Home Another Way (18 page)

Rabbit still refused to open the door for me. I’d stopped knocking and now just plopped the two paper sacks in the snowbank next to the woodpile.

On the way home, I swung into the junkyard to visit Hiram Dennison. It hurt my knuckles to knock on the glass bus door, so I kicked at the bottom of it. “Mr. Dennison, it’s Sarah,” I called.

The door didn’t swing open as usual. I walked to the side of the bus, jumped up and down, trying to see into the high, frosty windows. Then I kicked some more. Sheets of snow slid off the roof.

Luke had kept a toolbox in his truck, behind the front seats. I’d never lugged it out, too heavy for me to bother lifting. Now I went through it to find a pry bar, jammed the metal between the bus doors, and pulled. The doors popped open. I fell backward, landing on my rear.

“Mr. Dennison?” I said, climbing inside. I could still see my breath; usually, Hiram kept the air inside the bus toasty warm. At the top of the steps I looked toward the back of the bus and saw him, stiff in his chair, eyes frozen open. His dog, Nola, lay curled around his foot. She’d torn open the bag of kibble, little brown chunks strewn across the floor, her water bowl crusted over with ice.

I’d never seen a dead body before. I gave him a couple quick jabs with the pry bar. The dog raised her head and whimpered, her tail swishing a little. I bent over to pat her head.

“I guess you’re coming with me for now.”

The mutt stood and shook. Yawned.

“Oh, thanks,” I said, and she licked my fingers, as if apologizing.

Nola jumped into the truck, scratched the passenger seat and turned around once, twice, before settling into a ball and closing her eyes again. I drove straight to Doc’s office, leaving the dog in the car. She bolted up when I slammed the truck door, and pushed her nose against the window, watching me.

Patty vacuumed the waiting area. She clicked off the machine when I entered.

“I need to see Doc,” I said.

“He’s not here.”

“It’s an emergency.”

“He’s still not here.”

She turned the vacuum back on. I yanked the plug out of the wall, tossed it onto her pointy-toed boots. “Where is he?”

“Making a house call,” she said, wrapping the cord and wheeling the vacuum back into the closet.

“You missed a spot,” I said.

“And you can go now.”

“I told you, I need to see Doc.”

“And I told you he’s not here.”

She sat down behind her desk and opened the calendar. Ignoring me, she highlighted appointments in several different colors.

Patty and I had practiced together four times for the wedding. On three of those days Beth acted as referee, lightening the tension with her smile, marching up and down the Grange hall’s aisle to find the right speed for the music. She practiced in her heels and ignored our verbal sparring.

The fourth time—just two days ago—Jack had listened to us, too, hovering in the door of his office. Patty sat at the keyboard, back straighter than a sheet of plywood, chest out, flicking her hair on each accent, as if she were performing at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, not merely the wedding march on a rickety Yamaha upright. Not to be outdone, I added slides and grace notes to Wagner’s score, being unabashedly showy. In the end, mediocrity won; Patty gushed over Jack’s last sermon, and invited him over for pot roast and green bean casserole that night at Ima-Louise’s house. In fact, she purred, they could leave together now, and she’d drive him home after dessert—his favorite, apple cobbler.

I’d had nothing better to offer.

“Look,” I told Patty, “I just found one of Doc’s old guys dead. If you know whose house he’s at, could you please call him there? Then I’ll leave.”

Huffing, she picked up the rotary phone and dialed. “Hi, Linda, this is Patty at Doc’s office. Is he still there? Great, thanks . . . Doc, Sarah is here. I told her you were seeing a patient, but she insists she needs to speak with you.” She held the phone out to me, dangling it between her thumb and forefinger, as if it were a grimy jock strap. “Here.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Sarah, what is it?” Doc asked.

“Hiram Dennison is dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t think people get deader than that.”

He sighed. I could picture him tugging off his glasses and wiping them on the bottom of his shirt. “Okay, I’ll take care of it.”

“What should I do with the dog?”

“Is she still on the bus?”

“No,” I said. “I have her with me.”

“I’ll try to find someone to take her. Can you manage her for a few days?”

“Can’t you?”

