David was on the front porch with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigar in the other, basking in the morning sun, when the kids arrived at the center.
“Could you smell my smoke when you got off the bus?” he asked.
All three shook their heads.
“Damn, gonna have to get me a bigger stogie if I’m gonna to kill the population of Soda Springs with secondhand smoke,” he said. “You saw yesterday’s letter to the editor?”
They all nodded.
“Just shows you how stone-cold mean Adah is, talking about Bert like she did. Adah knows what happened; the newspaper was all over it.” He drew on his cigar again before going on. “Believe me, if Bert had her druthers, she would have retired from the library rather than having a blood vessel rupture in her brain leaving her with the cognitive function of a small child. The only thing she has to make her happy is food. And if she dies of obesity, well, damn, she’ll die happy.” He flicked the ashes from his cigar over the railing. “You are pretty pathetic when the only thing you can find to do is screw with the lives of a bunch of short-timers who are only waiting to age out of this life. She probably spends her spare time strangling small animals.” He waved the kids inside.
Olivia was just parking Bert at the dining room table when the kids clocked in. Bert smiled happily at them like they were the best thing she had seen in her life.
Olivia followed them down the hall. “Just want you kids to know I’m madder than a mule with a mouth full of bumblebees, so if ’n I get a bit short, it isn’t at you. It’s cuz this place is being haunted by the old witch out there. She’s just upsetting everyone when they should be enjoying whatever days the Good Lord is planning on providing them.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Soosie asked.
“Why, we could get closed down, sugar, if Adah can convince the state there really are bad things happening here and she sure seems bent on it.”
“What would happen to everybody who lives here?”
“They’d be sent to live at different places, and it would be just like breaking up a family. Oh, they fuss and squabble like any family, but they also depend on each other, look out for each other. They think of this place as their home—their last home. Take them out of here and stick them in a new place with new people, new routines, new staff—it’d likely be the end of most of them real quick.” Shaking her head, Olivia took off down the hall.
Of the three young faces scattering to gather laundry hampers, Adam’s was the most troubled. Somewhere in the last few days, he had discovered a miniscule bit of hope. Hope for what he hadn’t figured out, but it was connected to the man in the picture and by extension this place, which housed the woman to whom the picture belonged.
*****
Myron was damp-mopping the main room when Emily and Mary returned from their morning walk.
The two women were a study in contrasts. Although both were tall, Emily would have been described as rangy, while Mary would have been considered willowy. Emily was dressed in her usual outfit of jeans, faded tee-shirt, and Birkenstocks. Mary wore trim navy blue slacks and a striped top. Her feet were neatly shod in canvas slip-ons. When she spotted Myron, Emily strode in his direction while Mary followed in her wake.
“Em, please. This may not be appropriate,” Mary said.
Emily just ignored her as she positioned herself in front of Myron and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Emily. And you’re Myron, right?”
He nodded as he shook her hand.
“You’re familiar with the small mystery we have in which your coworker is the spitting image of Mary’s son?”
Myron nodded a bit more warily.
“Do you know anything about his father? Have you seen a picture? Heard him talk about his father?”
“No, ma’am.”
She studied him. “You know, I spent over forty years teaching in the sea of hormones that passes for the college freshman year. You develop a sixth sense about truth-telling when you have heard probably a million excuses about everything from missing assignments to absences, so I know you are telling the truth, but you’re not telling all of it.”
“It’s not mine to tell,” he answered simply.
*****
“Mary watched you the whole time we ate lunch even though you had your back to her,” Soosie commented to Adam as they headed back to the laundry room with Myron.
Adam shrugged and then something snicked through the fog he had been carrying since Saturday. “No,” Adam said. “She was watching Joe, not me.”
The little bit of something that had welled up collapsed. He was just the animated picture of a dead man. Nothing had really changed; he himself still didn’t matter. He began pulling wet sheets out of the washer and loading them into the dryer.
*****
Climbing on the bus at the end of the work day, the threesome didn’t pay attention to the blue Altima pulling out and following the bus as it made its way across town. When they disembarked at the bus stop, the car’s driver held up her cell phone, looking at the pictures she had taken on Saturday and compared them to the three walking down the street. She edged her car along while following them. When they turned into the walk leading to the Pittison House, she snapped pictures until they disappeared through the door.