Tangle of Lies, page 2
She considered what the car’s presence might mean while she finished her tea. Then she went inside to retrieve a banana loaf from her freezer.
*
Bobbie knocked on the front door. For over thirty years Denise Hooper had lived in this house, directly across from Bobbie. She’d moved in when she was newly married, then stayed to raise her daughter after being tragically widowed in her twenties. She’d only moved out seven months ago, when her late-stage cancer had sent her to a hospice in Grand Forks.
Since her death the house had sat vacant. During the winter adjacent neighbors took turns shoveling snow off the walkways. Now that it was spring those same neighbors mowed the lawn. Bobbie had given the inside of the house a good cleaning after Denise’s death, and she’d boxed her clothing for donation. Now she tended the perennials, such as they were. Some daylilies flanking the front porch, as well as hydrangea and poppies.
The front door was opened by Hadley, as Bobbie had expected. Still uncommonly pretty, though too thin, with dark circles under her huge blue eyes. A closer look revealed not just fatigue but deep unhappiness. Which wasn’t surprising since this was her first visit home since her mother’s death.
“Hey Mrs. G.” Her smile was faint, her voice tired.
“I thought it must be you, Hadley. But I had to check. I’ve been keeping an eye on the house since your mother passed.” Hadley’s daughter, a three-year-old carbon copy of Hadley at that age, peered out from around her mother’s legs. “Hello, Madison.”
The little girl scooted back behind Hadley’s jeans-clad legs. They were the ripped and torn style, exposing almost as much skin as they covered.
Bobbie had seen both of them on her last visit to Denise at the hospice in Great Falls. After a lifetime of rebellion, Hadley had shown up for her mother in the end. She’d sat vigil for those last weeks, only leaving Denise’s bedside when other friends came to visit.
Had that time made up for all the years she’d been absent? Only Denise could answer that.
Bobbie handed over the plastic-wrapped loaf. “Welcome home, Hadley. The banana bread is frozen, but it’ll thaw quickly at room temperature. Or you could use the defrost setting of the microwave.”
Hadley thanked her and Bobbie said she was welcome. There followed several seconds of awkward silence.
“So, are you here to get the house ready to sell?” Bobbie finally asked when it was clear she wasn’t going to be invited inside.
“No. We’re staying. I’m going to get a job and next fall Madison will start at Bright Days preschool.”
“I see. Isn’t that nice.” But Bobbie couldn’t help thinking it would have been nicer a few years earlier. Denise had been so angry when Hadley dropped out of school to join country singer Luke Baron’s band—words had been uttered and lines crossed with the result that Hadley and her mother were estranged for several years.
Gradually a détente had been established. There were phone calls back and forth and Denise had gone to visit when Madison was born. But Hadley had never come back to Tangle Falls. Until now.
“When your mother was sick, she gave me a key to her house. But now you’re here…” Bobbie dug the key out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Oh. Thanks. For everything, Mrs. G.”
“Of course. If you need anything, give me a call. I’m retired now. Lots of time on my hands.”
The door was slowly closing even as the words were coming out of her mouth.
“Thanks again,” Hadley said softly, before the final click.
Chapter Four
Fern Sinclair had an eerie sensation of homecoming as she stepped over the threshold, through dust motes glistening in a beam of sunlight, into the old farmhouse kitchen. Nothing about the room appeared to have been changed since 1980 when the house had last been occupied. The small property she was considering buying was eight miles from the town of Tangle Falls. Her neighbors would be a herd of cattle, a field of hay, and a forest preserve backing on the flanks of the Monashee Mountains.
“The McArthurs have done the bare minimum to keep up the place, but the furnace, water heater, and all appliances still work,” the real estate agent, Monique LaPierre informed her.
Monique was older than Fern, well-groomed and stylish. When she’d first heard the woman’s name Fern had assumed her family must be from Quebec, but no. Apparently Monique’s grandparents hailed from a French town called Gravelberg in Saskatchewan. Little French enclaves like Gravelberg dotted the prairies, but isolated from the political clout of Quebec, one had to wonder how long they would retain their distinctive cultural identity.
“But since the house has been vacant for decades, problems are bound to come up,” Monique concluded.
Since she’d first phoned to request a viewing, Fern had sensed a reluctance on the part of the real estate agent to show her this house. She’d said it was only “unofficially” on the market (despite the For Sale sign in the front yard) and that she had much better options to show her. Fern had needed to be quite insistent to get this far. She opened one of the kitchen cupboards. The inside was bare and spotless.
“The McArthurs have kept it clean, at least,” Monique said grudgingly.
Fern looked out the window above the sink. The house sat on a full acre. From here she could see a large rectangular patch of dark, freshly tilled earth—a former vegetable garden. The house itself was set within a white picket fence which had once contained, according to Monique, prizewinning perennials, though now they were a mass of out-of-control weeds. “I’m looking forward to tackling the gardens. It will be so nice to work outside for a change.”
“You said you were in health care?” Monique’s sentence trailed, inviting more details.
But Fern just nodded briskly. “I was a caregiver. Now happily retired.” She was young enough to imagine going back to work one day. But never health care. “Can I see the rest of the house?”
