Fighting for Anna Read online

  The Hispanic guy spoke again. “Who are you?” His voice was shaky.

  I used my firm maternal voice. “We’re the neighbors. But what’s really important is that Gidget’s not breathing. One of us needs to start resuscitation, now.”

  The Hispanic deputy’s gun drifted down, so I lowered my hands. In my peripheral vision, I saw Annabelle’s and Sam’s hands drop, too. Behind the deputies, a paramedic appeared. She was tall, thick, and muscular, and I felt better immediately at the sight of her.

  “Where’s Gidget?” she asked.

  I pointed. “Right there, ma’am. She just stopped breathing.”

  The woman pushed through the deputies, her mouth pursed down so far she looked like a bulldog. “Hell’s bells, don’t you two have the good sense God gave a turnip?” She knelt and began resuscitation efforts.

  As I watched her, for the first time I noticed the faint flashing blue and red lights against the far wall of Gidget’s living room. I swallowed, and something lodged in my dry throat. What had started as a somber day, with Annabelle and Sam bidding me goodbye as they were leaving me for weeks, if not the whole summer, had turned crazy. This was not how I wanted our last memory together to go. I wiped away the sweat trickling down the side of my face against my hairline.

  The Hispanic deputy puffed up. “There are signs of a break-in.”

  Another paramedic came through the door, this one a man pushing a stretcher.

  “We understand, sir.” Not really, but it seemed the right thing to say.

  “Is Jimmy here? A handyman sort of guy?”

  “There’s no one here but us. Maybe we could answer your questions outside?”

  His face pulled tight across his cheeks and jaw, and I knew he was still only a hairsbreadth away from doing something I’d regret later.

  The second deputy finally spoke. He was tall, thin like a razor, with sparse blond hair and faintly green eyes. “Sounds like a good idea to me, Tank.”

  Tank, if that was his name, nodded. He put his gun back in his side holster as did his partner. “This way.”

  Gidget had a decent-sized front porch for the age and size of her home. Once upon a time it had even been a cheery, welcoming white. The paint was coming off in large patches now, and what was left was streaked with mold. A wooden-plank bench covered the left span of the porch. Without warning, in my mind I saw a bonneted woman shelling peas from this bench, smiling at the laughter of children nearby. I shook my head to clear it.

  Watching the deputies carefully for clues on how to act, I sat in the middle of the bench. The kids took a seat on either side of me. Both of them had been grilled mercilessly by the cops after Adrian’s death. It had left a bad taste in all of our mouths, even though in the end I earned their grudging trust, if not respect, when I was the one to find Adrian’s killer. One thing we had definitely learned was that all deaths are suspicious until proven otherwise. Another was that the best suspect is the one right in front of you. And lastly, the better part of valor is keeping your mouth shut. So, rather than start babbling our explanation, we sat silently and waited for the deputies to make the next move.

  Tank took a cloth from his back pocket and mopped his brow. It might have only been early June, but here in the Roundtopolis—as locals called the cluster of towns where my property was located, with the area famous for the national phenomenon of Antique Week as the hub—we’d hit triple-digit temperatures and nearly that in humidity. At least in Gidget’s living room, there’d been some air conditioning. Not much, probably because of the broken door and window. But come to think of it, I’d noticed it being warm when I was there before, too. Gidget had apologized and told me she didn’t have two wooden nickels to rub together. She had served me watery coffee, black, and I was glad I’d channeled my mother at the last second and stopped at H-E-B for a coffee cake. Tiny Gidget ate about two-thirds in one sitting.

  Tank spoke. “I’m Deputy Vallejo.” The name Tank fit him. He was weight-lifter thick through the chest and shoulders. His short-sleeved brown uniform shirt strained around his bulging upper arms, and veins popped from his forearms. Maybe he juiced? That could cause aggressive behavior, like his overreacting when he came in. “Let’s start with names and where you’re from.” He nodded at me.

  I drew my first easy breath since his arrival. Without fully realizing it, my internal tension meter had shot up near to redline. Not that it hadn’t been stressful finding Gidget, and helping her and Gertrude. But scary cops were a personal threat, and that was a different breed of cattle. “I’m Michele Lopez Hanson. I have a weekend and summer camp next door, and I usually live in Houston.”

