Teresa nodded. “She is. I have her.” She squirmed. “I had to tell them she was mine so they would let me have her, but I’ll take care of her for you until you’re released.”
He’d nodded, staring at her with those eyes that seemed to burn through her.
She slid a piece of paper through the slot in the glass. The attending police officer checked it and handed it to Dogman. “Call me when they let you out, and I’ll bring Lucy to you. Is there… is there anything you need? Anything I can get you?”
He shook his head. “They’ll give me my stuff back when they let me out. All I need is Lucy.” He stood.
“Okay.” Teresa stood also. “Call me.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
She knew he was only thanking her for Lucy’s sake. She reached down now and patted Lucy’s head as they walked. The dog had actually been good company. She’d been perfectly well behaved in the house, not messing or begging. Teresa had given her a bath and taken her to a veterinarian for her shots. She lay beside Teresa’s bed at night and was always there when Teresa woke from her nightmares—the nightmares that weren’t going away. Sometimes, Teresa would sit on the floor after one of her bad dreams, Lucy curled up against her thigh, warm and comforting. She’d been thinking lately that after Lucy went back to Dogman, maybe she’d get a dog of her own, but every time she thought it, she drew a blank on where that might be. She couldn’t stay with Rob and Karen forever, and she could never move back home.
They approached the house, and Teresa stopped short. Ellie was sitting on the front porch. Bracing herself, Teresa walked up to her.
“Hi.”
Ellie stood, brushing her backside off. Teresa had never seen Ellie in shorts and diverted her eyes from her bare legs.
“Hi,” Ellie said. She glanced down at Lucy who wagged her tail. “Who’s this?”
“Lucy.”
Ellie glanced up sharply. “Lucy. As in Dogman’s Lucy? The one who was behind your store?”
“Yes,” Teresa said. “He was the one who saved me.”
There it was again—that note of accusation. It hung like a palpable thing between them.
“Teresa, there’s a lot we need to talk about.” Ellie waited, her hands shoved into her shorts pockets as Teresa stared at the sidewalk for several seconds.
“Come in,” Teresa said at last. “Rob and Karen are at work. I was just going to get dinner started.”
Ellie followed Teresa inside. Lucy got a drink from a bowl on the kitchen floor and lay down where she could keep an eye on Teresa as she got a pasta pot out and started to fill it with water.
“Can we talk? Please?” Ellie said. “Without interruption?”
Teresa turned the faucet off and joined her at the kitchen table.
“Why aren’t you at work?” Teresa asked.
Ellie sat back and exhaled. “There is so much… I don’t have a job at the bank anymore.”
“What? You said something in your message…” Teresa tried to remember.
“The day everything happened, I was pulled into the manager’s office and—”
“They didn’t fire you!”
Ellie shook her head. “No. They didn’t fire me. They offered me a transfer to get me out of the way. Instead of dealing with the pervert who hit me, they figured it was easier to move me to another branch.”
“What did you say?”
Ellie shrugged. “I told them to go to hell and walked out. That’s when everything went haywire. I left you that message. I went downtown. I was just feeling angry and reckless and… I honestly didn’t care if something happened to me that night.” Ellie’s eyes shone with tears. “But I never meant for it to happen to you.”
Teresa watched Ellie, trying to feel something, anything other than anger. “And what if it had been you? Do you think that would have been any easier for me? What were you thinking?”
“I guess I wasn’t.” Ellie shook her head. “I was just so angry—”
“And reckless,” Teresa cut in. “Got that.”
Ellie opened her mouth to respond but closed it again. “What now?”
“Are you working for Louise?”
“Kind of,” Ellie said. “I’m working there about forty hours a week, but we don’t have a formal agreement. What about you? Are you back to work?”
Teresa looked down at her folded hands. “Not yet. I haven’t decided what I’m doing.”
Ellie leaned forward, placing her hands over top of Teresa’s. “Please, can we fix this? Can’t we go away together? Leave Pittsburgh, go somewhere new, somewhere where nothing else pulls us apart.”
For long seconds, Teresa stared at their hands. “I don’t know.”
“Do you still love me?”
Teresa looked up. “What?”
“Do you still love me? Isn’t that worth hanging on to?”
Teresa sat back, sliding her hands out from under Ellie’s. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I don’t know what I feel.” She stood and went back to the sink, not wanting to see the hurt and confusion in Ellie’s eyes.
A moment later, she heard the front door open and close. When she turned around, Ellie was gone.
“What are you doing? You shouldn’t be here.”
Louise gently pulled the spatula from Ellie’s hand. Ellie wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.
“I need to keep busy.” Ellie gave Louise a watery smile. “Who would’ve believed that making pies would be my way of keeping my mind off—”
Louise handed the spatula back. “Need some help with the dough?”
Ellie shrugged. “Sure. My dough’s still not as good as yours.”
Ellie measured sugar for the cherries while Louise added a little flour to the dough and kneaded it in.
“So, what’s going on?”
Ellie blinked and kept her eyes on what she was doing. “Everything.”
Louise raised her eyebrows in question as she pounded the dough.
