“What do I need a road for? My legs ain’t broke.” She grinned, the expression settling into the worn creases in her face. Her silver hair was plaited into a braid that went halfway down her back, only a few wisps of hair daring to escape the tight coil. Everything about her spoke of humor and resilience. “And who knows? I might move into town.”
Charlie set the basket next to the cabin wall. “What, you? I’ll believe that when I see it!”
“Yeah,” Louise agreed. “Wouldn’t know what to do with myself down there.” She waved at the basket. “What’s all this?”
“I thought you might be getting low on some things—coffee and flour and such. Beer.”
The old woman frowned. “Now, you didn’t need to do that.” She lifted a shoulder. “Except maybe the beer.”
“Wasn’t any trouble,” Charlie said, her voice even, as if they were discussing the weather. Louise was stubborn—and proud—but she got out less and less. And it wasn’t just her nutrition she was neglecting. “Oh, and I was at the pharmacy, too. When I said I was coming this way, they asked me to bring you this.” She handed over a bottle of pills, a prescription for Louise’s heart condition.
Her friend’s frown got deeper. “Look, I told that teenage excuse for a doctor that I just have a mild arrhythmia—nothing serious. I’ve been mixing up some foxglove to take when I feel like I need it. Works fine, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.”
Charlie considered her. It was true that the old heart medicine digitalis was derived from the foxglove plant, and maybe it did make her feel better. But the modern medicine that had been prescribed for her was both more targeted as to function and standardized as to dosage. Of course, as a retired nurse, Louise should know that.
“You know self-diagnosis is dangerous, right?”
“Physician, heal thyself. You look like something the cat dragged in.” Her friend moved inside the cabin to the tiny kitchen. The space was hung with pots and pans and drying herbs and smelled like woodsmoke and something sweet baking. Charlie trailed behind her and sat at the battered kitchen table.
Louise opened the oven and pulled out a panful of warm muffins, popping them out onto the kitchen counter with a practiced flip of the wrist. She placed an example of golden-brown poppy-seed goodness on a plate and slid it onto the table at Charlie’s elbow. She followed it up with a mug of steaming coffee. Then she sat down in the chair across from Charlie and slipped a home-baked treat to each of the dogs, who had trooped into the kitchen behind their owners. At a sign from Louise, the dogs took their treats and trotted off to gobble them up elsewhere.
Charlie’s stomach growled. “You are the devil, Louise.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, girl, you could afford a few more pounds. What are you, about 100 pounds sopping wet? In fact, here.” She got up to get Charlie a second muffin while she served herself one.
Charlie blushed. Okay, yes, she was tall and thin. Had been all her life. And long before it had become fashionable to look like she did, she’d endured many a “Beanpole” taunt.
Louise, on the other hand, was not particularly short, but she was stacked like a sturdy farmwife. She liked to say she was built for survival.
“Okay, so where is your toothy grin today?” Louise asked her. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on you.”
Charlie had just taken a mouthful of muffin and used the excuse to avoid a direct answer. “Oh, my God, this is good. Is it a new recipe?”
“Thank you, no, and answer the question.”
Charlie gave up; there was no sense in trying to stonewall Louise. “New client. I’m having a little trouble figuring him out.” And not just the father. His son was an even bigger mystery. “But I’m sure you don’t have time to hear about all that. Anything new in the seed catalogs this year?”
Louise grunted. “I just read ’em for fun. Got all the seeds I need from last year’s garden. Now what’s wrong with your client?”
Charlie shook her head. She took another bite of the muffin, chewed, washed it down with a swig of coffee. Still, no accurate summation came to mind. There was just something different about Del Laurence, despite the reams of paperwork that should have explained what was wrong with him.
“I don’t want to go into the details, but . . .” She tried to summarize the problem. “He has the hallucinations and nightmares and periods of non-responsiveness that are characteristic of his type of dementia, but they all seemed to be tied together somehow. They’re cohesive, like the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic. I’ve never seen that before.” In fact, Del’s “trips” to another time and place seemed eerily real, as if he was reliving a past experience. And that scared the crap out of her.
