by Lisa Wingate
The third car pulled in, and I peered through the leaves, undercover-agent style. The silver Cadillac rolled to a stop behind the first two vehicles, and doors opened on both sides. The puffy blond hair and peach pantsuit were unmistakable. The venerable Mrs. Underhill, whose stepson I was supposed to help elect to the county commission. She came bearing a foil-wrapped plate, and she had someone with her.
The holly bushes combed my hair as I leaned closer. Who was that with her? Someone young, svelte, and blond in a perky above-the-knee skirt and high heels. Blaine Underhill had a couple of half-sisters, as I recalled, but they didn’t look like that. The Underhill girls had the misfortune of having the same figure as their father. They were stocky, muscular, and athletic. When we graduated from high school, they were entering middle school, and Mrs. Underhill was still cramming them into ruffled gowns and making them stroll the catwalk at beauty pageants, and attend cotillion classes. The kids at school used to tease Blaine about it, and ask him if his stepmother expected him to make a bid for Cotton Queen one of these days, too.
The girl with Mrs. Underhill today was definitely not one of Blaine’s half-sisters.
She trotted up the steps, the dress swaying back and forth across her knees. My brother, of all people, answered the door, his dishwater blond hair sporting a bad case of bed head. I noted, in the split second before the newest visitors reached the porch, that Clay didn’t seem to have changed much. Same rumpled look—khaki shorts, washed-out T-shirt, flip-flops. Mom’s soft, slightly curly hair and hazel eyes, a green tone where mine were brown. His face had matured a little in the . . . how long had it been since I’d seen him, other than on his Facebook posts from the far parts of the universe?
Three-and-a-half years. He’d called on the Fourth of July. Just called me out of the blue. He was a hundred miles from Seattle on a bicycle tour—not the organized kind with other people, but a solitary, unplanned journey of his own making. He’d been rained on for three days, was running a fever, and wanted to know if I’d like to come get him. He wasn’t complaining about the conditions, really. It was more like he was offering me the opportunity, and he was fine, either way. Maybe the choice between biking in the rain with a fever and visiting with me was pretty much a toss-up. He probably knew I’d ask why he was out of college for the summer and not working anywhere.
The girl in the cute dress tackled Clay with an exuberant hug. I watched in fascination, my mouth dropping open. What in the world was going on? Who was the girl, and why was my brother . . . slipping an arm around her waist and lifting her off her feet?
The casserole ladies twittered, giggled, and seemed delighted—even Mrs. Underhill. They politely pretended to be commenting on the condition of the memory gardens, as Clay gave the girl a peck and then set her down again.
Suddenly the ladies were looking in my direction, pointing, and I was cognizant of the idiotic position I’d put myself in, hiding in the bushes, spying on the funeral home. Another thought followed—something petty, and immature, and born of sibling rivalry. It wasn’t fair that I was hiding in the bushes while Clay was getting hugs and cookie plates. Moses Lake had always loved Clay. The year we lived here, he was a cute, gap-toothed fourth grader—goofy, precocious, innocent, a little charmer who was easy to like. After my father’s death, Clay had slipped neatly under the sheltering wings of not only his school teacher, but his Sunday school teachers and a half-dozen adopted grannies around town, including Mama B. They loved him then, and apparently still loved him now.
“There’s someone over there,” one of the ladies observed. “In the bushes . . . Look!”
“Where?” That was Mrs. Underhill’s voice, the sound shrill, all traces of sugar-and-honey sweetness gone. That was the voice I remembered—the one that sent chills through me, back when there were secrets to hide. Mrs. Underhill loved nothing better than to ferret out people’s secrets and spread them around. In particular, she wanted to find out what was really going on in the little cottage behind the funeral home. She was certain that, in some way or another, the authorities needed to be involved. She would’ve liked nothing better than for child welfare services to swoop in and take us away from my mother. It would have proven her right about everything and proven that my father should have married her years ago, instead of my mother.
