Chapter 5 #2
Evelyn wrinkled her nose, but Georgie laughed.
It was those two, Christine, and one other woman, named Sharon, who was in her seventies and only helped welcome the rare newcomer so she could snoop in their houses.
She’d almost certainly been in the parsonage before, but the old house was shining with a new coat of white paint, and I could see a few of the railings on the porch had been replaced.
In the golden gleam of the autumn light, it looked almost charming, even with its flower beds bare of anything but mulch.
Christine took the lead up the porch, with nosy Sharon on her heels, then Evelyn and Georgie, and me bringing up the rear.
I hovered on the edge of the top step as she knocked; it was answered barely a breath later, as if the person behind it had been waiting.
There was a general shuffle backward, which nudged my heels over the lip of the stair into space.
I glanced down to check my footing, and when I looked up again, Norman Abdee was standing in the doorway.
I was vaguely aware of Christine’s bright voice at the edge of my perception, the on-cue chorus of niceties from our group, the waft of stale, mildewed air that belatedly followed the opening of the door, but it all felt very far away. The only thing I could really see and really hear was him.
He was not as I’d known him, of course—his hair was steely gray and there were hard lines around his mouth, a sagging pouch beneath his Adam’s apple, a slight paunch where muscle had run to middle-aged softness.
But his shoulders were still broad and his eyes were the same stony blue, and I only realized how hard I was shaking when an apple tipped out of my basket and rolled across the porch.
Norman bent and picked it up, his large hand enveloping the lustrous dark flesh. He buffed it lightly on his sleeve and looked up at me; I waited for the jolt of recognition, but the polite smile on his face never changed.
“Oh, whoops,” Christine was saying. “That’s Tess. She’s our animal control officer and she has a beautiful wildlife sanctuary up on the hill, and she grows amazing produce.”
“Tess, nice to meet you,” he said. My body unlocked, and I gasped in a breath.
It was not Norman. The voice was all wrong, loud and booming, and the accent was the familiar, clipped attenuation of Western New York rather than the Kansas drawl I remembered.
And of course it wasn’t Norman, couldn’t be him—Norman must be forty years dead, nothing more than worm food. Which meant this must be—
His grandson.
Yes, that must be it. This was Norman’s grandson, and he had no idea who I was. How would he, after all? It’s not as though Norman would’ve had pictures of me.
I swallowed hard, my dry throat clicking. “Nice to meet you,” I managed.
Blessedly, Christine recaptured the pastor’s attention again. I sagged against a porch pillar, my flight response receding and leaving trembling weakness in its place. Georgie turned and frowned at me, mouthing, Are you okay?
I summoned up a brisk nod and a thumbs-up, and she turned back around, listening to whatever Christine was saying. A moment later, Norman—Zeke, I reminded myself—said, “Why don’t you all come inside?”
They all shambled through the doorway after him, and I trailed along numbly, not trusting my own voice to make an excuse for myself.
I didn’t want to draw attention, and part of me was certain that if I started to plead out, I’d simply flee.
Inside, the house was exactly as I imagined all parsonages must have been—plain white walls, dark wood trim, the faint, warring smells of mold and bleach.
The décor amounted to a rough wooden crucifix and a couple needlepoint Bible verses.
Just stay quiet and keep your head down, I told myself. Get through this and—
“Honey!” Zeke boomed, and I ducked like a gun had gone off over my head. “We have guests!”
Despite the fact that I remembered her obituary from thirty years ago, there was a part of me that expected Laura Macoun to emerge.
Far from the stout, corn-fed girl who had been engaged to Norman, the woman who appeared was a scrap of a thing.
I stood a full head taller than her, and her narrow shoulders seemed to pull in even tighter when she saw us.
She had a sharp, elfin chin, sunken cheeks, a large, sloping forehead, and hazel eyes that bulged in her small face.
Her hair was mousy and thin, pulled into a low ponytail that made her look childish despite the lines in her skin.
She was followed by a boy, and had I not already experienced the shock of seeing Zeke, the boy would have sent me reeling.
He was the spitting image of Norman as I’d known him—still growing into his frame, but he had the same curling dark hair and crooked grin and big hands.
The only thing he seemed to have taken from his mother was the color of his eyes, which were a woodland palette of soft brown and green, nothing like Norman’s stone blue.
