It took every ounce of strength I had to curb my knee-jerk reaction and slam on the brakes. Swerve to the side. Hit something. I bit down and braked slowly as we drove through the woman. After checking traffic, I pulled into an empty parking lot and got out. She was gone again.
No way was I playing this game all day. I’d kill someone at the rate I was going. So I crossed my arms, crossed my ankles, and leaned against Misery in wait. After another minute or two, the woman appeared again. She materialized right in front of Misery, looked around as though trying to gain her bearings, then disappeared again. I rounded the front of my Jeep and waited. This time when she appeared, I gently took hold of her arm.
She blinked, then furrowed her brows, squinted her eyes, presumably against my brightness, and looked up at me.
“Hi,” I said softly about a microsecond before she hauled her foot back and kicked me in the shin so hard, it brought tears to my eyes. I let go of her, took hold of my shin, and hopped around, cursing under my breath. After gathering myself, I turned and glared at her. “That had to hurt your toes.” She was barefoot, after all. “Please tell me that hurt your toes.”
“Where are you taking him?” she demanded, her wrinkled face, like cracked porcelain, puckering in anger. She raised a fist at me, reminding me very much of Vera from the yard sale.
“Your name isn’t Esther, is it?” I asked. She could have been the sister they were waiting for.
“My name is none of your concern, hussy. You give him back this minute.”
Hussy? “Hashtag color-me-confused,” I said her. “And this week’s insanity award goes to the crazy lady with the blue hair.”
“I ain’t crazy, and you give him back. I heard about women like you.”
She eyed me up and down like I repulsed her. I was horridly offended.
“No. I’m not giving him back.” I leaned in and said through my teeth still gritting in pain, “You can’t have him.” Then I frowned in thought. “Who?”
“Like you don’t know.”
I had a thousand comebacks, but none of them made sense. One can only say things like Your mama and Stick a sock in it in certain situations. So I gave up on the smart-ass route.
“Look, little crazy lady, I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
She focused on something over my shoulder, and I looked back at Mr. Andrulis.
“Wait, Mr. A? He’s yours?” I asked, suddenly hopeful.
Her anger evaporated the minute she looked at my naked dead man. “We were married over fifty years ago. And I catch him in a car with a hussy. After all this time!” She broke down and sobbed into her fists. In the span of sixty seconds, she went from angry to nostalgic to grief-stricken.
“You didn’t happen to be on medication when you died, did you? Perhaps something in an antipsychotic?”
Her gaze slid up over her fists. And back to anger.
“Look,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He’s only here because he’s been waiting for you.” That was an educated guess. He’d never told me why he was there. Wait, maybe it was to get away from his spouse. Maybe he’d come to me seeking refuge. That would suck since I just handed him over to her.
I walked her around to the passenger door, suddenly realizing to my utter mortification we had an audience. Correction, since the onlookers could hardly see the little crazy lady, I and I alone had an audience. Wonderful. I opened Mr. Andrulis’s door and put a hand on his arm to hopefully draw him to me. With his wife close by, it could work this time.
And it did. He slowly turned toward me, then glanced over at his wife.
“Charles?” she said.
Luckily I realized she was talking to him and not me before I answered.
She stepped closer and I moved out of the way. “Charles, what are you doing with this hussy?”
Oh. Em. Gee.
“After all these years—”
Dawning realization and a knowing smile crept across his face. He lifted a hand and wiped a tear off her cheek.
They didn’t say anything else. They embraced and hugged for several minutes as I surveyed the damage to the side of Misery. Freaking light pole came out of nowhere. Fortunately, the scratches were very superficial. Surely they could just be buffed out.
My audience, which consisted of three kids on Huffy bikes, stood waiting for me to explode again and argue with air, their phones at the ready. I so did not want to go viral. Praying they hadn’t thought to record my earlier confrontation with Mrs. Andrulis, I went about my business, ignoring them. But any second now, I was going to have to explain to the Andrulises who I was and what I was and let them know they could cross through me if they wanted to. I’d have to pull the talking-into-the-phone routine. But before it even came to that, they were through.