M. Stelmack - Coming Home To You

“Hello?” Mr. Greene again.

Daphne scrambled into the tracksuit, its stench wonderfully clearing her muddled mind, and then she exited the bathroom to the front.

This time, Mr. Greene was accompanied by a police officer.

“Hello. I’m Corporal Paul Grayson,” the officer stated from the other side of her bed. “Daphne, is it?”

He must’ve got her name from Mr. Greene. Daphne wished she remembered his first name. She never could remember names when they were spoken to her, which made the first day of classes excruciating. She’d invented a mental game of rhyming names to hurry the memorization process. Hopefully someone would mention the man’s name so she could use her trick. “Yes. That’s right.”

“Daphne,” he repeated in an extra calm voice, “do you mind stepping outside with me?”

Was he going to arrest her? Was carelessness a crime? Perhaps so, particularly since there’d been property damage. But she hadn’t been driving. Was she an accessory?

Her breath caught in her throat. Negligence. Yes, she knew that was a crime, one she’d magnificently demonstrated.

Then again, her arrest would stop the trip.

Had things so unraveled that she was actually welcoming the chance to be placed in cuffs?

“Very well.” With a straight back, she scooted across her bed and down the steps. Mr. Greene was already waiting beside the coach, like a flight attendant. When she reached the bottom step, he pointed at her bare feet with a thick, strong workman’s finger. Not too many of those on the university campus. Or on Edward Ferrars, for that matter.

“You need shoes. There’s broken glass out here.”

She blinked at him in the new morning light. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”

She mounted the steps, searching her mind for where she’d left her shoes. Any shoes. “I saw a pair under the bed,” he called after her.

“Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

As she got on her hands and knees, Daphne was quite sure she would beat Fran to death’s door and expire here and now from incurable mortification.

CHAPTER TWO

DAPHNE’S MORTIFICATION SWELLED when she viewed the damage to the motor home and the restaurant. One of the Tim’s windows was webbed with cracks, and the RV’s fender was twisted and stuck well into the bashed brickwork. At least Fran owned The Stagecoach, as they’d dubbed it, so they just had to deal with the insurance company.

A uniformed officer was taking pictures, and so was the Tim Hortons man. Should she be, too? Then again, to what end? Responsibility—hers and Fran’s—was undeniable.

Mr. Greene disappeared once more into the restaurant. She moved to follow him when Corporal Grayson said, “Can I get your full name, Daphne?”

Right. Business before doughnuts. “Daphne Merlotte.” She automatically spelled it for him.

“Date of birth?”

Daphne stated it, inexplicably relieved that Mr. Greene wasn’t there to hear she was five months shy of fifty. Daphne had always dismissed Fran’s claim that she barely looked forty, but on this particular occasion, considering what an appalling impression Mr. Greene no doubt already had of her, she hoped he’d give her the benefit of the doubt when it came to her age. If he thought of her at all.

“Address?”

She gave her Halifax one, and Corporal Grayson moved on to get the same information about Fran. Daphne was rattling off the address when Mr. Greene emerged, balancing a tray of coffees and a box of Timbits.

“Here,” Mr. Greene said, handing her a coffee. “Have one.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Go on,” Mr. Greene said, taking the Timbits box. “The tray’s heavy. You’d be doing me a favor.”

He smiled at her, making laugh lines crinkle around his eyes and his tanned face lift and lighten. His expression was one of pure joy and warmth, so unexpected on a man, at least in her experience with the anemic-looking professors of her faculty.

She obediently took the coffee and two mini cups of cream. “Thank you,” she said.

He held out the box of mini doughnuts.

“I couldn’t possibly.” Her stomach squeaked an objection to her objection.

He must’ve heard because he smiled again. Oh, that smile. She took a Timbit.

She popped the sugary ball into her mouth because, of course, it was the doughnut making her mouth water.

Mr. Greene offered the box to the officer. “How about you, Paul?”

“Mel,” Corporal Grayson said, “we already have to deal with the stereotype of police liking doughnuts without you perpetuating it.”

Mel! Mel, fell, sell, tell, well. Mr. Greene—Mel—Mel Greene shook the box invitingly at the officer.

“Okay, one. So you’ll leave me alone.” Corporal Grayson took two.

“I’ll take the rest and the coffees up to the ladies,” Mel said. Of course, Fran. If anyone, her godmother had proved how much she needed a coffee. “She likes her coffee with cream and sugar,” Daphne called after him.

“Got it,” he said, not breaking stride.

He entered the RV before she could thank him, another uniformed police officer right behind him. Through the shaded window, Daphne watched Mel and the stiff solidness of the police officer move to the bedroom. More authority to further enliven Fran.

Corporal Grayson brushed the sugar off his shirtfront. “Could you tell me what happened here?”

Daphne dropped her gaze. She’d found only her flip-flops under the bed, and her toes curled from the mild morning chill—or from her guilt. “I—I can’t tell you much, really. We stopped last night in Red Deer and planned—”

“In an RV park? Which one?” he asked.

Daphne tried to remember. The campsites were all running together as if Canada was nothing more than a string of campgrounds. “The one by the river?”

Corporal Grayson nodded and gestured for Daphne to continue.

“We departed early this morning while I was still sleeping.” She’d woken to books thudding off her bed as The Stagecoach swung onto the highway.

“How did Fran Hertz—”

“She’s my godmother.” It somehow felt important to state that Fran was more than a driver or a traveling companion or a full name on a police report.

“How did your godmother seem to you at that time?”

Mel Greene emerged from the motor home and walked its length to the rear. The other police officer slid into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The Stagecoach shuddered to life.

“Do you intend to impound the RV?” Daphne couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice.

“Just moving it out of the way,” he said.

“Oh.”

“We were talking about your godmother,” he prompted.

“As well as can be expected,” she said automatically.

The officer paused his writing.

“That is, she seemed fine. She was talking. Coherent.”

“How did she look?”

Daphne curled her toes completely under and confessed yet again to her inattention. “I—I couldn’t say. I—I was in bed.”

From the back of the RV, Mel called for the police officer to put the vehicle into Reverse. As he pulled back, the front grille severed from the restaurant wall with a loud scraping and a crumbling of bricks. The Tim Hortons employee took more photos of the wall and the front bumper, clearly to be used against Fran in a court of law.

If Fran was still alive to contest it.

“Sorry. You were in bed?” Corporal Grayson said.

Daphne pointed to the approximate place in the moving Stagecoach. “I sleep on a hide-a-bed right behind the driver’s seat. I don’t drive so I decided to read.” Today she’d reached for the nearest book, which happened to be Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility .

“So...when did you notice that your godmother’s driving had become erratic?”