In This Life
Page 31
The drive back to my place only took a few minutes. Emma had left Mr. Ford sitting on the kitchen table. His black embroidered eyes regarded me placidly as I picked him up.
I was locking the front door when a shadow startled me into dropping my keys.
“There was a man,” said Mrs. Sofia Fetucci. She was eighty-seven, the widow of a former national boxing champion and she rarely left her unit on the other side of the duplex. Last week I’d run into her daughter who confided that she was moving her mother to an assisted living facility down in Scottsdale, closer to where she lived.
“Are you okay, Sofia?” I asked, bending down to retrieve my keys.
The tiny old woman peered at me, her faded blue eyes covered with a milky layer of cataracts. I wasn’t even sure how much she could see at this point.
“There was a man here,” she insisted and the whole incident was beginning to feel a little spooky. I wondered if she was talking about Nash but to my knowledge he hadn’t been here today.
“He was at your window,” she said, pointing a bony finger at the kitchen window.
“When?” I asked, looking around and feeling more uneasy than ever. Sofia might seem lost in her own personal cloud sometimes but I’d never known her to hallucinate.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But you saw a man looking through my windows earlier?” I asked for clarification.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
She scrunched up her face. “Tall,” she said. “Maybe.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No. He might not have been tall.”
Well, that narrowed it down. I wouldn’t even know what to tell the police.
“My elderly half blind neighbor might have seen a nondescript possibly tall man near my kitchen window at some point.”
“Did you see where he went?” I asked. I wasn’t completely sure the man was real but that didn’t stop the hair from standing up on the back of my neck.
“No,” she sighed and I saw her hand trembling. She seemed upset and unsteady so I offered her my arm for stability and then walked her back over to her place. Sofia’s daughter had hired a maid, a meal delivery service and also a nurse to check on her mother several times a week but there was no one in the neat little apartment now. Her rooms were a mirror of my place, except all the furniture was covered with crocheted blankets and there were cat cross stitch pictures all over the walls. When I was satisfied that Sofia had everything she needed I left, making a mental note to find her daughter’s contact information and share the strange encounter.
I got behind the wheel of my car feeling bothered, nervous. Sofia had probably just seen a solicitor or maybe one of the missionaries who would frequently canvas the neighborhood searching for people to spread their religion to. And her cataracts were so bad I wasn’t even certain her version of events was correct.
But still, the flames of my anxiety were sufficiently fueled and I kept glancing in my rearview mirror. For a few blocks I thought I was being followed by a silver car. It remained a good twenty yards behind me and when I reached Nash’s street the vehicle turned in the opposite direction.
Nash’s car to the airport was already idling by the curb when I returned. There was a small municipal airport forty miles away where he’d catch a plane to Phoenix and then take a flight to Portland from there. I’d offered to drive him myself but he adamantly refused.
“Colin’s napping upstairs in the crib,” he said.
“I’ll kiss him goodbye for you.”
Nash flashed a grin. “I’ll get to Portland this evening,” he said, tossing a small carry on bag into the waiting car. “Then I’ll rent the truck, drive out to the coast, pack up, maybe catch a few hours of sleep and be on my way back here as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about Colin,” I told him, clutching Mr. Ford and still feeling a little rattled over the whole Man at the Window mystery. “Between Emma and me and Roxie he’ll be well taken care of.”
Emma suddenly burst through the front door and ran to me, claiming Mr. Ford and hugging the toy in a rapturous reunion.
Nash paused before sliding into the backseat of the car. His face searched mine. “Call me anytime, Kat.”
“You do the same.”
We stared at each other and he started to take a step toward me. I wondered if he planned to kiss me goodbye. I wanted him to. In spite of the fact that we were just good friends who gave each other incredible orgasms I wanted him to give me one gentle kiss before he left.
But Nash looked over at Emma, who was dancing around the front yard with her stuffed duck, and backed off. He winked at me before getting into the car.
I watched the car disappear and felt sad for some reason. Or maybe it wasn’t sadness. Maybe it was because I needed Nash Ryan more than I’d ever intended to.
