Killer Pancake

I didn’t move. “Claire, then? You didn’t really know her, although I know you worry about Julian—”

He shot upright suddenly, his brown hair askew, his face pale with rage. “Why are you so nosy? Why do you have to know about everything?”

“Sorry, hon,” I said, and meant it. When he dropped back down on the mattress without saying more, I asked, “Want the curtains closed?” He didn’t answer and I backtracked toward the door.

“Wait.” His voice was muffled by the pillow. Slowly he sat up. He looked at the wall with his fifth-grade drawings of wildflowers, made during an intensely lonely period, the painful time before Tom came into our lives and well before Julian became Arch’s personal hero. “Could you close the door, Mom?”

I did as directed. Arch gave me a fierce, guilty look.

“I wanted Claire to leave,” he said harshly. “I hated her.”

“Why? You met her only once—”

“So? Julian was always with her or thinking about her or on the telephone with her, or something. We never had any fun anymore. I wanted her to go back to Australia.” He faced the drawings again. “Now I’m being punished for wanting her gone.”

I hate feeling so helpless. “I may not know much, Arch, but that doesn’t sound like the way punishment works.” He shook his head and refused to look at me. I went on. “Claire’s death wasn’t just a terrible accident. Somebody ran her down on purpose.”

He was silent, his eyes on his drawings, his face expressionless. Then he muttered, “I still feel bad.”

“Then help Julian over the next few days, especially when I go down to work the food fair. He’ll need your company now more than ever.”

He hesitated, then said in a resigned voice, “Yeah, okay.” After a moment he asked, “Do you think Julian will ever find another girlfriend? I mean, sort of the way you found Tom after things didn’t work out with Dad?”

It was so tempting to give him an easy answer. I said softly, “Arch, I don’t know.”

He shook his head mournfully. “Okay, Mom,” my son said finally, “it’s not helping to talk to you. Would you please just leave?”

Storms ripped through the mountains that night. Thunder boomed overhead, echoed down Cottonwood Creek, and seemed to shake the walls of our home. I woke and saw lightning flicker across our bedroom. The flashes were so constant that it was difficult to tell when one ended and another began. Rain pelted the roof and washed noisily down the gutters. I slipped out of bed to close our bedroom curtains, and found myself mesmerized by the storm. Torrents of muddy water gushed around the vehicles parked on our street, including a pickup truck blocking the end of our driveway.

As a lightning flash faded, I hesitated. Did a light turn on and then quickly off in the pickup? I narrowed my eyes. The storm slapped rain against the window. It was an unfamiliar truck; I didn’t recognize it as belonging to one of our neighbors. But people had summer guests all the time, especially in Colorado, where we were usually spared the heat that afflicts the rest of the country. In the midst of the storm’s violence, the truck was dark and still. I stared through the slashes of raindrops and decided the light was something I’d imagined.

A wave of water spewed up over the curb and surged toward Aspen Meadow’s Main Street. This summer gullywasher would dump tons of mud and gravel on Aspen Meadow’s paved roads. It would leave in its wake deltas of stone and a river of caked dirt. Driving after one of these torrents is invariably slow and treacherous. I sighed and wondered if Alicia, my supplier, would be able to get her truck up the street, to park anywhere close to the house in the morning. Especially if the pickup was still blocking the driveway.

When the tempest seemed to be abating, I glanced at the digital clock. But the clock face was dark. The storm had probably taken the electricity out. I fell into bed next to Tom’s warm and inviting body. Incredibly, he had slumbered sonorously through it all. But when I inadvertently woke him by touching his foot, we had a deliciously stormy half-hour to ourselves.

With the power out, the usual artificial reminders of morning—ringing alarms, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee—were absent. Luckily, Tom seems to possess an internal clock I dimly registered his departure when watery morning sunshine slanted through the bedroom windows. During a homicide investigation, he always leaves at sunup for the investigative team’s strategy meetings, and returns home late. He phoned after a few hours, when I was moving slowly through the end of my yoga routine. He wanted to make sure I was okay, and that I knew the electricity was off. Yes, he’d been able to back out of the driveway, he said when I asked about the pickup, but I should be careful to avoid the mud on Main Street. I caught sight of my own short-statured, disheveled-haired, stupid-happy reflection in the mirror when I hung up. Living with someone who tried to take care of me still brought unexpected pleasure.