Chapter 37
Pink shot a glance up the hall. “Aw, hell,” he said. “Mama? I got to get going. Where’d you run off to?”
She came out of her private room.
“What is it you wanted, Mama?”
She walked past him and motioned for him to sit.
“Mama, I need to get going. My damn eyes are starting to feel like sand pits,” he said, plopping down in the lounger. “And if that ain’t enough, Isabelle’s about to make me crazier than a sprayed roach. I ain’t even had a chance to tell you her latest nonsense.” Pink hadn’t thought about Isabelle in the last couple hours, but now it seemed she was living rent-free in his head. What would make a woman say the crazy shit she’d told him? he wondered. How could she even conjure up such a notion? It was beyond him.
“Pink, I want you to do me a favor,” his mother said.
“Sure, Mama, but I may need to stay here tonight. Isabelle’s lost her mind. You know what she told me? I can’t even believe I’m telling you this. She’s been calling me all damn night to tell me—”
“Pink. I need your attention.”
Pink crooked his arm over his other shoulder and scratched an itch at the center of his back. “Yeah, Mama, I’m listening.”
“Don’t repeat what I’m about to tell you.”
Pink looked at her.
“Mrs. Stage . . .” his mother said. “Mrs. Stage is a very disturbed woman. I’m worried about her, Pink. I called Loudon’s office and left a message while you were eating supper. I told him to come by in the morning to fetch her. She needs professional help. She shouldn’t be in that cabin alone. I’m afraid she’ll end up like her husband.”
“She’s got her own people, Mama, back in Atlanta. Let them handle her. We got our own nut logs to deal with . . . like Isabelle.”
“Pink, listen to what I’m telling you. Mrs. Stage believes she followed a light in the woods and somehow ended up in some other dimension or something.”
“Whew!” Pink said. “I should get her and Clarence together. He’s in some other dimension too. They’d be happier than a three-legged dog in a ball-licking contest.”
“Pink! Why do you say such things?”
“Sorry, Mama.”
“Mrs. Stage experienced a terrible trauma with the death of her daughter . . . and now her husband. She’s delusional. I’m not sure why they released her from the hospital.”
“What’s this got to do with us?”
“She came to us for answers. She came to us for help. We need to help her, Pink.”
Pink shook his head. He didn’t share his mama’s altruism, and he didn’t believe he was put here to save anybody. He saw folks out there trying to help other folks when they couldn’t even help themselves. “Blind leading the blind,” his daddy used to say. Pink felt he’d be lucky to save himself, much less anyone else.
“After you drive her back up to her cabin, I want you to go with her. Into the woods. Tonight. And I want you—”
“Tonight? In the damn snow? Mama, I can barely keep my brain working as it is, I’m so damn tired. I ain’t going down no damn mountain in the middle of the damn night in no damn snowstorm!”
“Pink, go with her. Make sure she’s doesn’t hurt herself and bring her back here. Once she sees there is no strange light, no mysterious cabins—just a hill and my house down here—she’ll have to accept reality.”
“Then what?” Pink asked.
“Then she can sleep here, on the couch, till Loudon comes to fetch her in the morning.”
Pink shot up from the chair, pulling his fingers into fists. “Where the hell will I sleep? I can’t go home. You have no idea the shit I been through the past few days. I got Mrs. Stage telling me I killed my wife. I got crazy rednecks shooting holes in my upholstery, making me jump off bridges. I got Clarence spraying his damn toes with jock itch powder, and I got Isabelle calling me every damn three minutes to tell me I’m her damn blood brother! Now I know it was a full moon the other night, but right now my life’s got more nuts in it than a squirrel’s nest!”
Mattie sat back in the couch, her hands folded in her lap. “I need you to do this, Pink. I want you to go with her. Bring her back here safe.”
Pink shot away from his mother and went to the window. He looked out at his Suburban in the driveway, wondering how much it was going to cost to fix his window. He’d never had to replace an electric one before.
“I don’t know why I can’t just take her back to her cabin and leave her,” he said. “She’s none of my business. Yours neither.”
“Because I asked, Pink.” His mother wrapped her arms around him at the window and hugged him. “I love you, Pink.”
He scratched behind his ear. “Aw, hell, Mama, why do you have to get involved in other folks’ business?” He turned in her arms and returned the hug, pulling her to his chest, planting a kiss on the top of her head. For a second he thought she was crying. “You okay, Mama?”
“Yes, baby. Maybe tomorrow, Pink, you can help me take down the circle, and I’ll cook you a nice, big lunch.”
Chapter 38
The drive to the cabin took longer than normal, the road hidden under more than a foot of snow. Michelle gripped the armrest when the Suburban’s tires slipped, then caught, slipped again, then caught, the rear end shifting before the tread found traction, jerking the vehicle forward. A few times, the front end slid and Michelle thought they might crash into the trees lining the edge of the road. Pink kept the wheel steady as he crawled the big truck up the mountain, eyes straight ahead, not saying a word. Snow cut past the windshield. Pink’s silence made her nervous. She didn’t know him well, but she knew he liked to talk.
When they arrived at the cabin, Michelle was shocked to see Darcy’s Explorer in the driveway. She felt a moment’s relief that her sister hadn’t abandoned her, followed by the dismay of knowing Darcy wouldn’t approve of what Michelle was about to do.
When they got out, Pink knocked his fist on the hood of Darcy’s vehicle as he walked past. “Looks like you have company,” he said.
Michelle walked up on the deck. The cabin was dark, and Michelle wondered if Darcy was asleep, if she should wake her. Why? she thought. What would be the point? Michelle padded through the snow to the far railing. Pink followed.
“Mama says you got some business down there,” he said, walking up beside her, brushing snow off the rail to rest his hands on the wood. “Wants me to go with you.”