ANGIE SEEMED A little more awake when they got to Julia’s house, able to sit at the kitchen table, albeit occasionally swaying so severely Julia feared she’d end up on the floor.
Julia hurried to make coffee, despite the truism that pouring coffee into a drunk only resulted in a wide-awake drunk. She popped a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster.
“Smells good,” Angie mumbled.
Julia, wary of spills, only half filled Angie’s coffee mug. She thought a moment and added a glug of whiskey, resisting the temptation to do the same for her own. She slathered the toast with butter and added cinnamon and sugar. What Angie really needed was protein—a proper eggs-and-bacon meal with fresh-squeezed orange juice, or maybe even steak and eggs—but she feared it might all come back up on her kitchen table. Save that for later, she thought.
She watched carefully for signs of sick as Angie nibbled at her toast. So far, so good. Jake had dogged her steps as soon as they’d come in the door but now sat quivering at Angie’s feet, training his most winsome look upon her.
“Cute dog.” Angie held out a bit of toast, and he took it politely before backing away a few steps and wolfing it down.
“He’s your friend for life now.”
Angie nodded, her eyelids at half-staff. She needed sleep. A bath. Clean clothes. All of which Julia was happy to supply, but first she had to know what was going on.
“Angie, why are you so eager to see Ray sent off to prison?”
Angie’s eyes snapped open, fear flaring anew.
“You’ve got to get him out of that county jail. You’ve got to.” She reached across the table, clutching at Julia’s hand, for the second time in a single hour upending a cup of coffee despite Julia’s precautions. Julia grabbed a kitchen towel and mopped the table and herself.
“Why?”
“Because he was in cahoots with that woman. The one who died.”
“Miss Mae?” Julia wondered if she should have held off on the whiskey. Miss Mae had a good fifteen years on Ray. Maybe more. “I thought Ray was with you.”
“No.” Angie slumped again in her chair. She was fading again. Julia resisted the urge to shake her. “Not Miss Mae. The big one. The lawyer lady.”
“Lawyer lady?”
“Not lawyer. Something else. Something important.”
“The legislator? Leslie Harper? And Ray?”
Now Julia wondered just how drunk or high Angie really was. Nothing the woman was saying made sense. She’d be better off waiting for her to sober up.
“Angie, how would you like a nice hot shower? And some clean clothes? Then a long nap.”
Even as she spoke, she wondered what she could possibly offer Angie. Her own clothes were barely above child size.
Angie nodded dazed acquiescence to a shower. Julia hadn’t dared offer a bath, fearful Angie would drown in the capacious tub. It would make more sense to let Angie sleep first and then shower, but in the confined space of the house, Angie’s lack of recent acquaintance with soap and water was becoming more noticeable by the moment.
When Angie saw the tub, though, her eyes widened in near alertness. “Oh my. Would you look at that?”
She gazed at it with such longing that Julia, who’d cringed at the reality of having to help Angie undress, realized that a shower wouldn’t do and furthermore that she was going to have to stay with Angie for the whole process. She twisted the faucets on the tub and set about helping Angie remove layer after layer of clothing, more than necessary now that temperatures had finally begun to lift. She turned her back while Angie used the toilet, then retrieved her recently purchased jar of bath salts and added them to the water.
She helped Angie into the tub, averting her eyes from Angie’s ribby frame. Angie sank in up to her chin, murmuring, “Oh, oh, oh. Only time I ever get to take a bath is in the creek, and no matter how hot it gets in the summer, that water is never warm.”
Julia tried to imagine it, how Angie would have had to wait until full dark, when the townspeople finally abandoned the creek, then strip naked and vulnerable, knowing all too well the unsavory types who haunted the creek at night. Would Angie keep her knife in hand even as she bathed? Would she creep step by step into the frigid rushing creek or plunge in at once to get the worst of it over with? And would such a necessarily quick and furtive process ever really leave you feeling fully clean?
