An Eggshell Present: An Abishag’s Fourth Mystery (Abishag Mysteries Book 4)

by Michelle Knowlden

  Fortunately Tina wasn’t looking at me, her gaze on the tissue package’s sunflower border. She took my hand. “I want to ask you something, Leslie. Before you answer, please know that I love you like a daughter and whatever you say won’t change that.”

  I gritted my teeth but managed to keep my Abishag face neutral. “You can ask me anything, Tina.”

  She took a deep breath. “Would you consider being Sebastian’s Abishag wife?”

  I carefully withdrew my hand to clasp hers in both of mine. “Sebastian doesn’t need an Abishag wife, Tina. Abishags are for old men who have neither wife nor girlfriend. Sebastian has me, and I’ll stay as long as he lives.”

  Her hand fluttered in mine, and she wouldn’t look at me. “I lied, Leslie. I have a little hope.”

  A fairy tale picture popped into my head of Sebastian and me at our wedding while rose petals floated from the sky. It disappeared as quickly as a pricked soap bubble when Tina added, “I’ve read about Abishags and the Lazarus effect.”

  Inadvertently my hands clenched. Tina winced and wiggled her hand free. “Tina…”

  She skated a glance my way, and then her face crumbled. “I know. I read it all, everything you’d tell me. That the people who woke weren’t as brain damaged as thought. That some who woke died soon after.” She swallowed.

  I added as gently as I could, “Most of those reports were hoaxes.”

  She winced as if I’d hurt her again. “I read that, too.”

  She began crying, and I waited, thinking about tears as therapy, thinking how sunflowers on tissue packages provided solace for neither the grieving nor the sneezing, thinking about anything that didn’t involve Sebastian and a cold marriage contract.

  Later I would wonder why I finally agreed, whether it was weariness or to give Tina that thin thread of hope or because I thought it was what Sebastian would have wanted.

  I think anyone undergoing torture will crack. It’s only a matter of time.

  ***

  While Kat and I packed, Dog went to Sebastian’s townhouse in Santa Monica to set up a room for hospice. Tina arranged for the medical equipment rental but while tending my third husband last summer, Dog discovered a host of details left undone and wanted everything ready at the start for Sebastian.

  Not that Sebastian would know or care.

  Professor Stegner knew we were vacating at the end of the month, which left time enough to clear out of the house completely. Halfway through packing for the early days of an Abishag marriage, I suddenly abandoned my suitcase to quietly close my door and call Jen.

  “Hello?” She sounded groggy.

  “It’s me. Can you talk?’

  “Les?” She yawned. “Yeah, I got an hour before reading to the old gent. What’s up?”

  Jen and I’d been dorm mates before a room became available at the West LA house for me, and Jen decided to contract as an Abishag wife. A year later, when I needed financial help, I called Jen. After trying to talk me out of it, she mentored me through the candidate process till I took my first Abishag contract.

  She enjoyed the work and the money. For some reason, her seven (count them—seven) stints as an Abishag wife had been quiet guardianships of her “old gents,” unlike mine that had been unrelenting mayhem. Maybe she knew how to pick them better than I did.

  She also handled her finances better. I blew my first husband’s money trying to please my then boyfriend Donovan Reid. My second payout was spent on credit card debts, university fees, living expenses, and housing. The third payout funded my last year at UCLA and a modest savings account that might have carried me through two years of graduate school.

  Jen’s first husband paid for four years of schooling and she bought a condo when her second contract finished. Husbands three through six paid for a BMW, a killer wardrobe, exotic vacations, a maid, investments, and graduate school. I wasn’t sure why she’d taken a seventh last quarter—one that still hung on after four months.

  I told her about Sebastian’s accident, and his mother asking me to be her son’s Abishag wife.

  “The signing contract was yesterday. I wore that teal dress you gave me last summer. It was Sebastian’s favorite.”

  I stopped there. I’d used past tense and been reminding myself not to do so in front of Tina, Kat or Dog, but that it was okay to start thinking of Sebastian in the past, that the man I’d married was just a patient, an Abishag client, a simple contract.

