Cry Baby Hollow (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Joe insisted on
carrying in her bags before getting started on the mailbox. As soon as they were piled on the sofa, he left and Aubrey pulled out her lap
top to check in at work. She set it up at the desk, set her cell phone to act as a hot spot, and got online. Two days worth of orders were waiting for her, and after she’d logged them, checked their payments, and sent them to the company that did her warehousing, she spent an hour emptying her customer service email inbox. Most were requests from her customers for things she didn’t carry, and she spent another hour online emailing her suppliers, trying to track the items down. She didn’t want to think about the dent she was making in her data plan.

When Aubrey was finished, she unpacked her overnight bag into neat piles on the sofa and then started to put everything away. Toiletries were easy enough, but after climbing up into the loft and finding only a queen sized bed and night stand, she was at a loss as to where to put her clothes. The bed was on a low pedestal that had a few drawers underneath, and the built-in sofas in the conversation pit lifted up to reveal storage bins, but there was nowhere to hang anything.

She thought she might be able to hang a rod in the utility room but when she went to check, she realized the door was gone. She had been so awed by the cabin’s transformation that she hadn’t even noticed. Between the kitchen nook and bathroom door, there was nothing but a line of recessed, built-in book cases. She walked into the kitchen. It had a gas range with an electric oven and a combination microwave/vent above it, a dishwasher that had two drawers that could be used separately, a white farmhouse sink, a snazzy little side by side refrigerator with a glass door and stainless steel trim, as if it had been taken from an upscale convenience store, and open shelving covering all the walls. There was little in the way of cabinet or counter space, and the only light came from a skylight in the roof, but she would only be feeding herself, so it was more than adequate.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember what it had looked like before. She saw her mother, hair in a ponytail, making them both hamburgers. The counter had been Formica instead of granite, the appliances had been mustard yellow, and instead of a skylight there had been a florescent light on the steeply pitched ceiling, but while the room had certainly been spruced up, none of the space from the missing utility room had been added to it.

She walked to the bathroom and the mystery was solved. There was pocket door she hadn’t noticed partially hidden from view by the shower stall. She slid it open and found that the little room, which had originally held a full sized washer dryer, a utility sink, and a counter, had been gutted and turned into a modest walk-in closet. It had built-in shelves and drawers, high and low hanging bars, and in the back corner there was a small single unit washer/dryer, like the ones used in Europe.

She walked back out into the main room, bundled up her things and carried them into the closet. She placed her small suitcase on one of the top shelves, carrying in the teak stairs from the tub to be able to reach, and pulled on a pair of cut off sweat pants, a lycra jogging top with a built in bra, and her running shoes.

After the incident with the deer in the fog, she was reluctant to go out into the woods alone and that reluctance was exactly why she decided to run to Vina’s instead of driving or calling. She had learned over the course of her life that if you were afraid of something, you did it anyway, and if you were
really
afraid of something, you did it a lot. Familiarity was the best cure for fear. She grabbed her iPhone, strapped it onto her arm, and headed out.

Out front, Joe
was sitting on the tailgate of his truck, drinking and looking at the half-dug hole where the mailbox was going to be. She put her headphones on and turned up the volume so she wouldn’t have to talk to him, and then sprinted past.

Aubrey alternated sprints with fast walks every other song and concentrated on not losing her footing on the gravel road. She passed Joe’s, and then came into a more thickly forested section where the lake was invisible behind a dense curtain of trees. She crossed the culvert where one of the mountain streams emptied into the lake, and then pulled up short. There was a fresh looking gravel driveway to the left, heading away from the lake, and a recently cleared patch of land. A massive, red, four-door pickup was parked there and as she stood panting, a man hopped out of it and ambled toward her.

“Hey there,” he called.

She wanted to run off, but he held up his hand and waved her over.

