Maybe if she tells him what Ozzie said tonight, as she was taking him out of the bathtub . . .
No.
That won’t prove anything to Lou, other than that his pregnant wife has a grossly overactive imagination and it’s probably rubbing off on their poor, innocent little boy.
“So what? So he said he’s afraid to go to bed because of the lady in his room? I told you not to paint that gigantic mural on his wall. That life-sized Old Mother Hubbard is probably giving him nightmares.”
That was exactly what Michelle had thought, when Ozzie had first mentioned the lady in his room—that he was referring to the picture of a bespectacled white-haired woman in an old-fashioned dress, holding a bone for her dog.
The only trouble was, when she’d brought Ozzie into the room after drying him off, and told him to show her the lady, he said he couldn’t.
“She not here, Mommy,” he said, looking around, his eyes wide with trepidation.
“Are you sure? Look at the wall above your crib . . . is she there?”
He’d glanced at the nursery rhyme characters, shaking his head. “Nope, not there.”
“Then where is she, Ozzie?” Michelle had asked.
He couldn’t tell her. He only shook his head, whimpering, then started screaming “No!” when she’d put him into his crib, even after she’d promised him she’d stay right upstairs here with him until he fell asleep. Finally, the screaming had stopped, but still, Michelle is keeping busy in the bathroom, her ears strained toward the hallway, in case Ozzie should wake up again and need her.
Meanwhile, Lou isn’t yet home, and it’s got to be well after nine. Darkness fell a while ago.
Where is he? she wonders, then realizes she might rather not know.
If Lou really is having an affair, or up to some other secretive activity, she can’t handle it right now. Not with the baby in breech position, and Ozzie’s mysterious lady, and everything else that’s been going on lately.
She draws in a sharp breath as a contraction comes out of nowhere, painfully tightening her abdomen and causing her to double over.
It lasts at least thirty seconds, then passes.
Just more Braxton-Hicks, like Dr. Kabir said, she reassures herself. Funny. She just doesn’t remember these early contractions starting so early in the pregnancy, or being this strong, with Ozzie.
Oh, well. Every pregnancy is different.
She’d better get used to this false labor.
After all, she still has more than a month to go before the real thing.
Grayson’s Cove, North Carolina, is a small fishing village not far south of Roanoke Island, located on the Pamlico Sound separating the mainland from Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
At the airport, Barrett rented a car and made the long drive from Raleigh, arriving in the early evening, when the sun was still shimmering brightly on the vast stretch of dark-blue, whitecap-tipped water.
He had almost been expecting one of those built-up tourist towns that have sprung up along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida, but this is one place that seems to have escaped commercialization. The businesses along the main street are somewhat run down and strictly functional—banks, a grocery, a lunch counter, several Laundromats. No pricey boutiques or fancy cafes here, nor charming inns. Rory would probably be hard-pressed to find an espresso in these parts, he thinks with a smirk.
Barrett quickly finds a room at the only hotel in town—a motel, really; a somewhat dilapidated two-story structure with a long, outside balcony running the length of the place and affording the advertised water view—if you stand on one of the peeling metal chairs and crane your neck to see above the golden arches of the fast food restaurant on the next block.
After dumping his small bag on the sagging queen-sized bed and changing into shorts and a lightweight T-shirt, Barrett quickly makes his way back to the main drag, which is fairly deserted for this hour on a pleasant summer evening. Deciding to eat before anything else, Barrett eschews MacDonald’s in favor of the luncheonette, which is, luckily, still open, and hopefully the kind of place where a newcomer can strike up a conversation with one of the locals bound to be sitting along the counter.
As soon as he walks in, Barrett sees that he made a good choice.
The few booths along the windows are empty, but the counter is occupied by several likely prospects. He surveys them, wondering who will be the most forthcoming and the least suspicious if he asks a few casual but probing questions.
The white-haired man in the slouchy fisherman’s cap chatting the bored-looking counterman’s ear off?
