“You think we should wait here for a tow truck?”
“Or you could kick out the rest of that windshield and drive it to town. You’ll be cold as hell.”
“Yeah.”
“I say we just drive it and get the fucking hell out of here,” the other said.
Ogden looked at the damage again. “I can fill out a report for you to sign right now. You know, for insurance. That way you won’t have to come into the station.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Snow started to fall.
Ogden’s mother was holding the curtain aside and looking out the window when he drove up. She opened the door and stepped away to allow him in.
“It’s cold out there,” she said.
“It is that. How’s your visitor?”
“She’s doing fine considering all that’s happened. Poor thing. I simply can’t imagine.”
“Thanks for letting her stay here,” he said. He looked around for Jenny.
“You were right to suggest she stay here. Imagine losing your mother and having to sleep in some depressing motel. She’s been napping. And she’s lovely. Don’t you think she’s lovely?”
“I hadn’t noticed, Ma.”
“You’re a liar.”
Jenny Bickers came out of the guest bedroom, what had actually been Ogden’s bedroom. “Hello, Officer Walker,” she said.
“It’s Deputy,” Ogden said. “Seeing as you’re sleeping in my room, I think you can call me Ogden.”
“Okay, Ogden.”
“How are you, Jenny?” Eva asked. “Would you like some nice hot tea? Ogden, come sit down with us and have some tea. It’s the kind you like.”
“No, I’d better get going.”
“Pishposh,” his mother said.
“Okay. Just a cup and then I have to go.”
Ogden still felt grimy from his day. “Sorry I’m so filthy.” He looked at Jenny’s eyes. They were tired. “I think I’m finished at your mother’s house. I’ll have to get the okay from the sheriff, but I think you can get in there tomorrow.”
“Did you find anything?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Eva’s old cat walked across the room and rubbed against Ogden’s leg. He reached down and scratched his back. “Hey, Moose.” His father had given the cat that name almost fifteen years ago, a kitten as big as a Labrador puppy. “You’re feeding him too much.”
“I can’t control what he eats when he’s cruising.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t let him out so much.”
“Hey, I just let the guy enjoy what’s left of his life,” the old woman said.
Ogden thought about Moose out there prowling yards in the night and then he thought about Mrs. Bickers’s cat. He looked at Jenny. “Do you like cats?”
“I love cats,” Jenny said. Then, “Excuse me.” She left the table and walked into the bathroom.
“Poor thing,” Eva said. She shook her head and then looked at her son. “Why do you have to run off?”
“I’m filthy.”
“You can shower here. You’ve got clothes here, too.”
“I have to go,” he said.
“She needs people around her,” Eva said.
Ogden shook his finger. “Ma, you don’t know this woman. You don’t know what she needs. You hear me? Now, she’s got to make arrangements for her mother’s funeral and sort through—
Eva stopped him. “Already started.” Eva got up to see to the whistling kettle.
“What?”
“I got her in touch with Fonda today and we’re taking care of it. I know everybody here. I can get everything for a reasonable price.”
“Good Lord.”
Jenny came out of the bathroom. Mother and son shut up. Jenny sat. “Am I in the way?” she asked.
“Don’t be silly,” Eva said.
Jenny looked at Ogden.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. While they sat and talked about weather, Ogden wondered how he might get a look at the woman’s driver’s license. “What was your mother like?”
“Ogden,” Eva said.
“I don’t mind. I’d like to talk about her.” Jenny sipped her tea. “My mother was independent, ornery, and secretive.”
“Sounds familiar,” Ogden said.
“At least that’s what I imagine she was like,” Jenny said. “Sadly, I didn’t know her that well. I was raised by my grandmother.” She smiled at some memory. “My grandmother, she was from Kansas, she was a wonderful woman. She never said a negative thing about my mother, though I’m sure there was plenty negative to say. That stuff comes out, you know. Emma Bickers was a lousy mother and apparently an even worse judge of men.”
Ogden glanced up at the clock hanging slightly crooked on the wall behind Jenny.
“She was married to my father for a couple of years and then he left. I don’t know anything about him. My grandmother refused to acknowledge his existence. Then my mother left me with her. My mother lived in Seattle, Portland, Butte, and then here. She never remarried, but always moved because of a man. That’s what I got from my grandmother. She always blamed it on the men.”
“It’s always the men,” Eva said.
Jenny pulled her hair from her face and stared down into her tea cup. “I was trying to get to know her these last few months. I had only seen her three times since I moved to New Mexico. You probably knew her better than I did.”
“I doubt that,” Ogden said.
“Did you like her?” Jenny asked Ogden.
“Yes,” he lied.
“She was a fine person, I’m sure,” Eva said.
Ogden stood, looked at his watch. “Okay, I’ve been dirty long enough. If you ladies will excuse me?”
Ogden got up after a restive night and drank orange juice from the carton. He looked out his window at the landscape. He deeply loved the place, the mountains, the desert, the rivers, the fish, but he felt like a failure remaining there. It had been different for his father, he thought. The man had come there from someplace and carved out a life. He’d worked house construction and driven cats and plows in the winter and seemed happy with that, while instilling in his son the notion that there was more out there.
He dressed and drove toward town. He decided he would go over a few things at Mrs. Bickers’s house with Jenny and then ask her to sign a receipt and claim to need her driver’s license number on it. The sky was clear and cerulean and he felt lighter.
He arrived at the station to find Jenny waiting.
“You’re up early,” Ogden said.
Felton watched the two of them from his desk.
Ogden saw that Paz wasn’t in yet. “Well, let’s go have breakfast and then we can go to the house.” He felt himself intentionally say the house instead of your mother’s house and wondered what difference that sort of thing made.
Felton cleared his throat. “So, you’ll be 10—?”
“I’ll be at breakfast,” Ogden said.
Ogden drove them to the bowling alley that served the best Mexican food in town and breakfast all day. They sat in a booth. There were a few other people eating and one lone fat man bowling at the far end. A lot of folks didn’t go to the bowling alley, because it was a bowling alley. It was what it was; that was all you could ask of anyplace or anything, Ogden thought.
They ordered.
Ogden got right into it. “Did your mother have anything of value that you know about? You know, like gold bricks between her mattress and box springs, diamonds in ice trays. That sort of thing.”
Jenny shook her head. “Never saw anything.” She looked over the lanes. “You know, I don’t think my mother was ever really happy to see me. It was as if she worked to tolerate me.” She glanced at Ogden and then back at the fat man down the way. “She just didn’t feel like a mother to me. You probably don’t know what I mean. She wasn’t anything like your mother.”