She knocked and let herself inside, and Katherine said, “If I’d known you’d stop by, I’d have fired up the Keurig and made coffee.”
Joanna loathed tea. She said, “It’s an impromptu visit. I only decided to annoy you en route.”
“Dear, you couldn’t annoy me if you tried. Well, not since you were sixteen. In those early teen years, you could be a pisser.”
Joanna crossed to the coffeemaker. “Gee, I don’t recall that.”
“How convenient. There’s plenty of lox in the fridge. It’s sugar cured, the kind you like.”
Selecting a single-serving vanilla-bean coffee from a drawer full of choices, Joanna said, “I’ll just have caffeine.”
“The dreams again?”
“I went to bed at ten thirty, woke before three.”
“Sleeping alone for a long period is unhealthy. It causes nightmares among other things.”
“Is that the finding of a peer-reviewed Harvard study, Auntie Kat, or just your personal experience?”
“I worry about you, child. You’re alone and lonely.”
“I don’t recall complaining of loneliness.”
“Not directly. But in so many words. In so many, many words. One can be a feminist and still believe life is better with the right man.”
At sixty-six, Katherine was vibrant, attractive—and planning her third wedding. Her first husband, Bernard, walked out on her thirty-five years earlier when her career became more successful than his. He was the wrong man. Harry married Katherine the year that Joanna graduated college; he was a lovely guy, and they enjoyed eleven years together before cancer took him. A year after Harry passed, Katherine met Saul, a second Mr. Right.
Watching the hot coffee drizzle into her mug, Joanna sighed. “Auntie Kat, men my age are different from those in your generation. A lot of them can’t commit to anything but themselves. This coffee machine is more reliable.”
“But no fun to snuggle with.” In sheeny swishes of scarlet silk, Katherine went to the refrigerator, produced more lox, and put it on the table with a plate and utensils. “A bagel? Cream cheese? Salmon does for the female libido what oysters do for men.”
“Not in my experience,” Joanna said as she brought her coffee to the table and sat opposite her aunt.
Putting aside the newspaper, Katherine said, “Did you dream of the grizzly bear again?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t a nightmare. It didn’t scare me. I picked a bouquet of wildflowers for it.” She stirred coolness into her coffee. “It kills my father, so I give it flowers? What’s with me? Seems sick, doesn’t it?”
Katherine’s blue stare, as clear as Santa Fe skies, fixed on Joanna’s eyes, like a laser reading code. “You loved your father.”
“Well, of course. He was my dad.”
“How well do you remember him?”
“I was so young. And after all this time . . .”
“He was not an outgoing man. Your mother said shy, but I thought . . . well, something else. I believe he married your mother because he was unsure and somehow empty, while she was so centered and complete. Your life at Rustling Willows was idyllic, wasn’t it?”
Joanna shrugged. “It was a beautiful place. Idyllic? I guess so. My memories of it are . . . misty.”
“I was there for a week, when you were seven. I remember it well. The natural beauty. The relaxed pace of life. I’d say it was one step away from paradise.”
“Until it wasn’t.”
Picking up a bagel and spreading cream cheese on it, Katherine said, “I’m not a psychiatrist, and I’ve never played one on TV, but I suspect that to some small extent, subconsciously, you blame your father for leaving you alone, for having to leave the ranch.”
“What sense does that make? He didn’t want to die.”
“The subconscious isn’t always rational, sweetie.” Katherine reached across the table and put the bagel on Joanna’s plate. “The book you’re working on . . . does it draw on any childhood experiences that might have stirred up all this?”
“No. Nothing like that. Anyway, something’s happened that puts the dreams in a different light.”
When Joanna finished recounting the phone call she had received a few hours earlier, Katherine said, “How peculiar. You’re right to be wary of this woman, whoever she might be. There’s a world of scam artists these days. But surely you do remember Jimmy Two Eyes?”
Having picked up what remained of her bagel, Joanna put it down again without taking a bite. “He’s real? You remember him?”