“I lost my job. I lost my best friend.” Ellie sniffed. “I feel like I can’t do anything right.”
“You miss the bank that much?”
Ellie snorted and clamped her forearm over her nose and mouth to avoid spraying snot into the cherries. “No. But it’s not how I pictured myself leaving.”
Louise chuckled. “Bet they’ll remember it, though.”
Ellie started laughing. Louise laughed along with her. A couple of the cooks and waitresses peeked back at them to see what was so funny.
Louise rolled the dough out to the perfect thickness and slapped it into a pie pan. Ellie spooned the cherry mix into the dough and turned to the sink to wash the bowl, while Louise laid out strips of dough in a basket weave pattern over top of the cherries. She slid the pan into the waiting oven.
“Come with me.”
Ellie dried her hands and followed Louise to her office. Louise sat in her chair, and Ellie took the other seat.
“What are you going to do?”
Ellie sat there a moment. “About what?”
“About your life.”
“What do you mean?”
Louise leaned forward. “I mean, you need some momentum. You aren’t happy here. You need to move on. You need to let Daniel go, Ellie. You need to let Teresa go, too, if she won’t go with you. And you need to let me go.”
Sudden tears sprang to Ellie’s eyes again. Exasperated, she wiped them away. “I’m so sick of crying. I feel like it’s all I’ve been doing for weeks. And where do you get off, telling me all those things?”
Louise tilted her head and gave Ellie a knowing smile. “Ellie Ryan, I’ve known you for how many years now? I’m saying this because I love you. You have lived your life for your dead mother and your lost brother. You don’t even know for sure he’s here. You are suffocating here in this city. You’ve
done the hard part. You walked away from your job. The next step should be easy. Pick a place and go.”
Ellie shook her head. “I can’t leave you. What about the diner? You can’t work like you used to.”
“Baby girl, you’re never going to leave me. That’s never going to happen. Patty’s been reconsidering helping me out here. I think she got a little taste of it and liked it.” Louise opened her desk drawer and pulled out a slip of paper. “This is the name, address and phone number of my cousin in Baltimore. She owns a seafood restaurant and just opened a second one. She needs a manager to help her out. It may not be what you want to do forever, but you learned enough here to step in, no problem. I told her all about you, and she’d love to have you call her for a telephone interview. No guarantees, but I did tell her I’d never make her favorite sweet potato pie again if she didn’t hire you.”
“Baltimore?”
“Not too far away,” Louise said, reading Ellie’s mind. “You’d be close enough to get back here for visits. You could explore a new city, see the Chesapeake Bay, and start your traveling the way you always planned.”
Ellie considered. “Maybe Baltimore wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Thanks for driving us again.”
Bernie glanced in the side view mirror at Lucy, who had her head out the backseat window. “I don’t mind. You’re still dizzy?”
“Yeah.” Teresa rubbed her forehead. “It’s irritating. It’s like being a little drunk all the time.”
“Shit. I wish I could feel that way without having to drink. It would make going back to school in the fall much easier.”
Teresa smiled and looked back at Lucy. “I’m really going to miss her. She’s been good company.”
Bernie gave her a sidelong glance. “Missing anyone else?”
Teresa was glad for the concealing sunglasses she was wearing, but she knew Bernie could see the flush creeping into her cheeks. “I’m dealing with it.”
“She really asked you to leave Pittsburgh and go away with her?”
“Yes. I told you.” Teresa shook her head. “I just can’t let go of what she did.”
Bernie lit a fresh cigarette and took a deep drag. “What are you going to do about work?”
Teresa didn’t answer immediately. “I don’t know yet. Pop hasn’t pushed me. And he’s been paying me. Can you believe it?” She sighed. “I’ll have to make a decision soon. I’ll probably go back.”
“To which store?” Bernie flicked her ashes out the window, and Lucy sneezed. “Sorry, dog.” She pulled open her ashtray and turned back to Teresa. “You could go back to Bloomfield now, if Ellie’s not in the picture.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that.” Teresa bit her lip as she thought. “It still feels like I’d be crawling back to Ma, though. Don’t know if I can do it, but I do miss that neighborhood. It’s so much nicer than Oakland.”
“Where should I park?” Bernie asked as they neared the jail. “I’ve never done this.”
“Me, either.” Teresa pointed. “Park here. I’m not sure how long this will take.”
“Do you want me to wait here?”
“Yeah, maybe. You mind?”
“Shit, no.” Bernie ground out her cigarette and lit another. “The city jail is one place I can honestly say I’ve never had any desire to visit.”
Teresa got out and opened the back door of the car. Lucy stood quietly while Teresa clipped her leash onto her new collar. Teresa reached back into the car and gathered up another large shopping bag before bumping the door shut with her hip. “I shouldn’t be long.”
She and Lucy walked through the jail’s front entrance. The police officer behind the desk frowned at Lucy.
“I’m here for someone who’s being released today,” Teresa said quickly, before he could say dogs weren’t allowed. She took her sunglasses off. “This is his dog.”
“Who is it?” The officer consulted a clipboard.
“Dog—uh, John Doe,” she corrected herself.
