Tumbling Blocks (27 page)

“Hear, hear,” Ray said, lifting up his water glass. “You’ve got my vote.”

She narrowed one tobacco-brown eye at me. “I like this man. But I hear Gabe doesn’t.”

“Nadine!” I felt my neck turn warm.

She shrugged and pulled her order pad out of her apron pocket. “I’m only repeating what I’ve heard.”

Ray reached across the table and patted my hand. “I understand small towns, Benni. And I keep telling you, Gabe will come around.”

“He’s right,” Nadine said. “Gabe will eventually accept his new stepdaddy. He’s just still all in pieces about his cousin and whatnot. Mark my words, this will all turn out for the better.”

I looked up at her, wanting desperately to believe that. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Gabe and Kathryn are having dinner tonight in Morro Bay . . .”

Nadine checked her large Timex wristwatch. “They finished their shrimp cocktails about ten minutes ago and have just started on their main course of mahimahi.”

I could feel my eyes widen.

Nadine gave another loud cackle. “I was just putting you on. I have no idea what they are doing.”

Ray laughed, and so did I. Coming here had been the perfect thing. She took our orders; hamburger for me, grilled cheese with beefsteak tomatoes for Ray. In no time, Nadine delivered our food, including a strawberry malt for me.

“I didn’t order this,” I said, accepting it gladly. So what if my jeans were already pinching my waist?

“You look like you need it,” she said, glancing at me over her pink glasses. “Not your thickening waist, mind you. But psychologically.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“Constance has you running around with this Pinky Edmondson silliness like you were her personal slave.”

This time I didn’t act surprised that Nadine knew about what Constance had me doing. I took a long drink from my malt. “So, what do you think?”

“I think Constance Sinclair is completely bonkers, you know that,” Nadine said. “But this time . . .” She clamped her thin lips together. “Pinky Edmondson did her share of stepping on people’s toes. The things I hear would put hair on a seal.”

“Like what?” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “You know I don’t gossip, Benni.”

“Of course not,” I said, not looking at Ray for fear I’d laugh out loud. “But I do want to know what you know about Pinky’s affair with Dot St. James’s husband.”

She looked at me over her glasses again. “Wasn’t very long, and Dot knew about it from the first time they do-si-doed.”

“I knew she knew. But she didn’t say when she found out.” I glanced over at Ray, who was calmly chewing his grilled cheese sandwich. He’d certainly have a lot to tell his cronies about San Celina when he went back to Kansas.

“Yes, and despite her moaning and groaning, she really didn’t care.”

I cocked my head. “Oh, c’mon. She didn’t care that her husband was having an affair with one of her friends? I know everyone’s trying to be all modern and stuff, but people still care about adultery. I watch
Dateline NBC
.”

She gave a triumphant smile. “Not if a person is busy do-si-doing themselves.”

“Dot St. James was having her own affair? She didn’t tell me that!”

“You’re surprised? Those 49 Club women are like a bunch of rabbits from what I hear. Lucky for us they are all too old to procreate.”

“Who was she seeing?” I picked up a French fry and took a small bite.

Nadine’s white eyebrows scrunched together in frustration. “I don’t know.”

“What?” I said. “The great Nadine Brooks Johnson does not know a significant piece of San Celina society gossip? Call the newspaper.”

She bonked me over the head with her order pad, causing Ray to chuckle. “You watch your mouth, missy. I told you, I do not gossip.”

“Okay, important social commentary,” I said, not wanting to annoy the woman who brought me a significant portion of my meals. “So, who do you
think
it might be?”

She bent closer and said sotto voce, “No one knows. But whoever it was, it was happening at the exact same time as Pinky was seeing Mr. St. James.”

After she left, I mulled over this new piece of information as I ate my hamburger and fries.

“What do you think?” Ray asked after his second cup of coffee.

“I don’t really know what to think,” I said. “You know, somehow I have the feeling all of this is connected, but I don’t know how.”

“Do you really think this woman, Pinky, was murdered?”

I pondered his question while stirring the last of my strawberry malt. “I don’t know, but there is something fishy going on, and I’m nosy enough to want to know what it is.”

He leaned back in the booth. “I wish I could offer you some wise insight, but it all looks as clear as pea soup to me.”

“On that we agree, Ray.” I drank the last swallow of strawberry malt and looked up at the Elvis clock hanging above the kitchen pass-through. “Want to head back home? Maybe Gabe and Kathryn are back, and everything is hunky-dory.”

He raised his gray, bristly eyebrows. “One can hope.”

Gabe’s car was in the driveway when we got back home, and the porch light was on. I said a quick prayer that everything had been settled between him and his mother. When Ray and I walked into the empty living room, I didn’t get a good feeling.

“It’s too quiet,” I whispered to Ray.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’ll go check on Kathryn.”

“I’ll lock up and go upstairs. Maybe they’re just having an early night.”

When I opened our bedroom door, both dogs jumped up to greet me. Gabe was lying in bed reading. Though I tried to immediately get a vibe from him, all I felt was . . . nothing.

“Do the dogs need to go out?” I asked.

He looked up at me over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Yes.”

That one word said it all. The evening did not go well.

I took the dogs downstairs, let them out in the backyard and contemplated how I would handle this. Like many times when I was faced with an emotional dilemma that confused me, I tried to channel my gramma Dove and consider what she’d likely advise. It was past nine p.m., and though I could call her and get real live advice, I was trying to learn to figure things out on my own. I would be thirty-nine years old in March, it was time for me to stop running to my gramma every time I had a problem.