  I wondered what I would feel when I saw Sebastian lying on the hospital bed in the townhouse, his heartbeats measured by Dog, his life doled out in days.

  “I’m sorry, Les,” Jen said. “I wanted you to have your happily ever after.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Would you tell me again how to be an Abishag wife?”

  Bless her. Jen didn’t say that after three husbands, I already knew how to be an Abishag. Lying on the bed, I let her words flow over my whirling thoughts, let them settle me, and form within me a shaky new resolve. Not in how to be an Abishag wife, but how to act as one when being one was impossible.

  She finished with her acting primer and added, “My old gent’s place is in Belmont Shore or I’d come over now. We could have breakfast this week if you’d like. Any day? Everyday?”

  My throat squeezed at her kindness, and it took me a minute to speak. “You’re a good friend, Jen. Maybe breakfast tomorrow? Tonight …” I had to pause again. “I think tonight’s going to be hard.”

  She muttered something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I said …” She spaced the words in distinct syllables. “Of course, it’ll be hard. An Abishag is all about making it easier for the family, friends, and nearly-dead husband. I expect no one knows exactly how cruel this is for you.”

  I cut off her tirade. “It’d be worse if they’d asked someone else.”

  “Well, yeah, there’s that.” She sighed. “I should have stopped after ‘I’m sorry, Les’.”

  “You’ll come tomorrow?”

  “Count on it.”

  I did feel better after talking to her. I finished packing and went over it twice to make sure I’d packed everything listed on my spreadsheet. After leaving the bag by the door, I helped Kat finish her own packing and pretended not to see her red eyes. I wasn’t sure if she’d been crying over leaving the house where she’d met and married Dog or over Sebastian. I didn’t ask. We managed to laugh over Dog’s underwear, birthday gifts from his Romanian mother. When we heard his key in the door, we rolled their oversized duffel down the hall.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I’d spent little time at Sebastian’s townhouse. During the past year, he had been working on his thesis while finishing off Professor Telemann’s last project for the Institute of Desert Antiquities. He also managed his grandfather’s properties. For the past few months, he volunteered at my father’s campaign headquarters in a useless effort to impress my parents. Useless, because the Crowder name and his trust fund had already impressed them.

  The time we spent together included studying at his school or my place or a Starbucks between the two. Or me going with him to manage one of Thomas’s properties with lunch along the way (like my favorite deli in Malaga Cove near the Portuguese Cove house) or a picnic on the bluffs near the La Jolla bungalow. And one disastrous kayak trip. I had an eggshell memento for each one.

  Every month, he’d text “dress for adventure,” and we would camp in Ojai or harvest olives in Temecula or pick apples in Fallbrook or photograph seals off Balboa.

  Although he would ask, I never went with him to Dad’s campaign headquarters. I told him, ”When it comes to my parents, you’re on your own.”

  We did our duty as a couple and spent Christmas Eve with my parents who served a catered dinner on their best china. My mother took me aside and hissed in my ear about fashion tips while dating a rich man. Dad talked about his campaign for state senator over appetizers and Sonoma Valley wine. Both spent dinner lobbying for connections and financial support, using
a mission fig and cheese board dessert to inveigle a public endorsement from Crowder Industries from Sebastian.

  Fortunately, Sebastian’s influence at Crowder Industry was slight—or that was what he diplomatically told them. After Easter, he began volunteering at Vote Greene headquarters in Orange. When I asked him why, he only grinned and said that it was an anthropological tenet to study the parents to understand the children. When I protested, he kissed me and ended the discussion.

  My parents no longer embarrassed me but could still manipulate me. Avoiding them was my best defense. I hadn’t seen them since my graduation. After Sebastian’s accident, I didn’t return their voicemails on my cell and let Kat handle their calls to the house. God only knew what they were saying to Tina.

  I’m not sure why I stood in Sebastian’s tiny brick courtyard filled with kitchen herbs, roses, and window box geraniums thinking about my parents. Probably procrastinating about playing wife to the Sebastian who was no more.

