Gone and Done It (13 page)

“The kid’s not part of this.” He raised his right hand up, curling his fingers into a tight ball. Without warning, the coiled fingers darted toward my face, stopping just short of impact.

The hissing sound Duke made froze my lungs. God, no. He knew I hated snakes. A shudder rippled through me.

He nodded in satisfaction, pivoted on his booted heel, and hurried away. I locked the door behind him and raced to the closet for the shotgun. Tears fell unchecked as I patrolled my house, gun in hand, tiny Muffin trotting at my heels.

Once the premises were secured, I sank down to the heart pine floor with the shotgun.

Damn him.

Double damn him.

By the time the bus came, I’d calmed down enough to put the gun back in the closet. Duke Quigley wasn’t a nice man. He definitely had it in for me. But I couldn’t let him get to me. Staying vigilant was the key. Avoidance was good, too.

Larissa dragged her heels down the grassy driveway. Guilt assailed me. I’d been so busy worrying about our financial future, I hadn’t paid enough attention to my daughter. Had the trauma from my day spilled into her head again? We sat at the kitchen table drinking apple juice and eating peanut butter on crackers. She pushed the crackers around on the plate without eating them.

The silence weighed heavily on me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I tried again, peering under the curtain of her long hair. “It doesn’t feel like nothing. It feels like something.”

Her shoulders sagged. She shook her head.

The ache in my heart intensified. My kid was hurting, and I needed to make it stop. “I’m so sorry about today. I thought I’d shielded my thoughts so you wouldn’t be bothered. I apologize if they spilled over into your head.”

She kept her gaze on the plate. “They didn’t.”

Well, that was progress. I was learning how to cope with my extrasensory abilities. What else could be wrong? “Did I forget an appointment at school?”

She shook her head again.

I found it harder and harder to breathe. What was troubling her? What could be so awful that she couldn’t even talk about it? “Is it about the food stamps? Are the kids at school giving you a hard time about us being poor?”

Dead silence.

I reached for her hand. “Whatever this is, we can get through it. Please, let me in. I want to help. If I’ve embarrassed you, I apologize.”

She swiped her cheek with the back of her other hand. “It isn’t about you. Everything isn’t about you. I have problems too.”

I gently squeezed her hand. “Let me help.”

Slowly her head came up. Tears spilled out of her sad eyes. Anger churned in my gut. I’d fix this all right. Whoever had hurt my daughter would answer to me. And by God, they’d better not ever cross either of us again.

I couldn’t stand the distance between us. I opened my arms, and she scooted onto my lap, dumping poor Muffin on the floor. She sobbed in my arms. I stroked her hair. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, we can fix it.”

Her tears subsided in time, but she still clung tightly to me. “Tell me about it,” I prompted.

“It’s Marcus,” she whispered.

“Marcus?” I didn’t recognize the name.

“The new boy.”

Larissa had been jabbering about her new friend for days. I waited in agony.

“He doesn’t like me anymore.”

Compassion drowned my fear. I knew what it was like to be excluded. Kids at school had shunned me because I was different. That aspect of human nature hadn’t changed in twenty years. I stroked my daughter’s silky hair and down her back. “I’m so sorry.”

“I thought he really liked me, Mom.”

“Did he hurt you?”

She nodded against my chest.

“How?”

“He didn’t sit by me at lunch. And he gave Rozella the drawing he made. It was a sea monster. The sea monster I asked him to draw for me. He gave it to her.”

“Oh, dear.”

She sat up straighter. Her emerald eyes met mine. “I thought he liked me, but he wouldn’t even talk to me today.”

“Why? What changed?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. I thought we were best friends. But now he’s best friends with Rozella. She’s pretty. All the boys like her.”

The tightness in my chest eased. This wasn’t about the bodies I’d found at Mallow. This was fourth-grade drama. “She won’t be content with one boy for long. I had a Rozella in my class, too.”

“You did? The same exact name?”

“Different name, but a pretty girl. Every boy in our class was crazy about Juanita. If she dropped her pencil, boys fell on the floor to pick it up.”

Larissa snorted. “Silly boys.”

