Seventeen

Arthur Niederman did his usual trick of slipping around the side of Verna's house, making sure no one saw him. Since he needed two canes to walk and his balance was bad, it wasn't easy. Damn the landlord and his laziness! he thought yet again, working his way across the littered yard.

The owner of the house, Lester Boggs, wanted Verna—meaning Arthur—to pay three grand to clean up the place. But Arthur was holding out. He had enough trouble with every relative he had hitting him up for money. Just yesterday his mother's third cousin by marriage had called and asked for twenty grand.

Even this long after he'd received the settlement, it still shocked him that people truly believed that if they just had X amount of money they'd be happy. At first, Arthur had yelled at them. "I've lost the use of my legs. You're healthy and you have a loving family, but you're the one crying?"

It hadn't done any good. Within four months of the money being deposited in his bank account, his relatives had labeled him selfish. Uncaring about his own family. That not one of them had visited him in the hospital or helped with his rehabilitation didn't seem to matter to them. Their demands had made him bitter and lonely.

He stopped at the corner of Verna's house and looked both ways. No one was around. He liked to slip through the back so nosy old Mary Ellerbee across the road wouldn't see him. She was like a mother and grandmother to Verna and her daughter. Always baking things for them, knitting useless little things. She would spend whole afternoons at their house, chatting with Verna for hours. And she was endlessly curious about their lives.

But then, poor Verna didn't have many friends in Lachlan. Actually, only him and Mary that he knew about. There might be some other men, but he didn't like to think about them. When you got down to it, he liked to think of Verna and Cheryl as his family. The one he never got to have.

When everything seemed to be clear, he leaned on his canes and started toward the back door. To his right were the remains of an old thrasher, something Boggs refused to move until Arthur paid him to do so. Farther away was what used to be a barbecue pit. Left over from the six college boys who'd rented the house for a couple of months. They'd dug the deep pit, cooked their hog, then hadn't bothered to fill in the hole.

Because Arthur was thinking so hard about other things, he didn't see Cheryl until he almost ran into her. He always tried to stay away from her. After all, what could he say to a kid who dressed like an adult? "How was work today? The traffic was bad, wasn't it?" She didn't look like someone you could ask, "Did you do your arithmetic homework?"

Cheryl was leaning over the concrete steps at the back of the house and throwing up her guts.

Arthur tried to leave unnoticed, but he didn't make it.

"Oh, Mr. Niederman," she said. "Sorry, I—" She couldn't finish but collapsed on the step.

He thought she was such an old child, a woman-child, really. So adult, so unflustered by anything. But right now she was just a girl wearing what looked to be her mother's clothes. Her usually perfect hair was messy and scraggly. When she looked at him, there was such misery in her eyes that he wanted to grab his canes and take off running.

He was pretty sure he knew what was causing her to vomit. She was about to pop out of the front of her blouse and four days ago he'd seen her nearly faint. Lord! Yet another pregnant teenager.

In an instant, Arthur could see his life ending. Verna wouldn't stay in Lachlan. She'd take her wayward daughter and leave town forever. Arthur would be alone.

The horrible thought made him practically fall backward to sit on the steps beside Cheryl. She wasn't the only one who was depressed. Side by side, they were two glum-looking people. "What now?" he whispered.

"I'll get married," she said.

He turned to look at her. Ah, to be that young! There was no doubt in her voice that the boy would marry her and there'd be a happy-ever-after. "You're a bit young, aren't you?"

"I guess not," she said in a way that almost made him smile.

"So he'll take responsibility, that sort of thing?"

"Oh, yes. He's like that."

Again, there was that certainty. "What did your mother say?"

Cheryl's pale skin looked bleached. "She knows nothing."

"Verna must have some suspicions. When she met the boy—"

"No!" Cheryl took a breath. "I couldn't introduce her to him. To anybody. Never."

"You've kept all of this secret? In a town like Lachlan?"

"It hasn't been easy. I've—" She put her hands over her face. "Oh, Mr. Niederman, it's been awful. I've had to lie and sneak and hide. Lots of hiding! But if Mom had found out I had a boyfriend, she would have ruined everything."

Arthur's eyes were wide. His housekeeper was one of the town's biggest gossips, yet he'd never heard a hint of the Morris girl with any male. Suddenly, he realized what Cheryl was saying. Her mother would "do" something? And young Cheryl was having to keep it all secret? "How old is this guy?"

"Not much older," she whispered. She was looking at him with eyes filled with tears.

Arthur wanted to run away. He fumbled for his canes but one had fallen to the ground. He did not want to be involved in some scandal that would make little Lachlan a national laughingstock. Teen pregnant by...what? A man in his twenties? Thirties? Forties? Married with kids?

