“I look different now. I’m older, and she”—Flo pointed at her sister—“treats me bad. She keeps me away from people.”
On the thin edge of fury, Esther said through clenched teeth, “Flo, that is enough!”
Susan stepped between Flo and Esther. She engaged Flo while Harry moved Esther a slight distance from her very loud sister.
“Esther, can we help you?” Harry asked.
Esther’s face crumpled in relief. “I don’t know what to do. We were getting along pretty good. Flo wanted to do Christmas and—” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“Miss Mercier, why don’t Susan and I try to get her in your car? I mean Mrs. Toth.”
Esther’s eyes misted over. “I’m afraid she’ll jump out when I start driving.”
“Let’s try.” Harry was thinking of alternatives if Esther’s prediction came true.
She decided if worse came to worst she and Susan could drive Flo home.
Having greatly calmed Flo while exhausting herself, Susan was grateful as the other women approached her.
“Miss Rice.” Harry used her brightest voice. “It will be dark soon, traffic is fearsome, we thought we’d go home, too. Just way too many people. Maybe you should convince Miss, I mean, Esther to go, too.”
A beady look crossed Flo’s face. “Oh, she won’t be happy until she spends tons of money.”
“I promise I won’t spend a thing.” Esther managed a smile. “Harry’s right, it’s going to be a mess. If we leave now, we’ll get home at a reasonable hour. If we wait, we’ll sit in traffic.”
“I don’t know.” Then a determined look came over Flo. “Don’t talk to me anymore about Cletus Thompson.”
Esther led the way across the parking lot to her car. “I won’t. We’ll talk about whatever you wish.” She slid behind the wheel.
Harry opened the passenger door while Susan, quietly taking Flo’s elbow, guided her in. Before the difficult woman ducked her head in, Flo whispered loudly, “She keeps me from everyone. Don’t believe a word she says.”
That same evening—still cold, with low clouds—Fair reached home an hour after sundown, early for him. Often when he’d cross the threshold, the man was so tired he’d gratefully sit down at the kitchen table. Harry usually knew when he would be arriving home. He was good about calling ahead, so oftentimes upon his arrival supper was on the table.
Harry never minded preparing meals alone, whether it was for her husband, the horses, the cats, or the dog. While not the superb cook that Miranda was, she excelled at the basics. In wintertime, one needed basics. As they ate, both discussed their days.
“Did you see the weather report?” Fair cut into a pork chop.
“Cold. Temperature won’t break freezing maybe even until after Christmas. That’s unusual.”
“For us.” He smiled. “Imagine living in Minnesota.”
“I don’t know how those northern states do it. The electric and heat bills alone would bankrupt you.” Harry paid the monthly bills, and winter’s bills skyrocketed.
“I guess they plan for it.” He thought for a moment. “How can you plan for Mother Nature’s revenge? Even with sophisticated weather predictions, they’re often wrong and, boy, what a mess.”
She switched the subject. “I can’t get that episode in the parking lot out of my mind. It wasn’t violent, nothing too grotesque was said, but how do you reason with someone who is unreasonable? Flo Rice was like a wizened child.”
Fair folded his hands in his lap, leaned back a little. “You can’t reason with the unreasonable. You try to manage them. With a horse, if I can get close enough I stick him with a tranquilizer. Can’t really do that with a person unless you’re in a hospital or some kind of home. Maybe not even then.”
“You know, honey, that’s the one thing that scares me the most, my mind unraveling.”
He smiled at the woman he’d known all his life. “Harry, no one in your family has ever suffered from dementia or Alzheimer’s. You aren’t going to be the first. You might drive me to it, but you’ll be fine.”
“You’ll pay for that.” She reached across the table as though to stab him with her fork.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m bigger.”
“You have to sleep sometime.”
This made them both laugh, then Fair said, “Something you reported made me wonder, though. Esther asking why her sister put her name on the needy list at St. Cyril’s. And you heard Flo say she’s being kept away from people? Maybe that’s why she snuck her name on the list.”
“She didn’t say it exactly like that, but it was the sense of it. Flo doesn’t go to St. Cyril’s anymore. She says she left the church when they removed Latin from the service. That was one of the things she banged on about when Susan and I dropped off food and clothing.”
“That is odd. Who knows what wires are getting crossed in her brain.”
“I thought of that, too, Fair, and then I thought of a bit of history I was reading about the wife of Nixon’s attorney general. Martha Mitchell told the truth and media painted her as a crazy alcoholic.”
“It’s done every day, especially now. But it doesn’t seem to me there’s anything Flo knows of import. No reason to keep her from people. If Esther took her out to see Christmas decorations, she’s obviously not hiding her or keeping her hidden away.”
“And Flo has a car, but there was something about that fuss in the parking lot that’s bothering me and I don’t know what.”
“Honey, seeing anyone lose their clarity is unsettling.”
“You’re right, as usual.”
“Oh, she can tell a fib!” Pewter called out from the floor.
“Not a fib. Managing your husband,” Tucker sensibly replied.
“Rather manage him than her.” Mrs. Murphy batted a small yellow ball with rattles inside to Pewter.
“Ha.” Pewter whacked it across the kitchen.
The humans watched the cats chase the ball and each other.
“I often envy them.” Harry admired the cats’ delight.
“Me, too,” said Fair.
“Still no news on Lou?” she asked.
“No. He truly is missing.”
“I’d like to pay my respects to Arden, see if there’s anything I can do, but I think I’d get in the way.”
“Best to wait until we know something.”
Harry shivered for a second, then said, “Someone walked over my grave.”
“Let’s not talk about graves.”
Later, when their humans watched a movie, the cats retrieved the pork paper, the chop bones. Harry hadn’t put them in the garbage yet. She’d put them in a Ziploc bag, dropping it in the sink. She figured she’d remove the enticing-smelling things later, and she was tired of cleaning up knocked-over garbage cans.
The animals took the food to the appointed place, slipped into the barn. It was not really warm but warm enough, and they waited.
Odin trotted across the back pastures about an hour later, happy for the pickings.
Mrs. Murphy, Pewter next to her, called down to the coyote from the hayloft, “How you doing?”
“Fine.”
“If I go up the old farm trail in the walnut forest, how far before I reach the bones?” Mrs. Murphy asked.
Devouring another piece of corn bread, Odin swallowed again, then spoke, “If you go about halfway up, there’s another narrow trail, a deer trail that cuts across the old truck road. Go left on the deer trail, uh, quarter mile at most. You’ll see the tree uprooted. You can’t miss it.” He waited, then smiled. “I can take you there.”
“Odin, I appreciate that, but you’d eat me in a minute.” Mrs. Murphy stared down.