Disappearances (21 page)

“No!” The plastic spatula she was holding sliced through the air and smacked the table with a resounding splat.

“Oh, no, you don’t, Anna. Believe me when I say this. It’s not what he wants. It’s not what you want. He means you nothing good. You have
got
to get rid of this guy, this Neil.”

Tim stirred, sat up, the recliner rocking as he released the handle. Quietly, with Mark’s cat-like grace, he came to the kitchen, went to the sink, and helped himself to a large tumbler of water. Anna’s eyes went to Timothy, assessing the long, dirty-blond hair, the tall, lean figure, the loose jeans. Did she notice his scarred cheeks? His decaying teeth? The teeth, definitely, she thought. Her face was unreadable.

Tim came to the table, folded himself into a chair, raised his eyes to Sadie’s, and asked if he could help himself. She nodded, still watching Anna’s face. Tim threw a whole chocolate-covered Ritz cracker into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed, reached for another, then another. Anna swallowed, watching him. He ate six, then asked if they had plenty of milk. Sadie nodded, and he moved to the refrigerator to fill his large glass with milk, guzzling all of it in five or six large gulps, promptly reaching for more crackers coated with chocolate.

“I hope you’re going to pay rent,” Anna remarked sourly.

“Think I should?” Tim asked, meeting her gaze squarely, challenging her. Infuriating her, Sadie observed.

“Yes, I think you should,” Anna said.

“You know, it’s absolutely none of your business.”

Sadie winced. Touché. Immediately she changed the subject to something trivial, her words tumbling over each other in her need to smooth things over, but was rewarded by the lack of even a single comment. Tim ate a chocolate-covered pretzel, then tried the raisins, Anna watching him with an increasingly nauseated expression.

“You know,” Tim said, slowly putting Anna on the edge of her seat, bristling with defense at the mere sound of his voice. “Couldn’t help overhearing your little conversation there. Looks like you got some guy trouble.”

He paused. “Is it true, Anna?”

Anna’s face flamed, and she ignored the use of her name.

“Like I said, Anna. I couldn’t help overhearing. Sounds as if you have some problems. Bill. His name Bill?”

Anna could not have been more contemptuous, her eyes flashing as she faced him squarely. “I wouldn’t say anything if I couldn’t hear.”

Tim laughed easily, then, his hand going to his mouth to cover the offending teeth. “Oh, I can hear all right. You just weren’t speaking very plainly.”

“I was, too!”

Tim shook his head.

Where did he come up with this sort of audacity? Sadie wondered. This poor self-conscious individual who could barely lift his head when they first met. With Anna he was at ease, completely in control with a sort of teasing banality. Was it Anna’s vulnerability? She was a scarred, troubled creature like himself. Whatever it was, Sadie realized he enjoyed Anna’s company or he would have left. Or perhaps he suspected he knew how to help her.

“As I was saying, you can’t have this Bill guy … ”

“Not Bill. Neil,” she broke in, quickly.

“Believe me, this guy does not want you. Not in the right way. I know. I’ve been there. You don’t want him. He’s no good.”

“What do you know about him? Nothing. Why don’t you just stay out of it?”

“Okay, I will.”

And he took down his coat and went outside, leaving Anna peering out the window, turning her head to watch as he slipped and slid down the sidewalks to the barn, his arms waving wildly to keep his balance.

“Now where’s he going?”

“I have no clue.”

Sadie smiled to herself, watching Anna. She was clearly frustrated but curious now. They ate a lunch of turkey, tomato, onion, and lettuce sandwiches on Kaiser rolls, with mustard, of course. Sadie knew Anna would not touch the sandwiches if there was as much as a speck of mayonnaise on them, the fat-laden condiment containing the ability to put 10 pounds on her.

After she had actually eaten half of a sandwich, Anna’s mood shifted. She became lighthearted, talkative. She related incidents of her weekends, who was dating whom, the pitiful creature that Sheryl had become after breaking up with Neil, hardly ever coming to the Sunday evening singings, how cute Reuben was, so certain the whole world was his, driving Charlie and that brand new buggy. When Sadie wondered at the ability of Charlie to keep up with the youth’s horses, Anna laughed, telling her old Charlie could still kick up his heels with the best of them. They were laughing when Tim came back into the house, but stopped when they saw his expression.