"I better go. Tell your mother I'll call her."

Cheryl clamped both hands on his forearm, her perfect pink nails cutting into his skin. "I want you to tell Mom for me. Find out how crazy she'll be when I tell her that I'm going to get married very soon. Tell her I'll stay here in Lachlan and I'll get a good job at a local TV station. A job like she used to have. I will not be throwing my life away."

Arthur could feel his heart in his throat. "I can't do that."

"Yes, you can."

Again, he tried to stand up.

Cheryl's look of pleading went away and was replaced by an expression he'd seen on Verna's face. Had seen it only once. About a year ago, he'd made a joke about how pretty her daughter was and maybe little Cheryl would start running around soon. It came out more vulgar than he'd meant it to.

Verna's face had changed to this, an expression of such rage that it made the hairs on his body stand up. Before he could apologize, she pushed him off the massage table. If he hadn't bounced onto the bed, he would have hit the floor. As it was, he had to pull himself across the old carpet by his arms to get to his canes. The fact that he was naked added to his humiliation. When he managed to stand, he tried to cover his nakedness, but keeping his balance at the same time was impossible. He made an attempt to grab his boxers but she threw them out the open door.

Completely naked, he got outside, leaned against the house to pull on his boxers, then drove home. It was seven months before he was able to persuade Verna—with flowers, candy, lavish apologies and doubling his payments—to forgive him enough to start the massages again.

Right now, young Cheryl, with her tearstained makeup, was wearing that expression—and it scared Arthur half to death.

"The people in this town think you and my mother have sex for money," Cheryl said slowly. "You never contradict them because you like that people think you can still do it."

Arthur sat back down. She was right. He liked being teased about what he did at the Morris house. Young men driving big pickups tugged at the brim of their caps when they saw him. Their tributes made him feel young and whole.

As he looked at Cheryl's hard eyes, he thought of how his life would change if his secret was told. Pity instead of accolades. "I'll talk to her," he said. "I'll ask."

She stood up. "Good." She went into the house.

Minutes later, Arthur was lying naked on the massage table that Henry Lowell had made for Verna. Her hands were glistening with oil as she gouged and dug into his flaccid leg muscles.

"So why'd you come back to Lachlan?" he asked.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Just being friendly, that's all."

"You've never so much as asked me how my day was, much less about my life."

"So maybe I'm curious. Is that so unusual?"

"From you, it is."

Arthur took his time before asking again. "So I'm bored. Tell me your life story. Take my mind off my own problems."

"I thought you believed only you had problems."

Arthur gave a sigh. "How about that car for Cheryl? In exchange for a story?"

"The green one?"

"Sure. So tell me a story worth a car."

"Why not? It's not like I have a thousand friends in this town. It's simple, really. In high school all I could think about was getting away from this backwater town. I wanted to go someplace where the muggers didn't have four feet and teeth."

"What you got against gators?"

"Are you going to listen or not? So anyway, the day after I graduated from high school, I went to Baltimore. I loved it! Everything was fast and they had snow. I worked as a waitress during the day and went to school at night. I became a legal secretary."

"Good money?"

"Yes." She paused. "But then my father died and I returned to Lachlan for the funeral and to get my mother settled in a nursing home. That was the end of my life as I knew it."

"You look healthy to me."

"But then, you never believe that there are things worse than your own problems. Turn over." She waited until he was on his back. "I met a man."

"Ah," Arthur said.

"Right. Exactly. I knew him in high school. He was a jock and I'd never paid any attention to him, but—" She shrugged. "But when I came back, I fell for him. Fell really, really hard." She seemed ready to stop there.

"So why aren't you with him now?"

"He was already married."

"Never heard of divorce?"

"He wouldn't do it. Gave lots of reasons. So I went back to Baltimore, cried a lot and thought that was the end of it. But four months later, I realized I was pregnant."

"What did he say when you told him?"

"I didn't. I planned to wait until after the baby was born, then send him photos. I was sure that would make him come running. But when I held Cheryl in my arms..."

"That was it," Arthur said.

"Yes. I had friends, a good job and my daughter. I didn't want anything else."

"No man?"

"There were a couple of guys I dated, but..."

"But they didn't do for you what Cheryl's father did."

"You're making this into a cliché."

"Sorry. So, then what made you come back?"

"He did. He found us when Cheryl was eleven and begged us to return. He had business here, so he couldn't leave, but he showed the papers of the divorce he was going to get. He said he wanted to be part of our lives." She stopped massaging Arthur's legs.

