mile stretch of road that led from the interstate to her subdivision, so the odds were excellent that this was one of her neighbors, on his way home. Then she considered how her day had been going and thought her chances of being murdered were better.
A man got out of his car. She shone the flashlight on his face—and groaned. She was only slightly happier to see her ex-husband and not a serial killer.
“Charlie?” he said. “What the hell you doin’ out here?”
She almost laughed, but it was more a sputter, given the heavy rain. “Oh, gee. Thinking,” she replied.
“Well, Jesus, think in my car!” he said, grabbing for her arm.
“I can’t,” she resisted. “I’m soaked.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Come on.”
“I’ll ruin your upholstery.”
“Oh, that’s funny. My upholstery? I’m way ahead of you. Come on!”
For lack of a better option, she went to the passenger side of his car and got in. She had to kick aside what appeared to be dirty clothes and a pair of running shoes, while he lifted a stack of file folders spewing loose papers off the seat so she could sit down. He pitched some fast-food bags into the back seat, pulled a blanket from same and drew it around her shoulders. The car was only a couple of years old at worst, but the interior was a wreck. Like his little house. His life.
“Why would you have a blanket in the back seat? Dates?”
“You’re a riot, you know that?” he replied irritably. “This is a stakeout car—I practically live in it. There’s also a first-aid kit, water, pick and shovel, fire extinguisher and other emergency items. You never know what’s going to develop. Or what you might have to dig up.” He pulled the blanket tighter around her. “So, what were you thinking about, Charlie? That flat tire?” he asked. “Wishing you could say ‘April Fools’?”
God, she thought, it was. April first! How sad that none of her stuff could be joked away.
He was the only person who called her Charlie. Well, he and his cop friends. “What are you doing out here?” it finally occurred to her to ask, but she knew the answer. He had to be coming to see her. The question she couldn’t answer yet was whether he was going to make her laugh or piss her off. There was a fifty-fifty possibility.
“I stopped by your office, but you were already gone….”
“I know I gave you my cell-phone number,” she said.
“I had to see you in person for this,” he said.
“Is it about Stephanie?” she asked.
“No, it’s a favor. I need your help on something. But what about Stephanie?”
