Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

He should know this senior citizen. She knew him.

Though the lady wore sunglasses, he sensed that her eyes were tracking him when he left the car and stepped onto the sidewalk. As he came closer, she graced him with a smile and lowered the dark glasses. Her smile quickly slipped away, and Oren knew that he had failed a test of some kind. The woman raised one clenched fist and slowly extended her middle finger as an invitation for him to perform an unnatural act upon himself. And by this hand gesture alone, he recognized her. He had been a teenager the last time they met. Then, she had been a woman in her forties with a lean body and long hair the color of lions.

Then and now were different creatures.

He approached the hotel steps, calling up to her, "Hello, Mrs. Straub."

She leaned forward, causing the wicker to creak with the sudden shift of her bulk. Her voice had the husky quality of booze and cigarettes when she said, "Oren Hobbs, we've had sex in half the rooms of my hotel. I think it's time you called me Evelyn." Impervious to the peasants, a startled pair of guests, Evelyn Straub donned her sunglasses. She sat well back in her chair and turned her face away from him.

This audience was clearly over.

Thus dismissed, he gave her a wave, almost a salute, and continued down the sidewalk toward the drugstore. As always, the traffic moved slowly, not even close to the posted twenty-five miles per hour. By some mystical agreement of tourists and residents alike, all the drivers slowed down at the sign that welcomed them to town. Yet Oren was mindful of the slowest car, the one keeping pace with him. In sidelong vision, he noted only that it was black and low-slung, for his eyes were fixed on the pharmacy bottle in his hand.

This was not the judge's medication.

Another name was printed on the label. He recognized the drug, and he knew why it was prescribed. When had Hannah's days become so stressful? High anxiety and three strong locks on the front door-what else had changed during all the years of his exile?

The black car still crawled beside him. Now it put on a short burst of speed to capture a freshly vacated parking space up the street. Oren raised his eyes as the car door slammed-and he missed a step.

The summer girl always had that effect on him.

Isabelle Winston left her black sports car to face him down on the sidewalk half a block away. There was great purpose in her stride as she moved toward him. Though the morning was a cool one, a light, white cotton dress swirled above her knees, and he saw the flash of red toenails on sandaled feet. Her hair was shorter but still the color of raw carrots. Her freckles could not be seen at this distance; Oren took them on faith. He slowly released all the breath in his lungs.

The first time he had come near her, she had smelled of horses and, in later summers, a succession of perfumes, a different scent each time they met. Now she was almost close enough to inhale. As the gap between them narrowed, he averted his eyes and edged closer to the storefront side of the pavement, unwilling to risk touching her in passing.

And so they fell into their old childhood dance, the look-away two-step.

He watched her reflection in a shop window as she came abreast of him. In the glass, he saw her pause just long enough for her left foot to lash out in his direction.

A direct hit to one shin!

His legs tangled, and he was tripping, falling. The ground flew up to meet him with the painful crack of his kneecap on the cement and the vision of stars that came with a bang to the head.

First contact.

Oren rolled onto his back and raised himself up on one elbow to watch the summer girl, now a woman in her thirties, as she moved on down the sidewalk. There was never a backward glance to gloat over the damage she had done to him, and he thought that spoke well of her character.

The rear doors of the coroner's van hung open, waiting to receive his child's remains-to rob him.

Judge Henry Hobbs dangled his feet from the wide stump of an ancient tree. He had the meadow all to himself. His housekeeper had been so distracted by the events of the morning, she had allowed him to sit here in the sun without a baseball cap to shelter his bald head, and now she had deserted him for an interview with the sheriff. The judge could only watch his own front door from a distance, forbidden to enter it.

The old Mercedes rolled past the house and parked where the gravel driveway widened into a turnout. His son left the car and walked toward him, not hurrying any. Apparently, Oren had completed Hannah's odd errand, for he carried a small, white bag imprinted with the drugstore logo. The prescription for his heart medication only interested Henry Hobbs because he had no heart ailment and took no pills of any kind. The pharmacist would have apprised Oren of that fact, and now the boy would want to know what Hannah was playing at.

His son idly shifted the bag from one hand to the other as he sat down to share the generous expanse of the stump. Oren pretended interest in the clouds passing by overhead when he said, "I saw Mrs. Straub in town-just to say hello."

Well, how nice, but what's in that damn sack?

In the ensuing silence, the judge had to smile, for now they had a game. His son was enjoying the tension of a query that could not be voiced. Obvious questions were against the rules.

Heart medication indeed.

However, declaring his housekeeper to be a bold-faced liar would be rude, and bad manners were also against the rules of the game.

Oren set the pharmacy bag on the stump-and the mystery of its contents hovered in the air between them.

"Oh, Evelyn Straub," said the judge, keeping up his end. "I always wondered if she was the one who taught you to smoke cigarettes." He also suspected that woman of committing worse crimes against his son while the boy was underage.

Oren picked up the paper bag, opened it and looked inside. "And I saw Isabelle Winston, too. So she still comes back every summer?" He closed the bag and set it down on the stump.

"This time she came in April." The judge squinted and strained his eyes to read the receipt stapled to the paper sack, but this only told him the price. "I think the Winston girl moved back to the lodge so she could look after her mother."

And the flimsy paper bag that did not contain the judge's heart medication was gaining more weight with every passing second. It had to be Hannah's own prescription. What ailed his housekeeper? Was it something serious?

"So Mrs. Winston's not well?"

"Sarah? Oh, she drinks a bit," said the judge. "When I was still on the bench, I had to revoke her driver's license."

Could the bag contain heart medication for Hannah?

Endgame.

The judge picked up the bag, ripped it open and stared at the label on a bottle of tiny white pills prescribed for his housekeeper. "Lorazepam?"

Oren smiled-no, call it gloating-as he dangled the car keys in one hand. "I wonder why Hannah keeps these in a tea tin at the top of the cupboard."

So that's where they were.

"Well, age takes a toll, and she's getting up in years," said the judge, who was fifteen years older than his housekeeper. "Did the pharmacist mention what these pills were for?"

"He didn't have to. I already knew."

Beaten again, the judge looked down at the mystifying label. "It's for her anxiety," said Oren, a gracious and charitable winner.

Hannah anxious? Never.

Henry Hobbs regarded the pill bottle as if it might be filled with little white bombs. "That can't be right. She's so calm, she's downright sluggish. She goes to bed early, takes naps in the afternoon." He addressed the object in his hand. "There's got to be another use for this medication. You know, over the past six weeks or so, I think she's gotten a little paranoid. Hiding the car keys-that fits. And you've seen all the locks on the front door? Kitchen door, too. That's Hannah's doing."