In Sheep's Clothing (9 page)

He blushed. I love it when he blushes. “No, I was just teasing you. Trying to keep you from getting all somber on me.”

“What? That makes no sense. I just told you my most favorite aunt in the world is dying and you're teasing me? How does that seem like a good idea to you?”

“Just … I just know you. You're thinking too much. Then you're going to start brooding and then before you know it, you'll be off half-cocked on some harebrained—”

“Just stop right there,” I said.

“I was just trying to derail you,” he said.

The phone rang and I jumped. It rang twice and somebody in the house picked it up. Within half a minute, Uncle Joe came to the door and said the phone was for me. I picked up the one next to the bed and said hello.

“Mom?”

“Rachel?” I said. I looked at the clock. Nine-forty. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything's fine,” she said. “Gramma wanted me to call and let you know that Matthew's running a fever.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Don't worry, though. Collette's going to take him to the doctor tomorrow,” she said. I had to smile. My best friend, Collette, stuck in a car with a toddler who was ill. But my mother, who was wheelchair-bound, couldn't exactly take Matthew to the doctor, so somebody had to do it. I thought it funny that my mother would think of Collette.

“All right,” I said. “The insurance cards are in that envelope on the counter. Call me and let me know what the doctor says.”

“I will,” she said. She hung on the phone for a few seconds, just breathing. Rudy's eyebrows went up as if to ask if something was wrong. I gave him the everything's okay sign.

“Is there something else?” I asked.

“You have got to stop Mary.”

“Now what?” Mary. My middle child. Three-fourths of the gray hairs in my head have her name on them. Since the day Mary was born nearly nine years ago, she has been the bane of her sister's existence. Rachel insists that life was perfect before Mary came along, and Mary insists that Rachel is a spoiled-rotten brat, sadly in need of a little sister to set her straight. This very thing has been going on since the dawn of time, right? I mean, somewhere back in prehistory, one sister hit the other sister over the head with a club because her sister ate her maggot. So you'd think in the eons of time since the invention of siblings that
somebody
would have found a cure for this.

“She called all of my friends and told them that I still sleep with my Pooh bear,” Rachel said.

“Rachel. You do still sleep with your Pooh bear,” I said. Yes, Rachel would be a teenager next year. Bras, boys, boy bands, but still there were stuffed bears.

“Yes, but that does not mean that she had to go off and tell everybody that! Now everybody at school is making fun of me,” she said. I could hear the tears in her voice. Oh, the humiliation. The torture. This was a serious issue for a preteen in public school.

“So, just tell everybody that the Pooh bear was a gift from your long-dead grandmother and you promised her that you would sleep with it every night and that you just can't bear to break that promise to her.”

“Mom. All of my grandmothers are still
living!
”

“Yes, but the kids at school don't know that. They only know about one of them.”

“Aren't you going to do anything to your bratty daughter? This is so unfair. She goes off and does all these horrible, stinking things to me and you just laugh it off and make up lies for me to tell my friends. If she didn't do this stuff in the first place, you wouldn't have to think up these stupid stories, you know. It's so unfair. You always ignore what she does to me.”

“I do not,” I said.

At this point, Rudy had covered his head with a pillow.

“Put your sister on the phone,” I said. A switch of hands and I heard something about how much trouble Mary was in and Mary saying something like
“Pthbbb!”

“Hi, Mom,” Mary said, bright and cheerful.

“Hi, Mary,” I said. “Stop causing your sister so much grief.”

“She is grief,” Mary said.

“Stop it now, or I'll ground you.”

“From what?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, sure. If it's something I don't care about, then why should I stop?”

I swear to God, I just grew another gray hair. It went
bing,
right out the top of my head. “Whatever you ask me for in the next month, I will say no to. And before you agree to that, you think about it. A whole month. There will be something that you want really bad, or something that you ask me for, and I am going to say no, I don't care what it is.”

“What if I ask if I can breathe? Or eat? Or pee?”

“Mary, for all that you hold dear, I swear…”

“Oh, all right,” Mary said. “But she's such a baby.”

“We've established that already. And I believe we've established that you're a brat. So, now let's be civil and move on. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said with all the gusto of a slug.

I heard her yell, “
Baby!
” at Rachel. Rachel got back on the phone. “She better straighten up, or I'm gonna kill her,” Rachel said.

“You'll do no such thing,” I said. “Be good. Your grandma doesn't need this. I'm going to bed. I love you.”

“Love you, too. Bye.”

I hung up the phone feeling completely exhausted. Rudy uncovered his head. “Well?”

“I took care of it.”

“Lord,” he said.

“It's a temporary condition. They become grown-ups one day,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I was just wondering why we couldn't have had all boys.”

I rolled my eyes and the manuscript on the nightstand caught my attention once again.

“Oh, go ahead and read it,” he said. He picked up his pillow and took the top blanket off of the bed and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm going to go sleep with Colin,” he said.

I tried not to laugh. “You might want to put something on other than boxers.”

He looked down at himself. “Ugh,” he said. He threw on his T-shirt and his sweatpants. “Good night.”

“Thanks, honey. You're a sweetheart.”

“No, I'm an idiot.” He shut the door behind him and I looked over at the manuscript. The diary. The detailed events of what had been a promising life. Did I really want to read it? Did I really want to know what led to her having a baby out of wedlock? Did I want to read about her heartache and pain when she realized that she and her lover would not be together? I thought about that. What had the little weasel said to her, I wondered? What could he possibly have said to her when she told him she was pregnant with his child? Whatever it was, it was bad. And what was the name of that weasel, anyway? For some reason, I wanted to know his name.

“Jeez,” I said as I picked up the manuscript. “I'm pathetic.”

