Melinda Curtis - Love, Special Delivery

Mandy peeked in. What once might have been a small basket of strawberries (based on the fermented smell) was now a glob of mold. That hadn’t happened overnight. Mandy shut the door, more convinced than ever that no one had lived here recently. More hopeful that no one would visit while they stayed a few weeks.

Olivia and her flip-flops snapped their way down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Hey, I recognize our room.” She disappeared inside. “Why did we leave the bunk beds?”

“Why?” Mandy leaned against the door frame. There were more good memories in this room than bad. “Because I’d slept on top for ten years, and at twenty-five I wasn’t going to do that anymore. And don’t get any ideas.” At thirty-two she was too old to be sleeping on a bunk. “These are out. We’re bringing in your bed and you’re sleeping in here alone.” She’d take her grandparents’ room. “No arguments.”

“It’s freaky how you can read my mind.” But Olivia looked happy, which was a welcome change since they’d had to leave her friends and support group behind.

“Do you remember this?” Mandy closed the door, shutting them inside. They had time for a little reminiscing before the day’s summer heat made it too hot to unload their truck. “This is where Grandma tracked our height.” On the white frame of a tall slim mirror on the back of the door.

The two crowded into the reflection. Mandy, the tallest of the pair, looking too thin and too young with her slight smile and thick dark hair in messy ponytails. Her red tank was as baggy as the circles under her eyes. She’d been worried about her new job, about the move, about the bills, the house, Olivia, about...well...everything.

Olivia’s frame was deceptively solid, as if she’d put on extra adolescent weight preparing for a growth spurt. Her soft brown hair was only an inch long, making her brown eyes and wide mouth seem more prominent.

“Was I ever that short?” Olivia leaned closer to the door, peering at a mark about three feet off the floor.

“You were a petite thing.” Mandy nudged her aside and opened the door, leading the way to the master bedroom. “You should feel lucky you didn’t get my height or my shoe size.”

Neither one of them opened the second bedroom door.

Grandma’s wide bureau sat in the master bedroom in front of a wall with maroon-striped velvet wallpaper. The solid cherry dresser had a white marble top and a large framed mirror attached to the back.

“Grandpa and I couldn’t lift this, so we left it when we moved.” Mandy opened a top drawer. It was filled with her grandmother’s colorful polyester scarves. “He left most of her things.” And then she said with forced casualness, “Do you remember Grandma’s wedding ring?”

“Only because you told me it was made of brass.” Olivia opened the closet. “Her clothes are still here. They smell of lavender.” While Mandy fingered her grandmother’s scarves, Olivia moved clothes across the rod, scraping wire hangers over wood. “There aren’t very many clothes in here.”

Dismay made a special delivery to Mandy’s gut with a one-two punch. “That can’t be.” Grandma had never walked out of a clothing store without a purchase. She’d believed in retail therapy. When they’d moved after her death, Grandma’s closet had been jammed full of pants, blouses and dresses, many with the tags still on.

But the clothes with price tags were gone. Mandy rummaged through the mostly empty bureau. Only the scarf drawer seemed untouched.

An old memory lurched from her past, like a zombie coming to life after a long restless sleep.

Grandma’s voice, pitched low. “If you need money, Teri, ask. Don’t go searching through my drawers.”

“I was just admiring your scarves.” Mandy’s mother slid the drawer closed, looking like a model in a short, clingy black cocktail dress and black heels more appropriate for a hotel bar than Harmony Valley. “They’re so pretty.”

Neither one of them acknowledged eight-year-old Mandy lingering in the hallway, eavesdropping as she held on to the hope that Mom wasn’t going to leave again.

“Save that tone for your father. You hate those scarves.” Her grandmother’s voice wasn’t sweet. It didn’t comfort, not the way it did when she talked to Mandy. “Those scarves remind you of my cancer. They taunt you because I didn’t die.”

Mandy had stumbled back in the hallway and then ran into her room. It wasn’t until the door was closed and she’d burrowed under the covers that she’d realized her mother was laughing.

“Do you think...?” Olivia came to stand near Mandy, unable to complete her question.

It didn’t matter. Mandy knew what her sister had been thinking. They both stared at the closed door across the hall. Grandpa had left the house to their mother, a woman who didn’t value roots or generosity or family. “If Mom stayed here, it was a long time ago.” The dust. The strawberries in the fridge. The drawer full of untouched scarves. “You know how Mom is. She comes for a very brief time and then goes away for a lot longer.”

Still, neither one of them moved toward their mother’s room. Neither one seemed to want to know how long it’d been since Teri Zapien had been here.

“I want to see her.” Olivia’s words sounded like they came from a young girl lost on a once-familiar playground.

“She might show up.” Mandy hoped not.

Their mother was no good at keeping secrets, especially ones that would hurt Olivia.

* * *

“KITTENS?” CAPTAIN BEN LIBBY drove Harmony Valley’s fire truck around the corner toward the crowded town square. “We’re taking the engine out for the first time for kittens?”

“It’s not just kittens.” From the passenger seat, his father, Fire Chief Keith Libby, pointed to the large, sweeping oak tree in the middle of the square and the gathering crowd. “There’s a boy up there, too.”

Sure enough. There was a flash of red hair and knobby knees between the branches.

Dad’s eyesight was still sharp even if the rest of his body wasn’t in its prime.

“Kids seldom need rescuing from trees.” Ben’s godchild came to mind. Seven-year-old stoic Hannah would never find herself in such a predicament.

Dad scoffed. “Need I remind you of a boy who fell out of a tree and broke both wrists?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Ten-year-old Ben had been pretending to battle a blazing high-rise. That’s what third-generation firefighters in the making did—pretend to battle blazes. Unfortunately, his feet had tangled in the garden hose and ladder rungs, sending him tumbling to the ground. He’d had a healthy dislike of ladders ever since.

“Give Harmony Valley a chance, son.” Dad laid his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t grow up here like I did, but I didn’t ask you to come with me.”

“No. That request came from Mom.”

Decades of sleep-depriving forty-eight-hour shifts and the inhalation of too much toxic smoke in the busy Oakland, California, fire department had taken their toll on his father. Dad’s weakened heart and lungs made the fifty-five-year-old move like the octogenarians who made up the majority of Harmony Valley’s population. Breathing had become a daily struggle. He’d be deadweight on a fire crew in a busy fire station, a danger to himself, those under his command and those in need of rescue. Ben had put his firefighting career on hold to help his father reopen the rural fire department for the ten months his old man had left until retirement. Reaching full retirement meant a 25 percent bigger stipend each month.

No. Dad hadn’t asked. Vanessa Libby had. And despite his father missing out on much of Ben’s childhood to pursue a career in fire, Ben couldn’t live with himself if he wasn’t here to watch over him. So he’d quit his job in the Oakland Fire Department, too, purposefully putting his career on hold.