I heard it in her voice, how she caught herself, how the sarcasm came back and punched her right at the end of the word and suddenly she doubled over. Silent sobs shook her shoulders, too deep for noise. Too raw.
Winifred, who’d been standing guard out by the file cabinets, hurried back into the office and held Mona by the shoulders. I grabbed some takeout napkins from a drawer and shoved them across the desk, but Winifred rolled her eyes and produced a handkerchief from her purse. Mona wiped her face, pulling herself together, while I felt about as useless as thumbs on a snake.
“Mona, I need you to do something for me.”
She managed to calm down and sat up straighter. The grief hadn’t made her weak. A woman like Mona Hoffman—a true farm woman who faced every season and every storm with an equanimity that would make God jealous—thrived on action, on measuring out the task and getting it done. Even here, in the darkest days of her life, I knew she would do whatever I asked of her.
“I want you to look through Hattie’s room again, and her truck, anywhere she might have left that envelope.”
“Okay, Del.”
“There’s a few other things we need to know the whereabouts of, too,” I added on an impulse. “Her suitcase and her video camera.”
“What?” Surprise broke through the other emotions.
I described them both briefly and said, “We think they’re missing.”
“The suitcase was her Christmas present from us. Bud bought it at Brookstone. She loved it.”
She said she would look for Hattie’s things after they picked out the casket flowers for the funeral.
“We’re having the wake tonight at the house. Just family.” Mona glanced away as she got up to leave.
I walked them out, but stood back while the old woman helped the younger one into the sedan. A news van hovered on the other side of the street, waiting for a break in the story. They’d be swarming around the funeral tomorrow, trying to interview anyone they could about the “curse killing.” At least I could take care of that nuisance for Bud and Mona. I didn’t feel capable of much else as I watched Mona’s car pull away.
It was a long while before I went back inside.
PETER / Friday, March 21, 2008
COULD A body tear in half? I stood under the tree, one of Mary’s sprawling oaks that had shown her what she wanted to do with her life, and watched Hattie walk away from me. Her ultimatum hung in the air. Come to New York with me or I’ll tell Mary about us. She hadn’t said those exact words—had she?—but the threat was there, glittering in her fearless eyes.
I watched her shrink across the field, her steps eating up the ground with a callous teenage confidence that would have told the sun itself to fuck off. My desperation grew proportionally with the distance between us. Everything in me burned to run after her, to haul her back here, tie her to this tree, and put her mouth to use until it couldn’t speak a word of truth or lies. Give her exactly what she wanted and then find a car and drive. Show her everything. Make us both forget this town and ourselves and every terrible decision that had brought us to this place and time.
But New York? What did she expect me to say? Yes, I’ll move to New York with you? I’ll throw away any chance of getting my life in Minneapolis back and go live on the streets of New York City with you? That’s where we would be—on the street. Even if I could miraculously line up a teaching job for the fall, I wouldn’t get a paycheck until October. I had a thousand dollars left in my savings account, which was nothing, yet Hattie thought her two grand would somehow support both of us in the most expensive city in the country?
She had no idea what she was facing. She had no friends there, no contacts, no plan. She needed me. God, she needed me almost as much as I craved her, and the temptation to give in to her insane demand practically overwhelmed me.
Except I couldn’t forget Mary.
Mary kept me rooted to the spot, watching Hattie until she disappeared into the woods. I didn’t give a shit about the rest of it—my job, my reputation—nothing in this Pine Valley life mattered anymore except Mary. She’d told me her plans to stay on the farm over a month ago and we’d been living in a stalemate ever since. I hadn’t given her an answer as to whether I would stay and she hadn’t brought it up again. We existed in parallel, passing perfunctory remarks like well-mannered yet distant neighbors. I knew she was waiting for me to make a decision, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether she cared about what that decision would be.
Was it any wonder I’d set up this rendezvous with Hattie? Hattie, who’d curled up in my lap like I was her haven from the world, who’d pleaded with me and threatened to break me, like I was someone worth breaking.