“But, I mean, you don’t have to,” said Jessie.
“I will try, but first you have to tell me why nobody wants to work for you.”
“Because I’m ridiculous,” she said. “I’ve never had housekeepers, and I do everything wrong. I feel uncomfortable having people clean for me, so I clean it before they get here. And they try to work, but I get in their way. I even offer to help, because Ryan and the kids are such slobs! So I get all overworked and mad, and it builds up, and I end up being snotty or mean, and they stop coming.”
“But you could learn how to deal with them better—”
“And that’s just the housekeepers. Also, you have the yard people, who had to contend with the dogs.”
“Can’t Jared kennel them on the days the yard guys come?”
“Yes, but they still poop everywhere and wreck everything. The outside is hopeless.”
We sat there for a minute, thinking. Then I put my arm around her. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I showered and dressed in Levis and a warm coat, grabbed my purse and Jessie’s keys, and managed to drive out to the street without the dog pack noticing me.
The sky was overcast with a threat of snow. Traffic was heavy on this weekday morning, and the coffee shop was hopping. Most of the patrons were using the drive-through on their way to work, so when I went inside, I found a table easily.
I ordered a mocha grande with whipped cream and opened my laptop. I wanted to check my email, touch base with a couple of clients, and read the morning news. Maybe by then, my brain would be awake, and I could think of some strategy to find home staff for Jessie.
But why would the new hires last any longer than the old? Working conditions were unpleasant, Jessie and Ryan were scattered, and the kids were needy.
My phone rang. It was my cousin, Lorraine.
“Have to talk fast,” she said.
“When do you ever do otherwise?”
“Okay, right. But anyway, we had to take Mom to emergency last night. Her heart’s out of rhythm, and they had to do surgery. They put in a pacemaker.”
I groaned. Poor Aunt Marie. In her late eighties, she was too busy, too curious to have her health jeopardized. I hoped she made a full recovery. “How’d the surgery go? How is she?”
“As you’d expect. Anyway, I’m at the office. Big meeting today. Gotta go.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
The line went dead. I glanced at the time. It was only seven in Dickinson, where Lorraine worked at a law office. I’d give it a few hours and call her back. Aunt Marie was Mom’s only surviving sibling, and while I had no illusions about mortality, I couldn’t imagine losing that critical link to my mother.
I worked a little more, looking up occasionally as I went from one email to another, one memo or line of argument to the next. The noise level increased as the coffee shop filled. The worker bees were being replaced by silver-hairs and mommies. I used to belong to the first group, the drive-through people. I liked retirement better, even though it wasn’t so much retirement as switching to a different kind of work.
As I checked the employment agencies around Denver, making notes and a list of questions to ask Jessie about her housekeeping situation, the hair on the back of my neck rose. I felt someone’s eyes on me.
I looked up.
Jessie’s mother stood across the coffee shop staring at me. I almost didn't recognize her. She was brown as a nut, her silver hair cut short as a boy’s. The arms sticking out of her white tee shirt were toned and firm as a bodybuilder, unlike the woman we’d left on the curb, a weeping, blubbery, manipulative mess.
When she started moving through the crowd toward me, I closed my laptop and crossed my arms, waiting. I had known Sandy when we were teenagers, back in Dickinson. She was pretty much a mean girl then, and as far as I knew, the thirty years since hadn’t changed her much.
Moving through the crowd, her eyes lasered onto me. I took a deep breath, ready for anything. The last time I saw her, she was insanely angry.
At me. For allegedly killing her mother.
I had been at the Moab Hospital, sitting next to the bed that held poor old Frieda, struggling for life after a massive stroke. Sandy had flown in from Denver in her husband’s private plane. They raced to Frieda’s bedside, but when she saw me there, Sandy had screamed me out of the hospital.
That was the last time we spoke, except for a fifteen-second confrontation at Frieda’s funeral, when Sandy again ran me off.
