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“Do you want to stop me?” he asked quietly. He had made so many mistakes with her, he didn’t want to add to the pile by pushing her too hard when she’d come here to be alone.
She stared at him a long time and then slowly shook her head. She looked so young right now, like a kid at Halloween, dressing up for attention.
He sat down cautiously, waited a while before he said, “Does praying help you?”
“Not so far. ” Tears filled her eyes. “Do you know what I did to Tully last week?”
“No. ”
“It’s my fault she’s here. ”
“It’s not your fault, baby. It was a car accident. There’s nothing you could have done—”
“It’s your fault, too,” Marah said, sounding miserable.
To that, Johnny didn’t know what to say. He knew what his daughter meant; he felt the same thing. They’d let Tully down, cast her out of their life, made her feel alone, and here she was.
“I can’t stand this,” Marah cried. She bolted to her feet and headed for the door.
“Marah!” he yelled.
At the door, she paused and looked back.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said.
“Too late,” she said quietly, and left the room. The door banged shut behind her.
Johnny got slowly to his feet. Feeling every one of his fifty-five years, he went back out to the waiting room, where he found Margie seated in the corner, knitting.
He sat down beside her.
“I tried calling Dorothy again,” she said after a while. “No answer. ”
“Will she get the note you had Bud put on her door?”
Margie seemed to hunch down at that. “Sooner or later,” she said quietly. And then, “I hope it’s sooner. ”
September 3, 2010
2:59 P. M.
On this cool September afternoon, leaves were falling all over the town of Snohomish, on the roadsides and in parking lots and on riverbanks. As Dorothy Hart stood in her stall at the farmers’ market, staring out over the view that had become her life, she saw little bits of beauty. The last wild roses for sale in Erika’s red buckets across the way, a young woman with a plump, curly-haired baby on her hip tasting some of Kent’s smoked salmon, a little boy sipping homemade cider from a Dixie cup. The farmers’ market was a bustle of color and activity and sights and sounds. Only a few short blocks from the historic center of town, this lively market sprang up on a patch of pavement every Friday from noon to five: white tent roofs rose above it all like ice-cream peaks; beneath them, a dazzling, glittering array of fruits and nuts, berries, herbs, vegetables, crafts, and honey. The patchwork colors were gorgeous in this fading autumnal light.
In the small booth, Dorothy was coming to the bottom of her limited supply of produce. She had a long, low table set up, draped in newspaper—the Sunday comics this week—and dotted with boxes that held this week’s crop: bright red apples, plump raspberries, baskets full of herbs, and the vegetables: green beans, tomatoes, broccoli, and summer squash. Of those, only a few remained; lonely apples in the bottom of an otherwise empty box, a handful of green beans.
She was out of almost everything. The sky—cloudless and blue—was a bright backdrop to the melee as she packed up her boxes and carried them across the aisle to the Cascade Farms stall.
The owner, a big, wild-haired man with a potbelly and a hook of a nose, gave her a smile. “Looks like a good day for you, Dorothy. ”
“Really good, Owen. Thanks again for letting me use part of your booth. The raspberries were gone in a nanosecond. ”
She handed him the stack of wooden boxes. He took them from her and put them in the back of his rusted pickup truck. He would drop them off at her house later. “You sure we can’t give you a ride home?”
“Naw. I’m good, but thanks. Tell Erika hi. See you guys later. ”
She walked back to her part of the shared stall, feeling a slight tingle of sweat along the back of her neck. A bead slid down her spine, dampening the waistband of her baggy pants. She unbuttoned the ragged plaid shirt that was basically her uniform—she had at least six of them—and took it off, tying it around her waist by the sleeves. The ribbed red tank she had on underneath was blotched with sweat beneath her arms, but there was nothing she could do about it.
She was sixty-nine years old, with long gray hair, skin that looked like ten miles of dry riverbed, and eyes that held all the sorrow she’d experienced in her life. The last thing she cared about was whether she smelled. She retied the red bandanna across her forehead and climbed onto the rusted bike that was her only mode of transportation.
