The next morning, she picked up the broken glass and drew the shades. There was no sense in leaving them open, for she no longer had any interest in anything outside her windows. She stopped answering the telephone, stopped reading the mail, turned away visitor after visitor until they finally stopped coming. Sometimes she remembered to eat. Sometimes she didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered any more, because the light had left her life and the world had gone dark.
After a time, she stopped combing her hair. Sometimes she wore the same clothes for a week. There were days when she didn’t bother to get out of bed. It was easier to lie there in her darkened bedroom and pretend she couldn’t hear the ringing of the phone. Easier to ignore the messages Rob kept leaving on her machine. Eventually, tired of it all, she unplugged the phone and put the answering machine on a shelf in the closet. That put an end to the aggravation once and for all. And each gray and shapeless day drifted into the next.
Until the day Rob MacKenzie came calling.
chapter twenty-nine
With his untamed mane of blond curls, he looked like an enraged lion, pacing her kitchen. “What the hell is going on here?” he said. “You don’t answer my phone calls, you ignore my letters—” He abruptly stopped pacing and stared at her. “And you look,” he said, “like bloody fucking hell. Why hasn’t anybody done anything about the way you’re living?”
She tried to focus on his words, but it was difficult. Grappling with his final sentence, she said, “What’s wrong with the way I’m living?”
“For starters, you’d disappear if you turned around sideways. When was the last time you ate something?”
She tried to remember, but couldn’t. Shrugging, she said, “Sometime yesterday, I guess.”
“What are you trying to do, Fiore? Starve yourself to death? And look at this mausoleum. Doesn’t the light ever get in? You’re starting to look like Dracula.” His mouth thinned into a grim line. “I never thought I’d see the day you’d do this to yourself.”
“Damn it, Rob, how long have you had this God complex? It doesn’t become you.”
He set his jaw at an obstinate angle. “It looks better on me than that crown of thorns does on you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”
“They burned Joan of Arc. Back in those days, martyrdom was in style.”
With deadly calm, she said, “Are you through?”
“Through? Hah! I’ve only just begun!”
“By all means, then, MacKenzie, spill it!”
He squared his shoulders. “The man is dead, Fiore. That’s spelled D-E-A-D.”
“I know how the hell it’s spelled!”
“He isn’t coming back. No matter what you do, he’s not coming back. And damn it, woman, you didn’t die with him!”
“Maybe I wish I had!”
She spun away from him, but he was quicker. He caught her by the hand. “Tough,” he said. “You didn’t.” He thrust the hand up in front of her face. “You see this? You cut it, it bleeds.” He dropped her hand and stalked to the window and yanked on the shade, and it snapped up with a sharp crack. “I want to see an end to this—” He yanked on another shade. “And this—” He yanked so hard on the third one that it fell with a clatter to the floor. “And this!”
Atremble with fury, she said, “This is my house. You have no right!”
“I have every goddamn right in the world. This is morbid, Casey. The man’s been dead for six months. You can’t hide forever. You’ve got brains, you’ve got looks, you’ve got more talent in your little finger than I’ve got in my whole body. You’re the best damn friend I’ve ever had, and by God, I won’t let you die up here in the sticks just because nobody else cares enough to help you!”
“Maybe I want to die! Maybe my life ended when that car went over that embankment!”
“Bullshit! Do you still think life is what your Mama taught you? Clean underwear and proper etiquette and 2 point 5 kids and a house in the suburbs? All neat and pretty and ordered, with blooming rosebushes and the lawn trimmed? Well, it isn’t. It’s a lie. It’s all a fucking lie!”
“Get out of here,” she said dully. “Leave me alone.”
“Not until I’ve said what I came to say!”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Tough. You’re going to hear it anyway.” He shoved her into a chair and pinned her hands to the chair arms. “Life isn’t pretty or nice,” he said, “and you won’t go to heaven for being a good girl. Life is flesh and blood, it’s tears and sweat and spit. It’s being born and dying and all the crap you have to go through in between.” His voice thinned to a sharp, hard edge. “It’s slow, sweet fucking and it’s a saxophone wailing in the night. And you only get one shot at it, baby, so you’d better grab it now before it’s too late, because once you’re gone, none of it will have meant a damn thing!” He released her abruptly and went to the window and stood there with his forehead pressed against the glass.
For a moment she sat there with her mouth hanging open. Then her anger caught up with her. “That was very nice,” she said. “Have you thought of setting it to music?”
He looked defeated. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
“Are you finished, MacKenzie?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m finished.”
“Fine. You know where the door is. Take it. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear from you, I don’t want to smell you! Get the hell out of my house and my life. Capisce?”
“I capisce. But when it all falls down around you, don’t come crying to me to wet-nurse you, because I just might have something better to do!” He stalked across the room and through the shed, and slammed the door with so much force, the house shook.
She ran to the door and opened it and flung the words at his retreating back. “Insufferable jackass Irishman!”
He paused with the car door open, and the sunset gave his blond curls a reddish glow. “Go to hell,” he said.
