Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (9 page)

“I’ve been meaning to tidy this up a bit,” he explained, “but a doctor’s work never seems to leave enough time.”

Christina didn’t know what to say or where she should go; in the end, she decided that the safest course was to say nothing and stay still. Somewhere back down the hall, the telephone rang.

“Most mornings aren’t particularly busy, but you never can tell when one will buck the trend,” Dr. Barlow said. “I’ll have you follow along beside me. If I request something, get it for me as best you can. If you don’t know where something is, just ask. Hopefully, we won’t have any emergencies like that fire yesterday. Now then—”

But before the doctor could say another word, they were interrupted by the sound of Callie racing down the hallway and throwing open the door. “Dr. Barlow! Dr. Barlow!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “That was Eunice Hester on the telephone!”

“Oh, no!” the doctor groaned. “What now?”

“She said that you had to come quick! She said she’s dying!”

A
S THEY DROVE
through the heart of Longstock, taking Main Street south and out of town, Christina was shocked by Dr. Barlow’s lack of urgency. Ever since he’d received the news that Eunice Hester was dying, the doctor hadn’t appeared to be in the slightest hurry; before they’d left the clinic, he’d calmly packed his medical bag, given Callie a few instructions should anyone come in during their absence, and sauntered out the door to his car, finishing his cup of coffee. His behavior certainly didn’t reflect that of a physician whose services were desperately needed.

While Christina still didn’t feel safe with Dr. Barlow behind the wheel, an unmistakable change in his driving had occurred. The trip to the Simmons home had been fraught with peril, full of near-collisions, screeching tires, and honking horns, but now he drove as if they were out for a leisurely Sunday excursion. Though they occasionally drifted back and forth across the median and once in a while Dr. Barlow tromped roughly on the brakes, Christina didn’t feel as if her life was in imminent danger.

“Don’t you think that we should be going a little faster?” Christina asked, not quite believing she could say such a thing.

“We’re not in any rush.” He shrugged.

“But what about the telephone call?” she asked, more confused than ever. “Callie said that a woman was dying. She said you had to come quickly.”

“If I had a nickel for every time Eunice Hester called to say she was knocking on death’s door, I’d have enough spare change to afford one heck of a nice lunch!”

“Wait…you…you mean that…that she’s
not
dying?”

“Oh, heck no, she most certainly is not!” Dr. Barlow exclaimed, letting go of the wheel to gesture with both of his hands, sending the car drifting across the centerline. “You see, Eunice knows that if she squawks loud and long enough, I’ll come. I won’t come running, but I
will
come nonetheless. She knows darn well that I was planning on driving out to her place the day after tomorrow, just as we had agreed during my last visit, but that doesn’t mean a thing when measured against a bridge game or a lunch or any other such nonsense!”

“But that means that she’s lying to you.”

“It’s not that she’s fibbing, but more that she likes to get a fella’s goat. She’s a prankster, a tease. She’s always going on about some new cockamamie idea, whatever has her fancy on that particular day. Half the time I’m there, all we manage to do is argue back and forth. After all of these years, it just chaps my hide the way she expects me to drop everything at a moment’s notice.”

“Then why not stay back at the clinic?” Christina suggested. “If you’re so upset, just ignore her call.”

“If I were to do that, that old bat would die just to spite my stubbornness! Probably spend the rest of my life being haunted!”

For the rest of the drive to Eunice Hester’s home, the doctor recalled all the times he had butted heads with Eunice, going on and on with no end in sight. After a while, Christina just stared out the window.

Is there such a thing as a normal day in Longstock?

Eunice Hester’s home was well off the beaten path, several miles outside of Longstock. Following a long, winding drive from the main road, passing through a thick stand of enormous oak, elm, and evergreen trees, the doctor brought the car to a stop in front of a home that would have looked less out of place in a bigger city, somewhere like St. Paul or Milwaukee.

