When Did We Lose Harriet? (13 page)

She answered without looking at me, as if fascinated by those roiling clouds. “You have to learn to let the other person be who he is, but that takes a lot less adjusting if you like who he is in the first place. Then piddly annoyances stay small. Joe Riddley leaves dirty socks on the floor by our bed, for instance, and I can track him by his trail of dirty glasses, but he’s so fine and honest and sweet—and he puts up with so much in me—that socks and glasses don’t matter much. I’m real fond of the old coot.”

“So you think it’s important to admire and respect the person you marry,” I translated carefully, thinking of some of the things I admired and respected in Morse. He was a good coach to the boys
(except when they lose,
a stupid little
voice whispered), he paid me a lot of attention
(he eats up your life,
nagged that little voice), and he loved me.

Meanwhile, Mac was chuckling. “Admire and respect? Oh, I admire and respect Joe Riddley, but mostly I just downright
like
him.”

“You’re fortunate,” I said softly, wistfully hoping I’d like Morse that much after forty-four years. I thought the conversation was over.

However—”I didn’t get Joe Riddley in a lottery, Josheba, I
picked
him!” she said hotly. “Pick somebody you like, and you’ll enjoy living with him.” She flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so het up. But I need to confess something. Yesterday when I was going back to my room from washing up, I overheard Morse fussing at you about something. Your door was open a little, and he—”

“He was certainly yelling loud enough to be heard.” I felt as embarrassed as she looked. “But the truth is, I’d let his very favorite shirt get wrinkled because I hadn’t done what he told me to—take it straight from the dryer. It was all my fault. And Morse has been under a lot of pressure lately—”

“No matter what you had done or how much pressure he’s been under, honey, he ought not yell at you like that—and you oughtn’t to let him. Has he ever hit you?”

“Of course not!” I said indignantly.

She gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Good. And I can just hear Joe Riddley right now: ‘Stick to your own business, MacLaren. The woman knows her own mind.’” She checked her watch. “I hope we can get me home fast. I promised Glenna a fantastic supper, and I haven’t even decided what to have.” We talked recipes the rest of the way home.

After leaving Mac at her brother’s, I decided to swing by the teen center. Lewis Henly deserved a report on Mac’s
break-in and our visit to Eunice Crawley. Besides, maybe now that he knew one of the librarians personally, he might be open to a summer reading program for the kids.

He sat at his desk, munching peanut-butter crackers and swigging them down with grape cola. “hotshot executive meal?” I asked, raising one eyebrow. “Your roomful of secretaries said to come on in.”

He raised one eyebrow right back. “And I told them not to let anybody in except potential donors.”

“I could donate some time, if you’d let me start a reading program around here.”

“Josheba, these kids don’t want to read. They get reading at school. Next year I want to start a dynamite tutoring program, but I don’t want to drive them away this first summer. They want to read, they can come to your library.” He paused. “That what you came for?”

“No. I came to tell you I just spent the afternoon with Mac. Somebody tried to break into her house last night.”

“No kidding! Was she hurt?”

“No, she scared them away, but she thinks it was Ricky. She figures he was looking for Harriet’s money.”

“Good thing she put it in the bank, then. Want a cracker?”

“No thanks. I also wanted to tell you that Mac and I just visited Harriet’s mother’s sister. Harriet may have gone to visit her mother.”

“Whoop-de-doo.” He twirled one finger in the air. Seeing my face, he looked ashamed of himself—as he ought to. “I really do hope she’s okay, Josheba, but Harriet was such a pain around here, and things are so much more peaceful without her riling people up, that I can’t help being glad she’s found somewhere else to spend her summer.” He stood up. “Speaking about spending time, how about coming out to dinner? I thought all I was going to get was crackers, but if you feel like sharing a pizza, I sure would like to get away for an hour or so. Have to be back later for a basketball game.”

I started to refuse, of course. Morse would throw a fit if he heard I’d had dinner with another man. “I don’t really think—”

Lewis cut me off with one upraised hand. “Not a date. I dropped by the library this afternoon, and they informed me that their Ms. Davidson is engaged to be married to a handsome hunk—I quote—at Christmas. But since you didn’t immediately say ‘I have a date,’ I assume you don’t—at least for dinner. Does your engagement mean you can’t even go to dinner with friends?”

