Grave Concern by Judith Millar Read Free Book Online

world. You’re an independent woman. What is this all about?”
    Kate put her head down on the table, hiding her face.
    Mary put her hand on Kate’s hair. Gently she said, “Well, dear. Maybe you could reframe it. Well, let’s see, as in: Teens don’t fall in love. They fall in lust . How long did you know the guy — a few months? Weeks? Kate, Kate. You’re a grown woman. The real world isn’t the movies, girl. That movie-love is a crock. Seems to me like you’re Ali McGraw, stuck back in Love Story , and you can’t get out.”
    â€œExactly!” whined Kate. “Where’s the escape hatch?”
    Conversation continued in this vein, until Mary took a spoon and scraped some screech along Kate’s tongue. “Here, have some of this here special-formula Newfie medicine. Now let’s change the subject, dear. What’re you doing for Christmas?”
    â€œI don’t know. Working, I guess.”
    â€œWorking! You’re not hanging out at a graveyard on Christmas Day, I don’t care what your loony-tune clients are thinking. And surely old geezer Gwyneth isn’t going to make you deliver flowers on the day itself. Give us a break, girl. Come up to my place. You’d be a welcome face. Well. Not with those bruises for eyes. But you know what I mean. It’ll just be me and Ned Nickers.”
    Mary lived on a small acreage just west of town. Ned Nickers was Mary’s horse.

    Christmas dawned bright and sunny, but the sky soon clouded over, and large snowflakes began to fall. Kate lay in her childhood bed in her old bedroom (she still couldn’t bring herself to move into the master) a long time, staring out the window, thinking about Ned Nickers. Mary had rescued him from certain glue-dom when, on an office visit, an old farmer up the highway had hinted his intentions for the horse. The name, Ned Nickers, kept knocking about in Kate’s mind. Why so familiar? Every time Mary said the name, it struck a faint note, but Kate could never chase the echo down. Now she had.
    Ned Nickers … son. Nickerson! Of course! Nancy Drew’s boyfriend, that fine, upstanding lad. The one who showed up conveniently when needed, but otherwise obligingly buggered off. How did Miss Drew do that? How did she snag the rich lawyer father, the sixteenth-birthday convertible, the low-maintenance boyfriend? You had to give it to her. Miss Drew, though blonde, was never dumb.
    Okay, Miss Drew, thought Kate. I, too, have an absent boyfriend, absent in fact if not in my head. So maybe you are not so much better off, after all. And, despite the recent blip on my emotional radar, with the recent-ancient demise of that same one-true-love, I have to tell you, Miss Drew, my life overall is pretty good.
    Kate reviewed the positives in her head. She had Mary as a friend. She had her parents’ mortgage-free house, bequeathed to her on their demise (if you could ignore the permanent shadow of the demise itself). She had a kind-of career, a “casual” job to break even, and a plan for business diversification and expansion. What more could a girl (okay, middle-aged woman) want? Well, except for a way to stop the leakage of her pitiful nest egg to incredible property taxes, criminal wine prices, and outrageous repairs on her parents’ ageing house, the latest a full retrofitting of plumbing occasioned by a leak under the bathroom floor?
    What more, other than these, could a person want? To belong. That’s what. Kate had to admit she still felt something of a stranger here, the place had changed so much while she’d been gone. Yes, it still looked much the same physically. But unlike in Kate’s day, the roads were largely empty of kids aimlessly roaming or noisily playing kick the can. Too, the place had lost its air of pulling together. Leadership, clear direction, seemed to be lacking. Recreational clubs were struggling. Ditto the local merchants