Standing two stories tall, with a bit more squeezed into an attic, Eunice Hester’s home was impressive. A gabled roof, tiled with wooden shingles, covered a house that seemed big enough for at least a dozen occupants. The morning sunlight that managed to penetrate the trees shone off beveled windows. On the long porch held up by a row of sturdy columns, an arrangement of chairs was set around an antique coffee table. From the top of the stairs, a white-and-orange-striped cat paused in mid-step to stare at them, before bounding off into a bush and disappearing from sight. But what most caught Christina’s attention were the two stone gargoyles that looked down at them from the corners of the roof, their faces chiseled into menacing grimaces, a pair of silent sentinels watching all who approached.

“Those look a bit…peculiar…,” she said, pointing.

“Aren’t they, though,” the doctor agreed. “Eunice had them sent over on a steamer all the way from Europe, said that when she saw them hanging off a castle in Spain she couldn’t possibly live without them. When they arrived, it took over a dozen men to get the danged things off the train to where they now sit. They creep the hell out of me, they do.”

“I agree…”

They got out of the car and headed up the walk toward the house. Christina was surprised to find that the lawn wasn’t in the same immaculate condition as the home; weeds sprouted through the long grass and poked up between the stones of the walk, while clumps of rotting leaves, undoubtedly left over from the previous fall, crowded up against the bottom of the steps and porch. She couldn’t imagine how much time had passed since the hedges had last been trimmed. She wondered why things were in such disarray. Still, her attention kept returning to the gargoyles; as she walked, she imagined that their eyes were following her.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve trudged up these damn steps,” the doctor grumbled.

When Dr. Barlow rapped on the door, striking a bronze knocker cast in the shape of a lion’s head, the sound echoed sharply across the woods, but no reply came from inside the house.

“She drags me out into the woods and then leaves me standing at the door,” he complained. “The least she could do is answer.”

Dr. Barlow knocked again, harder and longer than the first time, but still there was no reply.

“Do you suppose she could have left?” Christina asked.

“She’s never done it before,” he answered, rubbing his whiskered chin, “but with that woman, there’s a first time for
everything
.”

“Should we keep knocking?”

“If Eunice didn’t answer the first two times, I don’t reckon that a third is going to convince her to come to the door.” The doctor frowned. He turned and started heading back toward the car.

“But what if she really is in trouble?” Christina said, growing concerned that they were making a mistake in leaving.

“She isn’t,” Dr. Barlow said over his shoulder.

“But you said that she’s never done
this
before,” Christina said, refusing to let go of her sliver of doubt. “It couldn’t hurt to check around the house more closely, could it?”

The doctor stopped in his tracks, let out a deep sigh, nodded his head a couple of times, and turned back toward the house. “No, I reckon it couldn’t,” he acknowledged, “even if it is for that old bag.”

They agreed to split up and check the property for any sign of Eunice. Dr. Barlow would continue to knock on the door and look into the windows along the front of the house. Christina would follow a stone path that led around the side of the home toward the rear of the property.

At the back of the house there was another, smaller porch. Christina climbed up a short set of stairs and knocked on the door that opened onto the kitchen. Over and over she rapped, but there was no answer. Everything was silent, save for a pair of squirrels chattering away at each other in the trees and a woodpecker diligently hammering away on a branch.

Where could she have gone…?

Christina peered into the windows from the rear porch. At first she saw nothing but a deep, dark gloom. Thick shadows cloaked the interior of the house, making what she managed to see, an enormous chair, some reading lamps, and a vase full of flowers, seem as if they were sitting under the night sky.

Moving from one window to the next, Christina looked into the house until she stood before the last one. Just as she was about to turn away, something caught her eye. There, in the deepest shadows, looking down a hallway that led toward the front of the house, she saw a pair of feet. It wasn’t much, no more than the middle of a calf down, the feet lying flat on their heels, with one shoe, clearly a woman’s, having fallen to the floor, but the sight of it sent a tremor of fear racing through her.

