Chapter Thirty-six
After the owner of the fabric store walked away, still beaming with wonder and joy, Ellen crouched down by the pot again and took up her trowel to dig. But Abby stopped her from getting back to work again by saying, “You think it was Mitch, don’t you?”
Ellen looked over at her. “Who bought her store? Yeah. Don’t you?”
“Well, the way she described him,” Abby said, “that’s what he was wearing when I saw him.”
Ellen looked startled. “You saw Mitch?”
Quickly, and without quite lying, Abby said, “You know! Before you all came out of Sam’s. When I was across the street with that old man. I saw Mitch get out of his car and go inside.”
“Oh.” Ellen laughed a little, as if in relief. It was a reaction that told Abby a lot about her family and friends’ concern for a reunion nobody thought was any good for her. If she had felt even slightly tempted to confide in Ellen, Abby squelched it then.
“Right,” her sister said. “I forgot. And you don’t think he saw you?”
“Nope.”
They both glanced over to where the pizza restaurant was still in the dark. It had been the most heavily damaged of any building save Abby’s barn/greenhouse.
“You knew something was up even before she described him, though,” Abby said, a little accusingly. “What else do you know, Ellen?”
Her sister drew her upper lip in between her teeth and worried it, a habit she’d had since childhood, which Abby translated to mean that Ellen knew something and wasn’t sure whether to tell her.
“What?” Abby demanded. “It’s about Mitch, isn’t it?”
Ellen shrugged a little. “I’m not sure. But Terianne isn’t the only person who has been telling me about somebody poking around town inquiring about properties for sale. When we were in the Wagon Wheel this morning?” The sisters had met there for coffee. “I heard a rumor that Joe Mason sold that little shacky office of his-just like that, on the spot-to some unnamed buyer who also sounded a lot like Mitch.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was just a rumor, Abby.”
“You’ve got to tell me what you hear about him!”
Ellen looked surprised at her sister’s sudden vehemence, but she said appeasingly, soothingly, “Okay.”
Abby backed off a little, not wanting her sister to suspect that something irrevocable had already happened. She wasn’t going to tell anybody, not her sister, not any of her friends, ever, that she had already fallen into bed with Mitch. Like the tornado that had blown through her life, in Abby’s view that night had been a one-time, extraordinary occurrence that was totally over and that would never happen again.
“What do you think he’s doing?” Abby asked in a fretful tone.
“I don’t know.” When she saw Abby’s skeptical look, Ellen protested, “I don’t!”
“He’s only supposed to be visiting. He’s not supposed to be doing anything that means he has to come back. So why is he buying properties all over town?”
“Well, so far it’s not all over town, it’s just downtown.”
“I didn’t mean it literally, Ellen! I just meant it-”
“Okay.”
Abby gave her sister a shamefaced look. “I’m sorry, it’s just-”
“It’s okay, Abs, really.”
With a struggle, Abby managed to ask more calmly, “So what do we think he’s up to?”
“There’s only one way I know to find out,” Ellen said. “What the hell, I’m the mayor, I’ll just ask him.”
“No!” Abby panicked at the idea of her sister talking to Mitch, because what if he gave away their awful secret, that they had slept together? She didn’t think he’d actually tell Ellen, but her sister might read undercurrents. “I’ll do it! I’ll ask him.”
“You will? Abby, you don’t have to do this. I can do it.”
“No! I want to. I mean, I don’t want to…but I should do it so I can get it over with. I mean, if he’s going to be in town, then I’m probably going to have to see him eventually, right? So let me do it on purpose, let me plan it and do it my way, so he doesn’t take me by surprise again.”
“Again?”
Abby’s face flushed. “Monday night…seeing him on the street…” Desperately, she looked around for a conversational diversion. “Speaking of streets, what’s with all the traffic? I haven’t seen this many cars downtown since the Founder’s Day parade.”
“It’s that tabloid article.” Ellen smiled down at the dirt.
“You’re kidding. People believe that stuff? They’d actually drive here to see?”
“Believe it? You heard Terianne, didn’t you? She thinks the Virgin sent Mitch to buy her store.” Ellen laughed a little. “You notice how many handicapped stickers there are on those cars?”
“My God, they’re coming here to get cured by the Virgin?”
Ellen looked at a vanload of senior citizens driving past and waved back when one of them waved at her. “I think so.”
“Well, you’re the mayor, can’t you tell them to go home?”
“Go home? And drive all this business away? Abby, they’ll eat at the Wagon Wheel. They’ll buy groceries at Anderson’s. They’ll stay at the motels. They’ll buy gas. This is the best thing that’s happened to Small Plains since barbed wire.”
“But it’s not right.” Frowning, Abby stared back at her sister.
“Why not? If it gives them hope and a little happiness?”
“And then disappoints them and wastes their money-”
“But Abby,” Ellen said, reasonably. “You’ve heard the stories, too.”
“Yeah, but-”
“And you can’t prove they aren’t true.”
“You can’t prove they are true.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Ellen, that’s a terrible attitude!” Abby stood up. She threw her own trowel down onto the pavement and it landed with a clatter that made her sister jump. “This is wrong. It’s wrong to lead desperate people on! It’s wrong to give them hope when there isn’t any hope. It’s criminal. It’s…wrong.” Tears came to her eyes, and her voice began to shake. “People get lonely and they get desperate and they’ll cling to anything that gives them hope, and they just want to feel better, they just want to make all the misery go away, and it’s just not right to take advantage of them when they’re feeling that way, it’s just not right, Ellen!”
As her sister stared up at her, Abby’s voice broke on a sob.
Without another word, she turned on her heel and ran away, before Ellen could figure out that she wasn’t really talking about sick people and the Virgin, she was crying about herself and Mitch. Down the sidewalk she raced, through the pedestrians, who turned to look after her, wondering what in the world would make such a pretty young woman so unhappy on such a lovely day.
As luck would have it, when Abby had run almost three full blocks, she spied a new black foreign-looking automobile signaling for a left turn that would take it right in front of her when she crossed the next street.
Seeing who was behind the wheel, Abby ran faster.
The driver, not seeing her, began his turn onto Main Street.
His brakes squealed when she stepped out in front of his car.
Mitch stopped midway in his turn and stared at Abby as she ran up to his window.
He didn’t get to say a word before she started screaming at him.
“What do you think you’re doing, Mitch? Why did you buy Terianne’s store? Why did you buy Joe Mason’s building? What are you doing, buying up properties? What do you want? Why did you come back?” Tears rolled down Abby’s furious face. “And why don’t you just leave again? Just go away and don’t ever come back, just like you meant to do seventeen years ago. Why are you coming back and shaking everything up again? I want you to leave! This is my town! I want you to go away and never come back! Nobody wants you here! I don’t want you! You don’t belong here anymore!”