The friendly-looking black lady with the magazine propped open in front of her bowl of hominy grits?
The redneck type in the dirty T-shirt and Tarheels cap, munching on a sandwich and staring moodily into space?
The redneck, he decides, walking toward the empty stool beside the man.
The fisherman, though he’s obviously the chatty type, has an empty glass of ice and a plate dotted with crumbs in front of him, which means he’ll probably be leaving soon, since even Barrett knows that fishermen rise before the sun.
Meanwhile, the lady looks pleasantly absorbed in her magazine, and might not take kindly to being interrupted by questions from a stranger about the locals.
No, the redneck is a better bet. And if he doesn’t give anything away, Barrett will try the counterman next, as soon as the fisherman leaves.
He sits and glances at the white specials board, with a couple of inscrutable phrases jotted in marker. He’s starved, not having eaten since Mrs. Shilling’s scrambled eggs and blackberry muffins early this morning, and a small bag of honey-roasted peanuts on the plane. Even the stale-looking glazed doughnuts under a rounded glass lid down at the end of the counter are making his mouth water.
“What’ll you have?” the man stops mopping the counter to ask, interrupting the fisherman’s nonstop conversation, which is apparently about someone named Maisie who recently had a gallbladder operation.
What Barrett really wants is a seltzer with a twist of lime, but this is no longer New York. He orders a Coke and asks for a menu. The vinyl cover is smeared with ketchup, and sticky, and the list contains your basic diner fare—BLTs, tuna salad—with the kind of heavy, down-home, full-fat-and-cholesterol cooking you only find in the South. Chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, collard greens simmered with bacon, pecan pie.
He sets the menu aside after glancing it over and noting the incredibly cheap prices, then turns to the redneck and says, “Excuse me, but I’m not from around here. Can you tell me what’s good?”
“Everything’s good,” the man says, sounding mildly surprised, his eyes flitting over Barrett, but not in an overly curious way. “Sausage gravy. Corn bread. Hush puppies. Fried chicken. You name it.”
“I’ll try the buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy,” he tells the counterman, who plunks his beverage down on the counter with a wrapped straw.
The redneck orders a cup of coffee and a slice of butterscotch pie with extra whipped cream. He’s going to stay put for a little while. Good.
“My name’s Barrett,” he says.
“First, or last?”
“First,” he tells him, offering his hand to the man, knowing the friendly gesture won’t seem out of place or arouse the least bit of suspicion. Not here in the South, where the rental car agent offered him a stick of gum and the motel desk clerk called him hon.
“Jed,” the redneck says, shaking hands. His are grubby.
Barrett does his best not to wince, and fights the urge to wipe his fingers on his napkin.
“Nice little town,” he says instead, tilting his head toward the smudged plate-glass window, with its view of Main Street, and, beyond, the harbor dotted with sailboats. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Yeah, it’s all right. I just moved here myself, ’bout six months ago.”
Barrett’s spirits sink. He was hoping to talk to a native; someone who might be able to answer his questions. Still, you never know.
“What brings you to a little town like this?” he asks conversationally.
“Construction job. I’m workin’ on repairs to the bridge across the inlet over there,” he says, motioning toward the window, as Barrett did. He adds, stumbling a bit over the big words, “It’s for one of them historical preservation things. That there’s the oldest working drawbridge in the state of North Carolina,” he adds proudly, as though he’s personally responsible for restoring it.
“Interesting,” Barrett comments, sipping his Coke and wondering how to change the subject. He decides just to come right out and ask, waiting until the counterman slaps a steaming, heaping plate of buttermilk biscuits and creamy white sausage gravy in front of him.
“I’m hoping to find a cousin of mine,” he says to the redneck, as he picks up his fork and cuts off a small piece of sopping biscuit. He hopes the word cousin didn’t come out too forced, making it sound like an obvious lie.
