The Mill River Recluse Read online

  “Take deep breaths. Is there anyone else in the building?” the firefighter holding the mask asked.

  Kyle nodded and pulled the mask from his face so that he could speak. “The police chief. And his wife. He went in after her. Second floor apartment, right side.” The firefighter radioed the information to the men inside the building. Kyle looked around, trying to see where the men had taken Claudia.

  “There,” the firefighter said, pointing behind him. Kyle turned to see Claudia lying on a stretcher with a mask strapped to her face. She’d come to and was nodding slightly in response to questions from one of the paramedics.

  Thank God, Kyle thought, but then he worried again about Fitz and Ruth. He watched the fire crews working, the jets of water dousing the bakery. Most of the flames appeared to be extinguished, but the fire department wasn’t taking any chances.

  There was another flurry of activity as the group of firefighters that had entered the building came back out. Fitz was between two of the men with his arms around their shoulders, while Ruth was supported by two others. Both were coughing and gasping for breath.

  “She was standing by the open window,” Fitz wheezed to Kyle as a firefighter prepared to fasten an oxygen mask around his face. “She said the door was warm and she was afraid to open it, so she sealed it up with wet towels. Said she knew we’d come for her.”

  “I never heard Claudia,” Ruth said. “Is she all right?”

  Kyle lowered his oxygen mask. “I think she will be. I’ll be right back.” He walked over to Claudia and took one of her hands.

  “Kyle,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Ruth—”

  “They’re all right. I just spoke to them. Everybody got out okay.” He saw one of the paramedics coming back toward them. “You breathed a lot of smoke. They’ll probably want to take you to Rutland to make sure you’re okay, but I’ll see you there in a little while, all right?”

  Claudia closed her eyes and nodded. Kyle squeezed her hand and walked back toward Fitz.

  “Hey, we’ve got one more!” The last firefighter had exited the building with a bundle of beige fur in his arms. “We need to get him to a vet, though.” Sham the Siamese yowled and panted as the firefighter placed him in a portable cage.

  Everybody got out. The relief began to sink in as Kyle leaned against the shiny red fender of the fire truck.

  “Hey, Kyle! Chief! Are you guys okay?” Ron made his way through the center of activity.

  “We’re good,” Kyle said. Fitz removed his oxygen mask and nodded.

  “You’ll never believe what we found on the other side of the building.” He motioned for Kyle and the police chief to follow him.

  They approached a second ambulance where another stretcher was being readied for transport. Ron pointed at the man on the stretcher. “Guess who we have here?”

  Kyle and Fitz stepped closer to the stretcher. The unconscious man had severe burns to the right side of his face, and part of his right hand was gone.

  “I’ve got a hunch it’s someone we all know,” Kyle said, frowning. He leaned in to get a good look at the victim, then shook his head in disgust.

  “Son of a bitch,” Fitz said.

  “He was stretched out in the snow wearing a black ski mask when we found him,” Ron said. “Obviously up to no good. I guess ol’ Daisy was for real.”

  “About the man in black, you mean?” Kyle said.

  “Yep. She called the station a few hours ago and said she saw the same guy who burned her trailer hanging out behind the bakery,” Ron said. “I didn’t have time to check it out, though, because the fake burglary call came in right after hers.”

  “What do you want to bet he made that bogus call?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Ron looked at the bakery and sighed. “I hope you got plenty of fire insurance, Chief. And you, too,” he said to Kyle. Kyle nodded as Fitz grimaced and squinted up at his blackened building.

  “We all got out okay. That’s all I care about,” Fitz said in a gruff voice. “But what the hell do you think Leroy was doing here?”

  “Maybe some sort of revenge,” Ron said. “We found him in back of the building in an area with a lot of shattered brown glass. He might’ve been messing with bottle-bombs to set the bakery on fire, but the idiot didn’t get it right. There’s no neck on a beer bottle, not like a wine bottle, anyway. If he filled it with gas and lit it, he wouldn’t have had enough time to throw it before it exploded. I’m going to take a better look back there to see if he left anything else.” Kyle and Fitz nodded at Ron before turning their attention back to Leroy.

