“Want to wander down to the pizza place?” he asked.
“Tell you what. I don’t have any beer at my place but I do have food. If you get us a couple more beers to go I can make us grilled cheese.”
“Grilled cheese?”
“With bacon and tomato slices? A side of chips?”
“Waylan,” Troy hollered. “Two more Heinekens, leave the caps on. We’re going to take them home.” He stood and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He put some bills on the bar just as Waylan put the bottles there, then they walked out carrying two beers each. They went through the flower shop and out the back door to the stairs.
“Kind of dark back here,” Troy said.
“I look around before I lock up. I never see a problem.”
“What if someone’s hiding behind the Dumpster?” he asked.
She stopped on the stairs and turned to look at him. “Thanks for that, Headly. That should cost me a little sleep.”
“I’m sure you’re safe here,” he said. “Especially here.”
She snorted and led him up the stairs into a very small loft. They entered directly into a little kitchen that blended right into a living room. It looked like everything a person needed was right there—small sofa, comfy chair, two narrow side tables, a modest wall unit that held a TV and shelving for books and pictures. Except one thing was missing. “Where’s the bathroom?” he asked.
“Through that door. Help yourself,” she said, putting the unopened beers in the refrigerator.
He didn’t need a bathroom, but he wanted to see the rest of the place. He handed her the two opened and still half-full beers and headed through the door that was not really a door but more of an arch. Through that arch was an extremely small room with a Murphy bed pulled down and neatly made up and a bathroom with a sink, toilet, shower and a little cupboard space. Very little. In the bedroom there was one small chest of drawers and a freestanding armoire.
He walked back to the kitchen. Grace already had food on the table for two and a frying pan on her two-burner stove. There was just the bar-sized refrigerator and microwave. “This is actually very...cute,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Is there space over all the shops?”
“Space, yes, but pretty useless space. No other apartments that I’m aware of. This was an unfinished room but I saw great potential here. It needed plumbing and a little finishing. The windows to the street are in the closet-sized bedroom. It’s very cozy, but I’m one person. And I have an office downstairs in the shop.”
“That’s a mighty small refrigerator,” he observed.
“I’ve been known to leave a couple of bottles of wine in the flower cooler,” she said. “Would you mind slicing this tomato and microwaving this bacon while I excuse myself for just a moment?”
“Sure. My specialties—slicing and microwaving.”
As he prepped the food, he considered that he’d never even been curious about Grace before. He’d been in her shop exactly twice—once to order flowers to send to his mother for Mother’s Day and once to buy Iris a bouquet, though he’d never mentioned it was for Iris. He had run into Grace around town, usually with Iris—they were girlfriends. He hadn’t known she’d made this little storeroom into a home, didn’t know who her friends were. He’d found himself in her company a few times recently because they’d been in the same place at the same time and neither of them seemed to have anyone else. And she was a good second since Iris had rather firmly cut him loose.
When she came back to the kitchen, she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, socks on her feet, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. “There,” she said. “I was all done being a witch.”
“You were a good witch, but I’m still going to check in the morning and make sure you’re powerless.”
“Won’t you be surprised....”
“Do you live here alone?” he asked.
“Of course! There’s no room for another person here.”
“Why are you so tidy?” he asked.
“I like tidy,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “I scatter. I live among piles. I don’t mind a mess at all. Do you ski?”
She looked down and began fussing with bread, margarine, cheese slices. “Not really,” she said. “It’s been years. Why?”
“Well, because I’m thinking of going skiing my next long weekend. Not far—just Mount Hood. You could come along,” he suggested.
“I don’t have skis.”
“They rent ’em. Boots, too. You’d have to have your own jacket and stuff....”
“I don’t think that’s in my budget,” she said. “Especially not for one time on the mountain.”
“I had to ski in jeans and a parka for a long time. My dad did maintenance for the city and my mom was a teacher—we didn’t have much money for all the things I wanted to do. Some long underwear, jeans, borrowed gloves...”
“Yeah,” she said. “I could manage that, maybe....”
“I don’t have a long weekend anytime soon. Like maybe a month. But think about it. Could be fun.”
“Could be. Want a pickle with your grilled cheese?”
“What I’d really like is tomato soup,” he said. “I’m sure that’s out of the question, but growing up I used to dip my grilled cheese in tomato—”
She opened a cupboard where she stored about twenty cans. One of them was tomato soup. She smiled at him and he was a little overcome with how pretty she was.
He’d really never noticed that before.
* * *
Seth devoured the pizza while Iris checked the pictures on his phone. She laughed at the costumes of the Thunder Point shop owners, especially Grace, and cooed over the little ones. “I didn’t even take pictures,” she admitted. “I was doing good to get to the door with candy before they started yelling! Halloween is cute but honestly, it wears me out!”
She’d pick up a piece of pizza, take a bite and chew, put it down and go through the pictures again and again. By the time she was finally ready to concentrate on the pizza, he’d consumed half of it.
She handed him back his phone. “You got it all greasy,” he said, wiping it off with a napkin.
