by Catie Rhodes
Nobody had ever wanted to be a part of my life so badly. I was flattered and weirded out. A lifetime of having few friends and being the butt of the joke made me suspicious, but I’d never seen anybody look more sincere than Hannah looked right then. She was making an effort. Maybe I should, too.
“Thanks for rescuing me. I only agreed to the date because I thought he might know something about Rae’s murder.”
“Did he?”
“Nothing I hadn’t already figured out on my own. Worth a try, I guess.”
Hannah frowned. “You know, he was pissed. Do you think he’ll retaliate?”
I found myself telling Hannah about the other time I’d seen Michael Gage so angry.
“Let me make sure I understand,” Hannah said after I went through the story. “He got that angry over a letter from an old colleague?”
“Best I could tell.” After a short internal debate, I admitted my further snooping. “Looked the guy up on line and sent him an email asking him to send some pictures of Michael Gage. I made up a story about wanting to put them in the church newsletter.”
Hannah’s eyes widened. “What on earth for?”
“I guess I wanted to see if it’s the same Michael Gage.” Hannah looked puzzled, so I explained. “I found a website for a missing woman named Sharon Zeeman Gage. Her story matched details in the Jerry Bower letter Pastor Gage got so angry about.”
“So you think…” Hannah let her words trail off.
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “Before I think too much, I want to find out what I can.”
“Yeah. The most reasonable explanation is a case of mistaken identity.”
“But if it was, why did he get so mad?” That’s what kept me from dismissing the whole episode.
Hannah took a step closer to me. Her hand closed around my arm to the point of it being painful. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, listen to me. There is a woman watching us. She’s coming up behind you.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Blonde—”
“Go to your car and call 911. She’s dangerous.” My heart rattled against my chest, beating so hard my vision jarred with it. My face tingled as adrenaline rushed through me.
Hannah backed away, her eyes almost comically wide.
Veronica Spinelli grabbed my upper arm and spun me around.
“The old bitch told me you sold the trailer.” Veronica’s already scary face twisted into a feral snarl. “She wouldn’t let me look at what you found out there. Finally, I got her to tell me you’d come here.”
“You confronted my grandmother?” My voice rose in volume as my fury took hold. After what Dean told me and what I’d seen online, I feared Veronica. But my anger at her for bullying Memaw overrode that fear.
“I want what’s mine.” Veronica poked me in the chest.
“Tell me what’s yours. I’ll be happy to give it to you.” I grabbed her hand and squeezed. Veronica tightened her jaw against the pain and yanked her hand away from me.
“Don’t touch me again.” I said the words with my teeth clenched, hoping I looked scary. Schoolyard fights had taught me to stand my ground even when I knew I was about to get my ass whipped.
Veronica grabbed me by my blouse. I heard a seam tear. My fists went up. Hannah came out of nowhere and hit Veronica’s back at a full run. She wrapped her legs around Veronica’s torso and rode her like the jockey from Hell, tearing at her hair. Veronica managed to shake Hannah off. She thumped to the ground with a pained cry.
What happened next goes to show I’d never make it in prison. I threw a punch at Veronica. The punch connected to Veronica’s solar plexus just fine. Veronica even stumbled to the pavement.
She came back up with a fist-sized rock in her hand. I saw the rock hurtling at me, but I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. The rock crashed into my head with a meaty sounding thud. I hit the asphalt hard and tasted blood in my mouth. The parking lot lights got very bright. I could do nothing but listen to Veronica’s footsteps running away. I floated on a cloud of misery until a flashlight’s blinding beam snapped me back into awareness.
“Aw, hell. She just passed out. This ain’t no emergency.” Sheriff Joey Holze leaned over me, disgust plastered all over his face. He was one to act holier than thou. He’d stuffed his chubby body into a cowboy outfit, complete with hat and huge buckle making an indention in his belly.
Carly Holze—better known as Mrs. Sheriff Holze—grabbed Hannah by the arm when she tried to approach me. Hannah tried to shake off her aunt, but Carly dug her bony fingers into Hannah’s bare arm.
