Hung Out to Die (11 page)

Owen cleared his throat. “I'm not going to get back until early next week. Something came up and I have a busy day tomorrow or I'd have waited to call you at a decent hour—aw, hell, Josie, I might as well just get to it.”

I didn't say anything. So get to it, I thought, going cold again.

“I ran into Roger Muller, an old college friend—I think I've mentioned him to you? Anyway, he told me that one of his colleagues in the local community college's philosophy department has to take an extended leave of absence for the rest of the school year due to illness. The college is looking for someone to take over his classes starting in January—and, well, Josie, I applied. I put in my application just a few hours after hearing about the opening—”

“When was this?” I snapped. “A few hours ago?”

Now there was a moment of silence on Owen's end. Then: “What? No, of course not—”

“Of course not. So why are you calling me now, past one in the morning?”

“I—I couldn't sleep and I thought you'd want to know and I didn't think you'd mind and—”

“Owen, when did you put in your application?”

Silence, again. Finally: “Tuesday. Look, Josie, I know how that sounds but . . . I don't know if I'll get the job, and my interview is Monday morning, and I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd call you, and . . . Aw, hell. Look, Josie, it's a chance to be around my son all the time. It could grow into a permanent job, if Victor, the guy who's on extended leave, doesn't get better—”

“Ooh, let me make a voodoo doll of poor Victor and start poking pins in him.”

“Josie, I didn't mean it like that. It's just, I want to be around my son more, and—”

“I respect that, Owen. But you've only been back in touch with him for a few months.” The minute I said it, I frowned. Was I just being selfish? Still, I plunged on. “And I know you want to get closer to him, but what about your job at the community college here? Your volunteer teaching at the prison here? Your . . . your commitments . . . here.” Meaning, I thought, our relationship.

Owen sighed. “You're angry that I didn't call earlier this week and talk to you about it, aren't you?”

“No kidding.”

Now Owen turned cold. “You know, I don't know that this conversation would have been any better—or that you'd have liked my decision any better—if I'd called two days ago.”

“That's just it, Owen,” I said, sighing. This was a man with doctorates in philosophy, religious studies, and literature—and yet, I had to spell out the obvious for him. “You didn't want to discuss this with me—as a friend, or as anything else. You just made the decision and called to inform me at your convenience—which happens to be in the middle of the night. Well, I'm sorry you can't sleep, but I'm tired. Good luck on your interview.”

I hesitated, giving him another chance to say something—anything—to convince me that he really hadn't meant to shut me out of at least talking with him about a decision that big. He didn't take the chance. “Good night,” I finished primly, without a waver in my voice.

Then I hung up and burst out crying like a big baby.

Ten minutes later, I was in my kitchen hiccupping, and licking peanut butter from a spoon. Cherry had once told me that she'd read in a chick magazine that that was a great cure for headaches. I, thank the good Lord, never get headaches, but she swore it worked, so I figured the cure might work for my hiccups. And snuffles. And a confused, breaking heart.

It didn't.

In fact, my apartment still smelled of burned turkey, and I realized that other than Aunt Nora's cranberry relish and Effie Burkette's wassail, I hadn't had a real Thanksgiving dinner at all.

Which might seem like a petty concern, given Uncle Fenwick's murder and the fact that my relationship with Owen seemed to be falling apart, but it made me tear up, anyway.

So I plunged the spoon—a big serving spoon, mind you, not some wimpy little teaspoon—into the wide-mouthed jar and ladled out another spoonful of peanut butter.

I was on my first lick of the new spoonful when my doorbell rang.

Now, my apartment is just one of two units on the second story over my laundromat. I've lived in my one-bedroom unit for nine years since I sold my aunt and uncle's house and put the proceeds into trust for Guy, and I've rented the other unit off and on. More off, than on, truth be told. The most recent renters, a nice couple, had just moved the previous week into a small house because they were expecting their first child the following spring. I'd been thinking about just expanding the entire second story into one nice, luxury apartment for me.

