Cold River (19 page)

Mandy laughed and reached for the bell, but the door opened before she could ring. They were greeted by a slender, smiling woman with dark hair plaited into a single braid that hung halfway down her back. Dressed in jeans, a blue flannel shirt, and clogs, she wore no makeup, and her delight at seeing Rael and Mandy was unforced and natural.

“Come in, come in. Hello, Rael.” She kissed her cousin on the cheek and then turned to Mandy.

“And you’re Mandy? Goodness, you’re about knee high to a slug. And so young. Not at all what I expected.”

Rael asked the question that was on the tip of Mandy’s tongue. “What did you expect?”

“I thought she’d be larger than life— at least seven feet tall, forty years old, and able to go bear hunting with a switch.” Tammy laughed. “Come in and sit down. Did you bring me more needles, Rael? Thank you! I could have come and got them, but I’ve been pushing to get this order done.” She looked around. “I’ll make a place for you to sit.”

“I can’t stay.” Rael stayed by the open door. “I just wanted to bring these to you.” He spoke to his cousin, but his eyes rested on Mandy.

Tammy took the bags and carried them into another room, and Mandy was left alone with Rael. “Thanks again for last night. You’re my good angel.”

He smiled, winked, and turned to go, pulling the door closed behind him. Mandy looked around and found Tammy moving a stack of boxes off the couch.

“Sit down,” Tammy invited.

Mandy sat. The tiny living room contained a couch with two end tables, a TV, a folding worktable at right angles to the couch, and a straight-back chair. All other wall spaces were occupied by stacks of cardboard boxes. Directly opposite the couch, a bank of old-fashioned, double-hung windows looked out on a large back yard complete with orchard. Two of the trees were covered in white blossoms.

“I work at home,” Tammy explained, sitting in the chair. “I make pine needle baskets.” She handed one to Mandy, an exquisite filigree bowl with an intricate, secondary pattern created by the way the long pine needles were tied together.

Mandy examined the basket. “This is beautiful! I’ve never seen anything like it. You make these, you say?”

“Yes. I supply them to a catalog store. I feel very lucky to be able to do this. There aren’t many jobs in Limestone that pay very well. I don’t make a lot of money making baskets, but I get by. And I don’t have to worry about child care.”

“You have children?”

“Two boys, nine and eleven. They’re at Granny’s house right now. She’s got them helping her with her garden.”

“Granny Timberlain? That’s right. She’s your grandmother, too. I’d like to meet her.”

“I’ll take you over and introduce you, if you like.”

“Thank you.” Mandy handed the basket back to Tammy. As she did so, her arm brushed against a carved figure on the end table and knocked it over. “I’m so sorry!” She picked up the little stone orca.

“Don’t worry about that,” Tammy said. “That’s one of my earlier tries.”

“You did this?” Mandy inspected the carving, running her thumb over the crosshatching on top and noting how the contrasting colors had been represented by texture.

“Yes. I’m trying to branch out. The gift shops out on the islands are a good market for sea creatures, and there’s lots of soapstone around here. There’s an outcropping on Rael’s property that he gives me for free. The boys and I go out and mine it and bring a trunkload home at a time.”

“This is very clever.” Mandy set the carving down.

Tammy looked at her earnestly. “Millie Barlow said you had agreed to try to teach me to read. I’m determined to learn. I feel I could make better money if I could market on the internet, but if I can’t read…” The words trailed off, and she shrugged.

“I don’t know why Millie asked me to do this. I’m not a reading teacher.”

“My sister-in-law’s a teacher. She tried, but it didn’t do no good.”

Mandy pulled out her planner. “I might not do any good, either, but I’m willing to try. How about I come and teach you right after school, about this time of day, three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Will that work for you?”

