Coming Home To You

CHAPTER TWO

DAPHNE’S MORTIFICATION SWELLED when she viewed the damage to the motor home and the restaurant. One of the Tim’s windows was webbed with cracks, and the RV’s fender was twisted and stuck well into the bashed brickwork. At least Fran owned The Stagecoach, as they’d dubbed it, so they just had to deal with the insurance company.

A uniformed officer was taking pictures, and so was the Tim Hortons man. Should she be, too? Then again, to what end? Responsibility—hers and Fran’s—was undeniable.

Mr. Greene disappeared once more into the restaurant. She moved to follow him when Corporal Grayson said, “Can I get your full name, Daphne?”

Right. Business before doughnuts. “Daphne Merlotte.” She automatically spelled it for him.

“Date of birth?”

Daphne stated it, inexplicably relieved that Mr. Greene wasn’t there to hear she was five months shy of fifty. Daphne had always dismissed Fran’s claim that she barely looked forty, but on this particular occasion, considering what an appalling impression Mr. Greene no doubt already had of her, she hoped he’d give her the benefit of the doubt when it came to her age. If he thought of her at all.

“Address?”

She gave her Halifax one, and Corporal Grayson moved on to get the same information about Fran. Daphne was rattling off the address when Mr. Greene emerged, balancing a tray of coffees and a box of Timbits.

“Here,” Mr. Greene said, handing her a coffee. “Have one.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Go on,” Mr. Greene said, taking the Timbits box. “The tray’s heavy. You’d be doing me a favor.”

He smiled at her, making laugh lines crinkle around his eyes and his tanned face lift and lighten. His expression was one of pure joy and warmth, so unexpected on a man, at least in her experience with the anemic-looking professors of her faculty.

She obediently took the coffee and two mini cups of cream. “Thank you,” she said.

He held out the box of mini doughnuts.

“I couldn’t possibly.” Her stomach squeaked an objection to her objection.

He must’ve heard because he smiled again. Oh, that smile. She took a Timbit.

She popped the sugary ball into her mouth because, of course, it was the doughnut making her mouth water.

Mr. Greene offered the box to the officer. “How about you, Paul?”

“Mel,” Corporal Grayson said, “we already have to deal with the stereotype of police liking doughnuts without you perpetuating it.”

Mel! Mel, fell, sell, tell, well. Mr. Greene—Mel—Mel Greene shook the box invitingly at the officer.

“Okay, one. So you’ll leave me alone.” Corporal Grayson took two.

“I’ll take the rest and the coffees up to the ladies,” Mel said. Of course, Fran. If anyone, her godmother had proved how much she needed a coffee. “She likes her coffee with cream and sugar,” Daphne called after him.

“Got it,” he said, not breaking stride.

He entered the RV before she could thank him, another uniformed police officer right behind him. Through the shaded window, Daphne watched Mel and the stiff solidness of the police officer move to the bedroom. More authority to further enliven Fran.

Corporal Grayson brushed the sugar off his shirtfront. “Could you tell me what happened here?”

Daphne dropped her gaze. She’d found only her flip-flops under the bed, and her toes curled from the mild morning chill—or from her guilt. “I—I can’t tell you much, really. We stopped last night in Red Deer and planned—”

“In an RV park? Which one?” he asked.

Daphne tried to remember. The campsites were all running together as if Canada was nothing more than a string of campgrounds. “The one by the river?”

Corporal Grayson nodded and gestured for Daphne to continue.

“We departed early this morning while I was still sleeping.” She’d woken to books thudding off her bed as The Stagecoach swung onto the highway.

“How did Fran Hertz—”

“She’s my godmother.” It somehow felt important to state that Fran was more than a driver or a traveling companion or a full name on a police report.

“How did your godmother seem to you at that time?”

Mel Greene emerged from the motor home and walked its length to the rear. The other police officer slid into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The Stagecoach shuddered to life.

“Do you intend to impound the RV?” Daphne couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice.

“Just moving it out of the way,” he said.

“Oh.”

“We were talking about your godmother,” he prompted.

“As well as can be expected,” she said automatically.

The officer paused his writing.

“That is, she seemed fine. She was talking. Coherent.”

“How did she look?”

Daphne curled her toes completely under and confessed yet again to her inattention. “I—I couldn’t say. I—I was in bed.”

From the back of the RV, Mel called for the police officer to put the vehicle into Reverse. As he pulled back, the front grille severed from the restaurant wall with a loud scraping and a crumbling of bricks. The Tim Hortons employee took more photos of the wall and the front bumper, clearly to be used against Fran in a court of law.

If Fran was still alive to contest it.

“Sorry. You were in bed?” Corporal Grayson said.

Daphne pointed to the approximate place in the moving Stagecoach. “I sleep on a hide-a-bed right behind the driver’s seat. I don’t drive so I decided to read.” Today she’d reached for the nearest book, which happened to be Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

“So...when did you notice that your godmother’s driving had become erratic?”

About a week into our trip.

