Chapter Fifty-one
“I had no idea that you liked Ivory,” Mina said to Brian after Evie left. “Evie said you came over in the middle of the night to look after her.”
“Is that what she told you?” Brian eyed her warily.
“And after you left, she found the whistle to my teakettle and those papers you brought over for me to sign. Know where they were? Under the couch where Ivory was hiding.”
He gave her a cool look. “You need to be more careful about where you put your things.”
“Me? Why would I put the whistle to the teakettle under the couch? And why would I stuff my eyeglasses into the base of a potted plant?”
Brian folded his arms across his chest. “I’m sure it made sense at the time.”
She wanted to strangle him.
He shook his head. “Aunt Mina, I didn’t take your teapot whistle, and I certainly didn’t hide your glasses. But I’m not sorry those things happened, especially if it helps convince you that it’s time to get some help.”
That took some of the wind out of Mina’s sails. She lowered her eyes and said, more into her lap than to Brian, “I don’t know why I need someone sleeping in the house with me.” The walker seemed like an unnecessary nuisance as well. She was sore, but not incapacitated.
“Let’s try it this way for a few nights,” Brian said, “and if you can get along without the help, we’ll let her go. In the meanwhile, try to relax and enjoy having someone wait on you.”
Mina was glad when he left a short time later, leaving her in the hands of the capable Dora. There was no point telling Brian that at her stage of life she got a lot more pleasure from taking care of herself. So she bit her tongue and let Dora take her blood pressure and listen to her heartbeat, turn down her covers, help her into her nightgown, and settle her into bed. By then, Mina’s hip was throbbing like a bad headache. She took another pain pill with the glass of warm milk Dora brought her.
Dora positioned the walker alongside the bed and set Mina’s bedroom slippers inside its perimeter. “If you have to get up in the middle of the night, it’ll be right here for you,” she said. “I know you’d rather take care of yourself, but if you need help, I’ll be right out in the living room, sleeping on the couch. I’m a light sleeper, so just call out. That’s what I’m here for.”
Dora wished her a good night and left the bedroom door ajar. Mina hadn’t even seen the day’s headlines, and she’d missed two days’ worth of obituaries. If she’d had her glasses, she’d have sat up in bed for a while, reading the paper. Instead, she lay there letting her mind wander.
What a relief it had been to talk about the day that the plane had crashed, practically right into her office widow. Evie had been a wonderful listener. She hadn’t treated Mina like a sideshow freak the way reporters had treated Betty, trailing around behind her in the months after she was pulled from the wreckage. Other than to thank her rescuers, Mina had refused to speak with the press. But now she didn’t want her story vanishing into obscurity along with the rest of her memories.
And what about the troubling news the girl had brought her? It never occurred to Mina that other homeowners were being offered the same deal with the devil that Brian had wanted her to sign, property in exchange for short-term ease. She wondered if Finn had figured out who was behind the demolition of Angela Quintanilla’s house. And what about the demolished house a few doors up from Angela’s? Were the same folks poised to bulldoze Sandra’s house?
Bulldozed houses. A battery-less fire alarm. A whistle-less teapot. A golf ball that came out of nowhere. The more Mina tried to make sense, the more the pieces slipped around. She needed to make a list. But she couldn’t rouse herself to get out of bed, never mind call Dora to get her paper and pencil. Finally she gave up and let her thoughts swirl as she stared up at the ceiling, whose cracks she knew like the back of her hand but could not see.
She could hear Dora padding around in the kitchen. An occasional thump from overhead. Could the men still be working up there? From outside came the sounds of the night. The high whistle of what might have been a nighthawk. The burr-up of a bullfrog. She’d seen one, so camouflaged he was nearly invisible, in her garden just the other day, and she’d been careful not to disturb him. Nighthawks ate what frogs ate. Insects. She was happy to share her marsh with all three.
Ivory settled and resettled beside Mina’s pillow, resting her paw possessively on Mina’s cheek. The cat had been doing that ever since she was a kitten, and it never failed to make Mina smile. She rubbed Ivory on the forehead, then turned over onto her good side. Soon she’d drifted off, only dimly aware some time later of quiet footsteps. Dora was in her bedroom. Closing the windows. Drawing the shades.
Mina tried to rouse herself, to tell Dora to stop. She liked to sleep with the window open and the shades drawn halfway. That way, when she woke up she could tell if it was morning without having to put her glasses on to check the clock.
But Mina could barely open her eyes, never mind say anything. Sleep was overtaking her like a thick fog. Was she dreaming, or could she hear a man and woman laughing together? Was that the smell of cigarette smoke? Maybe Sandra Ferrante was back. She often sat outside late at night, smoking on her back porch, laughing with a gentleman caller, the smoke drifting in through Mina’s window.
Later—how much later Mina had no idea—she came awake to the sounds of a door shutting, thumps and scrapes like furniture being moved around. She strained to listen but heard nothing but silence until sleep pulled her back into unconsciousness.
A jiggle on the mattress awakened her again. A shift of weight. Had Ivory gotten up? Then a low grrrowwRRRR and a bounce, as if the cat had jumped down off the bed. The growl turned to a prolonged hiss and whine. Wrowww.
Mina knew the stance that went with that sound—back humped, head down, tail bushed out like a squirrel’s, mouth open and teeth bared. Was she imagining shapes on the floor? Ivory and her doppelgänger facing off? Or were there three of them—like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, one splitting into two, two into four. As Mina drifted off to sleep yet again, she felt a breeze from an open window and warm bodies settling in around her.
There Was an Old Woman
Hallie Ephron's books
- Tethered (Novella)
- There'll Be Blue Skies
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Ancient Echoes
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)