I held out my hand to Emma and returned to the house where Roxie awaited with her tail wagging. Emma introduced her to Mr. Ford and didn’t appreciate when the dog tried to chew on Mr. Ford’s soft beak.
After checking on Colin, who still slept soundly as the crib mobile rotated slowly overhead, I returned downstairs to the kitchen, washed the handful of dishes in the sink and checked out the contents of the fridge. Nash had urged me to help myself to whatever I found and I wondered if Emma and I would be eating old cheese and stale bread for dinner. I really didn’t want to embark on a grocery store adventure unless it was necessary.
But surprisingly, Nash’s fridge was well stocked. I scanned the contents and planned to make a salad and spaghetti for us solid food eaters while Colin would be pleased enough with his formula and canned peaches.
Emma was talking animatedly in the next room. I listened for a moment and couldn’t figure out what she was up to so I went to go see.
I found a haphazard tea party in progress. Emma was lying on her belly on the floor while Roxie crouched beside her and Mr. Ford stared serenely at the sofa. As I was watching, the stuffed duck did a face plant although Emma was quick to reach out and right him.
“Sit up, Mr. Ford,” she scolded. “Don’t you like your tea?”
That’s when I noticed the ‘tea’ was being served on Heather’s carefully acquired antique china.
“Emma, where’d you get that?” I exclaimed, getting down on the floor and plucking a one hundred year old cup away from the curious snout of Roxie. “These are not toys.”
My daughter rose to a sitting position and pouted as I started stacking up the pieces. “I can play with these,” she argued.
“No honey, I told you to always ask first before you take something from here and start playing with it. This isn’t our house. What happened to your coloring books?”
“Heather said I could play with it!”
I bit my lip. “Emma, you know Heather couldn’t have told you that.”
“She did! She showed me where they were in that brown thing.” Emma pointed to the old curio cabinet in the corner of the room. “And she said I could play with this tea set any time I wanted and I promised to be careful.”
I stopped stacking the tea pieces. “When did Heather tell you this?” I asked gently. Emma was an imaginative child. She might have made up the entire scenario. But my discomfort from earlier returned and I wondered if there was any such thing as the supernatural.
I was locking the front door when a shadow startled me into dropping my keys.
“There was a man,” said Mrs. Sofia Fetucci. She was eighty-seven, the widow of a former national boxing champion and she rarely left her unit on the other side of the duplex. Last week I’d run into her daughter who confided that she was moving her mother to an assisted living facility down in Scottsdale, closer to where she lived.
“Are you okay, Sofia?” I asked, bending down to retrieve my keys.
The tiny old woman peered at me, her faded blue eyes covered with a milky layer of cataracts. I wasn’t even sure how much she could see at this point.
“There was a man here,” she insisted and the whole incident was beginning to feel a little spooky. I wondered if she was talking about Nash but to my knowledge he hadn’t been here today.
“He was at your window,” she said, pointing a bony finger at the kitchen window.
“When?” I asked, looking around and feeling more uneasy than ever. Sofia might seem lost in her own personal cloud sometimes but I’d never known her to hallucinate.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But you saw a man looking through my windows earlier?” I asked for clarification.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
She scrunched up her face. “Tall,” she said. “Maybe.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No. He might not have been tall.”
Well, that narrowed it down. I wouldn’t even know what to tell the police.
“My elderly half blind neighbor might have seen a nondescript possibly tall man near my kitchen window at some point.”
“Did you see where he went?” I asked. I wasn’t completely sure the man was real but that didn’t stop the hair from standing up on the back of my neck.
“No,” she sighed and I saw her hand trembling. She seemed upset and unsteady so I offered her my arm for stability and then walked her back over to her place. Sofia’s daughter had hired a maid, a meal delivery service and also a nurse to check on her mother several times a week but there was no one in the neat little apartment now. Her rooms were a mirror of my place, except all the furniture was covered with crocheted blankets and there were cat cross stitch pictures all over the walls. When I was satisfied that Sofia had everything she needed I left, making a mental note to find her daughter’s contact information and share the strange encounter.