Zeke went over to his wife and put his arm around her shoulders. “Honey, I told you you’d love it here. These great folks came over just to welcome us.”
She smiled at us, revealing two rows of small teeth that bucked inward toward her tongue. “Thank you so much for coming. This is just what we hoped for when we moved here—people who share our values and still know how to be neighbors.”
The assumption—and the phrasing—made my skin crawl, but Georgie stepped forward, shifting her casserole dish to one arm and extending her free hand. “Georgie,” she said briskly; I knew she hated when wives didn’t introduce themselves.
“Oh, this is Rachel,” Zeke said. Rachel gingerly took Georgie’s hand, and Georgie pumped it vigorously enough that the other woman winced.
“And this is my son, David.”
The boy waved awkwardly, smiling Norman’s crooked smile, and ducked his head. “Nice to meet you all.”
There was another bit of shuffling as everyone deposited their casseroles and platters on the kitchen counter, and then Sharon said, “Rachel, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful quilted jacket on the coatrack. Are you a quilter?”
To my surprise, Rachel’s pinched face lit up. “I am, actually—I was working on something new before you arrived. Not many women have any interest in quilting anymore. Would you like to see it?”
I was one such woman who had no interest in quilting, but apparently I was the only one, because in short order I found myself in the kitchen with no one but Zeke and David, still clutching my basket of fruit.
“Would you like me to take that?” David asked.
“Oh, sure.” I thrust the basket in his direction, then realized I’d have nothing to do with my hands when he took it. He wrested it gently from me, his eyes meeting mine questioningly over the top of the handle when I didn’t release it at first.
“The apples are Black Oxfords,” I said when the silence was too much. “They’re an heirloom variety, so you might find—well, they’re an acquired taste if you’re used to apples from the grocery store.”
David took an apple from the basket, buffed it on his sleeve like his father had, and bit into it; I looked away. “Mm,” he said thoughtfully. “Yeah, it’s sweet, but there’s a little bit of—I don’t know. Cinnamon, almost?”
“I always thought allspice, but yeah.”
He took another bite, the scent of the apple reaching me in the stale kitchen. I couldn’t look at this boy; every movement and glance reminded me of Norman, bringing up memories and thoughts I shouldn’t have.
The pastor cleared his throat, propping himself against the linoleum counter and folding his arms loosely. “So, Tess,” he said, “Christine said you have a wildlife sanctuary?”
In my periphery, I saw David perk up. “Yes, I’m a licensed wildlife rehabilitator,” I said.
“And what does that entail?”
“Oh, well, a lot of cleaning up poop, honestly. Lots of waking up through the night to do infant feedings. Then there’s wound care, giving antibiotics, giving baths, that kind of stuff.
That’s the day-to-day, and you have to kind of love it on its own, because compared to that, the release days are few and far between. ”
“Ah,” Zeke said. “Doesn’t sound like it would pay the bills. What does your husband do?”
“I’m not married. I’m the town’s animal control officer. That’s what pays the bills.”
The pastor made a noncommittal noise. “But the town doesn’t own the sanctuary?”
“No,” I said, a sharp note creeping into my voice. “It’s my private property.”
“It sounds really cool,” David said eagerly. “Do you ever need volunteers? I used to walk dogs at the shelter where we lived before.”
“Uh, well, I don’t have a volunteer program at the moment. It’s been a long time since anyone asked. But if I come up with anything, I could let you know?”
“There must be someplace in town that already has a volunteer program,” Zeke said.
“Sure,” I agreed awkwardly. “No shortage of people or places around here that need help.”
There was a long, brittle moment of silence. Finally, David said, “Didn’t you need to ask Tess about the squirrels in the attic, Dad?”
The boy’s tone was mild, but there was a belligerent glint in his eye as he said it.
Zeke chuckled harshly, shaking his head.
“My son seems to think we should call a ‘professional’ just because we have some rodents in the attic. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think it’s overkill to go calling someone when I can just buy some traps at the hardware store.
I’m sure you have bigger fish to fry than some squirrels, right? ”
I’d heard some variation of this spiel dozens, maybe hundreds of times, but it never failed to rankle me. People—men, really—only seemed to think it was a matter of skill or self-sufficiency rather than the life or death of an animal.
“Pest removal is actually a huge part of what I do,” I said evenly. “Squirrels, rats, possums, bats, you name it. I can take in whole families and make sure they relocate successfully.”