“Is this the guy from Canada—the one with the son taking care of him?”
Charlie stared at her friend. “How would you know about him?”
“Oh, come on! This town has no secrets. Nobody’s been talking about anything else since the son started coming into town to run his errands. I’m not a hermit, you know.”
“Didn’t mean to imply you were.”
“Humph,” Louise said. “Anyway, I heard the son of this fella’s a real hottie. People goin’ around sayin’ he looks like some kind of actor or something. Who did they say? The guy that played Batman? I don’t know, somebody I didn’t recognize.”
“Christian Bale? No. He’s not that surly.” But he was close. “He is good-looking, I guess, but that’s not the point.” Charlie refused to think about how hot Rafe was. Or what effect he continued to have on her, even now, weeks after they had first met. She tried hard not to think about those things, especially late at night, alone, in bed.
“The son is not my problem.” Well, he is, but we’re not going to talk about that.
“Isn’t he?” Louise’s brown eyes twinkled with mischief. She might not get around much, but she was pretty quick on the uptake. “But, okay, so the father is showing signs of a problem you’re not familiar with. Is he violent?”
Charlie considered. “At times he comes out of his nonresponsive episodes in a highly agitated state. He doesn’t know where he is—he always seems to think he’s in this other place, where he’s in danger, or he’s protecting others. He was a cop, so I suppose that’s to be expected.”
“None of that seems to be out of line for dementia.” Louise had been an ER nurse, but she had personal experience with the effects of brain disease on the elderly. Her husband had been Charlie’s client; he had died from complications of Alzheimer’s. “Sounds like Lewy Body.”
Yeah, Louise was no slouch when it came to dementia. “It is Lewy Body, but, I don’t know, different.” Charlie wasn’t going to mention Del’s increasingly frequent use of his “special” language, a language that was consistent and almost seemed to make sense at times. Or the meds that came from the untraceable Phong’s Pharmacy. She had already shared more than she should have about Del’s case. But she knew Louise would never tell anyone else. They had become close friends through Mac Shelton’s final journey. And as a former nurse herself, Louise knew all about patient confidentiality.
Charlie shook her head. “Maybe I’m just overthinking things.”
Her friend cocked her head and looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Seems to me like you might be overthinking something else entirely. I reckon it’d be pretty easy to get distracted with a handsome young man around. What’s his name again? Oh, yeah, Rafe. Rafe Laurence. Has kind of a sexy sound to it, don’t it.”
“Oh, stop it!” A blush lit up Charlie’s face. “Del is my client. I hardly even see Rafe when I go up to the cabin. He seems nice enough, but that’s as far as it goes.” Charlie had never been a good liar, and doubted Louise believed a word of what she was saying.
“Uh-huh.” The corners of Louise’s mouth quirked upwards. “What’s the matter, he got a girlfriend in town already?”
“No!” A sense of outrage welled up in Charlie’s chest. She shoved it back down. “I mean, how woul
d I know? But I doubt it. He never comes down from that ridge except when he has to.”
Louise nodded once and pointed a finger at her. “See there. Y’all are two lonely wanderers circling this planet looking for someone to be with. Why be so standoffish?”
Okay, she had been alone for a while, that was true. For good reason. The last thing she needed was to fall in with Mr. Tall, Dark and Grumpy.
She laughed at Louise. “Since when did you become the town matchmaker?”
“Oh, us widder women got all kinds of skills, girl, you just don’t know. People come up this path day and night looking for potions from me.”
She wasn’t lying about that, Charlie knew. Louise might not have been born in these mountains, but as folks said, “she got here as quick as she could.” And she had learned all she could about the plants that grew in the woods around her little cabin. That didn’t mean Charlie was ready to ask for her version of Love Potion Number 9.
“Okay, I’ll admit Rafe is attractive,” she said. “But he’s paying my salary. In fact, he’s the only one paying my salary right now. So the rule is: Hands Off!—on both sides.”
