Evenfall (28 page)

“I’ve just had a lot on my mind, I guess,” she says instead.

“I know, I know, and from now on I’m going to help,” he says, letting her go. “You look wiped. Why don’t I order us a pizza and bring it back here. We can eat and you can tell me all about how it went.”

“That would be great,” Andie says. She looks more closely at him. There are tiny scratches on his face. When he moves, a piece of glass falls from his hair.

“What happened to you?”

Neal shrugs. “The damnedest thing. I was up in the attic, looking for that hive of bees, when the window blew out. I was lucky it missed my eyes.”

“It just blew?”

“All over the place,” Neal says. “It made kind of a mess, so watch your step if you go up there.” Andie sighs, picturing the spray of glass slivers across the floor. Her uncle Frank would have picked up each piece with tweezers, if necessary, but Neal’s more like her father, whose talents run more toward creating chaos than controlling it.

“The forecast says we’re due for a hell of a storm, so maybe the old glass just couldn’t take the pressure,” he’s saying. “I’ll try to tape some plastic or something over it later.”

The house does have that heavy, oppressive aura that comes before a storm. While Neal calls in their order, Andie rummages around in the refrigerator until she finds a can of Coke. She pops the top, takes a gulp, then looks around for her purse, where she keeps a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. It’s not on the kitchen table, and when she checks the bench in the entryway, it’s not there either.

She’s still looking when Neal comes back.

“I got us a half pepperoni, half plain,” he says. “Do you have any cash? I’m all out.”

“I think I left my bag in Gert’s car,” she tells him.

“Oh. Well, hey, I can pick it up for you on my way into town.”

Andie’s about to say that’s fine when she thinks of her aunt, who should be resting, and her reaction if Neal wakes her up.

“You know, I kind of wanted to check on her again anyhow. I think I’ll walk over and see how she’s doing.”

“Want me to drop you off?”

She shakes her head, stopping immediately when it feels as if it is going to detach from her neck. “No. I could use the fresh air.”

“All right then,” he says. “I’ll just grab some cash at the bank.” As they walk out the door, he laces his fingers through hers. “So, I really want to hear the details when I get back, but overall, she checked okay?”

“Pretty much,” Andie says. She tells him briefly about the doctor’s visit, leaving out Gert’s words in the car. When she gets to the part about Gert refusing to be admitted, he frowns.

“And he didn’t push the issue?”

“You know Gert,” she says. “Besides, I think he was able to do most of the tests he wanted to today.”

“Yeah, but, if he says she ought to be admitted for observation, don’t you think she should go along with it? She’s a nurse, for God’s sake.”

“Was,” Andie corrects. “She’s been retired for a while.”

“I’m just saying, if he’s worried enough that he wants to admit her, and she won’t go in, it makes me wonder…” He stops.

“Wonder what?”

“Look, I don’t want you to get mad at me again or anything, okay? But your father asked me to keep an eye on her. And I gotta say, she’s like, what, close to eighty years old? I’m just wondering if the old girl is still qualified to be making these kinds of decisions.”

Andie frowns. “Why would Richard ask you?”

“Well, you know your dad. I think he’s just more comfortable
with the man-to-man thing.” He gives her a playful tap on the shoulder, and Andie winces. “And plus, he knows how close you are to her. Sometimes, when you’re looking at something you know, you don’t see it the way it really is. You see it the way you want it to be.”

“What are you saying? That Aunt Gert needs help and I don’t see it?” She rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand.

“Look, forget I said anything, okay? I’m sure she’s fine.”

They’re at the car and Neal opens the driver’s side door. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off?”

“I’m sure.”

“All right. I’ll be back in a few. And maybe your head will feel better and we can talk a little bit. I’ve got an idea I want to run by you.” He kisses her gently on the forehead and slides into the driver’s seat. The top is down, and before Neal can start the car, a swarm of dragonflies begins to buzz about him, so close Andie can hear the clicking of their wings. Their eyes are enormous, and they dive at his head repeatedly, like miniature fighter pilots, until he’s forced to raise the top and seal himself in, a few doomed bugs accompanying him as he bumps down the driveway.

