Читать книгу Blackberry Winter - Cheryl Reavis - Страница 13

L oran saw Meyer’s truck parked in front of yet another church with a cemetery. As helpful as the kitchen staff at Lilac Hill had been in telling her that her mother had found it necessary to go look at a local graveyard, nobody had bothered to mention that there was more than one.

She pulled sharply into the church drive, making no effort to repress the exasperation she felt at having to chase Maddie down. Again. And while she was at it, she was annoyed with the man who had made it necessary this time. She knew perfectly well that there was no point in being angry with Meyer, that he was the hired help and that he couldn’t possibly know that her mother was ill or that it was becoming a full-time job of late just to keep up with her. Even so, he would do well not to get in her way. Maddie had to be exhausted—and hungry. And besides all that, she would have taken Maddie any place she wanted to go.

Her head hurt. She needed a couple of aspirins, and a long bath. Some peace and quiet just so she’d be up to cornering Maddie once and for all and finding out what this was all about. She was beginning to think she couldn’t take her eyes off Maddie for a second without her wandering.

Ain’t nothing but a stray-away.

She had only just heard the quaint expression while she’d been waiting in the checkout line at the little discount store where she’d bought her impromptu travel wardrobe. Two old women in sweatpants had been talking about someone’s granddaughter, one who apparently frequented places where she had no business being. And it wasn’t that the girl “hadn’t been raised” and didn’t know better, they had assured each other. It was that she apparently was just like Maddie. She knew better—but she did it anyway.

She parked the SUV behind Meyer’s truck and got out. The church door was standing ajar, and she walked in that direction. The sconce lights were on in the alcove behind the altar, but Loran didn’t see anyone around at first. She entered quietly and walked down the carpeted aisle toward the front, noting immediately that the place smelled like a church, even though she would have been hard-pressed to say exactly why she thought so. It was a kind of mixture of things, she supposed—mildewed hymnals and candle wax and furniture polish or something. There were candles on the altar table, but they didn’t look real to her.

She turned her head at a small repetitive sound—a woman vigorously rubbing the back of one of the pews with a folded cloth. A stack of hymnals sat on the floor at the end of the row.

“Excuse me,” Loran said, startling the woman so much that they both jumped. “I’m looking for…Meyer?”

“Well, he ain’t in here,” the woman said shortly. “And you ain’t supposed to be in here, either.”

“Really? I thought it was all right to come into a church—especially when the doors are standing open.” She hadn’t intended to sound so confrontational, but it had been that kind of day.

“Strangers don’t belong in here unless they’ve been invited,” the woman said bluntly. “And I told you Meyer ain’t in the church.”

“Did you happen to see him around anywhere?”

“I’ve got better things to do than keep up with Meyer Conley,” the woman said, going back to her pew polishing.

“Oh. Well. Thank you so much for your help,” Loran said. “Such as it was.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you won’t go getting mixed up with that Conley boy,” the woman called after her. “All them Conleys is liars.”

Loran gave her a look and went back outside—and she immediately saw Meyer and her mother in the cemetery across the road. She had to wait for a car to go by before she could catch up with them. The person on the passenger side waved, and Loran waved back, wondering if she’d been mistaken for someone else. Or maybe people here either waved at you or threw you out of their houses of worship.

Or gave you advice about who not to get “mixed up” with.

She walked quickly toward where Maddie and her accomplice stood, fighting the gusts of wind as she went.

Meyer and Maddie were deep in conversation about something. Neither of them saw her until the last moment.

“I don’t know if he will,” Meyer was saying. They both looked startled to find her so close.

“Hello, Mother. Silly me, I thought you would be resting,” Loran said in spite of her inclination—feeble though it was—to at least try to be reasonable. But at the moment, it was impossible to be reasonable where Maddie was concerned, not when she’d suddenly developed this penchant for not staying where she was supposed to be.

“Yes, Mrs. Jenkins told me that was my assignment,” Maddie said.

“So what are you doing out here? What’s going on?” Loran asked.

The remaining edge of the sun slid behind the mountain ridge. Loran could barely distinguish the features on her mother’s face. She could only suspect the degree of evasiveness there, which was every bit as aggravating as actually seeing it.

“Oh, not much,” Maddie said easily.

“Well, thank heavens for that,” she said, falling back on sarcasm to try to hide the tremor in her voice. “I’d hate to be doing all this worrying for a reason.”

She wanted to just let it go, but her being here in the first place was all Maddie’s idea and now she seemed so…devious.

“This just isn’t your day,” Meyer said to Maddie.

“I’ve had worse,” she said.

“Yeah, I hear that,” he answered, their unexpected camaraderie causing Loran to have to fight a sudden and ridiculous urge to cry—when she’d done enough crying for one day.

