Lost Along the Way (3 page)

“He certainly is thorough, isn’t he?” I asked the empty room.

Back in the living room, I stood marveling at how completely unprepared I was. After months of putting it off, I’d finally decided it was time to clear their home and sell it, but I realized now I’d never actually thought about what that would entail. I’d pictured myself sorting through paperwork. Donating bags of clothing. Maybe listing the furniture on Craigslist, then loading my car up at the end of the weekend with whatever things I’d decided to keep and heading home.

Now, standing in my parents’ cluttered living room, I felt overwhelmed by all the things I hadn’t considered. Namely shelf after shelf after shelf of ornaments. There were two shelves full of porcelain bells, several filled with ornamental teacups and matching saucers. Another shelf held unusual teapots. Two whole bookcases were dedicated to animals: lots of cats and dogs, but with small collections of owls, mice, deer, squirrels, moose, and birds as well. One set of shelves hanging near the front windows was filled with bud vases of all sizes and colors. I cleared a collection of porcelain angels off the top of one of the banker boxes and peeked inside. It was full of bundles of newspaper, which, once unwrapped, proved to be even more porcelain angels.

What in the world was I going to do with it all?

The doorbell rang before I had time to think about it much. I knew immediately it would be Landon. I’d never met him, since he hadn’t made the eight-hour drive to Omaha for the funeral. I’d only spoken with him a handful of times, but everything about our conversations told me he was observant. He’d definitely notice if somebody was suddenly living in my parents’ house, so I’d called the previous week to let him know I was coming. I wasn’t looking forward to the awkward pleasantries, but there was no hope of avoiding him for the entire weekend.

The knowledge that my parents had trusted this man with a key to their house coupled with his obvious attention to details made me picture a neat man. Tidy hair and perfectly tucked shirts. Probably pleated khakis and loafers. After seeing how thoroughly he’d handled my parents’ home, I suspected he even paid for regular manicures. The light on the front porch was dim, but still enough to illuminate the fact that the man in front of me couldn’t have been further from that mental image. He was shorter than me by an inch or two, although stoutly built, and he was, in a word, scruffy. His tousled black hair stood on end. His dark facial hair had grown out too far to be called stubble, but wasn’t quite long enough to be called a beard. He wore cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a faded University of Wyoming T-shirt.

“Danny?” He held out a thick-fingered hand. I noted the dark hair and several scars on his tan, muscular forearms. “It’s great to finally meet you. I’m Landon.” His grip was firm, his fingers rough with calluses.

“It’s Daniel, actually.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your mom always called you Danny, so I just assumed. She talked about you so often, I feel like I know you already.”

This statement surprised me almost as much as the photo on the mantel had. Part of me longed to press him for details, but standing in near-darkness, with moths and mosquitoes swarming around the dim light, their bodies
click-click-clicking
against the glass of the porch light as they flung themselves against it, wasn’t the right time to get into my fractured relationship with my parents.

“Thanks for taking care of things,” I said, gesturing toward the yard and the flowerbeds. “The place looks fantastic.”

“It wasn’t a problem at all. I’d been doing the yard work the last few years anyway.”

“Oh. I had no idea.”

“Well, Rose helped me with the flowers, and the garden in back.”

“She had a garden?”

“The last few years, yeah. We grew tomatoes and peppers, mostly. Zucchini. I’ve planted a few this year, even though….” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “But I always mowed for them. It was hard on your father’s back, and your mother worried about heatstroke. He hated her fussing over him, but I don’t think he was too sorry to give up the mowing.”

I nodded mutely, feeling wholly inadequate. It seemed absurd that he was the one telling me about my own parents. “Umm….” The silence suddenly felt awkward. “Would you like to come in?”

He seemed startled by the question. “I don’t want to intrude, and it’s late. I wanted you to know you can call on me if you need anything at all. I live right over there.” He turned to point at the house across the street. It was the smallest on the block. Back when I’d lived here, Miss Higsen had resided there. She’d been tiny and ancient, and I mostly remembered her as the woman who’d yelled at my friend Tom and me once when we were walking Tom’s dog, who had stopped to do his business on Miss Higsen’s lawn.

