Unfinished Business

by Inglath Cooper

  THE OLD BARN had once been used for cows. A dozen or so years ago, Claire had converted it to a warehouse for storing apple crates and machinery. There were three stalls still intact at the back. While Culley went in search of some straw, Addy opened up the stall in the corner closest to the house.

  He returned with a couple of bales, and they spread it out with a pitchfork, then filled a bowl with water and set it by the door. When they were done, Culley said, “I’ll go get her. Be right back.”

  Doc had given the fawn an injection of Xylazine for the ride home, and she was still groggy when Culley placed her on the straw bed a couple of minutes later.

  They stood side by side, looking down at the tiny creature. She looked lost in the big stall, and Addy’s heart felt as if it were being squeezed in half.

  “She should sleep for a while,” Culley said.

  “Do you think she’ll be all right?”

  “As I remember, it’s not likely you’re going to let her give up. Remember that bird we got out of the gutter on your house?”

  Addy nodded. “It had made a nest on the roof and fallen down the pipe.”

  “We had to dig out around the bottom and cut open the drain.”

  “She flew right out.”

  “That was a good feeling, wasn’t it?” he said, his voice lowering under the weight of something she was reluctant to identify.

  “It was,” she said, a familiar tug pulling at her. They had a lot of history, most of it old, some of it new. That was the part she was having trouble with. How did they reconcile what they’d been in the past with what they’d done together that one reckless night?

  Addy dropped her gaze first. “I’d better go check on Mama.”

  “I’ll drive you back up,” he said.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE THE BARN, Claire’s old white truck rumbled into the gravel driveway, a cloud of dust following it.

  Claire got out, looking weary. “Everything’s under control,” she said. “Nothing more we can do up there.”

  “I’ll be glad to go back up and hang around awhile, Claire,” Culley said.

  “Thank you. No need though. There’s still a small crew looking for stray sparks.”

  Culley nodded, then glanced at Addy. “I’ll head home then. Call if you need anything.”

  “We will,” Claire said.

  “Good night,” Addy said.

  “Good night.”

  He backed up and rolled down the driveway, taillights blinking red.

  Addy and Claire stood there until he was out of sight, an unnatural awkwardness settling over them. Two people who should know one another as well as it was possible to know a person, and yet standing there beside her mother, Addy realized the distance between them over the years had not just been physical. She wondered if they would ever breach it.

  Claire was visibly drooping, and Addy felt tired to her bones. Their clothes smelled of smoke, and they both had black smudges on their hands and faces. Addy’s hair reeked of the sickening odor. “I’ll get my things,” she said.

  “I’ll fix us something to eat,” Claire said.

  Addy headed for her car. Claire to the house.

  A half hour later, Addy had brought in most of her stuff and put it in her old room upstairs. Good smells drifted from the kitchen along with the sound of something sizzling in a frying pan, and her stomach rumbled in response.

  Claire was at the stove, sautéing potatoes in a cast-iron skillet. The table had been set with two plates, large glasses of iced tea already forming sweat beads.

  “Anything I can help with?” Addy asked.

  “I’ve just about got it ready,” Claire said. “Have a seat.”

  Addy pulled out a chair and sat while Claire put the potatoes into a white bowl and set them on the table. She opened the oven door, slid on a cooking mitt and pulled out a pan of rolls.

  “This looks great,” Addy said.

  Claire sat down. “Go ahead and start. You probably haven’t eaten all day.”

  In fact, the last thing she’d had was the yogurt she’d grabbed on the way out the door that morning. Claire had always been a good cook, could throw together a meal in a matter of minutes. It was a skill Addy had never perfected. Mark had preferred eating out. She’d nearly forgotten how good home-cooked food could be.

  “What did Doc Nolen say about the deer?” Claire asked.

  “He treated her and showed me how to bottle-feed her. He thought she would be okay in the barn.”

  Claire nodded. “I can check on her during the night if you like.”

  “I’ll go back out in a little while.” Addy took another bite of potatoes, then said, “Doc Nolen asked about you.”

  Claire’s expression lifted just enough to make Addy wonder. “Didn’t you two know each other in high school?”

  Claire nodded. “We went out a time or two.”

  “What happened?”

  She tilted her head. “I met your father. He met Alice. Our paths went in different directions, never crossed again.”

  “His wife died a few years ago, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you ever go out, Mama?”

  Claire shrugged. “Dating’s for the young. I’m too set in my ways to let anyone else in my life.”

  “You could go out as friends.”

  “It’s been too long,” she said, shaking her head. “Besides, I don’t need that.”

  The words sounded convincing, and it was what she always said whenever Addy had asked. But sitting here across from her, Addy was struck with the realization that her mother had to get lonely sometimes. Was it the change in her own life that allowed for this insight? If so, how selfish had she been not to have seen it before?

  “Are you seeing anyone?” Claire asked.

  “No.”

  Claire put down her fork. “Could I ask what happened between you and Mark?”

