I threw on my pink crochet hat and insulated coat to ward against the blustery November wind, then limped my way toward the shop. Leaves crunched in an uneven pattern beneath my feet. Limp, step. Limp, step. The pungent smell of late autumn filled the air.
I crossed the tracks, hardly glancing up, lost in analyzing the coffee girl’s facial jewelry fixation. If she was willing to offer such a countenance to the community, her thinking dipped even below my own cloudy level. At least I kept my societal blemishes hidden. But I supposed there was a place for the coffee girls of the world. Somebody had to make the rest of us feel better. Compared to her, I had my life together.
The door jangled as it opened. Warm, java-scented air rushed past into the street, and I scurried to put the plate-glass door between me and the frosty morning.
The nose-ring attendant was nowhere in sight. I grabbed a Styrofoam cup off the stack and filled it with raspberry coffee. I added some chocolate creamer and stirred.
Mmmm.
The sweet steam loosened up my sinuses. A drip of condensation formed on the tip of my nose. I dabbed at it with a napkin from the counter as I waited to pay.
After a minute, I decided the coffee girl must not have heard me come in.
“Hello?” I called.
The sound of shuffling came from the back room.
I waited. Good service in a small town was optional.
A minute later, a young blonde with a blotchy red-and-white face made an appearance.
“Sorry about that. Can I help you?” she asked, wiping her cheeks with the back of one wrist.
“Uh, sure.” I set my cup on the counter and poked around in my coat for a few dollars. “Coffee and that sticky bun back there, please.” I pointed at a supersized caramel roll sprinkled with nuts.
She plucked a piece of waxed paper from a box and reached for the breakfast treat. I studied her profile, a tad envious of the gold and diamonds that dangled from her ears and neck. First impressions said she was around eighteen, smart in school, and from a highfalutin middle-class family. No facial jewelry allowed in that household.
Curiosity got the best of me. “I guess I was expecting someone else this morning. Are you new here?”
She swallowed, obviously holding back tears. “I’m filling in for the owner’s daughter.”
In my mind, Coffee Girl made the jump from High School Flunky to Indulged Only Child. I felt like snorting. If this were my shop, would I let my daughter wait on people with her face full of sterling silver?
I tried not to snoop, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Is she on vacation?”
The attendant’s lip quivered and a tear chugged down one cheek. “Casey died yesterday. I’m helping out ’til her mom gets things together.”
A chill swept through my body. My legs tried buckling beneath me. I grabbed the smooth wood countertop and steadied myself.
The coffee girl had a name. Casey. I’d never even introduced myself.
Every unkind thought I’d had toward the girl swirled through my mind, and I knew that she would have been ten times harder on herself.
Please don’t let it be suicide.
I blinked hard and took a deep breath. “I am so sorry. Was there an accident?”
A million ways to die flashed through my mind. Quick and painless, long and agonizing, smooth and peaceful, abrupt and shocking. None seemed appropriate for a young woman of eighteen.
But then, death had no manners.
The attendant toyed with my sticky bun on the counter. “They don’t know what happened. Her little girl tried to wake her up, but she couldn’t. They’re doing an autopsy.”
My heart lurched. Casey had a little girl? And now Casey was dead, and the child an orphan. At least the poor thing had her grandmother. They’d make it through.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again, devoid of further words of comfort. I grabbed my sticky bun and coffee and hustled out the door, rushing to get away from death before it could latch on to me.
I walked home without seeing anything but my feet on concrete, then blacktop, then dying brown grass. I went inside. I wanted to push the world away. To crawl into my cot and make everything disappear. To plug my ears and block out the droning automobiles, rumbling trains, and barking dogs that proved life went on even without the dearly departed.
Instead, I leaned against the kitchen counter and ate my sticky bun and drank my coffee. A final swallow, then I tossed my cup and napkin in the trash.
I propped my elbows on the sink to take the pressure off my bad foot, and looked out the kitchen window at the catalpa tree. Its twisted, gnarled branches were like skeleton fingers reaching for me . . . Help me end the pain, Tish. The voice echoed in my mind like a remembered dream.
I jerked upright and shook my head.
Grandma was laid to rest. There was no reason to keep bringing her back to life. There was no reason to fear the dead.
Yet at the thought, a prickle crept over my skin. I turned slowly toward the basement door.
17
The old wooden door was the only thing that separated me from the body in my basement. I wanted nothing more than to grab a sledgehammer and smash the cistern to smithereens and prove to myself there was nothing but dirt and stones beneath that lump of white.
But I knew I’d never make it down the steep stairway with my leg in its crippled state. Besides, I didn’t even own a sledgehammer.
I pounded a fist on the counter. There was no body in my basement. There was nothing to investigate.
“Leave me alone,” I yelled toward the basement. I jumped at the echo of my voice in the empty house.
I grabbed at my temples, hoping to get a handle on my mind. But the more I tried to block it out, the more insistent the image in the concrete became.
A ball of anger lodged in my throat.
I hobbled to the basement door and fumbled with the slide bolt.
I threw the door open. It crashed against the back wall. Plaster dust drifted into an empty stairwell.
“Stop acting like a three-year-old afraid of the dark,” I chastised myself. “There’s nothing in your basement.” A thump sounded behind me in the kitchen. I twirled and screamed, sure I would see the cistern-dweller, wailing like a banshee, hair wild and clothes tattered from the grave.
But it was only David, standing in the middle of the stain-splotched linoleum.
I massaged my neck, that bare place between my shoulders and head that used to be hidden by hair. I could only hope David hadn’t heard me talking to myself.
“What are you doing here already?” The words popped out before I could stop them from sounding rude. I had at least nine hours to pull myself together before our scheduled date. How dare he arrive early?
“Sorry to startle you. I came by to drop this off.” A key dangled from one hand.
I reached for it. “What’s this for?”
He smiled and a dimple formed on one cheek. “It’s your house key, actually.” He looked around the kitchen. “Are you well? I looked through the window and you seemed distressed. I came in to help, if you needed it.”
I blinked hard, trying to imagine what a dork I must have looked like from his angle on the porch. Skinny me, braced at the top of the cellar steps, talking to myself about an empty basement.
“Everything’s great.” I rocked back on my good heel and swung my arms. “You know how it is. Me and the family ghosts were just working things out.”
“Oh.” David stared at me. “Is that a new style you’ve got there?”
On instinct, my hand reached for my head. “Just a couple days old. What do you think?”
“Superb. It really sets off the green of your eyes.”
“Thanks.” I got that warm fuzzy feeling that came with a well-phrased compliment.
But somewhere in my muddled brain, it finally registered why David had come over. “So. You had my house key. How come?”