EVELYN TURNER

Staring out her front window, Evelyn drank the last inch of stone-cold coffee. She willed her hand to stop shaking and her thoughts to cease bouncing back and forth. From guilty to smug, they ricocheted. From what have I done? to he got what he deserves.

It was her phone call that started this mess, and she didn’t regret that. Something just wasn’t right at Number Two, and she wasn’t a person to turn away from a problem. Plus, she had no use for Iris’s stuck-up doctor husband. Arrogant doctors were the main reason she left hospital nursing to open her home care agency. Earlier that morning she had walked next door to see Iris, just to check up on her, and Dr. Blum refused to let her in. That was the third time he had turned her away in a month. She had pushed her way into the house and looked around, but no Iris.

The last time she and Iris had tea together, Iris mentioned that her husband had prescribed a new medication for her heart. Didn’t the good doctor know that it was frowned upon, bordering on unethical, to prescribe meds for family members? The old guy shouldn’t be prescribing drugs anymore in any case. Did he read the journals? Keep up with all the medical advances? Why would he pay to renew his license and malpractice insurance all these years? Something felt so deeply wrong she couldn’t stand it. So finally, she called 911. Now a police car blocked the Court, but nothing seemed to be happening.

Evelyn couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. It wasn’t her nature, especially not now, when Iris could be hurt. Or worse. The only way she could think to help was to make a leaflet with a photo and some basic information. Then she and other neighbors could canvas the nearby streets and hand them out. Maybe someone had seen Iris. Luckily, Evelyn had pictures and biographical details stored on her computer, from the neighborhood directory she tried to get people interested in a couple of years back, a project that died for lack of participation. But Iris was a good soul, and she had sent Evelyn the information for her and Asher.

She put the empty mug in the sink and ran her index finger along the ragged edge of the newspaper clipping, circled in red marker, on the refrigerator door. She regularly clipped articles and recipes and ads and hung them on the fridge, using her collection of colorful food magnets—sushi and bagels and grapes and chocolate chip cookies looking good enough to eat. Donnie hated clutter and regularly took down the clippings, but he wouldn’t dare remove this one. A grainy black and white photo of Old Main, looking pretty much the way it did when she was a student nurse at the state hospital, loomed above an italic invitation: Join us Sunday, November 10, to dedicate the State Hospital Memorial Garden.

November 10. Two days away.

“You’re not going to that, are you?” Donnie kept asking.

Evelyn didn’t answer. She didn’t know.

“So not a good idea,” he would mumble and leave the kitchen before she could respond.

Living in this place wasn’t a good idea, she would say if she could talk about it, which she couldn’t. Donnie was already living in Number Three when they met and fell in love and that was before, when Azalea Court was just a quaint little street bordering a state hospital.

Back then, she couldn’t have imagined how the neighborhood would change around them. Sure, a few of the neighbors were the same, like Asher and Iris and their daughter, who moved out after college and visited less than a daughter should. And the couple in Number Six who had been there at least twenty years, but they didn’t wave or say hello, and she didn’t know them at all. Based on their Trump bumper stickers, she probably didn’t want to know them, but she hated to think of herself as narrow-minded. There was even a homeless woman who parked her car near the Community Gardens, probably because of the portable toilet placed there during the growing season.

Yup, the feeling of the place had certainly changed. People didn’t look out for each other like they used to. The erosion of the pulling-together feeling from the old days was another part of why she had been inspired to start her home care business, to take care of people. All that got her was a lot of bills and people calling her a Nosy-Parker. Maybe she was nosy, but only because she cared about her neighbors. And who was Ms. Parker, anyway?

She sat down at the computer and looked out the front window. She really should rake the leaves on the front walk. Eric did a pretty good job keeping the grass mowed and sidewalk cleared, but he couldn’t keep up with the mass of leaves that fell and blew and collected each autumn. If she went out there, she might learn something about Iris. Or Asher might yell at her again, about minding her own business. It had been three hours since she called 911. Surely, they knew something by now. But if so, they weren’t saying.

Her first task was to put something on the town Facebook page about Iris being missing. On the neighborhood listserv, too. Then, she’d make those leaflets and take them to everyone in the neighborhood. They would find Iris before something bad happened to her.

Searching for the files on her computer, she thought how much she wished she could live someplace else, anyplace else, but Donnie owned Number Three outright. With her business tanking they couldn’t afford anything else on his wages, even with his weekend differential at the store. Donnie always praised his mother’s financial smarts for buying the bungalow with weekly payroll deductions in the years the State Hospital was having a hard time keeping staff, pointing out that they wouldn’t be able to buy anything in town these days. Evelyn cursed her mother-in-law’s damn foresight.

When Evelyn had cut the dedication announcement from the Gazette and hung it on the refrigerator with a strawberry magnet, Donnie was upset with her. “That place has been closed down for twenty-six years. No, twenty-seven,” he said. “I know you had a difficult time there, but even the ghosts have given up. Let it go, sweetheart.”

She shook his voice out of her head. You couldn’t just decide to forget. Memory persisted, at least this one did. What happened to her at that place was thirty-five years ago, but the ugly images whooshed back at unexpected times on a wind stinking of garlic, just as strong as if it happened last week.

That was the problem with living here: it was so close to bad memories. She could never escape them. But she could try to do a little bit of good in the world anyway. She could try to find a missing old woman, a kind soul who never hurt anyone.

She found the file with Iris’s biographical information and opened it. It would be simple to make a leaflet and print enough copies to distribute. People on Azalea Court could rally together, take care of their own. Together, she and her neighbors would find Iris Blum.