  Addy kept her eyes on her plate. She had never told her mother about that awful morning when she’d walked in on Mark. Never told her he now had a son. Was it pride that had kept her from doing so or something else? “It just stopped working,” she said, the words lame even to her ears.

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” Claire said.

  “You’re not,” Addy offered quickly, feeling as if she should apologize even as the words somehow stuck in her throat. She pushed her plate back and stood. “I think I’ll go check on the deer. Leave the dishes, and I’ll do them when I get back.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE LIGHTING IN the old barn was dim at best.

  Addy opened the stall door and slipped inside. The deer lay on its side. She lifted her head to look at Addy, then lay back on the straw, eyes open.

  Addy sat down and leaned against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest. She’d been unfair to her mother. Knew it in the pit of her stomach where guilt pooled thick and heavy.

  Was it intentional, this knack she had for hurting her? For closing her out?

  Why hadn’t she told her about Mark?

  The answer suddenly felt too obvious.

  Because that would have made them too much alike. And the one thing she had been determined to be as an adult was different from her mother. The only unifying action she had ever taken in step with her mother was to change her name to Taylor when Claire had taken back her maiden name.

  When Addy was twelve, her father had walked out and moved to Ohio where he started another life with a woman who had four children of her own. With the quiet click of the front door and the sound of his truck rolling down the driveway, he was gone. And he had never come back.

  Addy’s hurt had eventually festered into anger, and she could not understand what her mother had done to make him leave. Or why she hadn’t done something, anything, to bring him back. Addy had pleaded with her to fix things, make everything all right again. But her mother’s silence on the subject had stood like a wall between them, and with every passing year that wall had only seemed to
widen.

  From the other side of the chasm, Addy could see her mother now as she had been unable to see her before. What Addy had once seen as her mother’s pride and stubbornness, she now saw in a different light.

  Sometimes people just changed. Went another way. Left you behind. She wondered if her mother had maintained her stiff-backed refusal to let Addy see her pain, not out of pride, but out of the sheer will to go on, to not be destroyed by what he had done.

  She sat there against the rough board wall, the deer now asleep. Would the very thing that had driven her away from her mother finally bring them back together again?

  * * *

  CULLEY SAT ON the edge of his daughter’s bed, closed the cover to A Simple Gift, the latest book they were reading. He read her a chapter every night, had been reading to her since she was a tiny baby. It had become their special time together, and he valued it greatly.

  He was convinced that the love he felt for his daughter could never be explained with words. As a doctor, he’d had people with children try to tell him how it felt, but until he’d held his newborn daughter in his arms, he had no way of understanding the depth of it, nor its permanence.

  Having nearly lost her three years ago, that love had taken on another dimension. And made him desperate to revive the spark that had once defined her.

  Madeline lay propped against her pillow, her dark hair the exact same shade as Liz’s, shiny from her bath. She’d been quiet all through dinner. “Something wrong, honey?”

  She fiddled with the sheet tucked up to her chest, not meeting his eyes when she said, “Mama called today.”

  Culley sat up straighter, tried to hide his surprise. “What did she say?”

  “That she’ll be getting out soon.”

  Hearing such things come out of his seven-year-old daughter’s mouth never failed to shock him. There was something altogether unnatural about a child her age using words like women’s correctional facility as part of her normal vocabulary.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She looked up and met his eyes, holding his gaze, as if intent on getting the truth from him. “Will you be glad?”

  It wasn’t a question he could answer with a few words, but one that required side roads of rationalizations and justifications, none of which she needed to hear. So he simply said, “Of course I will.”

  She caught her bottom lip between small white teeth and said, “Will she live here with us?”

  “Your mom and I aren’t married anymore, honey.”

  “I know,” she said, sadness in her voice. “But where will she go?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s not something for you to worry about. Everything will be all right.”

  “Do you think she doesn’t drink anymore?”

  “I don’t think she does now, no.”

  “Will she when she gets out?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  Culley leaned over and kissed her forehead. She wrapped her arms around his neck, held on tight for a moment before letting go. “Good night, sweetie,” he said.

  “’Night, Daddy.”

  She flipped over on her side and shut her eyes.

  Culley went downstairs, feeling as if a wedge of steel had settled in his stomach. Madeline had once been the kind of child that seemed lit up with happiness. As a toddler, she’d had the kind of giggle that he lived to hear. Sheer joy unmarred by awareness of anything other than good in the world. In the past three years, that happiness had all but disappeared, and she never giggled. He would give anything to hear it again.

  His mom was in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said from the doorway.

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “I don’t mind.”

  Ida Rutherford had not faded with age. Her skin had a glow to it not attainable even from the most expensive jars of face cream. That glow had come late in life. Culley’s early memories of his mother were of a woman whose natural joy for living had been siphoned away little by little until her face rarely saw the light of a smile.

  “Madeline said Liz called today,” he said.

