“Just as a precaution, tonight I’m gonna pull your dresser in front of this window,” he said.
“Okay,” she answered, watching him work. Slowly, the fear the interloper instilled in her was fading; she was safe in her own house and her stepfather wouldn’t allow anyone to harm her.
Chapter 2
The next morning, Frank called the postmistress, Jessie. “I have a big favor to ask, to one as busy as yourself,” he said, chuckling.
“Go fer it, Frankie,” Jessie answered. “I ain’t got all day.”
“Can you write a note that I’ll be in at nine-thirty today and tape it to my door? I got a small job that I got to attend to here before I come into town.” She agreed to it, to tape a hand-lettered sign in her neat penmanship.
Frank be late today. Not exactly what he had asked for, but close enough, and people in town knew what it meant.
He was standing at the stove frying potatoes when Ellen came out. “Sorry about last night, Frank,” she said. “Think my imagination must be gettin’ the best of me.”
“No, no. You did the right thing. Intuition saved many a life, I reckon.” She went to the coffee pot and poured two cups. “I’m going out to look at the river’s edge after breakfast.”
“What about the garage?” she asked.
“Jessie’ gonna put a note up,” he answered. “This is more important for now.” They ate in silence, the possibility that someone meant to do Ellen harm foremost in Frank’s mind. He wasn’t sure what she thought, and didn’t want to alarm her. When they were finished, he adjusted the holster attached to his belt and stood up to put their dishes in the sink.
“I’ll get those, Frank,” she said.
“No, I will. It’s my job to do the morning dishes.” He was a creature of habit, but more, didn’t want Ellen to think her lot in life was to wash up after a man, even her stepfather. “I’ll take care of it when I come back in.”
“I’m going with you,” she said. He paused for a moment, doubtful at first but then seeing the wisdom in it. It might be good for her to go, to see exactly where the man stood. It was dry last night, so footprints in the sand should be visible. They walked out the door together, pausing at the house to survey the formal garden that surrounded it; beautiful roses, peonies and perennials that bloomed throughout the summer months and into the autumn, annuals they planted together, and an herb garden; herbs like sage, said to protect the people who lived within. Ellen bent over to pull sheep sorrel out of the herb bed.
“A vicious, invasive weed, delicious sautéed in olive oil,” Frank said, all traces of his Alabama accent gone. Ellen laughed out loud.
“Yes!” They walked to the wood line, the edge of the forest that bordered their property. It was never a scary place; as a child she’d set up her little tent there with friends each summer, a perfect, quiet place away from the adults to play Barbie. Now, not so sure, she didn’t think she’d feel safe out after dark ever again.
“I wish we could put up a fence,” she said. He looked over to her, nodding her head.
“Haft’ to be awful high though,” he said. “Haft’ to have barbed wire on top. When it gets that bad here, we best move away.”
“This is it,” she said when they reached the area. “I think this is where he stood.” They were careful not to step off the lawn, because clearly, right under the big pine, a line of large footprints were visible in the sand, the edge just beginning to be lapped up by the water as the gentle tide came in. It looked like whoever it was had walked along the water’s edge, to avoid the forest.
“Where did he come from?”
“I’m going to call the sheriff before we do anything else,” Frank said. He wanted to follow the footprints, to discover their origin. He looked up across the river at the opposing bank. It was desolate across the river, directly in front of their place; there were more cottages upriver, less down. The woods were thicker on the other side, the current was swift, and there was no dock or place to tie up unless the boater used a tree. He doubted whoever it was came from across the way, but crept along the river’s edge from the same side.
“You go on now, find something to do. I don’t want my conversation upsettin’ you,” he said when they got to the house. She smiled at him, but didn’t argue. It was making her queasy, the thought that her imagination wasn’t playing tricks. A stranger possibly wanting to do her harm had taken the trouble to make his way along the desolate coastline to spy on her.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go read awhile.” He nodded at her and waited until she was out of sight to call the sheriff. Well known in the county as a reliable and trustworthy auto mechanic, Frank did the work the county needed on many of their patrol cars. So when he called with a dilemma, they took him seriously. It was the first time he’d needed to call in years, since Margaret disappeared into the woods one day ten years ago.
