The Volunteer

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Excerpts follow.

  See Barbara’s website for further details. www.barbarataylorsissel.com

  THE NINTH STEP, Excerpt

  Chapter One

  It was late on a Thursday afternoon in April and Livie was at the top of Peachtree Lane when she saw the car, a Mini Cooper, at the bottom of the long shallow hill where the water tended to pond after a heavy rain. It was parked off the road, on the wrong side, and the driver’s side door was pushed open into the roadside scruff. She had only moments to wonder about the trouble before she caught sight of the injured dog and the woman on her knees beside it. The woman looked up as Livie approached and her eyes, when they locked with Livie’s, were so filled with frightened entreaty that Livie’s heart jammed and what flooded her mind was a panicked impulse to floor the accelerator and flee the scene. Of course she didn’t. She parked her SUV and got out, cutting herself off from the vaguely shameful notion that there was a part of her that could have left the woman and her dog in the road as if they were nothing.

  “Someone hit him and didn’t stop.” The woman began explaining before Livie could ask.

  “Poor doggie. He’s yours?” Livie knelt beside the woman careful to keep clear of the blood oozing from underneath the dog’s hindquarters. A trickle flowed from its nose, but it was still breathing, dipping air in small labored doses.

  The woman nodded, hands fluttering above the wounded animal like helpless birds. “He’s so big, I don’t think I can lift him.”

  He was big, some sort of German Shepherd mix, Livie thought. “What’s his name?”

  “Razzleberry. Razz for short.” The woman picked up a cell phone lying in the tarred grit beside her. “I called my husband, but he’s not answering. He works in Houston anyway. It would take him an hour to get up here.”

  Livie glanced up the road, wishing Charlie would appear over the rise in his truck. He would know exactly how to move this dog without hurting him more. “We have to get him into town to the vet.”

  “I know, but he won’t fit in my car.” The woman looked at the Mini Cooper.

  “We’ll put him in mine.”

  “Oh, no, I can’t ask you to do that. He’s bleeding.”

  Livie stood up. “I don’t mind.” She opened the hatch, took out the blanket she ordinarily used as a liner underneath the plants she ferried to her landscape jobs and brought it back to where Razz lay. The woman was bent over him now, murmuring near his ear, things like, “My poochie boy,” and, “My silly willy boy,” and she sounded ridiculous and so tender that Livie’s throat closed. Her heart fluttered. Please, please let us get him into the car and into town without killing him....

  “We’ll make a sling?” The woman looked from the blanket to Livie to be sure they were thinking alike.

  “If he’ll let us,” Livie said. “Sometimes they snap when they’re hurt.”

  “He’s such a big baby, I don’t think he will. I’m Nancy McKesson, by the way.” The woman stood up, offering her hand.

  “Olivia Saunders, Livie.” In Livie’s grasp, Nancy’s hand felt as unpampered as Livie’s own.

  They knelt beside Razz again and gently shifted him onto the blanket. He offered no resistance other than to whimper.

  “See, he’s just a c—cream puff.” Nancy’s voice broke. She set her teeth together and pushed her palms down her thighs. “What kind of person does this? Just hits an animal and drives away? How could you sleep nights?”

  Livie shook her head; she didn’t want to think about it. “If anyone can fix him, Doc Forney can.”

  “He’s the local vet? I’m—I’m not familiar. We only moved here two weeks ago from Colorado.”

  “Ah. I thought you were new to the neighborhood. You bought the Bennett place.”

  Nancy nodded.

  “We’re neighbors sort of. I have the ten acres on the other side of Charlie Wister.”

  “Oh, his place is next door to mine, right?”

  “Uh-huh. You ready?”

  Together they lifted Razz’s weight between them, sidestepped to the car and managed to slide him inside. They waited to see his chest rise and fall and shared a look. It wasn’t exactly triumph that passed between them, but some paler shade of hope. Livie closed the hatch carefully. She found her keys and inserted them into the ignition. She was trembling; she couldn’t help it. But so was Nancy. From the effort and the anxiety, the sheer will to keep this dog alive.