But now here she was, standing in front of me at a Colorado coffee shop, looking hard and strong and capable of mayhem. I lifted my chin. This time, I wouldn’t yield.
“May I sit with you?”
Surprised at her tone, which was calm and low, I nodded toward the empty seat across from me. She pulled the chair out, wood scraping wood. She sat down, shoulders straight, hands in her lap, her eyes looking at me squarely but without malice. “I was hoping to see my daughter. Is she with you?”
I didn't answer. From what Jessie had said Sandy was a stalker and I certainly didn't want to give her any information.
“Clearly, then, she is not,” said Sandy. “I'd like to get a cup of coffee if you're going to be here for a few minutes. I’d like to talk with you. Can we do that?”
Rather than packing my laptop and leaving, I nodded. Sandy couldn’t hurt Jessie by talking with me, and I might learn something useful. Besides, I was curious. The last time I saw Sandy, she was a neurotic blob, an unhappy country club wife with a husband she never saw and a daughter who despised her.
But Frieda rejected her and died, and Sandy blamed me. To some extent, I had to admit that was true. I had been the vehicle for Frieda’s dash to freedom.
“I'll be here a few minutes,” I said.
She went for a coffee. When she returned and sat down, it was with a controlled power. She reminded me of a mountain lion, all smooth-rippling muscles and contained energy. What a change.
Who was this new Sandy? Like me, she was around sixty, yet she had the body of a woman twenty years younger. The only place her age showed was in skin roughened by weather and hard times, and in the lines bracketing her mouth.
We sipped our coffee, glancing at each other, unsmiling. She broke first.
“Whether you are here to see my daughter or not, whether you will pretend you’re passing through by coincidence, I'm going to tell you my message. Then maybe you'll tell her. And maybe I’ll have a chance.”
“I’m not your messenger.”
She stared down into her coffee cup. Her hands wrapped it, fingernails trimmed short.
“I was hospitalized for a while.”
The shop door opened with the great roar of the fan. I glanced over. She did not.
“I haven't been the perfect mother, and I have a lot to answer for. But there is something that you don't know about me. I have had brain chemistry issues throughout my life. I never really knew this, and I didn’t understand it. Neither did anyone else. My entire personality was shaped by a chemical imbalance. For half a century, I was that person.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Some people liked me that way. My husband, for example. But I grew tiresome, even to him. And when I had my nervous breakdown and tried to murder my own daughter. . .” She gulped coffee, staring out the window, her eyes narrowed as she studied the family bumbling past on the sidewalk.
I stirred my coffee, what was left of it.
She looked back at me. “I'm not offering excuses. I don't expect to be forgiven. I got better. I'm self-sufficient now. I live in a little house in Holt, about an hour from here. I paid cash for my Jeep. I have a job, and I have references. If that's what it takes, I'll offer them to my daughter. So she’ll let me come near her. And my grandchildren. Just every now and then, so I can see them.”
She spoke in staccato sentences as if trying to contain her emotions. So help me, I felt sorry for her. “You’ve come a long way.�
�
She exhaled as if letting go of a great weight. “The last time I was myself, I think, was when I was a teenager. You remember I went to Mexico?”
I nodded. Frieda had bragged about that, unhappy that the ballsy young Sandy had been replaced by the shallow, erratic, dependent adult.
“I stayed with a family in Mazatlán the summer after high school graduation. It was set up by my counselor. I was only there for three months, but I felt like I’d been born there. I helped take care of my host family’s kids and even got a job at their restaurant. It was so much fun. The customers helped me learn the language, especially this one boy who came in every day, just to see me. He was the first boy I kissed. God, I was so happy. But I went back home, and my thoughts started changing. I met Richard just as I was slipping downward. He rescued me.” She grimaced. “Turns out he likes needy women.”
“Are you still together?”
“I got better, and he filed for divorce.”
“I’m sorry. About everything.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry about Frieda.”
“She did what she could.”
“But you never got help when you started having symptoms?” Having loved Frieda almost as much as my own mother, I wondered why she hadn’t done more to help Sandy at an early age.
