TUESDAY OCTOBER 30, 2007
HARLEY MCKENNA STOPPED BY THE office unexpectedly, asking for a history of New Mexico’s shared water rights with Arizona. The girls rolled their eyes.
“Caroline, please get the file,” Lee Ann said.
Harley drawled on. “The state engineer has called a meeting to discuss the Arizona Water Settlement Act, to direct water from the Gila River system as part of an exchange with the Central Arizona Project. Four counties are involved, including…”
“Excuse me, Harley,” Lee Ann said. “An independent inspector will be arriving any day to assess the courthouse books. His name is Gerald Murray.”
Harley panted through parted lips, his chin disappearing into his fat neck, stomach rising and falling like a toad’s.
“I’ve called for an audit,” she said.
The clerks abandoned their computer screens and vanished. Lee Ann gathered her belongings from the bottom desk drawer while Harley used the phone, neck and ears turning bright red as he grumbled the news to Ed Richter, ordering him to call Saul Duran.
The inflated bid for the proposed youth center and the adjusted figures for Women, Infants, and Children remained locked in the top drawer of her desk. She dropped the key in her purse, reached for her jacket, and made it to the stairs just as Harley boomed, “You’re fired!”
Once home, she mopped the kitchen and pantry floors and caught up on the laundry, dusted the living room, and baked a macaroni and ham casserole and the boys’ favorite dessert—chocolate cream pie. She put the pie in the fridge, took out two boxes of the freshest eggs and drove to Grace’s, arriving late in the afternoon.
Grace’s sprawling adobe sat on ten acres she’d held onto after her husband died. Tumbleweed, rabbit bush, and sage crowded the road up to the house. The gate was open and blind Rosco, too old to muster the energy to bark a warning, raised his nose in the air as Lee Ann approached. She knocked, then raised her voice over the hum of a sewing machine and called Grace’s name.
“Come in, come in,” Grace said, appearing from a bedroom down the hall. “What a nice surprise! My goodness, I hadn’t noticed how late it’s getting. I’m catching up on unfinished projects.” She led Lee Ann into the kitchen, turned on the light, and reached into the hutch for plates. “Of course, I would trade it all to be sitting quietly beside your mother. I believe we communicated until the end.”
“Grace, please, I didn’t come to eat, or for a cup of coffee. Your devotion to Mother meant so much to all of us.” Lee Ann placed the eggs on the table. “I’m here to solicit your help again.”
She spoke slowly, keeping things in order. First, she wanted to make sure someone kept an eye on Edgar, a compassionate eye. He wasn’t one to complain, but his right hip was so painful he could barely hobble around. And the house needed to be overseen from a woman’s perspective. Scott and Dee wouldn’t notice dust balls if they grew big as thistle heads. They’d swish a dish under the tap and call it washed. Lee Ann would arrange with Carlinda to do the heavy cleaning every other week, but someone needed to check in every few days to organize the boys’ clutter—work gloves, catalogs, tools, hats, and jackets. A hot dinner twice a week would be nice, nothing fancy, something Grace could prepare at home and deliver on the days she dropped by.
“You see,” Lee Ann said, “I’ll be away for awhile.”