“You’re very quiet tonight,” she said.
“Oh? I’m sorry, was there time for me to speak?” he asked.
“Very funny,” she said. “It was a quiet night, wasn’t it?”
He shrugged and took another bite, though he didn’t really feel hungry all of a sudden. He put his pizza down. “Got a beer?” he asked.
She cocked her head and gave him a half smile. “In uniform?” she asked. But she grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“I logged off for the night. I just haven’t changed yet.” He opened the beer and took a pull. “Ahhh,” he said. Then he looked at Iris. “I had to deliver a twelve-year-old home to his mother. Sassy.”
Iris put down her pizza slice. “Oh?”
“He ripped off candy from a couple of younger boys. He didn’t hurt them, but I was right there and caught him. I’d like to think he wouldn’t have hurt them, but I will never know for sure. That’s a bully move. I hate that.”
“Kind of soured you on all the Halloween fun, I guess.”
“Yeah, but it’s Sassy who sours me more. The way she talks. She thinks there was something between us. Something meaningful.” He shook his head. “I don’t get that. I remember it as painful. Short and painful and better forgotten.”
Iris was very quiet for a long stretched-out moment. All the way through him wiping off his hands, taking another slug of beer, wiping his mouth with the napkin. Then he looked at her and said, “What?”
“That’s how I was sure you thought of us,” she said.
“Iris, I didn’t know there was an us. At
least, I wasn’t sure what kind of us there was. I was grieving a lost friendship without knowing there was more to it. There was a good reason you were so hurt and angry. It’s not like that with Sassy. She’s been married at least three times since high school and still talks as if we should give it another chance.”
“I guess that’s how she feels,” Iris said. “Maybe she’s felt that way for years.”
“If she has, she’s delusional. Look,” he said, then he paused at length as if thinking about things. “I’m bound to screw this up. I was an ass and an idiot. I was a teenager. I thought I was a gentleman, my mother drilled good behavior toward girls into my thick head. I did have the occasional gentlemanly act. But honestly? I was drawn to Sassy because she exuded sex and opportunity. I couldn’t have put words to it then, but that’s what it was. And it was a miserable experience that filled me with shame and jealousy and frustration.”
“And broke your heart,” she added.
“For fifteen minutes, until the next pretty girl came along. The next one broke my heart, too. So did the one after that. I was quite a bit older before I was clear on what mattered, what was genuine. Sassy was never a friend, never a girl I trusted. That’s not right, Iris, but that’s all I had at the time. And guess what? That’s all she had. I haven’t lost a second of sleep over her since.”
“That doesn’t mean she isn’t hurting over it now,” Iris said.
“There’s nothing I can do to help her with that. It’s time for all of us to grow up and move on. She might not have admitted it yet, but she’s got bigger problems than whether one of her old high school boyfriends wants to date her. If she doesn’t pay attention to her kids, at least one of them could get real mean. He’s a big kid and he could get in some real trouble.”
Iris sat up a little straighter. “Um, could we have a professional conversation? High school counselor to deputy sheriff? Confidential and all that?”
“Sure. But what—?”
“There’s a girl at school I worry about a little. Could be she’s just kind of klutzy. She’s got an excuse for each of her bruises, perfectly logical excuses. There’s just something a little suspicious and I... Not just me, other teachers have been wondering what’s going on. I never thought about a younger brother being responsible for her injuries, but what if a brother is fighting with her? Knocking her around?”
Seth shrugged. “I fought with my brothers regularly. Nick and Boomer got into it a lot—my mother went after them with a broom, swatting them till they gave up. But they usually came away with bruises. The occasional black eye. I wouldn’t call either of them abusive. Just stupid. And siblings. For that matter, you and I used to go at it pretty good. You beat me up!”
“You totally had it coming,” she argued. “Besides, you could’ve taken me. Why didn’t you? Now that I think about it, if you could beat up Robbie Delaney, you could beat me up, but you didn’t....”
“I wasn’t allowed to hit girls,” he said. “And we were young then. That never happened when we were older, like teenagers.”
“This is a teenage girl,” Iris reminded him. “A sweet girl. She’s not a scrapper, not someone who would pick a fight and end up with injuries.”
“What kind of injuries?” he asked.
“Bruises on her neck. Shoulder. Split lip and black eye. How many times can you get kneed in cheerleading practice or run into a wall?”
Seth frowned. “Black eye? Bruises on her neck?”
Iris nodded. “Troy brought it to my attention and I’ve been watching her. Seth, it’s Sassy’s daughter. And now I know she has a younger brother who could be a bully.”
“Shit,” he said.
Twelve
When Iris was in high school and John Garvey was the school guidance counselor, there was a girl in her class named Laura. She was popular, but not mega popular like the homecoming queens and such. She was a cheerleader, was in lots of clubs and worked hard on school projects, like the dances. As Iris recalled, she rarely dated, which might’ve been one of the reasons they were friendly—it seemed as if it often got down to Laura and Iris stringing up crepe paper and balloons for dances they wouldn’t attend.
