Aunt Dimity Goes West (2 page)

Stanley’s breathy purr became a loud rumble as Bill

reentered the bedroom, carrying a cup of tea on a silver salver. Stanley was, to all intents and purposes, Bill’s cat. He liked it when Bill stayed at home to look after

me. My ongoing incapacitation was, in many respects,

the best thing that had ever happened to Stanley.

Bill placed the salver on the bedside table and

rubbed his eyes again. I stared at the steaming teacup

and felt guilt settle over me like a lead cape. My hus-

band was in his midthirties, active, attractive, and ex-

tremely good at his job. He’d spent half the night in

front of his computer, yet here he was, serving tea to

me at dawn. It wasn’t fair. He was supposed to be run-

ning the European branch of his family’s venerable law

firm, not playing nursemaid to an invalid wife.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

5

“Mind if I catch another forty winks?” he asked,

yawning.

“Live it up,” I told him. “Catch eighty.”

Bill crawled back into bed, and Stanley left my lap

to curl contentedly behind Bill’s knees. I drank my tea

in silence, then made my way to the bathroom to pre-

pare myself to face another day. It was bound to be a

hectic one because of the parade.

The parade, as Bill called it, was the kind of thing

that happened in a tight-knit community when one of

its members suffered a mishap. Since my mishap had

been more newsworthy than most, our parade had be-

come a popular social event. No one wanted to be left

out of a story that had made headlines in the
Times,
so once a week—on Sunday—a steady stream of neighbors appeared on our doorstep, bearing gifts and

basking in reflected glory.

“And today is Sunday,” I muttered, closing the

bathroom door. “Bath, breakfast, church, and on with

the show!”

By the time I had finished dressing, Will and Rob

were up, and by the time Annelise and I had finished

dressing them, Bill was up again, so we trooped down

to the kitchen en masse for a hearty breakfast. We

were clearing the table when the doorbell rang. An-

nelise quickly took the boys into the back garden—

they tended to get overexcited on parade days—and

Bill went to answer the front door.

“Who was it?” I asked, when he returned to the

kitchen.

6

Nancy Atherton

“Terry Edmonds,” Bill replied.

I stopped loading the dishwasher and gave him

a puzzled glance. Terry Edmonds wasn’t a neighbor.

He was a professional courier who picked up and

delivered legal papers for Bill’s firm.

“Since when does Terry work on Sunday?” I

asked.

“Special delivery,” said Bill. “I put it in the study.”

“He brought it
here
?” I winced as another twinge of guilt assailed me. Bill had a high-tech office overlooking the village green in Finch, but he hadn’t set foot in it since I’d been shot. “If you don’t get back to work

soon, Bill, you’re going to have to change the address

on your letterhead.”

“All in good time, my love,” he said.

I swung around to face him.

“Look,” I said, flexing my arm gingerly. “I’m as

good as new. You don’t have to play Nurse Nancy

anymore.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that you were

trying to get rid of me,” Bill observed mildly.

“I
am
trying to get rid of you,” I scolded. “You can’t work all night and take care of me all day. You’ll

make yourself ill and
then
where will we be? It’s mid-June already, Bill, time for you to resume a normal

schedule. Annelise and I can look after the boys, and I

can look after myself. I don’t need a babysitter any-

more. I’m perfectly capable of—”

“—being on time for church,” Bill inserted, “which

we won’t be if we don’t get a move on.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

7

I smiled grudgingly, closed the dishwasher, and

called Annelise and the boys in from the back garden.

The parade began within an hour of our return from

church. The doorbell rang almost nonstop for the

rest of the day.

Sally Pyne, the plump and pleasantly chatty owner

of the tearoom, dropped off a basket filled with her

delectable Crazy Quilt Cookies, which had everything

in them except coconut because Sally knew I wasn’t

fond of coconut. The imperious Peggy Taxman, who

ruled Finch with an iron hand and a voice that could

penetrate granite, gave Will and Rob bags of candy

from her general store, along with a stern lecture on

dental hygiene. Miranda Morrow, Finch’s red-haired

professional witch, bestowed an unlabeled packet of

healing herbs upon us, and Dick Peacock, the rotund

and amiable publican, gave us three bottles of his

homemade wine. Since Dick’s wine was undrinkable

and Miranda’s herbs were quite possibly illegal, Bill

flushed both down the toilet after everyone had left.