The living and dining rooms had original hardwood, not in very good shape. In some places the gaps between the boards were almost a quarter of an inch.
“The Singletons, the original owners, sold the place furnished, but over the years the McArthurs have given away most of the furniture to their son or other people in need.”
All that had been left was a sideboard in the dining room, upon which sat a chipped china cookie jar in the shape of a young girl’s head, and a bookshelf in the living area. Both the glass doors to the bookshelf had cracks, inside were dozens of old gardening magazines.
“The stairs are this way.”
They ascended a steep, narrow, staircase to a small landing with three doors. The larger master had two dormer windows, one facing the road, the other the garden. There was an ancient Singer sewing machine in the smallest bedroom, along with a huge plastic bag filled with fabric scraps. Monique opened the door to the final room, walls painted pink. “This was the daughter’s room, obviously.”
Fern gave the room a penetrating glance. It was smaller than the master but the view to the east would provide cleansing morning sunshine. She would sleep here.
They descended to the kitchen where Fern took a closer look at the stove. She tested the burners in the oven too. “Seems to be in working order.”
Monique gave a quizzical frown. “Look, this house is livable, but it’s old and it’s been vacant a long time. I have another house in town I’d like you to consider. It’s a lot newer, the yard is big enough for a garden, and you wouldn’t be so isolated.”
“Thanks, but I’ve found what I’m looking for right here. I’d like to make an offer.”
Monique was silent for a few moments. “Okay then.”
They discussed price and terms, and Monique promised her office would have an offer in to the McArthurs before the end of the business day.
At the last moment Fern suggested a price higher than the lowball offer Monique was recommending. “I don’t want to insult them.”
“Trust me, they are going to be thrilled to get your offer. I just hope you’re going to be happy way out here.”
Fern gave a noncommittal smile. Happy wasn’t the point. This was going to be like a marriage. Until death do us part.
For the past two years she’d tried living in various places, mostly larger towns in the Rocky Mountains. Her father used to scoff at the hills Quebecers called mountains: Mont D’Iberville, Boundary Peak, Tremblant, Orford. Nothing compared to the Monashee Mountains where he’d grown up, in the West Kootenays. He’d always planned to go back one day. He talked about retiring in a mountain cabin, “getting away from it all.”
Since he’d only ever worked casual jobs, Fern wasn’t sure what would constitute “retirement” for her father. As he passed through his fifties and into his sixties without making any move to leave Quebec, she finally realized it was just talk.
Her father loved to talk.
Until suddenly he didn’t.
He stopped meeting his friends for a morning coffee. He stopped asking about her days, stopped updating her on what was happening in the NHL. While he continued to watch sports, especially hockey, compulsively, he stopped his cheering, his complaining, his opinionated commentary.
The day she saw him gaze with puzzlement at his reflection in the mirror, she finally faced the truth. Her father had early-onset dementia and she had to make adjustments to their living arrangements. She’d child-proofed the apartment. Locked medications in a cabinet, hid the keys to his car, installed a new convection stove with a feature that allowed her to lock the burners.
Then he’d started wandering. At first, with the neighbors’ help, she was able to contain the problem. Then he started wandering naked. Which was bad enough in the summer, but truly life threatening in the winter.
Fern had mixed emotions the day she moved him into Maison de Quatre Saisons. “You’re locking me up!” her father had accused.
“I’ll still see you every day,” she’d reassured him. “I’ll take good care of you.”
And she had. Until she hadn’t. He’d died the fourth week of March, during the absolute worst of the crisis.
In those crazy, upside-down days, the aides, the nurses, the kitchen crew, and the cleaners, all had been worked off their feet. Staff phoned in sick, some came in despite having fevers and coughs, knowing that if they didn’t the residents would starve, would sit in their own excrement. Which happened anyway.
And so, the virus spread, it tore like wildfire through the halls and into the crowded rooms.
At least she had been with her father in his final moments. There had been no funeral, however. No celebration of life. Had his life been something to celebrate? Fern honestly did not know. Her father had done bad things.
But then, so had she.
Chapter Five
“Young people are leaving cities and moving back to towns like ours. They’re choosing lifestyle over paychecks. It’s a good thing,” Leif Karlson said.
Bobbie speared a hunk of avocado from her salad. A rancher from across the border, Leif had been one of her husband’s oldest and closest friends. Back when both their spouses had been alive—her Colin, Leif’s Elizabeth—they’d met as couples for dinner most weekends. After Colin’s death, Bobbie had worried they might drift apart, but they hadn’t. Since then, Elizabeth had passed and Bobbie had retired and now she and Leif had settled into a routine where they met weekly for lunch. Not dinner. Never dinner. Bobbie suspected Leif was being very careful about his intentions, which was fine. Most of the time it was just fine.
“I disagree. People have a tendency to idolize small towns. But when they’re actually living in one, the gloss wears off. That friendly, cheerful neighbor becomes nosey and interfering. The mountains aren’t quite so beautiful when they block cell coverage or impede same-day delivery or become impassable in winter.”
“I never figured you for a pessimist.”
