False Impressions (9 page)

Was it anorexia? Violet had been overly concerned about her weight in high school, but April didn’t think anorexia could do this to a person.

A woman in a disability cart beeped at them to get past. Violet drew her over to the side of the aisle.

“How are you?” she asked, but her eyes wouldn’t light on April’s, and she didn’t really sound like she wanted to know everything. She glanced over her shoulder several times.

“Well, I’ve moved back.”

“I heard.”

“It’s great,” April said, trying to end the conversation as fast as she could. The smell coming from her mouth of rotting teeth was awful. Standing this close to her was not an option. “But I’m in a hurry. Catch up another time?”

“Call me,” Violet said, wagging her thumb and index finger. “I’m at my dad’s.” April nodded politely. The woman walked away. Her steps were mincing as though her feet hurt. It was painful to watch her.

April didn’t think she was going to be calling her anytime soon.

April went home, helped Charlotte put things in the cupboards, and went back up to the loft to work. She tried to get the picture of a ruined Violet out of her mind but couldn’t help but notice her sketches of icy mountains resembled broken teeth. Doggedly, she put her mind on hold and drew without thought. An angry Mary Lou made a mental appearance. April kept drawing until finally she was lost in the process.

Her cell phone rang, breaking her hard-earned concentration. From the backlit readout, it was nearly four o’clock. She had managed to work for several hours. She paged through the sketchbook to see if anything was worth keeping as she answered.

“April, can you come over?”

April didn’t recognize the voice at first. “Kit?” she asked.

While April liked Kit, Kit was not the kind of friend that she expected to get a call from. She saw Kit sometimes at stamping, although since the twins had been born, she hadn’t seen much of her at all. And after the scene at the party last night, she’d figured none of the Rosens would be talking to her.

“Are you at your mother’s?” April asked. She still needed to talk to Mary Lou. She’d left a message that so far hadn’t been returned.

“I am over at the new house. I’m sanding the kitchen cupboards.”

“Do you need help?” April asked. Perhaps Kit wanted her expert opinion on decorating.

“I’ve got something I want you to see. Can you come over in a half an hour?”

April realized the girl sounded excited. Maybe she’d found something to like about the house after all.

“Okay, give me the address.”

April clicked off her cell phone. Kit must be really bothered by her trouble with her mother. April was glad the girl had called her for some advice.

She had the computer open to Google Earth in anticipation of looking up the addresses Logan had given her. She searched for directions to Kit’s house. She thought she knew where she was going but wanted to make sure. It was a rural route address. Like Kit said, the house was isolated, set back from the road and with a pig farm on one side and fields across the street. Looked like the nearest human neighbor was a quarter mile away.

April grabbed her purse and her keys. She followed the directions she’d downloaded from the Internet. Kit’s new house was several miles on the Dowling Road, past Suzi’s nursery. The homes thinned once past Suzi’s. Long stretches of empty snow-covered land appeared, probably farms. The road was cleared, although piles of snow encroached from the shoulders and made the road more narrow than usual.

A pair of deer crossed the road in front of her. Her foot came off the accelerator. Ed’s voice rang in her ear. If there’s two, there’s more. Slow down and watch carefully.

Her father was right. A smaller deer bounded across the road, leaving fluffy bursts of snow in her wake.

She drove slowly. The snow looked deeper out here, and the road wasn’t cleared to two full lanes. If she met another car head on, she’d wind up in a snowbank.

She could see how a young mother wouldn’t want to be this far away from town. Still, she wouldn’t mind living out here. It was quiet and peaceful. She caught sight of a cardinal, sitting on a snow-covered branch. He flew off as she approached, and snow flew up in bursts.

Mitch’s house was only ten minutes away across the valley. After being in close quarters with the Campbells for the past three months, April relished the idea of no neighbors. She could work all night if she wanted, play her music loudly. She missed being able to blast her MP3 player. In the nice weather, she could work outside.

She found Kit’s place, but there was no car in the drive. April was early. She had to pull in as mounds of snow made it dangerous to park in the street. She left plenty of room for Kit to park behind her.

The house was a long redbrick ranch, probably built in the sixties. Not much in the way of charm. Just a functional space. The walk was neatly shoveled, the last snowfall piled high along the drive. Logan’s doing. April walked to the back of the house, following a neatly shoveled walk around to a windblown deck. The property seemed to go back several hundred yards. Woods stood at the far end, and she imagined she heard water. A babbling brook.

Something colorful stood out against the deck railing. April went to investigate. She found several brightly colored pieces of paper. Rocky was always looking for odd bits of texture to add to her collages. April picked up the papers and stuck them in her pocket. They were an odd shape, but she couldn’t figure out what they were.

Why wasn’t Kit here? She checked her watch. It’d been thirty-five minutes since she called. April stomped her feet. Her toes were beginning to get cold. She tried to force some blood into them by doing a little shuffle step.

She heard a car door slam and went back to the front of the house. Kit was getting out and hurried up the driveway. She put a key in the lock of the front door and let them both in.

“Sorry, April,” she said. “I just ran out to get a few things. Have you been waiting long? You must be freezing.” Kit was talking quickly. April couldn’t tell if the color in her cheeks was from the cold or excitement, but she seemed pent up about something. The kid looked much happier than she had at the party.

April hurried inside. Kit closed the door quickly. She was carrying several IGA bags. They took off their boots and went into the kitchen. The house was cold, and Kit turned on a space heater as soon as she’d laid down her packages on the plywood countertop.

