Tomes and Terriers

by Hillary Avis

  Emily stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  “What?”

  “It’s Mother’s Day. Don’t tell me you forgot.” Emily rolled her eyes as Allison gaped at her. “Well? Aren’t you going to show me your new place?” She moved to enter, but Allison used her body to block the way.

  “Oh, no—we should go out. It’s so messy in here. I’m still unpacking. Let me just grab a jacket.” She shrugged apologetically and shut the door in Emily’s face. Allison could almost hear the steam coming out of Emily’s ears at being left on the porch. She’d have to get used to it, though. It was going to be this way for a while.

  Allison looked down at the book she was holding and saw that her hands were trembling. She put it back in the box, dumped the small stack of books she’d already removed on top of it, and hurriedly closed the top. She slid the box into the open hall closet and, pulling on the jacket she’d draped over the books earlier, shut the door on the whole thing.

  Pogo danced delightedly as she clipped on his leash and they stepped out onto the porch. Allison closed the front door firmly behind her and jiggled the handle to make sure it was locked before flashing a bright smile at Emily.

  “Ready to brunch?”

  Emily nodded eagerly, but her face fell when she noticed Pogo at Allison’s feet. “Can’t you leave him here? I don’t want dog hair in Zack’s car. It could send him to the hospital.”

  “He’ll be lonely,” Allison explained. “It’s a new house, and it’ll be confusing for him to be here alone.”

  “Put him in the yard. Dogs love being outside!” Emily made a gesture that took in the whole front yard, the street, and the rest of the world. “Normal people don’t bring dogs to restaurants.”

  “Sure, they do.” Allison frowned, disappointed that Emily was being so difficult. “Don’t you like him? I thought he’d remind you of Tiny. Your dad made the connection instantly. I thought we could swing by and say hi to him on the way to the restaurant. He loves Pogo.”

  “Of course.” Emily rolled her eyes. “This isn’t about you and me, this is about Dad.”

  Allison felt her whole body still. She chose her words carefully, keeping her voice neutral. “Pogo is helping him. The doctors said if Dad remembers one thing, it can be the bridge to the rest of his memories. It’s like each memory is a domino. If we can just line them up, then maybe remembering Tiny will knock the next memory loose, which knocks the next one...you must have learned something about it in one of your doctor classes.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that he remembers his dog, but he doesn’t remember you and me?” Emily crossed her arms and glared at Pogo, as though it was the Yorkie’s fault that Paul’s memory was gone. “Why do you waste your time on him when he doesn’t even care?!”

  “Em”—Allison put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, but Emily shrugged it off—“it’s not his fault this happened. He didn’t do it on purpose to hurt us.”

  Emily’s shoulders sagged. “I know, Mom. I’m just tired of riding this ride. If he can remember Tiny, why can’t he remember that I’m the one who fed Tiny every day? That I played with Tiny every afternoon after school? That he helped me bake homemade dog biscuits for Tiny so I could earn my Girl Scout badge? At some point, you have to realize that he doesn’t want to remember.”

  Anger rose in Allison’s chest. Emily, who’d only visited her father twice in the last year, had no right to pass judgment on Paul’s state of mind. She hadn’t seen how Paul’s face lit up with recognition when he saw Pogo, how happy he was to have some shred of memory of the last twenty-five years. Tears burned in her eyes.

  “Of course he does,” she said fiercely. “We were his whole life. You and me and the bakery. That’s all your father cared about. That’s still in there, I know it! We just have to keep trying.”

  Emily shook her head, red spots rising on her cheeks as she stared at the porch floor. “Is this why you didn’t move to Portland? So you could torture yourself every day visiting Dad?”

  “Em.” Allison paused, waiting until Emily looked up and made eye contact with her. When she finally did, she said earnestly, “It’s not torture. He’s making progress. Come with me to Golden Gardens and you’ll see.”

  “I don’t know.” Emily shifted her bag to her other shoulder uncomfortably.

  “That’s what I want for Mother’s Day, for you to visit Dad with me. Right now. We’ll walk—no dog hair in the car.”