Aubrey pulled out her earphones, letting them dangle against her chest, and met him at the end of the drive. She looked past him and saw that while there was a prefabricated, single car garage, a set of concrete front and back steps, and a bare patch of ground where a house might have been, the house itself was missing.

“Who’re you?” he asked her without preamble.

She motioned back the way she had come.

“Guinn,” she told him, still trying to catch her breath.

“Funny name for a girl,” he said, too transfixed by the sweat trickling down between her breasts to bother looking her in the eye.

“Aubrey Guinn,” she corrected, knowing full well that in a town this size he would already know that, as well as most of the details of her life.

“I guess you moved in to that crappy old cabin. You kin to the Guinns that used to live in these parts?”

Hearing the cabin, which was far and away the nicest place she’d called home in recent years, called “crappy” by a man who, by all appearances, didn’t have a house at all, was too much for her.

“I thought this side of the road was all National Forest,” she told him, ignoring his question.

He pulled off his baseball cap and ran a hand through his thick, auburn mullet. He had a very prominent tan line along his forehead. Looking more closely, she realized the tan was more a case of freckles so thick that they had merged.

“You and everyone else,” he told her, not offering any further explanation. “You gonna run by here dressed like that every day?” he asked. “Cause I might just become a morning person.”

Aubrey wondered by what stretch of the imagination twelve-thirty could be considered morning.

“Maybe you can get your wife to fix you a big breakfast,” she told him, pointing to his wedding ring.

“Hell, that cunt run off months ago. Took my little girl too,” he spat. “Besides, we’re divorced.” He pronounced it dye-vorced.

“Then maybe you should take off the ring,” Aubrey suggested. “Some women find being hit on by a man with a wedding ring to be rather offensive.” Though she doubted the kind of man who used the word ‘cunt’ in polite company cared very much about who he offended or why.

He leaned in close.

“I ain’t hittin’ on you, honey,” he whispered. “If I hit on you, you’ll know it.”

His hand shot forward and he grabbed her upper arm.

“I think we’ll both know it,” she told him evenly, reaching up and prying his fingers loose. He was a big man, but he wasn’t in very good shape and she pulled him off easily. “I’ll know because my knee will be sore, and you’ll know because your balls will be hanging out of your nose.”

Sensing that the pleasantries were concluded, she turned and ran off, careful to keep her pace even so that she didn’t look like she was fleeing, just resuming her run.

Aubrey found Vina
sitting on the back porch, playing solitaire in the shade.

“Who’s the asshole living in the forest?” She asked immediately.

Vina made a moue of distaste.

“Wayne Mosley,” she answered. “You stay the hell away from him,” she said, wagging her finger at Aubrey. “He’s a rotten sonofabitch.”

“I already planned to,” Aubrey assured her. “How’d he get that land?”

“His people live in the next hollow over,” Vina explained. “There was always a feud about where the property line was, but after the hills went National Forest, it didn’t much matter. Then a while ago they wanted to cut a lot out of their property for one of their kids, so they got a survey. Turns out they still had a tiny spit on this side of the hill. They gave it to him and slapped a trailer on it, probably just to piss me off.”

Vina’s hatred of mobile homes was infamous.

“I didn’t see a trailer,” Aubrey told her.

“It got repo’ed,” Vina said with a shake of her head. “There are more Mosley’s in this county than trees, and the only reason I’m not saying they’re all bad is that even I haven’t met ‘em all. Those people breed like vermin, and that boy is the pick of this last litter. He can’t keep out a jail even though his uncle is the sheriff. He’s livin’ in that garage now, and my lawyer ain’t figured out how to get rid a him yet.”

“Hold that thought,” Aubrey told her, growing uncomfortable in her sticky clothes. She went into the kitchen and splashed some cold water onto her face. She returned a moment later, a glass of sweet tea in her hand.

“So how do you like the cabin?” Vina asked as Aubrey sat down across from her.