“Hey, Sadie, I hate to trouble you, but I had the barn door open, decided to clean out the stable, and this … this yellow … sort of yellow … horse came stumbling into the barn. Do you have a horse loose somewhere? He acted as if he’s been around the barn.”

Sadie dropped her spoon, heard it clatter to the floor as her mouth opened in disbelief.

“Y…Yellow?”

“Sort of.”

With a cry, Sadie ran to get her coat, pulled her boots on, tied her head scarf as she ran, slipping and falling the whole way to the barn, propelled by one single thought—Paris.

At first, she thought it was Paris. Then she thought it wasn’t. But when the dirty, unkempt, horse turned its head and nickered, she knew without a doubt it was her horse who had found its way back. She was thin, her coat was coarse and long, but it was Paris. Sadie was unaware of anyone or anything other than throwing her arms around the thin neck and staying there. She cried and whispered to Paris, told her of the times she missed her most, then stepped back to assess the damage that had been done to her beloved horse.

She appeared to have lost weight but was in better health than Nevaeh had been. She didn’t stand on the right hind foot. No matter, she’d heal everything up. Crying sometimes, then laughing to herself and talking, she was unaware of Tim’s and Anna’s presence until Tim cleared his throat self-consciously, the way he sniffed when he was ill at ease.

“I guess you know the horse” he said, finally.

“Yes, Tim, I do.”

Anna, completely forgetting her former animosity toward this stranger, filled him in with the details about Paris, the enduring relationship through all the trials. And now, after Sadie had given her up completely, she had come back. Tim’s face was an open book as Anna spoke. He watched her large eyes, the shadows of deprived nutrition beneath them, the thin, white hands gesticulating. They watched as Sadie continued stroking Paris before going to the wooden cupboard and taking down a currycomb.

Slowly, lovingly, she worked, cleaning the mane, the burrs and dirt falling on the cement floor of the forebay. Anna offered to help, but Sadie waved her away, so Tim told her she could help him clean the stable for Paris.

Anna looked at Tim, the pitchfork he held toward her, back at the stable, and then at Tim again. She wrinkled her nose and wrapped her coat tightly around herself, rocking back on her heels.

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”

“You would be if you’d eat normally.”

“Define normal!”

Tim laughed uproariously and admitted he was on the other end of what was considered normal. But she sure was on the extreme opposite. So which one was the healthiest? Sadie could tell that Anna knew the answer, but the younger sister went right ahead cleaning Paris’s coat as if she hadn’t heard.

Supper was not ready when Mark came home. The house was dark, chocolate-covered food all over everything. The fire burned low, but surprisingly, a bright light shone from the barn window. When he stepped inside, he couldn’t fathom the horse Sadie was still grooming, applying antiseptic to scratches and open wounds, while Tim swept the loose hay in a pile and fed it to Truman and Duke.

With a cry, Sadie dropped the antiseptic and ran to his waiting arms, hysterical with the joy of Paris’s return. Mark held her, soothed her, and held back his own emotion. He shook his head in disbelief, the only way he could convey his feelings.

When Tim joined them, Mark smiled at him and said he was genuinely glad Tim was back. Mark asked where he’d been. Tim looked down, scuffed the cement floor with the toe of his shoe.

“I had some business to take care of.”

“Okay,” was all Mark said, asking no questions.

Anna had taken her leave, declining Tim’s offer of assistance, obviously very uncomfortable under his watch. He said something, Anna replied, and she was off down the drive, turning to the left at an unsafe speed.

Paris had been sufficiently groomed, cleaned, and her wounds treated. Sadie returned Paris to her stall, which had been strewn with clean shavings as well as a large portion of oats, corn, molasses, and two blocks of good hay. Sadie finally turned to leave the barn, joining Mark who was patiently waiting by the door, the lantern in his hand creating a circle of yellow light around him. They walked to the house together, followed by Tim with a hand on Wolf’s collar, throwing a snowball for him before entering the house with them.

Sadie was starved, her stomach rumbling as she scooped up the chocolate candies and stacked them neatly in Tupperware containers, popping the seal to assure the airtight quality. Turning to Mark, she asked if it was all right to make “
toste brode, millich und oya
” (toast, milk and eggs).

“Sure, you know how much I like that,” Mark said grinning.

