Assault and Batting

by Rothery, Tess

  “How about this, could you girls invite all of them back there? Maybe not to the actual B&B, but there’s a little restaurant around the corner. Maybe you could all meet there, talk, and then walk to the dock where they were going to launch their canoes.”

  Belle nodded. “Very good. How’s tomorrow?”

  “I expect they work during the week.” Taylor patted Belle’s hand.

  Belle shifted from her sister’s touch.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to ask. Everyone has to eat dinner.” Maddie smiled and nodded. “It doesn’t make sense for me to come along, so I’d like to do some background research for you, if you’d like the help. What do you want to know that I could look up?”

  “Is it…legal? I mean, what Colleen is saying…” Taylor swallowed, hard.

  Belle’s face drained of color. “Yeah…that. Could you find out?”

  Maddie nodded, but in a way that made the sisters think she already knew. “I will see what I can learn.” There was a hint of sadness, maybe even apology, in Maddie’s answer. After all, she was a child psychologist. This kind of custody issue must have come up before.

  * * *

  Amara and Melinda were happy to meet with them for dinner, but they didn’t want to go anywhere near South Yamhill River. Taylor could hardly blame them, but Belle wasn’t happy.

  They settled on a family dinner at the Quinn house. Taylor was more than a little concerned about how the presence of Grandpa Ernie would affect their openness to talk about that night. To use up some of her nervous energy, she worked herself to the bone cleaning after a long day at the store. She also made pot roast, her one fail-safe meal. That, with Yorkshire puddings and a salad, never failed to impress, mostly because roast is always good and who makes Yorkshire puddings anymore? It was a bit heavy for what had turned out to be a shining example of a wine country spring day, but no matter.

  The table was laid with a linen cutwork tablecloth her grandma had received as a wedding present, and the daisy patterned china her parents had received. It was overly formal, but Grandpa Ernie had insisted. After all, these ladies were company.

  Taylor’s mother and Amara Schilling had been best friends since preschool, which had really just been daycare at Amara’s house. Colleen didn’t go that far back, but for most of their childhood, she had always been around. A friend in Sunday School, grade school, karate after school. Whatever her mom and Amara had done, Colleen had done too, except the preschool. Melinda Powell had moved to town when she was a second grader and had instantly been welcomed to the cozy little threesome that was Laura Quinn, Amara Schilling, and Colleen Kirby. The four of them had the type of undying friendship that people make movies about, though this one felt more like a soap opera.

  “So…what you’re saying is everyone was really excited about finally going away together.” The conversation had been very surface since the ladies arrived, and Taylor, seated across the formal table from Amara, was struggling to get a foothold.

  “It had just been so long.” Amara cut a forkful of the crusty Yorkshire pudding.

  “Why do you kids drink so darn much?” Grandpa huffed into his mustache. “Not like there’s a war on. What do you have to forget?”

  Amara’s eyebrows popped up.

  Melinda’s mouth opened in a little circle.

  “Oh, it’s been war forever, Gramps.” Belle passed him the plate of roast. “Have a little more. I don’t think we’ll ever get out of Afghanistan. We’ve been at war my whole life.”

  “Not a real war.” Grandpa wasn’t mollified by the roast, though he did add a little more to his plate. “Not like Korea.”

  “It’s a pity Colleen couldn’t be here.” Amara sipped her wine, despite Grandpa’s look of disapproval.

  Melinda sighed. “She must just be sick over all of this. If I had been fighting with Laura like that, there’s no way I could live with myself right now.” Melinda stuck two fingers in the collar of her cashmere mock-turtle neck and tugged.

  “No, I couldn’t either.” Amara swirled the wine in her glass like it was something more expensive than the house wine from Berry Noir.

  “Did you ever figure out what they were arguing about?” Melinda asked Amara.

  “I tried to get Colleen to tell me, but she wouldn’t. From what I could hear, it was about some girl they both knew, but then, we’d have to know her too, wouldn’t we?” Amara sipped the water, her look apologetic.