“For crying out loud, Sarah. I’m asking a simple favor of you. Throw some dog food in one bowl, water in another, and let her out a few times a day. Even you can handle that.”

“Fine,” I said, shaking off the prick of Doc’s reprimand.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”

The line went dead. I gave the phone back to Patty. “See, that wasn’t so hard,” I said.

“What’s hard is being in the same room with you for five minutes.”

I blew a little snicker of air through my nose. “Get over it, Patty. Jack is never going to marry you, and that’s certainly not my fault.”

“Is that what you think? I’m jealous because Reverend Watson is running around trying to help you put the pieces of your sorry life back together?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Luke used to ask us to pray for you, because you were lost, but he was too embarrassed to give specifics. I can only imagine,” she said. “Yep, the whole town knows about you, Sarah. And everyone knows that the only reason Jack Watson has taken any interest in you is because he feels like he owes your father something, because Luke saved his sister’s life.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Luke pulled Beth out of that fire, and now Jack’s trying to keep you out of hell.” Patty closed the appointment book and began filing her nails. “If you ask me, he’s just wasting his time.”

Patty’s mug sat on the desk. I picked it up and tossed the coffee at her. It splattered over her face and neck, on the front of her white blouse. “Are you insane?” she yelled.

“If I’m going to hell, I might as well have some fun on the way there,” I said.

I stomped out of the office, slamming the door hard enough to knock icicles from the roof; they clattered to the pavement, shattering. In the truck, Nola nuzzled my face. “Get away,” I said, pushing her off me. I sped down the road, but when I saw Jack’s truck parked in front of the diner, I cut the wheel to the left and pulled next to him.

Beth saw me burst into the restaurant as she balanced several blue-plate specials in her arms. “Sarah, is everything all right?”

“Where’s Jack?” I asked.

She jerked her head toward the back booth. “He’s there.”

I didn’t care that patrons had stopped eating to stare at me. I sidestepped the tables, walked past the booths until I found Jack, sitting with his headphones on, Bible open, scribbling on a yellow legal pad. He sensed me next to him, looked up and turned off his cassette player. “Hey, Sarah,” he said, smiling and stacking his papers to make room for me.

He touched his dish. “Care to join me for the meat loaf?”

“What am I to you?” I asked.

The diner went silent. Jack said, “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Am I just some charity case? You put in your five hours of dealing with me each week, and pat yourself on the back for fulfilling your duty?”

“Of course not. Where did you get an idea like that?”

“So, Luke didn’t ask you to save my soul?”

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

“You know what I mean. Are you supposed to be keeping an eye on me?”

Now Jack stood. He reached out and put his hand on my elbow, trying to guide me into the booth. “He did ask that. But, Sarah, it’s not like—”

I twisted away from him. “Not like what? Not like you owe him your sister’s life?”

He took me by the shoulders then, squeezing them. It didn’t hurt, but his sharp grip got my attention. “Just sit,” he said. Something in his voice—some mix of pain and exhaustion—made me listen. I slid into the padded bench, unzipped my coat, and biting the fingertips, pulled my gloves off with my teeth.

Jack left me there, alone, for a few moments. He walked to the counter; I could see him talking quietly to Beth. She nodded and filled two white mugs, adding a swirl of whipped cream to the top of each. He carried them back to the table. “Hot chocolate. I won’t spill it on you this time, I promise.”

“Jack, I—”

“Shh,” he said. “My turn now.” He looked at me, eyes brown, but not dull and mud-colored like my own; specks of amber and gold floated in them. “That night, the night of the fire, everyone was outside. It was chaos. Black smoke was pouring out into the sky, and we gathered in groups of three, five, six. Counting. Finally, someone screamed that the kids were still inside, in the basement. I remember my mother; she sank into the snow, and was sobbing, ‘My baby, my baby. Lord, please don’t take her, too. Please, please, no.’

“Luke was standing next to Mom. He told her he would find Beth. And he did. He ran into the building. Everyone else just stood there—stunned, frightened, I don’t know. He came back out carrying her, his hair singed off, huge blisters bubbling on his hands. Some of the other men tried to get back inside then, but it was too late. The church collapsed on itself.