There’d been a terrifying incident where Fran had nearly driven them off a steep riverside embankment in Quebec when she’d momentarily closed her eyes. After that, Daphne had wrung a promise from Fran that she would drive for only two hours at a time and never in the afternoon, when she was especially drowsy. Daphne was clear that if Fran once, just once, broke her promise, they would cancel the trip then and there. No doubt taken aback by Daphne-the-Mouse’s rare display of ferocity, Fran had agreed and since kept her word. She had a tiresome habit of keeping her promises.

The RV continued its slow reverse. As the rear wheel reached the edge of the pavement, the back end hung suspended over the ditch. Mel flipped up his hand, and the cop halted the RV immediately.

Whenever Daphne had signaled in such a way to Fran, the older woman had maintained that a minimum five-second delay existed between Daphne’s signal and Fran’s response. It was the way the rig operated, she had said. No, it was the way Fran operated.

Somehow, she had to keep Fran off the road.

Refocusing on the officer’s question, Daphne looked to the corner of the highway and the side street. “There. I noticed that we were in trouble when she turned in.” More books had tumbled off the bed and Daphne herself had pitched to the side. Kneeling on the bed, she’d watched in rising horror as Fran had cranked the wheel, screaming her curses as she tried to funnel the motor home into the entrance lane.

“I told her to stop but—but she kept saying she could handle it if I’d only let her concentrate.”

With the RV reversed as much as possible, Mel jogged past the coach to the corner of the restaurant where the driving lane curved to the back. Now that rush hour had passed, the crush of vehicles ahead had magically disappeared, so there was space to maneuver. Mel motioned with two fingers and the motor home eased forward.

“When it was clear she couldn’t handle things anymore, I tried taking over.” And here, not only her toes but her shoulders curled, too. “I accidently hit the gas instead of the brake and—” she looked at the hole in the restaurant wall “—and that happened. Fran turned off the ignition.”

The motor home glided out of view, undamming the logjam of vehicles behind it. If only her own exit plan could flow so easily. Could she nudge events to her desired outcome? “Corporal Grayson. Perhaps you aren’t aware that my companion has cancer?”

“Uh...no.”

“Quite advanced, actually. And taking medication. Perhaps, she should be warned not to be on the road.”

“Have doctors ordered her not to drive?”

They hadn’t, and Fran could prove it. Daphne nudged in another direction. “Not exactly, but as you can see, she poses a danger. Perhaps there is some consequence from this accident that would...suspend her driving. Temporarily. For an extended period.” As in months.

Corporal Grayson frowned. “You want us to charge her?” He spoke as if Daphne was suggesting an act of cruelty.

Ironically, Fran would flourish under the charge. “No, no,” Daphne said, now with little hope that they could stop this trip. “I suppose we will have to rely on common sense to prevail.”

Corporal Grayson looked steadily at her. No doubt he saw a small mousy, stale woman who couldn’t stand up to an old, dying woman. Battle of the feebles. Whatever his thoughts, though, he kept them to himself. “I’ll need to see ID for the report. Your driver’s license will do.”

Not this awkwardness. “I don’t have one. As I said, I don’t drive. I do have a learner’s permit, though.”

For the first time in the interview, Corporal Grayson turned suspicious. “Have you ever had a driver’s license?”

Meaning had she lost it due to incompetence or intoxication or criminal convictions. “No. I haven’t. Never.” Three negatives should do it.

“So...your companion has done all the driving?”

“Yes.”

“From Nova Scotia to here?”

“Yes.” Daphne let the officer chew on that. She had long ago dispensed with explanations about why she had not acquired the ticket to freedom. Truth to tell, the people in her life had long ago stopped asking. After all, she lived within walking distance of the campus and a grocery store, there was a lovely city park right across the street from her apartment, and for trips to the theater or special events, she took a taxi or Fran picked her up. The annual Jane Austen conference required her to fly to different locales, but once there she didn’t need to drive. So there was nothing amiss with a contained, well-defined, perambulatory life.

“So—” Corporal Paul scratched his jaw and looked through the window at the counter with its coffee and glass display of doughnuts “—given the condition of Ms. Hertz and that you can’t relieve her, why are you two driving across Canada?”

“She and her husband traveled coast to coast on their honeymoon, and she wanted to do it with him before she died.”

“Him?”

Fran hadn’t told anyone but Daphne and Moshe, her son, about the real reason for her farewell cross-country tour. To everyone she met on the road, she declared she simply wanted to see Canada up close one more time. But if Daphne had to confess to her driving inadequacies, then Fran’s special peculiarity could also go on record.

“Frederick. He’s dead. She keeps his ashes in...in a fire extinguisher.” Along with his wedding ring, a martini recipe and an old dollar bill.

Corporal Paul paused in his note taking. “A fire extinguisher?”

“It’s carefully labeled. She wants to deposit his ashes in the Pacific. As he requested.” Actually, Daphne wasn’t sure if that had been Frederick’s wish. So much of what he wanted had been wrapped in his wife’s whims. “She asked me to go with her. I’m her goddaughter. I’m on a sabbatical, so I agreed.” And had regretted it every day since.