  “What about the…girl?” Belle did a good job of sounding interested but not morbid, and definitely not terrified.

  Taylor’s throat seemed to close up. The only “girl” she could think of that Colleen and her mom would be fighting over had to be Belle.

  “I just heard snatches of the argument. Colleen said something about wanting to see her or wanting to have her here.” Amara explained.

  Taylor dropped her fork. “Sorry,” she murmured as she picked it up with a shaking hand.

  “But your mom replied she didn’t really like her…” Amara pushed the sleeves of her satin bomber jacket. “Is it warm in here?”

  Belle’s face crumpled in confusion, but she pulled it straight again, quickly. Her eyes were still grieved, but that was to be expected.

  “I know the fight kind of dragged on, but that door was solid wood. I just couldn’t figure out who they were talking about.” Melinda looked to Amara for confirmation.

  “Probably Brandy East, since her sister, Andrea, owns the bed and breakfast. Your mom never like Brandy, but I always thought she was fun.” Amara exhaled slowly, then took off her jacket and draped it over the back of her chair. “It is warm, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sorry.” Taylor pushed her chair back and went to open the window. She needed to turn her face away for a minute. Obviously her mom wouldn’t have said she didn’t like Belle. Then again, Belle was going through a difficult phase. It could be very hard to like emo teens.

  “Why would they be fighting over her after all these years?” Melinda asked.

  Taylor returned to her seat, cooler and calmer. She knew Brandy. She worked at the antique mall, but lived in Willamina. Her son, Hudson, was a few years behind Taylor in school. He was…very good looking.

  Belle was focused on eating. Taylor would have given her left arm to have never had these women over. Mothers needed to let off steam sometimes. It didn’t change their love, but the idea that her mom was saying things about Belle not being likable, and now Belle having to hear about it, was hard to stomach.

  But maybe the ladies were right. Her mom had to have been talking about someone else. A friend. Maybe even Colleen. That made more sense. Colleen wanted to be in Belle’s life. Taylor’s mom had said she had never liked “her” but the “her” in question might have referred to Colleen. She desperately wanted their guests to leave so she could tell Belle this theory.

  “Did you remember Gina Croyden?” Melinda asked. “She looked familiar, but I didn’t remember who she was till the next morning.”

  “Wasn’t she a couple of years younger than us? She did look familiar. I talked with her mom the next morning. Sweet lady.” Amara was nibbling her salad. Like the rest of the ladies, her appetite seemed to have died.

  “How awful for them to have this happen on their little mother-daughter get away,” Melinda sighed.

  “Who knows how many nights they had planned to stay, but they left when we did the next morning. Couldn’t seem to get away fast enough.” Amara set her fork down, maybe giving up on food for the night.

  “We should have invited Gina up for drinks, then maybe Colleen and Laura wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to fight.” Melinda set her fork down as well.

  “So, you all knew the other guests?” Taylor asked, wondering if the others could have had something to do with her mom’s death.

  “Knew of, anyway. Gina went to school here, but was enough younger that we didn’t really know her. She was there with her mother Nancy. You know, Nancy was a real comfort.” Amara sipped her water. “No
thing like a mother’s touch in a time of crisis.”

  Belle stared at Amara, but Taylor wasn’t shocked by the insensitivity of the comment. Amara was a lawyer and not necessarily clued in to the feelings of those around her.

  Melinda wasn’t much better—an accountant. Taylor had always thought of her mom and Colleen as being the balancing forces, the relationship types that had kept the friends close through the years.

  “I wonder….” Melinda tapped the tips of her fork against her lip. “Wasn’t Gina good friends with Shara? I wonder if Gina reminded them of Shara, and that’s who they were fighting about.”

  Amara brightened at the thought. “Your mom has had trouble with Shara since sixth grade, when she and Shara sang the same song at a talent show.”

  “Since when does Mom sing?” Belle asked. Their mom was great at many things, but her tuneless singing was a bit of a joke with the family.

  “She was a kid. Have some grace.” Amara smiled. “Sixth grade talent show was supposed to be fun. Shara made it a competition.”