“Yeah . . . you know . . . you’re right, I think,” Clay concurred, and then added, “Hey, Roger, come’ere. Come’ere, boy. What’s out there, huh? You see somebody out there?” Of all things, Clay still had the goofball mutt-slash-golden retriever that was riding with him on the ill-fated bike trip. Roger traveled in a pull-behind bike trailer, the kind made for babies. He’d been an inconveniently manic houseguest in my no-dogs-allowed apartment building for a week, while Clay recovered from pneumonia. I’d come within a whisker, literally, of getting kicked out of the complex, and my Persian rug has never been the same since.
“It’s just me. It’s just me.” Squeezing from the bushes with one hand in the air, I surrendered without a fight. “Everybody calm down.” My suitcase wobbled over clumps of grass and loose twigs, threatening to tip over as I started toward the driveway. The casserole ladies squinted, and Mrs. Underhill took a couple of steps my way. Detaching himself from the blonde, Clay trotted down the stairs as his dog sprinted across the lawn, heading in my direction.
“Roger, hey! Roger, wait!” Clay called, and of course Roger didn’t listen. He tackled me with the momentum of a linebacker, and we did a clumsy backward waltz as I tried to avoid falling over the suitcase. Roger swiped his long, lolling tongue across my mouth before I could get my balance and push him away. By the time I did, Clay had caught up.
“Heather’s here,” Clay announced, in case anyone was still confused. One hand caught the dog, and one gave me a shoulder-hug, but I got the distinct impression that my brother wasn’t thrilled to see me. “Hey, Sis,” he said.
The casserole ladies regarded us with curious, somewhat uncertain expressions, as we walked to the porch. A few uncomfortable greetings passed back and forth, and I was actually relieved when Mrs. Hall shoved a casserole into my hands. It was still warm on the bottom, which felt good. I remembered Mrs. Hall from the pharmacy where, after Dad’s death, I’d picked up the prescriptions that were supposed to fix my mother, but didn’t. Mrs. Hall was always nice about it. In truth, she probably wasn’t supposed to be handing that stuff off to a minor, but she let me take it, always with the kind admonition that they’d be happy to deliver next time.
I set the casserole on one of the porch tables and wiped my mouth, still contemplating the gross-out factor of having been kissed by Clay’s dog.
Mrs. Underhill gave me a suspicious look, then stated the obvious, “Well, Heather, my goodness, you’re a wreck. Was that you outside the hardware store earlier? You didn’t walk here all the way from Seattle, surely?” She batted a hand, peppering the artificially sweetened question with a sharp-edged giggle.
I did. You know, I’m on a new exercise kick, and I thought walking from Seattle would be a great way to start, was on the tip of my tongue. Heaven help me, but Mrs. Underhill obviously still held the strings to the broken, bitter, smart-mouthed teenager I thought I’d buried years ago. Even that was disconcerting—as if she had control of me, rather than me having control of myself. “It’s a long story,” I replied, instead. “Weather problems.” Let her ponder that and draw her own conclusions as to how that equated to appearing in town on foot.
She was right about one thing, though. I was a wreck. No wonder the girl who’d just put the smooch on my brother was eyeing me uncertainly. She butted Clay in the shoulder, as in, Introduce me, already. Who’s this Heather person? Apparently she didn’t know anything about me. Strange, considering how familiar they’d looked a few minutes ago.
Another vehicle rattled up just as Clay was about to begin the introductions. The hearse was a dead giveaway, even from the end of the drive. As it passed through the tunnel of live oaks, I recognized three people i
n the front seat—two tall, one short. Two gray heads, one sandy brown with the hair loosely pulled back, fly-away strands swirling around her face.
My mother, Uncle Herbert, and Uncle Charley. Clay waved enthusiastically, in a way that said, Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!
The hearse had barely skidded to a stop before my great uncles were grunting and creaking their way out of the car, then heading for the porch in stiff-legged shuffles. Mother, sliding over from the middle, was one step behind them.
“Well, praise the Lord and phone the saints. There she is!” Uncle Charley made a beeline toward me, outdistancing Uncle Herbert, who had to hold on to the handrail to make his way up the eight steps to the porch.
Uncle Charley pushed past the casserole ladies and swept me into a meaty hug. “We just been to the sheriff’s department, finding out how to report you for a missing person.”
