Urging them to hurry, she went back to the bedside, carrying the cordless phone with her and answering the emergency dispatcher’s continued questions. Boomer sat with his big head on Carla’s blue-jeaned thigh. Carla seemed only barely conscious, occasionally muttering something unintelligible in a breathy tone. “Sorry” was the only word Tara could make out.
“Help is coming. It’s going to be OK,” Tara whispered. Her voice sounded odd, far away. What more could go wrong on this terrible Monday! She wished she knew how to pray. Dampening a cloth she touched it to her boss’s hot forehead, thinking how much the crusty Carla would bristle at such attention if she had been her usual self. “All prickles and stings.” That’s how Alice described her. And Stella Brickson had harrumphed and offered, “You’d need a tank to get through that woman’s defenses!” But Tara recognized something in her new employer—a deep place where pain kept her prisoner as surely as the bars in Gomer’s cage.
At the whine of an approaching ambulance, Boomer sat up, and the dogs in their pens barked and brayed with renewed vigor. Relief flooded Tara as she ran to beckon them. She pulled Boomer back and wrapped her arms around him as the EMTs quickly attended to their patient.
Tara answered their questions as best she could. They strapped Carla to a gurney and took her away. Someone would come to pick up the owl, they told her. It didn’t look quite right, and the bite might have something to do with Carla’s illness. Tara knew that wild birds carried organisms that could be potentially infectious to humans. A person could experience respiratory illness from flu-like symptoms to pneumonia. Some cases could have serious complications.
Trembling, she dialed Annie’s number at Grey Gables. “I’m going to stay here,” she told Annie after briefly describing Carla’s condition. “Vanessa’s off today, and someone needs to see to the animals. I don’t know when they were fed; they’re making a terrible fuss.”
“Thank God you went to the shelter today,” Annie told her. “I’ll call Vanessa and ask her to come out and help too.”
Tara felt herself relax a little as she heard Annie’s quiet, confident voice. An honest heart. Strange, she thought, watching the ambulance dissolve into a tiny distant speck. Carla had treated her rather shabbily when they’d met, but in spite of it, Annie was quick to help when she was in trouble.
Tara grabbed the sheets and blankets that had fallen from the bed. They would need laundering. She began tidying up the messy room, scooping up newspapers and soiled dishes, feeling the invasion of Carla’s privacy as her own. Too late for embarrassment, she told herself dismally. A copy of The New York Times on the crumpled bed lay opened to the daily crossword puzzle, which was nearly finished. Tara had tried one once, but found it too difficult. So Carla Calloway was something of a brain, she thought, opening a window to let in the fresh air. She straightened a curtain panel that had come loose from its mooring.
As she bent to tuck Carla’s slippers under the bed, a bit of yellowed newspaper on the floor caught her eye. She was about to set it on the dresser when something fell out onto the floor. It was a small beaded ring that might have been handmade—tiny red, yellow, and blue beads strung onto plastic wire. Curiously, she opened the folded paper; it was brittle to the touch. Tucked inside was a swirl of black hair—one perfectly coiled tress.
The clipping was no bigger than a postcard, and one short article had been circled in pencil: An unidentified teen arrested earlier this week after stealing H.T. Simmons’s automobile and crashing it into a tree on Ocean Drive remains in custody. The girl’s mother, sole parent and resident of Chelsea, Mass., near Boston, was killed in a traffic accident en route to Stony Point. The girl is being held by juvenile authorities pending contact with other family members. Authorities are not releasing further information at this time.
Other brief articles accompanied the circled story: Lobster catch diminished by successive days of impenetrable fog. Meeting of the Stony Point Historical Society postponed during repairs. Tara searched the clipping, but the date was obscured. Feeling like a voyeur, she refolded the newspaper and tucked in the beaded ring and the swatch of hair. She nudged it gently under the bed near Carla’s slippers.
So Carla was a bit of a romantic too. It was strange to think of the crusty old woman that way. Who did the hair belong to? And who was the teenager who had been arrested? Was it Carla herself who had stolen the car? How tragic to lose one’s mother like that. She pulled the newspaper out again and reread the paragraph, registering the details in her mind. Who was H.T. Simmons? Did he get his car back? What happened to the unidentified teenager whose mother was killed?