Chasing Shadows

by Valerie Sherrard

  “That explains her thinking I was Mary Poppins,” I said, feeling rather sorry for the poor old thing. “Still, when I mentioned you, she directed me to this apartment right away. She must be a little lucid.”

  “A very little,” Nadine laughed. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to keep you this long. Lisa will be having a fit.”

  I said goodbye then and hurried back to The Steak Place, told Lisa that Nadine would be able to come in as she’d asked, and returned to the kitchen.

  Ben was stirring a pot of sauce, which a quick peek told me was for pasta. Remembering that I’d smelled oranges earlier, I started to ask him what he was making with them in it. My words were drowned out by the sudden clanging and moaning in the water pipes.

  It still startled me every time that happened. Distracted, I forgot my question and got back to work. The dishes I’d done before I went out were still stacked and waiting to be taken to the dining room. I carried trays of them out there and put them in place. Sue, the waitress who was on that afternoon, was in the middle of her lunch, but she still jumped up and offered to help me put them away.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Eat while you have a chance. The place won’t stay empty for long.”

  As if my words had drawn him, the fellow who’d been staring at Nadine the other day came wandering in. He ordered pie and coffee, but this time he ate with his head down, completely uninterested in watching the waitress.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Hey, do you guys want to do a good deed?” “Good deeds are the very reason I rise in the morning,” Greg said, getting up from his seat so he could make a silly little bow. “I would but there were more opportunities to perform acts of kindness for my fellow man.”

  “I’ll put you down as a ‘yes’ then,” I giggled. It delights me when Greg talks all formal and serious that way, which is a habit of his that I didn’t always find so endearing.

  “When?” Derek asked.

  “What is it?” Betts wanted to know.

  The four of us were at The Scream Machine on a Thursday evening, and I’d been waiting for just the right moment to ask. Betts and Derek seemed to be getting along okay today, but from recent experience I knew that could change at any moment. Laughter could turn into bickering at the most unexpected times, and it seemed that Greg and I had to become peacekeepers all too often. Their problems made me appreciate my relationship with Greg even more.

  Anyway, everything was calm and peaceful right then, so I plunged in.

  “There’s a girl I work with, Nadine Gardiner,” I began. “She’s just a few years older than us, but she’s on her own. She could use some help this weekend. Even a few hours would be great.”

  “Doing what?” Betts asked.

  “Count me in,” Greg said, “if it can be on Saturday. I work Friday evening and all day Sunday.”

  “She just moved into a new apartment and she’s going to paint it.” I answered Betts’s question first. “Saturday would be perfect. She and I both work, but not until four o’clock, so if we got an early start, we could get a lot done by mid-afternoon.”

  “I don’t know how to paint,” Betts said.

  “Me neither, never did it before,” Derek agreed.

  “How hard can it be?” I asked. “You just push a roller up and down the wall.”

  “So, what if it’s all streaky and stuff?”

  “I imagine you could just go over it again with more paint. C’mon, guys. She’s got no one to give her a hand with it. Her boyfriend won’t even help because he says it’s too unhealthy to breathe in paint fumes and besides he has a noon appointment with his trainer.”

  “Sounds like a nice guy,” Greg commented, shaking his head.

  “Oh, he’s a real catch. Jealous, bossy, and all wrapped up in himself. Actually, Nadine’s planning to dump him. I don’t really know him, though I’ve seen him in the restaurant a few times, but from what she’s told me, he’s a total jerk.”

  “Typical guy, then,” Betts observed unfairly.

  I took a deep breath, thinking her remark would quickly turn into a fight between her and Derek. It would be hard to stay neutral if it did, seeing as how she seemed to be deliberately looking for an argument. It didn’t happen, though. Derek ignored what she’d said and agreed to come and help at Nadine’s place.

  Then Betts said she’d come as well, and it was all settled. We’d meet at my house and all go over together.

