Back in the car, Vinnie held out the strip of bacon he’d reserved for the dog and Molly Pat daintily removed it from his fingers. Before putting the car in gear, he checked his rearview mirror as he’d done off and on throughout their drive.
“Are you still afraid someone’s following us?” she asked.
“Haven’t seen anyone yet.” He thrummed his fingers on the wheel as they made a loop past the outlet store fronts. They circled again, but neither of them saw a place that sold the kind of boots Foxy wanted him to get.
Foxy said, “Let’s just hang a left up at the road. There’s a Fleet Farm only a few miles away in Cambridge.”
“A farm store?”
“It’s a lot more than that.”
Driving into the Fleet Farm parking lot, Vinnie shook his head. “You’re kidding, right? You expect me to buy clothes in a big orange silo?”
“Ya, I do.” It wasn’t exactly Foxy’s haberdashery of choice, and it certainly wasn’t Vinnie’s either. “Sorry, no alligator shoes,” she said to him as they walked in.
Vinnie was surprised at the scope of goods, and although they didn’t have what he wanted in terms of style, they had exactly what he needed, a pair of sturdy black boots with wool felt liners. He paid for the boots and some Smartwool socks with a Visa card. Hanging onto Foxy’s shoulder, he put the boots on and wore them out of the store.
Catching sight of his pointy-toed alligator shoes peeking from the top of the orange Fleet Farm bag, she laughed out loud. The only boots she’d ever seen him wear were cowboy boots. “If you’re not careful, people might think you’re a Minnesotan,” she said.
Linking arms, they walked to the car, but before getting in, they scanned the parking lot for black SUVs amongst the pickup trucks. “His had duct tape on the side view mirror,” he said, eliminating all four in the lot.
“I’ll drive,” Foxy said, in the hope she could control the flood of memories by concentrating on the road.
Vinnie handed her the keys. “Remember when I had to sleep in your brother’s bedroom because we weren’t married yet?” he said almost as soon as they were buckled in.
“Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know. Just thinking about that first visit.”
She sighed. “Mm-hmm.” Actually, the part she remembered was him sneaking into her room, and the delicious, prohibited lovemaking in the bed where her teen-aged self had only fantasized about such things. She swallowed hard. “Long time ago, Vin.”
He fell silent again, and she noticed he was no longer checking the mirror for suspicious vehicles.
As they got closer to places from her childhood, more memories popped up, unbidden. She steered onto the freeway exit. Soon she saw the road leading to a park where several families used to share picnic lunches in the summer after church. She remembered the pastor’s son, Peter, who was a few years younger than she was. He’d turned out to be a handsome and accomplished man. The last time she’d seen Peter, he was tall, with an elegant bearing and a charming manner, but her mental image of him was that of a freckle-faced, round-bodied kid with an overbite and a penchant for crawling under the picnic tables to look under girls’ skirts. The girls said he was a pervert, but to all appearances, he’d outgrown his preoccupation with seeing girls’ underwear.
She couldn’t recall being involved in more than a handful of activities that didn’t have to do with the church. Church had been a huge influence—their whole lives, actually. Robin and Grace were members of a church in Minneapolis that sounded innocuous compared to the church of her childhood. Even though both were branches of the Lutheran church, which was so prevalent in Minnesota, the differences were immeasurable. There had been so many strictures and judgments in Pine Glen Lutheran that she believed well into high school, her only hope of salvation was to repent of anything she’d ever enjoyed or could possibly imagine enjoying at a future date.
When she was little, it had been oddly comforting to know exactly which activities were sanctioned and which would condemn her to eternal damnation. As long as she’d done this and not that, she’d been safe. That was when she still believed her parents and the church would keep her from all harm and that God’s love meant she had special protection from the evil that would befall unbelievers. But soon she’d learned that was just an illusion. Bad things happened to good and bad people alike, and they happened even in sleepy little Pine Glen—Pastor Paul and his wife losing an infant daughter to meningitis, for instance. Foxy couldn’t imagine they’d gotten through that without a crisis of faith.
