Gourdfellas (21 page)

The windshield wipers pushed the rain away fast enough for me to make out the vehicle whose headlights I’d seen, still facing me. If someone was hurt or needed help, what would I do? I was terrified—the thought of stepping out of the safety of the carapace of my car made my palms sweat.

But as I approached, I realized that I was about to pull up alongside a silver pickup truck.

New fears sprang to life like mushrooms after a rain.

What was going on? First a silver pickup truck nearly ran me off the road, and now here was another one. Or the same one, maybe. Had he reversed course to follow me? It was tempting to floor it and leave a spray of water as the only reminder that I’d been there, but I had to know who was in that vehicle. I pulled up alongside the truck. My windows and his were fogged, making it impossible to see anything more than a shape. I was about to drive away, when the truck’s horn blasted and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

The window rolled down and Seth’s face appeared, his expression hard to read under the brim of his blue baseball cap. He motioned for me to roll down my window.

I sat frozen, not sure what to do. This was Seth, for Pete’s sake. Even through the curtain of rain that separated us, his face seemed wreathed in concern.

“Lili!” he shouted. “Are you okay?”

Reluctantly, I rolled my window partway down. “Fine. That tree missed me. Just. I have to get home and see how Neil is.”

“I’ll follow.” He rolled up his window and pulled forward enough to turn around.

Not exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to recover from this experience without having to confront whether or not the man I was dating had tried to run me off the road. I tried to call Neil on the cell phone, but all I got was one of those annoying beeps-on-caffeine that meant that the circuits were busy. The rain was no more than a shower now, and I turned onto one of the roads that I knew would eventually lead me back home.

Nowhere else were power lines or trees down. In no other spot was the debris from the wicked storm strewn across the road and the fields like a child’s toy chest upended by a giant throwing a tantrum.

How had I gotten so lucky? But I wasn’t the only one almost to be picked up by what must have been a small tornado. If Dorothy had Toto for company, then I had Seth shadowing me. Maybe a little too close for comfort. By the time I pulled into my driveway, all I cared about was making sure my brother was safe. Then I’d concentrate on getting dry and warm. I wanted to sit still for at least an hour without worrying whether I’d be electrocuted, drowned, crushed by a tree, or accordion-pleated by a truck.

Seth was right behind me. I didn’t wait for him as I dodged the raindrops and ran up the back stairs and into the kitchen. Neil stood at the stove pressing buttons and looking totally frustrated.

“You need to be a genius to reset these clocks,” he grumbled. But he turned and held out his arms and hugged me to him, holding me tight until I pulled away gently. “I was so worried about you. So was—”

Seth shut the door behind him and shook his head like a shaggy sheepdog that had just retrieved a stick from a pond. “Lili! I was so worried. Neil said you’d gone into town and you didn’t answer your cell phone and then the radio said there’d been reports of a tornado headed our way and—”

“I’m fine. I’m a little shaken up and I feel like I only have seven lives left, but I’m fine.” Now that I was in the warm house, my soaked shirt and my hair made me cold to the core. If I didn’t do something, the shivering shakes would take over. “I’m going to take a hot shower and then put on some dry clothes.”

Neither of them said anything. I stripped off my wet clothes in the bathroom and stood under the stream of hot water long enough for my tense muscles to relax just a little. I rubbed my pink skin with a towel until not a drop of moisture remained, pulled on my terrycloth robe, and let the hair dryer blow warm air on my neck, my face, and eventually my hair.

By the time I’d pulled on blue sweatpants, white cotton turtleneck, and my white socks and sneakers, I felt like a different person. One who wanted to find out about the incident on Route 9.

Neil was in the living room, flipping through a magazine. He waved as I padded into the kitchen, where Seth was hovering over a saucepan, putting the finishing touches on a tray that had already been supplied with bowls, spoons, and napkins. The aroma of hot chicken soup, which had been in the back of the refrigerator for a couple of days, was so welcoming I almost melted on the spot. Instead, I turned to Seth and said, “Where were you going in such a hurry on Route Nine?”

He looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “When?”

Hovanian had advised me to say only what was necessary and sufficient to answer the question, but he’d said nothing about how to respond when someone answered a question with another question. At least this was an easy one.

“About fifteen minutes before the tornado tossed that tree in front of my car.” The only way I could do this was to make him maintain eye contact with me, and I watched those long lashes blink a couple of times as though he was trying to calculate a particularly difficult chemistry equation.

“Before that tornado hit the hill I was here, asking Neil if he was sure you’d taken your cell phone with you because you weren’t answering. What’s this about, Lili? You look . . . I don’t know, angry.”

Seth Selinsky hadn’t seen me angry yet, but he was about to.

“You might be angry with the person who tried to run you off the road, don’t you think?” I said it softly, through clenched teeth. When I glanced over at Neil, he was looking down at his cast, as though it was the most interesting thing in the room.

This wasn’t fair, not to Neil and maybe not to Seth, although at the moment that concerned me a whole lot less than finding out the truth. That truck . . . Had it been nothing more than coincidence?

“Look, maybe I was hallucinating. Or maybe it wasn’t you. But I saw a silver pickup truck barreling down the road toward me without even slowing down. I know I wasn’t fantasizing when that truck didn’t even stop to see what happened after I skidded into the weeds at the edge of the road.”

Can you ever put the toothpaste back in the tube?

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. I sank back against the counter, afraid to look up and see the expressions on Seth’s and Neil’s faces.

“Are you okay, Lili? It wasn’t me. Maybe the driver was too shaken himself. I don’t know what happened, but I was here with Neil.”

When I did look up, I saw worry brimming in Seth’s dark eyes. He took a step toward me, then shook his head and made no further move in my direction, as though he knew I’d have to be the one to decide how close we might get.

“I don’t know,” I said in a barely audible voice. “I thought I was handling everything—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a witch.”

Seth came around the counter and put his hands on my shoulders, pressing on my tight muscles with his fingers. “Too much stress, that’s all. You’ve got a million little knots here and here and here.”

With each word and each bit of pressure, he touched a sore spot and massaged it until it loosened a little. My eyes fell shut, and I felt myself go limp under his touch. When he got to a spot on the side of my neck, he hit the jackpot—a tiny burst of pain was followed by a sense of release so complete that I almost cried. I don’t know how long I stood there, feeling the warmth of his hands as he massaged every little packet of steel and turned it into silk again. His warm breath on my neck stirred a memory of nicer times, and I must have sighed.

“That’s good, Lili. Listen, why don’t you go lie down now? See if you can nap. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Seth came around in front of me, kissed my eyes, and then let himself out the back door.

I waved to Neil as I headed to my bedroom. The bed was soft and welcoming, and I was asleep before I could wonder how Seth had found me.

The sun blazed in the sky, cutting a swath of light across my eyes that made me wince even before I opened them. I glanced at the clock. Seven thirty.

Seven thirty? Either I’d just been transported to the Arctic Circle or I’d slept around the clock, nothing I’d ever done before. My mouth felt dry, but otherwise every part of me felt better than I had in weeks, relaxed, rested, and definitely energized. I recognized this—this was my normal, something that had been missing for too long.

Neil was already showered, dressed, and making breakfast. Smatterings of small talk and some decent scrambled eggs filled half an hour, fueling me with enough energy to look forward to finishing up the dreaded co-payment and deductible sections of the health benefits booklet I had to turn in by Monday.

“Gotta get to work.” I danced over to my brother and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Beard’s looking great. You trim it?”

Grinning, he said, “You didn’t even notice. Melissa trimmed it two days ago. She stopped by to see if you wanted to go to the movies and we got to talking and she found your scissors in the bathroom, and voila! A new me. She’s got a great touch.”

“Oh ho. I’d say TMI, but I really want to hear more.” Could an older sister ever have too much information about what was going on between her baby brother and a good friend? “Whenever you want to talk, of course.”