About forty minutes later I had read about twenty-five pages. The handwriting got a little worse as it went, as if she were rushing to write it down. She wasn't taking her time or choosing her words quite so carefully. I suspected at this point that it was all about just getting it down. I tried to imagine that she was writing it for her daughter. I couldn't. Maybe she just wanted a record of it, so that one day her child would know exactly what her mother was feeling at that time. Maybe she didn't want Emelie to get the version that time had tempered.

I am desperate for word from my love. The last time we spoke, He told me that the parson had given Him strict instructions to stay away from me. The parson does not know who I am, but he knows that there is a special person in my lover's heart. I fear that if the parson finds out, he will tell my father before I have a chance to tell him myself. What sort of person would deny a man a wife? Deny him love?

Yes, what sort of person indeed? I found a pen on the night-stand but wasn't sure where my pad of paper was. It wasn't anywhere in the room, so I wrote on my hand: Parson's name?

Before I could pick the manuscript back up to continue reading, I heard a sound outside in the distance. I got up and walked to the window. It was dark, so I saw nothing. What did I expect?

I went back to reading:

The wolf bays lonesome tonight. I have not heard the two of them in nigh on a week. Just the one, just the female. Maybe the male has gone off to hunt. I wonder if they have cubs somewhere.

There was the sound again. I went back to the window but couldn't see anything through the glare. What was it? I opened the door quietly and padded down the hallway to the steps. I opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch into the damp spring air and the sweet intoxicating smell of the lilacs. I'm not bothered by the cold too much, so the brisk temperature felt good on my face. I stood completely still, waiting for the sound.

And then I heard it.

No.

It couldn't be.

It sounded like a wolf.

Of course, would I know what the hell a wolf sounded like if I heard it? Maybe it was a coyote or a neighbor's dog. My skin felt like it rippled all the way down my arms. I remembered having this same feeling when I was in West Virginia and heard a panther in the middle of the night. But for some reason I wasn't afraid like I was when I heard the panther. Maybe it was because of all of those wildlife specials that talk about how there has never been a case of a wolf attacking a human. I don't know. Maybe I'm just stupid. Whatever the reason, I stepped off that porch and walked across the yard, behind the stables, and into the field.

As I went by the stables I startled one of the horses. “It's all right,” I said. The horse didn't look as if it believed me, though. He trotted around the corral fence, uneasy with my presence this late at night. The field seemed smaller in the dark, but the thing I realized once I really looked around was that it wasn't
that
dark. There was a half moon tonight and the stars … How was it possible? When I looked up at the sky there were so many stars. This was the same sky we had in Missouri. Why did Minnesota have so many more stars? I suddenly felt small, and wholly insignificant.

And then I heard the rustle of leaves. “A wolf will not hurt me,” I said. “It will not hurt me.
National Geographic
said it will not hurt me.”

But what if it was a bear?

Just as I was ready to turn around and run, I saw something move on the edge of the forest. Then I spotted two golden eyes peering back at me through the cover of night and the thick foliage. I couldn't see the body that went with the eyes, but the eyes alone were enough to bewitch me. I was completely spellbound. My skin felt like it was shouting. I could feel every follicle on my head.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

I jumped and squealed and turned to find Colin standing behind me. “Oh … you … man … God, don't ever do that to me,” I said, placing my hand protectively over my heart. “Why aren't you sleeping?”

“Your husband snores.”

I couldn't speak. I just stood there breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, trying like heck to get my heart to calm down. My head was spinning from the sudden rush of blood.

“Are you going to answer me? Why are you out here? Are you trying to get eaten by a bear?” he asked.

“There are no bears here,” I said. “No, I saw a wolf.”

“A wolf.”

“Yes, right there,” I said and pointed to where the golden eyes had been just moments before.

“Okay, Torie, I was just joking about the bear thing,” he said. “I'd be more concerned about a person being in those woods than a predator.”

“No, I'm serious, Colin,” I said. “I saw a wolf.”

“Right.”

“No, really.”

“And just how many wolves have you seen in person?”

“I've seen a few at the Wolf Sanctuary back home.”

“Torie…”

“No, really. I just saw a wolf,” I said and then the realization hit me. “Oh, my God, I just saw a wolf.”

“Yeah, whatever. Let's get inside before it eats us both. Besides, I'd be much more afraid of the ticks.”

“Ticks?”

“Yes, the ticks here are horrible. I bet by the time we get back to the porch you've got two or three on your clothes.”

“No,” I said. I scratched the back of my head. Then behind my ear.

“Rudy and I were on the boat … on
water,
and I still found three ticks on me when I got in the shower. They're like commando ticks here.”

Blood-sucking things are just disgusting. I scratched my collarbone.

I looked back at the woods and took a deep breath. I knew what I saw. I could feel the wolf in there looking back at me even now. Colin gestured toward the house with a jerk of his head. I followed him, reluctantly, across the field and back toward the house. We didn't speak to each other until we got to the porch.

“Don't tell anybody,” I said.

“Tell anybody what?”

“That I saw a wolf.”

He looked at me for a beat, as if trying to decide if I was insane or not. “Torie,” he said. “I know that Minnesota has the largest wild wolf population in the country. But they don't come this far south. I saw it on
National Geographic
.”

“You know for a fact that the wolves have never made it this far south?”

“I don't think they've ever been south of Duluth. And we are south of Duluth.”

“All right,” I said and held my hands up in surrender. But I knew better. I gave one quick glance toward the line of trees before I entered Aunt Sissy's house. It was a wolf. And it was still out there.

Ten

I was standing on the front porch of Aunt Sissy's house staring out at the lush green of the countryside around me when Rudy came outside holding a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and scratching his head with the other. He yawned, took a careful sip of the coffee, and then smiled. “Good morning.”