A Feral Darkness (41 page)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 15
OTHILA
Connection to Heritage & Kin
Brenna couldn't remember the last time she'd gone to her mother's unannounced, but the next day she found herself hunting a parking spot in the upscale retirement community, cruising around banks of immaculately tended landscaping as she navigated the maze to the correct clump of apartments. Her day off, with the world going weird around her and last night's conflict still unresolved, and she walked through the reception and sitting areas where the world was nothing
but
normal, with elderly women comparing knitting projects made painstaking by their arthritis and an elderly man snoozing through his friends' conversation while the single visiting family tried to control the small child ping-ponging from chair to chair and raising affectionate smiles from strangers.

      
Not only couldn't she remember the last time she'd come here without calling ahead—though she knew her mother's habits well enough to be comfortably sure Rhona would be at home, and probably Aunt Ada, too—she couldn't at all place the last time her mother had been to the farmhouse. All she knew of it lately was what Brenna told her; Rhona had no feel for the recent changes Brenna had made, for the ways she'd made it her own. For the obvious ways she'd loved and cared for the place.

      
Maybe it was time for that to change. Maybe if it
did
change, her mother would be less susceptible to any old idea Russell decided to plant.

      
Or maybe not. In any event, this was one old idea she wasn't going to let reach fruition.

      
"Brenna!" her aunt said, opening the door at Brenna's knock, as surprised as Brenna would have expected but welcoming. They exchanged a quick hug—Brenna was always careful with her aunt, a light-boned and thin-skinned woman in her seventies—and Ada called back over her shoulder, "Rhona! Your girl is here, so tear yourself away from that soap opera and come out here!" She gave Brenna a wink, wrinkling her crepe-papery skin. "I never let her watch those things in the sitting room. Those commercials drive me up a wall!"

      
"More power to you," Brenna said, grinning.

      
"Go sit in the on the couch, dear. Your mother'll be out directly, I'm sure. Would you like some tea?"

      
"Water would be nice." Brenna took a spot on the couch, the same spot she took every time she visited here. Her mother would take the recliner, and Aunt Ada would drift in with refreshments and sit on the other end of the couch if she pleased. Ada, Brenna's mother had always said, was an
individual
—as if being an individual were not entirely a good thing. Brenna had been surprised when the sisters had decided to live together after her father's death and had been even more surprised when the arrangement endured—but glad that it had. This community gave her mother a secure place next to a medical facility, and was engineered with hand grips, wide hallways, high toilets, and showers with built-in seats. And with all of that the apartments still looked more like luxury living than anything else. Which was all a great relief, because Brenna couldn't imagine life if her mother had stayed at the farmhouse.

      
Although unless she did something, it didn't look like she'd have a life at the farmhouse to imagine.

      
Brenna's mother came out from the hallway, using her cane today; must have been a bad bone day, as Ada called them. It made Brenna reflexively check her old injuries to see if she felt any aches, and then sigh with relief when she didn't. Not yet. She got up from the couch to greet her mother with a kiss, and waited for her to settle in the recliner before sinking to the couch again.

      
"I can't remember the last time you came by without calling," Rhona said.

      
"I was thinking the same as I drove in," Brenna admitted. "But if it was a bad time, it wouldn't have been a big deal to turn around and go home. It was a nice day for a drive, anyway."

      
"Nonsense!" said Ada from the kitchen. "It's never a bad time to see you, Brenna."

      
"But I can't imagine you came all this way for no reason," her mother added.

      
Brenna couldn't help a grin, though there wasn't much mirth behind it. "It's not that far," she said. "Maybe you should come out and visit me sometime, refresh your memory."

      
"I remember the old place well enough, I suppose."

      
"You remember the way it was," Brenna said. "It's been my home for a while now. Things have changed."

      
"Don't tell me that old hulk of a barn has changed."

      
"Not so much," Brenna said. "But I don't live in the barn. I live in the house. And you're right, I'm not here for no reason. I'm here because of some things Russell said to me last night."

      
"Goodness," her mother said. "I stopped interfering in your quarrels a long time ago."

      
Brenna took a deep breath. A very deep breath.
Don't give up. Don't escalate
. "I wouldn't call this a quarrel...it's much more significant than that. And it involves you."

      
"He talked to you about the house," her mother said flatly.

      
"Yes. He talked to me about the house." She looked at her mother, who sat motionless in the chair, not a gesture or twitch giving away how she might feel about the subject although there was an innate disapproval in her unbending posture. Her cane rested beside her, and her delicate pink sweater and close-weave, off-white linen slacks seemed at odds with the rest of her. The pension from Brenna's father had done well by her, supplemented by Social Security—but mostly by Ada, who picked up all the household expenses. And somehow Rhona had never seemed truly to enjoy it—to allow herself to enjoy it. Nothing except the community restaurant outings; she'd picked up a taste for fine food in the last four or five years. Other than that, it was difficult to get a conversation of substance out of her.

