Diane Greenwood Muir - Bellingwood 05 - Life Between the Lines (15 page)

Polly nodded, “I remember. I didn’t do angst
like my friends, but it wasn’t easy. Between the boys and the girls and the teachers and the …” This time it was Polly who stopped mid-sentence. “Are they having dances?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvie said. Her eyes got big. “You don’t suppose that’s part of
this, do you?”

“What if there’s a girl, Sylvie?”

“Oh!” Sylvie sighed. She shut her eyes in pain and rolled her head back on her neck. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” she whimpered. “It’s not fair.”

Polly giggled. “You should ask Eliseo to see if
he can get Jason to talk. We always had dances on Friday nights when I was in junior high. They were horrible, but everybody went to them. Has Jason ever had a girlfriend?”

Sylvie’s face twisted into a frown. “I don’t want to think about this. He’s a cute boy and he’s popular and he is always with a bunch of kids, both girls and boys. I’ll bet
girls are trying to hook up with him and he doesn’t know how to respond. I’m a terrible mom, Polly. I ignored this so it wouldn’t ever be true.”

“You’re not a terrible mom. You are so far from that.”

“But, I didn’t want to pay any attention to this. I wonder why Andrew hasn’t teased him about girls.”

“Maybe because he’s been
threatened within an inch of his life by his older brother.”

Sylvie
slowly nodded. “There are a couple of little girls who say hello to him on Sundays and now that I think about it, those same girls are part of the crowd waiting for him when I drop the kids off at school. I’m really good at ignoring the obvious, aren’t I.”

“I still think you should talk to Eliseo or
Doug or Billy. They are with Jason a lot. Maybe he will let them talk about it.”

“But it’s not their job. It’s my job. He’s my son.”

Polly put her hand firmly on the prep table. “Sylvie, stop it. He’s absolutely your son, but there are a lot of people around here who love him. I keep telling him that sometimes we have to let our friends pick up the slack when we can’t do things on our own. You have to trust that these people have your back with your boys. You can’t be everything to them all the time.”

Sylvie raised her eyebrows. “You know I don’t like that answer.”

“But am I wrong?”

“I don’t have to like it when you’re right.”

Polly giggled. “Call Eliseo. I’ll bet he won’t mind talking to Jason while they’re working in the barn. Those two are always discussing something. Neither of them would tell you, but it might already be working itself out.”

Sylvie took her phone out of her pocket. “You’re right. I’m not in this alone.” She began scrolling through her contacts. “You know this is strange for me. I spent so many years all alone with those two boys, I’m not used to having this many people in our lives. Sometimes it’s nice, but sometimes it is really odd.”

Polly hugged her. “Life keeps getting bigger and bigger, doesn’t it? You couldn’t be all that you are becoming without friends helping and you wouldn’t want your boys to spend their entire childhood cooped up in that little apartment. Am I right?”

Sylvie made a shooing motion with her hands. “Get out of here. Of course you’re right. I still don’t have to like it.”

“I love you, Sylvie Donovan,” Polly said as she headed for the back door. “Even when you don’t like it.”

She was giggling as she unhooked Obiwan’s leash and led him outside. A quick trip to the grass and then she loaded him up in her truck and headed for Des Moines
.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

That evening, Henry’s truck was parked in the second space of her garage when Obiwan and Polly returned. “He’s quite the knight in shining armor, isn’t he?” she said to her dog as they went in and up the steps.

The training session had been productive and Obiwan impressed Polly with his socialization skills. She figured that the time spent with so many different people and animals at Sycamore House gave him plenty of exposure to outside stimuli.

“Honey, I’m home!” she called out as she hit the first step. She’d texted Henry before leaving Des Moines and he told her that he would have supper ready when she got there. She had actually grumbled a bit at that since she rarely got an opportunity to eat fast food anymore. Sometimes a greasy hamburger was necessary for a girl to keep her sanity.

Henry walked in through her bedroom and met her with a kiss. “Welcome home,” he smiled. “Did you have a good time?”

“It was good. I think Obiwan will be fine through this.”

“I’m glad. Tell me you didn’t stop somewhere and eat.”

“I restrained myself,” she laughed, “but it wasn’t easy. I passed a lot of burger places that called my name. When I remembered that they also had fried cheese nuggets, I had to stop myself from passing out and requiring them to resuscitate me. But I’m here now. What’s for dinner?”