“Yeah? You mean, in these parts?”
He nods. “I did some searching over the Internet and found out he was living in this town.” At least that part is true.
“Well, like I said, I’m new here. But Grayson’s Cove’s a tiny place. You don’t have to be born and raised here to get to know everyone in town pretty damn fast. Who’re you lookin’ for?”
“His name’s Anghardt. Russell Anghardt. Lived here for years, then moved away for a while, and came back about ten years ago. Ever heard of him?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Where were you yesterday?” is Molly’s greeting when Rory walks into the kitchen Wednesday morning.
And for just a moment—an inexplicable, precarious moment—Rory considers telling her the truth. For some reason, after a sleepless night and an acute uneasiness over coming face-to-face with Emily’s brother, she needs to share the burden.
But not with Molly.
“I went down to Poughkeepsie to see a friend,” she hedges, walking to the cupboard and taking out a box of Cap’n Crunch. She adds, truthfully, “And after that, I stopped in Albany to go shopping.”
What she doesn’t mention is that she’d wandered around the shopping mall for a few hours, trying to lose herself in something she had once found to be one of life’s ultimate pleasures. She’d tried on a few outfits in a department-store dressing room, and found herself thinking of Barrett, wondering if she’d see a flicker of appreciation in his eyes if he saw her in the knee-skimming, pale-yellow halter sundress that complements her coloring. She hadn’t bought it, had decided she wasn’t going to buy anything—not if Barrett Maitland was going to be her subconscious inspiration.
Instead, she’d wandered into the Gap, and Express, and the Limited, and she’d looked at the hip, young clothes, and she’d tried to find something for Molly. Something that would look cute on her, and lift her spirits after everything that’s happened. After all, she seemed to dress in mainly cut-off jeans and Kevin’s cast off T-shirts.
Maybe, Rory had thought as she poked through a rack of midriff-baring tops, Molly’s wardrobe can use a big sister’s female influence.
God knew Mom certainly had been useless in that department.
Then again, Rory figured, it wasn’t as if she herself is some fashion expert. She favors cut-offs and T-shirts, just as Molly does.
It was Carleen who’d had a real sense of style. She was always fooling around with a new look, wearing a drastic shade of lipstick, or curling and back-combing her straight, shiny hair until it was ratted and big in true eighties style. She used to try to make Rory over, too, but Rory never found it much fun to be teased and sprayed and plastered with goopy makeup, then forced into clothes that were uncomfortable and unflattering.
Besides, a new outfit isn’t exactly going to ease the pain of Molly’s discovery that she’s Carleen’s illegitimate daughter, or the gut-wrenching knowledge that her best friend might very well have met with a tragic, violent death.
“Well, you shouldn’t just take off like that,” Molly grumbles to her.
“Why? Did something happen around here that I should know about?”
“No, but if something had, no one would have known where to find you.” Molly’s tone is accusatory, but she isn’t looking at Rory. She’s sitting at the table, apparently reading the back of the cereal box as she munches.
“Okay,” Rory says, sitting down across from her. “I’ll make a deal with you. Next time, I’ll tell you where I’m going and where I can be reached. And you do the same. That way, if we need each other, we can get in touch. That’s fair, right?”
Molly shrugs.
“Kevin didn’t call yesterday while I was gone, did he?”
“Kevin?” Molly’s face lights up. “No, why? Were you expecting him to?”
“I just thought he might have gotten in touch by now. Then again, backpacking across Europe with his girlfriend, it’s not like finding a pay phone and making an overseas call is going to be utmost on his mind.”
“No, I guess not.” Molly’s expression is inscrutable.
“I see that Sister Theodosia is still here,” Rory comments, motioning toward the nearby window overlooking the driveway, where the big black car was still parked when she pulled in last night. “She didn’t mention anything about leaving?”
“I haven’t talked to her. Why’d you bother inviting her here if you’re just so anxious for her to leave?”