  Ida turned from the dishwasher where she had been pulling out glasses and placing them in a nearby cabinet. “This morning.”

  Culley leaned against the kitchen counter, folded his arms tight against the knot of emotion in the center of his chest, even as it began to unravel. “Did you speak with her?”

  “No. Madeline answered the phone.”

  “She’ll be getting out next month.”

  Ida nodded, anchored both hands around the bottom of a glass. “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, because he really didn’t. “I guess I should be happy for her, but—”

  “It’s not that simple, is it?”

  “No,” he said.

  He had taken Madeline to visit her mother at the Mecklinburg prison several times. More so in the beginning. Somehow it got harder to see her rather than easier. He felt this in his daughter as well as himself. The Liz behind the glass enclosure was the old Liz. The Liz before the drinking. But there she didn’t have a choice. He didn’t know what would happen when the decision was hers again.

  Ida crossed the floor, patted his shoulder in an awkward gesture of understanding. On this subject, he and his mother were synchronized. They both understood the complications of caring about someone who did not care for themselves, only where the next drink would come from.

  “I spoke with Claire earlier,” she said. “Shame about the orchard.”

  Culley nodded.

  “She said Addy’s back to stay for a while.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like it.”

  “That’s nice, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be a big help to Claire,” he said, keeping the reply neutral.

  Ida studied him for a moment, looking for evidence to contradict his apparent lack of interest. He didn’t give her any. “I’d better get going,” she said.

  “Thanks for staying with Madeline today,” he said.

  “You know I love being with her. I am a bit worried about how Liz’s reemergence into her life will affect her.”

  Culley nodded. “I know. So am I.”

  He walked her out to her car. She slid inside, looked up at him through the open door. “Somehow she needs to understand that none of it was her fault,” Ida said.

  “I’ll talk to her again.”

  She nodded once. “Good night, honey.”

  “’Night.”

  He went back in the house, wishing he could snap his fingers and turn his child into the carefree little girl she had once been. But he understood her guilt, had felt the same thing as a boy when he had come to understand the hold alcohol had on his father.

  A lawyer with his own practice, Jake Rutherford had managed a successful enough career during the day. But at night the alcohol took over, and the walls of their house reverberated with his rages. Culley had seen his mother wilt beneath the scalding heat of that anger more times than he could count. Growing up, the only thing he had wanted was to make his father see what he had done to their family. If he could see, then maybe he would stop.

  But it had not stopped until his father died ten years ago, right after Culley had finished undergraduate school. It was only then that Ida began to stand straight again, like a flower that has found a kinder beam of sunlight.

  Like his mother, Madeline was wilting beneath the harshness of Liz’s choices. Somehow, he had to help her see she wasn’t responsible.

  He went back to the kitchen and made himself a glass of iced tea, heading to his office just off the living room. He had some patients to check in on, calls he had intended to make earlier in the day.

  He sat down at his desk with his hand on the phone, his thoughts drifting to Addy.

  For the past few years, he’d convinced himself that he was content. Life had not taken the path he’d expected
, but he had peace after years of turmoil, and it felt like enough. At least it had.

  But seeing Addy again had opened a door. And on the other side of it, he had glimpsed something he’d thought he no longer needed. Ignited somewhere low inside him was a desire for more than he had.

  He couldn’t define any of it yet. He only knew that it had started with Addy. And that he was glad she was back.

  * * *

  ADDY WENT DOWN to the barn not long after sunrise. The fawn was still lying down, but awake. Addy spoke softly to her, offered her the bottle which she had filled with warm milk. The deer licked at the nipple a few times and then began to suck in earnest.

  “You’re hungry this morning. That’s good.”

  The deer drank the entire bottle, and encouraged by her appetite, Addy went back to the house to do a few stretches before her run. A brown county sheriff’s car rolled up the driveway and came to a stop at the edge of the yard. She straightened from a hamstring stretch and waited while the driver got out and inclined his head at her. “You must be Claire’s daughter.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Addy.”

  “Morning. I’m Sheriff Ramsey.” He stuck out his hand. Addy shook it.

  The other man stepped forward and did the same. “I’m Captain Obermeier with the fire department.”

  The screen door flapped open, and Claire came out of the house and down the porch steps. “What is it, Sheriff?”

  He nodded at Claire, then said, “The fire yesterday. Looks like it was intentionally set.”

  Claire stared at them for a moment. “What? How can you be sure?”

  “Somebody ran a line of gasoline, then threw a match to it,” Captain Obermeier said.

  Addy glanced at her mother. “The phone calls you’ve been getting. Could they have anything to do with this?”

  Sheriff Ramsey laserbeamed a look at Claire. “What calls?”

  “They’re not anything I’ve taken seriously. Just someone who thinks I shouldn’t voice my opinion on the route of the new interstate.”

  “Well, that’s a place to start. We’ll check out the call records with the phone company. Right now, we’re going back up to take another look around. Make sure we didn’t miss anything yesterday.”

  Claire nodded.