Her own crisis of faith had begun in earnest when Mr. Linna, her fifth grade Sunday school teacher had placed his rough hands on her budding breasts one day and told her he loved her. He’d had tears in his eyes, and in her confusion, she’d felt sorry for him, even as she batted his arms away. Backing off, his lips curling, he’d said. “You must pray, Frances. Satan takes many forms. He’s using you to seduce me.”
By the time she was in high school, right and wrong had gotten so muddied for Foxy, the idea of being protected seemed ridiculous. It wasn’t as if Mr. Linna’s behavior had been the one cataclysmic event that made her shun her church teachings and doubt the wisdom of her parents. It was more like slowly peeling away the whitewash to reveal something crumbling and decaying underneath. By the time she was in high school, listening to Pastor Paul thunder from the pulpit, it felt more like theater than theology.
To this day she believed moving away from Pine Glen had been the right decision, despite all that followed. Moving to Sin City, she’d embraced what had been forbidden. She’d taken up drinking and smoking. She’d worn skimpy clothing and paraded on stage. She’d fallen in love with an unbeliever, moving in with Vinnie before they were married, and no lightning bolts had fallen from the heavens. For a while, her life had been charmed.
Rebellion for the sake of rebellion lost its allure after a while, and without planning to, she slowly began to reclaim a few of the values she’d been taught. She’d begun to yearn for a helpmate, someone she could have children with. She knew women were supposed to entrust their husbands with their well-being and happiness, and when she and Vinnie had gotten married, she’d never doubted that love would keep them together, just like the Captain and Tenille song Vinnie used to sing to her.
In the beginning she’d believed whatever Vinnie said, but it didn’t take long for her to discover he was a liar. When faced with his gambling, she’d prayed for God to deliver him from his addiction and trusted him when he promised to quit. When that didn’t work, she resorted to scolding and begging and bargaining. She took on his inability to quit as her own failure.
By the time she and Vinnie divorced, she’d run out of trust. The mistrust didn’t prevent her dating a few guys in Colorado and a few more in Minnesota, but ultimately, none of them had worked out. Her fortress of suspicion had caused more than one man to call her “cold.” So far, Bill Harley had never said that of her, and she’d begun to trust again. Bill would’ve done anything to protect her—at least until yesterday. Now, he had every reason to think, along with all the others, that she had ice water running through her veins.
Chapter 13
Don’t we turn soon?” Vinnie asked, interrupting her thoughts.
She glanced out the side windows to get her bearings. “It’s still a few miles. We have to cross the creek first.” Some people called it Brown Trout Creek, but most people called it “the swimming hole.” This was where her father had taught her and Matt to swim. Just around the bend from there was where she’d had her first kiss with a boy. His braces had nicked her lip.
Crossing the creek, Vinnie gave her a quick look, and she knew he was remembering, too, the night they’d spread a blanket right next to the running water and had lain there for hours looking at the stars and planning their glorious future together. Vinnie’s ideas had been more grandiose tha
n Foxy’s. He wanted to own a classy spa outside of the city that would attract a world-class chef, and where visiting celebrities and local performers could be pampered and renewed. She wanted to dance for a few more years and spend the rest of her life with this handsome, funny man who claimed to be crazy about her.
Foxy blinked rapidly, trying to keep her tears from spilling over. After a few more minutes she pointed to the road on their left. “That’s the back way to town now. Pine Glen isn’t the way you remember it. The population hasn’t changed much, but most of the people I knew moved away. The little school is gone and now the kids are bused fifteen miles away. The church is gone too,” she said. “My mother’s nursing home is up there, just past the gas station.”
Within minutes, they were getting out of the car in front of Senior Care Suites, which everyone referred to as Pine Glen Nursing Home, even though not one of those words was in the actual name. It was a simple, one-story clapboard structure with a wheelchair ramp and, when the snow was gone, a walkway that encircled the long building.