“Come in and you can see what I did.” He took her jacket and followed her into the dining room.
He had thrown a pretty cloth over one end of her table, found candlesticks and her good dishes. The candles were lit, the lights were dimmed and food was on the table ready to be served.

“What have you done?” she asked.

“Have a seat.” He pulled a chair out for her, then sat down and began passing food. “I cooked.”

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” she smiled at him. “You really are a catch. How has no one ever managed to hook you?”

“I don’t tell all my secrets to just anybody and no one has ever taken enough time to figure them all out.”

“You’re amazing, Henry Sturtz.” She took the first dish filled with mashed potatoes. He’d made a meatloaf and
the vegetable dish was roasted zucchini and green beans with parmesan cheese. He pulled a towel off a basket filled with biscuits and then handed her a bowl filled with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.

“I had to go to Boone for the garden vegetables. There isn’t much left in town, but I had fun,” he said.

“This is a feast!”

“I needed to redeem myself for all the pizza I keep bringing over here.”

“I love pizza, but this is really something. I had no idea.” Polly took a taste of the potatoes and moaned, “These have garlic in them. They’re good.”

“Try the meatloaf.” He pointed to her plate.

She took a bite. “Wow. What did you do to this? My meatloaf is never like this.”

“I tried something new. I cooked the onions in beer before putting them into the loaf. There’s also a spicier pork sausage than I usually use.”

“Thank you, Henry,” Polly reached out to touch his arm. “This is sweet. And kind of romantic, too.” She pointed at the candlesticks. “I’m impressed that you could even find those.”

“I just pay attention. I bought the candles. I have no idea where you keep those.”

Polly took another bite, and tried to speak around it, “I can’t believe you did this for me. I figured it was going to be hamburgers and baked potatoes, which would have been awesome, but this is amazing. Wow, thank you.” She picked up his hand and brought it to her lips, kissing it. “Thank you for making me feel special.”

“Awww, shucks, it ain’t nothin,’ ma’am,” he laughed.

They finished the meal and then cleaned up together, laughing as they moved around the kitchen. When everything was cleaned and put away, Polly said, “I have a favor to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been dying to dig into Thomas’s computer and now that I think I might have a clue as to how to begin, I’ve had a million interruptions. Would you mind if I spent some time with that this evening? I’d really like to hear what you think.”

“That would be fine. You know I’m not going anywhere, don’t you?”

“I assumed,” she said, her eyes slitted. “I saw your bag. You know people are going to talk, don’t you?”

“Let them talk. We aren’t living our lives for their approval, are we?”

She reached out and hugged him, “You are so good for me, Henry. Sometimes I forget just how much.”

“Then I’ll do my best to remind you.”

He walked with her over to the sofa, and sat down, then got back up before she could get settled. “I totally forgot!” he said.

“Forgot what?”

“I have dessert, too.” He trotted back to the kitchen.

“You made dessert?” she asked, surprised.

“I didn’t say I
made
dessert,” he poked his head out from the freezer door he’d pulled open. “I said I
have
dessert. I know what my pretty girl likes.” He brandished two ice cream sandwiches in front of his face. “Polly want some ice cream?”

“You and I have been together nearly a year and you haven’t ever used that phrase with me.” She glared at him. “I was doing fine without it.”

“So you don’t want ice cream?” He moved to open the freezer door again.

“No, I want the ice cream! I’m just not a parrot.”

“No, honey, you’re not,” he laughed. “Not at all. So, tell me something else about Thomas Zeller. What kind of information did you land on that makes you think you can put the puzzle together?

Polly was seated cross-legged in the middle of the sofa, her laptop on her legs. “Would you mind grabbing that book?” she asked, pointing to the Poe collection on a bookshelf.

He handed it to her and sat down on her right since Obiwan had taken the space on her left.

Polly opened to the poem
Annabel Lee
and pointed to the tiny heart that had been sketched in the bottom corner. “I didn’t do that. I’m guessing Thomas did one day. I’d pulled this out and he flipped through it, talking about some of the different short stories and poems. I think that’s my key.”

“Key?”

She turned the laptop toward him. “There are thirty three folders here. I counted,” she said when she saw him look at her.” Count the lines in
Annabel Lee
.”

“You’ve already done that. There are thirty-three.”

Polly had marked up her book, something she had never thought she would do to a book, but when her mind started working this puzzle out, she needed it to be written down. She had also numbered the words in each line of the poem as well.

“That seems a little obsessive,” he laughed.

