“We’ll see you later,” Rebecca said.
I grabbed the laundry basket and went back inside. Owen lay on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor, eyes closed, blissed out. The body of Fred the Funky Chicken was strewn in pieces around him. The chicken’s head was on Owen’s belly, the yellow fabric bright against his white fur. And he was purring.
I stepped over him without comment. At least if he was decapitating chickens, he wasn’t raiding the neighborhood recycling bins.
By the time Roma pulled into the driveway all the laundry was on the clothesline, and I’d eaten lunch and changed into a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt, paint-spattered pants and a denim ball cap. Owen had wandered off with his chicken head, and Hercules was sleeping on the bench in the porch.
“I brought my gardening gloves,” I said. “In case I need a pair of gloves for . . . well, anything.”
“Good idea,” she said.
“And I brought my big thermos. I made lemonade.”
Roma glanced over at me. “When you say you made lemonade, you mean the powder in the can, not the fizzy stuff in the bottle?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, I made lemonade. Lemons, sugar syrup, cold water, ice.”
“You’re kidding.”
I shook my head. “Roma, my mother knows how to make only two things, if you don’t count toast”—I held up a warning finger—“which you shouldn’t count, because most of the time she either forgets to press the little lever so the bread doesn’t toast, or she forgets about the bread altogether and it burns.”
I couldn’t help grinning, thinking about my mother’s efforts at cooking. “However, she makes the best lemonade—from scratch—and the very best bakingpowder biscuits.”
“In other words, your mother is a picnic looking for a place to happen,” Roma said. “I think I’d like her.”
I smiled. It was a pretty good description of my mom.
Roma jerked her head toward the backseat. “I brought a thermos of ice water. Lemonade sounds a lot better.”
“How long have you been going out to Wisteria Hill?” I asked.
“A bit more than a year.” She raised her hand in greeting as we passed a woman walking a large black lab. I recognized the woman’s face, but I couldn’t think of her name. She was working her way through the various ethnic cookbooks we had at the library—Indian, the last time I’d checked her out.
“I worked with a cat-rescue group in Des Moines,” Roma continued.
“You lived in Des Moines?”
“For years. I’ve only been back here about a year and a half.”
“Why did you come back?” I asked. “If that’s not too personal a question.”
She didn’t take her eyes off the road, but her smile grew wider. “I don’t mind. I guess it was mostly because I was homesick.”
I knew that feeling. On the other hand, there was a lot I’d miss about Mayville Heights if I left—when I left.
We waited while two cars and a pickup, most likely headed for town, went by; then Roma turned left onto the road that would take us out to the old estate. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “This is a small place. And everyone seems to know what’s going on in your life. But everyone knows who you are, too. When someone asks, ‘How are you?’ they truly want to know. It’s not just some meaningless pleasantry. I missed that.”
She put her window down a couple of inches. “So when I heard Joe Ross was retiring it seemed like divine providence. I sold my practice, bought this one and here I am.”
There were no houses on this stretch of the road, just trees, huge, old trees. Except for the asphalt, it probably didn’t look much different from how it had when Everett’s mother was alive.
“How long has Wisteria Hill been abandoned?” I asked.
“Years,” Roma said, driving around the remains of a dead skunk and closing up her window at the same time. “Must be close to twenty-five.”
I stared at her, incredulous. “Twenty-five years? But why? Why would Everett let his home deteriorate for twenty-five years?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Roma slowed and put on her blinker for the turn into the lane out to the old house. “To be fair, the place wasn’t really abandoned in the beginning.”
I put a hand on the dash as we bounced over the rutted dirt drive. “Everett closed the house after his mother died, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes, he did,” Roma said. “He closed off all but one section at the back. He had a caretaker who lived in it and took care of things, and, I’m guessing, looked after the cats.”
We pulled into a open area then, in front of the house, and I couldn’t help staring, just the way I had the first time I’d stumbled on the estate in the spring. The old house looked neglected. It looked . . . lonely. The windows had been boarded over. The right end of the verandah sagged. The yard was even more of a tangle of overgrown grass and weeds, prickly rosebushes, and saplings about kneehigh, new trees taking root as the forest slowly spread out. I thought about the remnants of the English country garden in the backyard. Someone had clearly cared about Wisteria Hill at one time. “What happened?” I said softly. “How could . . .” I let the end of the sentence trail off.
Roma sighed. “I truly don’t know. No one does.” She studied the house. “George and Clara Anderson took care of the place. They’re related to Everett’s secretary, Lita, somehow. Then they decided they wanted to move to Michigan to be closer to their daughter and grandkids. It was before I came back, but not by a lot.”
She reached into the backseat for her ball cap and pulled it on. “Everett spent most of his time in Minneapolis and just came home for weekends. When George and Clara left everyone thought he’d hire someone new. But he didn’t. He moved his business and himself back here, but he left the house empty. If he even comes out here, no one’s seen him.”
“How could Everett leave the cats out here to fend for themselves?” It was clear to me that Everett was an intense, hardheaded businessman, but I would never have said he was cruel.
“He didn’t,” Roma said. “No one knew there were any cats out here.” She reached over the seat again, this time for a dark canvas backpack. Then she opened the car door and got out. So did I. She glanced over at the house, then looked at me over the roof of the car. “The Andersons took four cats with them when they moved. Clara was the kind of person who would carry a bug outside rather than squish it.”
Like Ami, I thought.
“She wouldn’t have left a cat behind. Second week I was back here someone brought in an injured cat—attacked by something, probably a coyote. It was Desmond.” Roma popped the trunk.
“I didn’t know Desmond was feral,” I said, as I helped her take two large animal cages and a couple of blankets out of the trunk.
“What? Did you think he was just cranky?” Roma said, giving me a sideways grin.
“I didn’t even think he was cranky.”
Desmond was Roma’s cat. Or, more accurately, he was the animal clinic’s version of a guard dog. Sleek and black, Desmond had only one eye and was missing part of an ear. Even though he wasn’t a particularly big cat, his appearance and his demeanor made him seem larger and decidedly imposing. I’d seen him glare a barking golden retriever under a clinic chair. But he’d also sat companionably beside me in the waiting room while Owen and Hercules were being neutered.
“It never occurred to me that Desmond was a Wisteria Hill cat.”
Roma tucked the blankets under one arm and picked up one of the cages with her other hand. I grabbed the remaining cage. She started for the house and I followed.
“Des was almost full-grown when Marcus brought him in. He’s learned to tolerate people, but he hasn’t gotten close to anyone—not the way Hercules and Owen are close to you, although he does seem to like you better than pretty much anyone else.”
I stopped. “Marcus?”