“What circumstances are those?”
The kid tipped her head to one side. “Perhaps I didn’t tell you. My mother came into the room before I could completely finish describing the last few years of Talia DeKeyser. Mom says this part is gossip, anyway.”
Before she could go all ethical on me, I jumped in. “Talia’s great-niece was killed. A store has been broken into, along with the library and the bookmobile. Any information might be helpful.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Dana glanced toward her house, then back at me. “As you know, Talia DeKeyser spent the last few months of her life at the nursing home.”
I nodded.
“One of the reasons Talia DeKeyser’s children had her moved to the home was”—Dana looked at the house again—“that she was giving everything away.”
I didn’t grasp why anyone would care what Talia did with her possessions. Then I clued in. “Everything? Heirlooms, you mean?”
Dana nodded. “They weren’t valuable things, just family items. It was when she tried to give the mail carrier a vase that their great-grandmother DeKeyser had brought over from Europe that the daughters caught wind of what their mother was doing.”
“Alzheimer’s,” I murmured, and Dana agreed.
“From my research, I gather that it can be hard to detect when it is late onset, which Talia DeKeyser’s obviously was. I can imagine that it’s easy to attribute forgetfulness to age instead of to consider more dire implications.”
Though I’d already grown accustomed to hearing an adult vocabulary and sentence structure come out of a child, it was a jolt to hear her understand the reluctance to diagnose an elderly parent with a difficult and devastating disease. Not only was the kid bizarrely intelligent, but she also had empathy.
I looked at Dana, wondering if she’d been born this way or if something had already happened in her short life that had instilled that difficult emotion. It was hard to be empathetic; sympathy and pity you could assuage with a check to an appropriate nonprofit foundation. Empathy, though. That could spur you to acts of—
“Minnie? Hi!” Jenny Coburn came out of the house and down the center of the front steps. “How nice to see you. Dana, did you want to invite Ms. Hamilton inside? It’s getting dark; the mosquitoes will be out soon. If you’d like to keep talking, why don’t you come in?”
Dana and I shared a look. I wouldn’t have minded getting to know my young new friend a little better, and I had the feeling she felt the same about me, but doing so under the watchful eye of Mom would be difficult.
“That would be nice,” I said, “but I have to get going. Things to do, socks to wash. All that.”
“Okay. See you later.” Dana walked off to the house, going up the steps the same way her mother had come down them: exactly in the center.
Jenny looked after her, frowning a little, then turned back to me and smiled brightly. “It’s hard to remember what time it is, the sunset is so late up here this time of year. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be rude; she’s just tired.”
I blinked. I hadn’t thought anything about Dana’s abrupt departure and didn’t know what to say. Happily, Jenny kept talking, and I didn’t have to say anything.
“It’s so nice that you’re making friends with Dana. That’s the one thing about this neighborhood; no children.”
I glanced around at the stately homes, most owned by the same families for generations. “Aren’t there grandchildren running around all summer?”
“Yes, but they tend to stay in their family groups, doing the same things they’ve always done with the same people they’ve always done things with.” She sighed. “It’s hard for a well-adjusted adult to break into an established social pattern, let alone someone with . . . someone like Dana.”
“I think she’s a great kid,” I said.
“You do?” Jennifer looked at me. “You really think so? She’s . . . well, you see what she’s like.”
“Different.” I nodded. Which wasn’t what Jennifer had meant, but that was the root of it. “And being different is hardest when you’re young.”
“True.” Jenny sighed. “My husband and I, we’re not like her.”
I flashed back to how both she and Dana had trod the front steps and guessed that mother and daughter weren’t as far apart as Mom thought.
“We try to understand her, but we just don’t.” Jenny looked back at the house again, then at me. “Do you have children?”
I shook my head. “All I can handle right now is one cat.”
“Well, I hope you have kids someday. You have a knack for drawing them out.”
I was pretty sure she was wrong. Most days I had no idea how to treat kids other than as short adults. People said when I had my own children it would be different, but I was also pretty sure I wasn’t nearly mature enough to have kids. Besides, they’d be embarrassed to death if people knew that their mom talked to cats.
“Stop by again,” Jennifer said. “Anytime.”
I told her I would, wished her a good night, and pedaled off into the darkening evening, thinking about chance encounters and inappropriate gifts and about Talia and about the great mystery of what the future holds for all of us at the end.
* * *
“Minnie? Is anything wrong?” Otto, in jeans and a polo shirt, peered at me the next morning.
I was standing on his front doorstep, my skin prickly in the chill air. “It’s time for breakfast,” I told him.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes it is. It is definitely that time of day.” He raised his eyebrows, still waiting for an answer to the question he’d asked.
“Have you been to breakfast this summer?” I asked, nodding at my aunt’s place.
“Well, actually, no.” He looked at the big house across the street. “I haven’t been invited, and I didn’t want to barge in without being asked.”
My aunt was an idiot. “Come on.” I grabbed his hand and tugged. “I’m inviting you.”
“I can’t possibly.” Otto pulled out of my grip. “Frances will—”
“When’s the last time you saw her?” I asked, crossing my arms. “How many times have you seen her since the guests arrived?”
“Well.” He rubbed his chin. “We had dinner . . . No, that was the day before the first one arrived. I think we had lunch last week. We were supposed to go to a concert in Petoskey the other day, but there was a plumbing emergency at the boardinghouse and she had to cancel.”
“Otto, it’s only June,” I said. “If you don’t make yourself part of the group, you’re not going to see anything of her until after Labor Day.”
He continued with the chin rubbing. “That’s not what she led me to believe.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s because she doesn’t quite get how much work running that place is. Trust me. I’ve been watching this for four summers in a row. If she ever has the time to go out and do something with you, she’s going to be too tired to do it.”
“That sounds remarkably unappealing,” Otto said. “I’d hoped to spend a lot of time with her the next few months.”
“Well, then.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Get over there.”
“Minnie, I’m not sure I should—”
“You may not be, but I am. Come on.” I tugged at his hand a second time, and this time didn’t let go until his front door was closed and we were crossing the street.
The entire way, he was hemming and hawing and sounding more like he’d sounded last December. Back then he’d been hesitant about introducing himself to my aunt, then, after a little push, had blossomed into the confident man who’d been squiring her around town for the past six months.
I ignored every one of his worried comments and practically dragged him up the steps and through the boardinghouse’s front door. “Good morning,” I called out. “Any chance you have a little extra?”
When I’d opened the door, I’d heard a congenial babble of voices and the tinkling of silverware. As soon as I spoke, however, the noises ceased. “Minnie?” my aunt said. “Is that you?”