  “Still that doesn’t seem like something to fight about all these years later.” Taylor pushed her plate away, most of the food untouched. Shara Schonely owned Dutch Hex, one of the four quilt shops in their town. Dutch Hex was a blatant rip off of Flour Sax and the relationship between her mom and Shara had always been a tough one.

  “Everyone knows Shara and Laura hated each other. But Colleen always wanted everyone to be friends. Maybe it’s nothing. It was just an idea.” Melinda held up her hands in surrender.

  “I don’t see how that would be something they would fight about though.” Belle was staring down Amara, practically begging for answers with her eyes.

  “You know how things go when you’re arguing, right? Especially reminiscing. And your mom…she really hated Shara. She never hated a soul, except that girl.” Amara’s eyes were narrowed as she thought about it. “So out of character.”

  “When Shara opened Dutch Hex, I thought Laura was going to completely lose it,” Melinda said.

  “What a name.” Amara shook her head. “Could it be more obvious she wanted to be the edgy version of Flour Sax?”

  “Who needs an edgy quilt shop?” Grandpa Ernie grumbled. He seemed to be following the conversation better than Taylor was. “I think she sells drugs.”

  “What?” Taylor stared at her grandpa.

  “Have you seen her fabrics? Terrible. All dark, dark stuff and the prints…”

  “I thought it was a focus on Amish style…Dutch Hex referring to those good luck quilt squares on the barns.” Taylor tried to bring a moment of order to the chaotic conversation.

  “Amish use a lot of dark colors,” Grandpa said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Belle sipped her ice water like she was dropping some news. “Kids around here don’t do meth. And pot’s legal, so they’re into mushrooms and other psychedelics. They’ve got to get them somewhere.”

  The room went silent as the women in their late forties stared at the teen with her dark eyeliner, shaggy black hair, and ripped and torn clothes.

  “I don’t do any of that stuff.” Belle held her head up high. “Makes me a rebel.”

  “Straight edge punk.” Melinda smiled approvingly. “Like your Auntie Mel. I remember those days.”

  Belle flicked her long black bangs out of her eyes with a puff of breath. “Someone has to drive the getaway car, and that someone had better be sober.”

  Taylor’s head sort of floated above her for a moment. Just another reminder from her dearly beloved that grief was only one facet of the completely horrifying job that was raising a teenager. She would definitely need to talk to Maddie about some of this.

  Nonetheless, Belle’s revelations seemed to have opened the well, and the ladies were talking again, openly and vividly.

  “I would swear on my life your mom wasn’t drunk that night. Not when she left her room. We’d had a big dinner and she only had two margaritas. Now, she did make them strong, I won’t deny that, but we had eaten like beasts. There was no way she passed out,” Amara said.

  “What was the weather like that night?” Taylor needed a better picture of the situation. If it had been stormy, her mom might have been blown into the river.

  “Dry and sunny during the day. It was damp the next morning, but I don’t think it would have been that night. Not enough for her to literally slip on the dock.” Melinda offered the weather report.

  “But she didn’t have to be totally drunk to fall, either. She had those sandals with the little heels, and the dock was old, not perfectly smooth. The boards were well spaced out. She could have been just light-headed enough to not be able to balance herself if her heel caught.”

  “I told her not to pack those shoes,” Amara said. “It was too cold and there weren’t going to be any men to impress.”

  Men?

  Taylor stared at Amara. Her mom had been single for so long that it hadn’t occurred to her she might have been looking for a man.

  “I know it sounds morbid,” Belle looked up at Amara, using her big blue eyes like a Precious Moments illustration, “but I really do want to go there. I feel like I need to see it. Force myself to believe this is real.” Belle hadn’t deigned to take part in either of the school plays since she’d been in high school, but she was playing this part well.

  “Oh, honey…” Amara’s hand hovered over the table as though she wanted to reach for her but was scared. “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Girl can do whatever she wants,” Grandpa Ernie said. “All you do is talk, talk, talk, and drink. If you didn’t do so much talking and drinking my daughter would still be alive.” He slumped in his chair.