  Emily’s pained expression made it clear she had no interest in visiting her dad, but she nodded grudgingly. “OK—because it’s Mother’s Day. But only for a little while. I came to see you, not someone who doesn’t even know my name.”

  Allison swallowed any shred of disappointment that she might feel. A grudging visit was still a visit and the best she could hope for. Maybe seeing Emily and Pogo together would jolt Paul’s memory into action, forge the connections that had been damaged. And maybe Emily would see that her dad was still in there. That he was worth fighting for.

  Chapter 15

  The first thing Allison noticed when they entered the activity room was Kara Lee parked in a chair outside Lilian’s door. She was in uniform, but the holster on her belt was conspicuously empty—Myra’s doing, Allison guessed. Kara drummed her fingers on the arms of the chair as she watched the residents milling around the activity room. Unfortunately, Emily noticed her, too.

  “Why is there a police officer here?” she asked, frowning.

  Allison knew she probably should have told Emily about the murder already, but she wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. She shrugged. “Maybe she’s visiting someone here.” The lie fell easily off her tongue.

  Emily seemed to buy it. She looked around for Paul and, spotting him near the puzzle table, headed toward him.

  “Morning, Dad,” Emily said, leaning down to hug Paul. He stiffened and leaned back in his chair, shrinking from her touch.

  “Sorry?” he said. “Do I know you?”

  “It’s me. Emily.” Emily’s voice was flat and tired as she plopped down in the chair across from him, her lips tightening as she stared at him. He shifted uncomfortably, as he looked back and forth between Allison and Emily. Emily rolled her eyes. “Come on, Dad.”

  “Honey,” Allison said gently, sensing Paul’s growing embarrassment. “Don’t push so hard.”

  “I—I’ll just leave you to chat,” he said awkwardly as he pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “No, stay.” Allison caught his arm and pulled Pogo around the side of the table. “Look, I brought someone to visit you.”

  “Yes, she brought a dog,” Emily said bitterly. “Oh, and your daughter.”

  Paul shook his head and backed away from them. “I don’t have—I don’t know—I’m sorry. There must be some mistake.”

  Allison watched with a sinking heart as he walked quickly into his room and shut the door. She whirled on Emily. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Do what? Tell him the truth?” Emily’s jaw jutted out as her eyes blazed at Allison. “It’s not wrong to tell him who I am!”

  “He’s not ready to hear that. It hurts him too much. Imagine if someone told you that you’d forgotten everyone and everything you loved—your family, your education, your business. Would you believe them? Probably not! It’s too painful, Emily. That’s why we have to go slowly.” Allison sighed. “Remember the domino metaphor? We just want to tip one domino, not bulldoze the whole room.”

  Tears slipped down Emily’s cheeks and Pogo leaped up into her lap, nuzzling her face with his tiny nose. Emily petted him reflexively, accepting the tissue that Allison retrieved from a nearby box and dabbing her eyes with it. She sniffed, her breath ragged. “I just want to shake him. How can he do this to us?”

  “He’s not doing anything. He’s just trying to survive, and that’s tough with big holes in his memory.” Allison froze as she heard her own words echoing in her ears.

  Big holes in his memory. That’s what Myra had warned co
uld happen when her memories were ripped out of the Guardians book. She said that if Allison’s memories of the library and the rest of her life were too intertwined, it could tear big holes in her other memories when she turned over guardianship to someone else.

  Had Paul been the guardian of Remembrance Library before Myra? The timing was right—he’d lost his memory right around the same time Myra’s husband died, and that was when Myra had moved into the library, right after Al died. Maybe when Myra ripped Paul’s guardian pages out, it accidentally ripped out his other memories, too!

  No, it couldn’t be true. Allison shook her head, remembering what she’d seen in Myra’s memories before she burned them. The guardian before Myra had been a woman with salt-and-pepper hair, not Paul. Plus, Paul had lived in the apartment above the bakery for the whole time Allison had known him, both before and after they married. He certainly wasn’t secretly living blocks away on Rosemary Street at any point in the last thirty years or so.

