by Celia Kinsey
I did a search for surgeons in Denver with the surname of Haskell. What I found was rather a shock.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I stared at the picture accompanying the news article on the screen of my laptop. It was of a Dr. Rory Haskell, M. D.
There was no doubt I was looking at a picture of Roberta Haskell’s son. They had the same angular features, the same freckles, and the same strawberry blond hair—although, in the case of Roberta, she must be dying it back to its natural color.
Dr. Haskell, according to the article, had been sued by the family of a patient who’d died on the operating table; not only that, but a subsequent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the patient’s death had resulted in the suspension of Rory Haskell’s license to practice medicine.
I’d already been 90% sure that Roberta’s son had stopped sending her money months ago, but now I was certain. Not only had Roberta’s son stopped sending money—most likely because he was probably under an equal or greater financial strain than was his mother—Rory Haskell was also concealing from his mother that his lucrative and respectable career was most likely over.
Poor Roberta. She had no idea that while she was going around bragging to anyone who would listen about her surgeon son, Rory was no longer practicing medicine and likely on the brink of bankruptcy.
Rory should have told his mother months ago, but I could understand why he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. That’s the thing about lies—regardless of how well intentioned—the longer you persist in clinging to them, the harder they are to let go of.
I was just mulling over what to make of this startling revelation about Roberta’s son when Georgia came up and told me I’d better come downstairs to the Bird Cage.
“Frank’s here,” said Georgia.
“My Frank?” I asked, although I hoped he wouldn’t be “my Frank” for very much longer.
“That’s what he said.”
Georgia hadn’t ever met Frank, even though I’d been married to him for nearly a decade. I’d invited her to the wedding, but I hadn’t expected her to show up, and she hadn’t. After that, I’d always visited Amatista alone. Frank never took much interest in my family, and it seemed easier, somehow, just to plan trips without him.
“You’d better get down there,” said Georgia. “Frank’s landed a hot air balloon in the middle of the street, and I don’t think he intends to allow the pilot to depart until you’ve heard what he has to say.”
“I’m not interested in what Frank has to say.”
“I’m afraid the village of Amatista doesn’t agree with you,” said Georgia. “And I think you should steel yourself for the banner.”
“What banner?”
“There’s a big banner on the side of the balloon that says, ‘I’m sorry, Emma.’”
“He’s sorry he got caught. I don’t see how that changes a thing.”
“I didn’t finish telling you what the banner says.”
“Oh?”
“It says, ‘I’m sorry, Emma. Please take me back.’”
Georgia had taken my jacket off the hook by the door and was holding it out to me.
“Please tell me you aren’t taken in by all this over-the-top—you’re not going to tell me I should take him back, are you?”
Georgia was shoving my arms into my jacket, but she paused and came around to look me in the face.
“Absolutely not!” she said, “and I think you’ll find a great many people around here agree with me.”
“Then why are you in such a hurry to get me down there?”
“The mob is getting restless.”
“What mob?”
Georgia didn’t answer, she just pulled me down the stairs and out the front door of the Bird Cage.
Georgia not been exaggerating when she’d called the assembled company a “mob.” It looked like every inhabitant of Little Tombstone had beaten me down to the scene, plus several extras from the village proper.
If Frank had been hoping for a warm and encouraging reception, he had miscalculated badly.
Juanita was standing on the steps of the boardwalk that fronted the Bird Cage with a carving knife clutched in her shaking hand. She was flanked by Chamomile and Janey, who were sending Frank looks that could have killed. Oliver stood beside Janey holding a machete—I think he’d been clearing sagebrush out back of the trailer court.
Ledbetter was unarmed, but then he didn’t need to be. I’d thought the way Chamomile and Janey were looking at Frank was intimidating, but Ledbetter looked like he’d enjoy nothing more than tearing Frank limb from limb.
I was wondering where Hank was when the front door of the Museum of the Unexplained opened, and he emerged carrying an enormous ceramic Kokopelli. I wasn’t sure why he’d chosen that particular object, but I’d later learn that he intended to threaten to bean Frank over the head with it, should the situation escalate.
“Emma!” said Frank, his voice fairly dripping with nervousness and something more like affection than I’d heard in his voice for ages.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” I said.
“But I wanted to.”
“But I didn’t want you to.”
“But I wanted you to want me to.”
“But I don’t. I won’t. I never will. We’re done, Frank.”
My little speech got a smattering of applause from the assembled company on the front steps of the Bird Cage. This threw Frank off for a beat or two, but he quickly regained his composure.
I suspected he’d touched down in the street anticipating sympathy and support from any onlookers. It was becoming increasingly clear—to me at least—that far from getting sympathy and support, Frank would be lucky to leave without coming to grievous bodily harm.
“Get back in the balloon, Frank,” I said. “You need to go. Unless you’re here to deliver signed divorce papers, I don’t want to see you.”
“Nobody wants to see you!” said Juanita, making a little slice in the air like she was itching to make mincemeat of Frank.
Morticia, who’d come a little after I had, came down off the steps and started circling Frank, a stick of burning incense in her hand as if she were trying to ward off the bad energy she must see emanating from Frank by purifying the street with a smudge of patchouli.