***
The three of them, five year old Ellen included, were in the yard puttering, watering the roses and pulling weeds. When Frank stood up, Ellen was beside him but Margaret was gone, the hose with the precious water still running left on the ground. He looked in the house and then taking Ellen by the hand, walked to the river’s edge, just in case. It didn’t look like she’d gone for a dip, so they proceeded to the woods. Holding Ellen’s hand, they walked as far as they could into the forest, until the trees grew so close together he couldn’t get between them.
“Okay, I guess she’s not in here,” he said, smiling down at Ellen, not wanting to scare her. “Let’s git’ back to the house and make a few calls. Maybe she went to see her friend, Mary.”
“Momma doesn’t like Mary,” Ellen said, frowning. This was news to Frank.
“No? Why’d you say that?”
“She said Mary got the cooties,” Ellen said, obviously repeating what she’d heard Margaret say. Frank turned away, frowning. Margaret’s use of the word cootie to her five-year-old daughter transcended inappropriateness in spite of its truthfulness; he tended to agree with his wife.
“Oh, well maybe momma didn’t feel good when she said it,” Frank explained making an excuse for her. He was going to call Mary regardless. He reached out for Ellen’s hand. “Come on, sister, let’s get inside.” Then, on second thought, he reached down and scooped her up. She yelped with glee.
When they got inside the house, he put her down. “Run along now, darlin’, go on and play for a while.” She did as she was told and ran off to her room. He picked up the kitchen phone and dialed the sheriff’s office.
“Boyd here,” Boyd Dalton said when he answered the phone.
“It’s Frank McPherson, Boyd. I gotta slight problem here,” he said. “Margaret done took off again, but this time she did it right under our nose. I turned my back for a second and she was gone.”
“Okay, I’ll come out,” Boyd replied. They said good-bye and hung up. Frank walked to the back of the house to the bedrooms to get Ellen. It was a tiny house, cottage style.
Frank’s father built it after the war, and when he died, Frank left the apartment above the garage and moved back to his childhood home. Two months later, he met Margaret and her baby daughter, Ellen.
***
Margaret Fisher’s car, a vintage Buick, broke down as she was driving from Saint Augustine to Galveston. She just made it into the village limits when it started to spit, the engine sputtering for seconds until it died. She looked in her review mirror as it came to a rolling stop. Ellen was just two years old, in her little car seat, smiling and shaking a toy at her mother.
“Momma, go!” she said leaning forward.
“Nope, can’t do it. The car is broken, sweetheart. We have to stop here, unfortunately.” She looked around the dusty street and saw the line of storefronts, the gas station and the post office, and across the street, the blue painted cement block building with a neon sign out front spelling out Frank’s Garage. “Thank God, there’s a garage.” She got out of the car and opened the back door, reaching in to unbuc
kle her toddler from the car seat.
“Walk!” Ellen hollered squirming to get down. On the sidewalk, Margaret put her daughter down.
“You have to hold my hand, honey,” she said, gripping her child’s hand, the terror of a dream she’d had the previous night in which unseen forces, still vivid in her memory, took the baby from her. Ellen didn’t fight her, staying close by. Locking the car, Margaret wasn’t sure what sort of town this was, whether she and her belongings were safe or not.
Looking around the area, Margaret saw an old-fashioned place, quaint almost; a throw back to another time with a café in the center of town and a small, family owned grocery store crowded with locals, the sign out front; Family-Owned Grocery Store. She chuckled, first noting the women chatting with each other on the sidewalk and then, more sobering, groups of motley looking men sitting along a wooden bench near the entrance. They were waiting to assist shoppers as they packed their cars. She decided if she lived there, she could never shop for food at a place that hired such intimidating help, not knowing the men were indigents the storeowners allowed to work for tips. When she reached Frank’s, a customer was just leaving and he held the door for her to enter, smiling at her. Frank was still behind the counter.
