False Impressions (8 page)

“What?”

Rocky leaned over her, blocking April from view with her hair. She whispered softly, “That’s how Mary Lou’s brother died,” Rocky said. “In that house.”

April glanced up at Mary Lou, who was escaping into the dining room.

She’d had no idea. “In the meth house?”

That did explain the cremains. Certainly there couldn’t be much left for burial.

April felt her stomach churn. She hadn’t meant to hurt Mary Lou. She looked up, but Mary Lou had turned her back and was disappearing into the crowd. April heard her voice, low and purring, but she could see from the stiffness in her shoulders that she was furious.

She turned to Rocky. She glanced at Deana and Mitch. Their heads were hung low. “Are you telling me her brother was making meth?”

“Not really. I think he was more of an errand boy. He was never a druggie, just a drunk.”

Mitch came up behind her and kissed her ear. “Ready to go?” he said.

“I need to go say good-bye to Mary Lou first,” April said, watching her friend as she herded her guests into the family room for a nightcap.

“Maybe not tonight,” Mitch said. “You can call her tomorrow.”

April glanced from Rocky to Deana and Mark. They all looked disappointed in her.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” April said to Mitch for the tenth time since
they’d gotten in the car. They were only a half mile from Mary Lou’s place. April kept looking behind them, as if she could still see the house and know what was going on.

“There was no way you could have. You were in California.”

“Deana could have told me, instead of making it seem like a state secret.”

Mitch repeated himself. “You couldn’t have known. Mary Lou’s just hurting. She won’t stay mad.”

April wasn’t so sure. Mary Lou could hold a grudge. There were several Realtors in town that she’d cut out of her business because of their sketchy dealings. April didn’t want to be cut out of the stamping group. She liked Mary Lou, Suzi, Rocky, and Deana. They were her closest friends here. If she didn’t have those women in her life, Aldenville wouldn’t be a fun place to be.

Mitch put a hand on her thigh, reminding her of one big reason Aldenville felt like a great place to live. He smiled at her, chucking her under the chin, a move that would have warranted a slap away if attempted by anyone else.

She grabbed his fingers and squeezed. The returned pressure felt like sustenance.

“She can’t stay angry with you,” Mitch reiterated.

“
You
can’t stay angry with me,” she countered.

He sensed a change in her mood and furthered it along by kissing her fingertips. “So true.”

He drove with one hand, twirling the steering wheel with his pinky. April felt herself softening. She didn’t want to think about what she’d just done to Mary Lou. She wanted to obliterate the reaction she’d seen on her friend’s face.

Mitch was at the end of the road. “Right or left? Are you coming home with me?”

They’d planned on ending their evening in front of his fireplace. Now the decision had to be made. Left to Mitch’s. Right to the barn. Left to mind-altering ministrations from Mitch. Right to home and nonstop recriminations. There was really no choice.

“Promise to ply me with drink?”

“My best scotch is at your disposal.”

“Promise me to make me forget what a jerk I just was?”

“I have the method in mind,” he said.

“Promise to drive me home in a few hours?”

“I will.” With his right hand, he tapped out a rhythm on her knee. “You won’t be sorry. I built a fire. It’s all ready to go.” His voice grew low and teasing. “Just one match, and whoosh . . .”

April’s thigh heated up where his fingertips now rested. His touch held a lot of promise. They’d be at his house in a few minutes. The house would be toasty, warm enough to get rid of the layers of clothes she was wearing.

“Drive faster,” she said.

 

April woke up late. Mitch had dropped her off at about two
A.M. What sky she could see from the clerestory windows high above her in the loft was pale. The sun might not make an appearance at all from the looks of the cloud cover.

She could hear the usual midmorning noises coming from downstairs. The TV was on. Charlotte opened the refrigerator slowly, trying to be quiet as she got their early lunch started. She’d hate it if she knew her attempts to stifle herself were more annoying to April than a steady stream of noise would be. She held her breath waiting for the refrigerator to make the final squeak. It took forever.

April had hoped that ideas for the stamps for Rocky’s new line would come to her in the night. She often set her mind in gear before falling asleep and came up with wonderful ideas in those moments just before she fully woke up. Last night was not one of those times.

Maybe it was the subject matter. Winter was not an inspiration to her. This winter had been too harsh, too restrictive, too cold for her to enjoy and want to memorialize in stamps. She tried to come up with pictures in her head that reflected the beauty, but nothing was coming.

The real reason was how badly she felt about mouthing off at Mary Lou’s. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, wishing she had said something else.

But it was curious. Mary Lou was the last person she’d expect to have a brother who had died in a meth-lab explosion. It was hard to believe Mary Lou had a criminal in the family. She was so straight.

The purse guns that Logan had showed April took on a new meaning now.

Even so, she hadn’t meant to rub Mary Lou’s nose in it. She couldn’t have known the facts, but still, she had hurt Mary Lou. She needed to make amends quickly.

She would go to Mary Lou’s office for the list of rental houses and talk to her there.

April threw off her duvet. The loft was too warm, victim of the seniors downstairs in charge of the thermostat. She tried not to think of the heating oil they were burning as she started down her ladder.

Charlotte greeted her with a smile. She got up out of her recliner and headed to the kitchen, trying to beat April to the counter. “I didn’t know if you wanted coffee,” she said.

“I’ll get it,” April said. “Sit down.”

