Running on Empty (23 page)

'Oh. Right.'

'Your car's not in the garage,' AnnaLise said to Daisy. 'Where is it?'

'On the street.'

'Where?' The doctor's car blocked the driveway apron, but there was no sign of Daisy's
vehicle.

'Around the corner,' said AnnaLise's mother.

'In the angle parking on Main Street? ' Daughter tried to ger her head around that.
'But you hate backing out into traffic.'

'Honestly, AnnaLise.' Daisy glanced at Dr. Stanton, embarrassed. 'You make me sound
like I'm ninety. Oh, no offense, Mrs. Peebly.'

'Some taken.'

Daisy shrugged. 'Anyway, AnnaLise, you're being silly. Next thing you'll be saying
is I don't like to make left turns.'

'You don't.'

'Neither do I,' Dr. Stanton said. 'You're taking your life in your hands even trying
that during tourist season.'

'And when is it
not
tourist season?' Daisy said, spreading her hands. The two laughed.

AnnaLise's mother and Dr. Stanton? Could it be?

'Stop making moon eyes over there,' Mrs. Peebly groused. 'Like I said, when I heard
you drop the door, AnnaLise, I called your mother.'

'I was asleep,' Daisy said, 'but the telephone woke me up. When I realized you weren't
home―'

'We both hightailed it down here to the garage,' Mrs. Peebly said triumphantly, 'and
there you were, laid out like a deer carcass on this very ground.'

'So they called me,' Dr. Stanton said, getting to his feet with a grin, but also another
'Ouch'.

'I know, I know,' AnnaLise said. 'Running injury. Marathon.'

Dr. Stanton's grin grew wider. 'Give me your right hand and I'll help you up.'

She did and he eased her to a standing position, her left arm lagging a bit behind
the exercise.

'Sore, but no sharp pain,' AnnaLise said, rubbing at the joint gingerly. 'The shoulder
doesn't feel dislocated.'

'It's not,' Dr. Stanton confirmed. 'But I'm pretty sure you do have a slight separation.
I want you to ice it for fifteen minutes each hour for the next four. Then stop by
the office tomorrow and we'll do a quick X-ray to make sure you haven't cracked anything.
I think you'll be fine, though.'

'Does she need a sling?' Mrs. Peebles asked. 'I have just the thing. The sheet from
Larry's crib.'

'Larry's nearly seventy,' Daisy pointed out, 'and you still have his
crib
?'

'Never know,' Mrs. Peebly said, lifting up her walker to get it past a rough spot.
'He likes 'em young. I could be a grandmother yet.'

It was as though AnnaLise had fallen asleep during the cougar discussion at the inn
earlier and awakened to the same one, but with a very different set of characters.
Through the Looking Glass
kind of different, where the seventy-year-old Larry was a cradle-robber and Daisy,
a cougar. Kind of.

'I don't think a sling will be necessary,' Stanton, the younger 'stud', said as he
opened his car door. 'But if letting the arm hang at your side hurts...'

'I'll elevate it,' AnnaLise said quickly. Her own childhood sheets having been emblazoned
with Smurfs, she couldn't imagine what baby sheets, circa 1930, sported. Coats of
arms? Mastodons and sabre-toothed tigers?

Given the circumstances, though, no need to find out. Daisy was bound to have a spare
pillowcase.

'I don't understand,' AnnaLise said. 'Why can't we get this to work?' Her left shoulder
was starting to ache as she held up the elbow for Daisy to tie a knot at the neck.

'I told you, the pillowcase isn't big enough. You should have taken Baby Larry's crib
sheet.'

AnnaLise shuddered, causing Daisy to once again lose her grip. 'I think not. Besides,
this has to work. I always used pillowcases as slings back when I was pretending to
have a broken arm.'

'And sitting on the stool next to the cash register at Mama's, trolling for sympathy.'

'And candy. Don't forget the candy,' AnnaLise mumbled over the cloth corner she was
trying to hold in her teeth.

'You were six,' Daisy said. 'The pillowcases didn't get smaller, you just got bigger.'

There was that.

AnnaLise let the pillow case drop. 'OK. This option is kaput.'

Daisy picked up the pillow they'd stripped the case from. 'Why don't you rest your
elbow on this. At least it'll cushion the weight from your shoulder.'

Daisy put the pillow on the arm of AnnaLise's chair and gently placed her daughter's
elbow on it. Then she dragged over the ottoman for AnnaLise's feet.

'Thank you, Mommy,' AnnaLise said. It was nearly three a.m.

'Your whole childhood, you never called me mommy, except when you were hurt.' Daisy
was sitting on the couch across from her. 'Or trying to get away with something.'

'Untrue,' AnnaLise said, letting her eyes drift closed.

'So,' she heard Daisy say, 'when we lifted the garage door off you, your car wasn't
inside.'

