What We Find (Sullivan's Crossing, #1)(87)

“She did?”

“Didn’t she tell you? I bet she told you and you just forgot.”

“They took Sierra, you know. Took her away.”

“I’m going to look into that,” Cal said, but his mother had told him the truth—Sierra had checked herself into a hospital. “But first, let’s get you something to eat and while you’re eating, we can talk about fixing up the house. It needs some paint, that’s for sure.”

Jed Jones sighed heavily. “This could be a mistake.”

“Nah, I checked around. We’re good. You’re safe in the house.”

He slowly descended the ladder from the loft. He was as skinny as Frank Masterson. His dad had always been so thin, losing interest in food sometimes. When he stepped down, Cal hugged him. “Feeling a little stressed, are you?”

“What do you expect, with all the pressure?” Jed replied.

“I guess it’s reasonable. What’ve you been working on here?”

“Another lecture and a design. I have a deadline and I’m behind.”

“The class could be postponed while you catch up,” Cal said, though of course there was no class.

“It’s not a class!” Jed snapped. “It’s a briefing, for God’s sake. It’s important!”

Cal thought if he unrolled those large papers he might see some amazing drawings—machines or solar systems or even spaceships, and they would look fabulously complex and perfect. And completely useless. He grew up being told Jed held several PhD’s in law, engineering, psychology, chemistry, etc. In point of fact, he wasn’t entirely sure of Jed’s level of education. He eventually came to find out that when Jed’s schizophrenia began to take hold, when he was a young man studying prelaw in college, his family rejected him, left him to his young wife to deal with. For that reason, Marissa had never taken him back to his relatives in Pittsburgh and none of the kids had ever met that side of the family.

Marissa’s parents did what they could to help, however.

“I stand corrected,” Cal said. “But you know when you’re under pressure you don’t think as clearly. You probably need sleep. I know you need a shower and food.”

“I need to be left alone! Why doesn’t anyone leave us alone? We never broke the rules!”

Cal wondered, as he often had, what things must be like in Jed’s world. He kept his arm around his father, leading him to the house. He was a little embarrassed that Jed had his foil cap on and wished he could bring Maggie a father more like Sully, a healthy, wiseass, happy, cognitive person. Although he wanted to yank the foil cap off his head, he stubbornly didn’t. Maggie should know how it is around here.

They walked in the door and there was a sandwich and glass of lemonade on the table. Jed jumped when he saw Maggie.

“It’s okay, Dad. This is Maggie. My girlfriend. She’s visiting with me.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Jones,” she said.

“It’s Dr. Jones,” he said, correcting her. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe.”

“It’s all right now, Dad. I told you, I checked around. No one’s here but Mom. And now us.”

“I’ll be careful, Dr. Jones,” Maggie said.

Mollified, Jed sat down at the table and applied himself to the sandwich.

Maggie washed her hands at the sink. “Marissa,” she said. “You’re a little low on supplies. Would you like me to take you to the grocery store now that Cal is here with his dad?”

“Oh, thank you, but no. I’ll go when the check comes. We get by eating out of the garden till the check comes, then Jed’s fine at the farm while I go. It’s just a few more days.”

“Tell you what, let’s go now. Cal will cover the cost—it’ll make him feel useful. That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Cal?” Maggie asked. “I could take your mom to the grocery store now while you spend a little time with your dad?”

“You sure you want to do that?”

“There’s a grocery in Pratt, isn’t there?” she asked Marissa.

“You don’t want to go to that one,” she said. “The prices are terrible there.”

“That’s okay this one time, Marissa. So, should we go while Cal visits with his dad?”

“Are you sure?” Marissa asked a little nervously.

“We’re sure, Mom,” Cal said. “Go get some groceries.”

*



So their visit began. Maggie and Marissa went to the small grocery where Marissa was greeted familiarly and kindly by a few people. They asked after Dr. Jones and she replied that he was fine and staying busy. When they got home with a few bags of groceries they found Jed had washed and was sitting in his chair, writing in one of his notebooks, rocking sometimes, muttering as he wrote.

Maggie assured Cal that the trip to the store had gone well and asked him how things were at home. “As normal as they ever get. We can leave now.”

Cal helped put the groceries away, hugged his mother and promised to be back the next day.

The next morning, after breakfast, they stopped at a store to buy paint and supplies, and returned to the farm. Cal talked Jed into helping him sand and paint the porch and the front of the house, while Maggie spent most of her day with Marissa, getting to know her and seeing the garden, which was only a small patch but impressive. In the second bedroom of their house Marissa had a loom and showed Maggie some of her decorative weaving, something she’d been doing for decades. The other thing she kept in that weaving room was a bookshelf stuffed with books, all of which had been read to death. It reminded Maggie of Cal’s treasured books that he read and read and read again.