Fly by Night (41 page)

“Old man Whitedeer,” Amelia repeated. “How can I at least thank him?”

Charlotte was quiet for a few moments. “He likes those blueberry coffee cakes they make on Saturdays at the bakery in Bayfield. Bring him one of those. Bet ya he'll eat the whole thing right in front of you, doesn't eat anything else.”

Amelia liked him already. “Deal—so where do I find him?”

“Why don't you get settled in and we'll talk tomorrow,” Charlotte said. “But I'm warning you, the old man'll talk your ear off.”

“Is it okay with TJ that I'm here?” Amelia asked. She wished Bryce had come with her but knew it was only right for him to transition duties to some of the other staffers.

Charlotte snorted an irritated laugh that Amelia guessed was aimed at her husband.

“It's your house too, Amelia,” Charlotte said in a stern but encouraging way. “Besides, who do you think plowed the place out?” She said with mischief. “The two of you need to talk, he needs to. Maybe go for a walk in the woods sometime. TJ's talks better when he's outside—inside he sort of clams up.”

Amelia doubted TJ'd go anywhere with her except at gunpoint.

“Charlotte, I don't mean to be nosy,” she began as she sat looking at the house, the lake. “But why didn't Gloria rewrite her will? Why leave this to me too?”

Why would a woman allow half of her house to go to the child of the man who'd betrayed her?

“Don't know.”

And while she'd paid the property taxes weeks ago, it felt like there was some sort of lingering debt out there waiting to catch up with her.

“Still got your key, right?” Charlotte asked.

Amelia looked at the house key dangling from her key chain. “Uhh, yeah.”

“Call if you need something, have questions,” Charlotte said. “Left you some clean sheets, towels, and blankets.”

“You're a doll.”

“Why don't you come on by tomorrow for dinner?”

“Thanks. I'd love that.”

“And bring those two little rascals.”

“Of course.”

Everything had been hastily crammed into the backseat of her Jeep. Later that weekend Bryce was moving the rest of her things up in his truck.

All of the uncertainty about living in Gloria's house paled in light of what she was going to do for money. On a long shot she'd thought to ask TJ about a few positions for fish biologists for GLIFWC and had also seen two openings in University of Minnesota Duluth's biology department for the following fall semester that was an hour's drive away. It would be closer to Jen when she moved that spring to be with Doby. They also had five grants pending with notification dates of May and another three she was writing for the following fall.

“Well, here goes.” Amelia climbed out of the Jeep and stretched.

The place looked smaller and dumpier than she'd recalled, more like a hunting shack than a residence. A mound of freshly cut wood had been left alongside the front steps, looking as if someone had pulled up, opened the back gate of a truck, and shoved it all out with a foot before driving away.

Sounds of puppy cries made her turn. They watched in unison as soon as she looked, as if she'd forgotten about them.

“Okay, okay.” She opened the Jeep's gate and the door of the crate and grabbed the two leashes. Lifting them out, she set them down. Lacey rolled in the snow. Junior managed to get the leash wrapped around his head.

The second move in six months. There seemed no end to the paring down of personal possessions that had precipitated a shift in the meaning of things. Now included were places and real estate.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs she noticed animal tracks leading down around the house as well as up to the door. Although not shoveled, snow on the steps was scant since it was on the protected side of the house.

Lacey and Junior sniffed the first animal track and then both sat down. Along the sides of the house snowdrifts reached the windows. Amelia then lifted them both, carrying them as she followed the tracks downhill toward the lakeside and the opening in the lattice.

She set the pups down at the opening. Each lay down to rest, licking snow off each other's faces. Stepping closer, Amelia bent over. The tracks were that of a large dog.

She looked out to the woods.

“Jethro.” She scanned the area.

Amelia knelt and looked in. Everything looked the same.

Lacey and Junior glanced inside and then back at each other. Their faces were pensive as they sniffed. Information passed between them. Amelia didn't know the language.

The hair on Amelia's body prickled. Hard to believe it had been only a little over a week—a discovery that had set off a series of cascading changes that didn't feel over yet.

