by Dale Mayer
He rolled his eyes at her and said, “Hang on.”
Then he must have gone into the garage because she could hear the doors opening and closing, and then he came out with the tape measure. Together, they measured off sixteen feet, which was pretty close to where she had estimated. He had a little stick in his hand. He used the hammer to pound it into the ground, and then they put one on the other side too. “Now if you take these two straight back to the house,” he said, “that’s sixteen by sixteen feet. And that’s pretty big.”
She nodded. “But if we put stairs down this side or a stairway there, this could be a patio.” Then she motioned at the rest of the space, which would be close to another sixteen feet.
He measured it off, nodded, and said, “This is about fifteen. But if we attach the sidewalk on the side, which needs to be three feet minimum, that’ll be eighteen feet and that leaves you the three to four feet for the garden.”
“That works out quite nicely.”
Mack went to the garden, picked up some rocks, and laid out what they were looking at. Every rock he placed down, Mugs came to sniff, and Goliath hopped from one to the other, following the line. Thaddeus supervised Mack the whole time. It was a real family affair.
“Now,” Mack said, “the pasta should be done. Let’s eat.”
She laughed. “I’m more than ready. But now I’m really excited about doing something for myself too.”
“You should be,” Mack said. “You’ve done a lot for other people. Remember. It’s all about balance. So, think about what you want, and then we’ll figure out what it would cost to do what you think is best.”
Chapter 10
Sunday Morning …
The next morning, Doreen rolled over, disturbing Goliath, who ran off. Then she groaned, closed her eyes, and willed herself to go back to sleep. But Mugs wasn’t having anything to do with it. He wandered up on her bed—still just mattresses on the floor—snuffling into her neck and shoulder, and then nudging her with his head. “Really?” she mumbled. “Surely it’s not morning yet.”
“Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
“Sure you are,” she muttered.
Mugs nudged her shoulder once, twice, and then reached out with one of those thick paws of his and dropped it on her arm. She winced at the roughness. “We’ll have to get some cream for those pads of yours,” she whispered.
She opened her eyes, looked around the room, and noted sunlight inside. So, whether she thought it was morning or not, the rest of the world seemed to think so. And certainly Mugs too. She rolled over on her back and reached out to scratch him, but he wasn’t looking for that. He was looking to go outside because he woofed at her several times and then nudged her.
Groaning, she dragged herself vertical and made a quick trip to the bathroom. Then she led him downstairs. She disarmed the security and opened the back door, still yawning and still dressed in her pajamas, and let him out. She watched as he headed to the first bush and peed all over it. She groaned. “You know those peonies will never survive if you keep doing that, right?”
He ignored her and proceeded to tear into some of the grass right beside it as he dug several times. And then he dashed around, as if rejuvenated by an early morning spring air infusion. “I’ll do the same,” she said wryly. “As soon as I get coffee.”
She let the door fall closed with him outside and went to put on the coffee. As soon as it was set to drip, she stepped onto the deck and stretched. She really needed to get back into yoga. Somewhere in the last few months, she’d lost that sense of calm and peacefulness that she had used to maintain her stability in that ugly relationship she had called a marriage. She looked around and realized just how much she wanted that bigger deck to add to her sense of zen.
She took several steps in the direction of the expansion and thought about how it would open up the yard completely. She could do stairs all the way around, or she could do railings on part of it. Both were just such great options. Thaddeus hopped onto a corner rock and fluttered out his wings.
Doreen figured it would make the complexity that much worse if she did anything other than right angle corners on the edges. She also didn’t want to do something like that because complexity usually meant upping the cost. She went right to the edge where she could peer around the side of the house and thought about what her options were for that strip.
By the time the coffee was done dripping, she had a notepad, and she sat at the outside table, sketching ideas. She’d have to look up some photos online.
The problem with that was then she tended to want more and more. Just because everybody else had something grandiose didn’t mean she could afford the same thing. And sometimes, simple was just the nicest. If she did it all in beautiful wood, she knew she’d have to treat the wood, but she wasn’t sure how often. Ten years, maybe? And that depended, she thought, on if she bought pretreated wood for the decking, which would up the cost again but would help to protect the wood from the elements.
Her first cup of coffee disappeared without her even tasting it, while the second cup went down slower. And finally she walked to the creek with her third cup, the animals at her side, and turned to look back at the house. Mack had brought up an interesting point about proportion, and she understood that. She could have an outdoor couch. Maybe she could find something secondhand or even cheap at an end-of-season clearance too? Or maybe they could build a bench.
She frowned at that because really, at times, she wanted something soft and not superhard to sit on. She gave a happy sigh, wondering how much of it was really possible. The fact that Mack offered to help was huge because he really did have the strength she didn’t have. She could get an order of the blocks delivered and pay the extra delivery fee, which she was hoping was only about fifty dollars. She could move the blocks in a wheelbarrow to the backyard, but she didn’t think she could move the big six-by-six foundation frames, if they were using them. Maybe four-by-fours were all that would be required, but she wasn’t sure if she could drag those around or not.
