PHLOX HUNG UP THE phone. Still no answer. She heard a man shouting and looked out the service station window. She saw two men jumping into a maroon van, the driver taking off before the other guy even got his door closed. At the same time, a green car fishtailed out of the lot, leaving a cloud of dust and smoke. Within two seconds they were both out of sight.
Phlox said to the kid behind the counter, “What was that about?”
The clerk shrugged. “I dunno. The guy in the hat took off running, then all hell broke loose.”
“Hat?”
“Like a cowboy hat.”
Phlox pushed through the door and ran out to the truck. No sign of Bobby, just the pickup truck. She went back inside.
“You say you saw him run off?”
“Like he was being chased.”
Phlox nodded, putting the pieces together. She should have realized. Letting Bobby show his face in public in this town was akin to wearing the Koh-i-noor diamond to a convention of thieves. She paid the clerk for the gas, then went out to the truck and sat in the driver’s seat staring out the windshield trying to think it out. He got away, or he didn’t, or he got caught and he’ll get away, or he won’t. He’s hiding or he isn’t. He’ll come back to the gas station soon, or never. After a time, the clerk came out and asked her to move away from the pumps. Phlox drove the pickup to the corner of the lot and sat there for another twenty minutes. Finally, the image of Bobby being dragged back to his wife by faceless men prompted her to act. She went back inside and said to the clerk, “If my friend with the hat comes looking for me, tell him I went to talk to his wife.”
Of the three, it was Barbaraannette who’d got the looks and the fashion sense, though she hadn’t really blossomed until the year after she graduated from Henry High—the year after her first romance with Bobby Quinn.
Hilde remembered the day Barbaraannette had come home late from the Henry High graduation party, swollen-lipped and bright-eyed with nothing to say. Hilde had been concerned like any good mother, but she’d known the day had long been coming and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it. She took Barbaraannette to Dr. Fox, got her a prescription for birth control pills, and then bought her a root beer float at Lang’s Pharmacy.
That boy Bobby had given Barbaraannette a few heady weeks of young love, then cast his eye in other directions, the way boys will. The breakup had been hard on Barbaraannette. That fall, wounded and bitter, she had left Cold Rock to attend college in Florida.
The next time Hilde saw her daughter, it was as if God herself had reached down from heaven and transformed her. She’d dropped twenty pounds of baby fat, her skin and auburn hair had gone coppery with Florida sunshine, and her eyes carried in them the color of the sea. Even more striking, her personality had taken on a vivacious, self-confident sheen. For four years Hilde watched Barbaraannette become increasingly beautiful with each return visit to Cold Rock.
Then Barbaraannette had stopped visiting. Hilde had heard almost nothing from her middle daughter for three long years-a brief letter, now and then, with a new address in San Francisco, then Chicago, then New Orleans, then New York, each note citing another man’s name, a new job. She’d signed her letters Barb, a name Hilde hated because it sounded so hard and sharp. She had not come home, not even for Mary Beth’s wedding, for three long years.
“Mama?”
Hilde looked up from her plate of macaroni and cheese at the young woman sitting across from her. She said, “Most of the people here are old.”
“Mama, it’s me, Barbaraannette.”
What a coincidence! She’d just been thinking about Barbaraannette. “Of course you are,” she said, scooping up another forkful of the orange matter on her plate. It was salty. Hilde liked salt. “Five years you don’t come home, now look at you. Barely twenty-six, you could be thirty.”
“I’m thirty-four, Mama.”
“Thirty-four what?” Hilde hated these games. She wished the hotel management would put a stop to them.
“Years, Mama. I have to tell you something.”
“I can’t stop you.”
“I just quit my job at the school.”
“Now why did you go and do that?” School? What school?
“They asked me to leave. They don’t want me there anymore.”
“Why, that’s ridiculous! What’s wrong with those people?”
“I think they’re jealous of me.”
“Well they should be! You’re a beautiful girl. Will you be coming back to Cold Rock now?”
“I’ve been back nine years, Mama.”
Hilde blinked and looked away. She heard the voice go on speaking to her, but other voices drew her into another less confusing time. She remembered now that Barbaraannette had finally returned to Cold Rock, her eyes narrower, her lipsticked mouth hard and red over the pale curve of her chin, her voice husky from cigarettes and alcohol. She had become more beautiful than ever, though it had become a sadder, more mature beauty. What Hilde remembered most vividly was the way the men of Cold Rock, even the married ones, had swarmed the new Barbaraannette.
The girl really knew how to fix herself up.
These days—Hilde abruptly found herself back in the present—Barbaraannette did not seem to care what she wore. Her wardrobe was plain, plain, plain—all earth tones and practicality. Such a shame. Such a beautiful girl.
Hilde herself had never held back when it came to making herself look good. She’d had her breasts worked on back in the 1970s, had her face lifted twice, and had undergone a number of tucks, peels, and excisions. She’d put in four decades with Jack LaLane, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her wardrobe, never appeared in public without her makeup, and always kept her hair big, bold, and bright. This year she was a redhead. It was a wig, but one had to make allowances for age. After all, she was sixty-six years old.
Or was it seventy-something? She’d been sixty-six when Barbaraannette had returned to Cold Rock and renewed her romance with Frances Quinn’s boy, Bobby. Sixty-six when they’d married.
Hilde said to her daughter, “You could’ve done better.”
But when she lifted her eyes, she was alone.