Gold-patterned linoleum covered the floor, curling up under the kick plate of the cabinets. The doors to the cupboards were off, standing in rows, leaning against each other and the back wall. They were in various stages of being stripped. A small hand sander was plugged into the socket and lay on the floor.

That wall still had the original wallpaper, a green and brown design featuring coffee grinders and other old-fashioned kitchen tools divided by rows of cross-stitched exes. A wooden sawhorse had been set up in the middle of the room. It was topped with a full sheet of plywood and covered with paintbrushes and other tools.

“Welcome to our humble abode. I’ll be appearing here all week. Logan and I are going to pull an all-nighter. He’ll be here in a couple of hours after he puts the kids to bed at his mother’s.”

“Are you liking it better?”

“Not really. I just decided I don’t care.”

She didn’t look like someone who didn’t care. Something else must have happened to make her this happy.

“But that’s not why I called you. I wanted to talk to you about my uncle.”

April’s face fell. Her inexcusable behavior last night had hurt Kit, too. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve been trying to call your mother all day to apologize.

Kit pulled out a kielbasa and a hunk of cheese from the grocery bag. “My mother needs to stop trying to control everyone’s behavior.”

April pointed to the food. “You didn’t need to feed me. Mitch is expecting me for dinner. This looks like an expensive snack.”

Kit had bought a new paring knife and was unwrapping it. “It
was
expensive. Logan’s going to have a fit when he sees the charge. But it’s not for you.”

She twirled around. Her eyes were lit with excitement. She was brandishing the tiny knife. April stepped back.

“It’s for my uncle. He’s coming here.”

“Your uncle’s dead,” April said slowly. She looked at Kit’s pupils. The light wasn’t great in here, but they didn’t seem to be dilated. She decided to say something harsh, to snap her out of it. “I saw his cremains at Deana’s.”

Kit shook her head. “That’s just it. He’s not. He’s alive.”

Kit had slashes of bright color high on her cheeks and her eyes
were glowing. Was she on something? Did she even know what she was saying? Did she think J.B. was truly alive?

“Kit, really. I know it’s not easy to accept his death, but . . .”

Kit sighed and began slicing the sausage, using a paper plate for a cutting board. “I know it’s kind of silly. He loves kielbasa and cheddar. With beer, of course. But he’s not drinking anymore, so no beer. I thought about getting the nonalcoholic stuff, but then I thought why even tempt him?”

April watched, growing more dismayed as the girl rambled. What if this was hormonal? Kit had six-month-old twins. It might be some kind of postpartum depression or something. April was the last person equipped to deal with that. She mentally ran down a list of people she could call. Deana might know what to do.

“You must miss him terribly,” she said quietly. It seemed like speaking softly was the right thing to do.

Kit looked up and said at a normal volume, “Listen. I’m not crazy.”

“I’m sure it feels like your uncle is everywhere . . .” April began.

“No, seriously. April, he’s alive. It wasn’t him in the meth-lab explosion.”

“How can that be? Didn’t they find his body?”

“They found his truck and his license in the glove compartment. The house had burned to the ground. They didn’t find much that was identifiable,” Kit said.

She looked away, staring at an icicle outside her kitchen window. Her gutters must have been blocked because the icicle was as thick as her forearm and tapered to a sharp, dripping point. April thought about how much it would hurt if it fell on someone.

“My uncle wasn’t making meth, April, he wasn’t. He’d started going to AA as soon as he knew I was pregnant. Said he wanted to be awake and aware to enjoy my babies.”

Kit’s voice broke then, and a sob escaped. She stuffed her hand into her mouth. April put a hand on Kit’s shaking shoulder.

“Kit, do you want me to call your mother?” She took out her cell phone and began scrolling for Mary Lou’s number.

“No!” Kit took April’s cell away from her. “We’re not telling my mother about this. He won’t come if we do.”

Her face was like a young child’s. April could see what Kit must have looked like as a five-year-old, throwing a tantrum at the IGA because her mother wouldn’t buy her an Elmo balloon. Her lips were pursed, her eyes steely.

“What do you mean?”

Kit opened her eyes. “He wants to talk to me. Only me.”

April searched Kit’s face. Her cheeks were flushed, and her fingers nervously scratched the surface of the cell phone. Underneath the ruddy blush, her skin was as pale as the icicle hanging from the roof.

“No one can know he’s coming,” Kit said. She laid down the phone out of April’s reach and went back to arranging circles of kielbasa on a paper plate. “He’s waiting until after dark. If Yost or the state police catch him, he’ll get thrown in jail. We have to do this on the q.t.”

April looked out the window. Darkness came quickly and early on these cloudy days. The sky was already dusky outside. Within the half hour, it would be inky black. The darkness unsettled April even more.

“How can you be sure it’s him? What if it’s some kind of hoax?” April couldn’t hide her concern.

“It’s not.” Kit was calm, her hands busy with the snack she was making. She stopped suddenly and looked around the kitchen. “We’ve got no place to sit. There are some folding chairs in the basement. Would you go down and get them?”

Kit pointed to a door off the kitchen. She grabbed a wipe from her purse and cleaned off her hands. “I’ve got an empty five-gallon pail we can use for a table.”

April looked at her in amazement. Kit was acting like her mother. The perfect hostess. The fact that the house was in a complete uproar didn’t stop that entertaining gene from surfacing.

Why wasn’t Mary Lou here? April paused in front of the door.

“Why me? Why ask me to come here?”

“I promised J.B. I wouldn’t tell anyone yet. But I didn’t want to be alone. You see things that others don’t see. You have insights.”

April blushed. Kit was flattering her, she knew. But it was somewhat true. She had had a knack for getting to the bottom of mysterious doings around Aldenville.