      
This time, Brenna wasn't leaving until they'd had one. "He talked to me about the house, all right. And he had no right to go behind my back with whatever offer he's been made."

      
"I wasn't aware there was a firm offer."

      
"If there isn't, there will be. This is pure Russell, Mom—he came here and made a grand speech about poor little Brenna living all alone out in the country, didn't he? Got you to wondering if you'd made the right decision in not selling when Dad died after I said I'd stay there and take care of it, didn't he? When you said I could stay as long as I wanted to be there?"

      
Her mother had gone disapproving. "I'm not sure I like your tone."

      
She kept that tone carefully modulated. "How did you
think
I'd feel, after all these years of caring for the place on my own, and neither of you showing an interest? I've paid the taxes, I've repaired the fences and the barn and the roof. And I helped Dad hold it together for years before he died—Russell sure never put a hand to it."

      
"Your brother had a good job, and a career."

      
"That doesn't change what
I
did. What
I
put into the place. That I'm the one who's always loved it, and I'm the only one who's kept it up or even spent time there at all. You don't visit, and Russell doesn't visit. If there's to be any conversation about selling it, then I'm the
first
one who should have known about it."

      
"I'm sure Russell did as he thought was right."

      
Anger crept out. "That doesn't mean it
was
right. Do you even know who he's talking to? Rob Parker, that's who. The very same jerk who tore up the pasture the month Dad died. He's only been back in town a little while and he's already got a reputation for picking up his dead friend's drug business. Did Russell tell you
that
?"

      
Ada brought water and tea on a tray, setting it on the low coffee table that centered the conversation area, and sitting quietly on the other end of the couch, watching her sister thoughtfully. Brenna gratefully took the tall glass of ice water, glad to have something to do with her hands.

      
"He didn't say anything about that." Her mother smoothed the front of her sweater and leaned to reach her tea, resting the saucer carefully in her lap and leaving unspoken the implication that Brenna was therefore wrong.

      
"He wouldn't have, would he? And I'll tell you what else—I'll lay odds that Parker's paying him to engineer this sale—something on top of whatever Russell figure's he's got coming to himself from the house."

      
"Brenna," her mother said sharply. "Russell would do no such thing."

      
"Russell
would
." Brenna said it without hesitation, but without any edge, either. Just the certainty, the hard-earned, painfully won certainty of what her brother could justify when he wanted to.

      
Ada cleared her throat. "Rhona, listen to your girl. She's the one who's there, and I daresay she knows Russell better than you think. Even I know Russell well enough to know he'll do as he sees fit when he thinks he can get away with it. What do you think happened to that lovely silver platter of yours that you thought was lost in the move?"

      
"Ada," Brenna's mother said, stiffening, "I think this is a private conversation."

      
"Not as far as I'm concerned," Brenna said. She'd never heard her aunt offer an opinion about Russell one way or the other, and she didn't have any illusions that Ada wouldn't say similarly astute things about Brenna herself during the conversation, if she saw fit. But a third person made things easier—made it more than just Brenna talking and her mother never quite listening.

      
"I saw Russell looking at that platter while we were packing your things," Ada said, unperturbed by her sister's rejection.

      
"You never mentioned it." She said it as though Ada had taken the platter herself. Finally real, honest emotion—and it was misdirected.

      
Ada shrugged and took a sip of her tea. The delicate, silver-edged teacups were left over from her days of entertaining her long-deceased husband's business associates; when it came to difficult social situations, Ada could hold her own with aplomb. "What would have been the point? The platter was gone, and it wasn't like Russell was coming here on a weekly basis to plunder things. He saw an opportunity and he took it. He's always done that; he always will. I doubt he would be half so successful in his business if he didn't think on those terms. He just goes a little too far now and then."

      
Brenna left the moment to her mother and aunt, but her mother didn't seem likely to take it anywhere. Not while she stared at the tea sitting in her lap, a bit of it spilled over into the saucer with her last, nearly vehement words to her sister. But then she pulled herself together and took a breath and, as if Ada hadn't said anything, told Brenna, "I'm sure your brother is thinking of you, Brenna Lynn. He's not the only one who's wondered if it's best for you to stay alone in that big old house, away from town and the social opportunities it offers you."

      
"Mom, it's
Parma Hill
! What social—" Brenna shook her head, cutting herself off. "No. That's not the point. The point is, it's up to me where I want to live. If it's a mistake for me to be away from town, then that's a mistake I'll have to live with.
My
problem, not yours. It's not up to you and Russell to decide what I should or shouldn't do with my life!" Especially not when Russell probably didn't truly have an opinion about it one way or the other, but had chosen the most expedient way to get what he really wanted. "You want to know something? You can take the house away, but it won't get me into town. I'll find another place out in the country. I heard about an apartment over the Sawyers' barn—I can probably even get a reduced rent in exchange for barn chores."
But it wouldn't have my spring.