  Livie eased onto the road, wincing at every bump, fighting a renewed urge to floor the accelerator.

  Nancy talked about the move from Colorado, describing it as difficult. The animals had all been spooked. “Charlie helped me corral one of the horses last week,” she said. She propped her elbow on the window ledge, rested her forehead in her hand. “I knew better than to leave the gate open. I knew Razz would run. It’s my fault he was hit.”

  “Don’t blame yourself.” Livie offered the bit of advice automatically.

  o0o

  By the time Livie brought Nancy back to her car, the dip at the bottom of the hill was feathered in light-silvered shadows and the faint scent of new-mown grass floated in the air. Livie let down the windows. Nancy got out of the SUV and when she looked in at Livie, her eyes filled. “The only reason Razz has any chance is because you stopped,” she said in a voice that slipped and caught.

  Livie looked away. I almost didn’t. The words hung in her mind. Some nettlesome prick of conscience goaded her to say them, to admit she didn’t deserve admiration or gratitude, that she wasn’t so pure and noble, that sometimes, she didn’t much like herself.

  She met Nancy’s gaze. “It was nothing,” she said, instead. Because the truth was too hard and confusing.

  o0o

  Charlie was in the rocking chair on her front porch, drinking a Coors beer when she drove up. It was a ritual they shared on summer evenings. He’d rattle up her driveway in his old beat-up Chevy truck, slam the door that sounded like a tin can and holler, “Livie, gal. You got a cold beer for a tired old man?”

  He wasn’t that old, sixty-five. Livie had watched him work rings around men half his age. He was an architect by trade. Retired, he’d say, if she mentioned it, but they’d worked several projects together in the three years since she’d met him and she knew better. She was more likely to sit down on a job than he was.

  She walked up on the porch, sat down in the swing, nodded at the beer in his hand. “You helped yourself.”

  “Door was open,” he said. “How many times do I have to remind you not to go off and leave your door unlocked.”

  She smiled. “It’s the country, Charlie, not downtown Houston.”

  He drank his beer. “That used to make a damn, but it doesn’t anymore. You’re too trusting. Where’ve you been anyway? You’re late.”

  “I need one of those, I think.” Livie nodded at his beer.

  He went inside letting the screen door snap shut behind him and she pulled her feet up under her, jostling the swing on purpose just to hear it creak. The sun teetered now behind the ancient wind-bent pecan tree that kept watch like an old druid over the field across the road. A frog peeped, a descending melody of notes. Out on the highway, a semi ground through a sequence of gears. She heard a horse whinny and thought of Nancy.

  She thought of Charlie who could be crotchety and severe, and more protective than the oldest of her old broody hens. He was the dad she’d never had. She thought of last Friday, the explanation she owed him for her behavior that still made her squirm. He was too private himself to ask, but the worry was present in his eyes every time he looked at her. She had to clear the air; she just didn’t know how.

  When he came back and handed her the Coors, Livie thanked him and told him about Razz.

  “Doc Forney’ll fix him if anyone can,” Charlie said when she was finished.

  “That’s what I told Nancy. Poor lady was devastated, blaming herself.”

  “Ought to go around checking bumpers, see if we can find who did it.”r />
  “Some jerk,” Livie said. “Is that the mail?”

  Charlie bent over the arm of the rocker, scooped up the pile and handed it to her.

  Livie riffled through it, the usual assortment: junk flyers, a catalogue from Logee’s Nursery, a utility bill. There was a note from one of her clients. “You remember Charlotte Gibbs?” Livie waved the sheet of scented stationery, cream-colored with spidery handwriting rendered in ink the same shade as strong tea. “She wants me to come and speak to her garden club.”

  “And you thought she didn’t like the job you did in her yard.”

  “She didn’t. She just wants me there so she can humiliate me in front of all those old biddy friends of hers. Acid-tongued witch.” Livie slid Charlotte’s note underneath the pile of mail in her lap and there it was, a white number 10 envelope addressed to her.

  In his hand.

  His.

  At least she thought it was. It was dusk now, the light was vague, plus she hadn’t seen his handwriting in six years.

  Livie put her feet down flat.

