Long Memory (3 page)

“All right.” Nonie stood up and walked down the hall. Beth hoped she would remember what she was doing when she got to the bathroom. The pill box sat on the table. Beth popped open the “W” section and set it beside Nonie’s cup.

“There’s cereal in the cupboard beside the stove and milk in the fridge.” She walked over to the calendar before she did something embarrassing. James in the kitchen in boxers was a little more intimate than she was used to and she wanted to give him a familiar kiss on the cheek. Except he wasn’t familiar. He was Donna’s spy. Unfortunately, the calendar wasn’t going to give her much distraction. The girls didn’t have any appointments all week.

“What’s this?” He’d moved to stand behind her and sounded more awake now.

Beth folded her arms. He smelled good. Masculine and warm. And too close. “The schedule. I keep track of all Nonie and Jean’s doctor’s appointments and stuff here so I know when I have to take them places.”

“Dr. Rose, Dr. Ayudia, Gilmore Clinic, Flashes versus Turbos. Flashes versus Turbos?”

“Little League game. Nonie has kept score for the Little League for decades. They don’t let her do the official one anymore, but she does team books. Usually the Flashes’.”

“She can keep score?”

“She only needs to remember long enough to make a note, and then we total everything up at the end of the game.” Beth tightened her folded arms. “It’s good for her. It keeps her stimulated and involved.”

“You must spend a lot of time ferrying them around.”

“I don’t mind. During the school year if I get pinched there’s a couple of people I can call. There is a bus, but I hate to send them on the bus. Mostly the doctors work around my schedule.”

“Do you declare mileage?”

“Mileage?”

“On your taxes.”

Beth turned to him. He still looked sleep rumpled, but his eyes were sharp. “How would I do that?”

“If you set up a sole proprietorship and declared your business as taking care of Nonie and Jean, you could bill them for time and take the mileage off on your taxes.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble for just a little bit. I wouldn’t charge for my time and the gas isn’t that much.” Where was he going with this? Was he fishing for information for Donna? Trying to find out if she was profiting off this arrangement? Had Nonie made it to the bathroom?

“Just a thought. I’d have to run the numbers to figure out if it was cost effective anyway.” He set his coffee cup on the table and started rummaging around the breakfast cupboard. “Is there anything here that isn’t a fiber cereal?”

“No.” Beth stared down the hall, listening for any sound. Nothing. If she had fallen, they would have heard a thump. She hadn’t called for help either.

James was leaning into the refrigerator. “Are there any eggs?”

“No eggs. Just egg substitute.”

“Where’s–” He closed the freezer door and cocked his head. “Where’s Nonie?”

“I was about to ask that question myself.” Beth started down the hall as Nonie came out of the bedroom. Her hair, which she normally combed flat, had been fluffed and curled a little. “Nonie, did you do your hair?”

Nonie touched her hair. “Do you like it? There’s an attractive man visiting. I wanted to look my best.”

“Nonie, he’s your grandson.”

“Grandson? Oh pooh. Are you going to go out with him?”

“There she is,” James said, sounding much more awake. “How are you this morning? You look lovely.” He kissed Nonie’s cheek and she giggled. James took her hand and led her down the hall. Beth heard him asking if she was hungry.

Well, asleep to charming in ten minutes. It might be a record. A few minutes later, she found Nonie at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee and James manning the toaster making breakfast. He’d unearthed apple butter from someplace. Beth hoped it wasn’t moldy. She’d confiscated the jelly when Jean was diagnosed with diabetes six years ago, but must have missed this.

“Where did you find the apple butter?”

“The freezer.” James set a plate of toast on the table.

“The freezer?”

“Nonie always kept her fruit butters in the freezer. I got it out last night.” He popped the top off. “I hope it’s not still frozen solid. You want some?”

Beth frowned. “She has some pills she needs to take with breakfast,” she pointed out.

James picked up the pill box from the table and dumped the pills in his hand, then handed them to Nonie. “Done.”

“Jean can’t have the apple butter when she comes over. She has diabetes.”

“No problem.”

Beth hovered a moment longer. Nonie was up, dressed and eating breakfast. It wasn’t the fiber cereal the doctor wanted her to eat, but a day off here and there wouldn’t do any harm. Jean wasn’t here yet, but James was. “If you need help, let me know. You can just bang on the floor.”

* * * *

James walked out the back door of the house. Nonie’s backyard had been gardened into some kind of four-star arboretum. Paths wound through trees and around flower beds with artistic fountains and pools. When he was a kid, it had been all open territory, great for baseball games with neighborhood kids. Summers when his mother sent him to stay with his grandparents, he’d spent a lot of time in this yard. The house was built on a slope. The front was one story, but the back was two. His mother mentioned a few years ago, after his grandfather died, that they were remodeling the basement into an apartment for one of Nonie’s former students. His mother had been dubious about the whole arrangement. Over the years, as the former student didn’t move out, his mother became even more dubious and started to say the woman was waiting for Nonie to die so she could steal the property.