  I squeezed Sam’s hand. I could feel its dampness. He’d been suspect number one for quite some time in his stepfather’s death, and cops would probably always scare him.

  He cleared his throat and spoke, then Annabelle took her turn. I followed up by explaining how we ended up here and everything that followed, until the deputies had shown up.

  When I’d finished, Tank aka Deputy Vallejo said, “Where were you this morning?”

  “Breakfast in Round Top at Espressions.”

  Junior broke in. “Is that the place where you sit at the same table as strangers?”

  Annabelle smiled at him. “Yeah. We sat with a bunch of old guys. Then we came home to get our stuff and say goodbye, or whatever. Sam has to get to the airport, and I’m moving to Austin with my cat, Precious.”

  I suppressed a grin. Annabelle and that cat.

  The two deputies looked at each other long and hard.

  I put on my sweetest smile, remembering that people told me I looked like Eva Longoria when I flashed one. I might be past forty, but it still seemed to work. The two young deputies smiled back. “So why don’t we give you our contact information? In case you have follow-up.” I smiled even bigger.

  “All right,” Tank said. “Me and Junior will give you a call if we need a statement. Or something.”

  In the background, I heard the female EMT. “I think she’s gone.”

  ***

  Gertrude sat like a sphinx on the Quacker floor, waiting for the door to open so she could return to Gidget’s side. She refused food and water, but tolerated the cold packs for her eye, which I applied every hour. I didn’t eat, either, and the dog and I spent the evening alone, together. I had some work to do, but I decided to go install my new wildlife camera before it got too dark out.

  I slid off the bed and grabbed the camera. Gertrude started jumping when I opened the door, about half an inch vertical clearance per hop.

  “No. Sit.”

  She continued her crazed lunging and leaping. I opened the door, holding my foot across it to keep her in. She tried to wriggle under it, her toenails scrabbling against linoleum, and I shut it quickly behind me. I went around back and tied the webbed straps of the camera around a tree, with the camera pointing across the cleared area toward the tree line. I heard frenzied scratching and more yips from inside the Quacker.

  “No,” I shouted.

  I made sure the camera was on with batteries aligned properly, then shut and latched the cover. I jogged back to the door. The dog was still freaking out, so I positioned myself to block her escape and pushed my way in past her.

  “Gertrude, honey, shhhhh.”

  Her barking subsided into whines. She threw herself on the floor, her face between her paws, her eyes sad and betrayed. If a dog could cry tears, she would have.

  I kneeled beside her and rubbed her ears under her cords of hair. “I understand, Gertrude. I truly do. Gidget is gone, and you don’t realize yet that it’s forever. But I can’t let you run off. You’re snack-size for a coyote.”

  I’d been referring to losing Adrian, but as I spoke the words aloud, I realized that Gertrude had lost not just her closest companion, but more of a mother figure. I felt a sob well up in my chest, but I forced it down. Yes, Gertrude, I understand. Times two. I slid out of my flip-flops and rummaged in my supplies for something to
use as a leash, since it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to let her out unrestrained. I found a stretchy clothesline that would do and set it on the table by the door. Then I positioned my laptop beside it and turned it on. I changed clothes while it booted up, and as I slid my jeans off, I felt an object in one of the front pockets. I pulled it out. It was a dirty business card. I remembered finding it at our fence line. I brushed the dirt off, and my heart shot into my throat. Adrian Hanson. I covered my mouth with my hand. It felt like a message from him, an encouragement. Or at least a reminder that he had been here, that this was our place. I propped the card in the window at the head of my bed, then stepped back.

  The laptop was ready for me, so I sat in front of it, massaging Gertrude with my toes. My composure came back to me slowly. I opened my browser and typed Gidget Becker into my Google search box. It pulled up the Montrose Fine Arts Gallery and a slew of historical pieces about the art scene. I scanned a few. Her name was always linked with her partner, Lester Tillman. I wondered if anyone had told him yet that she was gone. I added the word family to my search. The results didn’t change much, and the only appearances of the word were in relation to the “family-like” relationship the gallery had with its artists. I tried adding parents. This time when I hit enter, the site locked up, so I hit refresh. It seemed to be trying, but nothing happened, and finally the failure message appeared on the tab.