“Don’t you remember those days, Karen? They didn’t know anything back then.” Sandy looked down at the table, brushing nonexistent crumbs toward the floor. “Mom was worried. I knew that. Even Dad tried to talk to me, but I shut them both down. By that time, I lived three states away. It wasn’t like we had face-to-face contact. And I was a wife. I was somebody else’s problem.”
That was the first thing she said that showed true bitterness, and it scalded me, the sense of abandonment that radiated from her.
She looked up. “I don’t want to revisit this anymore. I intend, if possible, to ask Jessie’s forgiveness. And then I will continue to make the most of my life. I’m self-sufficient, I’m engaged in good works, and I go home tired enough to sleep well. The only thing left undone is to apologize to my daughter. And I’d like to meet my grandchildren.”
It was here that she cracked. Hiding her face, she hurried to the restroom.
When she came back, her face was flushed. She apologized, blew her nose, and drained her coffee cup. “I didn’t expect to be dumping my story on anybody today, least of all you, Karen. It was just a shock to see you, and I assumed she’d be here. Most of the time, I just sit in the car and watch Jessie go in and come out. Sometimes I get lucky and see my grandchildren.”
“She said you were stalking her. That you leave a lot of texts on her phone.”
“I guess I do. I imagine that’s how it looks. I’m probably making things worse.” She extracted keys from her fanny pack. “Listen, just forget you saw me, okay? Have a nice life.” She pushed her chair back.
“Wait.” I thought Jessie might be open to hearing what I’d just heard, and anyway, what could it hurt? Maybe they could just have a conversation, leading to a clearer understanding of why it happened. For sure, it was Jessie’s call. A mother tries to push her pregnant daughter down the stairs? Holy shit.
And yet, if Jessie were open to the possibility of a relationship, she could verify what Sandy said. It was horrific, yes, on a scale beyond imagining. Yet, in my own lifetime, in listening to the many stories that unfolded behind my closed office door, I had seen cases where young mothers weren't as good as they wanted to be but got a second chance when they became grandmothers—a chance to redeem themselves. Maybe that was what happened with Frieda, too. Maybe that was what was about to happen with Sandy.
It wasn't my responsibility to fix them, but I could ask Jessie if she’d be willing to meet. They wouldn’t have to become best friends. Maybe just have a conversation and come to an understanding that would ease both their paths.
So I offered to act as the go-between. I told Sandy that I would carry her message to Jessie and see if I got anywhere. If I didn’t, she had to stop.
She agreed, and we left, hurrying to our respective cars, heads averted, not looking at each other as if to re-engage might destroy our fragile truce. On the way out, she was in front of me in a Jeep. It wasn’t new, but it was clean and had good tires. And strangely enough, it was the same model as her daughter’s.
Jessie might be angry, but she would hear me out. I’d offered my home and a safe place from which she could restart her life, back in Key Largo. It seemed to me I’d earned the right to have her listen to me on this one issue, consequential though it may be.
I drove back to the compound, sure that, wherever she was, Frieda was once again laughing at me.
Chapter 20
I BUZZED THE HOUSE, waited, and buzzed again. I was about to poke the keypad a third time when the gates juddered open. I navigated slowly through a churning mass of fur, teeth, and paws to the front of the house, where I parked and wondered how I’d get from my car to the door. Movement caught my eye. Jared was standing near the far corner of the house, hands in his pockets, watching me. I tapped my horn and made a hand gesture at him—not the one you’re thinking, though. He raised his chin and whistled. The pack whirled and raced toward him, following as he turned his back and walked away.
Jared owned the perimeter, and I sensed he was proud of that fact.
Even before I grasped the cold metal of the front door handle, I could hear Jessie yelling at Ryan. Christopher’s wailing added to the cacophony.
“How could you let him drink poison milk?”