  Amara and Melinda exchanged looks. Their plates were almost empty. Taylor had dessert in the kitchen, but she felt like they had all had enough.

  Taylor stood. “Thank you for coming. I know…it’s not easy to talk about. Not for me, anyway.”

  Amara looked at her, almost surprised. “I hadn’t been thinking.” She stood and reached across the table. “This must be just awful for you too. It’s nice that you have, oh, I’m sorry, what was his name…Clint? No, I know, Clay. Nice that you have Clay at a time like this.”

  Taylor swallowed.

  Melinda stood as well. “Thank you for inviting us, Taylor. Let’s not be strangers, okay? Your mom wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  Belle walked them out.

  Taylor fell back into her hard, wooden dining chair.

  She agreed. It would have been nice to have Clay. Very nice.

  Grandpa took himself to his room.

  Belle joined her for cleaning up the dishes.

  “That fight…”

  “She didn’t mean you.” Taylor put her hand on Belle’s shoulder. “When Mom said she had never liked her, she did not mean you. You know that, right?”

  Belle snorted. “Duh, obviously she didn’t. The question is, did she mean Colleen or were she and Colleen fighting over someone else?”

  “We could ask Colleen…” Taylor didn’t like the idea even as she said it.

  “I should probably talk to her. Without you. Sorry.” Belle stood straight her eyes fixed on a spot somewhere in front of her. “The thing about Colleen…” Belle ripped a piece of foil to put over the pot roast platter. “Before Mom died, I liked her. It would be nice to think she didn’t do this.”

  “It would be very nice.” Taylor took the platter from her sister and stuck it in the fridge. “It would be very, very nice to think she didn’t murder Mom.” She gritted her teeth. For Belle’s psychological health, it would be nice. For her pending custody battle, not so much.

  Chapter Five

  Roxy, the sweet and salty lady in her mid-forties with a wide, bright grin and a slight limp, had the opening shift at Flour Sax the next day. She said she liked Grandpa’s company, so Taylor left the two of them at the store and took Belle with her to South Yamhill River. They needed to see the scene of the crime. On the way, they pi
cked up Maddie. She claimed she had no news about the custody situation, but Taylor wondered. It didn’t seem like it would be that hard to figure out.

  Taylor glanced at Maddie as she buckled up in the backseat of their mom’s old Audi. She was realizing that she wasn’t ready to know the answer to the custody dilemma, but Maddie had already known. Maddie was a very good counselor, Taylor suspected.

  The bed and breakfast Laura Quinn and her friends had stayed at was delightfully traditional. The two-story Queen Anne with the associated fish scale siding in the dormers, and the porch with fancy scroll work and turned posts, sat on a couple of acres of river front. Baby blue, yellow, and white paint clearly aligned it with the Scandinavian heritage Taylor usually associated with Junction City, a bit south of the location. The lawn was lush this spring, but the landscaping looked half-hearted. A few shrubs not yet in bloom. No early spring flowers. Almost like it knew this wasn’t the right time to show off.

  South Yamhill was a small, smooth, slow flowing river. A peaceful place for a canoe ride, or for kids to learn to paddle a kayak. It was hardly a destination getaway, but for her mom, who was afraid of leaving Grandpa Ernie for too long, it must have felt perfect.

  Taylor parked in the big empty gravel parking area, and they made their way toward the house in silence. Andrea Millson, the owner might have heard something, might know something they didn’t, but there was no answer to her knock, and the curtains were drawn in all the windows.

  Belle had gone straight to the water, but Maddie had followed Taylor.

  “How are you doing?” Maddie asked, her head tilted slightly.

  “Ok.” It came out more slowly than expected.

  “You look a little green. Do you want to sit?”

  The front porch had an old pew and a swing, both covered in a sun-faded plaid canvas that used to match the house.

  “No. We’d better not leave Belle alone.” Taylor felt like running back to the car, instead, she took several slow, careful steps off the front porch, and then allowed herself to hurry around the side of the building to find Belle.