“If that’s what you want. Honey, will you be all right here tomorrow?” Norris asked. “I’m going with Marlene to take Jenny back to St. Cloud, where she goes to school.”
“She’ll be spending the week skiing with friends before school starts,” Marlene added.
“Of course, I’ll be all right. I’ll read, knit, and make lists of what I have to do when I get home. I’ve decided to sell the farm, and I’ll need to talk to a financial adviser. Can you recommend one?”
“I sure can. We’ll talk about it on the way back to Clear Lake.”
• • •
Nelda spent a lazy day in Norris’s apartment. She didn’t get dressed until noon, and in the afternoon fixed herself a lunch of tomato soup and celery with peanut butter. When Norris returned the next morning, Marlene was with him. Looking refreshed after ten hours of sleep, Nelda had risen early, bathed, and was ready to leave.
On the way out of town they took Marlene home. She lived in a lovely Victorian house set on a large lot in an older, well-kept section of the city. The driveway circled to the back of the house, where a carriage house had been converted into a garage. Painted a pale yellow with white trim, the house had gables, fretwork, and a wraparound porch.
“It’s beautiful,” Nelda exclaimed. “This is just the kind of house I want to live in someday.”
“I’m glad you like it.” Marlene turned around in the seat to speak to Nelda. “If you feel the need to
come back before your apartment is available, come stay with me.”
“Thank you. I’m living from day to day right now.”
Before Marlene got out of the car, Norris pulled the calm, beautiful woman close to him and kissed her tenderly.
“I’ll call you tonight, sweetheart. Take care of yourself for me.”
“You too,” she whispered.
Nelda got into the front seat with Norris, and they moved slowly down the drive toward the street. In the rearview mirror he watched Marlene standing in the drive, and waved to her.
Norris seemed to be wrapped up in his own thoughts, as they drove out of the city, and Nelda was reluctant to break into them. They were well on their way south when he turned and smiled tightly at her.
“Thank you for letting me meet Marlene,” Nelda said. “She’s lovely.”
“Yes, she’s lovely, sweet, compassionate—she’s all things to me. I love her more than life.”
“I could tell. She loves you, too.” Nelda sighed. “It must be wonderful to be loved like that.”
“She’s the reason I live part-time in Iowa. I couldn’t bear to be with her all the time and not have her.”
“I . . . sorry—”
“She’s married,” he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “They were in a plane crash. He threw himself over her, saving her life. He has extensive
brain damage and is being kept alive in a care facility. He’ll never recover, and she’ll never divorce him.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Eight years.”
Eight years, the same length of time that she had been alone. But now, she reminded herself, with Lute’s baby growing inside her, she was no longer alone.
“I’m building the house on the lakeshore for her. It’s just the way she wants it,” Norris said quietly. “I keep hoping.”
Before taking Nelda home, Norris stopped at the kennels and went in to get Kelly. The dog wiggled and made little yelping noises in his excitement when he saw Nelda, and could hardly wait for the door to open so he could get into the car. Nelda was glad she didn’t have to face Rhetta’s disapproving eyes.
“I wonder what Rhetta and the others would think if they knew you aren’t the lecher you pretend to be,” Nelda remarked, as they turned down the lane to the farmhouse.
“Give away my secret, and I’ll put a hex on you,” Norris threatened. Then, “Uh-oh. Reckon he’ll punch me in the nose?” he asked when he pulled into the yard and saw Lute’s truck parked beside the barn.
“He comes to tend his horses. He couldn’t care less what I do.”
“That’s a relief. I’d hate to tangle with him if he had his back up.”
The minute the door opened, Kelly raced across
the yard to Lute’s truck, then squeezed himself through the partly open barn door.
Norris carried Nelda’s bag to the house, catching her arm when she slipped on the slick steps.
“You stay in the house, young lady, and off these steps until they are either sanded or salted,” he ordered sternly.
“Yes, Uncle Norris.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Want me to stay until Lute leaves?”
“No. He won’t come to the house. He can hardly stand the sight of me.” She laughed nervously.
“He’s a damn fool.”
• • •
Norris pushed open the barn door and walked down the lane between the rows of stalls to where Lute was combing the mane of his horse. He looked up when Norris approached, but continued to curry.
“Good-looking horse. Tennessee Walker?”
“Yeah.”
“Registered?”
“No. Not pure-blood.”
“Looks like it to me.”
“You know horses?”
“A little bit.”
Lute continued to curry the horse and had hardly looked at Norris until he asked,
“Do you love Nelda?”
Lute’s head came up, and his eyes bored into those of the shorter man. Not a flicker of an expression crossed Lute’s face. When he spoke it was softly.
“What’s it to you?”
Norris shrugged. “Just wondered.”
“I don’t pry into your personal life. I’ll thank you not to pry into mine.”
“You’re right. Sorry. I just didn’t want to be stepping on your toes. See you around, Lute. Come on, Kelly, I’ll put you in the house before I go.”
Lute watched him leave the barn, and, for the first time in his life, he hated the farm, hated himself, and hated being who he was.
• • •
The next week brought a warming trend that melted the ice and made it fairly easy to get around again. Nelda talked several times with Rhetta. Although she didn’t come right out and say so, she clearly didn’t understand Nelda’s friendship with Norris.
She brought up Lute’s name several times in the conversation: Lute and the boys had been pheasant hunting; Lute and Gary were talking about going to Wyoming to hunt deer. Lute had bought a block of tickets to the Valentine’s Day Ball, which was a benefit for the swimming-pool project.
