“What?”
“One thousand and sixty-two,” she said, somewhat breathlessly.
“Don’t pull that with me, old woman,” he said, coming closer to watch as she won the hand. “Don’t go lowering your voice like you’re out of energy just so I can’t hear you.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” She didn’t look at him. And her cantankerous tone didn’t put him off a bit.
“Yes, you would.”
“Don’t you have homework to do?”
“How many tokens, Nonnie?”
“One thousand and sixty-two.” He’d heard her correctly.
“That’s over eighty hands of poker in three days!”
“Winning hands,” she pointed out. “I’ve still got my touch.”
He didn’t doubt that. And hoped she kept it forever. But he wanted more for her than a life spent playing poker against other lonely people online.
* * *
ADDY WASN’T GOING to set one foot outside her house Friday evening. To prove that fact to herself she pulled on the pair of cutoff black sweat shorts she wore for cleaning, and her favorite T-shirt. The one she only wore in private because she figured she was the only one who’d appreciate the saying emblazoned across the chest: I Live in My Own Little World, But That’s Okay—They Know Me Here.
The threat against Will had escalated. She had so much to do, so many personnel files to get through. Scholarship recipients to investigate. Athletic programs to look at. Clubs to join on campus so she could see how they operated.
And homework to complete. Her cover would be blown if she failed out of her classes.
Pouring herself a glass of wine—something she allowed herself about once a week—she sat at the kitchen table with her laptop, leaving the desk in the living room for the next occupant of the duplex to use. The desk faced a wall and it was too far from the kitchen window and the sliding glass door—she couldn’t hear the fountain.
She opened the secure server, typed in her user name and password, and opened the faculty files. She was still in the first half of the alphabet. The Ps weren’t far off. Where she would find Will’s personnel file. His hiring information. Any formal complaints. Performance reviews.
She prayed to God she wouldn’t find anything suspect among them. Prayed she could protect the man whose family had taken her in such a long time ago. She wasn’t nearly as sure now, as she’d been when she’d taken this job, that she’d be able to do so.
The people of Shelter Valley lived by their own code. A good code. One that worked. But not necessarily one that would fit into today’s court system where only the law—case law—mattered.
She needed a pen and got up to get one from the desk drawer where she stored her supplies.
She caught a glimpse of the front window through her peripheral vision as she bent over the tray of pens—one slot for red, one for black and one for blue. The window overlooked the front yard, the driveway and the road beyond. The houses across the street. Straightening, a black pen in hand, she moved to the window, just to check on the state of the neighborhood like any reasonable person living alone would do.
Mark was home. She’d heard him come in. And yes, there was his truck parked right next to her car in the driveway. His and hers. The sleek, big black truck and the small, older, tan-colored sedan.
Male and female. Side by side.
She had work to do.
She was not going outside that night.
Mark was as temporary as the duplex. He had a bit part in the life of Adele Kennedy. He could not mean anything to Adrianna Keller.
And it was Adrianna Keller who sat down at the kitchen table, and proceeded to take notes with her black pen as she peered at the files in front of her. Personnel records for an Amanda Kingsley. She’d been a professor of music at Montford for thirty years before her retirement five years ago.
The sliding glass door opened next door. And shut again. She was not going to look up. To see Mark sitting in his chair close to her side of the patio. She was Adrianna Keller. An attorney with a job to do.
She didn’t hear him sit down. Had he seen that her chair was empty and gone back inside?
Had he needed to tell her something?
Addy dropped her pen. Picked it up. Her stomach was fluttering, her nerves on edge. Her heart was going to start pounding soon, too. She knew the signs. A panic attack.
She had nothing to panic about.
Closing her eyes she focused on the calming sound of the fountain and made herself forget the man who might be sitting out there all alone.
* * *
MARK HAD TO WORK all weekend, split shifts with time off in between. But he was still up before dawn on Saturday—woken by the sound of Nonnie’s chair whirring by his door on the way to the bathroom. Out of bed and down the hall before his eyes were completely open, he bent to look inside the refrigerator. If he didn’t get the bacon frying, she’d do it herself. Because a good day started with a good breakfast and a good breakfast consisted of bacon and eggs. Every single day. Health experts might say that the cholesterol and fat was bad for you, but Nonnie was over eighty in spite of it.
“Adele had dinner with me last night.” Nonnie wheeled herself up to the table half an hour later, a jar of grape jelly, napkins and silverware on her lap. “She brought over a pot of kielbasa and red potatoes with fresh green beans.”
He’d sat outside and had a beer the night before, hoping she might join him, but she hadn’t. So he’d spent the rest of the evening with his tablet, trying to focus on his art history reading while his thoughts kept painting visions of his neighbor undressing, getting ready for bed...getting into bed.
He’d texted Ella twice.
“It was good,” Nonnie said, draping Mark’s napkin across his knee and stuffing the tip of her own beneath her collar.
