“Skye sure liked cars.” I wanted to keep her talking, thaw the frozen look on her face. “Tell me about those Volkswagen Beetles he started on.”
A small smile touched her eyes and lips. “For his twelfth birthday, he asked his daddy for a Beetle he could tear down and rebuild. He saved his allowance and lawn-mowing money to buy parts. When he finally got it running, his daddy had to take it for its test drive, because Skye was too young. But it ran. Skye sold it for a good profit and used his money to buy another, plus parts to fix it. After he’d rebuilt and sold that one, folks with Beetles started bringing theirs by. His mama and daddy got tired of car parts lying all over their lawn—who wouldn’t? His father was a dentist, and they lived in a real nice subdivision. So his daddy said he’d have to quit. Instead, Skye begged him to sign the papers to rent a warehouse where he could work. Skye wasn’t even fifteen yet. He worked every afternoon and weekend, and by the time he went to college, he’d rebuilt and repaired enough Beetles to pay a lot of his own way.”
“Oh!” Gwen Ellen pressed her hand to her mouth. “I must call his folks.” She sat forward and looked around like she couldn’t remember where she kept the phone.
I pushed her back. “Not right this minute. Pour us each another cup of tea. Tell me again about you and Skye getting together.”
She bent to the teapot like she was glad to have something to do. When both our cups were full, she relaxed against the cushions again. “Skye was in my sophomore history class, and from the very first day, I thought he was the handsomest
thing.
We didn’t have a man in Hope County who looked that good to me.”
I was glad she’d added the last two words. I might have had to correct her, widow or not.
“He kept looking at me, too, and on the third day he offered to buy me a Co-cola after class. We went for a walk and all he talked about was cars, and I told him I practically grew up in a motor company. I didn’t really, of course . . . ,” she added. She certainly hadn’t. I doubted if she was ever in the business as a child, except to ask her daddy for money. “Anyway, after that we were always together. We got pinned in November, engaged in February, and married in June, after he graduated. I never loved anybody except Skye. Never.” She set her cup on the coffee table and polished her small engagement diamond with her right forefinger. The stone was nowhere near as big as Skye could have afforded later, but I knew how she felt about it. I looked down and found I was unconsciously polishing my own ring.
“Tomorrow is the thirtieth anniversary of when we got engaged.” Her voice was rough with tears.
Surely that was the cruelest thing of all.
I set down my own tea and gathered her into my arms. “Oh, honey.”
She laid her head on my shoulder with a strangled little sob. “He’s not really dead, is he? Didn’t I just imagine it? Isn’t this a bad dream?”
“No, honey. You didn’t imagine it.”
She drew away from me and covered her face with her hands. “It’s not fair,” she whispered. “It’s just not fair.” Tears trickled between her fingers.
The best thing I knew to do was sit there and let her cry her heart out.
Finally she took two deep breaths and leaned against the fat pillows. Her cheeks were trailed with tears and her lashes wet. “I loved him, Mac. I gave my whole life to that man.”
“Of course you did, honey. And he gave his to you. That’s what marriage is about.”
She sat up straight and demanded fiercely, “So why did he leave me?”
Her anger at poor Skye caught me by surprise. “He didn’t leave you on purpose, even if that’s what it feels like.” Was that the right thing to say? I sure wished I’d taken that course at church on stages of grief. It seemed to me, from what I’d picked up from thumbing through the book, that Gwen Ellen was whipping through several stages at a fantastic rate.
“Where is Skell?” she cried, pressing both temples as if her head would explode. “I want Skell.”
A car came up the drive. I hurried to the window, but it was just one of the women from our Sunday school class. Behind her came another. “You’ve got company,” I informed her. “Do you want to see them?”
She joined me at the window, then heaved a sigh. “I’ll have to, I guess. I can’t be rude.” She turned to peer in a mirror over a small table. “I look a mess.”
“Go fix your face again and come down when you’re ready.”
Within half an hour the room was full of people who’d brought potato salad, sliced ham, fried chicken, fruit salads, casseroles, and homemade cakes and pies. None of them cared if Gwen Ellen had a full-time cook. Food in the South is the currency of caring.
I helped Tansy find places for it in the refrigerator and on the countertops while Gwen Ellen talked in a flat, dead voice and told as much as she knew of what was going on.
