“Ma’am,” he said. “I’m Officer Dilbert. You called about a suspicious noise.”
Yeah, that was right. She was a ma’am. She was nearly forty, young looking, in shape (not skinny, but fit). Still the days of “miss” and “honey,” of the goofy smitten stares at her prettiness? They were fading fast. Not that she cared. Hey, everyone was young for the same amount of time; every girl gets her turn for a blushing youth. And at the end of the day, pretty didn’t seem to be worth very much at all. But Claudia was noticing it lately, how she had almost receded from the stage, from any hope of hotness. After a certain age, women who were trying to look “hot” were really just succeeding at looking sad. Lately, she was going for well-turned-out, elegant, attractive. Which in sweatpants and oversized tee, hair crazed from sleep—nowhere close.
“That’s right,” she said, taking her hair down from the knot at her crown. “Thanks for coming out.”
“I think I saw your problem on the way up the drive,” he said, glancing back at the barn. “That barn door looks like it fell off?”
The millennial way of ending a statement like a question. It annoyed some people she knew, like Martha, for example, who was annoyed by most things. But Claudia didn’t mind it. There was something modest, something gentle about it. It acknowledged the many possibilities of a situation. As if, it looked like the barn door fell off and that’s what made the noise, but, you know, hey, maybe that wasn’t it at all.
Yes, of course, the barn door. Claudia was certain that’s what it was. What else could have made such a bang? Somewhere in her subconscious, she must have registered it otherwise she might have been more afraid.
Claudia walked over to the barn with young Officer Dilbert, him towering, as big as a refrigerator, which was a rather nice quality in a cop. The rain had stopped, but the ground was saturated, the trees around them bending and whispering in the high wind.
There it was, the huge barn door laying flat on the ground. Officer Dilbert removed a big black flashlight from his belt and shined it, moving in close. Claudia could see where the hinges had ripped from the wood, leaving rusted, exposed nails. The latch at the door had ripped completely off, lay on the ground practically dissolving into a pile of rust. The barn was another thing she hadn’t had time for. They’d been there only a month. Which was weird. In a way, it felt as if she had always been there.
“It looks like—and it’s hard to tell because the wood is so old?” he said, moving in closer. “Could someone have pried this off?”
She came up behind him and saw the scratches he was examining. She remembered how it looked that afternoon; even the handyman had noticed it. The one she hadn’t hired on the spot the way she wanted to. She put a finger to the gouges in the wood. There it was, the dark creep of suspicion, the edge of paranoia. But, no. No. He wouldn’t have come back here and done that, just to get the work. No, that was crazy. Or was it? The world was a dangerous place, and she knew that better than most. People did all kinds of unthinkable things, all the time. But he was a nice guy; she could see that. Couldn’t she? And he came highly recommended by Madge.
“Oh, no,” said Claudia. “I don’t think so. It was really needing repair. I put a call in to Just Old Doors this afternoon. They’re coming out early next week.”
He gave a quick nod. “I’ll take a look around just the same if you don’t mind?”
“Of course,” she said. “Thank you.”
He looked very serious as he made his way around the back of the barn, his hand resting on the gun in the holster at his waist. She fought back the urge to tell him what a good job he was doing, very thorough and brave. Why do you always treat people like they’re in kindergarten and you’re the teacher? Ayers had recently asked her, not unkindly really. Actually kind of amused. He’d been down at the school for orientation day. She’d been talking to the principal, complimenting him on something or other. Did she do that? She really didn’t think so. Martha was like that, but surely not Claudia, who really didn’t consider herself an authority on anything.
Raven had put on some clothes and a long sweater and was standing on the porch, arms folded, watching as Claudia returned.
“Just that barn door,” Claudia said. “It finally fell apart.”
“Like everything else around here.”
The sullen, oh-so-disdainful Raven had returned. The sweet clingy one, the one who loved Claudia and had always thought she was so wonderful, was gone again; she came and went. Every time she disappeared, Claudia prayed she wasn’t gone for good. That little person was the truest friend she’d ever had, the kindest, the most honest, funniest, sweetest little dear. In the dim orange light of the lamp beside the door, her daughter looked more like an unfriendly stranger.
“Well,” said Claudia, forcing brightness. “That’s why we’re fixing the place up.”
Raven glanced away, wrinkling her nose. Disgust. With the place? With her mother? Claudia didn’t dare ask.
“I want to stay with Dad this weekend,” she said, looking down at her toes—which she’d painted black. Once upon a time it had been all pink and sparkles, princesses and unicorns. Now Raven’s fashion palette was black, slate gray, and light gray, and black again. “He said I could.”
Claudia nodded, wrapping her arms around her center. “That’s fine. Sure.”
It crushed Claudia when she did that. It shouldn’t. It was normal for a teenager to pull away from her mother, to try to pit her divorced parents against each other, to want to hurt Claudia a little. But the twist, the anguish Claudia felt—as if someone were mercilessly squeezing her vital organs (it wasn’t an exaggeration; she literally felt physical pain sometimes)—almost always brought tears to her eyes.
She turned back toward the barn so Raven couldn’t see her face. Claudia had never been good at hiding her feelings. Anyway, Raven wasn’t looking, didn’t care; her perpetually angry teen went back inside, slamming the screen door behind her.
five
“Maybe it’s my imagination, but I wouldn’t say you seem overly happy to see me, brother.”
“Of course, I am,” said Josh, staring at the eggs in the pan. The words sounded fake on the air, probably because he was definitely not happy to see his older brother Rhett. Not at all. In fact, he’d hoped never to see him again. The fact that Rhett was back was a little like thinking you had beaten cancer only to discover during a routine visit to the doctor that it had returned, more virulent than before.
Their mother, on the other hand, was as giddy as a schoolgirl. He’d never seen her face light up the way it did when Rhett walked in through the door of her bedroom last night, as if Jesus Christ himself had come down from heaven.
“My baby,” she’d said. “My Rhett. Am I dreaming?”