But Miss Higsen had probably died years ago. Now it seemed the house belonged to Landon. “Thanks,” I said.

“You bet.” He turned to go but turned back after only a couple of steps. “And Danny, I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really sorry about your parents. Rose and Bob were two of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”

I appreciated the sentiment, but I also felt a stab of sadness that I’d let a fifteen-year-old grievance get in the way of my own relationship with my mother and father. In the end Landon had clearly known them better than I had.

M
Y
ALARM
goes off at 5:00 a.m. most weekdays since I have to be at the station by six. I tend to sleep a little later on weekends, but for the most part, my body had adjusted to the “early to bed, early to rise” routine. The sun was already shining weakly in the east when I woke at 5:45 a.m., although the temperature was still in the midfifties. I expected it to get up to almost seventy later in the day. Brisk winds likely. A 70 percent chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Twenty percent chance of hail. I debated going for a jog—something I’d been doing less and less lately, even though I usually enjoyed it—but decided to tackle the important things first: I needed coffee.

There were nearly a dozen different types of tea in the cabinet, but tea wasn’t going to cut it. Besides which I was going to need more than ketchup for breakfast. I made a quick trip to the store to stock up on the essentials, then returned to staring at the smiling angels and shiny critters around me, wondering where to begin.

I decided to start with the kitchen. I’d go through everything and divide it into three boxes: keep, donate, trash. But after cooking a quick omelette for breakfast, I realized the fault in that plan. If I planned to stay here on weekends—and it was beginning to look as though I was in for a long haul—I’d need the pots and pans and dishes. The same was true of the towels and the linens.

I had just decided to start with my parents’ clothing when the doorbell rang.

Landon still struck me as scruffy, but in the bright light of the Wyoming sun, I added a new word to my mental description of him: rugged. His face was deeply tanned. Laugh lines surrounded his eyes. Today he wore a New Belgium Brewery tank top, showing heavily tattooed shoulders and biceps. I noted the dark hair on his chest, tufting out over the top of his shirt. He held a thick manila envelope in his hands.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all.” In truth, I was glad for an interruption. More opportunity to put off the looming unpleasantness. I held the door open and stepped out of the way. “Come in.”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“I wouldn’t have invited you if you were intruding.”

He blinked at me, then broke into a smile. “That’s exactly what your mom said to me the first time we met.”

I wasn’t sure how that made me feel. I was happy to have an excuse to turn my back on him as he followed me inside. “I think the coffee’s still hot.”

“No, thank you. I prefer tea.”

For some reason the idea of this bear of a man drinking tea made me smile. “There’s plenty of that too.”

“I came because of this.” He held the envelope out to me. “I found it on my front porch this morning.” I took the envelope. It was sealed shut but felt as if it held a notebook or a stack of paperwork. “The address is yours,” Landon went on, pointing to the writing on the front, and I couldn’t help but notice the many small cuts and scars on his fingers and the backs of his hands, “but it’s my name.”

The address was written in awkward, jagged penmanship, using bright purple ink. Sure enough, the street number belonged to my parents’ house, but the name at the top of the address was Landon Kushner. The envelope showed no return address, and….

“There’s no postage,” I said.

“I know. It’s odd, isn’t it?”

“You haven’t opened it?” It was a stupid question. I could see he hadn’t.

“I thought I should check with you, in case you were expecting something.”

I laughed. “Why would I be expecting something with your name on it?”

“Yes, my name, but
your parents’
address.” He stopped, chewing his lip. “I thought maybe it was paperwork from the lawyer?”

I hadn’t contacted the lawyer before coming to town. There didn’t seem to be any point. “Well, there’s one way to find out.”