The older woman waved a hand at her. “That’s not the only reason you’re avoiding him, girl, and you know it.”
Oh, hell no, they were not going there. Charlie was not in the mood for the discussion about her ex and why she wasn’t dating and how she should move on.
She moved to shut this conversation down. “Rafe Laurence could be Mister Perfect, and I still wouldn’t be interested.” Though her heart branded those words a lie as soon as they left her mouth. “I’ve had enough of doing for men for a while.”
Louise shook her head. “Can’t tell you young’uns nothin’.” She got up from the table and went to a small, sunny, glass-enclosed porch off the kitchen. She rummaged around among a variety of containers on one of several cluttered shelves along one wall and came back with a small blue jar.
She handed it to Charlie. “Fresh pain salve. Just mixed it up last week. You’re probably too young to need it much, but your new client might could use it. For arthritis and such.”
Charlie recognized the gift as a form of exchange for the basket she’d brought; she didn’t pretend to decline it. “Del will find it a blessing, Louise. Thank you.” She got up, then, and headed for the door. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ve got to get on the road.”
“Don’t rush off,” Louise said, but Charlie knew it was merely obligatory. The older woman wasn’t one to sit all day and gossip at the kitchen table.
Charlie went out on the porch and whistled for her dog. Happy and his furry friends bounded up on the porch, panting and tails wagging from a run in the woods. All three would need a brush, if not a bath, later. But Happy had been a good boy to leave his fun and obey her command so readily, so Charlie bent to give him some loving before she gave Louise a wave and took off back down the trail to the road.
The walk back was much quicker—downhill and without the heavy basket—and Charlie’s mind was on her conversation with Louise. She didn’t notice that Happy had gone out of sight ahead of her until he started to bark. She sped up to catch up with him, calling him to her, until she rounded the last bend in the trail and saw what the problem was.
She reacted as she always did when she met Sonny Milsap face-to-face these days: with a surge of fearful adrenalin that caused her heart to pound and her mouth to go dry. The man leaned against the hood of her car, his arms folded across his chest and his mouth twisted into a smug smile.
“Well, ain’t this sweet,” Sonny said, glancing up into the woods and back at her. “The dyke witch invited her little girlfriend up for tea.”
Charlie concentrated on her breathing to control her emotions. She knew her ex-husband was just trying to get a rise out of her. The best thing would be to just get in her car and drive away without saying a word to him.
But he was blocking the door to the driver’s side. “What’s the matter, Sonny? Truck broke down again?” His old Dodge pickup was pulled in behind her Subaru, the engine turned off. Beside her, Happy continued to growl, keying off her distress. She didn’t bother to tell him to shush.
Her ex glared at her, absorbing the insult, but he’d lost a little of his swagger. “Nice dog. Little too much for you to handle, ain’t he?”
He made the mistake of reaching toward Happy. The dog tensed, his growl growing deeper. Charlie gave a single command: “No, Happy, sit!”
Happy sat, watching Sonny’s every move. Charlie had never seen him react like this to anyone else, but then, her own reaction to Sonny Milsap wasn’t exactly friendly, either.
Charlie gave him a pat and looked back at Sonny. “You were saying? And, by the way, don’t ever try to touch my dog.”
Sonny’s pale face had turned red with rage. “Stupid, crazy-ass dog needs to be put down! And you ain’t got no leash on him? How ’bout I go see the sheriff and tell him how that dog coulda took my hand off?”
Charlie shrugged, though her shaking ruined the casual effect. “Think you’d have to show a scratch or something, Sonny. Now, on the other hand, I’ve sworn out complaints against you before. I could do it again. Not easy to avoid each other in a small town like Masey, but if you need a restraining order to stay away from me, I’ll be glad to provide it.” The local sheriff wasn’t the hardest-working lawman in North Carolina, but he’d signed the orders before when she needed them.
Sonny Milsap hadn’t always been spiteful and mean. He’d been charming and full of fun once, long ago, when she’d loved him. But the look on his face now was the one she remembered, the one that had driven her out of their house into the night in a panic, fearing for her life.
