IRIS BLUM

“Are you okay, ma’am?” The jogger and his German Shepherd regarded Iris, their heads tilted at identical angles. “Do you need help?”

Iris jerked back to the present. Had she been talking out loud? “Oh, no. I’m just fine.”

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked again. “I saw something on Face-book a few minutes ago about a lost woman. Said they were bringing dogs to this area to search for her.”

“I’m fine,” Iris repeated. “Thank you for asking. Guess I’d better get on home.”

He nodded, and headed down the hill towards the river. Iris watched the dog bound across the burial ground. Was it disrespectful to let his dog run across the graves? She allowed herself a brief moment to wonder if Harriet was buried somewhere in that field with the other anonymous people in unmarked graves. She blew a kiss to the chilly air.

Leaning heavily on her walking stick to help her stand up from the stone bench, Iris tucked her pocketbook firmly under her arm and turned away from the river, away from the brown meadow. She felt unmoored, fuzzy-headed, passive. Those feelings were partly the shocks of the past few weeks, she figured, and partly her unhinged brain chemistry as Asher’s pills slowly seeped from her body. Hopefully she’d be fully back to herself soon.

Search party and sniffer dogs? She’d better leave, but where should she go? She had no plan. How could she be so unprepared? She had to get word to Lexi that she was all right, to figure out a strategy for dealing with the facts she had learned, the impossible, unacceptable facts. How could she put things right, fix things that had gone so very wrong?

But first things first, and first was a bathroom, the portable toilet at the Community Gardens. With the help of her walking stick, she was quite certain she could make it.