He followed me to the breakfast bar where I used a knife to cut through the top of the envelope. I upended it onto the counter. What slid out appeared, at first glance, as if it could indeed have come from a lawyer, or a real estate office. It was a stack of paper enclosed in a plastic sleeve with a clip binding. It looked for all the world like the term papers I turned in back in my college days. Landon picked it up and read the title.

“
Recipes for the Heart: Mystical Meals and Dangerous Desserts
.”

“Excuse me?”

He shrugged and held the folder out to me. Sure enough, the cover page, easily visible through the clear plastic report cover, read “
Recipes for the Heart: Mystical Meals and Dangerous Desserts
.” At the bottom were the words, “By Granny B.”

“I’ve never seen this before in my life.” They were indeed recipes, each photocopied from a handwritten page. In some places items had been crossed off or notes made on the side, but whatever revisions had been added had been done before the copies were made. “Chicken Soup,” I read out loud. “‘For broken hearts.’ And there’s mushroom soup ‘for comfort,’ and applesauce cake ‘for a rainy afternoon.’” I closed the book and checked the cover again, as if it might suddenly offer me an explanation. “What kind of cookbook is this?”

“Apparently a mystical one,” Landon said lightly. He took it from me to examine the contents himself. “I wonder where it came from.”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you know anybody named Granny B?”

“No. Do you?”

“No. Any ‘B’ surnames in your lineage?”

“None I can think of.”

He checked the first few pages of the booklet. “No copyright page. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Doesn’t look like it was professionally published.”

“Gee. You think?”

He ignored my sarcasm to look up at me with strikingly dark eyes. “What should we do with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we don’t even know which one of us it was meant for.”

I debated. Yes, technically it had been my parents’ address, but the fact remained that the name at the top was Landon’s. And it had been left on his doorstep. “I don’t want it,” I told him flatly. “I already have a house full of worthless crap to deal with.”

His jaw tightened, and he dropped the book to his side, tapping it agitatedly against his leg. I clearly had misstepped. The kitchen suddenly felt terribly small. “I only mean I don’t need the cookbook. I’m up to my ass in porcelain kitty cats and decorative bells.”

He softened a bit, now he knew I wasn’t trying to insult my mother. I liked him better for clearly holding her in such high regard. She deserved that.

“Your mother was quite a collector,” he said at last. But it was said cautiously. Respectfully. As if she might be hiding in the other room, listening in on our conversation.

“She never was. Not before. Not when I was younger.” I looked toward the living room and its shelves of bric-a-brac. “I don’t get it. When did this start?”

“I met them five years ago, and it had already begun.”

“But… why?”

“I think she needed something, you know?" he said, his voice hesitant. “You were gone, and she’d retired from the hospital. Your dad didn’t like dogs, and he was allergic to cats—”

“My dad was allergic to cats?”

“Well, that’s what she told me. Said she adopted one a few years after you moved to Colorado, but your father had a horrible reaction, and she had to return it to the shelter. She felt terrible about it too. She called every day until she knew it had been adopted because she said she wasn’t letting it be put to sleep, your dad’s allergies be damned. She said she wished she’d known me when it happened because she would have felt better about giving Oatmeal to somebody she knew.”

“Oatmeal? She named the cat Oatmeal?” I shook my head, and yet I could imagine it. My mother had always been a nurturer. “So she turned to porcelain cats instead?”

“Less dander.” He glanced around, seemingly lost in thought. “What are you going to do with it all?”

My gaze followed his around the living room, taking in the massive collection of knickknacks. I wondered if the boxes in the bedroom and garage were more of the same. “I have no idea. Donate it, I guess? Maybe have a garage sale?”

“What about a flea market?”

“A flea market?”

He laughed. “Well, the preferred term is ‘Antique Mall.’” His tone told me he found the term ridiculous.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that. I’m not even sure how they work.”

“It’s pretty simple. You rent a space, and then you set your items up and sell them.”

“Don’t I have to be there all the time, though?”

“Not for most of the indoor ones, no. At least, not the ones around here. You just set up shop. Stop in once in a while to make sure it’s all neat and tidy. That’s about it. Everything’s sold on consignment.”