“Help you?” he asked.
“My car just broke down, luckily, practically right outside of your door.” She pointed to the car across the street, and Frank came around to the front of the counter to look out the window.
“Let’s take a look,” he said. Just then, Ellen looked up at him and with her free hand, grabbed his.
“Dada,” she said. Margaret burst out laughing. Frank stopped in his tracks and looked down at the little girl, clearly moved.
“Oh, sorry! Pay no attention. She’s at the age where every man is daddy,” Margaret said, chuckling. And then under her breath, “I’m not married to her father.” A raise of her eyebrows and a grin said it all. She wasn’t married to anyone. Frank, not used to being flirted with and ignorant of the ways of women, took the little girl’s hand, sure his face was red.
“This yers?” he said, nodding his head toward the car and she said yes. “Better stay up on the sidewalk now.” Gently withdrawing his hand from Ellen’s and giving it to Margaret, he reached over and popped the hood. He looked it over, but couldn’t see anything obvious.
“Why not go get something to drink at the café and I’ll pull it into the shop to take a closer look.” She agreed and walked away from him after giving her car keys over. She made sure she walked with just a hint of wiggle, and turned slightly to see if he was watching her. But he was already on the phone, calling Paul’s Auto Supply asking for help to push the Buick into the shop. Margaret wasn’t used to being ignored; she got plenty of attention from men, so his disinterest fired something within her that would help keep her in the small town for longer than she expected, Galveston put on hold. She would call Alan and let him know there had been a delay. She was going to be stuck in Seymour for a day or two.
She still wasn’t sure how she happened to get there; it was far off the path she was taking, a wrong turn in Mobile probably. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get some breakfast,” she said to Ellen, who was tired and ready for a nap. Picking her up, Ellen put her head down on her mother’s shoulder and fell asleep quickly. No doubt tired from the previous night after pulling over to the side of the road when she’d realized she was lost, they slept in the car with doors locked. In the morning, she drove to a gas station to use the ladies room and get a wash up. Now she had no idea where she was, exhausted with a broken down car. But Margaret never got disheartened. It was her nature to look to at the bright side of everything. When she sat down, the sleeping Ellen slid down to her lap, Margaret cradling her with an arm while she drank coffee and ate eggs and toast. She’d ordered an egg sandwich for Ellen to eat when she woke up. The waitress, a young woman named Mary, was a talker.
“You just get into town?” she asked. When Margaret explained what happened with the car, the woman launched into Frank’s history, he was a bachelor all the single women in town had eyes for, but he wasn’t interested. No one said out loud that he might be a homosexual, although some of the women wondered secretly. “In high school, he dated the same girl till he left for college.” Margaret frowned, where she came from it was inappropriate to guess about someone’s sexuality. Either you were, or you weren’t. Maybe, hopefully, he wasn’t.
“He’s got his own little place down by the river, a real gem of a piece of property, and he owns that building the garage is in. You see how he looks; we women around these parts wait all summer for Frank to take his shirt off and work in his t-shirt. It raises the temperature a few degrees, let me tell you.” Margaret looked out the window, across the street to the garage. The door opened to the bay and she could see the back of her car but not the activity.
“How old is he?” Margaret asked Mary, now more than curious.
“He graduated high school the year I started. So he must be about thirty,” she said, sideling up to Margaret. “Don’t you think he’s dreamy?”
“I haven’t given it much thought,” Margaret said, thinking about nothing else but the handsome business owner with his own house on the river. “What’s the rent like in town?” She finished breakfast just as Ellen stirred.
“Not bad. You lookin’ to stay?” Mary said, interested. Margaret shrugged her shoulders, not willing to reveal anything about her history or motives to a stranger, not even knowing herself what the next hour would bring.