I got behind the wheel of my car feeling bothered, nervous. Sofia had probably just seen a solicitor or maybe one of the missionaries who would frequently canvas the neighborhood searching for people to spread their religion to. And her cataracts were so bad I wasn’t even certain her version of events was correct.
But still, the flames of my anxiety were sufficiently fueled and I kept glancing in my rearview mirror. For a few blocks I thought I was being followed by a silver car. It remained a good twenty yards behind me and when I reached Nash’s street the vehicle turned in the opposite direction.
Nash’s car to the airport was already idling by the curb when I returned. There was a small municipal airport forty miles away where he’d catch a plane to Phoenix and then take a flight to Portland from there. I’d offered to drive him myself but he adamantly refused.
“Colin’s napping upstairs in the crib,” he said.
“I’ll kiss him goodbye for you.”
Nash flashed a grin. “I’ll get to Portland this evening,” he said, tossing a small carry on bag into the waiting car. “Then I’ll rent the truck, drive out to the coast, pack up, maybe catch a few hours of sleep and be on my way back here as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about Colin,” I told him, clutching Mr. Ford and still feeling a little rattled over the whole Man at the Window mystery. “Between Emma and me and Roxie he’ll be well taken care of.”
Emma suddenly burst through the front door and ran to me, claiming Mr. Ford and hugging the toy in a rapturous reunion.
Nash paused before sliding into the backseat of the car. His face searched mine. “Call me anytime, Kat.”
“You do the same.”
We stared at each other and he started to take a step toward me. I wondered if he planned to kiss me goodbye. I wanted him to. In spite of the fact that we were just good friends who gave each other incredible orgasms I wanted him to give me one gentle kiss before he left.
But Nash looked over at Emma, who was dancing around the front yard with her stuffed duck, and backed off. He winked at me before getting into the car.
I watched the car disappear and felt sad for some reason. Or maybe it wasn’t sadness. Maybe it was because I needed Nash Ryan more than I’d ever intended to.
I held out my hand to Emma and returned to the house where Roxie awaited with her tail wagging. Emma introduced her to Mr. Ford and didn’t appreciate when the dog tried to chew on Mr. Ford’s soft beak.
After checking on Colin, who still slept soundly as the crib mobile rotated slowly overhead, I returned downstairs to the kitchen, washed the handful of dishes in the sink and checked out the contents of the fridge. Nash had urged me to help myself to whatever I found and I wondered if Emma and I would be eating old cheese and stale bread for dinner. I really didn’t want to embark on a grocery store adventure unless it was necessary.
But surprisingly, Nash’s fridge was well stocked. I scanned the contents and planned to make a salad and spaghetti for us solid food eaters while Colin would be pleased enough with his formula and canned peaches.
Emma was talking animatedly in the next room. I listened for a moment and couldn’t figure out what she was up to so I went to go see.
I found a haphazard tea party in progress. Emma was lying on her belly on the floor while Roxie crouched beside her and Mr. Ford stared serenely at the sofa. As I was watching, the stuffed duck did a face plant although Emma was quick to reach out and right him.
“Sit up, Mr. Ford,” she scolded. “Don’t you like your tea?”
That’s when I noticed the ‘tea’ was being served on Heather’s carefully acquired antique china.
“Emma, where’d you get that?” I exclaimed, getting down on the floor and plucking a one hundred year old cup away from the curious snout of Roxie. “These are not toys.”
My daughter rose to a sitting position and pouted as I started stacking up the pieces. “I can play with these,” she argued.
“No honey, I told you to always ask first before you take something from here and start playing with it. This isn’t our house. What happened to your coloring books?”
“Heather said I could play with it!”
I bit my lip. “Emma, you know Heather couldn’t have told you that.”
“She did! She showed me where they were in that brown thing.” Emma pointed to the old curio cabinet in the corner of the room. “And she said I could play with this tea set any time I wanted and I promised to be careful.”
I stopped stacking the tea pieces. “When did Heather tell you this?” I asked gently. Emma was an imaginative child. She might have made up the entire scenario. But my discomfort from earlier returned and I wondered if there was any such thing as the supernatural.