Andie waits until the car is out of sight before turning and walking into the woods. The path between the main house and the cottage is more beaten down than it was when she arrived here three months ago. It looks like it did when she was a child and spent her days running between the two houses, always in search of something she couldn’t quite find at either one.

The sun is just starting to set, and if she turns and looks back there are brilliant streaks of pink in the sky above Evenfall. It’s the time of day when Clara would have been standing on the front steps, calling her in. If it was getting dark, her aunt would send Frank to look for her. On nights when she’d been at Gert’s, he’d stand at the top of the path and call her name, never venturing more than a few feet into the woods.

She watches the sun sink lower. The dragonflies seemed to have mostly disappeared when Neal did; a lone blue one swoops in circles above the drive, chasing the evening’s first mosquitoes. She thinks of Frank and how much he loved this time of day, the space between light and darkness. He’d been a quiet man, caught between the two aunts, but with a subtle strength of his own. If he ever regretted the time and attention the sisters devoted to a child not of his blood, he never let it show.

She turns again toward the cottage. It’s cooler here in the woods, and after the heat of the day the goose bumps on her bare arms are welcome. In the dim light her headache improves. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, testing. There’s just the memory of a dull ache at the back of her head.

A slight breeze tousles her hair. She closes her eyes, stands still for a moment, and listens. The rustle of the leaves seems to call her name:
Andie, Andie, Andie
. She opens her eyes. As she walks along the path she thinks of regret, of how one mistake can change your life, make you forever look backward. But if you aren’t watching where you’re going, if you
can’t look ahead, you’ll stumble again and again, crash right past the opportunities that are waiting for you. Sometimes, Andie thinks, you just have to let go.

When the cottage appears at the end of the path, it’s so neat and tidy it looks like something from a children’s story. The morning glories have closed up for the day, their white throats gleaming in the evening light. The smell of pink roses perfumes the air, rich and spicy, and Andie’s not at all surprised to see a black cat staring at her from the porch railing. When she climbs the steps, it licks its front paw once, then jumps off and disappears into the dark of the woods.

Andie eases the screen door open, but she needn’t have worried—it doesn’t squeak once. Someone has oiled the hinges and rehung it so that it is perfectly balanced. “Aunt Gert?” she calls softly. “It’s just me.” But there’s no reply. The cottage is so still it’s as if it is holding its breath, and Andie tiptoes through the rooms until she reaches Gert’s bedroom. Her aunt is curled beneath a faded quilt, a corner of it clutched in her hand. In the dusk, the lines around her mouth and forehead have been erased, and her face is still and lovely, as though she’s dreaming of something beautiful. Andie doesn’t touch her. She backs out of the room quietly, but she’s not ready to go home yet. She pours herself a glass of lemonade from the pitcher in the refrigerator, takes it onto the porch, and settles herself in the white wicker rocker that someone has painted and placed there.

It seems perfectly natural that after a few moments, the black cat returns. It walks along the railing until it reaches her chair, then jumps into her lap. Although she’s never
cared for cats, she lets it stay, stroking the spot between its eyes gently.

It’s almost dark when what she’s been waiting for happens. A red pickup truck bumps down the driveway and brakes to a stop. Andie and the cat watch as Cort gets out, followed by the dog. The slam of the truck door seems unnaturally loud in the stillness, and she worries that it will wake her aunt, but when she cocks an ear toward the inside of the cottage, she doesn’t hear a sound.

Cort walks around to the truck bed and starts removing potted plants. There’s at least a dozen of them, and he carries them two by two to the walkway leading to the cottage steps. He works backward, starting at the end nearest the truck, and it’s not until he’s almost finished that he notices Andie.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey, yourself.” He goes back to the truck and returns with a shovel and begins to dig just next to where he’s placed the first plant. Nina walks down the pathway, brushing against the pots as she goes, and climbs the stairs, wagging her tail. She sits heavily, leaning into Andie’s knee, and the cat gives a low warning hiss before settling back under Andie’s hand. A woody, sweet scent rises from Nina, and it takes Andie a moment to place it, but when she does she closes her eyes and breathes deeply. Lavender. Now that she knows what it is, she recognizes the plant’s spiky shape in the pots closest to her. As Cort removes each plant from its pot, the bruised leaves release their scent to the air, until it’s all Andie can smell, a secret message written on the breeze.
It could be that she’s drunk on the perfume, that that’s why she rises from the rocker, dumping the black cat unceremoniously from her lap and letting it land with an undignified thud on the porch floor. It’s the scent that draws her down the steps, leads her to stop so close to Cort that they might as well be touching, even though they’re not, even though he still hasn’t given her more than a single glance.