  “He must’ve still been after Claudia,” Kyle said finally. “But something this dangerous, I never thought, I mean, even Leroy--”

  “—holds a grudge longer than anybody I know,” Fitz said. “He might’ve been real sore about you dating Claudia. He was hot onto her for a while. Maybe he was trying to get rid of you. We’ll get warrants to search his car and his house, see if we can find out what he was trying to do. And then I’m going to make sure he gets what he deserves, even more than he already has.”

  Kyle nodded, only half-hearing Fitz’s comments. He was thinking about how grateful he was that his daughter hadn’t been in the building and how thankful he was that Claudia, Fitz, Ruth, and even Sham were safe.

  The paramedics loaded Leroy into the ambulance and closed the back doors. As it sped away, Kyle’s words to Claudia came back to him: sometimes, what you find in a small town can surprise you.

  ~~~

  Chapter 20

  The Marbleworks hadn’t changed.

  It was still the same stately building, down to the bronze plaque at the front door engraved with its date of completion. From the front seat of Father O’Brien’s truck, Mary was too far away to read it, but she had committed the inscription to memory years ago: “McAllister Marbleworks, est. July 22, 1894.”

  She had made up her mind upon leaving the outpatient center that she would get a good look at the Marbleworks. She had asked Michael to drive past it so that she might see it again. It was the one part of Rutland that stood out, a grand structure from a different era. Seeing it brought back memories of her youth, her relationship with Patrick. She remembered the yellowed picture of Conor as a young man, standing with his father on the front steps of the Marbleworks. He had been the closest thing she had ever had to a real grandfather, and even now, she missed him.

  “One of Conor’s great-great-grandsons is in charge now,” Mary said, still peering out the window. “Brought it back from financial collapse. I read it in the Herald a while back.”

  Father O’Brien grasped the steering wheel, waiting. Daisy was sound asleep in the back seat. Finally, Mary sighed and turned to him. “I’m ready,” she said. The priest nodded and shifted the truck into drive.

  Mary looked again at the Marbleworks as they pulled away. She focused on the buildings in Rutland, too, trying to absorb each image of the town. It would be the last time she would see any of them.

  A part of her refused to believe what the doctors had told her--that she had metastatic pancreatic cancer and had perhaps six months left to live. She was a little groggy from the anesthetic and tranquilizers, but otherwise felt fine. The yellowish tint to her skin was rapidly disappearing. The doctors had inserted a stent in her bile duct to keep it from being blocked off by the primary tumor. The stent would prevent her from becoming jaundiced again for at least a few months. Apparently, her last few months.

  Mary looked over at the elderly priest. His eyes were fixed blankly on the road ahead, but she was sure that his thoughts were far away from the highway. His shoulders were a little more stooped than they had been on the way into town that morning.

  The worst part of learning her approaching fate was realizing that Michael would be left without her. It pained her to imagine him sitting in the parish house, eating supper by himself. She could envision him reading in his office, counting his spoons, having no one he could really talk to. She kn
ew that he would want to tell her of his day, to confide in her, to seek her advice. He would be alone.

  A loud snort from the backseat startled her. Daisy shifted position and muttered something that was unintelligible except for the words, “magic snow.” Mary turned to gaze fondly at her, quite as if she were seeing Daisy for the first time. Daisy in person was exactly how Michael had described the little round woman. The endearing misfit was child-like and socially awkward, yes, but Mary knew now that she was much more.

  “We’re almost home,” Father O’Brien said as they rounded the final bend in the highway before it straightened out into the heart of Mill River.