“Sit up a little, if you can,” Julia said. She squirted liquid soap onto a washcloth and began to scrub the back of Angie’s neck and around her ears, just as she did for Calvin. But even the surprising amount of dirt accumulated by a small boy in the course of a single day washed away easily compared to the weeks—months?—of ground-in grime layering Angie’s skin.
“Lift your arms.” Angie, somnolent, responded in slow motion, water sheeting from them.
Julia soaped the tangle of hair there, thinking how shaving, something she considered a necessary annoyance, would be an impossibility for someone like Angie, probably along with brushing, flossing—two things Angie no longer had to worry about—shampooing, moisturizing, deodorizing, the daily grooming routine she took for granted. She had some disposable razors somewhere. She’d offer them to Angie later.
“Can you lift a foot?”
It was a horror, the skin tough and cracked, the nails blackened and misshapen. Julia ran the cloth between each toe, thinking that Angie’s feet were roughly the size of her mother-in-law’s. She wondered if Beverly, whose footwear tended toward ladylike pumps and serviceable winter boots, had a single pair of sturdy shoes that might be practical for the kind of life Angie lived. She intended to find out.
“Here.” She finished with Angie’s feet, discarded the begrimed washcloth, found a fresh one, and prodded Angie awake. She wet the cloth, soaped it, and handed it to her. “So you can clean down there.” She turned away until the splashing stopped.
“Thanks.” Angie’s voice was thick with mingled sleep and embarrassment.
“One more thing.” She squirted shampoo into her palms and then rubbed it through Angie’s hair, working hard at her scalp, trying not to think of things like lice. Surely it was too cold?
She fetched the cup from the sink and turned on the water again, pouring cupfuls over Angie’s head until the water ran free of suds. She pulled the plug on the tub, grasped Angie under each arm, and helped her from it, wrapping her in a towel and seating her on the toilet.
“Almost done. You can sleep in just a few more minutes. But if we don’t get this hair untangled now, you’ll wake up with a rat’s nest that we’ll have to cut out.” She kept her voice soft and low and constant, an effort to soothe herself as much as Angie. Because what was she going to do with this woman in her house? Angie couldn’t stay. She worked a wide-toothed comb through the snarls, apologizing when she tugged especially hard.
Maybe she could call a shelter. Definitely not the police; Angie had been vehement on that point, and especially about Wayne. Not that bastard. Julia made a mental note to ask Angie about that when she was awake.
“Can you sit here for one more minute?”
She feared Angie would topple from the toilet. But Angie, eyes closed, slurred, “I’m warm. I’m clean. I’m dry. I can sit here all night if I have to.”
Julia ran to her bedroom and ducked into the closet, rooting around in the back for the boxes of Michael’s clothes she’d been unable to bear to give away, feeling past the layers of folded sweaters and flannel shirts for—“There!” She retrieved an old sweatsuit, soft with use and age.
Angie would swim in it, but it would be better than anything of Julia’s, which would barely cover her and be too tight besides.
She led Angie to her bed and drew the blankets close around her chin, resisting the impulse to kiss her cheek as she did Calvin’s at night. Jake appeared and leapt onto the bed, curling himself against Angie’s shoulder, somehow sensing vulnerability and appointing himself as protector.
Just as Julia started to tiptoe away, Angie’s eyes flew open and she sat up, looking wildly about the room. Jake crouched stiff beside her, hackles raised.
“Where am I? What happened?”
Julie hurried back and knelt beside the bed. “It’s me. Julia. You’re in my house. You’re safe here.”
Angie sank back onto the pillow, whimpering. Julia decided to press her advantage.
“Angie, what are you so afraid of? Why is it so important that I get Ray out of the jail and into prison?”
Angie rolled over and clutched the pillow, curling herself around it like a child with a teddy bear and muffling her voice. Julia strained to hear.
“Because they think he’s going to tell.”