  Emily shooed Pogo off her lap and stood up, scrubbing her face with the tissue and looking, dismayed, at the black smudges on it from her running mascara. “I can’t go to brunch like this. Is there a bathroom here where I can fix my makeup?”

  Allison nodded and pointed toward the kitchen. “In there.”

  Emily left for the restroom, and Allison watched Myra weave through the activity tables toward where she stood.

  “Everything OK?” Myra asked in a low voice. “Your girl looks upset.”

  Allison nodded. “She’ll be fine. She just tried too hard and Paul didn’t remember her.”

  “Oh, poor thing. I thought maybe it was about Ms. Gertrude passing.”

  “No, I haven’t mentioned that yet. I don’t want her to have any more bad feelings about Golden Gardens. It’s already hard enough to get her to visit. I told her Kara was probably just here visiting family. I’m guessing you made her put her gun away?”

  Myra nodded. “It made a difference, too. Folks are enjoying her, talking to her. Before they seemed scared all the time. It’s good for them to have new faces, you know? Something to do, something to talk about. She’s been a real help around here, and Lord knows I need all the help I can get.”

  “How’s Lilian doing cooped up her in her room all day?”

  Myra sighed. “Not so good. She doesn’t understand why she can’t come out and see her friends. Plus she was annoyed at Officer Kara being in there all the time. That’s why I asked her to sit outside for a bit, to give her a break. Anyway, Ms. Lilian’s lawyer is in there.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  Myra nodded, her forehead creasing with worry. “I saw Leroy’s mother at the early church service this morning, and she told me he’s expecting Gertrude’s autopsy report to come in tomorrow. If the report says the knitting needles killed her—which they did, of course—Lilian will be charged. The lawyer intends to have Lilian make a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced sentence, so that’s what he’s in there talking to her about. Making sure she understands what it means to admit to murder. Writing up her confession.”

  “But she didn’t do it!” Allison blurted out.

  Myra patted her on the back. “Honey, we know she didn’t mean it, but she’s the only one who could have. You know how this thief of a disease changes people. It can make a nice lady kill who wouldn’t dream of doing something like that.”

  But Allison had seen it with her own eyes in the Homicides book—Lilian was sound asleep when Gertrude Winter was killed. Now that she knew what was recorded in the killer’s memory, there was no more doubt, no more possibility that Lilian had snapped and stabbed her roommate. Someone else was responsible for that death. It was time for Allison to do the right thing, before Lilian pled guilty to a crime she didn’t commit.

  “I need to talk to Kara,” she said. She scooped up Pogo and marched over to where the police officer sat.

  Kara straightened up as she approached and smiled cautiously at Pogo in Allison’s arms. “Happy Mother’s Day,” she said.

  Allison nodded. “Lilian didn’t do it. I know it for a fact.” She took a deep breath and braced herself for pushback.

  “Didn’t do what?” Emily asked beside her. She must have come out of the bathroom when Allison wasn’t looking. To be honest, Allison had forgotten she was in there, and she felt a pang of guilt at forgetting about her own daughter.

  “Didn’t kill Gertrude Winter,” Kara said slowly, as she studied Allison’s face.

  Emily’s jaw dropped open. “Someone was murdered here at Golden Gardens?!”

  Kara nodded, and Emily turned on Allison. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.” Allison cringed apologetically. “With everything else going on...it just seemed...well, I knew what you’d say.”

  “How could you possibly know what I’m going to say when I am utterly speechless?”

  “Excuse me,” Kara said, standing up from her chair. Pogo grumbled under his breath and Kara kept her eye on him. When she seemed satisfied he wasn’t going to lunge out of Allison’s arms, she continued. “I hate to break up this family drama, but you can’t drop a bomb like ‘I know for a fact she didn’t commit murder’ and then not follow up on it. What do you know, and how do you know it?”