  By the time Saturday morning came, Greg and I had gathered up some trays and rollers and brushes from our dads. We figured we had enough stuff for everyone to be doing something productive at the same time.

  “We’re ready,” I called out to Dad. He’d promised to drive us over and pick us up at three so I’d still have time to shower and change for work.

  “I have a couple of things to do around town later,” he told us as he dropped us off about ten minutes later. “Which apartment is it? I’ll bring a party pizza by around noon.”

  I told him how to find her apartment and hugged him good and hard because he deserved it. Then the four of us trooped up the stairs and knocked on Nadine’s door.

  “Shelby!” she said, surprised to see me there with a group of friends. “Oh, goodness. I’m sorry, but I can’t invite you in today. I’m painting my place and everything’s in a big mess. I think I mentioned that I was going to be doing that, but I guess you forgot.”

  “I didn’t forget,” I said. “We’re all here to help you paint. This is Betts and her boyfriend, Derek, and this is my boyfriend, Greg. Everyone, this is Nadine.”

  She looked stunned and delighted all at once, inviting us in and murmuring that she couldn’t believe it and thanking us over and over.

  “I’m just here because I figure it will look good on my resumé,” Greg said, smiling. “Which room do you want to start in?”

  “I’d like to get the kitchen done first, since it’s the first room people see when they come in. Then, if we have time, the living room next.”

  “Okay, Derek, let’s you and I move the table and chairs and stuff into the other room so we can get started.”

  He and Derek each grabbed an end of the table and disappeared around the corner with it.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” Betts asked. “My mom made me bring some old things to wear while I’m painting, but I’ll have to change into them here. There was no way I was wearing them on the street.”

  Nadine showed her where the bathroom was and then came back. “This is so awesome of you guys,” she said.

  “None of us were busy today, and I knew you weren’t getting any help from Leo,” I said, setting down the trays I’d been holding.

  “That’s all over,” she said, giving me a nod as though I’d asked something else at the same time and she was answering it. “I’m through with him.”

  “Seriously? You broke up with Leo?”

  “Yup. The other day. I just couldn’t take any more of his self-centredness, or his telling me what to do all the time. So I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I think he was in shock, actually. Like, totally unable to believe that anyone would dump a prize like him. He kind of stormed off in a state of disbelief, but he hasn’t called me since so I guess he’s accepted it.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t afford to buy mirrors for every room in my apartment, and Leo could never be truly happy without them,” she added with a giggle.

  “So, you’re sure he’s not going to freak out or anything?”

  “I can’t see it. Leo is too proud to make a scene.”

  I hoped she was right.

  Betts returned then, looking cute as could be in a big blue shirt that must have belonged to her dad at one point in time. The flaps hung down almost to her knees, and she had to roll the sleeves up a couple of turns in order for her hands to be visible at all.

  “I feel ridiculous,” she said.

  “But you look adorable,�
� Derek assured her. I was glad to see that they were getting along so well at the moment. It wouldn’t be much fun working together if they were at each other’s throats.

  Nadine looked at the cans of paint and checked them against the colour code cards she’d brought from the paint store. She pulled out the one for the kitchen, and before long we were all working away. We decided that the girls would do the edges where the paint had to be applied with brushes, and the guys would roll the rest of the walls.

  It only took a little over an hour to have the whole kitchen done, and we’d finished the living room too by the time Dad got there with pizza, juice, and bottles of water.

  “This is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me in my life,” Nadine said after Dad had dropped off our lunch.

  “Hey, it’s fun,” Betts remarked, and I could see that she meant it. It was true too. While we’d worked steadily, there’d been a lot of joking and laughter the whole time. Betts isn’t what you’d call used to doing much in the line of work, coming from a fairly well-off family that employs a cleaning lady. She doesn’t even have to keep her own room tidy.