She wondered if Meyer had told Maddie that he’d had to bribe her out of weeping on the gazebo steps with a piece of candy.

“Okay, what am I missing?” she asked, looking from one of them to the other.

“Nothing,” Maddie said. “I’m ready to go if you are. Meyer, thank you for your trouble and your time. I appreciate both.”

“You’re welcome. Anytime,” he said, but he made no attempt to leave. Loran could feel him looking at her, and, after a brief moment, she looked back. He seemed…not worried exactly, but still concerned somehow, just as she was. She had the sudden impression that she and Meyer were both in a situation they didn’t quite understand.

She glanced at her mother, then at the child’s grave the three of them seemed to be standing around—or at least she assumed it belonged to a child, because of the lamb resting on the top of the headstone.

Her mother abruptly began to walk away.

“Ms. Kimball?” Meyer called after her and she turned to look at him. She turned, but she didn’t want to. Loran could feel her wariness more than see it.

“There’s an eating place on Highway 16, just before you get to the Parkway,” Meyer said. “The food’s good. You just take this road as far as you can, then turn right. It’s on the left, before you get to the Parkway bridge. Best apple pie in the world,” he added, as if he thought it would matter.

“Thanks,” Maddie said. “Maybe we’ll try it.” She walked on.

“Are you done with the flashlight?”

“Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

Loran watched as her mother returned it, still trying to understand. She was rapidly losing hope that Maddie would be answering any of the questions she’d been formulating all the way down the Blue Ridge Parkway. Aside from her normal policy regarding inquiries, it was obvious that Maddie didn’t feel up to being interrogated—or anything else for that matter.

“Don’t take my mother off anywhere again,” she said to Meyer under her breath as she walked by him.

“Do what?” he said, clearly surprised.

“You heard me,” she said without stopping. She ran the few steps it took to catch up with Maddie.

“Did you find everything you needed to buy?” Maddie asked lightly.

“Yes.”

“See anything interesting?”

“No.”

She had seen a sign for a hospice agency that had been set up in what used to be somebody’s brick ranch house, but that was the last thing she would have wanted to talk about, even if Maddie hadn’t been sick and a prime candidate for their services.

“Are you ready to go back to the B and B now?” Loran asked the question, but she wasn’t offering alternatives. She wanted Maddie accounted for and resting in a warm and comfortable place out of the cold wind, and, as far as she was concerned, it wasn’t up for discussion.

Maddie looked up at the sky. “Beautiful,” she said, supposedly admiring the last tinges of orange and purple in the sunset but in fact studiously trying to avoid answering Loran’s question. “Look.”

Loran looked. Briefly.

They walked by an abandoned backhoe and a newly dug grave, and Loran shivered as much from the dread the sight of it evoked as from the cold. She didn’t like anything about this place.

“So you and Oscar are new best friends,” she said as they crossed the road to where she had parked in the circle drive in front of the church.

“Oscar?”

“The guy with the truck who takes my mother off to God knows where when I’m not looking.”

“Oh, that Oscar.” Maddie suddenly smiled. “Oscar. Meyer. I get it. Does he know you call him that?”

“Yes, he does, and whatever you do, don’t start tap dancing.”

“I’m too tired to tap dance.”

“Which is exactly the point, Mother. Why are we here? What are you doing?”

“You mean besides hoping to convince my lovely daughter to buy me a hearty meal before she locks me in my room for the night?”

Loran gave a sigh. “There is no talking to you, is there?”

“Nope. You’re not going to ground me, are you?” Maddie asked, smiling.

“Oh, very funny. I would if I could, believe me. I would have brought you out here, you know.”

“I…needed to see it alone.”

“Alone—with Meyer Conley along.”

“Meyer is a very unobtrusive person,” Maddie said.

“It’s his job to be unobtrusive or anything else the guests or Mrs. Jenkins want him to be.”

“Maybe so. But somebody definitely took the time and the trouble to teach him how to behave. You don’t see much of that anymore.”

Loran didn’t miss the not-so-subtle dig at Kent, and once again she felt the urge to cry. No. Not just cry. To throw her head back and wail, like some big overgrown child who had dropped her ice cream in the dirt, lost her nickel, torn her best dress and broken her favorite doll—and who was completely out of options.

“He’s been all over the world, in the military,” Maddie said. “I think there’s something a little sad about him, too. Did you notice that?”

“Everybody I’ve seen here looks sad. Are you trying to change the subject?”

“Not…very,” Maddie said.

“You’re not well, Mother—”

“No, I’m not. So humor me. Tell me what you bought on you shopping spree.”

“Deodorant,” Loran said, fumbling with the remote on her key ring so she could unlock the SUV doors. She glanced over her shoulder. Meyer was standing at the same place in the cemetery where they’d left him.

