2 Maid in the Shade

by Bridget Allison

  By the way, no one knows where you are,” he added darkly.

  “That isn’t funny, next time you’re seeing a woman who has been pursued by a killer you might work on your romantic gestures and compliments.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “it’s a learning curve; this is all virgin territory to me, pursuing a woman who is more hotly pursued than I am.”

  “You are so conceited.”

  “Wait; back up, so we’re seeing each other?”

  I drew off my top and flung it on the floor before I headed to his bathroom to brush my teeth; I left the door open.

  “You see me now don’t you?”

  “Does this mean you’ve made a decision?” He called from the bed.

  “Nope, and I guess you are just going to have to make your peace with that.” I turned on the shower and with my back to him I slipped out of my thong and stretched languorously before stepping in.

  “Then my ultimatum stands,” he said weakly.

  “Wise decision!” I called back as I lathered up. “Just friends!”

  The shower door opened and he stepped in. I flung my wet hair away from my face and gave him a smug look.

  “Friends support each other’s causes,” he shrugged, “Lucy tells me you are all about water conservation.”

  {END}

  Maid in Waiting

  By Bridget Allison

  Copyright Graysea Publishing 2013

  Facebook Post: “Granted, Milton was a lovely poet. And when I am powerless his phrase comes to mind: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” I understand the perspective he was speaking from, but I’m still going to have to call bullshit on standing around and waiting. It’s a fresh and endless waltz in Hell to the rhythms of a burning silence.”

  Chapter 1

  It’s a wonder I can be shocked by anyone sitting on my front porch, but this morning I was rendered speechless by my dad’s presence there. He had been in London with Elizabeth when we last spoke just days ago.

  There was a lost look on his face, a look I hadn’t seen since my mother’s death, and a cup of coffee which he was rolling slightly between his palms as though he were warming them on this already unseasonably warm early fall day.

  I knew he hadn’t come because of the narrow escape I had just weeks before. I had insisted to Elizabeth, my dad and brothers that we would all get together when Ben returned. It had taken a lot of persuading, but I had done a good hard sell on the fact that the media had wildly exaggerated the whole story. Since some news outlets have earned a reputation for getting it fast before they get it right, the sale was hard, but not impossible. Hugh’s capture hadn’t even registered on the real news outlets we relied on such as NPR and BBC.

  Dad would have normally let me know if he was coming merely to check on me. The fact that he had been unable to call beforehand was confusing. He looked at me without speaking, his eyes moist. I knew immediately this was news which couldn’t be conveyed over the phone.

  This wasn’t good, this was going to be very bad indeed, and so to prolong this awfulness that swelled and swirled around him like a dark aura I simply asked, “Did you go to Lucy’s house first?”

  He squinted at me questioningly.

  “The mug,” I said more gently. “It’s Lucy’s.”

  No one could mistake Lucy’s mugs; she had them handmade at Seagrove to her own design.

  “Oh,” he cleared his throat, “I did.”

  I gripped the handle of my supply bag tightly as I moved toward him.

  “Are you ill Da? Did someone die?”

  He settled the cup on the porch banister where it pitched over into the yellow bell bushes. Neither of us reacted.

  Then he got up slowly and moved toward me the way I might approach a dangerous but wounded animal. It occurred to me that since I had moved here, I had been approached like that a time too often. Had all my recent waltzes with death made me look like a willing partner to another more perilous and final one?

  Then he stopped and my mouth was half open, my breath so shallow my lungs could barely register an absorption of air. My eyes were casting into his as though I could draw the rest of it from him without hearing this impending awfulness made more concrete by being put into words.

  “Gretchen, it’s Ben, he disappeared in Yemen with a guide and another fellow from the State Department.”

  I gave him an uncomprehending stare, “He wouldn’t go to Yemen,” I said softly. “No one from the West goes to Yemen right now.”

  “That’s where he was Shug, that’s the last place anyone saw him. Now a militant group has been boasting they have captured three spies. We had already been trying to locate him when the State Department confirmed that one of the men is theirs. They think it stands to reason Ben is among the other two.”

  “But he’s a consultant. Wha-”

  He reached for me and hugged me hard as he patted my back. “That’s what everyone is saying; it’s all a huge mistake. But it is a pretty big one. These groups don’t like admitting they snatched the wrong hostages. Our best hope is that they ask for a ransom.”

  “And if that fails?”

  “I afraid then Shug, prayer is our last hope. It will be time to worry.”

  “Let me pack a bag.”

  “If it makes you feel better to do that now go ahead,” he urged.

  “There is no point in it?”

  “There’s a point to everything sweetheart. Even if it just makes you feel more ready to”…he sighed, “Do you mind if we stay here a bit?”

  “Shouldn’t we be with Elizabeth?”

  “We will. She wants you with her. We’re just going to tie up your loose ends and then leave. I was thinking two days and we’ll head back together. I have our plans all set.”

  “Actually, that seems wise.” I said as he picked up his brown leather travel bag. I put my arm through the crook of his and led him inside the house. “Thank you for coming and thank Elizabeth. Now let’s get you settled in your room.”

