The Older Woman Read Free

health—four, if you threw in Rita.

    Sounded like a plan to him.

    It took him a while to get down the staircase. The effort made his legs hurt a lot more than he anticipated, and he kept having to stop and get over it. He didn’t see Mrs. Bee anywhere. The front door was wide open, but the screen was latched. She hadn’t gone out on the porch.

    He could hear the rain beating down on the granite steps outside. Mrs. Bee didn’t like air-conditioning in her part of the house, and it was hot in the front hallway. An old brass-and-wood ceiling fan wobbled overhead, but it was way too muggy and humid for it to help much.

    He stood for a moment at the kitchen door, then hobbled inside to the far window. The toe of his left shoe kept dragging on the red and white linoleum tiles. Not a good sign. He was a lot more tired than he thought. He finally got himself situated in front of the window and moved the fruit-print curtain aside so he could see out.

    “Is Katie still out there?” Mrs. Bee asked behind him.

    “Yeah,” he said, relieved that a little old lady creeping up on him like that hadn’t made him jump.

    “It’s none of our business if she wants to sit in the rain,” Mrs. Bee said, peering past his elbow.

    “Right,” he agreed without hesitation. His opinion exactly.
    “But…”

    He could feel Mrs. Bee looking at him, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might have been watching out the window, too, and no way in hell was he going to walk into a loaded opening like that.

    “Calvin?” Mrs. Bee said after a moment. She sounded every bit the schoolteacher she used to be. Class was in session, and he had just been called on.

    “No way, Mrs. Bee,” he said, trying to stay ahead of her.

    “Somebody really ought to do something.”

    “You don’t mean ‘somebody,’ Mrs. Bee. You mean me.”

    “Yes, Calvin, I do. I can’t go. It will look as if I’m meddling. If you go, it’ll just look as if you don’t know any better.”

    He glanced at her.

    “Well, it will,” she said. “Men don’t know about these things—especially soldiers. It’s all that hunt the hill, get the hill, way of doing things. She knows you, Calvin. She likes you. She’s not going to be offended if you go.”

    He didn’t know about any of that. All he knew was that he’d had more than one occasion to see Meehan when she was “offended,” and it wasn’t something he cared to repeat.
    “Mrs.
    Bee—”

    “It’s just so…worrisome,” she interrupted. “Katie sitting out there in the rain like that. She had that bad spell of pneumonia last winter. She ought not be out there in the wet.”

    “It’s July, Mrs. Bee. I think she’ll be all right.”

    “Maybe,” Mrs. Bee said. “Maybe not. Couldn’t you go and shoo her back inside or something? It might be, if she saw you coming, she’d just get up and go in by herself, anyway—and you wouldn’t have to do anything. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

    No, he didn’t think, but he didn’t say so. His legs hurt. He was tired. And pineapple-coconut-cream-cake hungry. He looked out the window. It was raining as hard as ever, and Meehan was still sitting there. He drew a quiet breath and glanced at Mrs. Bee. Her whole frail little body was saying one thing and one thing only— Please!

    Ah, damn it.

    “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go shoo her. She’s not going to like it—I’m going to catch hell for it. But I’ll go.”

    “I’ll get the umbrella,” Mrs. Bee said, scurrying away.

    He peered through the window again, hoping that Meehan would be gone. She wasn’t.

    Mrs. Bee came back with a big multicolored golf umbrella. He took it and hobbled toward the back door.

    “You’re a good boy, Calvin,” she said as he stepped out into the rain.

    Doyle opened the umbrella. He could feel Mrs. Bee’s eyes on him all the way across the backyard. Which was just as well, because he probably