“You okay?” I didn’t want Hannah to get herself crossways with her aunt and uncle, who were her only blood relatives in Gaslight City.
“I’m all right—”
“No damn thanks to you.” Carly Holze shouted over the rest of Hannah’s sentence. “I always say: Once a trouble maker, always a trouble maker.”
Hannah jerked away from her aunt and directed an eye roll at the starry sky. Carly, wrapped up in giving me a hateful glare, seemed oblivious to it. Too bad.
My head throbbed and swam. I dragged myself to my feet and staggered toward my car. I leaned against it and fumbled for my keys, my breath coming in harsh gasps. Dean Turgeau appeared in front of me decked out in his uniform. I saw two of him and rubbed the side of my face.
“Where’d you come from?”
“Someone in Danner’s Landing called 911.” Dean shined his flashlight in my face and took a close look at me. “You all right?”
“Veronica Spinelli did this.” My words had a sluggish sound to them. “I need to get home. She visited Memaw first.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Dean grabbed me under my arms and steadied me against the Nova. “Except maybe to the hospital. You might have a concussion.”
“Dean, listen to me.” I grabbed Dean’s shoulders as much to hold me upright as to get his attention. “Veronica might have hurt my grandmother.”
Realization sharpened Dean’s features. He turned from me and shouted for Brittany Watson. She ran to us with her shoulders back and her chin high. She wore an excited grin. I would have been amused, but my head hurt too bad.
“Go check on Mrs. Mace, Deputy Watson. Ms. Spinelli reportedly visited her before she confronted Peri Jean here.”
Brittany ran for her car and screeched out of the parking lot. Ignoring my arguments, Dean drove me to the hospital in his cop car. At Sheriff Joey Holze and Carly’s insistence, the town’s only ambulance drove Hannah to the ER to treat her scrapes and bruises. Who said influence didn’t help?
18
At the hospital, I found myself confined in a curtained room furnished with an examining table and a stool for the doctor to sit on. The curtains provided only the illusion of privacy to anyone with normal hearing. I listened to a soap opera’s worth of drama before Dr. Longstreet joined me.
“I’m fine,” I told him and stood. The sooner I got out of this place, the better. The antiseptic odor and the intense glare of the overhead lights had me in a cold sweat. Too many bad memories.
“That’s not what Turgeau told me. He was quite concerned about you.” Dr. Longstreet approached me and shined a pen light in my eyes.
I grunted and tried to struggle away. The pinprick of light left behind an aftershock of blazing pain.
“Be still,” Dr. Longstreet said. “It’ll only take a moment. You might have a concussion.” Eons later, he shook his head. “I don’t see any signs of a concussion. You’re going to look like you’ve been in a fistfight.”
“I have been in fistfight.” I got up again and pulled together my belongings. “I need to get home to Memaw. Brittany Watson went to check on her, but I never heard any more.”
“Leticia’s fine.” Dr. Longstreet stood in front of me barring my way out. “She’s staying in the hospital tonight.”
“What did Veronica Spinelli do to her?” I shoved around Dr. Longstreet and pushed the curtain aside.
I found myself in a sanitized maze of curtains, and I realized I had no idea where to go.
“Just wait a minute before you go off half-cocked, Peri Jean.” Dr. Longstreet exited the exam room and came around me. “Your grandmother is fine. She just had a little spell, probably brought on by all the excitement.”
“Then I need to see her.” If Veronica Spinelli hurt my grandmother, I’d make her beg the police to arrest her sorry ass.
“Not just yet, you don’t. Come on. I want to talk to you.” Dr. Longstreet hustled us through a tangle of austere rooms scented with fear. I saw people wandering around who were no longer part of the living world. A little girl holding a teddy bear skipped up and down the halls. Obviously dead, her spirit form wore ghastly injuries. She emitted a loneliness so complete and poignant, it broke my heart.
