Lightning struck, closer this time, and Gretchen envied Wobbles and the canines for their dry and protected home. Water from her soaking clothes pooled on the floor around her, and the seat felt squishy and wet.
Nina ground the car to an abrupt halt.
A sign loomed ahead. Do Not Cross When Flooded. The street ahead looked like the inside of a whirlpool with all the jets at full blast.
“I can show you a way out,” Nacho said, pointing to the right. “Go that way.” And Nina swung the wheel.
Ten minutes later, at Nacho’s insistence, they dropped him at the Rescue Mission. He heaved his own large bag out behind him, and after another piercing look at Gretchen, he ran for cover.
“I feel like I’m letting him get away,” Gretchen said. “I have so many questions, and he’s the only one who might be able to answer them.”
“We know how to find him,” Nina said.
“He knows so much more than he’s telling us. I can feel it.”
“That’s the Birch psychic intuition finally coming out in you.” Nina grinned. “It’s about time. That’s a good thing.”
“At least he left all this other stuff in the car.”
Nina wrinkled her face. “That’s the bad thing.”
They passed a car caught in flooding in a wash along the side of the street. Two men sat on the roof of the car, and rescue vehicles were parked at the curb on higher ground. Firemen attended to the men and directed traffic away from the area. Gretchen saw a helicopter overhead, scouting for stranded motorists and dangerous situations.
“We’ll get home eventually,” Nina said. “The long way. Those two unlucky men will be ticketed under the dumb motorist law.” She laughed wryly. “Phoenix has a campaign called ‘Turn around, don’t drown.’ That could have been us if we hadn’t obeyed the signs.”
Gretchen was mesmerized by the freak of nature she was witnessing. Actually, everything about Phoenix seemed otherworldly. First the intense heat that scorched the land creating a crisp, brown, leafless environment hostile to most life-forms. Then the sky opened up and torrential rains flooded the entire city, virtually drowning the parched land.
She remembered the call that she had ignored while pursuing Nacho under the freeway bridge, and she reached for her phone. The clip was empty.
“Pull over,” Gretchen said. “My phone’s missing.”
“I’m sure it’s in here someplace,” Nina said. “Wait until we get home, and you can look around without getting soaked.” Nina slid a glance at Gretchen. “Too late for that, I guess.”
“I don’t think it’s in the car. I might have lost it while pushing Daisy’s cart up to the car. We have to go back.”
“Sorry, dear. Anything left behind is gone by now, and I wouldn’t risk going all the way back anyway.”
Gretchen searched the seat and floor around her then crawled in the backseat and rummaged around under the bag Nacho had said belonged to Martha.
No cell phone.
As soon as they stopped in her mother’s driveway under the carport, she dug through the trunk.
No cell phone.
How, she wondered, could she live for even one day without her phone?
Caroline stared at the bleak motel walls. Close enough to O’Hare for a fast flight out, far enough away to escape the steep prices associated with instant airport accessibility.
Twenty-six calls from her daughter in the past few days, mostly from Gretchen’s cell phone, a few made from Caroline’s house. At least the same number of calls from Nina, received and also ignored. Now, when she needed so desperately to warn her daughter away from Phoenix, she couldn’t locate her.
All her calls to Gretchen had gone unanswered.
She sat alone in a musty room with a foul odor clinging to it, the smell of too many years of cigarette smoke and too many untrained pets. The first thing she did on entering the room was to yank the bedspread off the bed and toss it into a corner.
Planes continuously roared overhead, drowning out the television, turned on but unwatched.
Caroline considered leaving a message on Gretchen’s voice mail, but what would she say? Explain too much or too little, and she couldn’t predict the extent of the damage to herself or to Gretchen.
She had failed. She could tell Gretchen that. Her laptop hummed on the scarred dresser top, but it hummed off-key, the music Caroline had hoped to hear never played.
Wireless Internet, even in this dilapidated sorry excuse for a motel.
She tried calling her house. No answer.
With any luck, Gretchen was back in Boston and wouldn’t need a warning.
Nacho should have called by now. Hah, he should have called a long time ago. He was her only link to the events taking place in Phoenix, and he was as unreliable as always. Self-medicating inside a wine bottle to numb the pain or to calm his nerves, or to render inactive the voices only he could hear. Who knew what really went on inside that misshapen head?
Reluctantly, she speed-dialed Gretchen’s cell phone number again, left a terse, uninformative message, and hung up, feeling regret for avoiding her daughter these past few days.
Why didn’t Gretchen answer?
18
A professional doll restorer spends as much time searching for doll parts as she spends performing the actual repairs. Without a well-stocked inventory, her ability to replace parts damaged beyond repair can become severely limited. Anyone hoping to break into the business should start a collection of at least the basics: heads, legs, arms, eyes, wigs, clothes, hats, and shoes, keeping everything organized in separately marked bins. A replacement doll part must complement the doll it is joining. No mixing and matching. Attaching a vinyl leg to a hard plastic doll is a faux pas not tolerated in the doll community. And the doll community is smaller than one might think.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
Tutu and Nimrod greeted them with enthusiasm. Gretchen was enormously relieved to find they had behaved themselves without leaving the whirlwind mess in Caroline’s house she’d feared. One natural disaster for the day was enough.
Wobbles, a fairly large tomcat, stalked between the two dogs, towering over Nimrod and standing almost eye to eye with Tutu. A formidable trio, but Wobbles was clearly the ruler.
Ever since Tutu had suffered a scratched nose, she watched Wobbles with a healthy respect.
The respect wasn’t reciprocated.
Wobbles feigned indifference, but Gretchen suspected that he knew exactly where the dogs were at all times. He even tolerated Nimrod’s puppy playfulness. As for Tutu, he didn’t allow her much leeway after cutting her down to size with one swift swoop of his armed paw.
“Six o’clock, and it’s dark outside already,” Nina said. “Monsoon season is the only time of year that we have such short days. If the sun never set at all, I’d be perfectly happy.”
Nina ordered a delivery of Chinese from a nearby restaurant, and they changed into dry clothes, Nina selecting a loose sundress from Caroline’s closet.
“Watch what I’m teaching Nimrod,” Nina said to Gretchen, crouching and holding open his personalized purse. Nimrod ran right in, turned around, and peeked out joyfully. Holding the handbag, Nina stood and adjusted it on her shoulder.
Gretchen said, “Rumor has it you tried to sneak Tutu into the hospital in a purse.”