“You sound like Monique,” Bobbie said. “She couldn’t be happier with the influx of new residents. The last three years she’s sold more properties than in the previous ten. In fact,” she hesitated, then plunged ahead, “this morning she showed the Singleton acreage to a prospective buyer.”
Leif set down his fork and gave her his complete attention. “After all these years… Well, I hope it sells. That house has been vacant far too long.”
“Yes.” Over four decades ago Leif’s younger sister Odette had lived in that house before her untimely death. Her controlling, disagreeable husband Neil and their two-year-old daughter had moved away immediately after. Neil sold the farmland, house included, to Bobbie’s father and brother, ranchers like Leif, and the house had remained vacant since. It would be good for a new family to move in and purge the old, painful memories.
Leif finished his beer and, over Bobbie’s token protest, ordered dessert for the both of them. “You really think this little population boom is a bad thing?”
“I can’t help wondering how happy our new residents are going to be once the pandemic truly is over and life is back to normal. Assuming that ever happens, of course.”
Life was mostly back to normal. But covid still lurked among them.
“I get the feeling you’re thinking of someone in specific?”
“Hadley,” she admitted. Earlier she’d told Leif about Denise’s daughter and granddaughter unexpectedly moving back to Tangle Falls. “I’m not sure if she’s aware her cousin Jeff Bombini and his wife and kids moved here, too, that they bought a house right on our street.”
In fact, the Bombinis had bought one of the three original copper baron character homes—Bobbie, and Monique and her husband Henri, owned the other two.
“Again, I ask—isn’t that a good thing?”
“God no. There’s bad blood between those two family branches. Goes back to their great-uncle Frank’s will.”
“Divorce and wills. Nothing is better at destroying extended families than those two things.”
“I don’t understand why Hadley would move back now. Her mother is gone. Her old friends have moved on. What’s left in Tangle Falls for her?”
“A house? I’m assuming her mother bequeathed it to her.”
“Yes of course she did. But houses can be sold. Hadley’s lived on Vancouver Island since her daughter was born. She could sell the house here and buy one there. Doesn’t that make more sense?”
“Maybe she had an argument with a boyfriend or lost her job.” Leif brushed a hand through his silvering hair. “There could be lots of reasons she had to move.”
“Reasons to leave where she was,” Bobbie agreed. “But why come here?” At seventeen Hadley had left town with a musician she’d met at a local concert, and simply never came home. She hadn’t had any problem leaving behind her boyfriend—Bobbie’s nephew, Jesse—her best friend, Fallon, or her mother. In the years that followed, she never returned, not even for a visit.
Yes, Hadley had been around for Denise’s final weeks, but that had been at the hospice in Grand Forks, a thirty-minute drive from here.
“We all grow up sooner or later. Maybe Hadley finally realized that the old hometown wasn’t so bad.”
“I don’t buy that. I wish you could have seen her this morning. She looked like a woman at the end of her reserves.”
“If she does have a problem, maybe she’ll talk to you about it. Once she settles in.”
“I doubt it.” Bobbie finished her tea and pushed aside her half-eaten pie. The Smokehouse pie in Silverton was fine but not up to the standard at Stella’s Diner on Bobbie’s side of the border. “Let me tell you a story to help you understand. When Hadley was a little girl, around five or six, she loved playing soccer. My nephew Jesse played, too—it was coed at that age—and so Denise and I were often watching their games and cheering them on. During one game Hadley was in a scrimmage for the ball, and she won, but as she dribbled down the field, it seemed she was limping. Her coach noticed, too, and called her off the field.”
“Sounds like she was a good little player.”
“She was. She insisted to the coach that she wasn’t hurt and that she still wanted to play. Which she did. Later that night, when her ankle was swollen more than twice its normal size Denise took her to the ER for X-rays. You know what they found? A sprained ankle. That little girl played soccer for more than half an hour with a sprained ankle.”
“So, she was good and tough.”
“Too tough. Hadley never liked to admit when she was hurt or when she needed help.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening now?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She could tell Leif thought she was too invested. But Denise had been more than a neighbor to Bobbie. She’d been a lifelong friend. And she knew Denise would want her to look out for her daughter and grandchild.
“Bobbie, you worry too much.” Leif polished off his last forkful of dessert. “Our towns need people like the Bombinis and your Hadley. Fresh blood brings new energy and ideas. We need their children, too, to fill our half-vacant schools.”
“Yes. But will they stay?” The covid pandemic had made people long for smaller communities, more room, easy access to wild spaces for hiking, biking, and skiing. Who needed to live in a big city when you could have your business meetings virtually and order almost anything you wanted online?
But mountain passes and winter weather presented an unavoidable reality: Her home of Tangle Falls and Leif’s Silverton—like a lot of towns in the interior of British Columbia and Washington State—were isolated communities for much of the year.
Bobbie wasn’t sure that newcomers like Jeff and Carly Bombini were prepared for the reality of snowed-in mountain roads and airports that were closed more often than they were open because of wind and poor visibility.
Something about the isolation of winter always brought out the stress fractures. Bobbie had lived in Tangle Falls all her life. And while she loved the town, and the people who lived there, she was privy to the dark stuff too.
