lost and there was a large clump of clumsy green frosting carnations right next to Bill’s name. She’d complained at the store and the sullen baker had added a few stars. Now the cake just looked cluttered and gloopy. She sighed. Bill wouldn’t care, and Dayana would scarcely notice. Louise took the box inside and set it on the counter behind her station.
She didn’t wear a jacket, just slung her purse over her arm and started walking. The sky was close to the earth, light filtering through the clouds in a gauzy haze. Louise passed The Bluebird without going in, waving to Emma Templeton through the window. She’d stop for a coffee on the way back.
Half a block on she heard an engine, and a tingling in her fingers told her not to turn around. From the corner of her eye she saw an old blue pickup. Rose. It had to be. As if she’d been summoned up from that awkward conversation with Nina Brown. Just feet away, the truck chugged past at a steady pace. Louise couldn’t help it—she looked at the woman behind the wheel. Rose’s hair was snowier than Louise’s mother’s, like a flash of something electric had passed through her and left a tip of ash. But her face—the nose that belonged on a statue, the square jaw, the mouth as set as ever—at least in profile, she was herself. Lance’s black dog sat in the passenger seat, his head hanging out the window. He smiled in Louise’s direction, baring yellow fangs. She stepped back, undefended.
The truck continued past, no indication that Louise’s presence had registered. She would bet her wedding china that they were headed to the same place—it would be just her luck. Her hand lit on her cell phone without thought and she pulled it out of her bag, checking the blank screen, empty of incoming calls. Well, she could make an outgoing.
She had learned to let it ring a long time. With each ring she pictured her mother moving a step closer to the phone table. The door to her room would be open, attendants and other residents moving along the polished industrial floors in the hallway. Her mother would be wearing slacks and lipstick and wide-soled leather shoes.
“Hi, Mother!” she said brightly, as soon as the receiver clicked.
“Hello?” The voice was thin and wavering. “Hello?”
“It’s just me, Mother.” Louise was out of breath. She stopped walking and stood against a shuttered storefront. The clock above the old town hall was broken—it read 7:20 and she had a momentary panic, as if she’d entered a time warp and leapt hours into the past.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
God, Louise thought, everything is an emergency—and I never gave her an ounce of trouble, not once.
“Nothing. It’s fine. I’m just on my work break and I’m walking over to Mondragon’s to get a birthday card for Bill.”
“Oh.” Her mother inhaled and coughed. For the second time that day, Louise felt dismissed.
“Mother, Rose just passed me on the street.”
“Who?”
“Rose. The one who—”
“The Anderson place? The old boarding house? That girl?”
“Yes.”
“That family never had what it takes.”
“No.”
“Anywhere they went, and it wasn’t just here. No sense of place.”
“Right. Her—”
“And the father! You know, he tried to talk me and Edna and some others into a fishy real estate deal. It was some sort of…what do you call it?…Pyramid. A pyramid scheme. He was as slick as they come. And his wife? Ha! Prancing around in four-inch heels and French perfume…you could hear the little gin bottles clacking around in her purse. Once even at the post office…” Her mother’s voice was stronger now, full of indignation, as if other people’s bad choices hurt her deeply.
Rose’s truck had given off a cloud of exhaust. Louise breathed a lungful of carbon monoxide, feeling calmer. Her mother could go on, and would, with minimal prodding.
“…The girls were pretty, though. What was the other one’s name? Stella. She had princessy ways, sticking out her finger when she drank tea like she was seeing whether she could hook a man on it… Once at a social I heard the mother telling the girls to act like they owned the place, building them up, you know, elevating their expectations—and of course they weren’t godly in the slightest, they just came to church on special occasions. What an inheritance: bad advice and bills!”
Louise straightened her shoulders and began walking, slowly this time. If there were any place other than Mondragon’s to buy a card she’d give up on that store. She pulled the phone a little closer to her mouth. “Her son died. Rose’s son died, Mother, remember? Just a few months ago. In the war.”
“He died? Well…that’s a shame. Really. What war?”
“Mother.”
Silence. The clock in the tower clicked its long hand forward a notch, and then back again. 7:20. A sedan drove by, the acquaintance behind the wheel raising a hand in effortless greeting. Louise waved back.
She shouldn’t have brought up the recent past, which was becoming foggier and foggier for her mother. Next visit, Louise would be sure to remind her that Benji had promised he would come home next month for Dave’s birthday, his first trip home since Lance’s funeral.
“How’s your day, Mother? Do you need me to bring you anything tomorrow?”
“I’m eating a sandwich,” her mother said. Louise added that to her picture: brown slacks, black shoes, pink lipstick, tuna on wheat, left hand pressing the red receiver to her ear, a look of impatience on her face and a few crumbs dotting the dry corners of her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Louise said.
“What for?”
“Interrupting.” She was moments from Mondragon’s and had to make a decision or she’d wind up face to face with Rose. Louise paused again, stopping under the awning of what had once been a dress shop. “I interrupted your lunch.” They had plenty to say face to face—her mother held court and Louise courted. But now she wasn’t sure where to focus her attention. Her mind felt as shuttered as the window at her back.
They were both relieved to hang up. As Louise stepped across an intersection she could see the ramshackle white clapboard on the corner down the block, the old Anderson’s B&B. The empty building looked even more rundown than it had when Rose and Stella and their parents had lived there. A dump, home to hapless travelers and wayward types, the down on their luck. The carpet on the stairs had been a threadbare crimson, a sign of better times, and the one time Louise had climbed those stairs her toe caught on a piece of buckled rug at the top—she’d pitched forward clumsily.
Louise had a sudden wish for winter—the punishing cold would clear her head. She shoved the phone into her purse, taking care to watch her step on the uneven sidewalk. Up ahead, just as she’d figured, Rose’s truck was parked in front of Mondragon’s. Louise crossed the street and ducked into Dunleavy’s Fine Shoes (&Shoe Repair), the sad, dusty little place directly across from Ward’s store. Scottie Dunleavy had run the shop into the ground. The bell tinkled above the door, but there was no sign of life. Through Scottie’s window she could see two people inside Mondragon’s: Rose moving in one direction and then another, Ward following at his respectable, polite pace.
“Can I help you?”
Louise turned. Scottie lurked over by the men’s dress shoes, his eyes not quite meeting hers. His hair was lank and gray, and his gauntness made him look taller than he was. There was a long, ugly red scratch on his forearm. He was clearly searching for her name, though he should know it. Scottie had always been a strange one, spiraling further down since his parents’ death. A tabby cat walked out from the back, sat at Scottie’s feet, and yawned. Louise cast a glance at the street. Rose’s truck was still there.
They had a stilted exchange about the type of shoe she