Timothy nodded. “Aunt Hannah made it.”

Heating a large saucepan, Sadie poured a generous amount of milk into it, then cracked open and deposited the insides of a dozen eggs, leaving them to poach. Opening the broiler of the gas stove, she carefully laid six slices of thick, homemade bread on the broiler rack, then stood up, closing it with her foot. Hurriedly, she set the table with a clean tablecloth, three soup plates, utensils, a bowl of applesauce, some leftover red beets, and half a chocolate cake. When the eggs were soft-poached, the milk almost to the boiling point, the toast dark and crispy, Sadie put two slices of the toast in each bowl, set the eggs and milk on a hot pad in the middle of the table, then poured the cold water in each glass.

It seemed as if Tim’s self-consciousness became more noticeable when he was expected to bow his head for a silent prayer before mealtime. He never made eye contact, his sniffing became more frequent, and he shuffled his feet uncomfortably when Mark said it was time for “Patties down,” the Amish term, in child’s language, for silent prayer.

Tim helped himself to six of the eggs, as Sadie had expected, politely asking if she and Mark had all they wanted. He ladled enough milk over everything to fill the soup bowl to brimming, then added a liberal amount of salt and pepper before digging in. He ate all the red beets and half the applesauce, accompanied by a chunk of chocolate cake so large Sadie could not believe he ate it all in less than six bites.

They talked of Tim getting a job, of his offer to pay rent, and whether he was thinking of returning to the Amish. Mark did not set any rules, but by that first warning about not smoking, Tim knew about what was expected of him.

After Sadie washed dishes, Tim asked her what really was wrong with Anna. He spoke in a quiet, nervous manner that completely won Sadie over. As accurately as she could, she related Anna’s sad story about her obsession with Neil. But Tim said nothing at all when she finished. He made his way to the stairs with an abrupt “good night” before closing the door quite firmly.

Richard Caldwell had a fit, as did Jim Sevarr and the ranch hands who knew Sadie and Paris’s story. Richard Caldwell slapped his knees, gleeful in his exclamations, chortling about the rotten luck of the horse thieves or the tattered remains of the ones that had slipped between the cracks of the law.

“Good for ’em!” he yelled, his
Schadenfreude
completely consuming him. “For all they put you through,” he shouted, “good for ’em!”

Dorothy shook her head and said no good could come of it. She thought they were done with that cursed palomino once and for all. Sadie became so insulted she had to blink back tears.

“She ain’t a blessing, that’s sure, unless you figure every time Sadie got out of her scrapes alive was one. Ain’t no blessing to me, so she ain’t.”

Erma became completely defensive and said that palomino was not cursed and that was an awful term to use. Her face got red and she opened her mouth for her usual fiery retort. Sadie held a hand over her own mouth and shook her head, her eyes begging her to keep her peace. She knew Dorothy meant well; it was just her way of protecting Sadie.

They were into the Christmas season at the ranch, baking extra pies, dozens of cookies, and huge fruit cakes, besides the everyday cooking. The ranch was prospering; the price of beef spurred Richard Caldwell into acquiring more land, more cattle, as well as more horses and equipment. The usual 20 cowhands that ate in the huge dining room often doubled, especially for the evening meal.

Dorothy, who was in her element, barking orders, wearing the brilliant purple Crocs, would have to admit defeat around three or four o’clock every afternoon, succumbing to the pain in her lower back or a cramp in her leg. That was usually when the pressure was on to have the huge evening meal ready and waiting on the steam table, with napkins and utensils, everything clean and in perfect order.

So in the middle of everyone scurrying around in the usual manner, Dorothy sat, her one leg elevated on the seat of a kitchen chair, holding a bowl of macaroni and cheese and one of chocolate pudding. Erma’s baked beans had turned out a bit dry, so she was adding some warm water, leaning over the hot oven door, her brilliant red hair only a shade brighter than her face. Dorothy chewed with great enjoyment, savoring a too-large mouthful of macaroni and cheese, watching the heat rise in Erma’s face.

“Told you to do them in the electric roaster.”

Too slowly, Erma replaced the lid, shoved back the oven rack, and closed the door, adjusting the knob in front. She watched Dorothy slurp her coffee before spooning up more of the cheesy concoction, Erma’s eyes mere slits in her red face.