“Good.”
“She’s a looker.”
“Who?”
“Who? Who are we talking about? Adele, that’s who. Don’t you think she’s sexy?”
His head was bent over his plate as he shoveled eggs into his mouth. “She’s all right.”
“There’re bound to be lots of men calling on her once they realize she’s here.”
“Bound to be.”
“Why ain’t you one of them?”
He knew where this was going. And knew better than to fight it. He lifted his chin. “Who says I’m not?”
He wasn’t. But he managed to shut down his nosy, matchmaking grandmother, which made the false implication worth uttering.
* * *
SATURDAY MORNING, Addy attended a meeting for students interested in writing for the school newspaper. She listened while the student editor, a long-haired, bearded senior named George pontificated about truth in reporting, about upholding university standards without hiding facts, about full disclosure and university pride. The paper’s adviser, a Professor Nancy Litchfield, reiterated most of the same.
Nothing was said about needing to have articles vetted by university staff before publishing.
With an article about border patrol in mind—just as an excuse to infiltrate their little group—Adele Kennedy signed up to be one of the year’s two new reporters.
* * *
“DID YOU GET that kid a job?” Nonnie asked as she and Mark sat over empty breakfast plates, drinking coffee Sunday morning before work.
“I got him an interview,” Mark said. He’d asked management to
give Jon a chance, and offered to train the kid on his own time. Entry-level line jobs were hard to come by. The kid might end up cleaning bathrooms to start with. But at least he’d be in the door. “It’s up to him to get the job.”
“They know he’s in school?”
“Yeah.”
“And they’ll work around his hours like they do with you?”
“Yeah.”
She grunted. And Mark took the praise equably.
“You don’t talk about school much.”
He shrugged. “Not much to tell.”
“You just don’t want me knowin’ I was right.”
“About what?”
“You. The scholarship. Or rather, you don’t want me knowin’ you know I was right. But I do. Whether you admit it or not.”
Mark cocked his head, half grinning at her, half perplexed. “Why is it so important to you that I admit fault?” he asked.
“Who says it’s important to me?”
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“My point exactly.”
She nodded. He smiled and finished his coffee.
* * *
“PSSST.”
Addy was on her front porch, locking the door behind her Sunday morning, when she heard the familiar sound.
Why Nonnie didn’t just call out to her, she didn’t know. Hiding her smile, she turned toward her neighbors’ house.
“Pssst,” Nonnie said again.
“Nonnie? You need something?”
“So long as you’re not busy,” came the frail voice from just inside the door. And then, “Come in, girl,” she said with more gusto. Mark’s grandmother was sitting at the computer. “I got a favor,” she said.
“Of course.” Addy had stopped in twice the day before to say hello. The woman had been on the computer both times.
“Next time you’re at the store, could you pick me up a bottle?”
“I’d be happy to,” Addy said, watching over Nonnie’s shoulder as she won a game of backgammon against someone from Sweden. “A bottle of what?”
“Skunked him!” Nonnie exclaimed, putting her chair in reverse. “Be right back,” she said as Addy moved quickly to get out of her path.
Nonnie occasionally made rapid trips to the bathroom. But that morning, she whizzed right past it and on to her bedroom, returning a minute later with an empty bottle of whiskey on her lap.
Stopping her chair in front of Addy, she held up the bottle. “This. Can you get me some of this?”
“What about your medications?”
“Pooh them,” Nonnie said. “I don’t drink enough for it to make a difference. Just a nip at night sometimes when I can’t sleep. Been workin’ on that bottle for most of a year,” she said.
Still, Addy couldn’t agree to something that could put the woman’s life at risk. “I’m sure Mark would pick some up for you. They sell alcohol right in the grocery stores in Arizona.”
“I ain’t askin’ him.”
Because she shouldn’t be drinking alcohol? “Why?”
Backing up to her spot beside the small table that held Kleenex, bottled water, Nonnie’s phone and everything else the woman might need, Nonnie looked Addy straight in the eye.
“Because that boy seen enough whiskey in his life. I ain’t ever, ever going to make him see me with a bottle.”
Addy noticed the woman’s hands were shaking as she gripped the bottle in her lap.
“Mark drinks,” Addy reminded softly, not completely sure Nonnie was bluffing. The woman had missed her calling—she’d have been better suited to the stage.
“Beer only,” Nonnie said. “And never more than two a night—one when he’s driving. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout him, anyways. I’m talking about the women in his life.”
Women. Was Ella a drinker? Was that why Nonnie hadn’t liked the woman? It wasn’t her place to ask.
“He ever tell you about his mum?”
“Just how she died,” Addy said, remembering. That’s when she realized that Nonnie was being completely sincere. Wishing she could fade through the wall, back to the safety of her house, Addy just stood there. She couldn’t get any more emotionally involved with these two. Helping an old lady on occasion was no different than volunteering with meals-on-wheels like she’d done in Colorado. But this...sharing their lives...