“But I’ve been thinking about this and picturing what he has here and it is going to make sense, I promise. He wanted me to have this disk because he knew I’d think about our conversations.”

“What kind of conversations?”

“He spent a lot of time talking about his first love. He was so young, Henry. Only eighteen. Would you believe he was in Haight-Ashbury during the
Summer of Love
in 1967? I’ve been doing some reading about that. He heard all of those great musicians that summer. He graduated from high school and hitch-hiked down to San Francisco looking for a big life. Even when things started getting really bad, he ended up staying because he didn’t have any other place to go.

“Nelly was about four years older. He was living on the street that summer until he met her. She invited him to move into the house where she was living with six other people. They were high all the time, no one cared where they slept or what they were doing. And he remembered that there were people everywhere. Finally the summer was over and a lot of people left, but he and Nelly stayed.”

“What were they doing?”

“Getting high mostly. He had the best stories of some of those LSD trips. He tried to tell me that it made Poe come alive for him. When I seemed shocked by that, he laughed and told me that reading Poe while tripping was one of the craziest things he’d ever done. It scared him sometimes because he could see it all happening. Anyway, he said that the next two years were pretty awful in the Haight. Something bad happened. He wouldn’t tell me about it, but all of a sudden Nelly was gone and that was the real beginning of his downfall. He managed to get some things written and sold - enough to keep him alive, but most of it was going to drugs and booze. He dried out of the drugs, but couldn’t shake the booze.”

“I can’t imagine living that way, can you?”

“I really can’t. But somehow he did.”

“How did you know this was a puzzle?”             

“One time we talked about ciphers and puzzles, little tidbits authors give to readers without telling them. I wonder how often there are treasures buried in books that readers never uncovered, and the authors went to their graves never telling.”

“So what are you going to do with all of this?”

“Maybe you can help me. I’m going to do some serious counting and associating first of all because I’m not able to figure out … wait.” She looked up. “I’m a moron. Hold up the book for me, would you?”

He did and she glanced back and forth from the book to the computer screen.

“I can’t do this without spreading out on the dining room table unless you let me babble at you,” she said.

“Babble at me. I’m intrigued.”

“Can I tell you a word and then you tell me which line has the first two letters that match my word?”

“What?”

“Look,” she said, pointing to the first file. “Window Dressing. That makes no sense, but the word ‘with’ is the first word of line eleven. That puts it in the second stanza according to the poem.” She opened the file. “And there are nine folders in here. How many words are in that line?”

“Nine,” Henry said. “Wow. How did you figure that out?”

“I love puzzles. And I’ve been processing on this for a while. I know that Thomas isn’t this haphazard in his thinking. It had to be something. Okay, now I have the words ‘In a Small Town.’”

“That’s not helpful,” Henry said. “There are five lines that start with the word ‘in.’”

“Okay, well I have six folders inside.”

“Yeah. Three of these have six words - “in the kingdom by the sea.”

“Okay, I’ll pull that one,” she looked at the laptop “and these four over here.”
She clicked each of them open. “I have one with seven folders …”

“That’s line thirty-two.”

“And one with eight folders.”

“That’s line thirty-three.”

“Both of those are in Stanza Five, so I’ll put them in here,” she said, creating a new folder.

They continued through the process until there were only five folders that didn’t make sense as to their placement. The repetition of the line in the poem wasn’t going to give her enough to solve it. There had to be something more.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to organize the next layer of folders, but at least she had this sorted and she began to feel like she was getting somewhere. She jammed two folders beginning with ‘Of’ and with five interior folders in them into the Stanza Five folder, figuring they could reside there until she got a better understanding of the process. That left her with three folders beginning with ‘In’ and having six words each.

“Ugh,” she said. “I was so excited. Now what?”

“Look inside them. Each of these lines of text is just a little bit different. The first one says, ‘in a kingdom by the sea,’ the second one says ‘in this kingdom by the sea,’ and the third has a parenthesis after the last word. Maybe he will have given you some kind of a clue.”

Polly peered at the folder titles first and separated one away from the other two. “This is easy. It says ‘inappropriate.’ I’m guessing that is the first one.” She put it in the Stanza One folder.

“Oh,” she went on, “He really did make it easy for me. This is the third one. ‘Invaluable (not finance).’ He used the parentheses.” She moved the final two folders to the appropriate place and sat back. “Now I have to figure out what he has in all of these things. It seems so random, but maybe now that it’s in some type of order it will make more sense.”