Addy smiled. She couldn’t help herself. How a woman as frail and shrunken as this could, at the same time, be such a bundle of strength and energy she didn’t know. “The casserole was wonderful,” she said now. “I hope Mark conveyed my thanks.”
“He did. Which gave me the chance to tell him, ‘I told you so.’” The bony chin jutted upward.
Laughing, Addy remembered why she’d knocked on the older woman’s door. “I heard a tapping sound....”
“This darn thing,” Nonnie held up a metal rod with a plastic handle on one end and a claw-looking thing on the other. “I’m trying to get a package of beans off the top shelf over there and I cannot get this thing to close around it. Reminds me of a game they brought into the bar. You pushed buttons to drop a claw and it was supposed to grab a stuffed toy. Of course it never did.”
The bar? This woman hung out in a bar?
“Can I get the beans for you?”
“I’d rather you show me how to work this thing,” Nonnie said instead. “I’ve used it to reach for things at counter level, but up high, I’m not doing something right.”
Following the chair until it stopped beneath the highest pantry shelf, Addy took the grabber, played with it a minute and saw the problem. The older woman was clutching it just fine. She just didn’t have the claw around the beans.
Obviously the woman’s eyesight wasn’t all that good, either.
Helping the claw connect to its prey, Addy watched as Nonnie brought the beans down and dropped them in her lap.
“I’m making soup,” the woman proclaimed, and wheeled herself over to the stove where she bent, opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a Crock-Pot that she also put in the chair with her.
“I can get that.” Addy reached for the pot. And had her hand lightly swatted for her effort.
“I know you can get it,” the woman said. “But the important thing here is that so can I. And I intend to get this soup on before that stubborn and pigheaded grandson of mine gets home. He thinks he’s helping when he does things for me, but I swear, that boy’s going to have me in an early grave if he doesn’t let me do things with my day. I can’t just stare at the computer screen all day long.”
The whole time she was talking, Nonnie was using a combination of claw, hands and chair to turn on the faucet, measure water into a pitcher, pour it in the Crock-Pot, add beans and a Baggie of freshly chopped onions and plug it into a waist-high outlet by the stove. She pulled out a drawer—one that held dish towels in Addy’s half of the duplex—grabbed some spices and sprinkled them atop her mix.
Entranced, and afraid of offending the dynamo a second time, Addy stood frozen and watched.
“Sometimes Mark forgets that his old granny is a tough woman,” Nonnie was saying. “Couldn’t have tended bar all those years to pay for his keep if I’d been a swooner.”
Nonnie was a bartender? Eyeing the tiny woman in the flowered cotton dress, Addy couldn’t make the two images meld into one woman.
“I’m guessing he just loves you and wants what’s best for you,” she said when it appeared that it was her turn to speak. She should go. If she studied reports from then until Monday when classes started, she still wasn’t going to be halfway through this first batch of information. Once classes started, not only would her research double, she’d also have homework assignments to complete if she wanted to maintain her cover. And a campus to investigate for any possible civil suit infractions.
Just how she was going to do that, beyond attending class and keeping her ear to the ground, she wasn’t yet sure. But she knew the answers would come to her. They always did. She’d see or hear something that raised a question and off she’d be, following some lead or another.
Most of them would lead her straight to dead ends, too.
In this case, she hoped all of them did.
“Be nice if he had a clue what was best for me,” the older woman was grousing, mostly to herself, as she worked. Then she added, “Mark’s a good boy. And he’s on the right track now. That’s all that matters.”
With the lid on the Crock-Pot, Nonnie wheeled herself backward and around and headed toward the living room where the television was on, the volume down low.
“I hope you can’t hear that thing over at your place,” she said, as though expecting that Addy would have followed her in.
“Not at all,” she said, and wanted to ask if there was anything she could do for the older woman before she left.
“My grandson says that you’re over there alone.”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t have a ring on.”
“I’m single.”
“Have you always been?” The voice was fading, but the hawkish look in Nonnie’s eyes was not.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How come?”
I beg your pardon? The words were there. For some reason, Addy didn’t say them. What she did say was, “I’m a bit of a loner.”
“Pssshh. No one’s really a loner,” Nonnie said. “Who was he?”
Was dementia a problem here, as well? Mark hadn’t intimated as much. But sometimes the family was the last to admit. “Who was who?”
“The man who hurt you so much you’d rather live alone?”
“There was no man.” Anyone else she’d have told to jump in the lake. In polite terms, of course. “I date. I’ve just never met anyone worth giving up my solitude for.”
Arms crossed, Addy stood there, taking on the bird of a woman.
“You ain’t gay, then.”
“No.” She laughed.
