examined any of the boxes, but Rita was nothing if not thorough. Therefore, that purloined short story must still be there, carefully packed away among all of Gary Ladd’s other books and papers. That story was one of the things that demanded both attention and destruction, although there were probably plenty of others. Only Diana could tell the difference. It was her job, her responsibility, and nobody else’s.
“Mom?” a small voice asked from the doorway. “Are you awake yet?”
“I’m awake, Davy.”
“I’m hungry. Are we going to have breakfast? We’re still out of tortillas.”
“We’re going to have breakfast,” she said determinedly, getting out of bed. “I’m going to fix it.”
While Myrna Louise was making breakfast, Andrew Carlisle made a quick survey of her room. He found her extra checkbooks and the savings-account book in the bottom of her lingerie drawer, the same place where she’d always kept it, along with a fistful of twenties in hard, cold cash. The balance in both accounts was pitifully small in terms of lifetime savings for someone of her age. It was just as well she wouldn’t be around to get much older, Carlisle thought. He was actually doing her a favor. Maybe she was planning to land on his doorstep when the time came, expecting her son to support her in her old age. Fat chance.
Out in the garage, he eased Jake’s partially opened bag of lime into the trunk, careful not to spill any of it on Johnny Rivkin’s Hartmann bag. Garden-variety lime probably wouldn’t be enough to strip all the meat off the bones, but it would help kill the odor.
They had breakfast, a cheerful, family-style breakfast. Myrna Louise was careful not to fuss too much. Afterward, while she cleaned up the kitchen, Andrew loaded the car. Lida Givens, that nosy old bat from next door, came over to the fence to see what he was doing and to chat for a while. “Going on a trip?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s been a long time since Mama had a chance to get out of town. We’re going to drive up past the Grand Canyon and maybe on up through the canyon country of Utah. That’s always been one of my favorite places.”
“Never been there myself,” Lida Givens asserted. “Wouldn’t know it from a hole in the ground. I much prefer California.”
Andrew started for the car, then paused, snapping his fingers as if at a sudden afterthought. “Say, are you going to be in town for the next week and a half to two weeks?”
“Reckon. Don’t have any place to go at the moment. The kids are busy with their own jobs and families. They don’t like me dropping in unless I give them plenty of advance warning. Why?”
“Would you mind bringing in the mail? And if you see the paper boy, tell him to put us on vacation until we get back.”
“Sure thing. I’ll be happy to.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Andrew Carlisle told Lida Givens with a sincere smile. “Living far away, it’s been a real blessing for me to know my mother’s in a place with such terrific neighbors.”
“Think nothing of it,” Lida said. “That’s what neighbors are for.”
Myrna Louise was delighted to get in the car and go for a ride someplace, even if it was just an overnight jaunt. Excited as a little kid, she packed a bag and had it waiting by the door for Andrew to load while she did the breakfast dishes.
Years ago, not even that long ago, she would have left the dishes sitting in the sink to rot while she went away, but not anymore. Not in her cozy little house on Weber Drive. What would the neighbors think if they happened to glance in a window and see that she’d left without doing the dishes?
She was pleased that Andrew seemed to have forgiven her for burning up his stupid manuscripts. She probably shouldn’t have, really. Writing had to be a lot of work, but he seemed totally at ease this morning, whistling to himself as he loaded the car. She watched out the window as he stopped briefly to chat across the fence with Lida Givens, the lady from next door.
Thank God Andrew was making the effort to be sociable for a change, Myrna Louise thought, and thank God he hadn’t done anything to dispel the Phil Wharton myth. Lida Givens had a son who was a dentist and a daughter who sold real estate out in California somewhere. It was particularly important that Andrew keep up the Phil Wharton charade with Lida Givens even if he didn’t do it with anyone else.
At nine they headed for Tucson. The heat was incredibly oppressive, and the Valiant had no air-conditioning. They drove with the windows open and the wind roaring in their ears. Far to the south and east, thunderclouds edged over the horizon, but they were only teasers, hints of the coming rainy season that would bring blessed relief from some of the heat but they would bring additional humidity as well.
“Have you made any plans?” Myrna Louise shouted over the noise of the car.
It was fine for Andrew to come and visit for a day or two, but she certainly didn’t want to be saddled with him on a permanent basis. She was eager to know how soon he’d be moving on.
“I’m looking for a place somewhere around Tucson, someplace I can afford, so I can get back to writing.”
“Good,” Myrna Louise breathed. Tucson was both close enough and far enough away.
“I don’t like oatmeal,” Davy complained, picking at the cereal in his bowl.
“Not even with brown sugar and raisins?” Diana asked.
Davy shrugged. “They help, I guess. I just like tortillas better. Why don’t you fix tortillas?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Will Rita make tortillas for us when she gets home today?”
Diana thought of the huge cast covering Rita’s smashed left arm. “She won’t be doing that for a while,” Diana said. “At least not until after her arm comes out of the cast.”
“You mean we can’t have any until she gets better? That could take a long time.”
“Maybe I could try making some,” Diana offered tentatively. “I mean, if Rita were here to coach me and tell me what to do.”
Davy’s jaw dropped. “Really? You mean you’d learn to make them yourself?”
“I said I’d try.”
“Do you swear?”
Davy’s unbridled enthusiasm was catching. This was the first sign of life Diana had seen in her son for several days. She put her hand over her heart and grinned at him. “I swear,” she said.
Davy helped clear the table, then went to feed the dog, fairly skipping as he did so. He had been so strangely subdued that it pleased her to see him acting like his old self.
It was such a small thing, really, promising to make tortillas, but it signified something else, she realized, something much more important. Promises made meant they would have to be kept, and that implied a future-a future with her in it.
Before, she had thought about sorting Gary’s and her mother’s things as an ending, as a means of putting her house in order in preparation for yet another catastrophe. Now, for the first time, she saw the other side of the coin. It could go either way. She might just as easily be doing it as a beginning, as a way of putting the past behind her and finally getting on with her life.
I’ll do the dishes first, she thought, then I’ll get started.