He looked up and peered at her more closely. “You the one he saved?”
Teresa nodded in relief. “Yes.” It had taken forever to get the people in authority to believe that he had been her rescuer, not her attacker.
“Wait here.” He gave Lucy one last curious glance and disappeared through a door.
A few minutes later, Dogman emerged through another heavy steel door, his backpack slung over one shoulder. Lucy immediately began whining and dancing in an effort to get to him. Teresa let go of the leash. He dropped the backpack, knelt down, and buried his face in her neck as she licked every bit of him she could reach. After a few minutes, he stood, wiping his hand roughly across his eyes.
“Thanks for taking care of her.”
Teresa smiled. “I couldn’t leave her in the pound. She’s been no trouble at all.” She hefted the shopping bag. “I have what’s left of her food in here. And,” she pulled out a dark-gray bundle. “I thought you might not want to have my father’s old winter coat anymore after the trouble it caused. Here’s another.”
He looked from the coat to her as he picked up his backpack. “You didn’t have to do that. You don’t owe me anything.”
“But I do,” Teresa said. She pushed the coat back into the bag. “I will never know how you happened to be there that night, but I can never repay you for what you did.”
He nodded and accepted the bag. They turned toward the front door and descended the steps to the sidewalk below. Dogman stopped and looked up at the summer sky.
“It’s been a while,” he said.
He knelt down and stuffed the dog food and coat into his backpack and refastened the flap. Slipping the straps over his shoulders, he picked up Lucy’s leash and stood. He gave Teresa one last nod.
“Are you Daniel?” she blurted. She knew it was impossible, but she had to ask.
He turned and looked at her. “I don’t know who that is.”
CHAPTER 30
Ellie made her way through the cemetery to her mother’s grave. There, she laid a sealed plastic baggie at the foot of the tombstone. Inside the bag was Daniel’s Bronze Star. She’d included a note with the address of Louise’s diner if he wanted to know where to find her.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back, Mom. It might be a while.” She sat back on her heels and looked around at the squirrels running around like mad, gathering nuts as summer drew to a close. “I might finally get to travel and see some places. I’ll tell you about it when I come back.”
Are you doing the right thing?
She closed her eyes. She’d asked herself that question a million times. She still didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, but Louise was right. She had to start living her life instead of spending it in one place waiting for people who weren’t coming back. Including Teresa.
Ellie had hoped, after her talk with Teresa at Rob and Karen’s house, that she’d come around, and they could leave together. All through her conversations with Marion, Louise’s cousin, during all the hours of her bus trip to Baltimore to meet her and look for an apartment, the days spent packing up her things. Through all of those preparations, she kept hoping for Teresa’s knock on the door, for a phone call saying she’d changed her mind, but there had been nothing.
“Bye, Mom.”
She got to her feet and walked back to her apartment. Sullivan had borrowed a pickup truck from a friend, and they had loaded her bed, sofa and television into the back of it. She had sold or given away all of the rest of her furniture. Her clothes fit into two new suitcases—a bon voyage gift from Louise.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Ellie had whispered last night, holding Louise tightly.
“I’ll miss you, too, Ellie.” Louise rocked her. “But you’ll be back to visit, and now I’ll have another reason to come see my cousin.”
Upstairs, Ellie too
k one more trip around her empty apartment, stripped now of all the travel posters. It felt sad and lonely. Any lonelier than it has been since she left? KC meowed pitifully from inside her carrier. Sullivan knocked on the open door into the living room.
“All set?”
Ellie sighed. “I guess.” She picked up a paper-wrapped parcel. “You sure you don’t mind delivering this?”
“I don’t mind. I’ll get it to her.”
She picked up the cat carrier. “Let’s go.”
Teresa sat in a pew in St. Rafael’s, breathing in the familiar scent of incense and automatically responding to the priest along with everyone else.
“Remember when it was our First Communion?” Bernie whispered. “God, that seems like someone else’s life, doesn’t it?”
Teresa nodded. Everything she did lately felt like it belonged to someone else’s life. She was back at the Bloomfield store, but not back home. Rob had helped her find a small house to rent—“with a washer and dryer,” she’d noted with a wry smile.
“Are you going to bring your bedroom furniture from home?” Bernie had asked.
Teresa had scoffed. “I’ve had that bedroom furniture almost since I got out of a crib. I think I’m ready to buy my own stuff.”
The house still looked pretty empty—only a bed and dresser, a chair with an ottoman and a good reading lamp, and a small kitchen table with two chairs.
“You sure you don’t want a television at least?” Karen had asked when she and Rob came over to see how she was doing.
Teresa shook her head. “I’m enjoying the quiet. I’m getting tons of reading done.” And the more furniture I buy, the more permanent this feels, only she didn’t say that part out loud.
She couldn’t explain, even to herself, why she wasn’t ready to make it feel more permanent, but ever since Sullivan had come by the store with Ellie’s package…
“Baltimore? She really moved to Baltimore?” she’d asked.
“Yeah. I helped her move,” he said. “She’s working for Louise’s cousin. Got a nice apartment. Starting over.”
Starting over.
Cast Me Gently Page 29