  I took him to the first guest bedroom which he normally didn’t use, preferring to wake to the sounds and sights of wildlife stirring outside the back window. “I assume you are putting me here because the other thing happened in the room next door?” He asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll take my usual room,” he said firmly. “What better way to reclaim it?”

  I gave him a half smile, “It is clean, only I still see it for the bloodbath it was. I suppose I should have brought a priest in there to bless it.”

  We continued into the next room and he began to erase the horrors which had happened there so recently with quick efficient moves. My dad knows how to travel, and he had his packing and unpacking down to a science. There wasn’t much for me to do aside from sitting on the bed and watching as he transferred everything into drawers and on hangers. Then he rubbed his hands together, “How about some of that great coffee of yours?” It was his way to acknowledge something and then dismiss it for as long as it took until there was an opportunity to act. Maybe that was my way as well.

  “Sure you don’t want to rest first?”

  “Rested on the plane,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said leading him back to the kitchen. “I do have some questions about Ben.”

  “And I wish I had answers for you Shug. I don’t know a thing beyond what I already told you. We just have to wait.”

  “You’ve made calls?”

  “We’ve called on everybody, including God.”

  “Can we leave earlier?”

  “Yes, I just figured you’d need that much time. We’re flying privately. But bring your ID and passport. You should probably square your bookkeeping, make a list, pack for anything and settle Mosey somewhere. Let the entities which send you jobs know you’ll be gone indefinitely. Then we’ll leave tomorrow night.”

  I grabbed a pen and paper.

  “Head to toe,” Dad said smiling.

  It was my mother’s way of packing that had stuck with
us all.

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  “How can you ask Shug? Of course.”

  “I ask because it won’t be easy.”

  “Wouldn’t be much of a favor if it were.”

  I reached into my bag and pulled out three business cards.

  “Can you call them?”

  Dad fanned them out on the counter and looked them over while I started the coffee.

  His tone was surprised. “You don’t want to tell Dallas yourself?”

  I shook my head and looked away. “He will want to know everything; do everything possible. You two have that in common. You’ll know best how to explain what has been done, and the fact that he can’t fix this. I don’t have the energy or the intel.”

  “And Bud and Harlan?”

  “They need to know why I’m AWOL. Tell them whatever they want to know, send them my apologies for leaving them in the lurch.”

  I handed him a fresh cup of coffee and looked in the fridge. There was bread and Duke’s mayonnaise. Feeding Dad was easy enough. I had some celery and grapes and a late tomato, and that would do in a pinch. Thank God we wouldn’t have to go out.

  My father picked up his cell phone and headed out to the porch.

  “You don’t mind if I take it outside? It’s a pretty day.”

  “It is,” I said absently. I didn’t think that was the reason he was going outside to talk. But I was grateful. I could not hear about Ben missing, over and over. I didn’t want to hear my father struggle to explain my relationship to Ben when he called the chief or the sheriff.

  “We’re having tomato sandwiches for lunch,” I called to my father just as he was closing the door.

  I heard it creak open again slightly. Creaking doors used to vex me. Because of my own recent intruder, I doubted I would ever oil those hinges again.

  “Tomato sandwiches would be great,” Dad said, “lots of cracked pepper on mine. Oh, we’re going to Lucy’s for dinner.”

  He was out the door so I nodded, essentially to no one. I had to talk to Lucy. I didn’t know how she would keep Mosey, but I might as well figure out the caretaking immediately and give Dad a decent meal tonight without going to a restaurant. My few friends would tie up other loose ends.

  Funny the ordinary things you cannot bear sometimes. Right now, that thing was being in public. Tomorrow I imagined my obstinacy would take some other shape. There was no way I could go out tonight and look upon the smiling, oblivious faces of strangers who had not just become unmoored from the universe and sent spinning into oblivion. In the space of a moment I been both blinded and cast into a limbo. If we went out the happy strangers we saw would be blameless, but I would resent them all the same.

  My dad returned from his calls and veered off immediately to his room. I left the sandwiches on the counter and when he came into the kitchen he looked composed. He made quite a thing of having a hearty tomato so late in the season, but then a silence fell upon us as though we were strangers in study carrels during finals.

  I told him I needed to make sure I had plenty of feed and I made my way out to the tack room. I recorded everything we were getting low on then decided to order more of everything we had room for and headed back to the cabin to enter it online. I also sent a message asking for an ETA and had the bills sent to Lucy.

  I snapped a leash on Mosey and we walked for over an hour. When we got to the big lake I set him free to chase a few squirrels and breathe in the rich fecundity of the layers of leaves and moist soil. I stuffed the leash in my pocket, Mosey never needed to be on a lead for the walk home. I returned with a few pieces of stray kindling, adding them to the load of firewood outside.

  The house was quiet. I imagined my father was back in his room, thinking his own thoughts, talking on the phone, wondering what he could do or had not done.