When the back door opened, I thought it was yet another woman arriving. Instead, Joe Riddley stood there holding a green pet carrier. “What do you feed a ferret?”
Tansy yelped. “Get that filthy thing outta my clean kitchen. I told Skell he couldn’t bring it here, and I meant it. Get it out. Now.” She flapped both hands in Joe Riddley’s direction.
He was so startled, he dropped the carrier. The door flew open and something long and dark flowed over my feet and into the pantry.
“Dang it, that door wasn’t latched right.” Joe Riddley had the nerve to glare at
me.
I glared back, wishing I could climb up on top of a counter without looking as silly as Tansy did standing on that kitchen chair. “What was that thing, again?”
“A ferret,” Joe Riddley snapped. “And look what you’ve made me do.” He went to the pantry door and peered in. “Does it bite?”
“How should I know?”
“I wasn’t asking you, Little Bit. I was asking Tansy. Tansy, does that thing bite?”
“How should I know?” she echoed. “I told Skell when he bought it I wasn’t having it in this house, and I meant it. Get it out of here.”
“I take it Skell wasn’t home.” I edged toward one of the chairs and sat down, propping my feet on the seat of another.
“Nope. The place is a mess, and the creature was out of food and water. I couldn’t just leave it there.” He squatted down and peered toward a far corner of the pantry. “Come here, little feller. Come here.” He dragged the carrier to the pantry door and held it open. I watched nervously. Nothing happened.
“Where’s the broom?” he demanded over his shoulder.
“In the corner of the pantry.” Tansy didn’t offer to leave her chair to fetch it. She was even holding up her skirt with one hand, as if the ferret might leap up and cling to it.
Now that she’d mentioned it, my denim skirt was drooping down between the chairs. I tucked it around my knees. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the creature, but the little bit I’d seen resembled a cross between a weasel and a rat. Neither are on my favorite-creatures list.
Joe Riddley got the broom and headed into the pantry. “Come here, Little Bit, and guard the door. If he tries to get through, grab him.”
“Grab him yourself,” I replied. But I warily stood up and went to peer around him. Under a bottom shelf I saw two bright eyes. “I’ll prop chairs across the door,” I offered. As I dragged two kitchen chairs and made as good a barrier as I knew how, I couldn’t help thinking that Skye MacDonald would never have asked Gwen Ellen to grab a ferret while he chased it with a broom. “Okay, see if you can get him into the carrier.”
Joe Riddley swiped with the broom. Like liquid fur, the ferret darted from under the shelf, oozed through my barrier, slithered across my foot again, and headed up the back stairs.
I collapsed in my chair and waited to die.
Did my loving husband give me comfort while I recovered from that near heart attack? No. The guardian of my well-being roared, “You let him get away, dagnabit. You let him get right past you.”
“Well whoop-de-do. Did you expect me to grab him with my bare hands?”
He heaved a sigh like he’d never known anybody quite so useless. “We’ll have to find him before he tears the place up.”
“Them ferrets are real destructive,” Tansy contributed from her perch.
“You might climb down from that chair and help us look,” I suggested.
She shook her head. “I ain’t chasing no ferret. Don’t you be sending him back down here, either. I don’t want him in my kitchen.”
Joe Riddley clomped up the stairs. I followed him, one uneasy step at a time, hoping any second he’d say, “Here he is,” and slam the door of the carrier. Instead he said, “You search the master bedroom and I’ll check Skell’s. At least all the other doors are shut. Maybe he recognized Skell’s smell and headed in there.”
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,” I muttered as I headed to Gwen Ellen’s bedroom. What was I supposed to do if I met the ferret—introduce myself and chat with him until Joe Riddley arrived with the carrier?
I tiptoed to the king-size bed, hiked up my skirt, and took a quick peek underneath. I kept my knees bent, ready to run if I saw eyes. All I saw were Gwen Ellen’s slippers.
The closet door was closed, so at least he wasn’t in there. I drifted over to the dresser and peered this way and that, but I didn’t see anything except a letter Gwen Ellen had left lying open. It was the one from that New Mexico dude ranch. I had had time to read “Dear Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald, We hope you enjoyed your stay with us—” and to feel one twinge of envy when I heard a rustling in the bathroom.