  After two minutes of beating my head against the screen, I decided to check my data. Now that I was in the boonies, I didn’t have the luxury of an “all you can eat” plan anymore. I’d run out of data after only a week before I realized just how much I was using. I’d bought more, for a large upcharge, and I’d drilled it into the kids’ heads: don’t stream data, don’t pass Go, don’t collect two hundred dollars.

  So I shouldn’t be out yet. I accessed Exede’s site. It came right up, and the meter was redlined.

  I was alone in the dark in the woods in the middle of nowhere, without my kids and having lost my husband and mother, and now I didn’t even have data. My tension meter shot up to 10 and the needle kept moving. I wanted to scream and curse, but my mother had impressed upon me since a young age that cursing wasn’t ladylike. She’d turned a deaf ear to my doing it in Spanish, though. In an emotional implosion, I opened my mouth, ready to unleash in the tongue of my ancestors, but instead of caca, the word that came out was in English.

  “Shit.”

  Lightning didn’t strike.

  “Shit, shit, SHIT!” I yelled.

  Gertrude cocked her head at me, but nothing else happened. The Archangel Michael didn’t appear. I wasn’t swallowed up by a giant hole in the earth. My mother didn’t rise up from her grave.

  Something started bubbling up inside me. Anger. Red hot anger. My secretive mother had died. My secretive, restrictive, judgmental mother wasn’t here anymore to tell me what to do. I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

  And what I wanted to do was scream every word she’d forbidden me to use. “Mother-effing SHIT!” I repeated it a few times, trying out different conjugations and combinations of the F word until my voice broke and trailed off.

  I could feel Papa’s sad eyes on me as real as if he were standing an arm’s length away. He wouldn’t yell. He’d just say, “Oh, Itzpa, my little butterfly,” his voice somber. But he wasn’t here, and I wasn’t his little Itzpapalotl anymore. The Aztec goddess with the knife-tipped wings was strong. She was beautiful. She was a warrior. That wasn’t me anymore. I was a middle-aged woman who used to have a life. Who used to have a love that lit her up like a sparkler. Whose kids didn’t need her anymore. I felt closer to death—not just Mom’s and Adrian’s, but my own, and, today, Gidget’s—than to life. Old, speeding toward the time when my body ceased to function like a woman. Black and sinful inside, defiling my mother’s wishes with my words. More like the Tlazolteotl of my abuela Isabel’s whispered stories. Tlazolteotl, the Moon Goddess. The eater of filth, the giver of life, the bringer of the moon, and the absolver of lust and sins of the flesh.

  “Tlazol,” I whispered aloud. Tuh-LAH-zull. My tongue tangled on the –tay-OH-tull, but that was as it should be. Teotl was the designation for a god. Without it, Tlazol was just . . . the moon, waxing, and in my case, waning, darkness everlasting.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, my thoughts black and my heart heavy. But after quite some time, I realized I could barely breathe. I shoved my laptop back and put my forehead on the Formica surface of the table. It wobbled on its collapsible leg, but its coolness was soothing. I was a little in shock. A warm, scratchy sensation surprised me. Gertrude had somehow wrapped her body in a C curve of fur locks around one of my ankles and was working the other over with her sandpaper tongue. The emotions I’d been holding back burst out of me. Tears rolled down my cheeks, my back heaved, sobs ripped up and out. And all the while, the little lost animal kept up her ministrations.

  I leaned around the tabletop and patted the floor. “Come, Gertrude.”

  She stared at me and kept licking.

  I was beginning to think she was completely untrained. I scooped her in my arms and pulled her into me. She switched her attention to my collar bone.

  I buried my face in her funny coat, and hidden there, I said, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Tears still fell, but my breathing slowed. I focused on my breathing. Adrian would have told me to visualize myself in my happy place, if he were here. I tried, but I didn’t know where that was anymore, so I just kept breathing.

  When I was washed out, I finally scooched Gertrude to the seat beside me. We made significant eye contact, each telling the other we would be fine.

  “Can you love a Tlazol?” I asked her.