  I went upstairs with a cup of coffee, picked up a book then set it aside to stare at the ceiling. There were no numbers there. When Ben first left for three weeks I had counted the days until his return with imaginary numbers emblazoned on the tongue in groove wood above me. But I never got past day three. That was the day a woman abroad had called, claiming to be his lover.

  That night, hope had blurred my certainty that Ben would ever return to me although her call had been somewhat suspect. But the next day I had returned to a fresh assault from Ben. In an odd and vaguely insulting message on my machine he informed me that he had run into a colleague and no longer had a return date in mind.

  Now in light of his possible abduction I pondered those words over and over again. I still knew the recording by heart but I grabbed the tape and reinserted it into the answering machine to listen anyway. I was vaguely surprised to see the fresh and empty tape I had installed when I removed his was missing. Since most calls come in through my cell I couldn’t pinpoint when that had taken place. Landlines are free with internet and I had merely kept it because in Bridle Springs progress arrives with all the purpose and alacrity of a sloth.

  The night that my house became a crime scene, it had been crawling with authorities, high drama and jurisdictional posturing. Anyone could have removed the tape in the midst of all that chaos in an effort to get a leg up on the case. And there had been extra men in dark suits who had neglected to identify themselves. Mona had pegged them as “G-men.” Harlan had confirmed discreetly they were “Feds.” Their dress and demeanor looked an awful lot like the men who had arrived so quickly when Ben’s condo had been robbed and those same men had returned to interview me at Jared’s place. But their presence seemed to be accepted, albeit grudgingly by the local sheriff and police chief on each occasion.

  Thank God I had kept Ben’s lone message safely tucked away in a sea glass vase filled with hair ribbons. Like a freshly minted masochist I hadn’t wanted anyone else’s message to overrun those shattering words.

  Now I attempted to listen again without longing and feelings of betrayal. What was he saying? Ben was never cruel or snide but his words had eviscerated me. He knew me so well; but his directions to take over his power of attorney for his finances had been embellished by a cautionary warning not to use the money for personal purchases of diamonds and furs. He knew very well that I would never misappropriate his money, wear fur, and that I distrust the conflict free labeling of diamonds in general. He had gone on at length about the picnic basket; a basket he had custom made “just for us” before his departure. He had risked a mauling by a mother bear to retrieve it. It was quite a sea change to hear his cavalier request that I should swiftly return it to Delmontes’ for refilling and use it without him.

  As wounded as I had been, I realized now that none of this made sense unless he meant for it to be confusing so that I would think carefully about his words. It all began to click and clack in my brain like an old fashioned typewriter. And then there was the clang of the zip and return sounding an epiphany. There was something I had missed, about Delmontes, or the basket, or in his condo which I had so set to rights with brutal speed.

  I had done almost everything he had asked, including taking over responsibility for his personal finances. Within days of that message I had moved swiftly from his condo to his office. I signed the power of attorney as his assistant Calinda, clad in black leather and more facial rings than any face should be able to support, looked over at me with something akin to sympathy as she passed me the paperwork.

  Ben must have known he was in danger when he left the message with me.

  I looked for Calinda’s business card, hoping for some answers but when I did locate it and dialed her, the number was no longer in service.

  I had more puzzles than I had pieces, but it seemed prudent to visit Ben’s office before we left. I had cleaned the picnic basket weeks ago, and placed it on top of a cabinet with a variety of other treasured objects. I was sure I would have noticed if there had been anything unusual tucked in the smart little cutlery storage pockets. Nevertheless, I added the basket and Ben’s office to my list and slid the small notebo
ok into my pocket before going back out to the porch.

  I heard my father milling about inside until showered and freshly shaved he came out to the porch to sit with me. Mosey was outside finishing up and I was staring out into the woods with blind eyes. “Do you want to get dressed for dinner?” My dad asked gently.

  I swiveled my head to look at him and bit my lip. I was conscious of my shallow breathing. I felt as though I had been eviscerated and everything within me had been filled with pain and sewn tightly back inside so it could never escape.

  “Do you know what I hate more than anything in the world?” I asked him finally.

  “I would think right now it would be powerlessness,” my father said.

  I nodded. “That is the one thing,” I said. “And I have been almost powerless before, you know? A few times; when it was personal and immediate, but this; this has an incalculable vastness to it…” my voice trailed off.

  My father was silent, but as we looked at one another it was though a barrage of questions without answers were being pitched back and forth, thought better of, and littered the ground all around us.

  “Do you want to dress for dinner?” My father asked.

  I scooted closer to him and put my arm around his shoulder.

  “I just asked you that,” he said, chagrinned.

  “How about I get dressed for dinner?” I smiled.

  “I’ll watch Mosaic there,” he nodded and I turned and walked back inside.

  When I came back downstairs I was wearing a soft comfortable dress. I had taken some pains with my hair and face for Dad’s benefit. My friend Jackson, a drama queen of the first order had taught me a quick trick or two and it seemed to be something I could offer up as reassurance. My father was worried about Ben, Elizabeth and me; I needed to at least look as though I could withstand whatever was coming our way. Dad, ever the gentleman took my arm and led me outside and we drove over to Lucy’s house.