An Accidental Woman (3 page)

Poppy saw none of it. Her mind was miles away, in a dream place where one could erase mistakes of the past and start fresh. In that place, she wasn't lying in bed alone. Nor was her house on one level, or the room that might have held children filled instead with equipment necessary to keep her upper body strong and her lower from atrophy. Nor, in her dream place, was there a wheelchair by the bed.

Poppy's legs didn't work. They hadn't since a snowmobile accident twelve years before. In those twelve years, she had learned everything there was to know about life as a paraplegic—the most important lesson being that she couldn't turn back the clock and undo things. Only by accepting them could she lead a satisfying life.

Still, there were times when she dreamed. This morning the fantasy involved a man she had seen only a handful of times. He was five foot ten, had red hair, blue eyes, and a sexy baritone that she had heard many
more times than she'd seen the man in the flesh. He called her regularly—or used to, until she put him off one time too many. But what choice did she have? She couldn't keep up with him from a wheelchair. Apparently he had come to agree. He hadn't called in a month.

The phone on her bed stand rang now—a single line, far removed from the complex system in the other room that Poppy used for business. She ran a telephone answering service for Lake Henry and the neighboring towns, and sat for much of the day before a large bank of buttons, directing calls from one place to the next, taking messages for the townsfolk, chatting with callers, passing on information. The phone on the bed stand was her personal line, and while family and friends frequently used it, they never called this early. It was barely seven in the morning. That was cause for alarm.

In the seconds that it took to push pillows aside, turn herself over, and reach the receiver, she had horrid visions of her mother being ill. But the number illuminated on the handset wasn't from Florida, where Maida was spending January, February, and March. It was a local number. Heather's.

“Hey?” she said, half greeting, half asking, wondering why her friend would be calling so early when they'd been together just the night before. But Heather wasn't on the other end. The voice was urgent and deep.

“It's Micah. There's trouble.” His next words blurred—made no sense to her at all—until he said, “I need someone to get the girls to school. Can you do it? I'm worried about Star.”

Poppy pictured the little girl with long, silky hair framing pale skin and deep-set dark eyes. She loved both of Micah's girls, but Star had always been the one to tug at her heart. “Of course I can do it,” she told him, confused, “but Heather isn't someone else. What are you talking about?”

“I'm not talking about anything. It's the FBI that's saying it.”

“Killed
someone? I don't think so. We've been friends since she first came to town. She went through my accident with me, and she couldn't have been more selfless or giving or understanding. Or comforting or helpful. Heather couldn't kill anyone if she tried.”

“That's what I said, but I don't count. I'll be there in five minutes, okay?”

“I'll be at the door.”

And she was. Poppy was a minimalist. She didn't bother with fancy clothes or makeup, rarely had, even before the accident. Rebels didn't primp and preen as their mothers might have them do. At the time, defying Maida in that way had given her great joy. Now, it wasn't rebellion that kept her from fussing, but pragmatism. A quick trip to the bathroom, where everything was perfectly situated for wheelchair access, and a cursory washing up was all she allowed herself this morning. What time she spent was in layering up her legs and pulling on sheepskin boots, so that her feet didn't chill without her knowing it.

On the porch, draped in a heavy parka, she combed her pixie-short hair with her fingers as she watched the headlights of Micah's truck approach. The road was narrow but paved, the latter being one of the concessions that Poppy had made when, soon after the accident, her parents had carved off a wedge of their own land to build her a house. She had put her foot down on having a direct link to their place, needing what small semblance of independence she could retain, and had opted instead for the longer road out to the street. Paving it meant less of a risk in foul weather. Indeed, the most recent snow, fallen three days before, had been plowed aside, leaving patches of bare pavement that had been neatly sanded. This morning even those patches wore a sheen of ice.

The ramp from the porch was built with the most shallow of declines, and even then, it had heat coils underneath that enabled Poppy to glide down without fear of skidding. Doing that now, she was at the side of the pickup when it stopped.

Micah was out in an instant. He was tall and solid, hatless as he often was, though his dark hair was thick and worn longer than even the country norm, so Poppy figured it kept his head warm. He wore faded jeans, work boots, and a plaid wool jacket that flapped open exposing a thermal shirt as he loped around to the passenger's side and lifted both girls out. Each wore brightly colored parkas and carried small backpacks.

“There's lunch in the packs,” he told Poppy. “Heather made sandwiches last night. She always does it the night before . . . always . . . prepared.” His voice trailed off and he looked suddenly stricken, as though what had once been innocent, even praiseworthy, was no longer so.

The implication, of course, was that Heather had been expecting something like this to happen—which Poppy couldn't believe was true. So she urged Micah on with the hitch of her chin toward the road. “You go on. Get this straightened out.” She took the backpack that Missy was already passing to her as the older child moved behind the wheelchair to push. Then she held out an arm to Star, who stood braced against Micah looking forlorn. Poppy had to pat her lap before the child came forward.