This was one of the few times when she realized what an inconvenience it was to be female. With that deck expansion in her mind, she made a few more notes and adjusted the rocks a little so she could get a better layout and get more artistic as to what she could have as a garden along the edges. She thought she wanted something that would give her a bit of shade for the deck, but she didn’t want to block her view of the creek, so that might not work.
Humming to herself, she stepped back inside, looking for food. Then she remembered the spaghetti from last night. Chortling, she headed to the fridge and pulled out some leftover cold noodles and the pot with the leftover sauce. She warmed them in the microwave and then scooped some of the sauce from the pot and placed it atop the pasta.
With hot spaghetti on her plate, she sat back at her little veranda table and nodded, thinking about how beautiful it would be to have a full-size table out here. Instead of devouring her breakfast, she slowly ate it and enjoyed every bite.
She didn’t have a copy of the video of how she had made this last night yet, but, while she sat there, she jotted down as many notes as she could remember about what she had done. She still had the notes and the video she’d created when he had made it the first time, but this time it had all been different because she had been the one creating the sauce.
And it was a sauce she planned on making over and over again. She didn’t even want to freeze the leftovers. She just wanted to eat it all up. It was so good. After a lifetime or what seemed like not having much pasta, she was thoroughly enjoying having the simple white carbs again.
She laughed at that because her soon-to-be-ex-husband had watched her waistline for her all the time. He would probably approve of the fact she was bordering on scrawny now. In fact, Mack was constantly trying to feed her, and maybe that was a good thing too. But then she was gaining muscles. She looked at her arms and grinned because just that bit of gardening she had done since moving here ha
d given her some muscle definition. Instead of the smooth and skinny arms she used to have, she now had some nice hills and valleys. Gentle ones, of course, but still more definition than she’d ever seen in her life.
While she ate, she studied her neighbor’s house and wondered about the ring and the handcuffs. Although she knew Mack had gone into Richard’s garden and had looked for whatever else might be there, she wondered if he’d missed something. Hell, she wondered if she’d missed something too. She’d been the one who was in there, moving things around. It was definitely disturbing to think two items had been there. More so that one was so much more sentimental, while one was so little. And yet, maybe both were indicative of this Meredith’s split life. Maybe she was engaged. Maybe she had found her way out, and the handcuffs were a reminder of what she still was in her mind.
Doreen sighed with a slow shake of her head. She couldn’t imagine a lifestyle like that. And, once again, she was forever grateful to Nan for giving Doreen a roof over her head and a massive amount of very expensive antiques inside, underneath that roof.
As she relaxed back and looked around her backyard, she realized she didn’t have any plans for the day. So, maybe she should start off with some research. She didn’t want to get sidetracked with gardening sites, but she knew, as long as she had her own computer, that would happen.
And what about Meredith? Doreen grabbed her phone and sent Mack a text, saying she’d just had spaghetti for breakfast, and it was delicious, then asked him what Meredith’s last name was. He sent back a Good morning text and left it at that.
She glared at her phone and typed a swift response. And the last name?
Why?
Because I want to do some research. Since my research has ended up helping everyone …
Meredith Pollock.
She chuckled when the name came back immediately. “Dear Mack,” she said to herself. “You might not like all the paperwork, but you definitely like closing cases.”
And, of course, a prostitute was one of those more vulnerable cases, where the public wanted to believe the police didn’t give her the same attention as they would have somebody prominent in society. And maybe there was some truth to that, but she also thought it had a lot to do with the lifestyle. It was easier to get information from one corner of society than it was the other. Doreen would likely run into the same problem herself.
She moved to her laptop and started researching. Almost nothing was there to be found, just an odd mention in a cold case folder online on a website she had never seen before. It listed Meredith as a missing person. Doreen paused. A missing person or a murdered person? She wondered at that. She texted Mack again, asking if they ever found a body.
Nope.
She nodded but didn’t reply and then kept going. With her trusty notepad nearby, she wrote down Meredith Pollock’s name on the edge and started taking notes. But, as soon as she put the notepad down, she wondered … Would there be anything from Solomon’s files on this woman? So many files were in there that she had no way to remember all the names. And she really didn’t need to go looking for more cases, but what if Solomon had something here? Solomon had been a journalist for decades.
So, on that note, she went to the closet and pulled out the four boxes. She should label them so she could grab what she wanted. Quickly she went through the files but didn’t see anything with Pollock on it. She checked M for Meredith just to make sure, but nothing was there either. What she needed to do was to prepare a list of just the names on the file tabs. She didn’t have a ready tally of what the files were yet.
Just then the doorbell rang. Doreen straightened but couldn’t see anybody through the living room window. Mugs barked like crazy at the front door, whereas Goliath had gone in the opposite direction. Doreen pushed the boxes back into the front closet and closed its door, so she could answer the front door. A young woman stood in front of her. Doreen smiled at her and said, “Yes, can I help you?”
