“You have my company if you want it. It is you who has remained hidden these last few weeks, not I. As far as love goes, that takes time. We’d have to build a relationship. Something we’d both be comfortable with,” she said, not wanting to promise him anything she couldn’t stick to.
“Agreed.”
Suddenly, he picked up the mouse and trap, climbed down the staircase, and took it out to the back of the house. He unhooked the mouse from the trap and threw it into the woods so that it sailed through the air farther than she could follow with her eyes. A great sigh of relief left her then and a shiver went up her spine. She certainly hated having mice around. When he handed the mousetrap back to her, she rebaited it and set it behind the shower stall in the tiny bathroom praying that she wouldn’t catch any more mice, but knowing it best that she got rid of any that might be hiding in the walls of her old home.
She heated leftover goulash that night, and they had an amiable conversation on her newest project. Since he’d lived in Nashua all his life, he knew all the homes she worked on. The owners’ names weren’t always familiar, but when she gave street names and house numbers, he recognized them because the houses Ashley worked on were not the modern homes that had gone up during the booms of the 1980’s and 90’s, when Nashua was twice voted best city to live in the United States. Instead they were the houses of his time when there were few homes and Nashua was just a small, suburban town. It was just one hour north of Boston with a primarily French-Canadian, Catholic, working-class mill community that was employed in the textile factories along the Merrimack River.
Part of why Ashley loved her work was because she was a history buff, so she took great pleasure in talking with him about what life was like when he lived. He had purchased his first motor car just two years before he was killed. He and Priscilla used to take Sunday drives in the Model T and enjoyed taking a picnic along with them, so they could stop somewhere along the way to enjoy a long lunch before heading back home.
“Those days were some of the only ones where she seemed totally happy. Nothing else brought a smile to her face. She was always moody, lost in her own thoughts, or crying. But finally, she got pregnant and that seemed to make her happy again.”
“That had to be a nice time for both of you,” Ashley said.
“It was, but I’m sure it’s never quite the same for the father because, after all, the mother has carried the baby inside of her for nine full months. There’s a bond there that can’t be broken. From the moment the baby was born, it was all about diapers, bottles, feedings, rocking, singing, sleeping schedules, being quiet for the baby...on and on she went about the baby. She refused to take our Sunday drives after Nora was born. She said the wind from the drive would be too much for the infant. I thought the fresh air would do her good, but Priscilla disagreed. She disagreed with me on just about everything as far as her baby was concerned.”
“You mean our baby, not her baby, right?”
“Of course, it was ours, but she treated Nora as though she was her creation alone, and I had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about what was good for it is all I meant.”
Ashley noticed he referred to his Nora as “it” and thought it odd for a father to do so. “That had to have been hard,” she said.
“It was. Priscilla was hard. She was ill, really.”
“There’s so much they can do for people with mental illness now. You wouldn’t have had those issues. Perhaps it wouldn’t have come to the point where she would have killed you and been hospitalized for it. Things would have been so different, I’m sure,” Ashley said. Again, she wanted to reach out and touch him, but she couldn’t because her hand would only sink through his aura, and that freaked her out. It was best if she didn’t. Talking with him, having his company, that was enough. Or was it?
The next day, she called Barb and suggested they have a ladies’ night out with some of her friends and Kia from G & J Renovations. “That’s a great plan. I haven’t done that in ages. It’s about time your brother spends some time alone with the kids.” Ashley even called and invited Liz to join them and stay overnight. They hadn’t seen each other since the move. Ashley was thrilled when Liz, too, agreed.
Two nights later, Ashley dressed in high heeled leather boots, a short leather black skirt, and white silk blouse. She felt hot and knew she looked it too. Perry whistled when he saw her. “Wow, women didn’t dress like that when I was alive!” he teased.
“They do now,” she said.
“Are you dressing like that for me? You don’t have to. I already know you’re beautiful,” he said.
“No, actually, I’m going out with Rex’s wife, Liz, I told you, she’s my best friend. She’s staying overnight, so you’ll have to stay hidden unless you want to have her meet you. And we’re going with my sister-in-law, Barbara, and some other lady friends.”
“I’ll stay in the carriage house while she’s here. Where are you going to?”
“Some clubs, I think,” Ashley answered.
“Women’s clubs late at night?”
“No, they’re dance clubs. We’re going dancing.”
“With men? You said the women were married.”
“Liz and Barb won’t dance with any guys; they are married and wouldn’t want to piss off their husbands. But women dance with women. And we single ladies will dance with whomever we want to.”
“Even you?”
“Yes, Perry, even me. You and I aren’t married.”
He hung his head and his shoulders slumped. “I wish I could do something about that.”
“But that can’t happen; you have to realize that, right?”
“I do,” he said. “Enjoy your night with your friends.”
The doorbell rang then. “That will be Liz now,” Ashley said, and Perry walked out of the room looking like he’d just been sent to time out.
Not thinking twice about it, Ashley greeted Liz with the excitement she felt, led her to the largest of the guest rooms, and gushed over how wonderful she looked. It would be a great night for the women to cut loose and catch up.
Chapter Twenty-one
There were six ladies in all and they went bar hopping that night in Manchester because the scene in Nashua was more subdued than what they were hoping for. They drank and danced and Emily, Barb’s friend, was seven months pregnant, so she was their designated driver and drove them around in the family mini-van making them feel both safe and dorky. But they didn’t care. At Club Fuse, the music was so loud they couldn’t hear each other, but the vibrations simply got under their skin and they couldn’t stop dancing. While they mostly stuck together, every once in a while one of the ladies was picked off by a man in the crowd who asked her to dance. Ashley was one of those.
“Single girls must give off a different vibe. They know you’re available,” Liz teased, “Nobody’s approached this mother of three.”
“It could be your wedding band,” Ashley said.
Liz looked down at her left hand, a bit tipsy from too many bloody Marys and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s it. It’s not my stretch marks. They can’t see those.” They all laughed and called the waitress for another round. Emily drank ginger ale all night and made frequent trips to the ladies’ room.