Charlotte parked herself at the kitchen table, watching April as she got down a mug and a cereal bowl.

“Want eggs?”

April held her hand up. “I’m just going to have instant oatmeal.”

Charlotte settled back like a cartoon bird on a nest. “Are you having dinner with Mitchell, dear?”

“Yes, he’s cooking.”

Grizz harrumphed from the other room, whether at Mitch’s cooking or something Maury Povich said, she wasn’t sure.

April finished off the soy milk. A trip to the store was in her future. Since the weather had turned so cold and snowy, she did all the shopping. Charlotte and Grizz hadn’t left the house in probably three weeks.

“Do you have a grocery list for me?” she asked.

Charlotte produced one from her apron pocket.

“I’ve got some work to do, and then I’ll run errands.”

“Thank you, sweetie pie.”

April went back up to the loft after her shower and drew for an hour. She never hit her stride, feeling like she was trying to force something that wasn’t coming.

She gave up and headed out for her errands.

Mary Lou’s real estate office sat in an old home at the edge of the development she and her husband had built twenty years earlier. Her own house was visible on a hill that overlooked both. April pulled into the small asphalt parking lot.

The door opened into a small reception office. A middle-aged woman with tightly controlled curly hair smiled at her.

“Can I help you?”

“Mary Lou here?”

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not.”

April was disappointed. She’d hoped to get to Mary Lou right away and apologize. She didn’t want this to fester. “Okay. Do you have an envelope for me? April Buchert? She said she would pull together a list of rentals for me.”

The receptionist looked through a pile of papers on her desk. The door to the inner office opened and closed. Logan, Kit’s husband, came through.

“April? You taken care of?”

The receptionist shot him a look of pure resentment. “Got it covered, Logan,” she said, not looking up from her task.

“You working?” April asked.

“Yeah. Going out to make the rounds. Make sure no pipes burst over the weekend.”

“That’s nice,” April said. From the exasperated expression of the receptionist, April got the feeling Logan was padding his importance.

“I don’t see anything with your name on it, Miss Buchert.”

Again, April was disappointed. She wanted to get started looking for a new place.

Logan came forward, perching himself behind the receptionist on the desk return. He ignored her pointed look and swung his legs. “Whatcha need?”

“Your mother-in-law said she had a list of houses for rent. I want to start looking at what’s available.”

“I can take you to a few.”

“I’d rather go by myself. Mary Lou said she’d give me the lockbox key.”

She didn’t need an escort. Especially Logan.

“Wait here,” he said, jumping off the desk and going back into the inner sanctum. April could see a giant mahogany desk and credenza. Pictures of Kit and the twins filled the walls. Mary Lou’s office.

The receptionist smiled slightly. The phone rang, and she answered it. April knew when she was being dismissed. April had thrown her lot in with Logan, and the receptionist was miffed.

“Here you go,” Logan said.

The receptionist looked over, trying to see what was in his hand. He palmed the page and gave April a key.

“I put my cell number up on top. If you need anything, just call. This key will get you into all of these. These are all foreclosures, so they’re empty.”

April glanced at the list. There were ten houses listed. A lot of the descriptions were abbreviated, and she wasn’t sure what they meant.

She could go home and look at them on Google Earth and see if any suited her needs. Perfect.

“Thanks, Logan.” She nodded to the surly receptionist and let herself out. On to the IGA.

She was only about halfway through Charlotte’s grocery list when she heard her name being called.

“April? April Buchert?”

April turned her head. She’d not gotten used to how small Aldenville was. She must not have changed much since she was sixteen; she was always running into people who knew her parents and recognized her.

She plastered a fake smile and prepared to meet yet another aging friend of her parents. Last week, it had had been Dumpy, the Presbyterian minister. The week before, she’d been mortified in the frozen food aisle by her kindergarten teacher gushing about April’s artistic talents at age five.

The woman in front of her looked to be at least fifty. Her hair was lank, and there were scabs on the backs of her hands that appeared to have been picked many times over and never allowed to heal. When the woman opened her mouth to talk, April was shocked to see broken and brown teeth.

Alarmed, April took a step back.

“It’s me, Violet.”

April shook her head. She didn’t remember this person. She started to walk away, but the woman wasn’t finished.

“Violet Wysocki.”

Violet
Wysocki
? April could barely keep her jaw from dropping. Of course she should have made the connection. Not too many people were named after a crayon. But this person was so far from the girl she’d known.

Violet had been her very first best friend. Daughter of the town’s most popular general practitioner, she’d been pampered and cosseted her entire life. Naturally blonde and predatorily perky, she’d ruled every class they’d ever been in together, starting in first grade. She and April had been inseparable until about fifth grade, when Violet began to change. By the time they got to high school, Deana and April were tight, and Violet, queen of the mean girls, wouldn’t give her a second glance. When Ed had come out, ruining April’s senior year, Violet had ignored April entirely.

She had been the most talented kid in the school. She’d nailed the highest pikes in cheer, got the best grades in math, and sang the lead in all the school plays.

What had happened to her? She looked older than her own mother. Take that back. Her mother, who April remembered as a tight frosted-hair version of her daughter, would never let herself look like this. Not this.

“I saw you at the council meeting,” Violet said.

April struggled until she realized this was the woman Yost had been with. She’d blended into the woodwork there. Violet’s hand shook as she offered it to April. She was so thin, April was afraid to press too hard as she accepted.