“Nothing to tell.” He grinned. “At least not yet. Anyway, here’s Trisha.”

I peered out the window and saw Trisha Stern marching toward the front of the house, her equipment bag slung over her shoulder and her smile as radiant as the bright sunshine.

“Give me a few minutes with her, okay?” I was ready to take on anything today, even a woman who had practically said she’d go to any extreme to protect the sanctity of her land. Of course, it wasn’t the only avenue that might lead us to the person who had killed Marjorie. There were other persons of interest, as Dad used to say. I just didn’t know who they all were yet.

Neil pushed himself to a standing position and hobbled to the hall on his crutches. “Sounds like my old Lili. Glad to have you back. I’ll be in the bathroom, pretending to be engaged in morning ablutions. You’re not going to find out anything terrible from Trisha, you know, but give it a try so that you can let it go.”

He disappeared as Trisha’s light, rapid knock filled the air. When I opened the door, she breezed in, all smiles and good energy. She greeted me cheerily and declined my offer of coffee as she set her bag near the straight back chair where Neil sat for most of their sessions.

“Neil’s just washing up. He’ll be right out,” I said over the sound of the running water from the nearby bathroom. “You make out okay in the storm?”

“Fine.” She looked up at me, her eyes clouding. “Except for a huge tree that came down right across the bed of tulips I planted last year. That, and the garage windows that were smashed by flying construction debris. Which also got Jonathan’s gazebo, and that’s just a pile of sticks now. To say nothing of the flood in our basement because the casino road isn’t properly graded so all the runoff goes right to our yard and then into our house.”

“That sounds awful. But how could there be construction debris when the casino doesn’t have approval? And you called it the casino road.” If Ira Jackson was counting enough chickens to start the building process, then not all the news was getting out to the public.

She laughed bitterly. “He says he’s putting in basic services for whoever ends up buying the property. Makes it more attractive to potential buyers so they don’t have to do the grading and put in the water and electricity and all that. I think he’s probably been paid off already by someone. No one does that in advance of sale unless you know where a building is going to be.”

I sipped from my lukewarm coffee, trying to make sense of what she’d just told me. Ira Jackson’s construction material had damaged Trisha’s property in what the local radio reports had called a tornado . . . which, for insurance purposes probably qualified as an act of God. If she wasn’t angry before, she certainly had every right to be furious now.

“I didn’t know about all that activity on the property. Anything you can do?” I certainly wouldn’t be the one to sit at the table, but a mediator might help her get some compensation and, equally important, some sense that the responsible person understood that his negligence had caused her considerable distress.

“Sure, I can take every damn piece of wood and glass and metal and lord knows what that blew over onto my land and move it right back to his property. Right in the middle of the damn road, so that he’d have to take notice that something terrible happened because of his negligence. If he wasn’t so greedy, he’d have spent the money to secure those materials properly, but he’s too damn cheap.”

The more we discussed the damage done to her property during the storm, the more agitated Trisha became. I’d never seen her like this, wouldn’t have known that the calm, supportive Trisha who worked with Neil and exuded positive energy was capable of such intensity. With one hand, she swiped at the fringe of hair on her forehead, and with the other she plucked at the seam along the pocket of her workout pants.

“You really don’t think much of him, do you?” One more level—I wanted to push her just a little further, so that her defenses would be down and she’d be likely to answer my questions.

“I do think about Ira Jackson a lot. All the time. I think about how he’s so interested in lining his pockets that he doesn’t care who or what he ruins.” As she spoke, she paced from one end of the living room to the other, hardly aware of my presence. “People like that should have something really awful happen to them so that they can learn compassion. It’s not going to happen any other way.”

“He never really heard you when you tried to say how you felt about the casino. Some very angry feelings built up in you, didn’t they? He kept moving forward, no matter what anyone said. And then Marjorie picked up his ball and started to run with it.” I paused but she kept marching back and forth across the room, restless and unfocused.