Maybe Eunice Hester
had
been telling the truth when she called…maybe she was dead…

Christina’s first instinct was to shout for help; she and Dr. Barlow had each agreed to let the other know if they found any sign of Eunice Hester, but the sound remained in her throat. It wasn’t because she was panic-stricken but rather that her training as a nurse told her that shouting out would be a waste of time if someone’s life was in danger.

Something more direct was needed. Without hesitation, she ran to the rear door, tried the knob, and was grateful to find that it was unlocked. But just before she rushed inside, there on the threshold, she hesitated.

What if Eunice Hester had been attacked?

What if whoever had done it was still inside?

Christina had never considered herself brave. Whenever she became frightened, she was much more likely to give in to it than confront the dark or the unknown. Charlotte had chided her mercilessly when they were children, desperately trying to break her of her cowardice, but there was no way that Christina would ever become the risk taker that her sister was.

“Don’t be afraid…don’t give in to your fears…someone needs you…,” Christina told herself.

Taking a deep breath, Christina stepped over the threshold, moved through the kitchen, and entered a darkened study, her eyes adjusting to the murky gloom. The faint smell of tobacco lingered in the air, surprising her, but she ignored it, hurrying around the table and chairs and down the hallway. There, just as she had seen through the window, she found a pair of unmoving feet.

She knew she was looking at Eunice Hester. The woman was old; her deep wrinkles were clear even in the dim light of the hallway. Thin as a bird, she had hair white as untouched snow. Her clothes were a bit out-of-date, although a touch flamboyant; her pleated, fire-engine red blouse was fastened at the collar and held in place by an ornate, sapphire-bejeweled brooch. She was flat on her back, one arm thrown across her chest, while the other lay at her side; gaudy rings decorated many of her fingers. If it were not for the small trickle of blood spilling from the gash at her temple into a growing pool on the floor beside her head, it would seem that she was merely sleeping.

Christina jumped as a strange, sudden sound rose up from the darkness that enveloped the house. For a moment she remained perfectly still, listening, wondering whether someone else lurked just out of sight, the person responsible for Eunice’s condition, watching Christina, waiting for the opportune moment to strike, but the only sounds that she could discern were the steady ticking of a grandfather clock and the creaking of the old house. Shaking her head, she reminded herself to stay focused.

Turn on a light! Do it quickly!

Eunice lay near the bottom of a steep, carpeted staircase that disappeared up into the darkness above. Christina looked around, straining to see clearly, and discovered that she was in a small foyer. Beside the stairs stood an elaborately carved table, decorated with a pair of photographs, a vase full of cut flowers, and a lamp, which she immediately turned on.

In its glow, Christina marveled at what she saw: a towering elephant tusk stood upright on the other side of the table, its ivory festooned with beads and a deep red satin cloth; wooden masks, crudely carved and painted in a rainbow of bright colors, leered down at her from the walls; an enormous painting of a giraffe, its long neck craned back over its body, was affixed to the space above the stairs; a stuffed penguin sat on top of another table, looking ready to take a swim in frigid ocean waters. Overlooking it all was a lavish chandelier, its finely cut glass reflecting light up and across the high ceiling. It was as if she had wandered into a museum rather than someone’s home.

It was clear that Eunice Hester’s eccentricities did
not
stop with her stone gargoyles.

“Mrs. Hester?” Christina said, turning her attention back to the unconscious, bleeding woman; when she spoke, her voice echoed, sounding undersized in such a large space. “Can you hear me?” There was still no reply.

A tremor of fear raced through Christina; until that moment, she hadn’t stopped to imagine that Eunice wasn’t sleeping as she appeared, but rather that she was dead.

“Mrs. Hester?” she repeated. “Please answer me…”

Then, in the faint light, Christina noticed Eunice’s chest rising and falling, although it did so weakly. Flooded with relief, Christina could not stifle a sigh. Grasping her patient by the wrist, Christina rejoiced at finding a pulse. Though Eunice Hester had been battered and bloodied, she was still alive.

But what in heaven’s name had happened to her…?

“Y
OU’RE NOTHING MORE
than a damn fool, old woman! A damn fool!”