“I didn’t invite her. I—”
“What, she just happened to show up after you said you were going to call and ask her to come?”
“No, I did call her. But as soon as I talked to her and realized she’s still the same, I changed my mind about inviting her.”
“Why would you want to invite her in the first place?”
“Because . . . I don’t know. Like I told you before, I thought she could help Mom.”
“How? By praying over her? What did you think she could do? God, Rory, you don’t know anything about anything that’s gone on around here for years.”
Rory is silent, pouring milk into her bowl of cereal. Molly’s right. She hasn’t been here. She doesn’t know. All she has to do, really, is get through the summer, just until Kevin comes back. She doesn’t have to make their lives right again.
She can’t do that, anyway.
It’s way more complicated than encouraging Mom to open up to an old friend, or giving Molly a fashion makeover. There are deep-rooted problems here, problems that might never be resolved.
The easiest thing to do is just get through the summer, and leave—go back to living her own life.
But is that the right thing to do?
Rory jabs her spoon into the bowl and shovels some cereal into her mouth, her appetite gone.
Michelle hates to use the television as a baby-sitter for Ozzie again this morning, but it’s overcast outside, anyway, and he asked to watch a Berenstain Bears video. Now he’s happily settled in the living room watching Brother Bear and Sister Bear work through some Bear Country crisis, while Michelle, doing her best to avoid her own sense of impending crisis, busies herself upstairs, cleaning the spare room that’s going to be the baby’s nursery.
They won’t be needing it for a few months yet—they’ll keep the baby in a bassinet in their room, as they did with Ozzie, until he’s sleeping through the night. That way, Michelle can pick him right up and do wee-hour feedings without even having to get out of bed.
Lou has already cleaned all the boxes and clutter out of the future nursery, but the room needs a good scrubbing before they even think about painting or carpet. There are cobwebs everywhere, and the hardwood floor
is covered in dust bunnies, and the whole place needs to be aired out.
She opens the windows, then drags her big canister vacuum cleaner in from the hall closet. Ozzie absolutely hates when she uses it, covering his ears and crying about the noise the whole time.
It is loud, and maybe it’s not such a good idea to use it, with him downstairs alone. She hesitates, holding the hose in one hand and an attachment in the other. If Ozzie called up to her from the living room, she wouldn’t even be able to hear him.
Still, it’ll only take a few minutes to do the dust and cobwebs. And she really wants it taken care of; she’s filled with more energy than she’s had in months, and this is the first chore on the ambitious to-do list she wrote this morning after breakfast.
Besides, what could happen? The doors are locked, and it’s not like Ozzie is running around playing with matches or climbing out windows. She knows him well enough to realize that he’ll be in front of the television set, mesmerized, until the video’s closing credits, same as he always is.
She decisively snaps the attachment on the end of the hose, pushes the ON button with her bare foot, and starts vacuuming. God, it’s ear-splitting. She stretches up on her tiptoes to run the attachment along the top of the window, then pokes it into the corner near the ceiling. A fine network of cobwebs, along with a small daddy longlegs, are promptly swallowed up without a trace.
Feeling better already, Michelle continues to work her way around the room, humming to herself, her own voice lost in the roar of the vacuum.
John Kline puts a fresh cup of coffee on his desk, sits in his chair, and adjusts the framed family photo on his desk, knocked askew by last night’s cleaning crew, as always.
He loves this photo and is glad Nancy insisted that they have it taken at J.C. Penney right before Christmas, even though he’d grumbled about it at the time.
“Come on, John, it’s not like I nag you about this constantly. You haven’t had a picture taken since our wedding day,” she’d pointed out, and it was the truth.
He glances at that particular photo—of himself, fifteen years younger, awkward in his tuxedo and sporting a full head of hair; and Nancy, slender and innocent in that white gown and veil. They’re looking at each other in unabashed adoration.
All the Way Home Page 25
