Page 5 of The Vigilante's Lover
She laughs, a merry tinkling sound. Then she whirls around and places a warm hand on each of my cheeks.
“Beatrice thought the world of you. You figure out what it is you want to do next, and I bet the whole town will be right along to help you do it.”
I nod against her hands. I have no doubt she’s right.
Shirley lets go of my face. “I would feel an awful lot better if you had someone here with you. The Petersons just had a litter of pups. You sure you don’t want one? Half husky. Make a good guard dog.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, although I know having a dog would limit my options. “I might still go back to school.”
“Of course,” Shirley says. “You’re just twenty years old. Lots of life ahead of you.”
A long howl breaks the quiet. “Oh, that Rowdy,” she says. “You’d think we…” She laughs again. “Hopefully he won’t keep you up tonight. We’ll keep him inside except when he does his business.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
Shirley leans forward and kisses my cheek. “Our poor little Mia,” she says. “You know you can always call any of us family.”
“Thank you, Shirley,” I say. I’m grateful to her. I really am.
She hurries down the steps. A sudden gust of wind stirs up the leaves and they whirl in a tight cone. Shirley pauses and turns to see if I saw it. “Autumn!” she calls out. “Change is coming!”
She gets in her car and I see Rowdy with his cone of shame. He’smanaged to get his head out the window even with the wide white brim. He howls again.
Poor dog. It’s not far to Shirley’s, just across the road and down a piece, but with Rowdy, she didn’t walk it. Her old Buick roars to life, and she waves out the open window as she backs down the long drive.
I’m alone again.
I wander the living room, touching each of Aunt Bea’s treasured silver bells. I’ve lived in this sprawling house most of my life, after my parents died when I was eight, so I know every nook and cranny.
I should make some tea. I move to the kitchen and flip on the gas burner for the kettle. The transfer of ownership of the house to me will go through soon, after the execution of the will. Then I’ll have to decide what to do. Sell it? Rent it? I need to go finish a degree. Do something.
I feel adrift, unmoored, like a boat some sailor accidentally freed by tying a shoddy timber hitch.
The stopper knot thrusts against you, eliciting another impassioned cry.
Oh, those letters won’t let me stop thinking of them.
But they do contain a strange coincidence, which is one reason I kept them.
The knots. I know all the knots.
My parents drilled nautical terms into me as if they were the language of our family. We had a small sailboat that we took out on the lake not far from our home.
As they taught me to handle the boat, I got to know every type of knot, hitch, and heaving line.
Since reading the prison letters, however, some of the terms have taken on a whole new meaning.
French whipping knot, for example.
Heat flutters through me again. I wish for some sort of history, a bitof sexual experience to draw upon as the emotions flood me while reading the letters. But a tiny public school followed by a small community college hasn’t afforded me much opportunity.
Besides, most people find me odd, in a Belle fromBeauty and the Beastway. Studious, sharp nosed, and more likely to stay up all night reading than attending parties.
Not that I am ever invited.
The kettle whistles. I realize I have neglected to fill the tea ball or place it in a mug. Daydreaming, another bad habit, worsened by my solitude.
I spoon some loose tea into the ball and snap it closed. The kitchen is forlorn. I open the stove and pull out Shirley’s potpie. The lovely aroma of chicken calms me, but I’m not hungry.