Dr. Barlow taped the last of the large bandage to the side of Eunice Hester’s bruised and bloodied forehead and then threw the roll into his medical bag in disgust. His anger was obvious.

“Maybe so, but I didn’t get to be such an old woman by accident, you know.” Eunice smiled, throwing a wink to Christina, clearly enjoying the outburst her injury had caused. “I can’t be
too
much of a fool to have made it this far.”

“Keep this up and I guarantee that you won’t be getting any older!”

“One of these days, you’ll get your wish!”

“How can you treat this like it was some kind of game!”

Dr. Barlow and Eunice Hester had been at each other’s throats from the moment the older woman regained consciousness. Christina was shocked, listening to it all, surprised that two adults could speak in such a way.

Once Christina had determined that Eunice wasn’t in any immediate danger, she’d raced for the front door, unlocking it so that the doctor could get inside. It had taken them some time to wake Eunice and even longer to get her into a chair in the study. Dr. Barlow had thundered and ranted the whole time, demanding that Eunice explain how she had ended up bleeding at the bottom of the stairs. But as furious as he had been up until that point, learning
the truth
made it much, much worse.

Eunice had, just as the doctor had supposed during the drive, fibbed when she had told Callie Davis that she was dying; of course, that didn’t mean that Eunice saw it in quite the same terms.

“It wasn’t as if I were
really
lying,” she offered in her own defense. “If you think about it, all of us
are
dying, some just more quickly than others.”

What she couldn’t deny was that her reason for bending the truth was selfish; an old friend had surprised her, calling to say that she’d be coming to town for a visit later that afternoon. Eunice had concluded that she should clear her calendar by hook or by crook. And so she’d called Callie and lied in order to get him to come before the scheduled time. Pleased with herself for pulling another fast one over on the doctor, Eunice had decided to celebrate with a cigarette; her mistake had been in lighting it while she was descending the staircase. Distracted while striking a match, she had missed a step and tumbled more than a dozen feet to the floor, striking her head hard enough to knock herself unconscious.

“Do you not realize that you’re almost ninety years old?” Dr. Barlow bellowed. “How can you possibly believe that it’s still a good idea to go tromping up and down those stairs like a woman half your age? It’s a miracle this hasn’t happened before!”

“Who says it hasn’t?” Eunice chuckled.

“Laugh all you want now, but you’ll see how funny it is tomorrow morning when you’re too sore to get out of bed!”

“If I am, I’ll have the good sense not to bother
you
with it!”

“Thank heaven for small favors!”

“Poor Samuel,” she said with mock concern. “Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone just did as you told them?”

“I might as well wish for all of the apples in town to turn to solid gold!”

Never in all of her time as a nurse had Christina heard a doctor speak to a patient as rudely as Samuel Barlow now fumed at Eunice. Christina couldn’t have been more shocked. It was both unprofessional and unbecoming.

However, though Dr. Barlow’s words were rougher than tree bark and his bedside manner resembled that of a grizzly bear, there was
something
in the way he cared for Eunice that made Christina wonder if much of his bluster was for show.

When he had first looked upon Eunice’s bloodied, unmoving body, Dr. Barlow had rushed to her, his expression one of grave alarm, and held her hand in his own with the kind of tenderness often reserved for a child. He had been quiet, only softly, insistently repeating her name until her eyes finally fluttered open; his relief had been instantaneous, even if it had been immediately replaced by harsh words. Even now, as he continued to lecture her, it was obvious that he was concerned.

Christina understood
why
he cared; her own first impression of Eunice Hester was that she was easily likeable. Though her skin was mottled with age spots and her face deeply marked by wrinkles, her green eyes still held a vitality and mischievousness that was impossible to miss. Her quick smile and warm laugh, even in the face of the doctor’s scolding, as well as the winks she kept sending Christina’s way, made it feel as if they were fellow conspirators in a game Eunice was intent on playing. Even with the bruise blossoming across her forehead, she seemed ready to commit more tomfoolery.

“When did you plan on telling me about the cigarette?” Dr. Barlow asked.