The basement door banged closed. That former student strode out with a bucket in one hand and a pair of wicked-looking scissors in the other. According to Aunt Jean, she was Beth. A lovely girl with a pretty face and a gift with children. She was also an amazing cook and an excellent gardener. After an hour with Aunt Jean, James had wondered if Beth practiced walking on water on the ponds in the backyard, but Aunt Jean was the reason he was out here. She’d shown up about an hour ago, alternately promoting Beth and berating him for not coming sooner. Nonie kept asking what was going on. No sooner had they explained than she asked again. The constant repeating and that bandage around her nose was disturbing. Nonie had always been so sharp, so on the ball. Seeing her confused was painful. Beth might or might not be doing something shady, but he didn’t want to make any judgments until he knew something for sure.

James strolled down the porch steps. He’d just left one acrimonious situation and didn’t want to be in another one so soon. Besides, she was the only female in reach and he wanted to know if his charm still worked. “Hi there.”

Beth slid her eyes toward him without turning away from the flower bed she was weeding. She’d taken off her glasses. The lack of them made her look more like a little girl’s doll than he expected. Or maybe it was sleep. Aunt Jean said she was taking a nap. “Yes?” she asked.

“I just wanted to say hello. I think we started off on the wrong foot.”

Beth tossed a handful of weeds into her bucket and stood up. “I think that happened before you got here.” She stooped and picked up the big scissors. Keeping her attention on the bush, she started snipping off rebellious twigs, letting them fall on the ground.

“Beth, I don’t know what’s going on between you and my mother, but I’m not part of it. She didn’t send me here.”

“No, you came here because you just lost your job and it was on the national news.” She stopped snipping and turned to him. “What was going on there anyway?”

James met her eyes. The glare of questions had made him flinch too many times recently, and he hated it. He hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, he’d been one of the few doing something right. So what if Mark seemed like a stand-up guy? He was still a con man. “My boss was buying properties and bribing assessors to inflate the value. Then he’d get investors based on the inflated value and buy more property. Which he inflated the value of.”

“To get more investors.” Her eyes were on him, but she wasn’t thinking about him. Something about her expression gave the impression of gears turning. Most people got upset, either because of the injustice or because he had opened his mouth about it. Sometimes both. She seemed to be studying the issue. “How did you figure it out?”

“I did the books.”

“All the books?” She raised an eyebrow. “For a big company like that?”

“Not all the books. There were three of us in the office and then an outside company that handled our overflow.” George and Melissa. George had a wife and a daughter in college. No sense wondering how he paid for that now. Or those exotic vacations. Melissa had been on the verge of going out with him until she lost her job. She had been beyond breathtaking. Now she was beyond reach. “I got into some accounts I don’t normally do and noticed irregularities.”

“Didn’t.”

“What?”

“Didn’t normally do. You don’t have that job anymore.” She turned back to snipping.

“Thanks for the reminder.” James folded his arms. She trimmed away with the same deliberation she’d used to correct his grammar. Her analytical questioning ruined his ability to charm.

“I understand there were some residual effects.” She glanced at him and her brown eyes were thoughtful. “Some damage to an already saggy real estate market. What happened there?”

James rolled his eyes. She wanted a thorough postmortem. This was not helping his ego at all. “The market in Atlanta was already struggling. Finding out properties were overvalued meant the properties near them were overvalued too, meaning people who had bought those places suddenly owed more than they were worth. And then there was a ripple effect.”

“Ripple effect?”

James wished he’d stayed inside and listened to Aunt Jean promote and berate. “Investors were scared away by the scandal. I ripped a hole in a weak market.”

“By doing the right thing.”

“Yes. The right thing.” The right thing that lost him his job, his friends, his lifestyle. Woohoo. Go honesty and integrity. “So, did you do all this gardening yourself?”

“Yes, most of it. Nonie likes it. She used to say she always wanted a garden. It gives her something to do as long as I keep an eye on her.”

Thinking about his grandmother was ruining his ability to charm too. “Is she really that bad?”

“Depends on the day. Sometimes she’s just bad, other times she’s hopeless. Today is a hopeless day.”

“Why?”

“I’d guess it was the stress. Stress makes her worse. Lack of sleep doesn’t help either.” Beth leaned the scissors against the bush and started picking up the bits she’d just cut off. James bent down to help, but she shot him a dark look.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. Throw them in the bucket.”

There was more to that look than nothing, but he didn’t want to pursue it. “So stress makes her worse. Doesn’t she just forget what stressed her out?”

“Stress? Nonie. Yes, stress makes her worse. I think she forgets what she was upset about, but the adrenaline is still flowing.”

“Like constantly waking up from a bad dream you can’t remember.”

Beth snapped her fingers, grinning. “Exactly. That’s the perfect way to describe it.” She peered past him. “I hope they’re all right in there.”

James looked back at the house. When he left Nonie and Aunt Jean were sitting in the living room watching TV. Neither one had looked like she was going to move soon, so he’d assumed it was safe to leave. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Why would they? Your great-aunt can’t see and your grandmother can’t remember. It’s a recipe for disaster. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when school starts.”

“It’s the beginning of July.”

Beth met his eyes again. “Neither one of them is going to get any better before September.” Worry gathered on her face.

“Isn’t there someplace you can put them?”

“That is what your mother wants and I won’t do it.” Beth threw down her pruning shears. Her hair shook loose from her ponytail and tumbled around her face. “Put them in a home. Sell the houses.”

“What’s wrong with it? If they need the care.” James took a step back. He thought he saw tears in her eyes.