“It’s spoiled, not poison.” Ryan stormed out of the kitchen, almost knocking me over. He mumbled an apology and marched down the hall. A door slammed, rattling the walls. In the kitchen, Sunshine was hiding behind a book, which she lowered and closed when she saw me. Jessie held Christopher over the sink. Holding her hand under the faucet, she scooped water into his mouth, helping him rinse. The water ran, the radio blared, and the dishwasher chugged through a cycle.
“Mommy, we’re going to be late for school,” said Sunshine.
“I know, I know!” Jessie shouted from the sink. Water darkened her blouse.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“Oh, my God, that would be fantastic,” Jessie said. “Just let me get the little guy dried off and—honey, do you want a granola bar to eat on the way? Sunshine, why are you still in your pajamas!”
“No, no, no.” Christopher shook his head vigorously. “Candy bar.”
“You can’t have a candy bar for breakfast. Sunshine, go get dressed.”
Christopher began wailing again. Looking up at the ceiling, Jessie wiped his face with a towel and reached into the pantry for a basket of candy.
I held out my hand for her keys, grabbed backpacks and lunch boxes, and went out to the car. As we were backing out of the garage, Jessie trotted toward the car with a different pair of shoes for Christopher. I rolled down the middle window, she stuck them inside, kissed the nearest child, and saying “I love you!” ran back into the house. I pressed the remote and closed the garage door just as the dog pack was returning. One of them, a shepherd mix, managed to slip under the door before it closed.
I shook my head, picked up my phone, and plugged in the school’s address as we drove toward the gate. In the rearview, I saw the garage door opening and a dog, tail tucked and wild-eyed, escaping from the screeching blonde woman brandishing a broom.
The kids would be late for school again.
WHEN I RETURNED, JESSIE was back in her office. Dressed in a blue hoodie, leggings, and Uggs, she was organizing papers and loading her briefcase. “A bad morning. Sorry.”
I leaned against the doorway, my arms folded. “Honey, you’re wound pretty tight.”
“It’s true. You know what the problem is? I stopped meditating. Dammit.” A folder had caught in the briefcase zipper and tore. “I haven’t exercised either. I’ve been meaning to get up earlier. We have a gym here at the house.”
“Not the gym.” Ryan came up behind me. “D
octor’s orders.”
“What kind of a doctor tells you not to exercise?” I asked.
“Exercise is one thing, but she goes overboard. It becomes her drug of choice.” He stood in the doorway. “Sorry about the milk this morning. I totally forgot to get fresh.”
She stopped her flurry of activity and looked up at him, her eyebrows severe. “It was one thing, Ryan. One carton of milk. That’s all I asked.”
“I’ll get some today, okay? Anything else?”
“I have to go to the office anyway. I’ll get it.” Jessie glanced sideways at him. “It’s no big deal. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
Ryan leaned down and wrapped his arms around her. “So, do you still hate me?”
“Yes.” But she smiled, a little.
“How about a kiss before we go slay dragons?”
“I don’t know.”
He spun her in the office chair and pressed his lips to hers, and I went back to the kitchen. It was reassuring to see they could be affectionate, but I was worried. They were under so much pressure.
A few minutes later, Jessie wandered into the kitchen, thumbing her phone. “I was hoping we could spend the morning together, but I have to get to work,” she said.
“I’ll talk fast. Can you give me five minutes?”
Jessie tapped a few more words and looked up. Her flawless skin was pale, and she wore no makeup. “Okay.”
“I went to the coffee shop you suggested.”
“Great. How was it.” She was back to thumbing her phone.
“Very nice. Good coffee.”
“Great.”
“And I saw Sandy.”
Jessie’s thumbs froze in mid-flight. She looked up at me, her eyebrows raised, her eyes wide. “She’s stalking us. I told you. She is harassing me, and now she’s going to target you.”
“Stop, Jessie. Wait.” I exhaled, knowing the steep hill I was about to climb and not sure why it was worthwhile to me. But it might be to Jessie.
Dakota Blues Box Set Page 67
