South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [89]
“Well, that’s one way to look at it.” Madeline snapped the ends off a few beans. “I guess she never set fire to anything, huh?”
“It was just a fire. Not even a big one. It’s not the end of the world. Look at me—I burned my own house all the way down and I survived.” She gave Madeline a grin and eventually Madeline looked less glum and broody.
“You can always come stay with me if you need to,” Mary said as Madeline was leaving. “I got that old camper, you’re welcome to it. I spent a winter in it, it wasn’t so bad. Heats Up real nice.” The camper wasn’t much, but Madeline gave her a quick hard hug and said thank you like it was the Taj Mahal and Mary waved her away feeling unaccountably good.
Madeline drove back to Arbutus’s house on Mill Street and pulled the Buick in the drive, hoping it would start again the next time she needed it. That was always a question now. The car was a dying beast with a terrible wasting disease, but she kept putting that truth out of her mind because without it she wouldn’t even be able to go and see Walter, say nothing about ever getting back to Chicago.
She went in and put a pot of coffee on, then mixed Up a batch of brownies. In the last two weeks she’d kept the lawn mowed and weeded the flower beds, cleaned every scant square foot of the place with a toothbrush, shined the windows, replaced the gaskets on the leaky faucets, washed the rugs, cleaned the linens and hung them out to dry, reorganized the closets and cupboards, painted the bathroom and kitchen, polished the pine paneling in the living room and bedroom, moved the furniture into an arrangement that gave the illusion of more space, and kept the little jugs of flowers she’d placed here and there changed and fresh. Now there was nothing left to do but wait.
For what she wasn’t completely sure. She was here only because Arbutus had pleaded with her to be. For obvious reasons, that hadn’t been her plan. She’d done enough damage. But Arbutus wore her down. It was impossible to refuse her anything after what had happened.
First Arbutus talked her out of leaving McAllaster the morning of the fire, and then talked her into staying at her house. She said she wanted Madeline there when people went through. She thought the house would sell faster if someone was living in it, making it smell good and look inviting (hence the brownies and flowers), and she couldn’t stand the thought of being the one to let people in herself, nor to have them poke through her things with the realtor, who was a stranger from Crosscut. She wanted Madeline there. Would Madeline do that for her?
Madeline took the brownies out of the oven and glanced at the clock—half an hour yet before a guy was due to come look at the place. It would be a waste of time because so far, of the dozen or so people who’d trooped through, no one had any real interest. Most of them were just sightseeing, and the few that weren’t, lost whatever interest they’d come with pretty fast.
The house was tiny and unassuming. It was quaint, but on all practical levels it was a mess. The plumbing and septic and wiring were old, as were the fixtures and counters and cupboards—nothing had been Updated since the house was built back in the forties. Plus it had a foundation of cedar posts that were rotting at different rates, giving the floors an interesting sloping pattern that alarmed people once they were thinking about plunking money down on it.
Madeline wished these weren’t the facts because she knew Arbutus wanted the ordeal over now that she’d made Up her mind to sell. When it did she could begin to pay off her medical bills. And when the hotel sold—whenever that was, to whomever it was—the burdens would really lift from her shoulders. She would go and live in the senior apartments, she said. It would be nice. Clean and convenient and modern, easy to get around with her walker, and friendly, with neighbors all along