I yelped when Dr. Longstreet took my arm and pulled me to his office suite. We went straight through his waiting room and past the receptionist’s desk and into his office.
“Do you want a drink?” Dr. Longstreet sat down behind his desk and let out a deep sigh.
I shook my head.
“Of course. You don’t drink.” He produced a pint bottle of Johnny Walker from his desk and drank straight from the bottle. “Days like today have given me this head of white hair.”
“What happened today?” I asked. “Car wreck?”
“How do you know?” Dr. Longstreet sat up straight and frowned at me.
I said nothing. All my life, it had been inappropriate for me to admit I could see the dead.
“You really do see them, don’t you?” He knew the answer. “The ghosts, I mean.”
I didn’t understand this sudden change in protocol. Dr. Longstreet and I always pretended I didn’t see the spirit world’s occupants. We never broke character. Now he wanted me to talk about it? Or was this some kind of trick he would to use to send me back to the loony bin? I searched the recesses of my mind for all the information I could remember on involuntary commitment for mental health reasons. Clammy, slimy sweat broke out all over me.
“Yes.” Dr. Longstreet’s voice made me jump. “Terrible car wreck. An eighteen-wheeler hit a passenger car head on. What did you see back there? To use a tired expression, you looked like you’d seen a ghost.” Dr. Longstreet took another long swig of Johnny Walker and set the bottle down on his desk.
Suddenly, I had a flash of intuition. Memaw was dead. Dr. Longstreet bought me back here so my wails wouldn’t disrupt the entire hospital. He wouldn’t have me back here to tell me she was fine and dandy. I called on every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep myself seated and my manner calm. I couldn’t act nuts. They might not allow me to go home.
“She was less than ten, wasn’t she?” I played Dr. Longstreet’s game. “The little girl. She had on a pink sweat jacket and long black hair. She had her teddy bear with her, one of those expensive ones.”
Dr. Longstreet jumped as though he’d been shocked. “All these years, I knew. I knew you saw things beyond the realm of what medical science can explain. As a doctor, a country doctor, I’ve seen things. I knew.”
“Then why did we always pretend I wasn’t quite right?”
“Leticia fought tooth and nail to get legal custody of you after Barbie allowed you to be committed for testing. Carly Holze spoke against Leticia both publicly and to child services. Until that happened, your grandmother believed Carly was an ally. It scared her to have misjudged someone so powerful.”
“Carly Holze thought I’d somehow tainted Hannah.” I saw it as an adult for the first time. “She wanted something done to me, and she had the law on her side.”
Dr. Longstreet pursed his lips and frowned. “This is a small town, honey. The ‘haves’ have everything, including all the power. Leticia knew it. When you came home, she worried she’d lose you again.”
“I don’t understand why she didn’t just move us away from here.”
“Leticia said…she said to make you tough it out. She said you’d have to learn to hide it or you’d never be safe.” Dr. Longstreet looked down at his desk as he spoke.
“She’s dead, isn’t she? Memaw, I mean.”
“No.” Dr. Longstreet’s eyebrows shot up. He gave his head a hard shake. “Of course she’s not dead. She’s resting in a private room.”
“Then why did you bring me in here?” I stood. “I need to let her know I’m here.”
“Sit down.” Dr. Longstreet leveled his gaze on me. His tone left me no choice but to comply. I sat.
“I need to tell you something. I should have already told you, but I’m stalling.” Dr. Longstreet didn’t have Benny’s slick polish, but he had a certain dignity to him. I had never seen him this way. Fear grabbed hold of me and squeezed.
“Leticia was right about one thing. Treating you the way we did made you tough.” Dr. Longstreet rubbed his face. He looked twenty years older. “You never learned to trust, though. You also grew to be very dependent on your grandmother. So, last spring when we found out—”
“What are you saying?” It all clicked into place. Memaw’s tiredness, the way she seemed to have aged so much in just a few months—everything started to make some kind of terrible sense.