Ruth and Louise Pym, the ancient and utterly identi-

cal twin sisters who lived up the lane from us, delivered flowers and fresh vegetables from their gardens. Mr.

Malvern, the dairy farmer next door, supplied us with

milk, cream, butter, and cheese. Mr. Barlow, the local

handyman, brought only his tools, but he used them to

mend the sticky hinge on the back door. Lilian Bunting,

the vicar’s wife, filled my freezer with casseroles, stews,

8

Nancy Atherton

and soups, and the vicar brought an armload of books he

found comforting in troubled times.

My favorite part of the parade occurred after the

rush was over, when my best friend Emma Harris

showed up to chat quietly over a cup of tea, but even

she felt compelled to drop off a few jars of her home-

made jams. No one ever left without leaving some-

thing. As a result I hadn’t had to cook or bake or shop

for groceries since we’d returned from Scotland.

“I’m going to bankrupt the villagers if I don’t snap out of my funk,” I said gloomily.

The parade was over, as was dinner. Annelise had

taken the boys upstairs for their baths. I’d offered

to lend a hand, but Bill had insisted that I rest after

my action-packed day, so he, Stanley, and I had re-

treated to the sofa in the living room to munch on

Crazy Quilt Cookies, put our feet—and paws—up,

and watch the fire.

“It’s not a funk,” said Bill. “It’s post-traumatic

stress and it’s not something you snap out of. It’s

something you recover from.”

“But I’m
not
recovering,” I moaned. “In the past month I’ve tried counselors, psychiatrists, the vicar,

pills, meditation, hypnotherapy—”

“—aromatherapy, massage therapy, hydrotherapy,

acupuncture,” Bill put in.

“And nothing’s worked,” I concluded.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

9

“If I were foolish enough to risk rousing your

wrath,” Bill said, after a pause, “I’d point out that you haven’t done anything long enough to
know
whether it was working or not. But I’m not, so I won’t.”

I nodded ruefully, acknowledging the hit. “Patience

was never my strong suit. I don’t seem to
have
any strong suits at the moment. I don’t know what to try next.”

“That’s okay,” said Bill. “I do.”

He smiled mysteriously, shifted Stanley from his

lap to the floor, and left the living room. He returned

a moment later with one hand tucked behind his

back, sidestepped his way around the couch, to keep

me from seeing his hidden hand, and perched on the

edge of the coffee table, facing me. His expression re-

minded me of the twins’ when they’d accomplished a

particularly ingenious bit of mischief.

“What are you up to?” I asked, eyeing him warily.

“Remember the special delivery Terry Edmonds

made this morning?” he asked. “It’s for you. I ordered

it last night.”

“It’s a brain,” I said promptly. “You want me to try

a brain transplant.”

“Wrong,” he said, his eyes dancing.

“Well?” I demanded. “What is it?”

Grinning from ear to ear, Bill brought his hand

around to reveal his big surprise. It was a large, white cowboy hat. He placed it on my head.

“Saddle up, little lady,” he drawled. “The Wild West

is a-callin’!”

Two

“

ee-ha!” Bill cried, slapping his thigh.

Startled, Stanley bolted from the room,

Y but I was too bewildered to move a muscle.

My husband was the Harvard-educated scion of a

Boston Brahmin family. He didn’t drawl or slap his

thigh, and the closest he’d ever come to the Wild

West was a legal conference in Denver. I stared at him,

dumbfounded, and wondered what on earth had come

over him. Had the fumes from Dick Peacock’s wine

pickled his brain? Had he finally cracked under the strain of caretaking? Had I strayed into an alternate universe?