“Let’s find a ladies room, okay sweetheart?” Mary pointed to the back of the café. Margaret and Ellen walked between the tables, diners curious about her, the men glancing up at her face after taking in her figure and she didn’t miss their interest.
While in the bathroom, she dug out her wallet from her purse and counted cash. She had exactly fifteen hundred dollars. It was her savings from her secretary job, enough to get her and Ellen to Galveston and have a little nest egg in case it didn’t work out with Alan, or if he didn’t have money for her after all and she needed to move on or get back to Saint Augustine. Now this darn car thing; hopefully it wouldn’t cost too much to fix. She looked in the mirror and reapplied her lipstick, then washed up Ellen’s hands and face.
“Let’s go sweetheart. Let’s see if that car of ours is going to get us out of town today.” They left the restaurant waving to a disappointed Mary, and crossed the street. She walked through the bay door of the garage and saw Frank standing over the engine compartment with a tool in his hand.
“Hi,” he said. “It’s gonna to take me longer than today to fix this. You gotta place to stay tonight?” She shook her head.
“No. I don’t even know where I am. We got lost back at the river.” He nodded his head. People were known to take a wrong turn in Mobile, ending up in town as a result.
“Mary over at the café rents out rooms in her house. You want I call her for you?”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll go back and ask her myself. We were just talking, her and me,” Margaret said.
“Come back in an hour. I should have a better idea how long it’s gonna take by then.” She nodded at him, finally catching his eye. He’d looked at her beautiful face and huge blue eyes, auburn hair tumbling over her shoulders. She saw the admiration in his eyes and smiled back, giving him the approval he needed to keep looking.
“Okay, bye for now,” she said.
Ellen waved. “Bye bye, dada.”
Frank chuckled and waved to her. “Good bye.”
Margaret walked back across the street to the café. It was past breakfast and the space had cleared out. Mary was wiping down a table when she looked up as Margaret came back, and couldn’t help but smile.
“Frank tells me you might rent a room for the night. Looks like my old car is going to take longer than we thought to repair.”
“Yes! I’m the only place to lay your head in Seymour. I have a crib, too,” she said, suppressing her excitement that Margaret
and Ellen were going to stay. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a key and a card with an address on it. “That’s my only key, so hold tight to it. Go on over now if you want. You both look tired. Your room is right off the living room. The one with the crib. You can freshen up and have a rest. It’s right down that street, to the left.” She pointed to the street next to the beauty parlor. Five oh five First.”
“Thank you so much,” Margaret said. The thought of a cool place to sit with her child was heavenly. Taking the card, they left the café again and proceeded down the street. It occurred to her that Mary was pretty dumb to hand a house key over to a stranger. What if she was a burglar? The lock was stubborn, but she got it open, and the cool air inside rushed out at them. When they went inside the house, she understood why she’d hand over a key; it really was a rooming house with no personal objects around or anything of value that could be stolen. It made Margaret feel better for some reason. It appeared Mary didn’t have much more than she did.
“House?” Ellen asked, and Margaret confirmed it. “House.”
“Let’s walk back to the garage and get our suitcase,” Margaret said. Frank was standing in front of the auto parts store talking to the owner Paul, when he saw her walking towards him and the sight of her rendered him speechless for a moment.
“I need my suitcase,” she said demurely, looking up into his eyes.
“Suitcase,” Ellen repeated. They laughed, walking back to the garage. Frank opened the trunk of her car so she could get a bag out, and feeling its weight, offer to carry it back to Mary’s for her.
They didn’t talk as they walked side by side, Margaret carrying Ellen on her hip. But if they had admitted what they were thinking they’d have been surprised that it was similar thoughts. Margaret imagined the kind of couple they made; people would take notice. Frank thought of the empty cottage he’d recently moved to, filled with a ready-made family. They arrived at Mary’s but he didn’t linger explaining he had to get back because he’d left the shop open. It was that kind of town; you could leave your business wide open and it would be safe.
Slow Dancing Page 2