Looking out to the edge of the woods she imagined what it would be like once Bryce arrived. Thinking back to that same night when he'd put it all on the line with a kiss. She smiled thinking of it. How tremblingly brave of him.

Lacey poked her head through the break in the lattice and looked around.

“Remember this place?” Amelia squatted.

Junior backed coyly away, sat down, and looked back at Amelia for reassurance, his ears flat against his head, his tail making a tiny fan shape in the snow. His sister wanted to proceed.

“You're the gutsy one, Lacey, aren't you?”

Amelia then lifted up both pups; balancing one on each hip as she hiked halfway back up and then set them both down.

“You guys are getting heavy,” she said. “We'll come back later.”

Loud sniffs on the ground as they puttered around, knocking against each other for a bit as Amelia tried to get them to walk but then figured they were still too young. Lacey jumped on top of Junior and then rolled over, sniffing in loud puffs until Amelia picked them both up and hiked back up to the base of the front steps.

“Hmm.” Amelia set them down and pulled her keys out of her pocket, holding the one TJ had given her.

Stepping onto the first step, she stopped.

The woods caught her attention and she turned. The pups turned too. Their ears up in alert as the three of them watched. An uneasy feeling of eyes. Scanning the leafless trees there were no shadowed forms against the stark background contours of snowy ground. Her throat tightened. Something was there. Yet as puzzling as it was, for the first time in years she felt free.

“Dad.”

She closed her eyes and thought back to that moment with Charlotte in TJ's truck. Seeing Lacey in her mind's eye and feeling the dog's will to return.

Amelia trounced down what little snow there was on the steps and scooted the rest away with her boot. Junior made a game of it, biting the tip of her boot and shaking it as if to kill it.

“Stop it.” She couldn't help but laugh and pulled her foot away though Junior took it more as an invitation to play. She carried the pups up to the front door.

Setting them down she slid in the key and turned it, feeling the inside button pop.

Taking a breath, she turned the doorknob, and pushed open the door.

The inside air smelled as musty as Charlotte had said, and also as she'd suggested, nothing that a few hours of open windows couldn't improve.

The pups poked in their noses and stepped inside.

Amelia stood still until they reached the end of the leash.

Inside was dim. Thin ivory-colored blinds and fabric shades covered the windows, in some places hanging down past the ledges to touch the floor.

She assumed it changed since her father had lived there. She looked around, imagining. That was so many years ago.

Amelia shut the front door and let go of the dog leashes. The pups stepped a few feet and then sat. Lacey stood as Junior followed, their loosely jointed bodies waddled and sniffed as they crisscrossed each other's path as the leashes wove into a kind of braid.

Floor tiles crackled beneath her boots. The long dried-out glue had reached the end of its shelf life. She flipped on a light switch and watched it illuminate.

“Thanks, Charlotte.” The woman deserved a medal. Especially for living with TJ. Either a medal or else she needed to have her head examined, Amelia thought as she looked around. Maybe he was different with her. Nobody knows what life is like in private.

She felt for the blinds' drawstring and pulled. The window glass was hazy. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed in. The window shades no longer had that spring to them so she unhooked them, rolled them up, and set them in a corner.

It was as cold inside as out. Squatting before the woodstove in the living room, she opened the front grate, stuck in her head, and looked up, wondering if the chimney was clear. A box of matches sat on the mantel. She opened it and struck one. It fired and she let it burn out.

“Guess we'll find out.”

She stood and walked down the short hallway and peeked into the two tiny bedrooms, then back to the kitchen.

The sink and cabinets were clustered along the wall like a ship's galley. A small wooden table was snug up against the lakeside windows, tucked beneath were three mismatched chairs. Amelia stood looking around, something about the interior felt boatlike.

A separate living room had been created by portioning it off with a tall blue-and-green-plaid sofa with wingback sides she'd once heard referred to as a divan, and two stuffed chairs facing the woodstove. Draped along the divan's spine was a crochet throw made of colorful connecting squares. The yarn looked faded along the sofa back, but as Amelia touched it, she could see it was only dust. She brushed her fingers off on her thigh.