“Oh, yeah, that would be just like you, Charlie McIntyre. Get me all caught up with the law again. It’s hard enough for me to get a job these days. Now you want to make it even harder.”
“If you’re having trouble getting a job, Sonny, it’s your own damn fault.” Charlie knew she was being dragged into an argument that never seemed to have an end. Why should she care anyway? They hadn’t been married for two years. “Everybody in town knows who you been running around with—and that crowd isn’t exactly full of law-abiding citizens.”
“Always the goody-two-shoes, even in high school.” Sonny’s gaze caught hers. His blue eyes, once so bright and clear, were bloodshot and haunted now. “You musta seen somethin’ in me back then.”
Charlie had asked herself what it was a million times. “You used to have some good in you, Sonny. You still do, if you dig deep enough for it.”
“You could help me find it again.” Some hint of the vulnerable boy he had been before he gave in to an impulse and signed on the dotted line at the Army recruiter’s office showed in his face.
But Charlie knew better; that boy was gone. “No, Sonny, I can’t. You’ll have to find it for yourself or it won’t stay found.”
“Oh, I get it,” he said, his expression hardening as he spoke. “You got the hots for that new guy in town—the old man’s son. Ain’t got time for me now.”
Charlie blew out a breath in exasperation. “For God’s sake!” Was everyone in town determined to put her together with Rafe?
Inside his truck, a cellphone sounded, the ringtone a blaring “Wormfood” by Six Feet Under. He glanced at the truck and cursed. When he looked back at her, all that she might have reached in him was gone.
“This ain’t over, Charlie. You might have a piece of paper that says we’re finished, but that don’t make it so.” He turned without another word and limped to the truck. Once he’d climbed in, the truck peeled out of its spot and was out of sight in seconds.
At her knee, Happy woofed softly. “Yeah, me, too, Hap,” she said. “Good riddance.”
Del had long since stopped digging a simple hole in the ground. Now he and his companions were digging a long, sloping tunnel that led deeper under the surface of the rocky bowl they’d cleared that first work day on this accursed planet.
After days of labor in the hot sun, this work underground—shoring-up tunnel walls and bracing durasteel roof beams, even digging on the rock face that was the tunnel’s advance edge—was a relief. The men no longer disturbed venomous creatures beneath every rock; their skin no longer blistered in the new sun; they no longer fainted and died of heatstroke. The occasional cave-in or pocket of poison gas that took five or six lives at once was a decent trade-off. At least those didn’t happen every day.
“Hey.” Shef was using a cutting laser on the rock face next to him today. Talk was possible, if you got close enough to each other to hear over the whine of the tools. “Have you seen the new guy the Grays brought in? Weird cat eyes?”
Del had seen the man touring the work site with the guards that morning. He was tall, graceful and lean with muscle. His eyes were a bright yellow, with no white surrounding the big, round iris, and a vertical slit of a pupil. He was unusual, in that none of his kind existed among the slaves, or among the guards.
“Yeah, I saw him. Hear anything about him?”
Shef shook his head. “Looked like an engineer, though.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He used a laser to measure the support structure. Took lots of notes. Asked the foreman lots of questions, and the foreman wasn’t happy.”
An engineer,brought in from outside. “So this is no ordinary tunnel.”
Shef grinned. “That’s what I thought. Probably not a mine.”
“Pass the word down the line to keep an eye on this guy today. Find out anything we can about him and what he’s here for.” Del focused his cutter on the rock face. “We’ll talk tonight.”
That night in the barracks, Kwai supplied a few answers. “He’s a—” then he did something with his mouth and vocal cords that sounded like a cat being put through a blender—“but in Galactic Standard his race is known as the Felinor.”
Del took this as useful information, but Shef began laughing so hard he could barely speak. “He’s a fucking cat with two legs! I told you, Del! Say it again, Kwai. I bet you ten bucks you made that shit up.”
Not Fade Away Page 7