Foxy crossed the threshold and stopped to look the place over, as she did on each visit. They kept the facility way too warm, but at least it smelled good. That was important to her. When she and her brother Matt had checked out options for their mother’s care, some of the places had smelled so foul they hadn’t had the stomach to finish the tour. A couple facilities had the heavy pine scent of cleaners, and she and Matt had wondered just what smells they were trying to mask.
Vinnie hung back near the entryway, holding the tote full of Christmas presents Foxy had wrapped for his former mother-in-law. He hadn’t seen her in years. Judging by the look on his face, Foxy knew her mother’s deterioration took him by surprise.
Mary Tripp sat in a wing-backed chair in the common area. A handful of her housemates were scattered about the room. Some were watching television. Two men played a game of checkers, making up their own rules to allow teetering stacks of checkers to be moved around the board.
Although her mother’s chair faced the television, she was gazing out the window. Her gray hair was unkempt, and her knobby fingers were knotted together in her lap.
Foxy approached her, saying, “Mother, it’s me.”
Her mother continued to stare out the window until Foxy put a hand on her shoulder. The older woman looked up, searching her face. Each time Foxy had visited her in the past year, recognition seemed to take a little longer. “Foxy,” she said at last. Reaching for an embrace, her arms shook.
Foxy thought she felt thinner than she had only a month earlier. Crouching next to her chair, she asked how she was feeling, and if she’d eaten today.
One of Mary’s favorite aides, a man from Barbados, came over to greet them. “She’s had trouble sleeping the last few nights, so we gave her something last night.” He bent over to touch her shoulder. He smiled broadly, revealing gleaming white teeth. “You slept good, didn’t you, Mary?”
Mrs. Tripp patted her hair nervously. “I slept good.” She started to rock, forward and backward. Her tongue darted in and out between her lips.
Foxy took her mother’s hands in her own, gently squeezing each finger from base to tip and then stroking the palms with her thumbs in a circular motion until her nervousness abated.
Mary Tripp looked past her daughter and, for the first time, noticed Vinnie standing on the other side of the room. She cocked her head and stared at him.
Foxy motioned for him to come over.
Her mother’s eyes didn’t leave him as he walked across the room and set his load down on the nearby table. If there was recognition on her face when he greeted her as “Mother,” it didn’t show.
She looked down at his feet. He wore his new winter boots. “Wrong shoes,” she said with a frown.
He and Foxy exchanged a grin.
“What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.
His expression was one of bemusement. “It got broken pretty bad. It happened a long time ago.” To Foxy, he said, “The old girl always was observant.”
The “old girl” glared at him. “My hearing’s pretty damn good too, and you have a smart mouth.”
Vinnie tucked his chin back and raised his eyebrows. “When did you learn to swear?”
“They teach me,” she said, pointing a crooked finger at the men playing checkers.
Vinnie laughed. As he and Foxy pulled up chairs to chat, Mary kept looking back and forth from her daughter to Vinnie.
Once again Foxy felt as if she’d been thrown back two decades. Vinnie had always had a way with her mother. He got by with flattery and teasing in a way she didn’t put up with in others. Foxy used to think it was endearing and sometimes a little maddening, but today she found it disorienting. How had Vinnie managed to come back into not only her life, but her mother’s as well without missing a beat?
At the game table, the checker towers toppled. The two men playing laughed. One of them swept his hand across the table and dumped the rest on the floor. The aide came over, hands on hips. “Game time’s over,” he said.
Foxy turned back to her mother, asking about the other residents by name. Mary Tripp was coherent with her answers. Sweet-faced Irma, who’d befuddled everyone when she suddenly reverted to speaking in her native German, had recently begun wandering at night. Floyd just turned eighty-five, and they’d had a party for him with balloons. Foxy looked around the room and made note of who was there. Today, all the usual suspects were in place, except for the residents who took afternoon naps. “Is Pastor Paul taking a nap?” Foxy asked, recalling how surprised she’d been to see him here and in such rough shape during her last visit, after not seeing him in years.