The ladies gasped.
“Huh . . . wha . . . oof!” I stammered and grunted as Uncle Herbert moved in from behind and I was momentarily the filling in an uncle sandwich. The scents of Borax, axle grease, and musty leather flicked at my senses, pulling threads. Memories were tied to those smells—childhood visits to the old family farm with my father, where Uncle Charley gave me pony rides. The dark days after my father’s death. My high school graduation, when all I cared about was getting away from here. I didn’t want the memories that were tethered to these two old men. I wanted to leave this place and everything attached to it.
Now I felt it all pulling at me again, leaving me confused and lost.
“Heather, where in the world have you been?” My mother’s admonition came from somewhere outside the circle of scents and memories. “We had a call from a man in Dallas who discovered your purse in the trash that was cleaned off of a bus, but you were nowhere to be found. We were scared to death. He said he’d FedEx the purse, by the way.”
The casserole ladies gasped and twittered and asked questions as I rushed to share the odd saga of my trip to Texas and the lost purse. No telling how big that story would get by the time it circled town a few times.
Uncle Charley brushed a sandy-sounding something off my jacket. “Looks like Roger got the besta you. Clay, you gotta teach that dog not to mug the comp’ny. He almost knocked Reverend Hay in the drink when we were takin’ the lights off the restaurant after Christmas, and the UPS man is afraid to even come by here. He’s been catching us at the Waterbird when we go for coffee in the mornin’.”
Uncle Charley took my shoulders and held me away from him. “Let me get a look at ya.” He pulled me into a patch of sunlight and announced to the crowd, “My cow, look at our little Heather! She growed up to be a pretty thang!”
I was too confused to be embarrassed. Clay and his dog had been in town long enough to frighten off the UPS man and help take down Christmas lights? What in the world?
Mrs. Underhill wasn’t the least bit interested in admiring my growth or my natural beauty. She regarded me with the fisheye, as if some frightening life-form had invaded the casserole circle. “My word, you got on the bus with a . . . a man you met on the plane? It’s a wonder he wasn’t after more than your purse.”
I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “He was a dentist.” As if that explained everything. “Anyway, I was never in any danger. I just forgot my purse.”
“What sort of purse?” one of the ladies asked. “Nothing expensive, I hope?”
“Land sakes, what’s that matter?” Mama B snapped, then turned and hobbled toward the car. “Let’s leave these folks to their reunitin’. We got more deliveries to make.”
Even the members of the Moses Lake human telegraph knew better than to refuse a direct order from Mama B. Reluctantly, they backed away, having ferreted out enough details to successfully add their own and come up with an account of my arrival in town. In closing, they offered a few sympathetic, but pointed, comments about the burden of my two widowed uncles being forced to provide for all this company. Then they handed over more food before following Mama B. Clay’s apparent girlfriend kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “We gotta drop off a meal for a funeral.” Adding a meaningful look, she told Clay she’d see him later.
An uncomfortable silence descended on us as the crowd departed. I was conscious of everyone surreptitiously watching me and maintaining their positions, in the way members of the bomb squad might gather around a suspicious package.
My mother broke the stalemate by peeking under the foil on the CorningWare pan. “Still hot,” she said, her tone overly light and falsely cheerful. “Let’s go around back and eat on the sun porch. Clay, maybe you can give Heather a ride over to Catfish Cabins after that.”
“The cabins?” I glanced at the house. Despite the presence of the funeral office, parlors, and workrooms, as well as the chapel in what had once been a grand ballroom, Harmony House was still quite large, the entire second floor and both ends of the main floor remaining in use as personal residence space. There was also the small gardener’s cottage out back, which meant there was plenty of space for me to stay here. So why was Mom trying to ship me off to the rental cabins, halfway around the lake by Uncle Charley’s restaurant? With no car to drive, I’d be stranded there.
Maybe that was their plan. Maybe I was being given the bum’s rush—while they were happy not to have to report me as a missing person, they didn’t want me around, either. “I thought I’d stay here.”