I slammed that bathroom door faster than a cockroach can fly. “I’ve got him,” I yelled.
A woman shrieked.
Then somebody wrenched open the door and demanded, “What are you doing?” A young woman I barely knew glared at me with one eye open and one eye closed. I could tell we wouldn’t be getting any of her lawn-and-garden business in the near future.
I backed away. “Did you see a ferret?”
“A what?” Both eyes flew open.
“Ferret. Little black animal—” As she began to cringe, I shook my head. “You’d have known if he was in there. I heard a sound and thought that was him.”
“That was me, trying to put my contact back in. I had some mascara in my eye. Now I’ve dropped the dratted lens, and heaven knows if I can find it on this blue carpet.”
Which is why I spent the next ten minutes crawling around on Gwen Ellen’s bathroom rug. It’s hard enough to search for a blue contact on a blue rug. It’s a lot harder when you have to keep one eye cocked to be sure a ferret doesn’t sneak in while you’re looking for the lens.
When the woman yelled, I jumped at least two feet.
“Here it is. It got caught on my sweater.” She picked it off with one long red fingernail and held it up.
I managed not to kill her by remembering something our newspaper editor likes to say: Half the world is below average, and we can’t all be in the upper half.
Mama had never taught me a graceful way to get up from my knees off a bathroom floor and excuse myself to somebody I had scared half to death. I did the best I could, and tiptoed down the hall. “Did you find him?” I called in a soft voice.
Joe Riddley was nowhere to be found. I didn’t go into Skell’s room, but I called at the door twice. And I knocked on all the other doors before I ran my husband to earth back in the kitchen, drinking coffee with Tansy.
“Where is that blessed ferret?” I demanded.
He waved one hand like the question was unimportant. “In Skell’s closet. I shut the door on him, and thought I’d call Cindy.”
“Does Cindy know anything about ferrets?”
“You got a better idea?”
I considered. Cindy had known about beagles and parrots, and she’d grown up hunting foxes. Maybe ferrets were like foxes. “No. Call Cindy. But for heaven’s sake, go upstairs first and close the bedroom door, too, in case he gets out of the closet. And put a sign on the door so nobody opens it by mistake.”
“You close the door and put up the sign. I’ll call Cindy.”
Tansy condescended to provide paper, tape, and a pen.
I stomped up the stairs with steam coming out my ears and hardened my heart to frantic scratching as I closed the bedroom door and taped up a note:
Loose Ferret. Do Not Open This Door.
Anybody stupid enough to disobey deserved what they got.
9
As I started back down the stairs I heard a light voice that sounded familiar say, “I came to see how I could help,” and heard Laura reply, “That’s real nice of you.” When I got farther down the stairs, I saw Tansy pulling out a chair at the kitchen table, across from Joe Riddley, for the young receptionist from MacDonald’s.
Laura sprawled in a third chair, legs stretched before her and one strand of hair at her lips. I’d seen her slump just like that after a grueling soccer game. I’d also heard her mother beg, “Honey, please sit up like a lady and stop sucking your hair.” Today, even Gwen Ellen wouldn’t have the heart to correct her. Laura’s face was white and drained, and she kept letting out deep, deep breaths. I knew how she felt. Sorrow leaves little lung room for air.
Tansy offered Nicole—that was her name—a cup of coffee, but Nicole refused. Then, as I watched, Tansy poured a cup of coffee, added lots of cream and sugar, and sidled into the pantry to pour in something from a bottle she took from behind the potatoes. I was startled, and a little shocked. Gwen Ellen was a rabid teetotaler. Years ago she’d gone to visit her parents for a week and came back to find Skye had left wine in the refrigerator. She had told me with perfect seriousness, “Mac, he’d drunk nearly half the bottle in a week. If I’d known he was going to stay drunk the whole time, I’d never have gone.”
Tansy handed Laura the doctored cup, and she took it with no inkling of what was in it. Her grateful smile was for the coffee. “I tell you true,” she told Joe Riddley, “having to listen to folks say how sorry they are is one of the most wearing things I’ve ever had to do.” She took a gulp, gasped, choked, and had to be slapped on the back. Then she gave Tansy a wry grin. Tansy put on an innocent expression and turned to look out at the rain still streaming down.