Night Shift(29)

“It’s beautiful,” Anna said, through Manfred. “Agnes, Mama’s ring . . . it’s in the sewing machine.” Manfred shook his head, puzzled. But that was what Anna was saying. “In the button box?” he said. “Does that make sense?”

Evidently, it did. Agnes didn’t wait to see if Anna had any other words for her. She was on her feet and hurrying into the next room, trailing exclamations like scarves behind her. There were sounds of vigorous rummaging. While Manfred and Linda waited, two tears slid down Linda’s cheeks, and she blotted them hastily on a napkin. She said, “Thank you,” very quietly.

A second later, Agnes burst back into the kitchen, carrying an ancient dark blue metal tin that had once held King Leo, whatever that was. She spilled the contents out on the table.

“Wow,” said Manfred involuntarily. There were buttons of every description imaginable on the table, many of them far older than he was. Some were metal, some covered in velvet, some were carved wood, some modern plastic. Agnes bent over them and began stirring them with an urgent finger.

“There,” said Linda, who had gotten interested in the search. “There it is!”

Sure enough, a pearl ring lay jumbled in with the buttons.

Agnes couldn’t stop repeating “Oh my God,” and Manfred was feeling pretty damn proud of himself. A genuine, tangible, result of his work! This didn’t happen often.

Agnes, the ring on her little finger, was turning it this way and that, exulting. Impulsively, she took Manfred’s hand and Linda’s, and said, “What a wonderful day this is!” But the link between the three of them flung Manfred back into the realm of spirits, and he was abruptly confronted with his grandmother.

He was horrified.

Seeing Xylda again, as a spirit, was almost unbearable. She wasn’t in color, which was very strange. He could only imagine the red of her hair, which was being whipped around her head. A wind was battering at her; soon it would rip her away. Xylda was desperate to tell him something. She reached out as if she were trying to physically grab his shoulders so she could hold on long enough to deliver her message. “Watch out,” she said. “Watch out. Get away from the crossroad! It’s waking up!”

And then she was gone, and the kitchen was silent, and both Linda and Agnes were looking at him with alarm. “I’m sorry,” Manfred said. “I hope I didn’t scare you?”

Agnes said, “You just looked scared and pretty upset for a minute. We didn’t know what was happening with you.”

“I saw someone I didn’t expect to see,” Manfred answered honestly. “It shook me up. I . . . was surprised. I’m fine, now.” He forced a smile.

Agnes was ready to be reassured, and Linda too absorbed in her own problems, to spend a lot of time worrying about Manfred. They both accepted his explanation, and returned to the topic of the ring.

Manfred could tell that Agnes was not only delighted to discover the ring, but also proud that her whole belief in spiritualism had been validated by the ring’s reappearance. Since anything else he told Agnes would have been anticlimactic, Manfred extricated himself slowly and politely from Agnes’s hospitality. He took a moment to give Linda a quick hug. He was sure he would not see her again.

Because Agnes was so thrilled, it took Manfred a bit longer to actually get into his car and leave. With some relief, he returned to the main street, hoping to meet Teacher and get back to Midnight without further incident. Manfred had had a text from Teacher: I’m at Mary Lee’s Café. Pie still good.

Manfred entered to find Teacher sitting at the counter, a big metal box on the floor beside him. It certainly looked heavy enough to contain tools. he’d purchased. Manfred sat down with Teacher long enough to wolf down a sandwich, and then they were on their way.

Manfred had a lot to think about. Fortunately, Teacher took the hint when Manfred answered a couple of questions in a clipped way. Drawing out his cell phone, Teacher played a game most of the way back, at least in the areas where he had service.

When they reached Midnight, Manfred dropped Teacher off in front of his trailer, glad to have done a nice thing for Teacher but even more glad to have completed that nice thing and gotten rid of him. Manfred was itching to get back inside his own house, sit at his own computer, and catch up on the work he’d missed while he was in Killeen.

He was almost at the point of having to hire another “Manfredo” to help him with the website, because if he slackened he had to hump to get back to keeping abreast.

Even with Manfred’s plunge into work, it seemed to take a very long time for the sky to darken outside. Finally, he felt so tired he stopped working. Though Manfred was preoccupied with his vision of Xylda and her alarming message, he also felt relieved to have discharged his debt to Magdalena. She was not a woman he’d wanted to owe, especially since she was his lawyer. Manfred knew he’d hear from Magdalena. He knew that Agnes would call her daughter today, assuming she hadn’t been on the phone the second he’d backed out of her driveway.