“Lucky me,” Maddie said as she opened the door, smiling until Loran smiled in return—in spite of herself.

“What else?” Maddie said when they were both in the SUV.

“A toothbrush and toothpaste, a three-pack of men’s undershirts, a red flannel nightgown, socks, a pair of jeans, a three-pack of ugly cotton panties, some weird shoes and a shirt, royal-blue plaid, also flannel.”

“Going for the Oscar look, are we?”

“Ha, ha. I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to be comfortable. Really, Mother, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were making fun of him.”

“I wasn’t making fun of him. I was making fun of you and Kent. I wonder what he would say—if he saw you dressed like that?”

“Nothing. He wouldn’t recognize me.”

“I hope he’s getting along all right without you.”

“I hope his hair catches on fire,” Loran said as she pulled the SUV onto the road. “What?” she asked pointedly, because of Maddie’s startled look.

“Well, me, too, then,” Maddie said, making Loran smile again in spite of her worry. Her mother might be difficult to contain, but she was blindly loyal.

“Don’t ask me why,” Loran warned her.

“I don’t care why. If you want his pin feathers singed, that’s good enough for me. I think Meyer thinks you’re cute, by the way.”

“I am cute.”

“And so modest, too. Oh—” Maddie said, suddenly grabbing the door.

“What is it?” Loran asked, reaching out to steady her.

“I’m feeling a little…wobbly….”

“Wobbly? What do you mean, wobbly?”

“Just…tired all of a sudden. It happens sometimes.” She leaned back and closed her eyes, then took a deep breath. Then another one.

Loran was already slowing down the SUV, looking for a place to pull off the road.

“No, don’t stop,” Maddie said, opening her eyes. “Keep going. Just take me back to the house. I can rest while you go find us something good to eat. Maybe that place Meyer mentioned.”

“I’m not leaving you by yourself. This trip has been too much for you. Maybe we should find a doctor. I’ll ask Mrs. Jenkins where the closest—”

“I don’t need a doctor. I need to eat. Just drop me off at the B and B. It shouldn’t take you long. I’ll be fine while you’re gone. It’s already starting to pass.” She took another a deep breath. “Buy something with a lot of onions, will you?” she said as if it were all settled. “And watch the road, not me.”

“Mother—”

“Loran, stop worrying. Will you please just return me to my room? I’ll feel much better after I shower and eat something.”

“I wish I could believe you—you have no idea what it’s like having such a liar for a mother,” Loran said, and Maddie laughed.

“Ah, well. We all have our heavy burdens to bear.”

Loran kept driving. They weren’t far from the B and B now. Maddie did seem better. She was sitting up a little straighter at any rate.

“So what were you doing at the cemetery?” Loran asked after a moment.

“Just looking.”

“At what?”

“Headstones mostly. There’s not much else out there.”

“Right. And I’m supposed to believe that, I guess.”

“Well, what else would I be doing?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking. I just don’t…” Loran gave a quiet sigh instead of continuing, mostly so she wouldn’t say something she couldn’t take back.

“Don’t what?”

“Understand! I don’t understand why you wanted me to come. And now that I’m here you’re…hiding!”

“Farther along, daughter,” Maddie said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a song. About having patience because all will be revealed. Later.”

“A song. Great. Do you have any idea how much I want to help you—and how am I going to do that if you won’t let me!” The tremor in her voice was back, in spite of all she could do, and Maddie reached out to caress her shoulder.

“If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t understand what’s going on with me, either. I think I’m…filled with whims, that’s all. Well, actually, I’ve always been filled with whims. It’s just that now I’m giving in to them. And I kind of like it, you know?”

“Like…what?”

“Like eating whatever I want to eat. Going wherever I want to go.”

“Going to a cemetery in the cold with a total stranger?”

“That, too,” Maddie said, looking out the side window. There was nothing to see in the dark, nothing to see in the daytime, either. Maddie was clearly avoiding the cemetery topic again.

“So what did he mean?”

“Who?”

“Meyer, Mother. The total stranger. He said this wasn’t your day. He must have meant something. What was it?”

“He meant that you weren’t happy about me being there. And one of the locals had just left—she wasn’t happy about me being there, either.”

“Why not?” Loran asked, realizing she had probably encountered that particular local herself.

“I look highly suspicious,” Maddie said.

“Right. You look like everybody’s idea of a graveyard vandal. What about Meyer? I guess he’s suspicious-looking, too.”

“Well, the light was bad, and people here don’t like outsiders.”

“Tell me about it,” Loran said under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing. How do you know they don’t like outsiders?”

“I’ve seen Mrs. Jenkins’s face,” Maddie said.

“She told me she was born here.”

“You can be born in a place and still be an outsider.”