“That’s why I stopped by,” Aubrey told her. “I wanted to thank you for fixing it up so nicely, and offer to pay you for all the repairs.”

She knew Vina would never accept any money from her. She would never even let her buy groceries when she came to visit, but Aubrey felt it was important to make the gesture.

“Don’t be simple,” Vina waved off the offer. “You know I’m always looking for new ways to spend the ingrates’ inheritance. What you and I got here is a mutually beneficial relationship. We were both in a bad patch, and you coming down here got me out of mine. Least I can do is make sure you’re comfortable. You really like it?”

The ingrates in question were Vina’s step-children. They had been trying to have Vina put in a home for years so they could get their hands on the family money. They had almost succeeded in their last attempt, but they had been stymied when Aubrey had agreed to move down and act as Vina’s guardian. The timing had been perfect. Aubrey had just gotten divorced, and while her new business was doing much better than she had expected, it wasn’t sufficient to keep her in the Washington DC suburb she’d been living in.

“It’s fabulous,” Aubrey told her whole-heartedly.

“Speakin’ of fabulous,” Vina said. “How’d you like Joe? I noticed that your lights didn’t come on after you left last night, but his did. I gotta tell you, if it was me, I’d a gone for the big bed in the cabin instead of shacking up in his trailer, but then you’re young. You don’t have to worry about arthritis.”

“You can’t see the cabin from here,” Aubrey said, turning to look out over the lake.

“I got a telescope up in the back guest room,” Vina told her. “I can’t see inside on account of the trees, but I can see the lights reflecting on the lake.”

Aubrey rolled her eyes, wondering how long it would be before Vina got an infrared attachment.

“Joe seems very nice,” Aubrey told Vina, “but he’s not my type,” she added firmly.

“Shit,” Vina scoffed. “That boy is every woman’s type. I could rent him out to the Mormons so they don’t have to electrocute their lesbos anymore.”

Aubrey decided it was better not to go anywhere near that statement.

“What?” Vina continued, unphased by the look on Aubrey’s face. “He wasn’t any good in bed? I always figured he would be.”

“I didn’t sleep with him,” Aubrey promised. “And anyway, just because a man is handsome doesn’t mean he’s good in bed.”

“It means he gets plenty of practice,” Vina countered, “and practice makes perfect. Besides, the last one was your type and look how that turned out. Your type is shit. You should let me pick the next one and I pick Joe.”

“Jason wasn’t a bad man,” Aubrey said, appalled at herself for defending him, but feeling it was only fair. Post 9/11, dual-military marriages were more about vacations and holidays than actually being a couple. Everything was fine until Jason had gotten a job offer in the private sector and convinced her to get out too so that they could have a real life together. Neither of them had handled the transition well. He had just handled it worse.

“Good men don’t cheat on their wives,” Vina told her definitively. “Anyway,” Vina said, waving off the subject as she won her solitaire game and shuffled the cards. “I didn’t take to Joe at first either, but he grows on you. He’s very handy to have around, and have you seen his backside?”

“I have and it’s very nice,” Aubrey admitted, blushing. She was always slightly embarrassed to be discussing sex so blatantly with a woman in her nineties. It was a favorite topic of Vina’s though, and in spite of four dead husbands, no children of her own, and three decidedly evil step-children, she was always been after Aubrey to get married and settle down. She’d never counted Jason as an actual spouse, probably because he’d never come with her when she visited.

Vina uncharacteristically let the subject drop and started dealing the cards into two stacks.

“I can’t stay,” Aubrey said apologetically, sliding the cards back across the table. “I have a lot to do before the moving truck comes,” she lied.

Vina gathered the cards back and dealt out another hand of solitaire with a shrug.

“We’ll be needin’ you to be our fourth tomorrow night though,” Vina told her.

“Sure,” Aubrey agreed, strapping her iPhone back onto her arm and sticking her headphones in her ears.

“Seven,” Vina told her as she hopped down the steps with a wave.