The rented car spattered rocks and gravel in all directions as he backed it down the driveway and screamed off at breakneck speed. She slammed the door as hard as she could, but she was surprised by the lack of satisfaction the act gave her.
***
The minute Jesse Lindstrom opened his door, Rob blew through it, tracking in mud all over Jesse’s clean floors. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” he said. “Are you all stupid, or is it just that you don’t give a damn?”
To his credit, Jesse calmly shut the door and leaned against the frame. “Care to clarify that?” he said.
“That woman,” he said, pointing in the general direction of Casey’s house, “is sitting up there on that hill, and I don’t think she’s combed her hair in a month.” He began pacing, heedless of the mess his size elevens were making on polished oak. “Or eaten anything, for that matter.” Scowling, he said, “She’s so goddamn thin, it hurts to look at her. She’s sitting there in the dark, trying to commit slow suicide, and doing a damn good job of it.” He paused just long enough to glare at Jesse. “How the hell can you ignore it? Doesn’t anybody in this godforsaken wilderness give a damn about her?”
Jesse folded his arms and casually studied his cuticle. “You finished?” he said.
Rob paused in his pacing. He was breathing hard, like he’d just run the Boston Marathon. He squared his jaw. “Why?” he said.
“Take off the sneakers,” Jesse said, “and I might invite you in for a beer.”
They drank it in the living room, in front of the hearth. Rob propped his feet on the edge of the coffee table. “Nice fireplace,” he said grudgingly.
“You get rebuffed enough times,” Jesse said, “after a while, you stop trying.”
Rob studied the label on his bottle of Bud. “Couldn’t you see what was going on?” he said.
“She’s a grown woman,” Jesse pointed out. “There’s only so much anybody can do.”
Rob scowled at h
im. “Speak for yourself,” he said.
“It looks to me,” Jesse said, “like what she wants to do is curl up into a ball and die.”
“Too bad. It’s not on my list of preferred activities for the bereaved.”
Jesse took a sip of beer. “You going back over there tonight?”
“Depends.” Rob slowly rolled the beer bottle between his palms. Darkly, he said, “I don’t suppose you’d happen to know if she owns any firearms?”
Jesse wasn’t quite successful at hiding a smile. “I do believe,” he said, “that she’s a pacifist.”
“Damn it,” Rob said. “I wasn’t supposed to like you. I had myself all pumped up to hate your guts.”
“I suppose it would be an odd friendship,” Jesse said. “You being you, and me being me.”
“And your taste in beer,” Rob told him, “is beyond pathetic.”
“Really.”
“Friends,” he said pointedly, “don’t allow friends to drink rotgut. I happen to know that the local grocery store here in Dogpatch carries Heineken. And if we’re talking about doing any serious drinking to cement this friendship, then we’re damn-well going into town and picking up a couple of six-packs.”
Jesse drained his beer and set the bottle on the end table. Stretched out his legs and planted his feet on the floor. “Well, then,” he said, “what are we waiting for?”
***
He came hammering at her door the next morning. Casey tied the belt of her ratty old terrycloth robe tighter around her and went to answer the door. He had one shoulder propped against the frame and was wearing that ingenuous little boy look that women of all ages found so irresistible. “Still speaking to me?” he said.
She opened the door farther and stepped back so he could come inside. “Ah, coffee,” he said, closing his eyes and inhaling. “You knew I was coming.”
“Let’s say I had a pretty good idea.”
“And I don’t imagine you have a meat cleaver hidden anywhere in the folds of that robe. Which, by the way, is a prime candidate for the rag bin.”
“I wouldn’t talk if I were you,” she said. “You look like you slept in your clothes.”
“It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last.” He followed his nose to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. Leaned against the counter to drink it. Eyeing her over the rim of the cup, he said, “How much weight have you lost?”
“How should I know? I threw out the bathroom scale months ago.”
“You look like shit.”
She crossed her arms. “Thank you, Doctor MacKenzie, for that learned diagnosis.”
“When was the last time you left the house?”
“Give me a minute,” she snapped, “and I’ll check my appointment book.”
They glared at each other. He uncrossed and recrossed those bony ankles. “You’re not half as tough as you think,” he said.
“Probably not,” she said. “Where’d you spend the night?”
“On Jesse’s couch.”
They’d been friends for fourteen years, and still he could surprise her. “Really,” she said.
“I want you to take a shower and comb your hair,” he said, “and try to find something to wear that won’t fall off and embarrass me.”
“Oh? Are we going somewhere?”
“After I feed you, we are. That is, if you have any food in this joint.”
The shower was heavenly. In its warmth, she felt as though she were washing away the remnants of some stranger who had taken over her body. She vigorously toweled her hair, then brushed it back from her face. It had been some time since she’d looked in a mirror. Her face was gaunt and drawn, her cheekbones visibly prominent. Her shirt hung off her shoulders, and her jeans were so loose that she needed a belt to hold them up.