“Boys and girls like each other for different reasons. If you and Marcus are meant to be friends, he’ll make it up to you. Give him time. Meanwhile, just be yourself. Don’t be spiteful or mean. That always backfires.”

“I wanted him to come over tomorrow.”

“I know you’re disappointed. Marcus will realize he’s made a mistake soon enough. And if he doesn’t, he isn’t the kind of friend you want.”

“Like Charlotte?”

I nodded. “Charlotte and I went through a lot together. We’ll always be friends. We stayed friends even though I didn’t live here anymore. That’s how you can tell who your friends are. They want to stay connected to you. If Marcus doesn’t want that, it’s best to find out now.”

“What about Dad?”

My sense of calm evaporated. “What about him?”

“Did you know he was the one for you the first time you saw him?”

I exhaled in relief. “Nope. I didn’t know. He’d never noticed me before my junior year. We’d been in the same school forever, but we’d never spoken to each other outside of class. Then he filled up the empty space in my life. I didn’t trust him in the beginning. Boys shied away from me and Charlotte. But Roland won me over, and I’m glad he did because I have you.”

Larissa reached for a cracker. “I’m glad, too.”

The sound of weeping penetrated my slumber. It was the woman again. Angel. Back in the rumpled bedding, crying her heart out again. I called her name. She glanced up, recognized me, and collected herself.

“You! How are you here?” she asked.

The shadows in the room lightened. I sat on the canopied bed with Angel. She smelled of exotic spices. “We meet in my dreams.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t understand it either. But here we are. Did your love return?”

She shook her head sadly. “He’s gone, and I have to leave this place. Our place. My heart is breaking all over again.”

“Tell him your feelings. You can patch things up.”

Violet eyes drooped. “I can’t. He died.”

The pieces of this puzzle fell into place. Somehow my psyche had picked up on her distress across the miles. I was supposed to do a dreamwalk for her to contact her loved one. But could I do it without my father? I wanted to help her.

“Sometimes I’m able to speak with the dead,” I began hesitantly. “But it doesn’t always work, so I can’t promise success. Describe your lover for me.”

“I don’t understand, but I need help.” Angel’s tight grip on the cover released, revealing a lacy spaghetti-strap negligee, the likes of which I’d never owned. The tasteful beige color flattered her creamy complexion and contrasted with her long dark hair.

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s handsome, sexy, generous, tender. Everything I ever wanted in a man.”

“What’s his name?”

Her eyes rounded. “I can’t say his name. I can’t. He made me promise never to say it. I call him Jay. I miss him so much. I’m sick to my stomach with grief.”

“Why the secrecy?”

Angel smiled sadly, her image fading into the ether. “I have Jay’s heart, but another woman owns his soul.”

Prudence from the Antique Palace called first thing Saturday morning. “Baxley, I need to cancel.”

I’d dashed around dusting and vacuuming my furnishings for nothing? My hope of financial rescue dimmed, and a faint pounding in my head intensified. I threaded my fingers through my ponytail. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Is everything okay?”

She chuckled. “As okay as it ever gets. Something has come up, though, something I left a little too late. I know you wanted to do this, but I’m not available today or anytime soon.”

The force of her lie nearly blinded me. I staggered over to the sofa and sat. “I see.”

“Do you? Well, then, it’s all for the best. Give my love to that beautiful daughter of yours and to your parents.”

She clicked off, and I was left holding the warm phone against my ear. I snapped the phone closed, listening to the familiar sighs and creaks of this old place. I’d always loved this house and every stick of furniture in it. Deep down it felt right not to be selling the furniture.

Along with that satisfaction was a burning curiosity. Why did Prudence lie? Was she in trouble?

Muffin trotted down the stairs, his tiny paws ticking on the bare wood risers. He gazed at me expectantly as he did his morning pee-pee dance. Though Prudence’s lie rankled, I was pragmatic enough to realize I couldn’t do anything about it right now. I could, however, make one small dog very happy by letting him outside.

We charged out the back door, and there on the steps was a basket of fresh vegetables. I picked up one of the jumbo turnips and savored the earthy fragrance. The onions were baseball-sized globes, the mustard greens leafy. A still warm loaf of corn-bread and a bag of hulled pecans completed the content list.