"And you moved back to Lachlan."

"I did, but he didn't go through with the divorce." Verna gritted her teeth. "His wife said no, he couldn't leave his kid, his business would suffer. You name it, he gave it as an excuse."

Arthur watched as the red of rage seeped up her neck and into her face.

"You could have gone back to Baltimore."

"I wanted to, but Cheryl begged to stay here and—and I wanted him to see us. To see what he'd lost. I knew he was miserable in his marriage. He offered me money but I refused. That was probably a mistake. To stay, I had to supplement my income with you."

"And a couple of others," he added, trying not to smirk. When she said nothing else, he opened his eyes and looked at her. Her face had gone stone-cold. Everyone in town knew what she did, which was why Arthur had never felt bad about letting people think there was more between him and Verna than massages. Only he knew that Verna would have slapped him down if he so much as asked. Was she like that with her other clients? He'd always assumed that what the town whispered about her was true, but what if it wasn't? "The town thinks that you—" He couldn't say the rest of it.

"I know they do. At first I tried to set them straight, but no one believed me."

"Who started the gossip? Who keeps it going?"

"I'm not sure, but I have an idea."

He waited for her to say who it was, but she didn't. "So what happens now?"

"The minute Cheryl graduates from high school, we're out of here no matter how hard she fights me. The only temper tantrum she ever threw was when I said I wanted us to leave this town. I can't figure out what she loves about it."

"She certainly loved something here," Arthur mumbled as he thought of Cheryl's predicament. The girl was fifteen and pregnant with some older man's baby—and she actually believed the guy was going to marry her. Arthur needed to lead into a talk about that. "If you leave, that Wyatt kid will be heartbroken."

"Yeah, probably. I stay away from that boy. He shows up and I hide. If I got near him, Lord only knows what Roy Wyatt would accuse me of. Not that he pays any attention to his poor son."

"He and Cheryl seem like a good match."

"Yeah. He's a smart kid. Helps my girl with her newscaster practice. Cheryl wanted me to do it but I don't have the patience."

"It's been a good summer for her. Mostly because of that boy." Arthur paused. "Maybe Cheryl will want to get married and stay here."

"Hell no! When she graduates, we're leaving. I'll have the car packed and ready. I'll be glad to see the last of this place."

"But what if Cheryl has other plans?"

"Like what?" Verna was getting angry.

"I didn't mean anything. I was just asking." He put his hand out and she gave him his canes. "What does Cheryl know about her father?"

"Nothing at all. I told her he was a man I met at a concert and that he played a killer guitar."

"What about when Cheryl gets a boyfriend here?"

"That's not going to happen. I keep too close a watch on her. I drill it into her that earning a living is what's important. She shows up with a boyfriend, and two hours later, we'll be on the road heading north..."

Arthur stopped talking.

"That's it?" Kate said. "But what happened?" She looked at Jack and Sara. "Oh." She turned back to Arthur. "You never saw them again?"

Arthur looked out the window. "Only once. I knew it was Cheryl's birthday and I took the keys to the car I'd bought her to their house. It was late because I'd had the car cleaned and detailed. I wanted the girl to have something nice because of what was coming to her."

He looked down at his hands, then up again. "You know how sometimes you can just feel an atmosphere? Like going into a haunted house and you don't see anything but you can feel that there is something else there?"

The three of them nodded in unison but said nothing.

"That's how it was that day. I parked a few houses away. It was harder for me physically, but I was afraid of facing Verna. Afraid of what I was going to find at their house. If Cheryl had told her mother..." He paused. "It was worse than I ever imagined. I swear I could feel the misery inside that house as soon as I reached the driveway. Verna's old car was gone and there was a big black van parked there. The back doors were open and I could see that it was already packed with household goods."

He looked at Sara. "I'm ashamed to say that all I thought of was myself. They were leaving me. That's how I saw it. I felt no compassion for what they must be going through to make them pack up and leave. All I felt was anger that I was going to be utterly and absolutely alone." He grimaced. "And how was I going to keep up my image of being a stud? Of making people believe that I was still sexually active? Me. That's all I thought about. I put the car keys in my pocket and left."

"And that night someone killed them," Sara whispered.

Arthur's head was bent forward and they could see that he was softly crying. Kate looked at the others and they nodded. It was time to go. Jack picked up the manuscript, then quietly, they left Mr. Niederman's house. Outside, the air seemed fresh and clean.

They got into the truck and Jack drove them to where the MINI Cooper was parked beside the road. "I'll meet you back at the house," Jack said.

Kate nodded, then she and Sara got into the car.