The woman gave her a luminous smile and said in a low voice, “You already have. I’m Crystal.”
It took a moment for the tumblers in Doreen’s brain to connect, and then she gasped in surprise and instinctively opened her arms—she didn’t know why. Still Crystal threw herself into her arms, and they hugged. They stood like that for a long moment, where Doreen felt tears well in the corners of her eyes.
The animals wove in and about them, rubbing alongside their legs, giving Crystal a welcoming greeting of their own.
When the two women finally separated, Doreen smiled at her and said, “I am so delighted to see you.”
“I got back in town a couple days ago,” Crystal said. “I was trying to sneak out of my place and to yours without the media. I heard they haunt your place a lot too.”
“They certainly have done so in the past,” Doreen said, still smiling. “But thankfully they’re not here right now. Come on in.”
With a pot of tea between the two of them, they sat outside on the little deck, the animals nearby. Crystal explained so much of what had happened to her in her other life. “The only person I regretted leaving a little bit,” she said, “was my mom. But, at that point, I was really worried about her boyfriend. I was just old enough to understand he was big trouble, so … when he would come into my room and stand in the open doorway and stare at me when he thought I was sleeping …” She shuddered.
“Did you tell your mom?” Doreen asked.
Crystal nodded. “But she didn’t want to believe anything bad about him.”
“And, of course, when you went missing, he fell under suspicion pretty fast.”
“Good,” Crystal said. “But he’s still probably on the loose.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said. “I’d have to look up his name to see if we can get an update on what happened to him. Last I heard, he just dropped off the radar.” As soon as Doreen said that though, she winced. Dropping off the radar in her world these days meant that the person was dead.
“I’d be happy if he did disappear,” Crystal said. “He was really creepy. I couldn’t understand how my mom loved him so much.”
“I think it wasn’t a case of your mom loving him,” Doreen said quietly, “but more how she was grateful somebody loved her.”
Crystal looked at her for a long moment and then nodded. “I guess the divorce from my dad really hurt her, didn’t it?”
“The divorce and Mary’s presence,” Doreen explained. “It’s one thing to have a divorce, and it’s another thing to be replaced immediately by somebody your husband’s been carrying on with the whole time.”
“My father was always nice to me,” Crystal said, “but I didn’t have any illusions that he was a good man. He and my mom fought all the time, and he brought a lot of really rough people to the house. I never felt safe there. Mary was never friendly.”
“With good reason,” Doreen said. Then she looked at Crystal and said, “Have you been told the whole story now?”
Crystal nodded. “My mom and I have reunited, and it’s really nice to have her in my life again. She’s changed too. I’m happy getting to know her now.”
“I’m sure you are. That’s why she came to me, you know? So all this would blow apart, and we could get you back.”
“But to think she actually knew or had suspicions about what had happened and didn’t do anything about it …”
“What I think is, she did do something about it,” Doreen said. “Think about it. Because you are eighteen now, you could come home on your own. And no longer being a child gave you more options when you arrived here than before.”
“I’m going to college,” Crystal said. “There’s a university in town I was thinking of applying to.”
“That’s a great idea. This is your hometown. I know it probably doesn’t seem that way, after being gone so many years, but it is definitely a place that maybe you would like to live in again.”
“Maybe,” Crystal said. She hesitated and pushed her chair back, then settled on saying, “I
just wanted to stop in and say, Thank you.”
“And you’re very welcome,” Doreen said sincerely. “I’m so very happy you stopped by. It’s hard to work on these cases and not really get to know the outcomes in some instances.”
“According to my mom, you’ve got quite a reputation in town now.”
Doreen laughed. “Maybe, but you know what they say about reputations. There’s bad, and then there’s worse.”
Crystal laughed. “Oh, that’s cute. Well, in this case, I think it’s a good reputation.”
“Only because you’re on the good side of it,” Doreen said gently. “A lot of people are going to jail over this.”
Crystal winced, then said, “I’ll speak up in the brothers’ defense. At least, as far as my kidnapping goes, I went willingly enough.”
“And for good reason,” Doreen said with a nod. “But you were a child and not responsible for your actions. They were adults and could have done things differently.”
“I know it seems like people do the oddest things, maybe even the right things but in the wrong ways,” Crystal said. “So I was wondering about becoming a lawyer.” Her tone was abrupt, as if looking for some sort of approval that it would be the right thing to do.
Doreen had a hard time with that because she had such an awful opinion of lawyers as it was. So she stood and said in a quiet tone, “If that’s where your heart lies, follow it. You’d make a great lawyer, a people’s advocate, or a children’s advocate. I can see you doing something like that.”
Crystal beamed a smile at her. “Thank you. I do have to run though. I promised to meet my mother for a visit and then for lunch.” And she turned, stepped back outside, gave Doreen a small wave, and dashed away.
Chapter 11
Sunday Midmorning …
Doreen watched as Crystal waved goodbye a second time as she headed down the cul-de-sac to the corner. As soon as she was out of sight, Doreen took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