I think Morticia freaked Frank out more than everyone else combined. He was looking rather rattled. He kept eyeing Ledbetter out of the corner of his eye and looking nervously at Juanita’s butcher knife while trying to keep track of where Morticia was in her orbit of his person.
The hot air balloon pilot cleared his throat loudly and mumbled something hard to follow about not blocking traffic. It was then that I saw Nancy pulling right up to the hot air balloon. She shut off her engine and got out, Cliff and Clive in tow.
“Emma,” Frank pleaded, sounding a little desperate—or maybe just scared—“We’re family. I’m all you’ve got.”
Frank couldn’t have said anything more calculated to push Juanita over the edge. She handed the butcher knife to Chamomile—probably because she was sorely tempted to use it—came down the steps into the street and stood toe to toe with Frank.
“You’re wrong,” Juanita said in a voice that could have instantly covered over Old Faithful with a sheet of ice. “Emma doesn’t need you. You’re the worst thing that ever happened to her.”
Frank had enough residual humility in him to look liked he’d been slapped.
“Emma,” he said helplessly over the top of Juanita’s head.
“I’m done, Frank,” I said. “We’re over. I’ve moved on.”
I don’t know why I put it that way. I had moved on, but not in the way Frank was taking it. I saw him looking around. His eye settled on Ledbetter, who looked fierce enough to be a jealous boyfriend restraining himself from beating up his ladylove’s unfaithful ex who refused to let her go.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Frank said in a strangled voice as he pointed to Ledbetter. “So th
at’s what you’re going for these days.”
Ledbetter was not what I was going for. In fact, I’d never felt the slightest spark of attraction between us, although I’d grown enormously fond of the man, and judging by the expression on his face, he thought enough of me to involve himself in my personal affairs.
What I did next was unforgivable. I think I said what I did out of desperation to get the whole horrible scene over with, Frank back into that balloon, and, hopefully back to California, never to show his face in Little Tombstone again in this life or the next.
“Yes. Yes, he is what I’m going for these days,” I said.
“So you’re chasing after old men now,” said Frank. “Guess he must have money.”
Ledbetter is hardly what I’d call old, although he is technically old enough to be my father if he’d gotten an exceptionally early start at procreating. And he certainly was rich, although Frank couldn’t possibly know that.
Every little potshot my in-laws had made over the years about my supposed status as a “gold digger” crashed over me in a red tide of anger. Angry little spots started dancing in front of my eyes, and I could hear myself huffing out of my nose like a bull preparing to go after the matador. If Chamomile had handed me the butcher knife, I’d probably have gone straight to work, reducing Frank to tiny bite-sized cubes to feed to Nancy’s sows.
I was so angry that I said the absolute worst thing possible.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Ledbetter and I are very much in love.”
It was right after I said that I realized that sometime during the past couple of minutes a spotless white Range Rover had pulled up behind Nancy’s truck, and Jason Wendell had gotten out.
I didn’t realize how close Mr. Wendell was standing behind me until he took an abrupt step back and tripped over the Kokopelli doll Hank had tired of clutching in his arms and set down at his feet.
Mr. Wendell fell backwards and toppled the Kokopelli with him, breaking off the poor thing’s head.
It was in the confusion of Hank’s distress over the senseless destruction of his tchotchke, and Jason Wendell’s distress over the condition of his pristine dove grey trousers, that Oliver sprang forward with his machete and started hacking away at the lines the balloon pilot had tethered to the posts holding up the boardwalk of the Bird Cage.
“Hey!” the balloon pilot yelled. “Stop that!”
I couldn’t blame the poor man. What he’d thought would be a straightforward romantic gesture was turning into something quite different.
Oliver kept right on hacking and managed to cut right through one of the ropes, causing the basket of the balloon to list as it hovered above the earth.
“Get in, you fool!” the pilot said to Frank.
Frank ignored the man. He reached out to grasp me by both arms, a move that made Ledbetter take a step forward, and Juanita take hold of Frank’s wrist and try to wrest me from his grasp.
“You’d better go,” I said to Frank, “before you get hurt.”
My warning came too late.
I heard Earp a split second before he attacked Frank’s ankles, snarling and growling as he bit through Frank’s chinos and made contact with flesh.
Frank stepped backwards, letting go of my arms, and did the unforgivable.
He kicked Earp, sending the pug flying back toward the front steps of the Bird Cage.
Maxwell, who’d been observing the scene on the street below from the windows of our apartment, had found the commotion irresistible. He’d come downstairs, bringing Earp with him.
After Frank kicked Earp, Maxwell rushed forward. I thought he was going to tend to Earp, who was yelping as a result of getting a size ten loafer to his ribcage, but instead, Maxwell rushed Frank, who was standing with his back to the balloon and warily eyeing the increasingly tight circle of decidedly hostile onlookers.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Gonzales,” Maxwell said to Juanita as he pushed past her. “Pardon me, Morticia.”
He walked right up to Frank and kicked him in the left ankle, which was, unfortunately, the same ankle Earp had been chewing on.