  Allison looked from Emily to the police officer and back again. She couldn’t very well tell Kara that she’d seen the real story of Gertrude’s death in a magic book. And she was pretty sure if she told Kara about how she’d opened the window in Lilian and Gertrude’s room and coincidentally touched the murder weapon, she might be arrested in front of her own daughter on Mother’s Day. She really should have thought of that before she opened her big mouth. “Well—I mean—I was just thinking. Maybe it was an accident.”

  “You said you knew for a fact that Lilian Hale didn’t do it,” Kara reminded her.

  “I just phrased it badly,” Allison said, flustered. “I meant that there were other ways Gertrude could have died.”

  “It’s pretty obvious how she died. She was viciously stabbed with a pair of knitting needles.”

  Emily gasped in horror. “What?!”

  “You don’t know it was vicious,” Allison said, rushing to reply before Emily could freak out and make everything worse. She thought back to the murderer’s memory. The killer hadn’t wanted to kill Gertrude at all. In fact, the killer had felt horror when Gertrude had landed on the needles. Was it even a murder if the killer didn’t mean to kill? Inspired, she added, “Maybe Gertrude just got up in the night and accidentally fell on the knitting needles.”

  Kara rolled her eyes. “OK. I think I’ve heard enough. Listen, ladies, I know it’s tempting to get involved in an investigation like this, especially when your friend is a suspect, but you have to trust in the justice system. The sheriff and I gathered the evidence, the DA will decide whether to press charges, and Lilian Hale’s lawyer will make sure she has the full protection of the law.”

  “I’m not trying to get involved,” Emily snapped. She grabbed Allison’s arm and pulled her toward the front exit. “Come on, Mom.”

  Allison stumbled after her, glancing over her shoulder at the officer, who stood shaking her head as she watched them go.

  “She probably thinks I’m a crazy old busybody.”

  Emily pushed open the door and marched out onto the steps. “Don’t look now, Mom, but if the shoe fits...”

  “Em!”

  But Emily refused to even speak to her on the walk along Claypool Creek to the restaurant across from the old log pond. Back in the day, it had been a truck stop where big rigs parked so their drivers could take showers and fuel up on three a.m. doughnuts or three p.m. French fries before they headed out, their trucks full of plywood and two-by-fours from the mill.

  When the timber industry dried up, so did the truckers, and the place had sat empty for ten years. It took the new owners, a couple of hippie kids, a full year to renovate it. They’d named it Feast and Flower and transformed the once-huge parki
ng lot into abundant gardens that supplied the restaurant with fresh produce and installed a beautiful covered patio area that was cozy even when it rained.

  Once she and Emily were seated outside and had their menus, Allison was pleasantly surprised to see that, in addition to a kids’ menu, Feast and Flower had a dog menu! When the server came back, she ordered Pogo a peanut-butter yogurt parfait with a homemade doggie bone on the side. Emily glowered at her, but Allison just smiled sweetly and ordered a morel mushroom omelet for herself. She was sure Emily would come around on the whole dog thing with a little more time. She scratched Pogo’s head under the table.

  Emily finally broke the silence when the server left to put in their order. “This place is cute. I can’t believe we got a table without reservations on Mother’s Day!”

  “You should see it at night with the lights. When it’s all lit up, it’s very romantic. You and Zack should come have dinner here sometime.”

  Emily’s face cracked into an incredulous grin. “Why would we come to Remembrance to eat dinner when there are fifty thousand amazing restaurants in Portland? You should come have dinner there sometime.”

  Allison chuckled. She remembered being in her twenties and thinking the big city was the be-all, end-all. But there was nothing like home. “The wonderful thing about living in a small town is that they always have a table open for you, even when it’s been a while and you don’t have reservations. You can’t say that about the fifty thousand restaurants in the city, can you?”

  “We have our local places, too,” Emily said breezily.

  “Well, then maybe when you’re here to visit Dad.”

  Emily’s face crumpled. “I can’t go through that again. I just can’t.” She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth as a tear leaked down her cheek.

  “Oh, honey.” Allison sighed, her heart crumpling like Emily’s face had. She knew too well what her daughter was feeling. “Don’t cry. The silver lining to Dad’s memory issues is that he won’t remember this visit, so next time you come, it’ll be like a do-over.”