  In reply she made a sound somewhere between a snort and choking.

  I laughed and wiped my eyes. “I guess that’s awesome? Now, let’s see what’s going on with that data.”

  She nodded. Or at least I thought she did.

  I texted Sam and Annabelle. “Out of data. Please tell me neither of you streamed.”

  Annabelle’s answer came almost instantaneously. “Not on my laptop.”

  “But somewhere else?”

  “On my phone so I wouldn’t use your data.”

  “Was it set to wifi?”

  “Um, yeah, so I won’t run over my data plan.”

  I groaned and clicked on BUY MORE DATA. Cha-ching. I’d have to do a better job with my instructions next time.

  Chapter Three

  My brand new canine alarm clock woke me with toe licks before sunrise. I opened my eyes to a blurry view of her googly ones.

  “Bed hog,” I muttered. “Nine-thousand-degree bed hog.” One I was glad I’d bathed before bedtime the night before.

  She wagged her tail.

  I rolled onto my side. My sheets were soaked in sweat, but I really couldn’t blame Gertrude. This was not an unusual occurrence these days.

  “What time is it?” I asked her.

  I got no answer, so I checked my phone. Five a.m. The exact time Annabelle’s cat, Precious, had always woken me each morning. Gertrude barked.

  “I’m up.” I swung my feet out of bed and onto the twenty-year-old carpet around its base. I cringed. It felt like steel wool, and I didn’t want to think about how it had gotten that way.

  Gertrude sailed off and landed hard on her squatty legs, then put her paws on my shins.

  “You sure are demanding.” I jammed my feet into boots and tied the clothesline to Gertrude’s collar. I threw the door open and gestured toward outside. Gertrude stared at me, her eyes shocked.

  “Yes, you’re doing this by yourself.” I pointed into the darkness. “I’ll be right here on the other end of this.” I jiggled the clothesline.

  The dog whined.

  “Go,” I said.

  Gertrude lowered her head and moped her way to the door. She gave me one last plaintive look before slinking outside. I played out slack in the line, looped the other end around my
wrist, and shut the door. I went into the tiny Quacker bathroom, but before I’d even finished, Gertrude was letting me know in no uncertain terms that she was not an outside-alone-in-the-woods sort of dog. I reconsidered my stance on cats. Precious didn’t bark and hadn’t needed to be let in and out on demand. I opened the door and Gertrude flung herself back in, panting.

  “What’s the matter?” I leaned down and ruffled her ears. “Scary out there?”

  Her breathing slowly returned to normal. Adrian had wanted to get a dog. I smiled at Gertrude. Not one like her, though. He’d wanted a long-legged, brave-hearted companion for trail runs and mountain biking.

  I turned to my training schedule taped to the mini-fridge. It was comforting to me like a favorite blankie or pacifier is to a child. I never went without a training calendar, not since Adrian lured me into my first triathlon. The Excel spreadsheet document was color-coded by type of workout. Today was green—a rest day—and that meant sleeping in. I looked at Gertrude, who was snuffling and sniffing around the Quacker floor. Loudly. Okay, so the extra shuteye wasn’t happening.

  “You know, Gertrude. This five a.m. thing works great most days of the week, but Mondays are sacred. We sleep in on Mondays. Got it?”

  I enunciated each word and held eye contact. She nodded, or something like it. She was a sweet dog, and I had no right to keep her if Gidget had family that wanted her. I’d have to look into it. At a minimum, I needed to call around and see if I needed permission from someone to keep the little beastie until decisions were made.

  Even with Gertrude here, the Quacker felt empty today without Sam and Annabelle. Yesterday it had seemed overcrowded. We’d fit in our Houston house perfectly, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever be able to part with it. All those memories. All those beautiful, beautiful memories. However, if I was successful at country living this summer, I had a decision to make. Sam had only one more year of high school. I could move out here full-time after he graduated. I’d only be able to afford to build a house here if I sold the Houston house. Or I could keep the Houston house and just visit this place and the Quacker occasionally. Or even sell it and move on from Adrian’s dream, somehow. But for now, I only had to figure out how to live three months in a twenty-eight-foot trailer, alone, except for Gertrude, maybe, while I gave the country a test-run.