Like an obedient child, she sat demurely at the kitchen table. Rob plunked a bowl of oatmeal down in front of her. “It was all I could find,” he said. “What in hell have you been living on?”
“Instant potato. Minute Rice. Canned beans.” She spooned sugar on the oatmeal and dug in, astonished by her appetite. “Aren’t you eating?”
“I’ll pass.”
She held out a sticky spoonful of oatmeal. He eyed it suspiciously, then leaned over the table and opened his mouth. Licked the spoon clean. “There,” he said, and swallowed. “You eat the rest. That’s an order.”
She cleaned out her bowl, then looked hopefully around the kitchen. “No toast?” she said.
“I had to throw out the bread. It was green. Where the hell are your shoes?”
“In the shed. You’re a really obnoxious human being when you’re bossy like this. Have I ever told you that?”
“Once or twice over the years.” He went into the shed and rummaged around, came back and tossed her shoes with a thud on the floor at her feet. “Dress your feet.”
It was the first week of June, and the world wore the rich, breathtaking green of early summer. Beside the back steps, her lupines pledged allegiance to the sun, and in the velvet pastures that lined the river road, dandelions grew in wild profusion.
They were there before she realized where he was taking her. He drove through the open cemetery gate and up the hill, stopping beneath the giant elm at the top. When he turned off the car, the whine of a distant lawnmower cut the silence. She inhaled the pungent scent of fresh-mown grass. “What in hell are we doing here?” she asked.
“Don’t you think it’s time?”
Wild daisies grew between the gravestones, and from somewhere, on the breeze, came a wispy scent of roses. Rob held out his hand. She gripped it hard, and together they stood over a simple granite headstone that read Daniel Fiore 1951-1987. Softly, he said, “I never realized how big a part of my life he was. Not until he was gone.”
“This is the first time I’ve been here,” she said. “I couldn’t make myself do it.”
“I brought something. Be right back.” He released her hand and walked off across the grass. She knelt by the headstone, touched the polished granite with a fingertip. He returned carrying a gardening trowel and a flat of yellow and purple pansies. Kneeling beside her, he said, “I thought the place could use a little jazzing up.”
She bit her lip as her eyes filled and overflowed. He dropped the trowel and took her hand. “I made you cry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I hate to have to admit this, Flash, but you’re a very nice man.”
“Yeah? You think so?” He cocked his head and smiled crookedly from behind wispy blond curls, showing her a glimpse of the man who’d stolen so many feminine hearts over the years. He reached out his thumb and wiped a tear from her cheek. “You’re not so bad yourself, pudding. Are you with me on this?”
“I’m with you, hot stuff. You dig, I’ll plant.”
She took out each plant separately, carefully untangled the roots, tucked them into the holes he made and then filled in around them with rich, black potting soil. When they were done, she tamped down the soil and he watered the tender young plants from a plastic container he took from the trunk. They stood back to survey their handiwork and he draped an arm loosely around her shoulder. “Feel better?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, surprised to discover that it was the truth. “Thank you.”
“So where would you like to go, pudding?”
“I can’t go anywhere,” she said. “I’m not ready.”
“You’re going. It’s not optional. But it’s your call, sweetcakes. Anyplace at all. London, Paris, Newark—”
“The beach,” she said with sudden and absolute certainty. “I want to go to the beach.” And experienced an exhilaration she hadn’t felt in half a year.
School wouldn’t be out of session for another week, so the summer hordes hadn’t yet hit the North Atlantic beaches. They shared the mile-long strip of sand with a bevy of gulls and a handful of young mothers with pre-schoolers. The sand seared the bare soles of her feet, and when they reached the water’s edge, he ma
de her close her eyes. “This is silly,” she said.
“Shut up and do what I say. Take a deep breath. Good. Now let it out and take another one. And tell me what you smell.”
Eyes still closed, she breathed in again, deeply. “Salt water,” she said. “Seaweed.” She sifted and categorized the sensations that accosted her from every angle. “Roses,” she said in surprise. “I smell roses.”
“We passed them coming in.”
“And you,” she said. “I smell you.”
“Me?” he said.
She opened her eyes and smiled. “You just smell like...you.”
He chucked her under the chin. “Okay, kiddo,” he said, “close those eyes again. This time I want you to tell me what you hear.”
She bit her lip in concentration. “The roaring of the surf,” she said. “I hear it breaking, behind me, before it hits the shore.” Still concentrating, she added, “and I hear the hiss it makes as it rolls back into the sea.”
“Good,” he said. “What else?”
“Gulls. And children, laughing.”
“And what do you feel?”
“Hot sand. Hot sun. Sticky ocean spray. And your hands on my shoulders.”
He was silent for a single heartbeat. And then he removed his hands. “You can open your eyes now,” he said.
She blinked at the sun’s brightness. “Do you understand why we just did this little exercise?” he said.
Her throat tightened, and she swallowed. “Yes,” she said.
“I meant every word I said yesterday, Fiore. You’re thirty-one years old. You’re not ready for the boneyard yet. And I’m not ready to let go of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 36