“I’m saying Leticia has cancer. By the time we found it, it was already too late to…”
I forgot how to breathe. A crushing weight bore down on me, finding every sore muscle and making it hurt worse. I couldn’t handle this. Too intense. Too adult. Too permanent.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” Some part of me wildly hoped asking enough questions would make this horrible thing not true. If I wiggled and danced enough, I might wake up in my bed, sweating out the remnants of this nightmare. But the cold truth has a certain ring. This little melodrama was real. My grandmother was dying.
“She wanted the two of you to enjoy the time you had together.” Dr. Longstreet took the bottle of Johnny Walker back out of his desk. He didn’t drink from it. He just set it on his desk and looked at it. “She’s worried about you, worried you won’t ever find someone who can love you the way she wants you to be loved.”
My chest tightened as a flood of adrenaline stung my nerve endings. Cancer was a merciless executioner. It stripped away dignity and autonomy, leaving only pain and horror in its wake. Memaw took so much pride in her appearance, her intellect, and her independence. I didn’t want to watch her wither into nothing, and I knew I had no choice.
“How long does she have?” Nausea rocked and rolled through me. My blouse, now soaked with sweat, clung to me. My fantasy of running away never beat at me with more urgency, but I would never leave Memaw’s side as long as she needed me.
“Eighteen months, maybe two years if we’re lucky. She might have to start light chemotherapy to keep herself comfortable. She’ll eventually be bedridden.”
The image of Memaw in a sterile hospital bed, growing thinner and weaker filled my mind. My world crumbled, a scream building in my chest. I bit it back and clenched my hands into fists, reveling in the pain of my fingernails biting into my palms. I squeezed tighter and tighter. Maybe hurting myself would banish my fears of the future. My apprehension built to an unbearable intensity, beating at my skin, trying to get out into the world. I took a deep breath and commanded myself to rein it in. One more breath, and I knew I could talk without screaming. I met Dr. Longstreet’s eyes across the desk.
“All right. I’m ready to see her.”
Dr. Longstreet didn’t bother to argue. He showed me to Memaw’s room. She looked frailer than ever lying on the hospital bed with her steel gray hair spread out around her head. Every vein in her face was visible. When the door clicked closed, she opened her eyes.
“You fared worse than I did.” Memaw’s voice was a hoarse impostor of her usual rough boom.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I hoped I didn’t have to say cancer out loud.
Memaw understood I knew her secret. Maybe she’d even told Dr. Longstreet to break the news to me. She motioned at Dr. Longs
treet to leave. He closed the door behind him.
“Because I knew you’d baby me. Because I knew you’d be sad. And because I don’t know what you’re going to do with yourself without me to push you.”
I pulled the visitor’s chair next to her bed and took her bony, liver-spotted hand in mine. For the first time ever, I noticed her hand and mine were about the same size. Our fingernails were the same shape. Tears stung my eyes, and my throat tightened. The tide of sorrow rushed up in my chest. I held it back, just the way Memaw always taught me. I didn’t know what I was going to do either.
Memaw fell asleep not long after she admitted her illness to me. I left the hospital. The parking lot gravel crunched under my heels, grinding together just like my emotions. Loneliness washed over me, devastating all other emotions, growing until I actually choked. It reminded me of getting lost in the Houston Museum of Natural Science at nine years old on Memaw’s and my annual vacation.
Wandering among the endless sea of taller people whose legs all looked the same after a while made me aware of something frightening: I was too small to get myself unlost. Finally, a museum employee took mercy on me and gently helped me find Memaw. I never forgot the helpless feeling; the feeling of being too young, too inexperienced, too little to help myself. Now that feeling came back with a vengeance.
At three o’clock in the morning, I pulled up in front of Memaw’s house. Lights blazed from every window. On the way inside, I muttered about the electric bill, careless Sheriff’s Deputies named Brittany Watson, and all sorts of other things. It gave me something to do other than feel scared of how Memaw’s last months on earth—and spending the rest of my life without her—would feel. Inside the living room, the smell of men’s cologne jolted me out of my funk.
