South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [90]
Madeline didn’t know what Gladys thought of all of this because Gladys would not speak to her and left the house each time Madeline cautiously knocked on the screen and went in to see Arbutus, but she could imagine. Arbutus’s mind was made Up, however, so that was that.
Madeline opened the newspaper she’d picked Up at the gas station. Maybe she could find a job in Crosscut. An apartment too, because the current arrangement could not go on forever. There was a notice that the prison was looking for kitchen help. She was thinking about that—the prison, Paul hated working at the prison, she wondered how he was doing, how he and Randi were coping with the summer trade, all the hours and craziness, and why did she wonder, it was none of her business, and even if the prison was awful it’d be good to get a job like that, it’d be year-round, with benefits, a decent paycheck—when a knock came at the door.
“Hello?” a man’s voice said. “Anybody home?”
Madeline went to the door and at first she was very confused. “Hi. My gosh, what are you doing here? This is such a coincidence. Or are you looking for me?” She racked her brain trying to think of a reason why Pete Kinney should be there.
Pete looked baffled too. “Hello. I wasn’t looking for you, no, though I planned to, later. Thought I’d see this place and maybe ask whoever was showing it if they knew you, knew how I could find you. I guess that worked out.”
“But, Pete, what brought you here? Why are you looking at a house?”
He shrugged, seeming bashful. “Daydreaming, maybe. I was roaming around on the Internet, looking at properties Up here—I do that sometimes—and I saw this one listed. I liked it, so I made an appointment.”
“Well, this is weird but nice.”
Pete nodded his agreement. He looked the same as always: a trim, slightly formal man somewhere in his seventies in a worn but clean work shirt the color of split-pea soup, with matching trousers. His hair had once been black but was now well salted with white, and his eyes were sapphire blue. He’d been so kind back in Chicago. When she took the Buick into his shop—old-fashioned, like him, the building sided in porcelain tile, the advertising sign a red-winged Pegasus, the pop machine so old that it dispensed small glass bottles from behind a narrow glass door—he’d told her she needed a new set of tires, an oil change, the points cleaned, the timing checked, the hoses replaced. She’d started to fear the car wouldn’t be Up to the trip but he assured her he’d get it into shape.
His eyes had twinkled when she protested that the bill was far too small. “I like the idea, you going way Up there. Wish I could go with you. Eunice has been gone now close to four years and it’s still hard, living in our house without her. I think of selling but my kids say no, I shouldn’t.”
Madeline knew how that was. So many people had ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do, but in the end you had to decide for yourself. A moment of pure Understanding had passed between them. And now here he was. Madeline stood in the doorway holding the screen open and could not think what to say.
“How’s your car holding Up?” he asked.
“It got me here.” He looked dismayed and she hurried to reassure him. “You did some kind of miracle, considering how it’s fallen to pieces since. If it wasn’t for you I’d probably still be sitting in Milwaukee, waiting for a tow.”
“So it needs some work, does it?”
“Well, in an ideal world, sure. But the way things are—” Madeline decided not to elaborate. “So you came all this way to look at this house?”
“It was just a notion I had.”
She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “Here, what am I thinking, come in. Let me get you some coffee.”
“Things going all right for you, then?” he asked after she poured him a cup.
“It’s been interesting.” She heard how ambivalent that sounded and added, “It’s beautiful.”
“It seems mostly like I remember. Lots