“Yes.” Tears shone in Tammy’s eyes. “I’ve got the shivers all of a sudden. Excuse me.” She left the room and returned moments later, blowing her nose. “I never cry,” she said. “I haven’t cried since… oh, for four years. Not once.” She sat in the chair, dabbed at her eyes, and cleared her throat. “I’ve got a good feeling about this. Millie Barlow said that good would come out of you coming to Limestone, even if—”

“Even if what?”

Tammy compressed her lips. “I was speaking out of turn. What I meant to say was that I’d like to do something for you in return. Can I come and do housecleaning for you?”

Mandy shook her head. “That isn’t necessary.”

“But I want to do something. There must be something I can do for you.”

“Well…” Mandy paused, considering.

“What? Go on, say it.”

“I want to know about Grange. He is your cousin, isn’t he?”

“Grange? Yes. Me’n him are the same age. Rael’s five years older.” Tammy frowned. “What do you want to know?”

“Someone said something about him rising above adversity. I thought at the time they were talking about his face being paralyzed, but today it seemed that his face was better.”

“Yes, I heard that he could finally blink both eyes.” Tammy smiled. “We’ve been so worried about that one eye, afraid it wouldn’t stay moist enough and the lens would dry out. If it did, he’d be blind in that eye.”

“I don’t understand,” Mandy said. “What was wrong?”

“He’s had Bell’s palsy. You know, where one side of the face is paralyzed. It comes on all of a sudden, usually as a result of stress. Sometimes it lasts just a few weeks, sometimes months.”

“How long has he had it?”

“About a month, I think.” Tammy sat with her eyes turned up to the ceiling, counting. “Maybe six weeks.”

“About the time I got hired. Was that the stress that caused it?”

“Possibly.” Tammy reached over and touched Mandy’s arm. “Not you, of course. But the situation.”

“So the facial paralysis is something recent. It’s not the ‘overcoming adversity’ that was spoken of.”

“Who told you about that?”

“Wesley Gallant. He really didn’t tell me anything. That’s why I’m asking you. I’m in a situation where I’m running blind. There are some deep undercurrents that I don’t understand.” Mandy spread her upturned palms. “Like, what’s going on between Vince and Grange? It poisons the whole atmosphere. I have an idea that’s Mrs. Barlow’s
even if
that you mentioned.”

Tammy took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll tell you.” She stowed her tissue in a pocket and picked up a pair of scissors and a pine-needle cluster. Methodically, she began snipping off the end that held them together. “This starts a long time ago, back in high school. Grange was dating my best friend, Lori Wilcox.”

Mandy raised her brows in question.

“Yes. I married her brother. But that’s another story.” She continued snipping as she talked, making a little pile of single needles on her right. “Grange and Lori was made for each other. She was an outdoors girl, not afraid of anything. Loved to hike and hunt and go adventuring. It was in our senior year, about this time, when there come a rain like you wouldn’t believe. The river come up, and there was lots of flooding. Kids got out of school to sandbag and move people out of houses that was in the flood plain.”

Tammy grabbed another handful of needles. “Then the flood was over and the river went down some, and things got back to normal. We had a marvelous sunny day— it was a Saturday— and Lori talked Grange into taking his boat out on the river. I was there when it happened. He didn’t want to said he didn’t know what’d been carried down in the flood. He knew about the danger of logjams when the river is running high, but she kept on and kept on till he give in.”

Mandy thought of the girl in the picture on Grange’s desk. “What did she look like?”

“A little like you. She had brown, curly hair and dark eyes, like you. Taller, though. Very outgoing. Loved to laugh.” Tammy paused and looked beyond Mandy. “She and Grange was very much in love and planned to marry as soon as school was out.”

“What happened?”

“They put in above Rael’s place, where the bank is lower. Grange had a fifteen-foot skiff with a little outboard on it. They hadn’t gone very far when they rounded a bend and there was a logjam right in front of them. He tried to get out of the sweep, but the outboard wasn’t strong enough, and they was pulled into it. The boat capsized and swept them against the trees. Grange hung on to a limb and tried to hang on to Lori, but the water was so cold he lost his grip.”

