Just Fine with Caroline Read online

“How would I have heard?”

  “I figured someone in town would tell you,” Court said with a shrug. “I figured Reese would come lookin’ for ya.”

  “That was four years ago,” Caroline reminded him. “I’m sure he’s over it by now.”

  “You know how Reese is. He’s not likely to give up on something.”

  “I’m not something,” Caroline replied. “I’m someone.”

  “Same thing to Reese.”

  Caroline stood up. “I really have to go.”

  “Oh come on.” Court stood up as well, wobbling slightly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Just one more drink.”

  “I’m not upset,” Caroline said. That was only half true. “I told you just one drink. I do have to drive home, Officer.”

  Court sat back down. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “So you’ve seen him, then?”

  “I have,” Court replied. “Stopped by the day he got into town. Asked about you.”

  Caroline could see the jealousy setting in on Court’s face, even though he was trying hard to conceal it. He’d hated Reese in high school, but Caroline served as common ground for the two of them, and now they kept up a friendship. She’d always wondered if Court was glad that she and Reese hadn’t worked out. “I hope you told him I’m not interested,” she said finally.

  “I did.”

  “Good.” Caroline bounded back down the steps, hoping that the town was going to be big enough to hold every person she knew and the secrets each one of them carried.

  ONCE CAROLINE WAS back in her truck, she tried to take her mind off of everything, but of course, she couldn’t. Maybe Court didn’t think high school was so long ago, but for Caroline, it had been a lifetime. She’d meant what she said to Reese all those years ago, and she meant it still. She hoped he wasn’t back in town trying to dredge up old memories. Because if that was the case, Caroline wasn’t interested.

  As she drove, her headlights shone upon a familiar figure weaving about the sidewalk, occasionally stumbling off and into the road. It was Smokey, the town drunk. She considered driving on past him. Surely he would make it home safely. It wasn’t as if this was the first time he’d wandered down the street, drunk and alone. It happened just about every night that he wasn’t working a job. He was the best roofer in three counties, and he was sober so long as he was employed, but his propensity for drinking in between jobs kept him from working for any of the roofing companies in town. Smokey spent most of his time at Mama’s bar.

  Caroline cranked her window down and stuck her head out. “Hey, Smokey. Headed home?”

  Smokey stopped walking and turned to face the truck. “Heeeyyy, Carolina, what are you doin’ out so late?” The more he tried to stand still, the more he wobbled back and forth. His long gray beard swayed with him, the only part of his body that seemed to weigh more than five pounds. Every time Caroline saw him, he was a shadow of his former self.

  “You need a ride?”

  “Nah, darlin’.”

  “Get in the truck, Smokey.”

  “Alright, alright.” Smokey shuffled over to the truck. After a few unsuccessful attempts at opening the door, Caroline leaned over and opened it for him. “I appreciate it, girly.”

  Smokey was the only person Caroline would allow to call her things like “darlin’” or “girly.” She’d been giving him rides home since she was sixteen, and before that, her mother had done it. Every time she pulled over to let Smokey in her truck, she heard her mother’s voice in her head. Open that door, Caroline, and see if he needs a ride. Her mother hadn’t cared if people thought she ought not to be offering rides to drunken men. She hadn’t cared if people would talk about what side of town she was on after dark. And now that it was Caroline’s turn, she didn’t care, either.

  “You got any jobs lined up?” she asked him once he’d managed to pull himself inside the truck.

  “It’s slow right now, Carolina.” Smokey rested his head against the window. “Everything in this town moves so damn slow.”

  “You better come up with something,” Caroline warned him. “You know Court will arrest you if he sees you wandering the streets.”

  For a moment, Smokey looked scared and almost sober. “I reckoned he had enough to deal with, ya know, with his step-mama ’n’ all.”

  “You reckoned wrong.”

  “Preacher man says I got to get right with the Lord,” Smokey said. He focused his gaze on Caroline. “Says the Devil is in the bottle.”