Put that way, it sounded not only harmless, but like an excellent idea. Truth to tell, since I started dating Morse, I hadn’t even been out with
girl
friends much. He liked me to stick close. I hated to admit how much I was enjoying some time to myself that week.

I’d have felt more virtuous, though, if Lewis Henly weren’t so attractive. In a black turtleneck and slacks, he looked like a young priest.

“Hey,” I asked, suddenly suspicious, “you aren’t a preacher in disguise, are you? I don’t even go to
dinner
with preachers.”

He shook his head. “Used to be a lawyer, until last year. What you got against preachers?” He took my arm and led me toward the door.

“I drive,” I informed him. “I’ve got a real liking for air conditioning. And how about if we go to Sinclair’s instead of for pizza? I feel like a salmon salad.”

“You don’t look like a salmon salad, sister, but if you’re driving, you drive where you want to go. Now, what is it you’ve got against preachers?”

I waited until we were on the road before I told him. “What I’ve got against preachers is, my daddy was one, before it got him killed.”

He’d been fiddling with the radio, but he stopped and stared. “Henry Davidson? Used to go around with Martin Luther King?”

“Yeah, before I was born. Dr. King was shot before I made the scene. Daddy got shot when I was nine. Only difference is, Daddy didn’t get statues and streets named after him.”

“But he was a fine man.” Lewis looked at me like he thought I was suddenly somebody, and said in this wondering voice, “I’m going out to eat with Henry Davidson’s daughter. Think of that. You know what? You and I are old friends, Josheba. When I was a little boy, my granny used to go to your daddy’s church. When we came to visit her, I used to see you sitting on the front seat in hair bows and frilly skirts. Your daddy was the first preacher I ever really listened to. Man, could he preach!”

“Yeah.” I always hate it when people talk about Daddy, because mostly what I remember about him is how he died. “Look,” I told Lewis, “if we’re gonna talk about Daddy all night, I don’t want to go. All right?”

“Sure. Whatever you say. No Daddy and no Harriet Lawson. I can handle that.”

We had a terrific time. Sinclair’s is a little restaurant somebody made out of an old Sinclair gas station. It’s decorated in black and white, and has all these old photographs hanging on the walls. The food is delicious, too.

That night, though, I hardly noticed what I ate. Lewis talked about his days as what he called a “hotshot lawyer with more money than sense,” and got me laughing so hard at some of his cases that I nearly wet my pants. I told him a little bit about working in the library and some of the funny things kids say, and he laughed so much he spilled his wine.

After dinner, we split a Bananas Sinclair—bananas, ice cream, brown sugar, butter, rum—oh, it was grand! By the time we’d scooped up all the runny parts from the bowl, I felt like I’d known that brother all my life.

It wasn’t romantic or anything. He didn’t touch me the entire meal, not even hold my elbow as we left the
restaurant. But you know, it just felt good to walk beside him and know we were breathing the same air—together, yet our own selves.

When we got back to the center, he climbed out quickly. “The basketball team’s gonna wonder where I am. Thanks!” He hurried inside.

I drove home slowly, savoring the whole evening. I wouldn’t trade Morse in for Lewis, of course, but Lordy, how that man could talk!

I refused to think about the way my pulse reacted to his last smile.

As twisting the nose produces blood,
so stirring up anger produces strife.
Proverbs 30:33

While Josheba was having fun with Lewis, I—MacLaren—was fixing supper and calling Dee to report on our trip to Eunice’s. When I told her there seemed to be a good chance Harriet was with her mother, Dee was bewildered. “Her mother? She hasn’t seen her mother since she was two.”

“Several people say Harriet’s heard from her lately, though.” I didn’t add that I suspected Harriet’s legacy might have had something to do with her mother’s change of heart.

Instead, I asked when I could bring “a few things of Harriet’s” over, and she suggested Friday morning. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the things were hundred dollar bills.

I was feeling curiously deflated. Maybe it was a reaction to how over-the-moon I’d felt right after Jake’s surgery.
I was certainly concerned about Josheba—that young man of hers worried me. But mostly I was feeling pretty low about not having found Harriet and having to give up the search in the middle. I’ve never liked leaving jobs half done, and it nearly killed me to realize it was entirely possible that I would never know if Myrna came, if Harriet was found, even if Harriet was still alive.