I touched the cowboy hat’s crown, to make sure I

wasn’t hallucinating, then said, very carefully, “Bill?

What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the one thing we haven’t tried

so far,” he replied, beaming. “A complete change of

scene, and I
do
mean complete.” He swept an arm toward the cottage’s bay window. “Go west, young

woman! Seek your fortune in the glorious, untamed

wilderness of the Colorado Rockies!”

“Are you saying that we should go to Colorado?” I

asked, struggling to keep up. “As in . . .
Colorado
?”

“The one and only!” Bill exclaimed happily. “Finch

Aunt Dimity Goes West

11

isn’t doing you any good. It’s too familiar. You need

to jump-start your batteries by plugging into a place that bears no resemblance to Finch whatsoever. And what

could be more different from our too-tame English

village than a log cabin in the glorious, untamed—”

“Log cabin?”
I squeaked, alarmed.

“You remember Danny Auerbach, the real estate

developer?” Bill registered my blank look and rushed

on. “I’ve done a lot of work for Danny over the years.

He built a cabin in the mountains a couple of years

ago, and he’s offered it to me a thousand times. I

finally decided to take him up on his offer.”

“You’ve bought a
log cabin
?” I said, my head spinning.

“In
Colorado
?”

“I’m just borrowing it,” Bill explained. “Danny

likes to have friends stay there. It’s near a small mountain town—”

“Aspen?” I said hopefully.

“No,” said Bill, dashing my hopes. “Danny doesn’t

care for Aspen—he says it’s overbuilt and overpriced—

so he built his place near a mountain town called Blue-

bird, on a piece of land that’s been in his family for

ages. With Bluebird nearby you won’t feel cut off

from civilization, but you’ll be far enough away from

city lights to enjoy a feeling of . . .” He stretched his arms wide and stuck out his chest.
“Expansiveness.”

“Expansiveness,” I echoed doubtfully.

“It’s what you need, Lori,” said Bill, “and it’s exactly what you won’t find in our cozy corner of the world.”

I could do nothing for a moment but gape at him.

12

Nancy Atherton

He’d evidently forgotten how much I loved our cozy

corner of the world. Finch was a sleepy backwater

that scarcely merited a dot on most maps, but it pulsated with the seething passions of everyday life, and I was

caught up in those passions. Would the vicar defy tradi-

tion and invite a rock band to perform at the church

fête? Would Sally Pyne wear her luminous purple track-

suit to the flower show? Would the all-powerful Peggy

Taxman expand her empire to include the greengrocer’s

shop, now that old Mr. Farnham had retired? The high

drama never ceased, and the thought of missing out on a

single day’s worth of juicy gossip was intolerable.

Gossip deprivation aside, it just seemed wrong

to leave the cottage and flee to a log cabin half a

world away from Finch. The cottage was our home.

To abandon it, even temporarily, would be to give in

to the black-eyed demon who’d hijacked my dreams.

“I don’t know, Bill,” I said. “It seems like cowardice

to me, like we’re letting Abaddon run us out of town.”

“Nonsense.” Bill tossed his head dismissively. “If you

go to Colorado, you’ll be declaring your
independence
from Abaddon.You’ll be saying, ‘I’m not going to curl

up in a fetal position for the rest of my life because a nutcase got the better of me. I’m going to seize the

day!’” He put a hand on my knee and added earnestly,

“I’ve seen you disagree with Peggy Taxman—
out loud

and in front of
witnesses.
You’re no coward, Lori.”

“What about the boys?” I said worriedly. “We’ll be

uprooting them, won’t we? Upsetting their routine?”

“Of course we’ll be upsetting their routine,” Bill

Aunt Dimity Goes West

13

retorted. “Do you honestly think they’ll mind? It’s

mid-June, Lori, a wonderful time of year to visit the

Rockies. The boys can go hiking and trout fishing

and fossil hunting, and they can pan for gold in the

river. If they’re lucky, they’ll catch their first glimpse of elk, buffalo, and bighorn sheep. There’s even a