  “You been drinking the Devil’s Cut?”

  “You think he’s right?” Smokey continued. “He give me this Bible.” He held out a small, green Bible—the kind generally passed out by kindly older gentleman called Gideons.

  “Who gave that to you?” Caroline asked, even though she knew the answer.

  “Brother Crow,” Smokey replied. “He says my soul is in jep . . . jeparody.”

  “Jeopardy?”

  “You think he’s right?”

  Caroline pulled into Smokey’s driveway and threw the truck into park. “I think you need to go inside and sleep it off. You can get right with the Lord in the morning.”

  Smokey nodded. “Thank you for the ride, Carolina.” He pushed open the door and poured himself out onto the lawn. “Get on home now.”

  Caroline did as she was told. She didn’t notice until she was already at the end of the street what Smokey had left behind—the green Gideon Bible on the passenger’s side of the truck seat. Maybe, she thought when she noticed it lying there, we’ll all get right with the Lord tomorrow morning.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE SOUND OF METAL SCRAPING AGAINST metal woke Caroline out of a dead sleep. At first she thought the noise had been remnants of a far-off dream, but when the clanging continued, she sat straight up, accidentally smacking Ava Dawn in the face in the process.

  “Oomph, ow,” Ava Dawn mumbled. She rolled back over without waking. The woman could sleep through a freight train crash in the living room, a trait of which Caroline was more than a little envious. A sneeze two towns over was enough to wake her.

  Caroline slipped out of bed and wandered into the kitchen, to the source of the noise. It wasn’t yet dawn, and there was no reason for anybody in the house to be awake yet, but there was her mother, standing in front of the sink with a pot, filling it with water. There were already pots on every single burner on the stove. Caroline watched as her mother removed one pot from the stove, set it aside, and put the freshly filled pot in its place.

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Caroline asked, walking into the kitchen. She touched her mother’s arm gently. “What’s with all the water?”

  “I’m drawing a bath,” her mother said simply, as if that should explain everything.

  “A bath?”

  Her mother stopped what she was doing to look at her. “I don’t like to take a bath in cold water.” Maureen O’Conner picked up the pot she’d set aside and carried it into the bathroom, pouring the water into the tub.

  “Mom, you don’t have to heat the water. We have hot water on tap,” Caroline replied. She remembered her mother telling her about how when her mother had been a child, she and her family hadn’t had hot water for many years. They’d heated water on the stove in order to take a hot bath. Caroline turned off the burners and took her mother by the arm. “Here, let me show you.”

  “I don’t want to take a cold bath,” her mother repeated.

  “I know,” Caroline said. She led her mother into the bathroom. She bent over the bathtub and turned on the hot water. “Put your hand in and feel. Doesn’t that feel nice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to help you get into the tub?”

  Caroline’s mother shook her head. “I can do it.”

  “Okay,” Caroline replied. “But I’ll be right outside the door if you need me.” She walked out of the bathroom feeling relieved that she didn’t have to help her mother bathe. It wasn’t that she wasn’t willing to help her mother—
she did it almost every day, but try as she might, she couldn’t escape the embarrassment she felt undressing her mother and helping her clean herself. Caroline tried to express this embarrassment to her father and then again to the nurse, but neither one of them understood. She supposed this was because they were both used to seeing naked people. They were used to seeing naked bodies other than their own. Caroline, however, didn’t even like to see herself naked. Seeing her mother that way, vulnerable and exposed, reminded her that her mother was not the woman she’d once been—strong and fiery and redheaded. More and more, she was becoming someone Caroline didn’t recognize.

  Caroline shook those thoughts from her head and padded down the hallway to look for her father. It was unusual that her mother was left to her own devices in the morning, and the nurse was almost always here by now. “Dad?” she called into her parents’ bedroom. “Are you in there?”

  “Caroline?” her father called.

  He sounded far away, and Caroline realized her father was in the shower in the master bathroom. She guessed that was why her mother had been busy filling the tub in the hallway bathroom. “Did you know Mom was awake?” she asked.