That evening I visited with Jake a few minutes, but he was too drowsy to care if I was there or not. I returned to the waiting room to find Glenna talking with a tall woman with iron gray hair swept back into a soft twist. Her skin was so thin, and her eyes so large and dark, that when I first saw her, all I saw was eyes. From the way she curved over an ebony cane, I suspected she was on the upper side of eighty.

Glenna welcomed me with a happy smile. “MacLaren, honey, I want you to meet my good friend, Lou Ella Sykes. Lou Ella, this is Jake’s sister.”The woman wore a soft blue cotton dress embroidered all up the front. It had probably cost about half as much as I’d spent on my entire shopping spree, and the pearl earrings she wore with it were the size of gumballs. I was so busy admiring her outfit that I scarcely heard Glenna tell her, “I think you’re the only member of your family MacLaren hasn’t met in the two days she’s been here.”

Her big dark eyes bored into mine. “Really? Why is that?” The woman’s voice was musical, with a hint of somewhere other than Alabama.

“She’s been looking for Dee’s niece, Harriet,” Glenna told her.

“Oh?” Lou Ella drew down her fine silver brows. “Why?”

“She’s missing,” I said.

“Missing?” She flapped one hand in dismissal. “Oh, pshaw. She’s probably just gone off again. It’s not the first time.”

I shook my head. “No, but this time she’s not with Ricky Dodd, like she was before.”

Lou Ella was astonished. “How on earth do you know?”

“I went out there looking for her. She’s not with her mother’s sister Eunice, either.”

“No, I don’t suppose she would go there. Harriet’s never had much to do with that side of her family.” Remembering what Eunice had said about Harriet running in and out of her house all the time, and that Harriet might at this minute be with her mother, I figured Lou Ella didn’t know as much as she thought she did about the girl.

Then Lou Ella surprised me. I’d have expected her to sympathize with Dee and William. Instead, she said, “Poor Harriet, she’s had a hard time with William and Dee. She’s been used to a lot of freedom, and they treat her the same way they do Julie, who has been much more delicately reared. I keep telling them that Harriet has to find her own way. Both her mother and her father had wanderlust in their blood. She’s got it too. If I were them, I’d let her have her head a bit more. As for running away, I wouldn’t give it another thought. Perhaps a few days on her own won’t do her any harm.”

“She’s been gone six weeks,” Glenna told her gently.

“Six weeks?” Clearly shocked, Lou Ella’s long fingers seemed to wring the neck of the silver duck at the top of her cane. She turned back to me. “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“I had no idea,” she murmured. “And they haven’t reported her missing?” Her voice dropped as if she were talking to herself. “Of course they haven’t. I would have heard.”

“William refuses to report her missing,” I told William’s grandmother frankly, “and unless he does, I don’t think the police will do a thing.”

Lou Ella’s eyes grew even bigger and darker with worry. “I suppose—” she began, then shook her head. “No, it’s unforgivable. Somebody ought to have looked for her.”

“The thing I find the hardest to understand,” Glenna told her, “is that nobody, absolutely nobody, seems to remember the last time they saw her. It’s as if she has vanished from the face of the earth.”

The old woman quivered with indignation. “Then we must find her.” Her face wore a stricken look. “Not one of us ever gave that child a second thought. Now, I’m very much afraid we are going to have to answer for it.”

Glenna decided to sleep in her own bed that night. On our way home, the storm broke over us like an egg. Long jagged lightning brightened the sky through a perfect deluge. We hadn’t taken umbrellas, of course, so we were soaked between the car and the house. We dashed inside and dried off, then Glenna went straight to bed.

I was still reading when the telephone rang. I leaped from my bed and hurried through the dark house to answer it in the kitchen before it woke her. It was probably Joe Riddley again, or somebody from the church. Hopefully it wasn’t another volunteer opportunity Jake had kindly left me.

“Crane residence,” I said softly. “This is MacLaren, Jake’s sister.”

Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. A loud whisper hissed through the receiver to fill my ear:
You’ll never find Harriet Lawson. Harriet Lawson is dead!