Are You Haunted (part twenty-three)

Are You Haunted

(part twenty-three)

She wore a black cardigan and a floral shift. These things, to Powell’s eyes, were not dress-up clothes. She had chosen from a kind of sympathy, he wished to believe it…

That Mrs. Drybrook had thought of how poor her lunch guest was.

Her inches bowed from the neck, a tall body crooked with age, buttressed by the arms of a caretaker—or the trembling in her knees might have rocked her off her feet.

She did not, though, ask her helper to speak on her behalf.

“That old place.”

He held the dry hand a moment, some impulse felt to still the tremor. He showed her the foil box.

He opened it, sparing his hostess, and held the little vase out to her. People have preferences, he had decided, about pink or yellow, but everyone likes blue.

“Mrs. Lessing,” Mrs. Drybrook said, when her lips had stopped working. “Do you see?”

“I seen them at Bonhof’s.”

“Ma’am, should I set this on that little bookcase?”

He wasn’t sure he could manage even that. The caretaker’s backside was close pressed against his objective, little only in that it was squat and narrow—the bookcase—and commanded less space in the foyer than the standing closet.

He would have to step through one of the arches, into either the dining or living room, and try darting an awkward hand behind Mrs. Lessing.

“Mr. Kenzie,” Mrs. Drybrook said. “I haven’t been very polite. May I apologize to you?”

“Oh. Yes, ma’am.”

He had not gone visiting often, growing up. He could recall his mother drawing him once or twice from behind her skirts, to be ain’t-he-shied at by a neighbor. From this small sampling of social life, he had gleaned his ideas of the niceties.

No. Why, no. Not at all.

“Will you join the young people on the porch? I’d be pleased if you’d put your kind gift on the windowsill by my chair, where I can see it when I read my paper.”

He guessed she wasn’t pleased. She had not exactly thanked him. He crossed a Persian rug that filled the living room wall-to-wall, to a windowed parlor down a step.

The young people, he was relieved to see, were Isobel and Tovey. They made an ill-assorted and shopworn trio of young people, but at least no small talk needed dredging up. He knew they didn’t really want to talk to him.

While he was looking at her smile, Isobel rose and hugged him, pressing against his dirty clothes. She wore a dress, a Sunday dress. “Powell, aren’t you presentable!”

She slipped the box from his hand. “What a dear little rose.”

“It was just something…” he started.

“Got yourself swanked up, Kenzie.” Tovey was grinning at him.

23

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part twenty-four)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)