  Max O’Conner stuck his head out of the bathroom doorway. “What?”

  Caroline stepped farther into the bedroom. “Mom is awake, and she’s boiling water to take a bath.”

  “Did you take care of it?”

  “Yeah,” Caroline replied. “But where is the nurse?”

  “She can’t come in today. One of her kids is sick.”

  “And the agency couldn’t send anybody else?”

  “I told them not to worry about it.”

  Caroline glanced from the bathroom, where she could hear her mother singing softly to herself, and then back to her father. “Who’s staying with her today?”

  “I thought maybe Ava Dawn could do it,” her father replied.

  “She worked a double last night,” Caroline reminded him. “She didn’t even get home until 4 A.M.”

  “I can’t stay home today,” her father lamented, closing the door to the bathroom so that the rest of his response came out muffled. “I work at the Christian Clinic.”

  It was just like her father to think that someone else could take care of her mother but forget to ask anybody first. “I don’t guess I have to open the shop today.”

  Max O’Conner reemerged from the bathroom. “It’s the busy season.”

  Caroline sighed. She knew what he was getting at. “Do you want me to take her with me?”

  “Would you mind?”

  “No, I don’t mind,” Caroline replied. She really didn’t mind taking her mother with her, but it had been a long time since they’d been at the shop all day alone together. Usually if Maureen O’Conner went to the bait shop, it was just for a couple of hours, and that was only when she was having a good day.

  Today wasn’t looking like a good day, and sometimes it galled her that her father wouldn’t admit it, that he wouldn’t just sit down and talk about her mother, his wife, like he would a normal patient—why he always pretended like this was normal. That they were normal.

  Her father pulled his shoes onto his feet. “Thank you, kiddo.”

  An hour later, Caroline rested her head on the seat of her mother’s car. She was thankful to be driving the Jeep since it had air-conditioning. She wondered why she didn’t drive the Jeep more, especially since her mother hadn’t driven it in over a year. Sometimes her father took it to work, but it mostly sat in the garage, gathering dust.

  She looked over at her mother who was staring straight ahead at the road in front of them, clutching her knitting bag. “Are you okay, Mom?”

  Her mother’s gaze didn’t deter. “I’m fine. Where are we going?”

  “You’re going to the shop with me today.” Caroline had to make a conscious effort not to add “remember?” to the end of every sentence she repeated. It didn’t do any good, and too many of these agitated her mother.

  “What shop?”

  “Mine,” Caroline said. “Ours. The bait shop.”

  Her mother nodded, clutching the bag tighter.

  “We can go home,” Caroline added. “If we get there and you feel uncomfortable, we can go home.”

  Her mother looked at her for the first time since they’d gotten into the car. “I know, honey,” she replied. “I’ll be fine.”

  Caroline felt a wave of calm wash over her. For a moment, it was like her mother was back with her, the way she used to be, warm as honey and concerned only with the happiness of her daughter. It was on this drive, only a few years before, that Caroline told her mother about her plans to stay home indefinitely. That was when the good days were more frequent than the bad days and when her mother still remembered Caroline’s name. Now, a good day was when Maureen O’Conner was able to get out of bed without asking where she was—without trying to fill the bathtub with hot water from the stove.

  As they passed Cranwell Station, Caroline craned her neck to see if Noah was there yet. She was still thinking about the night before, but this morning the station looked all but abandoned. Caroline felt an unwelcome ping of disappointment.

  “Do you want some help out of the car, Mom?” Caroline asked once she’d pulled up next to the shop. “I’ll carry your knitting for you.”

  “Are we here?”

  “We are.”

  “I’ll carry my bag myself.”

  Caroline grinned. Maybe her mother was having a good day after all.

  It was already so hot. Caroline wished she’d left the air-conditioning on in the store overnight, even though she’d hear from her father once he got the bill. In the summertime, she knew they made enough to cover a few overnight air-conditioning bills, especially since their air-conditioning unit was ancient and probably needed to be replaced, anyway.

