after his death, the neglect was starting to show in the dry rot on the edges of the siding, the missing shingles on the roof, the streak of rust at the edge of the gate latch.
“You having trouble remembering?” Will asked as he pulled to a stop.
Gemma realized he saw much more than was comfortable for her. Her first instinct was to lie. Just like her mother did. That thought caused her to hold her tongue, and she simply said, “It’s not likely I’m going to forget my whole life for long.”
He walked her to the front door, both of their heads bent against the stiff breeze. She hesitated a moment. “I can get in through the back,” she said. They walked across the porch, down a few steps and along a dirt track. The rear porch was basically a couple of long, wide steps, the paint chipped away from use. Gemma reached around the sill of the door but found nothing. She hesitated a moment, willing her brain to think while Tanninger looked on. He shifted position and she heard the rustle of his uniform, the squeak of his shoes. It sounded vaguely sexual to her and for a moment she wondered who the hell she was. Why did she think these thoughts? What of her own history was she not recalling?
And then another memory surfaced. “We moved the key to under the bench,” she said, and reached beneath the seat of the back-porch bench, finding the key wedged in a niche between thin slats of wood.
Threading the key in the lock, she murmured, “So this is what Alzheimer’s people must feel.”
“Memory coming and going?” Tanninger did not follow her inside and Gemma turned back to him.
“Pretty much.”
“It’s only been a few days since your accident.”
“Yeah.”
Gemma nodded and worried there was something else, something more, at work here. She wondered whether she was obligated to ask him in, but he took the decision away from her by pressing a card in her hand and telling her to call him if she remembered anything. He glanced at the battered white truck parked near the outbuilding, then said good-bye and headed back around the front of the house to his car.
She hurried through the house to the windows, looking out past the front porch to see him climb into the vehicle, turn it nose-out, and then leave splattered mud as he drove up the gravel drive.
Alone, Gemma slowly turned around and exhaled. She was glad Detective Tanninger was gone so she could think. Absorb. Plan.
She examined the decor in the living room/parlor. Her mother’s. Lots of quilts and florals and stuff. She felt suddenly claustrophobic. Jean had been a hoarder. Keeping items way past their pull date, in Gemma’s opinion.
“How long ago did you die?” Gemma asked her, her voice hanging in the empty room. It felt to Gemma like eons, and yet she sensed it was within the last few years, like her father. She could remember Peter’s death clearly. Could see the casket at Murch’s Funeral Home and the smattering of people, small groups that moved through the viewing room and on to the gravesite. Could remember her own sadness and a sense of apprehension that filled her. The apprehension, she realized, was because she’d been left to take care of her mother, who had always had a strong opinion on what Gemma should do with her life: stay in Quarry and help in her mother’s business as a psychic.
Her mother the psychic.
Gemma sat down hard on a needlepoint-upholstered foot-stool.
Charlatan. Flim-flam artist. Crook. Liar. That’s what her mother had been. Gemma had left home at eighteen, following after an army man who’d been stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State. He’d moved all around and she’d followed, but their relationship had dwindled as her headaches and memory loss increased when she’d scornfully thrown away her medication, believing the drugs to be the work of her parents, whom she’d deemed at the time to be self-serving and harmful to her health.
Not completely true. Her boyfriend…his name escaped her now.
“You having trouble remembering?” Will asked as he pulled to a stop.
Gemma realized he saw much more than was comfortable for her. Her first instinct was to lie. Just like her mother did. That thought caused her to hold her tongue, and she simply said, “It’s not likely I’m going to forget my whole life for long.”
He walked her to the front door, both of their heads bent against the stiff breeze. She hesitated a moment. “I can get in through the back,” she said. They walked across the porch, down a few steps and along a dirt track. The rear porch was basically a couple of long, wide steps, the paint chipped away from use. Gemma reached around the sill of the door but found nothing. She hesitated a moment, willing her brain to think while Tanninger looked on. He shifted position and she heard the rustle of his uniform, the squeak of his shoes. It sounded vaguely sexual to her and for a moment she wondered who the hell she was. Why did she think these thoughts? What of her own history was she not recalling?
And then another memory surfaced. “We moved the key to under the bench,” she said, and reached beneath the seat of the back-porch bench, finding the key wedged in a niche between thin slats of wood.
Threading the key in the lock, she murmured, “So this is what Alzheimer’s people must feel.”
“Memory coming and going?” Tanninger did not follow her inside and Gemma turned back to him.
“Pretty much.”
“It’s only been a few days since your accident.”
“Yeah.”
Gemma nodded and worried there was something else, something more, at work here. She wondered whether she was obligated to ask him in, but he took the decision away from her by pressing a card in her hand and telling her to call him if she remembered anything. He glanced at the battered white truck parked near the outbuilding, then said good-bye and headed back around the front of the house to his car.
She hurried through the house to the windows, looking out past the front porch to see him climb into the vehicle, turn it nose-out, and then leave splattered mud as he drove up the gravel drive.
Alone, Gemma slowly turned around and exhaled. She was glad Detective Tanninger was gone so she could think. Absorb. Plan.
She examined the decor in the living room/parlor. Her mother’s. Lots of quilts and florals and stuff. She felt suddenly claustrophobic. Jean had been a hoarder. Keeping items way past their pull date, in Gemma’s opinion.
“How long ago did you die?” Gemma asked her, her voice hanging in the empty room. It felt to Gemma like eons, and yet she sensed it was within the last few years, like her father. She could remember Peter’s death clearly. Could see the casket at Murch’s Funeral Home and the smattering of people, small groups that moved through the viewing room and on to the gravesite. Could remember her own sadness and a sense of apprehension that filled her. The apprehension, she realized, was because she’d been left to take care of her mother, who had always had a strong opinion on what Gemma should do with her life: stay in Quarry and help in her mother’s business as a psychic.
Her mother the psychic.
Gemma sat down hard on a needlepoint-upholstered foot-stool.
Charlatan. Flim-flam artist. Crook. Liar. That’s what her mother had been. Gemma had left home at eighteen, following after an army man who’d been stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State. He’d moved all around and she’d followed, but their relationship had dwindled as her headaches and memory loss increased when she’d scornfully thrown away her medication, believing the drugs to be the work of her parents, whom she’d deemed at the time to be self-serving and harmful to her health.
Not completely true. Her boyfriend…his name escaped her now.
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