AnnaLise kept her eyes closed. 'Left it at the inn,' she mumbled. 'I was... drinking.'

'So... ?'

'Hmm?'

'Then why were you going into the garage, at all?'

AnnaLise's eyes sprang open.

Two hours later, they'd given up on sleep.

'Should I make some coffee?' Daisy asked.

'Please.' AnnaLise took the plastic bag of partially melted ice cubes off her shoulder.
'Can you take this, too?'

'I'll put it in the freezer.' Daisy said. 'You have to use it again in forty-five
minutes, anyway.'

'Then drape it over a loaf of bread, so it'll be formed more to my shoulder than the
freezer shelf.' AnnaLise didn't suggest swapping out the cubes for new ones because
Daisy's old refrigerator didn't have an icemaker. Her freezer, like everything else
in Sutherton, worked at its own pace.

'Gotcha.' Daisy let the freezer compartment door slap shut before removing a bag of
ground coffee from the refrigerator and closing that, as well.

'You really shouldn't store ground coffee in the fridge,' AnnaLise said.

'OK,' said Daisy, measuring out the grounds and then returning the bag to the refrigerator
anyway. She flipped on the ancient Mr. Coffee machine and came back to sit down. 'Are
you going to tell Chuck?'

'That you ignore me or that you keep ground coffee in the refrigerator?'

'AnnaLise Marie Griggs, you know perfectly well I'm talking about the attack on you.'

Hearing the words laid out there like that made AnnaLise uneasy. 'I didn't imagine
anything, right? The light couldn't have gone out on its own?'

'And then slammed the garage door down on you?' Daisy asked. 'I think you give that
light way too much credit. After all, I bought the thing from the dollar store.'

'Which is just my point. Maybe the battery died. Or there was a loose connection or
something.'

'And when you tried again, it worked? Anything's possible, of course, but did you
push the light once or twice?'

'Once, I think. Why?'

'Well, if the thing went out on its own, wouldn't you have had to push
twice
? Once to turn it off and once again for on?'

AnnaLise, even dog-tired, had to admire her mother's reasoning. 'I guess so, but I
honestly don't know what's inside the gadget. I just know that when you push, the
light should go on. Or off.'

'And when you raise the garage door, it should stay up, too.'

'Unless you don't push all the way up. Then the wooden bastard can come slamming down.'

'Please, AnnaLise, no profanity. But, as you said two hours ago,' Daisy continued,
suddenly sounding weary, 'that should have happened right away. Not after you stepped
in and turned on the light.'

'But that's just the point, the light went on. If somebody was inside, why didn't
I see them?'

'AnnaLise, this is your story, not mine.'

'It's not a story,' she said stubbornly. AnnaLise tried to cross her arms, but that
hurt enough that she settled for just jutting out her bottom lip. 'Everything I told
you — and Mrs. Peebly and the doc — actually happened.'

'
I
believe you,' Daisy said. 'Though I'm not sure... you do.'

AnnaLise settled back miserably in her chair. 'I just don't want to start an uproar
and then have it turn out I was wrong, especially stupid wrong. How in the world do
people take the witness stand and testify under oath to something that happened in
the past? I can barely remember what I did an hour ago.'

'Wait 'til you're my age,' Daisy said.

Mother and daughter looked at each other, hanging in the air between them the thought
that whatever was happening to the older woman would also befall the younger.

AnnaLise struggled to say something — anything — to lighten the mood.

Daisy held up her hand. 'This isn't hereditary, AnnaLise. My grandmother was "sharp
as a tack", as my mother used to say. And she was the same. It's... it's just... me.'

For the second time since AnnaLise's arrival, Daisy looked like she was going to cry.
In this case, though, the speaker wasn't a young Lorraine drifting up from the past.
This was AnnaLise's mother, Daisy. Present tense, but also present and understandably
tense.

'It's going to be all right, Daisy,' AnnaLise said, climbing out of her chair in a
seven-count movement to sit on the arm of the other's chair. 'I swear.'

'I won't have you cussing, young lady.' Daisy blinked back her tears with an embarrassed
smile. 'I'm sure things will work themselves out.'

AnnaLise leaned over to give her mother a one-armed hug. 'I know.'

'Only...'

AnnaLise pulled back to look at her mother. 'Yes?'

Daisy's eyes were closed, her head bowed. 'Only... I don't want to forget.'

'Of course, you don't.' AnnaLise squeezed her hand.

'There are people who want nothing
but
to forget. People who have had such pain in their lives, that remembering is unbearable.
But for me... even the day your father died, I treasure.'

'The day Daddy...?'

'Do you know why?' The blue eyes opened.

AnnaLise's own eyes were welling, primed by the Labor Day waterworks. That was the
problem with tears. You let them out once and...