It took twenty minutes to reach Kelton, and another twelve seconds to drive through it. A general store, a gas station with pumps from the middle of the previous century, maybe a dozen houses. Motorists were supposed to slow to forty miles per hour driving through, but most, like me, held pretty close to sixty and no one seemed to mind.
County Road 9 wound through farm country. Barns, their boards weathered gray, sat back from the highway, beyond two-story homes likely built seventy to a hundred years ago. At the end of every driveway stood a mailbox, and at some, a small building, phone booth–sized, that could have been outhouses if it weren’t for large, window-like openings. These, I realized, were for children to stand in, for shelter, while they waited for school buses on wintry mornings.
I slowed for each mailbox, trying to read the name. Some were painted on crudely, others used those metallic-looking peel-and-stick letters you can buy from the hardware store. For a while, I had a pickup behind me, the driver wondering what I was doing, letting my foot off the gas as I approached each farm’s driveway. Finally, catching a break in the oncoming traffic, he gunned past me, giving me the finger.
“Whatever,” I said under my breath. I had other problems.
I’d seen boxes labeled “Fountain” and “Verczinski” and “Walton” and “Scrunch.” That one gave me pause. Scrunch? I tried to imagine going through life with a name like Scrunch. Maybe that was why they lived out in the country. Fewer people to introduce yourself to.
“Hi, we’re the Scrunches.”
“We’re a bunch of Scrunches.”
“Packing lunches for the Scrunches.”
I was having so much fun entertaining myself that I drove right past the mailbox marked Bennet.
I actually spotted the name, “,” in my rearview mirror. There was no name on the approaching side of the mailbox, so when I glanced into my mirror and saw what appeared to be the right letters, if in the wrong order, I hit the brakes.
Once I had the car pulled over to the shoulder, I scoped out the Bennet house. It sat a good hundred yards back from the road, a two-story brick farmhouse with a porch across the front and down one side. The gravel drive led beyond the house to a barn out back. The land that surrounded the structures didn’t appear to be used for growing anything other than tall grass, although the lawn out front of the house was green and well tended.
I backed up, turned into the drive, noticed one of those mini-shelters for bused children. Made of chipboard, it looked unfinished, but new, as though waiting for its first winter. As I rolled past it, gravel made crunching noises under the wide tires of the GF300. As I got closer to the house, I noticed the ass end of an old minivan parked out back. I pulled in next to it, got out, and when I happened to glance into the van, noticed a child’s booster seat attached to the second row of seats.
I admired the flowers in the garden, which looked as though it had just been weeded, mounted the two steps up to the porch, walked past some white wicker furniture, and knocked on the front screen door. Leaned up against the house, next to the door, were a garden rake and a small shovel, fresh dirt still clinging to it. Inside the house, I heard movement, and then the main door, beyond the screen, opened.
At first I thought Trixie had done something with her hair.
It was blonde now, instead of black, with some streaks of gray in it. She was wearing jeans, with a denim shirt tucked in, the sleeves rolled up. A wisp of hair hung over her forehead and across one eye, and when she used the back of her wrist to move it away, I could see that I had made a mistake.
This was not Trixie. But her face, the shape of her nose, something about the chin, it almost could have been. But this woman was older. Not by much. Three or four years, maybe, but no more. She was lean, and her forearms, where the sleeves had been rolled up, were ropy and muscular.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I—”
And I realized I had no cover story worked out. Maybe if I just told the truth.
“Are you Mrs. Bennet?” I asked, pointing to the mailbox out front.
I guess, what with her name out there by the road and all, she couldn’t see much point in denying it. “Yes,” she said, hesitantly.
“Mrs. Bennet, I’m looking for someone,” I said, my voice full of apology. “I don’t know whether I have the right place, but, uh, I’m looking for a woman by the name of Trixie Snelling.”
Mrs. Bennet’s eyes seemed to widen, then go back to normal, all in a thousandth of a second.
“I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name,” Mrs. Bennet said.
“Well, that’s possible,” I said. “I might have the name wrong. I don’t even know that that is her name. It might actually be Candace something. You see, I know her as Trixie, we used to be neighbors, she’s a friend of mine, and—”
“Mister,” Mrs. Bennet said, starting to close the door, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m afraid if you have any more questions, you’ll have to talk to my husband.”
I nodded agreeably. “That would be fine. Could I speak to him please?”