“His wife?” Frank asked. “Is that where you’re going with this? Didn’t surprise me she turned up at the shelter. Fritz Meshaum’s a son of a bitch.”
When there had first been talk around town, Elaine had asked if it was true, that he had put a hurting on Fritz Meshaum. He had made the mistake of telling her the truth, and she never let him forget it.
Elaine set aside the spoon and drank from her coffee. “No argument there.”
“I hope she finally left him,” said Frank. “Not that she’s any responsibility of mine.”
“It’s not your responsibility that her husband, once he was healed up enough to go home from the hospital after the beating you gave him, beat her within an inch of her life?”
“Nope, absolutely not. I never laid a hand on her. We’ve been over this.”
“Uh-huh. And the baby she lost,” said Elaine, “that’s not your responsibility, either, right?”
Frank sucked his teeth. He didn’t know about any baby. It was the first time Elaine had mentioned it. She’d been waiting for exactly the right moment to ambush him. Some wife, some friend.
“Pregnant, huh? And lost the baby. Gee, that’s a tough one.”
Elaine fixed him with an unbelieving look. “That’s what you call it? A tough one? Your compassion stuns me. None of it would have happened if you’d just called the police. None of it, Frank. He’d have gone to jail and Candy Meshaum would have kept her baby.”
Guilt trips were Elaine’s specialty. But if she’d seen the dog—what Fritz had done to it—she might think twice about giving him the stinkeye. The Meshaums of the world had to pay. It was the same with Dr. Flickinger . . .
Which gave him an idea.
“Why don’t I go get the Mercedes man? He’s a doctor.”
“You mean the guy who ran over that old man’s cat?”
“Yeah. He felt really bad about driving so fast. I’m sure he’d help.”
“Did you hear any of what I just said, Frank? You go crazy and it always backfires!”
“Elaine, forget about Fritz Meshaum and forget about his wife. Forget about me. Think about Nana. Maybe that doc could help.” Flickinger might even feel he owed Frank, for taking it out on his car instead of busting his way inside and taking it out on the good doctor himself.
There were more sirens. A motorcycle passed down the street, engine roaring.
“Frank, I’d like to believe that.” Her speech, slow and careful, was intended to be sincere, but it was the same cadence Elaine adopted when she explained to Nana how important it was to keep neat drawers. “Because I love you. But I know you. We were together for ten years. You beat a man half to death over a dog. God knows how you handled this Flickmuller, or whatever his name is.”
“Flickinger. His name is Garth Flickinger. Doctor Garth Flickinger.” Really, how could she be so dumb? Hadn’t they almost been trampled—or shot!—while trying to get a doctor to see their daughter?
She drank down the rest of her coffee. “Just be here with your daughter. Don’t try to fix what you don’t even understand.”
A dismal comprehension touched Frank Geary: everything would be easier once Elaine was asleep, too. But for now she was awake. So was he.
“You’re wrong,” he said.
She blinked at him. “What? What did you say?”
“You think you’re always right. Sometimes you are, but not this time.”
“Thank you for that wonderful insight. I’m going upstairs to sit with Nana. Come with me if you want, but if you go after that man—if you go anywhere else—we’re done.”
Frank smiled. He felt okay now. It was such a relief to feel okay. “We already are.”
She stared at him.
“Nana’s what matters to me now. Just her.”
6
Frank stopped on the way to his truck to look at the woodpile by the back stoop, hardwood he’d split himself. Half a cord left from the winter just past. The little J?tul stove in the kitchen made the place homey and welcoming in the cold weather. Nana liked to sit near it in the rocker, doing her homework. When she was bent over her books with her hair curtaining her face, she looked to Frank like a little girl from the nineteenth century, back when all these man-woman things were a lot simpler. Back then, you told a woman what you were going to do, and she either agreed or kept her mouth shut. He remembered something his father had told his mother when she protested over the purchase of a new power lawnmower: You keep the house. I’ll make the money and pay the bills. If you got a problem with that, speak up.
She hadn’t. They’d had a good marriage that way. Almost fifty years. No marriage counseling, no separations, no lawyers.
There was a big tarp over the woodpile and a smaller one over the chopping block. He raised the smaller and pulled the hand-ax free from the scarred wood. Flickinger didn’t seem like much, but it never hurt to be prepared.
7
Dorothy went first. Head lolling back, mouth open, dentures slipping slightly and flecked with cookie crumbs, she snored. The other three watched the white strings float and untether, split and float, float and fall down against her skin. They layered like bandages in miniature, wrapping in crisscross patterns.
“I wish—” Margaret began, but whatever it was she wished, she didn’t seem to be able to catch hold of the thing.
“Do you think she’s suffering?” Blanche asked. “Do you think it hurts?” Though her words felt heavy in her mouth, she herself was not in any pain.
“No.” Gail tottered to her feet, her library copy of Atonement dropping to the floor with a flop of paper and crinkle of plastic sheeting. She braced herself on the furniture as she crossed the room toward Dorothy.
Blanche was hazily impressed by this effort. Along with the pills, they’d dispatched the bottle of Pinot, and Gail had drunk the most. There was an officer at the prison who competed in arm-wrestling contests. Blanche wondered if there were contests for drinking wine and taking drugs and then walking around without tripping over the chairs or running into the walls. Gail might have missed her calling!
Blanche wanted to express all this to Gail, but she found that the best she could do was, “Nice—walking—Gail.”
She watched as Gail bent down close to Dorothy’s ear, which was already layered in a thin coating of web. “Dorothy? Can you hear us? Meet me at the—” Gail stopped.
“What place do we know is in heaven, Midge? Where should I have her meet us?”