I glanced around. Who had done this? Birds chirped. The sun shone. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing felt wrong. Hmm. Daddy used to explain away the bundles of food that appeared at our door as karma. Was this food basket karma? Had karma somehow found its way to my house?

Muffin looked up at me expectantly. I sniffed the mouthwatering fresh cornbread again, unshielding my senses to search for the face of my benefactor in the nearby woods. Nothing. Well not nothing exactly. White light. Lovely, embracing white light. I hugged it close and powered down my search. Joy flooded through me.

“Thanks!” I shouted. I could get used to karma.

My voice echoed through the thick pines bordering my property. I carried the basket in and set it by the sink. I’d have a tomato sandwich for lunch, and I’d cook up the rest for dinner. Stewed tomatoes and onions sounded great alongside a mess of collards.

On the way back outside, I caught a glimpse of myself in the microwave door. I’d pulled my hair back in its customary ponytail this morning, but I’d skipped the ball cap because I’d had a low-grade headache all morning. I hadn’t wanted a hatband to intensify the headache.

Wait. I looked twice at my reflection. My widow’s peak area seemed lighter in color. Significantly lighter than my dark brown hair. What the heck?

I hurried to the bathroom under the stairs to get a better look, Muffin at my heels. Sure enough, my hair looked different. Removing the hair tie, I pulled the ends of my hair forward, threading my fingers through various dark strands, examining them in the incandescent light. I dug another mirror out of the vanity drawer and checked the back of my head.

Nothing different there.

Only the one pale spot in the front.

Pale was putting it mildly.

In an area the diameter of a quarter, the roots and about half an inch of my shoulder-length hair was devoid of color. It had bypassed gray and gone straight to snowy white. The texture didn’t feel any different, but it felt heavier to my fingers.

Out of the blue, a memory popped into my head. One of my father teaching me how to fish. Back then, he’d had a streak of white hair in the front, too. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Daddy’s thick mane of hair had gone white all over not long after that.

Would that happen to me? Was this the downside of karma?

I wasn’t vain about my appearance, but at twenty-eight, I wasn’t ready to look like a senior citizen. Something had to be done. Charlotte would know how to fix this. She’d fooled around with hair color in high school.

I heard the patter of steps overhead, the creaking of old wood as Larissa clumped down the stairs. I didn’t keep secrets from Larissa, but this hair thing was too new, too upsetting to think about. I needed to come to terms with it first. I grabbed my hair up in a ponytail and stuffed it under a ball cap.

“Morning!” I thought I sounded pretty cheery for a woman with a headache.

Larissa yawned. “You’ve been busy, Mom. Vacuuming. Talking on the phone. Shouting outside. What’s going on?”

“Someone was planning to stop by this morning, but they cancelled. Then when I let Muffin out, there was a basket of food outside.”

“Like at Mama Lacey and Pap’s?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

She nodded, unfazed by this unexplained development. “Cool.”

“Very cool,” I echoed. “Let me fix you some breakfast before I go take care of Hobo.”

Larissa bounced a bit. “Can I come, too?”

“Sure.”

We ran Hobo around his neighborhood, gave him lots of hugs and attention, then headed over to my parents’ house. Larissa seemed to have put Marcus out of her mind, and I was glad to have my sunny daughter back. We spent the morning there, painting and visiting with Mama and Daddy. I helped Larissa paint a sea monster on the west side of the cottage.

My headache persisted, and I ended up leaving Larissa there to paint in the rest of the sea. On the way home, Charles Rankin called. His wife had become ill on their trip, and they’d cut their trip short. Bottom line, my gig with Hobo was up. Worse, my check would be smaller due to the reduction of service.

I parked in my driveway and walked back out to the road to collect the mail.

Maybe karma would send money my way today. With a light step, I hurried to the street-side box and pulled out the mail.

I sorted through the pile quickly. Junk. Junk. Bill. Catalogue. And a letter from Carolina Byrd. Hard to miss that embossed stationery and the shiny white envelope.

My fingers tightened around the slick paper. If the check was in here, I had a financial reprieve. I tucked the other mail under my arm and ripped into the expensive envelope, making it as far as the front porch steps before I pulled out the embossed note card.