“She’ll like that a lot,” Andie says.

Cort squats down next to the hole, flips the lavender out of the pot with a practiced twist, and plops it into the ground, molding dirt around it with his bare hands.

“I took her to the doctor today,” Andie says.

“Yeah, I heard she was going.” He keeps his eyes on the plant, positioning it just so. Andie takes a deep, lavender-filled breath and tells him about the day. She keeps talking—anything to fill the silence and make it seem less like he’s ignoring her—and eventually, the question that’s been on her mind slips out.

“Cort, do you think Aunt Gert is crazy?”

She’s finally gotten him to look at her, at least. He stands up, brushes the dirt from his hands, and starts to pick up the plastic pots that litter the walkway. “Don’t ask me. I’m obviously no judge of character.”

“You spend more time with her lately than anyone else does,” Andie persists. “Don’t you think she should have listened to the doctor when he wanted to admit her?”

Cort walks away from her toward the truck. He throws the pots in the back, and Andie trails after him.

“You’re a Murphy,” he says finally. “When was the last
time you did something you didn’t want to, just because somebody said you should? Doesn’t make you crazy. Just stubborn as hell.”

He whistles for Nina, and the dog comes loping off the porch. She brushes against the lavender on her way to the truck, releasing another cloud of fragrance into the air. Andie thinks about Gert’s words to her, about how long a span it is from six to twenty-two, about seeing things the way they are. She leans forward and gently kisses Cort on the lips.

“Then I must really have wanted to do that, right?” she says. He looks at her, just stands and looks, as she walks past him and onto the path leading to the main house. It’s dark now, and her progress is slow. Behind her she hears the truck rumble to life. She’s halfway home before she remembers her purse.

FOR the first time in close to a year, Gert sleeps through the night. She sleeps soundly and quietly, and if she dreams, her dreams are not of war, of boys without legs, or of Frank. When she awakens her mind is clear, as if she has not dreamed at all.

Buddy’s waiting for her on the porch when she’s finished breakfast, curled up in a rocking chair, looking for all the world as if he’s a civilized cat and not a half-wild animal who spooks if a stranger glances too hard at him. There’s an empty glass next to the chair and a dozen lavender plants lined tidily along the front walk, their flower wands as erect as soldiers.

Gert stands on the porch and breathes deeply. There’s no note, no calling card, not even a bill, but she knows who did
this work. A feeling of well-being stays with her the rest of the morning, while she washes the glass, braids her hair, and writes out a check for the property taxes. When she gets in the car, she finds Andie’s purse, a lime green leather bag that doesn’t seem like her niece’s taste at all. But it’s a built-in excuse for stopping by the main house, not that Gert needs one to see her niece. She resolves that today she will make it inside, that the foolishness that’s kept her from walking up the front path and through the door for the past few weeks will end. Just as soon as she pays the property tax.

The tax collector’s office is located in town hall, which is across from the Hartman library and next door to the elementary school. The motley collection of buildings is a town center, of sorts. Blink twice on your way through and you’ll miss it.

Gert doesn’t blink, just steers the car carefully into the parking lot and brakes to a stop. She could mail the check in, but three years ago, when Frank first started getting sick, Edna Menay, the tax collector, swore up and down she’d never received his payment. There were doctors appointments and chemo treatments and trips to Yale, where Gert had called in favors with specialists she knew, but the only thing that had seemed to matter to Frank was that damn bill. One day Gert just drove down to town hall unannounced, marched into Edna’s office, and started going through the piles of paper on her desk. Edna had been on the verge of calling the resident state trooper to throw her out when Gert found Frank’s envelope stuck in the folds of a tractor parts catalogue.