“What about it?” Eunice replied, looking away.

“I’ve been your doctor for more than twenty-five years. I’ve treated you for more things than I can remember, but not once can I remember you mentioning that you were a smoker.”

Eunice rolled her eyes; for an instant, she looked like a child caught sneaking a hand into the cookie jar before dinner. “You said it yourself earlier, Samuel.” She sighed, lifting her hands in a pose of surrender. “I’m almost ninety years old. Since I don’t have a whole lot of time left, I thought that it might be fun to take up some of the habits I’ve spent my whole life avoiding.”

“You must be joking!”

“If I was, I don’t think we’d be having this ridiculous conversation.”

“
This
might be the craziest thing you’ve done yet!”

“What better time to start than when there aren’t enough years left for it to do me much harm? Seems quite smart to me…”

“It
would
to a woman as crazy as you are!”

“Do you know what I’m thinking about trying next?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Bullfighting!” Eunice exclaimed happily. “The last time I was in Mexico I went to a match and, to be perfectly honest with you, it didn’t seem to be all that difficult. All you do is stand there, while everyone in the arena cheers, twirling a red cape about, waiting for the bull to charge so you can just step aside and plunge your sticker into its side. Why, anyone could do that!”

“I think that it’s a lot harder than it looks,” Christina said, finally feeling as if she could join in the conversation.

“Don’t bother trying to talk her out of it,” the doctor cautioned. “Even if
we
both know that she’s likely to be trampled underfoot, once
Eunice
has made up her mind, you would have better luck pulling the moon from the night sky than getting her to change it.”

“Oh, hush now, Samuel,” Eunice chided him. With a wicked smile, she turned to Christina and asked, “Why do you think I shouldn’t become a bullfighter?”

“I don’t know,” Christina answered, playing the role of innocent, aware that Eunice was teasing. “It seems awfully dangerous…”

“Would you like to know a secret?” the older woman whispered.

“I suppose…”

Eunice’s smile softened as her eyes lost their playfulness, narrowing and becoming serious. “The most foolish thing that you could ever do would be never taking a chance. When I remember all of the things I’ve done, all of the people I’ve met, and all of the places I’ve been, it reminds me that each of the risks I took was worth it.” Eunice grinned, as if she were imagining herself in a bullfighting ring, a sword in her hand. “If I’d never taken those risks, why, I’d be nothing more than another old woman waiting for death to come knocking. So when your own opportunity presents itself, whenever love and adventure introduce themselves, you’d be worse than a fool not to take them by the hand.”

Christina acknowledged the advice with a smile, thinking to herself that Eunice, unknowingly, had hit upon the hesitancy that often governed her decisions.

While Dr. Barlow packed up the last of his things, Christina moved out of the study and back to the foyer where she had first found Eunice. Remembering her worries upon entering the house, her fear that there was someone lurking in the shadows, and her panic at the thought that Eunice Hester was dead embarrassed her now. Even the mysterious smell of tobacco had an easy explanation.

Christina was relieved that she hadn’t said a word about any of her fears; she could only imagine how it would have looked to Dr. Barlow. Considering the harsh way he’d spoken to Eunice, Christina could only imagine what a lecture he might have given her.

Running her fingertips along the top of the table beside the stairs, Christina touched one of the picture frames and paused. In the chaos of her first moments inside the house, she hadn’t noticed what images they held. The first was of a woman, standing before an open tent, desert sand all around, a dark-skinned handler holding the reins of a one-humped camel; even with the passage of years, it was easy for Christina to see that the woman was Eunice Hester. The other photograph was equally exotic. In it, Eunice stood beside a well-dressed man, both of them surrounded by dozens of children; Christina couldn’t be certain, but she thought that they must be Chinese. They were all gathered in front of a school.

“That handsome man beside me was my husband,” a voice spoke from behind Christina. Startled, she turned to find Eunice standing in the hallway. The older woman, with her forehead bandaged and her bruise growing uglier, looked to be every one of her nearly ninety years.