  Caroline settled her mother on the little couch in the back room and prayed it would cool off quickly. She pulled out a jug of sweet tea from the mini fridge and poured a glass for both of them.

  “Here you go, Mom.” Caroline handed the glass of sweet tea to her mother. “I’m sorry it’s so hot in here.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” her mother replied. “I’m just happy to be here.”

  “I’m happy you’re here, too.” Caroline kissed her mother on the top of her head. “I’m going up front to open up.”

  She had no more than put the money into the cash register when a Subaru with two kayaks strapped to the top pulled up to the shop. Tourist season had officially begun.

  A woman and man both wearing Chacos got out of the car, followed by three kids. They stood outside for a few minutes, looking around confusedly, before ambling inside. “I told you we should have stopped at the gas station a few miles back,” the woman whispered to the man.

  The man’s only response was to scratch the balding spot on the back of his head.

  “Welcome to the Wormhole bait and tackle shop,” Caroline said. “Can I help you find anything?”

  “You only sell bait?” the woman wanted to know.

  Caroline nodded. “Live and synthetic.”

  “I’m hungry.” The youngest of the children pulled at her mother’s peasant top.

  “Just a minute,” the woman said, pushing the little girl’s hands down. “So, you don’t have anything else but bait?”

  Caroline fought the urge to roll her eyes. “I have some tackle boxes and a couple of kid’s fishing poles.” She pointed to one corner of the store. “But that’s about it.”

  “I can get these night crawlers cheaper back in that town we just passed through,” the man finally spoke up. “Cold River.”

  “I’ll match any price.”

  Another one of the kids let out an audible sigh. “This place is a dump.”

  Caroline felt herself losing patience. Why did the asshole customers have to come in so early? It set such a bad tone for the rest of her day. Did they really want sandwiches sitting next to the earthworms? Did they really want soda in the
cooler with the crickets? She was just about to suggest they head back to Gary’s when her mother came wandering out from the back room. She was holding her knitting.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” she asked.

  “Of course, Mom.” Caroline felt her cheeks redden. “You don’t have to ask permission for that.”

  Her mother didn’t move. “I don’t . . .” She leaned in closer to Caroline. “I don’t know where it is.”

  The people in the shop were staring at them now, five sets of eyes asking questions that were too uncomfortable to verbalize. “Come on, Mom,” Caroline said. She took her mother’s knitting and sat it down on the counter. “Let me show you.”

  By the time she got back up front, the family had gone. She glanced around the empty room. She couldn’t say she was sad they’d left without buying anything. Then she noticed the corner where the children’s fishing poles sat. One of them was missing. “Shit,” she said, running out the door. The Subaru had already started down the gravel road, and Caroline took off after it, waving her arms and hollering, “Hey, wait!”

  It was too late. She was left in a cloud of dust and rocks. She turned and began trudging back up to the shop. She could feel a blister beginning to form between two of her toes, and she wished that she’d known she was going to be chasing after customers. She would have worn something other than flip-flops.

  Those people had some nerve. She ought to call the sheriff, but she knew she’d never get them out here for a six-dollar fishing pole. She sat down on a pillow of grass to inspect her feet. Sure enough, there was a blister on each foot right in between her big toe and the toe right beside it. “Assholes,” she muttered. “Damn those no-good, Subaru-driving bunch of assholes . . .” She trailed off when she felt a shadow being cast over her.

  “Go ahead and finish,” Noah Cranwell said. “Once you’re done I’ll ask you why you’re cursing at your feet in the middle of the road.”

  Caroline looked around. “I’m not in the middle of the road. I’m on the side of the road.”

  “Cursing at your feet.”

  “I wasn’t cursing at my feet,” Caroline replied. “I was cursing at . . .” She turned around to point at the road. “I was cursing at . . . Well, hell, never mind.”