“Pastor Paul?” her mother echoed with a blank expression. It was visible on her face when the words connected. “Paul. No, he’s gone. Gone. Amen, the end.” her mother said, punctuating her words by tapping Foxy’s wrist. Mary had never liked using certain words, Foxy knew, and “dead” was at the top of her list.
“You mean he died?” Vinnie asked.
She nodded. “I mean gone. Just like Ichabod.”
Foxy explained to Vinnie that Ichabod was how her mother had referred to the retired teacher who’d lived in the room next to hers. Then one day, according to her mother, “Pneumonia took poor old Ichabod to the big classroom in the sky.”
“Pastor Paul died of pneumonia?” Foxy asked.
She nodded again. “Pneumonia, the old man’s friend.”
Having seen for herself how frail and incapacitated her former pastor had become, Foxy could well believe it.
“They move in, they move out.” Mary tipped her hand back and forth. “Aloha on the steel guitar.”
Foxy and Vinnie shook their heads in unison. Vinnie leaned forward in his chair, with elbows on knees and hands folded to support his chin. After a period of silence, he sat up and said, “Enough of the obits. Let’s open presents.”
Mrs. Tripp eyed the wrapped packages on the table. “Are those all for me?” Her voice was that of a little girl.
They handed her one after another and watched as she carefully picked off the tape and folded the wrapping paper before examining her gifts. She tried to open the perfume bottle, but Foxy stopped her and showed her how to spray it. When her mother opened the CDs, Foxy suggested going to her room so she could load them into the player.
As they accompanied her down the hall, toting her new robe and slippers and other items, they noticed the kitchen staff was already preparing supper. Mary’s bed was made and Foxy saw the gilt-edged pages of the bible were open to the Psalms. Mary sat in her comfy chair. Soon her eyelids began to droop.
Foxy leaned down and kissed her cheek. “We need to go now, Mother. I love you. She slid one of the CDs into the plastic player, and fitted the headphones over her mother’s ears.
“I love you,” Foxy mouthed to her ag
ain.
Mary grabbed her hand and then Vinnie’s. Staring at his face, she said loudly, “Will you come again?”
He looked at Foxy and nodded.
* * *
They’d left St. Paul just after daybreak, and already, only nine hours later, the sunlight was fading. Walking out into the cold, Vinnie said. “Is there any reason we have to head up to Matt’s tonight? I’m bushed. It’s been a long couple of days.”
Foxy had been thinking the same thing. Visits with her mother always drained her, but the emotional strain she’d been under in a short period of time was catching up with her—the unsettling calls, then hearing about Sierra’s death and finding out she’d been stalked too. And then there was Vinnie’s bizarre arrival. What had he been thinking? It was not simply that he’d come unannounced. That would have been enough stress, but at least it would have been consistent with some of his other boneheaded decisions. But to break into the house and scare her witless! Well, that was just plain dumb, masquerading as creepy.
The other stressor, she had to admit, was how she’d handled things with Bill Harley. She’d done her damnedest to live her life in harmony and integrity. She liked her life. And then Vinnie had come along and hijacked it. At this moment, all she wanted was to fall into bed and sleep until the world, with all its inhabitants and all its complications, went away.
Vinnie turned on the engine, and while he used the scraper on the windshield, Foxy brushed the dusting of snow off the other windows.
“I saw a little motel back by the main road,” Vinnie said, walking around to scrape the rear window.
Foxy cut him off. “The one on Finland Road? Near where I used to live?”
Vinnie nodded.
Years ago, her family had lived less than two miles from what was the current center of Pine Glen. Their house on Finland Road had been a tan clapboard two-story with dormer windows. She could lie on her chenille bedspread in her little upstairs bedroom with a sloping ceiling, and see into the rooms of both houses across the road. Because the occupants, a boy in each house, could see into her room also, her parents cautioned her incessantly to close the heavy curtains.
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