Anyway, the only person living above my laundromat was me, and it's not like strangers—the few times there are any in Paradise—would wander up the exterior staircase on the side of my laundromat, into the exterior door, which I always forget to lock, and down a dark hall to knock on my door for help.

So, I quickly calculated who it could be that I knew.

Cherry, I thought. Ha. I knew things wouldn't go well with her deputy sheriff beau. She was, again, moving too fast for her own heart's good.

Like I had with Owen, a needling voice whispered.

I swallowed my peanut butter, took another lick, and headed to the door. I had a fresh jar of peanut butter at the back of the cabinet. Cherry and I could lick peanut butter spoons until we were sick, and cry our hearts out about our awful boyfriends. Perfect for what was sure to be a sleepless, heartbroken night . . .

Except when I opened the door—it wasn't Cherry standing there.

It was my mama.

And she'd already cried all of her makeup off. Her face was mascara streaked. “Oh Josie,” she wailed, “it's your daddy.”

I jammed my spoon back into my peanut butter jar, and put my hand on my hip.

“Let me guess. He's taken off to interview for a job at some school of antiquing knowledge. Maybe a university of antiquities. Maybe—”

“What?” She looked confused for a second, then burst out sobbing. “No, honey—your daddy's been arrested! For Fenwick's murder!”

8

It took a lot more than peanut butter to calm my mama down.

She plunged right past me, flopped down on my couch, and demanded vodka and cranberry juice.

I told her I didn't have either, and there wasn't any-place open in Paradise that sold either at that hour.

She suggested I call my friends to see if they had vodka and cranberry juice. I pointed out I wanted my friends to
stay
my friends, so, no, I wasn't about to call them at 1:00
A.M.
with such a request.

Then she started wailing something about Paradise being a godforsaken place, and I told her that according to Pastor Micah at the Paradise Methodist Church, there was no such place. Then I told her that if she wasn't going to calm down, she could just get off my couch and go back to wherever she was staying. I waggled my peanut butter-slicked spoon at her as I said it.

Then she started wailing that she couldn't get back to the Red Horse Motel because she thought she'd stripped the gears in Daddy's and her cherry red sports car, which still ran despite its fender-bender with Uncle Fenwick's RV, and which she'd left in front of the Antique Depot—or some such junk shop, she said.

Antique shop, I corrected her, bristling. Then I told her to hush up, or she'd have to walk back to the Red Horse.

That seemed to stun her and I half expected her to snap, don't sass your mama! in that impatient, flustered tone I suddenly remembered as her usual tone when I was little. But she got quiet and shrank back into the couch.

I went into my kitchenette and put on a kettle of hot water.

I got out one of my
TOADFERN'S LAUNDROMAT
—
ALWAYS A LEAP AHEAD OF DIRT
! mugs, a promotional giveaway left over from years before, when I took over the laundromat and changed its name from Foersthoefel's to Toadfern's to really make it mine. Then I got out another mug, this one imprinted with
GLEN ARM INN,
a souvenir from a romantic getaway overnight I'd shared not too long before with Owen.

My heart panged. But my only other two mugs in my sparsely outfitted kitchen were filled with sudsy water and sitting in the sink.

I stuck my peanut buttery spoon in one of the mugs, suddenly so nervous that I didn't even want peanut butter, recapped the peanut butter jar, and put it back in the cabinet, and pulled out the honey and box of chamomile tea bags.

I squirted honey from the top of the plastic bear container into each of the mugs and plopped a chamomile bag in each mug. By the time I'd tucked away the honey and tea bags, the kettle of water was whistling. I finished making our mugs of tea and carried them the few steps into my living room. I gave Mama the Toadfern's Laundromat mug.

See, Mama, I thought. Your baby made good, after all, even if you did just up and leave.

But she didn't even glance at the mug. She'd kicked off her shoes, spit-washed the mascara from her face, and tucked her legs up on my couch. She'd taken off her fur coat and turned it around backward, and spread it over her, like an afghan. I eyed the afghan I keep folded over the back of my couch. The afghan is a sky blue and sea-foam green crocheted creation I'd purchased from the Antique Depot. Maybe I should offer it to Mama, I thought. But I resisted the gesture.