“Didn’t think so, but these days, you can never be sure. There’s lipsticks and dykes and—”
“Mrs....!” Addy broke off when she realized she didn’t know Mark’s last name. Or even if his and his grandmother’s last names were the same.
But she was fairly certain the woman was being purposely outrageous.
“Call me Nonnie,” the woman filled in without pause. “Everyone does. And don’t mind me, dear. I said what I thought when I was young enough to know better. No hope of stopping me now.”
“I don’t mind,” Addy said, perplexed as she realized that she spoke the truth. She should mind.
“Mark minds. But he worries too much, that boy of mine. My fault, not his. I was so certain I could handle raising him all by myself, but my body had other plans for me. Been the other way around longer than it should’ve been.”
“I’ve only met him a couple of times, but he doesn’t seem to mind having you around.” What did she know? Really.
“Nah, Mark don’t mind ’bout that. Like I said, he’s a good boy. Always taking care of everybody. That’s why I had to get him out of Bierly. That town was going to eat up my boy’s whole life and he’d never have known any different. Folks’re nice there, but they used my Mark. Always asking him to do the jobs no one else wanted to do ’cause they knew he would. And he was too nice to call ’em on it.”
Not sure what that meant, but completely sure she had no business having this conversation, Addy heard herself ask, “What did he do there?”
“Worked his ass off,” Nonnie said, and then, with a grin said, “Sorry, dear, I meant ‘butt.’”
“Doing what?” It’s no business of yours, woman. You’re here under false pretenses for one semester—fingers crossed—and then it’s back to Colorado and private practice for you.
“Anything anyone needed, during his time off. On the
clock he was in management at the gasification plant. Pretty much everyone in Bierly either works at the plant or has someone in the house that does.”
“Is that one of those places that turns coal into natural gas?” There was one in North Dakota that thought itself one of America’s best-kept secrets. Addy knew of it only because the Colorado-based daughter of one of their line workers missed too much school the year her father was killed and had been facing twenty-four hours in juvenile detention for truancy.
“Yep. Takes the coal straight from the mines and cleans it up.”
“I’ve heard the work’s dangerous.”
“Hell, yes, it’s dangerous. Mark’s best buddy was killed in an explosion on his line last year. Mark took it hard. Real hard. Not that he’d say so.”
Shuddering, Addy stepped back. “Was he there at the time?”
“Yep. He’s the one who pulled Jimmy out of the fire, but he was too late.”
“Is that why he left?”
Made perfect sense now why a man obviously past the usual age to enter college was starting out fresh.
Sometimes a fresh start was the only way... Turned out Gran’s idea to get her out of Shelter Valley after the fire had been the best thing for her....
“Hell, no,” Nonnie said. “I mean, heck, no. Trying to clean up my act a bit now that I’m getting closer to meeting my Maker.”
“Why’d he leave, then?”
“’Cording to him, he hasn’t left. He’s just here because I blackmailed him into coming. I was hoping he’d get interested in something completely different, new. Safer. But no, not my Mark. He’s got himself enrolled to study safety engineering so he can go back to Bierly and implement newfangled ‘protocols’ for keeping folks as safe as possible under the circumstances.” Nonnie’s opinion of Mark’s plan was obvious from the sarcastic way she pronounced the word protocols.
“You don’t think he should go back?”
“You ever been in a gasification plant?”
“No.”
“They’re filled with chemicals. Dangerous chemicals. Can’t tell you how many times Mark’s come home burning with frustration because one or another of his crew ended up in the bathhouse.”
“Bathhouse?”
“The shower they put them under when they’ve been exposed to contaminated substances.”
Addy had sporadic memories of the aftermath of the fire. Mostly pain-filled ones.
“I’ve got to get back to wor—what I was doing.” Addy made her excuses and turned to go out the way she’d come, adding, “I’m home almost all the time, and will be, except when I’m in class. If you ever need anything, let me know. I’ll leave my number here on the counter. And you can always just knock on the wall. I won’t take so long to respond next time.”
“You got a second before you go?” The woman sounded tired. Dangerously tired.
“Of course.”
“Could you help me into that chair?” Nonnie nodded toward the blue flowered recliner that exactly matched the one in her own living room.
Addy was at her side in an instant, and where she would have steadied the woman, Nonnie just had her hold on to her arm while she slid herself from one chair to the other.
“I can handle my own weight.” The woman’s words were more sigh than sentence. Addy had a feeling she could have handled the woman’s weight, too. By herself. Nonnie couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds.
Eyes closed, the woman’s features relaxed, providing her with a glimpse of the beauty she must have been in her younger years.
Remembering Gran during her last year, when the emphysema had taken most of her air away, Addy figured Nonnie was already asleep, and crept back softly toward the door.
“Mark’s on a job interview.”