  Mary looked up at her mansion. It felt odd to see the house through the windshield of the pickup instead of looking down through her bedroom window at vehicles on the main road. She was shocked at the degree to which her white marble home stood out among the leafless trees surrounding it. This is what everyone else sees, she thought. A huge white house that bears no resemblance to anything else in town. Mary closed her eyes, trying to remember whether she had ever noticed that contrast. She didn’t recall having seen it during her disastrous bakery outing a decade ago. Perhaps she had seen it when the mansion was first completed or after returning home with Patrick from an evening out. She concentrated on the distant past, but could only remember cringing in Patrick’s new car, trying to avoid seeing anyone.

  Michael had told her how her own seclusion in the marble mansion was a topic of great curiosity for others in Mill River. That she was an object of mystery had never bothered her, but what if the people in town, the people she watched and loved, thought of her as she thought of her marble home now? What if they looked at her monstrosity of a house and couldn’t even think of her as a real person?

  True, they didn’t know that she had been responsible for the decades of anonymous surprises in Mill River or that she felt so intertwined in their lives. She had given them no way to know her. They knew nothing of her likes or dislikes, her sense of humor, her dreams. But she was a real person, a person who knew the difference between being alone and being lonely, who wanted so much to be accepted, to have coffee at the bakery, to come face-to-face with someone she didn’t know without feeling fearful.

  It occurred to her then what she could do, a way she might be able to tell the people of Mill River who she was and how much she cared for them.

  She breathed a sigh of relief as the pickup stopped outside the back door of the marble mansion. Even with the Valium, she hadn’t felt right since they had left early in the morning. She took Michael’s hand as she stepped down from the truck. It was a good thing. Her legs were weak and wobbly.

  “Steady now, I’ve got you,” Father O’Brien said, helping her stand.

  “I can help, too, Father!” Daisy said as she clambered out of the back seat. She hurried around to Mary’s other side and slipped an arm around her waist. “Two is better than one, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, in this case, it is,” he said, managing a weak smile.

  They helped her up the stairs to her bedroom. Father O’Brien sat on the side of the bed as she lay down. “I know you’re exhausted,” he said. “Just try to rest. I’ve got to take Daisy home and then I’ll be back.” Mary didn’t like the expression on his face. It was the expression he wore when he told her of his most difficult experiences as a priest. She knew that he was pushing his own emotions away, trying to temporarily free himself from the knowledge of her condition.

  “It was wonderful meeting you, Mrs. McAllister,” Daisy said. “And don’t you worry, you’ll be feeling better in no time, I just know it! Oh! That reminds me--how would you like a free bottle of my Sick-Away Potion? Works like a charm, it does, and I know I’ve got some left at home.”

  “That would be very kind of you, Daisy, thank you,” Father O’Brien said, before Mary could reply. Daisy hadn’t been in the room when the doctors had given their diagnosis, and Mary was grateful for his answer. But now she laid a hand on Father O’Brien’s arm and smiled up at Daisy.

  “Daisy, you have been so kind to me today,” she said, ignoring Father O’Brien’s gasp of surprise. “I wonder if you might come by to see me from time to time. I’m sure Father O’Brien could bring you. I would so enjoy your company.”

  Daisy could hardly contain herself. “Oh, Mrs. McAllister, I’d love to come see you again! And I just know the potion will help you feel better,” she said, clapping her hands. She bent down and kissed Mary on the cheek. “Good-bye, Mrs. McAllister! Get well soon!”

  Father O’Brien squeezed Mary’s hand and followed Daisy out of the bedroom.

  With tears in her eyes, Mary listened for the sound of the back door opening and closing. Only when she was finally, mercifully, alone, in the safe silence of her home, did she stop fighting the overwhelming truth and begin to cry.

  ~~~

  Father O’Brien was gone only about an hour. He dropped Daisy off in front of her mobile home before he stopped for a few groceries. He found himself rushing down the supermarket aisles, grabbing at bread and fruit and cans of soup. Deliberately, he walked slower. Mary was probably sound asleep, he told himself, and there was really no reason to rush. Then again, time was precious now, and he didn’t want to waste it.

  In the dry goods aisle, between the egg noodles and the neat blue and orange boxes of macaroni and cheese, he almost broke down.