“I appreciate this,” Micah murmured. For a moment, he looked at the girls in a startled way that said he was only then beginning to think about consequences.

“They're okay,” Poppy assured him. He looked at them a second longer, before returning to the truck. Poppy had Star on her lap by the time the truck was gone, at which point she declared, “Well, we passed
that
baton smoothly enough.”

“What's a baton?” Missy asked.

“It's a thing that kinda looks like a rolled-up magazine. They use them in relay races, where one person runs his part of the race and hands the baton to another person, who then runs the next part. Push me up, Missy.” She worked the wheel with one hand and held Star with the other, leaning around to peer at the smaller child. “Did you guys have breakfast?”

“We were gonna, then we didn't have time,” Missy answered from behind.

“Daddy forgot,” Star said.

“Daddy has lots on his mind,” Poppy said, “but I have only you, and besides, you love my kitchen.” She tightened her arm around Star as they rode up the ramp, entered the house, and headed straight for that kitchen. Everything in it was lower and more accessible than in a standard kitchen, from counters and cabinets, to sink and stove, to lazy Susans everywhere. For Poppy, these things were a necessity. The girls saw them as play.

Poppy was dying to know more about Heather, because the situation was bizarre. But she couldn't ask the children. Nonchalance was the way to go here.

So she acted as if nothing were unusual as she popped waffles into the toaster, and as she buttered them and doused them with syrup from the maple crop Micah had produced the spring before, she chatted with the girls about school, about snow, about upcoming Ice Days. Missy chatted back. Star remained quiet, close by Poppy's side.

“Doin' okay?” Poppy softly asked the little one from time to time, always getting a nod in return, albeit a solemn one. It didn't take a genius to know that the child was worried about Heather.

She'll be fine,
Poppy wanted to say.
She'll be back. This is all a mistake. Your dad will take care of everything.

But she didn't say a thing, because she didn't
know
a thing. And that irked her. She prided herself on being the pulse of Lake Henry, but she hadn't seen this one coming. She wondered if anyone had.

The more she wondered, the more annoyed she grew, because her thoughts moved beyond the simple fact of an arrest. She was adamant in believing that Heather was innocent of what they said. But someone had fingered her. With virtually anyone else, Poppy might have wondered if one ornery Lake Henryite had resented her easy acceptance by the others, but this was Heather.
Everyone
liked Heather. Even more, they liked Micah, who, though marginally reclusive, was a native, one of their own from the get-go. Heather would have been protected if for no other reason than that she was part of Micah's life.

Poppy particularly doubted that the betrayal had been internal, because there had been so many opportunities for others. Three months ago, Lake Henry had been the center of a news event that had focused on Poppy's own sister, and the media had been all over town. Poppy would put money on the fact that someone from that faction was responsible for this sudden upheaval.

But she couldn't say that to the girls, either. So, calmly, she washed syrup off their hands and mouths, helped them back into their parkas and pulled on her own. Back outside again, she let them ride the lift with her up into the brand-new Blazer that her mother had insisted on buying her before the onset of winter. It was poppy red and had been adapted for her needs; once the three of them were inside, she patiently pointed to
buttons and let the girls retract the equipment. Focusing solely on them, she made sure they were belted in, drove them to school, and gave them big hugs before sending them off.

The instant they disappeared inside, she was on her cell phone calling John Kipling. Though born and raised in Lake Henry, John had spent most of his adulthood in exile. Given that he had left town at the age of fifteen—and that he was ten years older than Poppy—she had been too young to know him then. They had become friends only in the three years since his return. As of nearly six weeks ago, they were even related. On New Year's Day, John had married Poppy's sister Lily.

But Poppy wasn't calling him either as a friend or a brother-in-law. She was calling because he was the editor of the local newspaper, and she had an ax to grind.

Since it was barely eight-thirty in the morning, she tried him at the little lakeside cottage that Lily had inherited from their grandmother, Celia St. Marie. The cottage was smaller than John's a bit farther down the shore, but it had a history. So John had moved in, and they would be putting on a sizable addition once sugaring season was done. Micah was slated to do the work, which gave John an even greater incentive to help figure out what had happened to Micah's significant other.

No one answered the phone. Poppy guessed that John was either having breakfast at Charlie's Café or already at work.

She passed Charlie's first. It was a cheery sight with snow capping the red clapboards of both the general store and adjacent café. The wide brick chimney exhaled a curl of smoke, and a smell tinged with bacon and birch wafted into the Blazer.

She exchanged waves with the three men chatting out front, their breath puffing white against their dark wool jackets as they huddled into upturned collars, but she saw no sign of John's Tahoe. Less than a minute later, she spotted it down past the post office, at the yellow Victorian that stood near the edge of the pristine expanse of snow on the lake. That yellow Victorian housed the newspaper office.