“Oh . . . Well, it’s sort of . . . crowded. . . .” Mom hedged as furtive glances darted between the relatives. “Uncle Charley has been living here for a while now, since Uncle Herb shouldn’t be alone. It’s somewhat crowded with Clay and me in the house, too, and now the mess of getting ready for the estate sale. The place really is a disas—”
“I can bunk out back in the gardener’s cottage.” I didn’t wait for her to finish. I wasn’t about to let them warehouse me off-site while they continued with whatever they were doing. I’d never seen a group of people looking so culpable. I was going to be on them like fleas on a back-porch hound, as Uncle Herb’s Mennonite housekeeper, Ruth, used to say.
Glancing at the house momentarily, I wondered what had happened to Ruth. During those terrible months of my senior year, she was the one who’d saved me. She hadn’t tried to convince me to snap out of it, or stop skulking around in black T-shirts and too much makeup, or keep a stiff upper lip, like Uncle Herb and Aunt Esther had. Nor had she echoed the geriatric pastor of Lakeshore Community Church, telling me how much God still loved me. Ruth just baked cookies, washed laundry, and occasionally laid a comforting hand on my shoulder as she passed by in her old-fashioned-looking dresses and sweaters, and a hair covering, as was typical of many of the Mennonite residents upriver in Gnadenfeld.
Uncle Herb rubbed the back of his neck, glancing toward the backyard and then toward my mother, his brows lifting in a way that seemed to say, Uh-oh . . . Now what do we do?
“Well . . . but . . . Blaine Underhill has things stored out there,” Mother shrugged, dismissing my suggestion. “Signs and whatnot. He’s running for county commissioner.”
There was that name again. Blaine Underhill. Why was my family suddenly so tight with the Underhills? I’d never before in my life seen my mother speak the Underhill name without sneering.
“I don’t mind,” I pressed, calling their bluff, but there was also a painful little pinprick inside me. Nobody was happy to have me here. “All I need is a bed and enough space to put my suitcase, and maybe a plate of casserole. Why is the benevolence committee bringing food by here, anyway?”
Mom shrugged, her lip curling slightly, flashing an eyetooth. “Oh, you know those women. They’re always looking for an excuse to take a casserole somewhere and stick their noses in.”
“Stick their nose into what?” The attention of the church ladies was never completely for naught. They believed in Christian charity, with a purpose.
Mom flipped a hand through the air. “Who knows? Heather, don’t you think yo
u’d be more comfortable at the Catfish Cabins? The gardener’s cottage is a mess.”
The sting of rejection put me back in my high-school shoes, when no one other than Ruth seemed to want me around. I will not let them get to me. I will not. “No. I’ll be fine here. I don’t plan to stay long. As soon as we get the hitch in this real estate deal taken care of, I’m gone.” And never coming back. Ever. You won’t see me darkening your doorstep anymore. “In fact, since we’re all here, why don’t we go on inside and hash it out? What’s this malarkey about a competing offer on the properties? When did this come up and who made the offer?” As if there really is one.
Mother rolled her eyes. “Really, Heather. You’ve barely arrived, and all you can talk about is business? Let’s have something to eat on the sun porch. The man who found your purse said he’d try to get it to FedEx today. You’re stuck here until it arrives, anyway. You can’t fly without identification. I think you’re safe taking a little time for family niceties.”
Irritation crawled over me on sharp little legs, digging in claws. A snappy retort was on the tip of my tongue, Who are you to lecture me about family anything? Squeezing my lips tightly over my teeth, I fought to keep the venom at bay.
Uncle Charley, looking embarrassed, nudged Uncle Herbert and started toward the front walk. “Well, I’m starved. Let’s head around the back way. No sense traipsing through the house.”
I was conscious of more covert glances and a collective holding of breath, but I’d also caught the scent of casserole, and I was hungry, weary, and lost. Every muscle in my body seemed to be liquefying. The afternoon had started to cool, and I just wanted to sit down someplace warm, so I followed the uncs and the casseroles off the porch. Clay grabbed my suitcase and walked along behind me as Uncle Charley talked over his shoulder, pointing out the growth in various trees, a new rose bush on the corner, an old lamppost that had been removed after it became too unstable, and other things he thought might have changed since I’d last seen the place.