“So, yes, your father saved Beth. And, yes, I would do anything he asked of me. But if Beth had died in that fire, I’d still be here, sitting across from you, trying to convince you that you’re not just Luke’s daughter to me.”

    “Because that’s your job,” I said.

    “No, because I care.”

    “Because it’s your job to care.”

Jack rubbed his hand over his face, through his hair. “Obviously, we’re not going to agree on this one. I’d like to remind you, however, that I know of several people who don’t have ‘look after argumentative, pigheaded redheads named Sarah’ listed in their official job descriptions, and they happen to care about you a great deal. And believe you me, you don’t make it easy.”

No, I didn’t. I pushed and pushed, bending people until they snapped. For all his bravado, Jack was no different than anyone else who’d breezed through in my life. He’d eventually quit trying. Everyone did.

“Your mom and Beth don’t count,” I said, mashing the whipped cream into my cold cocoa with the back of the spoon.

“I give up,” Jack said, looking at his watch and cramming his pens and books into his messenger bag. “At least for today. But, if you wake up tomorrow and realize that you just might be worth something to someone, give me a call.”

“I don’t have a phone.” I was being a jerk, but couldn’t help needling him closer to the breaking point. I wanted him there sooner rather than later, to crush the tiny, insistent longing that whispered,
Someday, someone will stay.

He was tenacious—there was no denying that.

But I was more so.

Jack closed his eyes, and I watched his jaw muscles expand and contract, like gills. He took a deep, impatient breath and nodded slowly. “I’m going now.”

Sarah, one. Caring Reverend Jack, zero.

He slung his bag over his shoulder and walked down the aisle, but stopped and turned back to me. “Is there a dog in your truck?”

“Oh, shoot. I forgot,” I said, standing and grabbing my gloves off the table.

“That looks like—”

I shook my head, eyes wide and darting around the room. Jack understood. He ground his teeth into his lip, and held the door for me.

Once outside, he asked, “When?”

“I found him this afternoon. Doc knows.”

“He wasn’t in church Sunday.” He opened the truck and scratched Nola on each side of her head, behind her ears. “I should have gone to check on him then.”

“Jack—”

“Not now,” he said, closing Nola in the cab of my truck and getting into his own. His headlights flashed on, and he drove away.

I slammed my door. Nola sat up in the passenger seat, looking up at me, her head tilted to one side. “What the heck are you looking at?” I asked, and she barked.

A Closed sign hung in the variety-store window. I rattled the doorknob, but no one came to let me in. So I went back to the cabin and tossed several slices of bread onto a plate and set it on the floor. Nola gobbled it down, and slurped all the water in the bowl I put next to her.

I scrounged around the cabinets for my own dinner, finally settling on the couch with a peanut butter and potato-chip-crumb sandwich. Nola put her snout on my knee, licking her nose as I ate.

“Go away,” I told her. “You’re not getting any.”

She stayed near me all night, following me around the kitchen, into the bathroom, her nails clicking against the wood floor. When I went to bed, she sat next to the couch—her face the same height as my own—and panted on me. I turned my head into the cushions and stuck my fingers in my ears so I wouldn’t hear her whining.

I woke sometime later, unable to breathe, a crushing weight on my chest. Nola lay on me, snoring softly.

“Oh, no. Get off,” I said, shoving her to the floor. She whimpered a little, dazed and half asleep.

I pulled the quilt and pillows off Luke’s bed and threw them down next to the couch. “You can sleep on these.”

She sniffed the pile and burrowed inside the folds of the blanket. I fell asleep listening to her breathe.

chapter THIRTY

Jack found Doc at Hiram Dennison’s place, dozing in his Jeep, two wool blankets wrapped around him. When Jack tapped on the window, Doc rolled it down and started the engine, pushing all the heat levers to high, including the rear defroster. “Sarah tell you?”

Jack nodded. “How long?”

“A week, give or take. He stopped marking off his calendar last Wednesday.” Doc blew into his hands, held them against the vents. “Nothing you could have done.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “Are you waiting for the coroner?”

“He said he’d be here before midnight.”

“I’ll stay, if you want.”

“You’re not dressed for it,” Doc said. “He was dead four or five days before the generator went out. You can’t turn the heat back on in the bus. It’ll thaw the body, and the smell . . .”