While the dogs sniffed around and had their last constitutional, I thought about what I would say to Gabe when I went back upstairs. When the dogs had their bedtime treat and we went back upstairs, I heard Dove’s voice in my head:
“Sometimes, honeybun, the best thing you can do for a man is absolutely nothing. Just let him be.”

So that’s what I did. I took my shower, settled Boo in his crate and climbed in bed. Gabe was still reading, so I turned on my bedside lamp and picked up the book I’d been reading on outsider art.

“Ray and I went to Liddie’s,” I said, settling down under the covers.

He nodded but didn’t smile. I resisted the urge to ask how his night had gone. I scooted across our wide bed and laid my head on his shoulder.

“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” His answer would tell me in a roundabout way what happened.

He set his papers down on the floor next to him. “I’m going to work. I couldn’t tell you what my mother is doing. She might go home.”

I bit my bottom lip, holding back my cry of surprise. It was worse than I thought. I decided to override Dove’s advice—or rather the advice I thought she’d give—and just spit out what I was thinking. Who was I kidding? I’d never be as wise as Dove. “What happened?”

He stared straight ahead. “She has multiple sclerosis. She’s known about it for six months.”

When I didn’t exclaim in surprise, his head jerked over to look at me. The truth was written all over my face.

“You knew?” Anger darkened his high cheekbones.

My words tumbled over themselves like water over river rocks. “Not for very long. Ray told me last night when I commented that she didn’t seem herself. He asked me not to tell you. He felt so bad, but your mom wanted to tell you herself. It was—”

He held up his hand for me to stop. “I suppose you all had a great time discussing this behind my back.”

I sat up, shocked at his remark. “Gabe, that’s a horrible thing to say. No one was talking behind your back. I found out accidentally.”

“No, my mother’s husband
told
you.”

He had me there. I knew it looked bad. I knew that he was hurt deeply, just as I would have been in his position. But I didn’t know what to say, how or why I should defend my position or Ray’s or his mother’s.

“My sisters knew.” His voice was bitter. “She told them before she came out here.”

And Kathryn told them not to tell him. I understood why his mother wanted to be the one to tell her son, but this whole situation had gotten completely out of control simply because she just didn’t pick up a phone the day before she flew out here.
Oh, Kathryn,
I thought.
What was it you were trying to accomplish with this trip? To see how many ways you could hurt your son?

I waited to see what he would do. There was nothing I could say to defend what I’d done. Maybe I had been wrong not to tell him the minute Ray told me. But I knew my husband. If I’d told him, he’d have gone straight to his mother and demanded to know why she hadn’t come to him. So, we’d have been in the same spot as we were now. Well, I thought, not exactly the same spot. He wouldn’t be angry at
me.
Still, a small part of me was glad I wasn’t the one who told him about his mother’s illness. I guess in this situation there was no winning position.

“I’m sorry, Gabe,” I said. “I was in a no-win position. I wanted to honor your mother’s request—”

“Why?” he said, his voice harsh. “She’s never been anything except hostile to you. Why would you care what she thinks of you?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” I stammered. “Because she’s your mother.”

“I’m your
husband
. You should care more what I think of you.”

“I know that.” I blinked my eyes, trying to hold back the tears. “I know I blew this. I should have told you, but I just . . . it was just . . .”

“Forget it.” He threw back the covers and grabbed a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. “I’m going out for a while.”

I started to ask where, then bit back the words.

He pulled on his topsiders and grabbed his keys.

“Be careful,” I called after him.

He didn’t answer. I could hear his footsteps go down the stairs.

“I love you,” I whispered to the empty doorway.

THE NEXT THING I REMEMBER WAS THE ALARM GOING OFF at two a.m. I stumbled out of bed and pulled on my sweatpants. I glanced over at Gabe’s side. At some point he’d come home, though I’d obviously slept through his return. He’d been able to do that to me before, despite me being a pretty light sleeper. He’d learned a stealthiness as a soldier in Vietnam that had never completely left him. It was kind of creepy sometimes, I’d told him. He’d just laugh and say, “One of the many fascinating yet charming aspects of my complex personality.”

Boo murmured a doggie protest about being woken up. I stuck my nose in the warm, downy ruff of his neck and made comforting sounds as I carried him downstairs, thinking about my sleeping husband.

Though he joked about it, he was, indeed, one of the most complex people I’d ever known. I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like for his mother raising him. Was she a little afraid of him? I had to admit, sometimes I was. Not physically, of course. Gabe would cut off his own arm before he’d harm a woman, a child or anyone weaker than him. It was his unpredictability that was disconcerting. But it was also part of what made him so interesting. Predictable people were wonderful, but so were the less predictable ones. I mean, in some ways my own gramma was about the most unpredictable person I knew besides Gabe, and I wouldn’t want one thing changed about her. Daddy was as predictable as a sunset, and I wouldn’t want him any different, either.

Where was I in all that? Predictably unpredictable is what Gabe called me one time. I suppose it all came down to accepting ourselves for who we were. You needed predictability in dentists and train engineers and unpredictability in artists and inventors. The rest of us fell somewhere in between.

CHAPTER 12

G
ABE WAS UP AND GONE BEFORE I WOKE UP AT SEVEN a.m. A note waited for me on the kitchen counter next to the coffeepot.

“I’ll try to make the exhibit opening tonight. It will depend on my workday. Love, Gabe.”

I stared at the note a moment, trying to discern his mood from the few dashed-off words. Of course, I couldn’t. I didn’t have a clue what was really going on inside him.

I checked my calendar and for the first time in weeks, my day was relatively free. Maybe I’d have time to take a nap this afternoon, so I’d be rested for the opening tonight. The phone rang when I was standing in front of the refrigerator trying to decide what to make for Kathryn and Ray’s breakfast. It was Constance.