  Not that she’s spoiled — or, at least, she doesn’t act spoiled. When she’s at my place and it’s my turn for dishes or whatever, she always helps out. So, it’s not like she’s got some kind of “I’m a princess” attitude. It’s just that she normally doesn’t have to do anything.

  I thought we’d get all the rooms done that day, but it turned out that after we’d eaten lunch we got kind of lazy and worked sluggishly the rest of the time we were there. Still, all that was left when we cleaned up for the day was the bathroom, and it was too small for all of us to work in at once anyway.

  Nadine thanked us again and promised that she was going to invite us all over for a party one night the next weekend.

  Of course, she didn’t know what was coming.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When I got to work that evening I saw that Ben wasn’t in the kitchen. Instead, it was the second cook, a crabby middle-aged woman who’d haughtily introduced herself to me the first time I’d worked under her as Mrs. Something-or-other — a long name that my brain hadn’t taken in.

  I’d heard Lisa call her Carlotta, but her attitude toward me didn’t invite familiarity so I just called her “ma’am” to her face, which seemed okay with her.

  She took her role as my supervisor very seriously and liked to make sure that I was busy at all times. I’d already learned not to rush when I was doing anything on her shifts, since she’d just pile on more and more work. Not that I didn’t expect to work hard, but this woman was a slave-driver! I hardly had time to breathe between the orders she barked out, some-times accompanied by insults. Even Lisa looked positively easygoing next to her.

  Unfortunately, that Saturday wasn’t a busy evening in the restaurant. That meant there was spare time — or, I should say, there would have been spare time. Not with Carlotta in charge of me. She got the brainwave that I should lug up the supplies that had been delivered the day before. The place had been in the middle of a lunch rush when the delivery guy came in with the order, and Lisa had impatiently told him to put the piles of boxes downstairs for the time being. There was no way anyone could stop what they were doing to put stuff away right then.

  “You, girl!” Carlotta kind of yelled, her usual way of getting my attention. “You need job to do; you bring up boxes from basement. Put away.”

  Her English wasn’t great, but it was never a problem for her to make her orders understood! I could hardly believe that she expected me to do that all by myself.

  “Uh, Ben said he and I would do that together on his next shift,” I said, knowing full well it wasn’t going to change her mind. I’d seen the delivery guy strain when he was carrying some of the boxes, though, and dreaded the thought of having to wrestle them upstairs all by myself.

  “What? You want paid to do nothing? You want maybe we should just give you money to stay home?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Go then! Do like I tell you!”

  I trudged downstairs and surveyed the piles of boxes lined up along the far wall. There must have been fifty of them, and I knew a big percentage held canned goods like tomatoes and stuff.

  Well, there was no sense in standing there feeling discouraged. I went over and scanned the labels that were exposed, looking for the lighter things like pasta and paper products. Maybe by the time I’d hauled the things that weren’t too heavy upstairs and put them away, we’d get busy with customers and I wouldn’t have time for the rest.

  No such luck. It remained quiet in the place, and there was no way I could work slowly when I was unpacking stuff. Not with the dictator standing over me.

  By the time I’d brought up everything that wasn’t too hard to carry, I was dreading what remained downstairs. I began to wish I’d staggered them so there’d at least be a break in hauling up the weighty things. Besides, I was already getting tired from the trips up and down the stairs, and I realized I’d probably made a big mistake leaving the worst for last. It wasn’t the only mistake I made either, as was pointed out in a hurry.

  “Stupid girl,” Carlotta said, as though it was perfectly normal to call someone you’re working with names. “Why we want this in kitchen?”

  I looked at the box she was referring to. Citrus air freshener.

  “Where does it go?” I asked wearily.

  “Is for keep place smelling nice. Not food to eat!” she snapped, as though I were a complete moron who needed that explained. “Put back.”

  I was angry that she’d expected me to know where it was stored without being told, but at least now I knew why I could often smell oranges around the side door. It was air freshener. I lugged it back downstairs and started bringing up the canned goods.