She turned. “What?”
“Darn fool’s set on working in spite of the living expenses he’s getting. Didn’t want you to think he just up and leaves me.”
“The thought never entered my mind.” Surprisingly, in spite of Addy’s natural distrust of mankind, it hadn’t. Something to ponder later. Maybe. Nonnie’s eyes were still closed. Addy reached the door. Pulled the latch.
“Thank you.”
The barely discernible words followed her home.
CHAPTER SIX
HE GOT THE JOB. Both of them, actually. One was a work-from-home thing—doing small-unit repairs for the local hardware/electronics store. The second was just outside of town at the cactus jelly plant, working as a part-time floating shift supervisor. The position was perfect as it allowed him to work various shifts throughout the week, based on his school schedule. Cooking cactus plants was vastly different from cooking coal, but production theories and processes—and the machines used to run assembly lines—were surprisingly similar.
Still, his job was not to oversee cactus, or jelly, but to oversee people—the line workers who actually ran the machinery and created the product. He would oversee scheduling and deal with performance issues.
He’d pump gas or clean toilets if he had to—both jobs he’d done before—as long as he had work.
Both jobs, and the close proximity of his temporary home to campus, allowed enough flexibility that he could tend to Nonnie if an occasion arose. Enough flexibility that he could check in on her throughout the day. There wasn’t anyone else to keep an eye on her for him. They weren’t in Bierly anymore.
And when he’d tentatively suggested hiring someone to come in, he’d received another nursing home threat. If she was going to be treated like an invalid, she might as well live like one, she’d said. Or something to that effect.
The threat hadn’t gotten to him as much as the tears, though. He’d seen her eyes well up before she’d blinked them away. His insistence on babying her upset her. When would he get that?
And he remembered what Bertie—one of the few people Nonnie considered a true friend—had said to him not all that long ago. Quality of life was better than quantity. If he wanted Nonnie around forever, he could try to baby her. Try to prevent anything bad from happening to her. But if he wanted her happy for the time she had left on earth, he had to let her fend for herself for as long as she possibly could.
And if he lost her during one of her attempts to care for them?
Turning the truck toward town—the center of town where Montford University stood as the town’s foundation—Mark sang along under his breath to the country music station on the radio. Out of a pristine blue sky the sun was shining down on the mountains that housed Shelter Valley, and his voice rose with the swell of the music in an attempt to drown out the thoughts in his head.
Someday the trick might actually work.
* * *
ON SUNDAY, THE NIGHT before the start of the fall semester, and only a week after he’d arrived in Shelter Valley, Mark sat alone in the kitchen of the duplex, country music playing softly in the background as he bent over the DVD player, in pieces, spread out over the table. According to Hank Harmon, the owner of Harmon Hardware and Electronics, the DVD player’s owner couldn’t get the thing to play and was ready to replace it. Hank wanted Mark to see if he could find what was broken and fix it for less than the replacement cost. Because Hank didn’t just spout customer service—he insisted on providing it.
As it turned out, all the player needed was a good cleaning. Something had gummed up the gears.
From what Mark had gleaned in the couple of days he’d been working for Hank, the older man h
ad been in the hardware business his whole life. And his father before him, too. They’d just branched out into electronics in the past couple of years.
With technology changing so rapidly, Mark figured that as far as business decisions went, the choice was a sound one. Only problem was, Hank knew hammers and nails. Not technology.
Mark, on the other hand, was fascinated by every new toy that came out on the market, and had been the guy in Bierly that everyone called when they ran into a technological glitch. He didn’t have an iPad yet, but he wanted one. He just couldn’t justify the expense for what, for his purposes, would only be a toy.
With precision care, he gingerly picked up and, with a special cloth and solution, gently cleaned the metal pieces spread before him. Over the years he’d amassed an impressive collection of tools, from eyeglass-size screwdrivers to an air compressor that pretty much every citizen in Bierly had borrowed at one time or another.
He’d packed his collection of manly necessities in the bed of the truck. As long as he had his tools, he’d be able to provide.
With pressure from the tip of his finger, he picked up a screw from the table, set it to the tip of the miniature screwdriver and proceeded to attach part of the tangential deflector assembly, freezing midturn as he heard something.
Background on the Linda Davis tune playing from his MP3 player?
The sound was human.
And, he was pretty sure, female.
He didn’t move, listening for a repeat—hopefully in rhythm with the sound track.
It came again. Louder. More hoarse. Dropping the fragile component and screwdriver in a pile on the table, Mark ran down the hall to his grandmother’s room. Throwing open the door, he was at her bedside before he’d taken a full breath.
Nonnie lay still. Silent.
And while he watched, she took several long, even breaths. Normal breaths.
It's Never too Late Page 5