Laura came to school one morning crying her eyes out. She was so upset she couldn’t go to first period so she hid out in the bathroom near the gym, a spot no one would really notice because there wasn’t a lot of traffic in there once classes started.
John Garvey, the dumbest counselor who ever lived, summoned her and demanded to know what was wrong. He refused to let her go to class without telling him; he said he’d keep her in his office all day if necessary. Laura said she’d tell him if he promised not to tell her parents what she said.
Laura told Iris about it later. They weren’t really close, not the kind of girlfriends who walked to class together or talked on the phone at night, but they had always liked each other. Mr. Garvey promised never to tell anyone and so Laura told him her father had pitched a fit that morning. He was probably hungover, she said. He was mad about everything and everyone. He’d been out of work for a couple of months and was angry in general. That morning, he screamed at her, grabbed her by the hair and knocked her head into the front door, cracking the glass in the small diamond-shaped window. He was pissed about that and threw her schoolbooks out onto the front lawn, which was very wet and icky. He screamed at her that she was a worthless piece of shit and she walked to school without a coat because she wasn’t going back inside for anything.
Mr. Garvey listened very patiently, Laura said. He comforted her and, within about thirty minutes, she had recovered and went on to class with a late slip written and signed by Mr. Garvey. That afternoon when Laura went home and walked into the house, she walked into a fist. “So I hit you, do I?” her father bellowed. “Now you’re hit, you sniveling little cry baby!”
When Laura went to school with a fat lip the next day, she said her little sister accidentally opened a cupboard door in her face. And she told Iris, “Never trust that bastard Garvey—he’s a liar and a creep.”
When Iris told Seth that story, he was appalled. “My God, don’t you take an oath of confidentiality or something when you become a counselor?”
“If someone is in danger or is a danger to others, we really do have to step in and do something proactive, but tipping off the abuser isn’t on the list of recommended actions. John Garvey thought he knew everything and frankly, he did a lot of damage. I wonder what’s become of Laura? I hope she’s hugely successful and brilliantly happy and sticks pins in a John Garvey doll every day.”
“Do you have any idea how much time Robbie Delaney spends with his kids?” Seth asked.
She shook her head. “He hasn’t lived in Thunder Point for years. I have no idea when he officially left town—I was away at school for a long time after graduation. I heard through gossip that Sassy left, was back, left again, was back. Her sister and parents lived here and when she’s been on her own, she moved in with family. At least that’s what I heard.”
“I might try to have a conversation with Robbie, unless you think that’s a bad idea,” Seth said.
“Handle it delicately,” she said. “We don’t want him to act out on the kids because...” She took a breath. “Because what if he’s the abuser?”
“Well, here’s the thing I can’t do, Iris,” he said. “I can’t have any unnecessary traffic with Sassy. She just gets all the wrong messages.”
* * *
It was nice to have someone like Seth to talk to for a lot of reasons. They were on the same professional team, to start with—both of them concerned about abuse and neglect and all manner of violence. It was also nice to have a friend to talk to about everything from silly, funny things to serious matters to global issues. And someone who shared your past was extremely comforting. The one thing that continued to worry her was that she still had a danger
ous attraction to him. She was afraid that when it all played out and he told her the truth, that he wanted to restore their friendship but had no romantic ideas, it was going to sting. And sting bad.
But for now she let that worry slide as she dug into how to handle the situation with Sassy’s bruised daughter.
She waited patiently for another sign, and sadly it didn’t take long. The phys ed teacher reported that Rachel Delaney had dark bruises on her biceps that resembled the strong grip of someone who might’ve grabbed her. Whether the abuser had been male or female wasn’t certain, but four fingers and a thumb on each arm looked pretty obvious.
Iris launched into action. She summoned Cammie Munson. She sent a note asking her to drop by during her study hall or right after classes ended for the day. It was around midday that Cammie stopped by.
“You wanted to see me, Ms. McKinley?” she asked politely.
“Yes, thanks for coming by. Have a seat,” she said, rising to close both her doors—the one that led to the offices and cubicles and the one that opened to the hall where all the students passed. When that outer door was closed, a do-not-disturb sign automatically slid into place. “I was looking at the SAT scores—you did so well. Are you happy with the scores or do you want to try to do better?”
Cammie sighed. “I don’t know,” she said wearily. “I could probably do better, but do I have to? I mean, I can get into an Oregon college with the scores I have, right? Because the thought of another prep course and another whole day of exhausting testing... God, it sounds just awful.”
Iris couldn’t help it, she smiled. “I understand completely. Unless you’re looking for a little additional scholarship help for an out-of-state school.”
Cammie shook her head. “There’s no way I’m going out of state,” she said. “It’s going to be hard enough managing an Oregon school. We don’t have a lot of money. I’m applying for financial aid.”
“I understand that completely,” Iris said. “I got through college on loans and aids. Lucky for me, I chose to stay and work in Oregon. That reduced the balance on state loans. Kind of like working in the trenches, you know?”