  Hearing Kat call my name, I shouldered my small overnight tote, shifted an armful of Dog’s medical books, and opened the blue door outside the Santa Monica townhouse. Looking up to the loft inside, I saw Kat leaning over the rail.

  “Okay if Dog and me take this?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Sure you want it? It’s not very private.”

  “It’s got lots of light. Dog’s set up the bedroom downstairs for the aide and the study for Sebastian. The other bedroom up here is small. You want to check it out before letting us take the loft?”

  I dumped Dog’s books on the couch in the living room and dropped the weekender with a clatter on the adobe tile. “Whatever you want is fine.”

  She must have heard something in my voice, because hers immediately softened. “Check the kitchen. Someone left something for you.”

  I took a deep breath. Instead of heading for the kitchen, I looked around the large living room and the patio outside with wicker furniture, potted orange trees, hedges of berries and kumquat trees along the fence, and a trellis of climbing roses on either side of the door leading to the garage and laundry room. The living room hadn’t changed since Thomas Crowder used it for his business digs: deep red leather sofas and wide chairs, glass tables, tile floors with area rugs in blue-green geometric designs, and paneled walls.

  After my second husband—the artist Jordan Ippel—died, Sebastian had taken Kat’s advice and purchased a half dozen paintings from the estate. He replaced Thomas’s desert landscapes in the living room and entry with glottal stops of swirling silver and blue. A large one from his oak vein period of interlacing gilded twigs reminded me of branching probabilistic trees, which I never failed to find restful.

  Jordan’s lawyer had urged me to choose a painting too. It was still at the university house. If Sebastian lingered, I’d bring it here. It would never be as valuable as his other works, but he’d captured his love of crows in swirling paint strokes of black on a long green branch with a sunset backdrop of orange, pink and violet. Not as restful, but I always found it hopeful.

  I suddenly remembered that a flock of crows was called a murder.

  Shaking off that disconcerting thought, I walked down the hall, past the bathroom that the hospice aides and I would use, to the room where they would put Sebastian. It had been Thomas’s study. Sebastian had used it to manage his granddad’s properties. The large hospital bed now dominated the room. The paneled walls, craftsman style sconces, and a small captain’s desk in the corner were all that remained of the study. Knowing that an Abishag wife spends much time reading to her husband, someone had positioned a roomy leather wing chair near the bed.

  I retreated to the kitchen to plug in the teakettle and see what had been left for me. The afternoon light coming through the bay window blinded me momentarily, till I blinked and saw the herb pots in the window, the red tile countertops, and the white walls decorated with sheet music—Thomas’s first wife had been a composer of jazz tunes. The floor had been laid with a dizzying array of black and white tiles—about a quarter of the tiles were embossed with musical notes.

  I smelled the cinnamon before I saw it: a plate of snickerdoodle cookies, secured with clear plastic. Tears filled my eyes when I saw that someone had dusted them heavily with nutmeg. I knew only one person who did that.

  “Mrs. Timmons will be here later.” From behind me, Kat’s voice was still soft.

  I quickly blotted my eyes before turning. “Will she stay for dinner?”

  “She’s making dinner. She told Tina that only she knew how to take care of Miss Leslie.”

  “But she’s retired now,” I protested.

  Kat shrugged. “She insisted. She’s only doing the cooking, no cleaning and just during the week. Sebastian had, I mean has, a service that’s agreed to come daily, Monday through Friday. We told Tina that we could fend for ourselves on weekends.”

  I gently touched a cookie through the plastic, my finger leaving a dent. “It’s settled then.”

  Kat started to say something but instead went through the cupboards till she found two mugs. She flicked the kettle on, and then rummaged through the canisters for teabags.

  As she set the mug in front of me, she said, “This is your house now. You get to set the rules for running it. Tina just wanted to make it as easy as possible since …” Kat rarely was lost for conversation, but while watching me with that intent look, she seemed to hunt for the right words.

  “Since Sebastian’s dying will be hard?” I offered.