As a favor to Rhetta, Nelda consented to work three afternoons a week for the next three weeks at the library. Being busy made the time go by faster. On her way home from the library, she occasionally stopped at the Lake Crest or Halford’s Cafe and ate dinner so that she’d not have to cook when she got home.
One night, when Nelda was meeting Linda and Eric at Halford’s, she saw Meredith, the Home Ec teacher, sitting in a booth with another woman. Their
eyes met briefly, then when Nelda passed, the teacher deliberately turned her head and refused to look at her. Some little imp in Nelda caused her to speak.
“Hello, Meredith.”
The teacher grunted a reply, and Nelda moved on.
Shortly after Nelda sat down, Linda and Eric came in. Nelda waved and they came back to where she was sitting.
“Hi, Eric. How ya doin’?”
“Fine. Can I come play with Kelly?”
“Anytime you want, sweetheart. Let me help you with your coat.”
While they waited for their order Linda told her the news.
“Eric and I are moving to Iowa City. We’ll not be too far from my sister. Mr. Hutchinson is helping me with my application to nursing school and getting a job in the hospital as a nurses’ aide.”
“That’s wonderful. I’ll be leaving here myself the first part of February.”
“We must keep in touch.” Linda reached across the table and grasped Nelda’s hand. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“We’ll not talk about that. I had the best Christmas I’ve had in a long time . . . thanks to this guy.” She hugged Eric until he wiggled away.
On the way home, Nelda thought how ironic it was that the death of one person would free another. Linda was a loving, giving person who had the cards stacked against her when she was young, then jumped into a hasty marriage with a man who mistreated her.
Linda’s experience convinced Nelda that it was far better to remain single than marry a man who didn’t love her.
The minute she walked into the house she knew that something was not right, even though Kelly had met her at the door as usual. She had put him out on his rope and taken off her coat, when she realized that it was cold in the house and went to check the thermostat. Funny—it was set at the usual seventy-two degrees. Then she noticed that the chair had been pulled away from the table, and there was a glass in the sink.
Had Lute come into her house after she had told him she did not want him here? She could keep him out with the bolt on the inside of the door, but the only way to keep him out when she wasn’t at home was to have the locks changed.
Suddenly uneasy, she went to the porch and called Kelly in. The dog padded to the door leading to the basement and sniffed, then followed her into the bathroom, where she creamed her face, preparing to remove her makeup. When she reached for the tissue box, it wasn’t there.
“Damn. If I believed in ghosts, I’d feel sure I was being haunted by one,” she said to herself.
She looked around and found the box across the room on the corner of the small commode. Puzzled, she brought it back, plucked the tissues she needed, and wiped the cream from her face.
“Ghosts, my foot. You may be losing your mind,” she told the reflection in the mirror as she ran the hairbrush through her short curls.
Sure that she had inserted the bolt when she came into the house, she checked it anyway before she called Kelly and they went up to bed. She yawned on her way up the stairs.
• • •
Something awakened her.
Nelda lay for a moment, then turned over to see her lighted clock. Two-thirty. She lifted her head so that she could listen with both ears. No sound at all. She lay back down. Kelly’s ears were alert to every unusual sound. He would have sounded an alarm had he heard anything.
Kelly. Nelda lifted her head again. Because of the white snow and moonlight coming in the window, it was light enough for her to see that Kelly wasn’t in his bed. She looked on the other side of her bed. He was not there either. It wasn’t unusual for him to go downstairs in the night for a drink of water, but he never stayed down there.
Wide-awake now and with growing anxiety, Nelda got out of bed and switched on the bedside lamp. She pulled on her flannel robe and slid her feet into slippers. Before leaving the bedroom, she reached out into the hallway and switched on the light.
“Kelly,” she called. Then again, “Kelly.”
Her anxiety grew when the dog failed to come to her, and she wished she had not left the gun in the cabinet over the stove. She looked around for something with which to defend herself should it become necessary and remembered the brass-headed walking stick in her grandparents’ room. She had
noticed it when she cleaned the room after Linda and Eric used it.
She hurried quietly along the hall until she reached the room where the heavy, dark walnut stick stood against the wall. Grasping it as an improvised weapon, Nelda tiptoed down the carpeted stairway and stood on the last step, waiting and listening.
“Kelly,” she called again. When they were in the house, he always came to her when she called. Where was he?
Her heart was pounding and her breath was short. She gripped the walking stick, reached around the corner, and switched on the living-room light. Her eyes swept the area, then focused on the kitchen door.
All was quiet.
Nelda moved across the dining room and stood at the side of the kitchen door, vowing never again to go upstairs and leave the gun in the cabinet. Had someone come into the house and hurt Kelly, rendered him unconscious or killed him?
She had to know! Reaching around the corner, she switched on the kitchen light, then with the walking stick drawn back, she peeked into the kitchen.
Kelly lay on his bed beneath the coat hooks. Curled up on the rug beside him was a small person, covered with a blanket. Black overshoes stuck out from under the blanket at one end and shaggy black hair at the other. Kelly’s tail wagged in greeting.
“What in the world?”
The dog was obviously comfortable with whoever it was under the blanket. He looked at Nelda as
if apologizing, and his tail continued to swish back and forth across the floor. The room was cold. Nelda noticed that the basement door was open.
The blanket covering the person, Nelda realized, was the same gray blanket with the red stripes on each end that she had found in the garage and left on the porch. When it disappeared she had put it out of her mind; but it had appeared again, and she had laid it on the steps going to the basement.