Flanking the divan were mismatched side tables. Underneath one was a shelf piled with
National Geographic
magazines, their telltale yellow spines and size being a dead giveaway. A pair of matching table lamps on each table had golden-color round glass globes for bases, blending in with the kitchen color scheme. The walls were painted a sky blue.

Walking toward the kitchen sink she turned on the tap. The pipes knocked loudly, startling her with their vehemence. Nothing but air sputtered until a spurt of water made it out. Charlotte had mentioned that the well-pump might be broken, the pipes frozen, or both. Amelia turned it on again. After a few more moments of protest, a steady stream of water began.

The refrigerator was a harvest-gold color that she'd remembered seeing in people's houses when she was a kid. She opened the door, the interior lightbulb lit. Someone had placed an open box of baking soda inside.
God bless Charlotte
.

She shut the door.

The matching stove had a push-button control panel.

She pressed one and waited.

Sitting on the back ledge of the stove was a wire spice rack with glass jars containing tiny amounts of green material. Amelia lifted each cylindrical jar and turned it over, the contents tumbling as she examined it as carefully as a marine specimen. Oregano, thyme maybe, it had been ages since she'd cooked a proper meal. She placed each jar back in order—
Gloria's kitchen.

The burner had turned red-hot. Amelia held her hands over, warming them.

She stepped over to the kitchen table and pulled out one of the chairs. One had a yellow seat cushion, the other two wood. All three had been pushed in as if Gloria might have done to tidy up the day she moved out, wanting everything shipshape, knowing that she might never return. What might it be like to live knowing that.

Amelia pushed the chair back in.

A tall empty bookshelf flanked the wall near the woodstove.

The pups were too quiet.

“Lacey. Junior.” She clapped her hands.

There was no response. Amelia walked into the back room. They were tumbling onto each other and playing.

“Good doggies.” She sat on the floor as they tottled over. Rubbing their tiny ears, she picked them up, one in each arm and bent over, inhaling the scent of their fur. “What'd you find in there?”

Junior began to wriggle. Amelia set him back down as he dropped into a play-bow, his front paws down, hind end up in the air, barking at Lacey.

Amelia set Lacey down too and then turned back to the kitchen, opened the bottom cabinets, and squatted down, holding onto the doors for balance.

“Oh, Gloria,” she said softly, surveying the sizes of steel pots, lids, and pans all arranged by size, a pressure cooker, frying pans—the bits and pieces, odds and ends that had made up the woman's life.

Amelia bowed her head. Sighing deeply, she closed the cabinet doors and then stood, pulling out two drawers that she guessed from their weight held silverware and utensils. Cheese graters, spatulas, an array of wooden spoons, a garlic press, meat pounder, and other items were lined up next to a stack of clean pot holders. She picked up a metal spatula and looked closely, well-used but spotless. Gloria had been an ER nurse. The utensils were as clean as hospital instruments.

“Oh my God.” She noticed the same patterned vinyl contact paper in the drawers as Penelope's. She remembered her mother, measuring and cutting the paper to fit, cursing in Greek.

Amelia shut the drawers and looked out at the lake. She wished Bryce was there. She'd underestimated taking residence in another woman's home, especially this woman's.

“Why, Dad?” she asked the musty air. Why had he left this family? She'd asked TJ a few times, though she had not been given a straight answer or at least one that made sense, only cryptic, snarky little comments.

Loud sniffing came from the bedrooms; Amelia smiled at more sounds of growling and play-fighting.

It was a short walk down the hallway. Looking in one bedroom and then to the other, the pups were chewing on a sock, tugging it away from each other. Their ears flopped, faces wet as they tripped over each other until Junior stopped to shake off. His ears made a flapping sound as he began the game over again.

Amelia stepped into what she presumed was Gloria's bedroom. A double-size mattress stripped of all bedding filled the room, with a pile of Charlotte's clean sheets and towels set on a corner.