After that, it was a free for all. Juanita kicked Frank in the right shin. Chamomile handed the butcher knife off to Janey and came down the steps, her hands clenched into fists. I could see Hank out of the corner of my eye, advancing with the Kokopelli raised over his head.
“Ledbetter,” I said. “Do something.”
It seemed he’d just been waiting for the word. He walked up to Frank, grabbed him around the waist, hefted him over his shoulder in a fireman-style rescue carry, and unceremoniously plunked Frank into the basket of the balloon.
Oliver had hacked through the second rope anchored to the boardwalk, and Ledbetter untied the single remaining anchor.
“Finally,” said the pilot and gave the burner a burst of fuel.
The balloon began to rise, in slow motion.
I imagine, when Frank had rehearsed this scene in his head, this was the part where we’d both be in the basket together locked in a passionate embrace, me murmuring words of sweet forgiveness and asking if his tennis elbow was flaring up again.
I think it had never occurred to Frank that I’d say no. He looked down on us as he floated away and shouted down to me, “I must have been insane to want you back. You know I never really loved you.”
He probably should have waited to say that until he had drifted a little higher.
I was speechless with shock, but plenty of other people were eager to do my talking for me.
Mr. Wendell shouted back, “If you feel that way then I’m sure you’ll be happy to sign those divorce papers at your earliest—”
Morticia cut Mr. Wendell off by yelling something semi-intelligible about how Frank had a puce aura, and that it was well-known that a puce aura was the worst kind of aura a person could have.
Chamomile chimed in that Frank didn’t deserve me, which prompted Frank to say, “You crazies deserve each other.”
Hank still held the headless Kokopelli aloft, and I think he’d have liked to have thrown it but lacked the strength to make the distance, so Georgia did the job for him.
Frank had the presence of mind to duck, and the poor headless Kokopelli hit the burner. For a few endless seconds, I was afraid the burner might have extinguished, and Frank wouldn’t keep rising into the sky, and, hopefully, out of my life forever, then the pilot got it relit and they continued rising upward.
“I’m feeling a little sick,” I said.
“You go upstairs,” said Juanita.
“And take Earp and Maxwell with you,” said Georgia.
I took Earp, who Janey had grasped firmly by the collar. The pug had stopped yelping, but he was still growling under his breath.
“Do you think I should take Earp to the vet?” I asked no one in particular.
“I’ll take him,” Nancy offered. “I’m headed to Dr. Bagley’s now to pick up some medicine for one of the sows.”
Maxwell wanted to go along, which meant Georgia went too. I watched as they all piled into the truck: Clive, Cliff, and Maxwell in the back and Georgia in the passenger seat with a squirming Earp.
“He’ll be fine, Emma,” Ledbetter told me as he followed me up the steps to the front door of the Bird Cage. “He didn’t get kicked that hard.”
It was at that moment that I discovered that my face was wet, and I didn’t even know how long I’d been crying.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” I told Ledbetter. “I never should have involved you that way.” I may have paused in the middle of my little speech to hiccup.
“That’s all right.”
“You know I don’t—”
“Love me?”
“Yes.”
“I know.” Ledbetter smiled at me, clearly not disappointed. “But you’re well on your way to falling in love again.”
“No,” I sputtered. “I’m not.”
“I didn’t mean with me,” said Ledbetter, finally flustered. “I’m not i
nterested in—I meant—”
“He meant Jason Wendell,” said Janey.
We were in the empty dining room of the Bird Cage. Janey had snuck up on us sometime during the conversation. I was glad Chamomile wasn’t with her.
“That’s exactly what I was getting at,” said Ledbetter.
“See!” said Janey. “I’m not the only one who noticed.”
Georgia had noticed too. That made at least three people. I dearly hoped Mr. Wendell hadn’t. I couldn’t think of anything more futile and pathetic than developing a hopeless unrequited crush on my own divorce lawyer.
Two hours later, Georgia and Maxwell returned with Earp.
‘The vet says he’s fine,” said Georgia, “which is more than I can say for you.”
I’d spent the whole time she’d been gone crying my eyes out. I’d tried hugging Hercules—the only remaining living thing in the apartment—but it turns out that potbellied pigs don’t like having the stuffing squeezed out of them.
“You’re sad,” said Maxwell as if this had just occurred to him. It must have been the tears that wouldn’t stop running down my cheeks that clued him in.
He trotted off to his room, Earp at his heels, and returned with a copy of Scientific American and half-eaten Snickers.
“It’s the new issue,” he said. “Sit down on the couch, eat the candy, and I’ll read you a story.”
Georgia made me a cup of tea, and I sat on the couch nestled between Maxwell and Earp. Hercules came and curled up at my feet as I ate my Snickers, sipped my tea, and listened to the latest advance in AI.
Frank had been wrong. My Little Tombstone family and I didn’t deserve each other. They were too good for me.
Chapter Thirty
I didn’t go out for the rest of the day. After Frank aborted his ill-fated attempt to win me back, I napped and watched movies on my laptop between crying jags in the bathroom.