She closed her eyes and inhaled the steam from the tea and suddenly looked at peace. She took a long sip, opened her eyes, and smiled at me.

“Thank you. That's better after all than cranberry juice and vodka,” she said. “Chamomile tea and honey—it's just what I used to make you, you know, whenever you were ill. It's what my mother always made me.”

And suddenly I remembered that was true. Not the part about my grandmother having made the beverage, too—that was news—but that my mama had served this to me when I was sick, and just the smell of it made me feel better.

But I took a sip, then said, “Hmm. I don't recall.”

A flash of sadness crossed my mother's face, and I instantly regretted my comment.

But Mama shrugged and said, “I'm not surprised. You were so young when I left you with Chief Hilbrink and his wife. How are they?”

She didn't know, I thought. As a kid, at least for the first few years, I imagined she had checked up on me, would be back anytime for me, have a great explanation. But then I became, emotionally, Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara's daughter, and Guy's sister, and got caught up in just living my life. I stopped imagining.

But still, the fact that she hadn't checked at all shocked me. She looked in great health. And like she'd lived a blessed life for quite a few years. So there'd been nothing to stop her from checking.

“Chief Hilbrink died three months after you left,” I said. “Mrs. Hilbrink left to live with her sister in California and I lost touch with her. I lived in the orphanage for several months because the Toadferns wouldn't have me and Uncle Horace didn't want me, either, at first. But Aunt Clara put her foot down and they adopted me.”

Mama sipped her tea and nodded. “Mmmm,” was her only acknowledgment, and I wasn't sure if it was of the tea or my story.

“Uncle Horace died when I was still in high school, and Aunt Clara passed away a few years after that. I inherited the laundromat and now I'm Guy's guardian.”

Again, she sipped and nodded.

I sat my mug down too hard in frustration, and some of the tea sloshed out on top of my stack of magazines, which were from the bookmobile.

“Damn it,” I hollered, and trotted into the kitchenette for a paper towel, then came back and blotted up the tea before it could soak into Nicole Kidman's lovely face on the cover of
People
—a magazine that is one of my secret pleasures. Underneath the stack of magazines, though, were books, including
Pride and Prejudice
. Which I was re-reading. Truly.

I sat back down and glared at Mama. “So. How have you been?”

She smiled at me, ignoring my sarcasm. “The tea was lovely. I feel so much calmer now,” she said, putting her empty mug on the coffee table. She cleared her throat. “So. Your daddy is in jail for murdering his brother Fenwick. I know that must shock you.”

I met her gaze with a most unshocked look. After all, I was still reeling from the shock of my parents' sudden appearance and the shock of finding Uncle Fenwick hung out to die. After all of that, my daddy—whom I barely knew, after all—in the role of murderer didn't seem so shocking. Plus, I recollected, I'd witnessed their fighting and threats at the Toadfern Thanksgiving dinner.

“Maybe I should just start at the beginning—about what happened after you left,” Mama said.

Or maybe, now that she was calm, I should just drive her back to the Red Horse. But—I admit—I was curious. I decided I'd listen to what she had to say—just to satisfy that curiosity—and
then
drive her back to the Red Horse. And then I'd never have to deal with my mama and daddy again. It would be as if they'd never reappeared.

Why do I allow myself to believe such things?

“It took a while after you left for all of us to calm down Mamaw Toadfern and Nora,” Mama said.

“Understandably,” I said.

“Yes. Although Fenwick always was such a gruff, resentful man. I really never did see why he was Mamaw Toadfern's favorite—or why Nora doted on him so.”

She looked at me as if expecting some agreement that Uncle Fenwick had just not been very lovable. Well, how would I know? I didn't have any memories of him. And for all I knew, he would have been very enjoyable if Mama and Daddy hadn't shown up.

“The truth is,” Mama went on, “I don't know if they ever did calm down. I said something pleasant—about how God works in mysterious ways and maybe somehow this was all for the best—”