There was a moment of silence and then Mandy whispered, “She was pulled under?”

Tammy nodded. Her hands, still holding pine needles and scissors, were still.

“So what happened? How did Grange get out of the logjam?”

“Vince found them. He worked for a man who had a real powerful riverboat, and he was working upriver and saw them take off. He— he was in love with Lori. She didn’t give him the time of day, but he hung around as much as he could. As soon as he finished what he was doing, he decided he’d take a run downriver, and he found Grange hanging on, just about to go under himself.”

Tammy cleared her throat. “Rescuing him was a real dangerous piece of work, because he had to keep his boat going fast enough upriver to just hang there in front of the logjam while he threw a line to Grange. His hands was in such bad shape that he couldn’t hold on, and so Vince tossed him a loop to put around his shoulders and under his arms. He had to manage that himself, because Vince was at the controls, trying to keep the boat in the right place. It was a real sticky situation. He saved Grange’s life, that’s for sure.”

“What about Lori?”

“Vince hauled Grange into his boat, and they went looking for her downriver. They found her about two miles down, caught on a snag on the riverbank.”

Mandy leaned forward. “Alive? Was she alive?”

Tammy pulled the tissue from her pocket. “No. She was dead. I should have said they found her body.”

Mandy leaned back against the cushions. Some things were falling into place, but not all. “So, Vince blamed Grange for Lori’s death?”

Tammy blew her nose. Then she picked up her scissors and continued snipping the ends off pine needles. “No more than Grange blamed himself. He’s worked for years to try to— to atone. Just as Vince has worked for years to try to…”

“Make him pay?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe he’s been trying to prove to a woman who’s been dead for over fifteen years that he’s a better man than Grange.”

Mandy shook her head. “I don’t understand it.”

“I think it’s a guy thing.” Tammy put her scissors down and scraped all the tops she had cut off into a garbage can sitting under the table. “Are you ready to go over to Granny Timberlains?”

“Yes. Except, would you answer one more question?”

“If I can.”

“Where did Grange come by all his money?”

Tammy’s jaw actually dropped. Then she laughed. “Who told you Grange had money?”

“Someone who should know. You mean he doesn’t… hasn’t… isn’t wealthy?”

“He works for the public schools in Podunkville. Not many people getting rich doing that. Or maybe you know different?”

“Maybe his father left him something?”

“Uncle Fred was a gyppo logger, wouldn’t work for the big companies. He left Grange some wore-out machinery and not much else. The only Timberlain that ever made any money was Uncle Buck, and I don’t think any of it was made honest.”

“I see. Well, thank you, Tammy. You’ve answered a lot of questions.” Mandy stood. “I’ve got one more, though. It’s not about Grange. It’s about Vince.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you know who his father is?”

Tammy shook her head. “I often wondered about that and had my suspicions. I’ll tell you something that I never told anyone before. Granny Timberlain always made sure he had something nice for Christmas under his tree. She never put her name on it, but she always made sure.”

“What did that say to you?”

“I often wondered if—” Tammy stopped and put a finger to her lips. “I’d better not even say it out loud. It’s like gossip. Never mind.”

Mandy didn’t press her to say what she had been thinking, but followed her out the front door and down the walk. “Shall we take my car?”

“No need,” Tammy said. “Granny’s house is right next door.”

Mandy looked at the neighboring cottage, a twin to the one Tammy lived in. “These are cute little houses.”

“They were company houses for the people who worked for the cement plant way back when. Granny bought both of these with the insurance money when my grandpa died in a logging accident. I rent from her.”

Mandy didn’t know why, but she felt nervous as she approached the front door. She was glad for Tammy’s down-to-earth presence as she prepared to meet the matriarch of the Timberlain clan.

“I MET GRANNY
Timberlain yesterday.”

Leesie looked up from her oatmeal. “You did? What did you think?”

“She wasn’t anything like what I expected.”