“My daughter didn’t just die drunk, she lived that way, too,” Nonnie said, her voice filled not so much with disgust as with pain. And regret. “My fault. I raised her around the stuff and didn’t see till it was too late that she’d been sneaking sips behind my back. Lots of them. Got to the point she’d do anything for a drink. I thought, after Mark came along, that things’d be different. She loved him more than anyone. Just not as much as she loved the bottle.”
Nonnie paused, breathing hard. Tears pricked at Addy’s eyes and she felt the need to bolt but was physically unable to move.
“I did what I could, but when I saw her drinking around the baby, I told her to git. She could see the boy whenever she wanted, but only if she was sober. The courts tried to take him away from her, away from me, but in the end, I won. She’d come back every now and then, mostly for money. And every time, that boy thought his mom was home to stay. He never quit believing that she’d get sober and they’d be a family—the two of them....”
Addy’s heart cried for that boy. And ached for the wonderful man he’d become.
“I can’t afford the sleeping pills the doc prescribed,” Nonnie said. “He told me that a little nip at night, on the hard nights, wouldn’t hurt if it’d help me sleep. My friend Doris used to buy it for me. I been rationing, but I’m out and...”
Without another word Addy took the empty bottle from Nonnie, and got the hell out of there.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AFTER CLASS ON MONDAY, instead of waiting for Addy outside her building, Mark left school right away, intending to get a five-hundred-word essay written for his English 101 class. He went to Harmon Hardware and Electronics instead to drop off a toaster he’d fixed and to pick up some solar lights.
He hadn’t seen Addy since Friday. But he’d heard about her. Incessantly. Knew that she’d had pasta salad for dinner Saturday night and eggplant on Sunday. That she had gone shopping in Phoenix and had picked up some chocolates for Nonnie.
She’d been in his thoughts. Far too much.
“Mark, good thing you stopped in.” Hank greeted him with a smile from behind the old-fashioned counter—one that resembled the counter in the drugstore on Main Street in Bierly. “I’ve got a vacuum cleaner I need you to look at if you’ve got time.”
“Sure, Hank, leave it by the door and I’ll take it on my way out.” He made a beeline for the outdoor lighting and found what he was looking for almost immediately. The lights cost a little more than they would have been at the department store out by the highway, but the owners of independent shops needed support. He knew. Jimmy’s dad had owned the drugstore back home.
“How’s your grandmother doing?” Hank asked as Mark brought his lights up to the counter.
A sixtyish woman was perusing the paper towel holders in the center aisle. He’d noticed someone in the paint section, too.
“She’s fine,” Mark answered.
“Some folks have been wondering what she does all day while you’re at school and working. We haven’t seen her out and about.”
“She spends a lot of time on the computer, Hank. She did
at home, too, but people were always stopping by to interrupt her so I didn’t worry about it as much.”
“Well...” Hank paused and the woman he’d seen earlier came forward. “This is Veronica.”
“Hello.” The woman smiled.
“Hello.” Mark shook the hand that she held out.
“I’m sorry for butting in, but a few of us have been talking over at the diner and we were thinking that, if you don’t mind, we’d like to stop by and meet your grandmother. If you think she’d like that, that is.”
“I’m sure she’d love it.”
“I understand she’s in a wheelchair.”
“That’s right. She has MS.”
Veronica frowned. “I’m so sorry to hear that. There’s a gentleman at Big Spirits, that’s a drop-in center for the elderly here in town, connected to Little Spirits, the children’s—”
“The day care, yes, I know,” Mark told her. “I have a...friend...who’s new to town and just started taking his son there.”
“Oh, you must be talking about Jon. He and Abe live around the corner from me. He’s such a nice young man. And that baby. I told him to call me any time he needs a sitter, but he doesn’t seem too keen on leaving the boy with strangers. Anyway, I’d be happy to stop by and introduce myself to your grandmother. Maybe we’d have something in common....”
“Maybe.” If nothing else, the two could talk themselves to sleep. Stifling a grin, he couldn’t wait to tell Addy about the woman.
“Anyhow, there’s a gentleman at Big Spirits who has MS. Maybe your grandmother could come to the center sometime and meet him. Or she can just come and play games and eat with us.”
“Thanks for the suggestion,” Mark said, easing his wallet out of his pocket. Nonnie needed people in her life.
“Oh, dear, here I am talking a blue streak when you’re such a busy man,” Veronica said. “Just tell your grandmother I’ll stop by sometime tomorrow afternoon. Does she play cribbage? Maybe we could play cribbage. She shouldn’t be sitting there all alone. Especially not with MS.”
Veronica was still talking as Mark paid Hank and made his way to the door. Smiling, he loaded the lights and the vacuum into the back of the truck. Nonnie, meet Veronica. Veronica, meet Nonnie.
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