  She winced. “I was going to say since most of your attention will be on caring for Sebastian, but, yeah, that too.”

  “Hey.” Dog walked through the kitchen, his black hair falling into his eyes, his shirt damp with sweat. “No taking breaks before unpacking.”

  Kat patted his cheek. “Easy, big guy. Let Les do this at her own pace.”

  He shot me a harassed look. “How long do you need? The hospital’s called. They’re bringing him in a half hour.”

  How long did I need? Could I have a year or two?

  I shook myself. It really wasn’t logical to moon around the kitchen because snickerdoodle cookies made me sentimental. Suddenly feeling a wave of love for dear friends who were doing their best to help, I smiled.

  “I’m ready now. What needs doing?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Half dozing on a bench near the tangerine tree, I thought about the time Sebastian and I visited Pasadena, waiting for wild parrots to fly overhead. We had sat in comfortable silence, his arm around me, him watching the skies with eyes as green as a parrot’s feather, me watching him. When he caught me, he grinned and pulled me closer. “You’ll hear them squawking before you see them.”

  From the back patio, I heard the ambulance arrive in front with a second car chugging behind it. I recognized Mrs. Timmons’ car. She still hadn’t fixed the transmission of that old Buick despite her family’s urging.

  Dog and I intersected at the front door, but he headed for the ambulance and I headed for the housekeeper.

  Although it had been two years since Thomas died, I still met Grace Timmons for lunch the first Thursday every month. I also spent Easter with her, her adoring husband Ralph and their vast family of sons, daughters, grandchildren, and strays like me. Sebastian came with me—he’d spent holidays with her since he was a kid. When Tina traveled for Crowder Industry and the boys’ grandparents weren’t available, Duarte would go to friends and Sebastian would go to Mrs. Timmons.

  He told me once that she had taught him all that was good and decent in families. I suspected that Tina had been too self-centered to be a great mother—Thomas and his first wife were to be blamed for that. At least she tried, which is more than I could say for my own mother. I did envy him Mrs. Timmons and was grateful I knew her now.

  Being nearly 75 and a little stout, she took a wheezing breath and a long moment to exit the Buick. Then she swept me into a hug that smelled of nutmeg and lavender and felt of down pillows and summer.

  “Saints
be praised that our lad has us.” Her voice rumbled through me like a Mississippi paddleboat.

  “Yes, ma’am.” My face pressed into her collarbone, I sounded muffled.

  She released me, smoothed my hair, and shook a finger at me. “Don’t you cry. It’ll just start me going, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I managed a watery smile.

  She sniffed, her gaze drifting past me to where Dog and one of the EMTs pulled Sebastian’s gurney from the ambulance. She sniffed again.

  Trying to distract her, I said, “Thank you for the cookies.”

  She glared at me. “You eat every one of them, you hear? However long this will be, it’s no time to be dieting. That goes for Kathmandu and Douglas, too.”

  This time my grin was more heartfelt. “You’d better tell them yourself.”

  Studying Sebastian’s bandaged head, she said with solid resolution, “And don’t think I won’t.”

  We trailed after the gurney like a funeral procession. I squashed that thought. Closing the door after us, Mrs. Timmons cast a quick look around the living room.

  “I’ve always liked this place,” she said.

  “You’ve been here?” I only thought of Mrs. Timmons at the Crowder’s sprawling Portuguese Cove house in Palos Verdes.

  “Not often. Did a few business dinners for Mr. Crowder. Trained some of the cleaning girls.”

  Her gaze lingered on the gurney disappearing into the room at the end of the hall, and then she took my arm. “You keep me company while they settle the boy. Hope you’re hankering for broasted chicken as that’s what I’m fixing.”

  Later the only thing I remembered about dinner was the thought of Sebastian lying in the hospital bed while Kat talked, her voice soothing my rising tension. After she served us, Mrs. Timmons sat with Sebastian so Dog could eat dinner with us. Being a religious woman, she probably prayed over the boy she still saw in Sebastian.