  What really annoyed me about the whole thing wasn’t even the hard work. It was the fact that Carlotta just sat back on her chair and issued orders. She never so much as lifted a finger to help. She could at least have helped me put a few things away, but no, that would be lowering herself to her assistant’s level, which would never do.

  It felt as though my back was breaking by the time I’d dragged the last box up and unpacked it. My arms were so sore I could hardly move them.

  The only good thing was that my shift at work flew by that night. I’ve noticed that the busier I am doing something, the faster the time goes by. I hoped that it had dragged horribly for Carlotta!

  I’d been so busy that I hadn’t had time to chat with Nadine at all through the evening. It had been my intention to talk to her a bit more about the breakup with Leo, especially after I’d noticed partway through the evening that her mood had changed. I wondered if he’d dropped by and said something to her. Earlier, she’d been in perfectly good cheer, but later she looked kind of upset and almost frightened.

  My shift ended an hour before hers that night. If it hadn’t, when Dad arrived to take me home after work we’d have given her a ride too, and I could have asked her if there was a problem. Instead, I just said good-night to her, aching and tired and looking forward to showering and collapsing into my bed.

  Well, I thought as I climbed into the car,I can always ask her what happened when I see her at work on Monday. I was scheduled for a day shift and she didn’t come in until four in the afternoon, but we should still have a few minutes to talk. Mondays aren’t normally that busy.

  It didn’t work out that way, though. On Monday, when four o’clock came, one of the other waitresses showed up instead.

  “Is Nadine sick?” I asked Ben. “She was supposed to work tonight.”

  “Nadine? No, she quit.”

  “Quit?” I asked, stunned. “That’s impossible!”

  He smiled. “This may shock you, but waitresses quit their jobs all the time. It’s really not that uncommon.”

  “But she just moved into a new place.”

  “So?” His eyebrows arched with amusement as he spoke. It was obvio
us that he thought I was making a big deal out of nothing, and I started to feel a bit foolish.

  “Well, she has to pay the rent and stuff. Why would she quit her job?”

  “Maybe she found another job.” He shrugged. “How do I know why? I just know she called Lisa yesterday and said she quit.”

  I went to Lisa and asked her what, exactly, Nadine had said.

  “How would I remember?” She seemed as uninterested in the subject as Ben had been. “All I know is she didn’t give notice. Very thoughtless. Now I have no one to fill her shifts and I have to find someone else right away.”

  “Did her voice sound funny or anything when she called?” I asked, concern growing in me.

  Lisa seemed to have run out of patience. “The girl quit, that’s all I know. I can’t stand here all day talking about it. And I would think that you might have work to do.”

  Discouraged, I went back to work, glad that my shift would be over at six. I decided to stop by Nadine’s place later, to find out what was going on, but when I got home I was met with some unexpected news.

  “Shelby,” Mom said, putting her arms around me, “I’m afraid I have something sad to tell you. Your Great-Aunt Isabel passed away this evening.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  You can hardly blame me for forgetting about Nadine for the next two days. My great-aunt’s death pretty much took over centre stage as far as my family was concerned. There was the wake and the funeral, besides which we had relatives from out of town at our place for most of the meals during the whole thing.

  My mom cried a lot, which made me sad. Well, actually, the truth is I felt pretty sad anyway. That was a surprise because I’d never been overly fond of Great-Aunt Isabel.

  She’d had a lot of habits and mannerisms that I’d found silly and annoying, but they suddenly didn’t appear to me in the same light at all. Instead, I could picture things that she might have said or done, and instead of bothersome, they seemed sad and pathetic.

  In a room full of people, Great-Aunt Isabel had liked to be the one who was talking. More accurately, she’d liked to be the one being listened to. She often put me in mind of Lady Catherine de Bourgh — a character from Pride and Prejudice — except Great-Aunt Isabel, unlike that other rather self-centred lady, had neither power nor wealth.