  He took several deep breaths and squeezed his eyes shut. He resolved not to think any more about Mary until he arrived back at her house. Methodically, he finished his shopping, concentrating on keeping sad fingers of thought from reaching into his mind.

  Her house was dark when he again parked outside the back door, but she had turned on the porch light. Perhaps she was awake. He left the groceries on the kitchen counter and went upstairs, calling to her.

  She was standing in front of the large bay window in her bedroom. A shawl wrapped around her shoulders fell slightly when he came up beside her.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine. I’m glad to be home.” She was still wearing her eye-patch. When she turned toward him, he noticed that her face was tear-streaked and felt his own emotional control start to slip again.

  “I knew you would be. Mary, I’m...I’m so sorry. I want so much for this whole thing to go away, for it never to have happened, but I just don’t know what to do.” He was struggling now, pursing his mouth and blinking rapidly.

  “So much has changed,” she said in a distant voice. “But we’ll go on, just as we always have. I’ve still got some time left. Other than that, I’m not sure there is anything else either of us can do.” She paused to wipe at a tear that had slipped out from under her eye patch. “When we left here this morning, I just kept telling myself that whatever was wrong with me would be something a doctor could fix.”

  “We were both hoping that.”

  “And I was so scared, even with the Valium. When the doctors came in afterward, I knew what they were going to tell me just from their expressions. But hearing it was still an awful shock.” She was trembling.

  “Hearing something like that would be difficult no matter the circumstances.”

  “Yes. And Michael, I should have told you this earlier, but I wanted to thank you for taking me to Rutland. I know I made it anything but easy for you. Going in, I didn’t think I’d want to see the Marbleworks, but coming home, knowing that it would be my last time in Rutland…I’m glad I got to see it again.”

  “And you got to meet Daisy.”

  Mary smiled faintly. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that, too. After all these years of hearing about her, buying her little jars of strange concoctions--”

  “—and pouring them down your sink--” Father O’Brien added with a weak smile.

  Mary sighed. “Yes, she’s just exactly as you described her to me all these years, and yet so much about her was…unexpected. It was meeting Daisy today that really taught me something. That, and seeing my own h
ouse from town, like everybody else does.” Mary’s expression became more serious as she looked again out the window.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ve lived in this house for so many years and, until today, not once did I think of how it appears from down there—a monstrosity, isolated and different from everything around it.” She frowned and shook her head. “Thanks to you, I know everyone in Mill River, but I don’t know them as well as I should. And it’s too late for me to do much to change that. But all those people down there, they don’t know me. All this time, I’ve felt like I’ve been part of their world, but I know now that that’s not really true.”

  Father O’Brien looked down at her with raised eyebrows. “You know, you surprised me earlier, asking Daisy to come by. I never thought I’d hear you invite someone to visit you. But it’s not too late for other people, Mary. You can still meet some of the other folks in town, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t. I didn’t mean that,” she said, with an anxious expression. “What I mean to say is that, well, look at Daisy. She’s never met me before, and here she is offering me her friendship and her potions, the only things she really has to give. I never expected someone to reach out to me like that.

  “All my life I’ve been terrified of people. I still am, except for you, and now maybe Daisy.” When she turned to him, her visible eye was bright with excitement. “And still, all these years, I’ve tried to help them the only way I could. You’ve said many times that Mill River is full of decent, hardworking people, the kind that don’t have a lot but would give everything they have to a neighbor in need.”

  “Yes, with a few exceptions,” Father O’Brien said. “And I haven’t yet given up hope on the exceptions.”

  “Like that awful kid outside the bakery…but I know you’re right, Michael.” Mary’s smile faded into serene certainty as she looked again at the lights of Mill River below. “Daisy and the other kind, caring people in this town deserve to have had a much better neighbor in me. They deserve to know that someone has cared about them all these years.” Father O’Brien started to say something, but Mary continued. “I think I know what I need to do before I die, how I can make up for lost time.” She reached out and touched his arm. “Will you help me?”