  “What’s wrong?” Charlie asked. “You look like you swallowed a grasshopper.”

  Livie picked up the envelope and held it closer to her face. “It’s from Cotton,” she said.

  “The Cotton? The famous elusive sonofabitch Cotton O’Dell?”

  Livie nodded.

  “Well, are you going to open it?”

  o0o

  She didn’t.

  After Charlie left, she set the letter along with the rest of the mail on the marble-topped island in the kitchen and went out to the chicken coop murmuring apologies as she lifted the hens from their nests and gathered their eggs. She was in the potting shed rinsing them and the last of the carrots she’d pulled out of her garden when her cell phone rang.

  She glanced at the caller ID, made a rueful face and flipped open the phone. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” Kat hissed. “I’m here, in the foyer. Mother and her latest are waiting in the bar. Our dinner reservation is in ten minutes. Please tell me the valet is parking your car, that in one second I’m going to see you come through this door.”

  “I’m at home,” Livie told her sister. She looked down the length of her dingy overalls. “I haven’t even changed from work. I completely forgot. I’m so sorry.”

  “How could you?” Kat kept a rein on her distress, but it rang clear to Livie nonetheless. “I reminded you this morning. You can’t do this to me.”

  “There was this dog,” Livie said and she went on to explain about Razz. “It just totally left my mind. Tim’s with you, isn’t he?”

  “Tim is working late, which loosely translated means he’s pissed at me.”

  “About?” Livie asked, but she knew. Between Kat and Tim, the hot marital issue was always money.

  “Short version? A pair of tennis shoes I bought for Stella.”

  “He stood you up for tennis shoes?”

  “Why not? You’re standing me up for a dog.” Kat paused. “They were Prada, okay? He’s mad because they were Prada. He doesn’t think his seven-year-old daughter should have designer tennis shoes.”

  “How much, Kat?”

  “Two hundred give or take.” Kat tried to sound nonchalant, but her voice wavered. She sighed. “I can’t talk about this right now. Mom and the new boyfriend are tapping their shoes and since I appear to be the sole attendee at this little soiree she arranged to show him off—”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Suave, debonair. A line four miles long.”

  “So this one can actually put sentences together? How much younger this time?”

  “Incredibly, he’s her age, I think.”

  “You’re kidding. You don’t suppose this could be about more than the sex this time?”

  “Umm, it’s doubtful. This one’s married. But don’t say you heard that from me.”

  “Married,” Livie repeated. “That’s— Mom hasn’t ever— I mean what about his wife?” Livie felt herself wanting to protest that it was wrong. She touched the corner of her mouth, not liking herself, the impulse to judge.

  “I think the wife’s a long-time invalid or something. I guess, you know, there’s not much to choose from when you’re over sixty. At least Mother goes out,” Kat added after a pause, “which is more than I can say for you, tootsie.”

  You live like a nun. Livie waited for Kat to say it. She’d dubbed Livie’s place The Cloister right after Livie had moved in three years ago. Kat had even found an artist to letter the name on a chunk of old barn wood. As a joke, she’d said. Ha-ha.... Livie’d stuck the lettered plank behind the potting shed door. She didn’t find it terribly funny, probably because it wasn’t terribly accurate.

  “I don’t guess there’s any way you could get here before dessert?” Kat asked.

  “Honestly? I’m worn out. Charlie and I started the renovation on the Bonner dairy farm. I drove you by there, remember? Last week.”

  “That old Victorian monstrosity?”

  “Bones, Kat. The house has great bones. It’ll be gorgeous when Charlie’s finished. It’s my part, the grounds, I’m not so sure about. I’ve never done a landscaping job this huge. I’m sort of regretting I let Charlie pull me in on the job.”

  “It’ll be gorgeous too, Livie. Every garden you’ve ever done is beautiful.”

  “But this is a hundred acres and the client wants all of it cultivated. Meditation gardens, a labyrinth, three ponds.” Ponds, Livie thought, what a misnomer. It was how the client, Dexter French, referred to the bodies of water on the property that he intended to operate as a bed and breakfast, but at least one of them was the size of a small lake.