“You should be sitting down,” Christina told her.

“My dear, if you don’t watch yourself, you’ll end up sounding just like Samuel,” Eunice answered with a smile.

“There’s a part of me that takes that as a compliment.”

“You should, but don’t worry, I am fine, I assure you,” Eunice replied, dismissing Christina’s concerns with a wave of her hand. Carefully, she shuffled across the floor to stand beside the table, holding on to it for support.

“I hope that you don’t think I was snooping through your things.”

“The thought never crossed my mind.”

“Where was this picture taken?” Christina asked, showing Eunice the photograph with all of the children.

“We were in Shanghai,” she explained, as a twinkle of memory lit in her eyes. “Those were the days before the Boxer Rebellion, back before the country went a bit wild. There were all types of foreigners there, people from all over the world. You couldn’t walk down the street without hearing half a dozen languages being spoken. Albert and I took donations from back home in the States and used them to build schools, erect dams, fix old roads, anything that would help. We used to have dinner with Herbert Hoover and his wife. It was all so long ago.”

“It seems so exciting. When I think of all of the places you must have been,” Christina said, sweeping her hand around the foyer at all of the mementos on the walls.

“Albert and I
did
travel to a lot of wonderful places,” Eunice admitted. “But not a one of them would have meant a thing to me if he hadn’t been there by my side every exhilarating step of the way. For every strange new language I heard, every exotic food that I was brave enough to taste, every wild animal I saw, and every local custom that I somehow managed not to offend.” She laughed. “All of them were adventures because Albert was there, experiencing them with me. When I was with him, the whole world was my oyster.”

“He sounds like a remarkable man.”

“He was,” she answered, her voice growing wistful. “He’s been gone now for almost fifteen years.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Christina said respectfully.

“That’s nice of you to say, my dear,” Eunice answered, her smile returning, “but it’s just like I told Samuel earlier. Every one of us is meant to pass on from this life. Unfortunately, we often don’t get to stay as long as our loved ones would like. When Albert died, it took me quite a while to get my feet back under me. But in the end, I suppose I realized that he was still beside me in his own way, watching down from above.”

“Then I’m sure he would agree with me that you should take it easy.”

“Oh, hush!” she said, laughing.

Christina followed as Eunice led her around the foyer, pointing from one object to the next and telling her a story for every item; it was like having a guide in a museum. When they stopped in front of another photograph, showing Eunice and her late husband in a carved-out boat on a jungle river, she paused before turning to Christina.

“Have you given your heart to some lucky young man?” she asked.

For the second time that morning, Christina found herself surprised that she would be asked such a thing. But just as she had when Callie Davis had inquired, Christina took no offense from Eunice’s question; it wasn’t that she was being judged, but rather that Eunice was genuinely interested.

“I haven’t met that man yet,” Christina answered.

“You will,” Eunice said confidently, “and when you do, even if you were to decide to settle here in Longstock and
never
leave, with that special man at your side, adventures you will, most certainly, have. Shanghai is nice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to celebrating a child’s birthday or waking up beside your husband every morning.”

“I reckon that you would know what you’re talking about.”

“I do.” She nodded. “I truly do.”

Much as Christina wanted to agree with Eunice, another part of her thought that if all of the men in Longstock were made from the same mold as Holden and Tyler Sutter, she wouldn’t find a husband until
she
was ninety years old.

For the rest of the late morning and into the early afternoon, Christina accompanied Dr. Barlow as he visited patients who lived far from Longstock’s center. They checked in on Eugene Sanford, a farmer who had been in a machinery accident, so the doctor could be certain that the cast he had placed on the man’s leg had hardened properly. They stopped to see the Apitz family, whose newborn daughter the doctor had recently delivered. Christina took great pleasure in holding little Emily in her arms as the baby cooed and tugged at her finger. Finally, at the home of Margaret Gilles, an elderly woman Dr. Barlow believed was suffering from dementia, Christina took a bite of an offered piece of blueberry pie that seemed to have had its sugar substituted by salt.