  Livie carried the basket of eggs and carrots into the kitchen, set it down next to the stack of mail. Cotton’s letter sat on top. She picked it up, studying it.

  I have a letter from Cotton. Livie almost said it aloud. She imagined Kat’s reaction, something between blatant sneering and total disgust. Kat would ask Livie what it said and she would have to say she had no idea, that she was scared to open it. She set the letter down.

  “You worry too much,” Kat said.

  “You would too, if you knew Dexter. He changes his mind faster than Mom changes her boyfriends.”

  “Hah.” Livie got the laugh out of Kat she’d been looking for. “That’ll be the day,” Kat said.

  “I’m sorry, truly.” Livie apologized again. “I hate that you’re stuck with them by yourself.”

  “You owe me.”

  “I know. Can I pay you in eggs? I have dozens.”

  “My sister, the farmer’s wife, only in your case, it’s sans farmer.”

  “Cute,” Livie said.

  o0o

  After dinner, she sat at her drafting table with the drawings for the Bonner project spread out in front of her and tried to work, but she couldn’t get into it, and very soon, she gave it up, switched off the lamp and went through the house, locking doors. She retrieved the unopened letter from the kitchen, stopped in the dining room to flick the overhead light three times, a signal to Charlie that she was on her way to bed. Safe and sound. He insisted.

  His kitchen light flashed. He was satisfied.

  She took her shower, donned an old castoff dress shirt of Charlie’s and climbed into bed.

  Picked up the envelope.

  Studying it, trying to decide if it really was Cotton’s handwriting, wishing she didn’t care. Saying to herself: I don’t need this.

  It could just as well be junk mail, couldn’t it? Sometimes insurance agents hand addressed their fliers to snooker people into thinking it was something personal, the way Cotton had snookered her.

  Nearly six years ago, on April 29th when he’d left her standing at the altar. Well, not exactly at the altar, but in a small antechamber at the chapel where they were to have been married. In her tiara and tulle, her beaded white peau de soie gown belling at her ankles. Her mother, sister and all six of her attendants watching her covertly as th
e appointed hour for the ceremony to commence came and went.

  One hundred and twenty guests had been waiting to see her walk down the aisle on her brother-in-law Tim’s arm. A classical chamber ensemble had been running through the music Livie had chosen as a prelude to the actual wedding march. She would never hear Debussy’s Clair de Lune without it elevating her heart rate.

  Her gown now lay underneath Mrs. Rodriguez’s koi pond, the first one Livie ever installed. She’d cut up the silk petticoat and pieced a darling baby quilt appliquéd with a plethora of blue velvet zoo animals for her nephew Zachary, Kat’s youngest, when he’d been born three years ago. He still dragged it around. Livie’d given her tiara to Stella at the same time so she wouldn’t feel deprived. Whether or not the glittery crown was a suitable accessory for a favorite pink tutu depended on how regal Stella was feeling in the moment.

  Other monogrammed pieces of Livie’s trousseau were scattered in gardens around the countryside. Sixteen embossed linen napkins kept the ground soggy underneath Mrs. Teasdale’s clump of bog orchids and the heavy table cloth that matched them supported a bed of granite chips at the base of the fountain in front of Mitchell and Vaughn’s Funeral Home in town. The fountain was comprised of a group of cavorting nude water nymphs, which Livie thought was an odd choice for a funeral home, but then Hamp Mitchell was a little odd anyway.

  Several bed sheets, Egyptian cotton, king-size, 300 thread count, also monogrammed, underlay Livie’s own koi pond. She’d donated her wedding china and silver privately to the local battered woman’s shelter. It had suited her to recycle the gifts that her guests hadn’t allowed her to return.

  She would have buried her heart if she could have.

  Livie pushed her thumb hard under the flap, opening a ragged seam. She took out the single sheet of paper and unfolded it. Besides the opening address, Dear Livie, there were two words, I’m sorry.

  For a moment the world stopped. Her breath caught; her hand rose to her throat and she examined the shadowy corners of her bedroom as if she might see Cotton there.

  As if he might step into the light.

  o0o