The officer scanned his writing. “I’m done here. Just need to get your address while you’re in town. Where will you be staying until you sort out insurance and repairs?”

Staying? Yes, they’d have to stay for repairs. In one spot. For days. Days for her to think of how to stop Fran once and for all from their mutual destruction. Thanks be for small mercies. Her toes uncurled and her shoulders relaxed. “Is there an RV campsite close?”

“One right in town, as a matter of fact.”

If she had to push the RV from here to there herself, she’d make it happen. “Then that’s where we’re staying.”

Provided she could convince Fran.

* * *

DAPHNE FOUND FRAN lounging on her bed amid a bevy of gold and purple pillows. With her coiled gray hair and her elegant length in wide-leg silk pants and a tunic, she might’ve passed for an aging Katherine Hepburn.

“This—” Fran waved her hand at Linda, her many rings slipping to her knuckles “—this nurse thinks she knows better than me. She insists I go to the nearest hospital immediately. It’s not necessary. I’m merely dying.”

“That,” Linda said, reading the prescription label on a pill bottle, “is all the more reason for doctors to assess your condition.”

Fran shot Linda the same look that made her law students flinch. “Its condition is imminent.”

Linda set down the bottle and picked up another. “And dangerous to those around you. You’re lucky your driving did not result in someone else having your imminent status today.”

Fran wiggled her bare toes. “I’m no more of a danger on the road than a cell phone user.”

Linda drew a breath for a return volley but Daphne didn’t want to encourage Fran.

“Linda,” Daphne said, “you are talking to a woman who argued for the rights of a dog to own his former master’s six-bedroom house—and won.”

Fran visibly brightened. “I’d forgotten all about that.” She bestowed an arch look at Linda. “I guess the point is settled.”

Daphne’s phone rang. She held it up for Fran to see the caller ID. “Moshe.”

“My phone’s off—that’s why he called you. Tell him I’m taking a shower and will call him later.”

Ordinarily Daphne would’ve complied, but today called for extraordinary measures. The phone rang again. “What about I tell him the police are considering laying charges against you of reckless driving causing...causing endangerment...and...”

“You don’t even know the terms for it,” Fran said. “He’ll figure out that you’re lying.”

“I’m not. You were driving recklessly. How about I say that you are refusing to cooperate with medical advice to go to a hospital, despite him having paid an inordinate amount of insurance so you could have extensive out-of-province care and that, yes, I recommend he fly out immediately.”

The last thing on earth Fran would want is for her only living child to feel compelled to fly to her side, especially with his wife in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy. The third phone ring was a loud exclamation mark to Daphne’s threat. “Or,” Daphne said, “if you promise to check yourself into the hospital, I’ll tell him that you are in the shower and you’ll call him back later today.”

Daphne held up the phone as though it was a torch and hoped her hand wasn’t shaking too much. Fran glowered at Daphne through the fourth ring, but on the fifth, she cast up her hands. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

A win. Daphne tapped on the green bar and moved into the wreck of a living area. “Good morning, Moshe.”

“Good morning, Daphne.” Moshe’s voice was as smooth as the granite countertops in his house. “How are you?”

He didn’t care. They’d been close as kids, along with his sister, but his conversion to Judaism, his marriage, his wife, his children, his work—life—had stripped their relationship down to just the Fran factor.

“I’m fine. You?”

“Good, good. Listen, I would not be troubling you but Mother is not answering her phone.”

“It’s charging.” Daphne picked up a book from the floor and looked about for a safe spot to put it. “She’s in the shower right now. Would you like her to call you back?”

“I’m in court for the rest of the day. I only want to confirm she’s okay.”

Daphne tossed the book on her bed. “She’s as well as can be expected.”

Her standard comment in all her texts and calls with Moshe. He had all the legal acumen and more of his mother, so the less said the better.

“You will contact me immediately if there is any change, as we agreed?” Like his mother, he was a fast adherent to verbal agreements.

“Of course, Moshe. Of course.” She delivered the lie with all the aplomb of his mother.

* * *

DAPHNE EXITED THE hospital that afternoon, wondering if she should do an about-face and check herself in. She ached to the bone, her tracksuit hung on her like garb for a homeless vagrant and she was light-headed enough to either sink to the warm cement or float off.

She was checking for the taxi she’d ordered when Mel Greene rounded the corner of the building from the parking lot. He was alone. Strange to see him without someone, as if he had a missing limb. He had shifted so smoothly between the nurse, the police officers, the restaurant employee and her that somehow she’d got it stuck in her mind that he was always with people.

He waved, and Daphne waved back. As if they were old friends. Had he come to see her? Or Fran? But why visit a cranky woman he didn’t know? Somebody else, then? She ought to speak to him. Update him on Fran. On The Stagecoach. Thank him for his help. Old friends had less to talk about.

Her taxi pulled up. “A moment,” she said to the driver as he emerged. “I need to speak with—” she wondered how to refer to Mel “—my friend.”

She turned to catch the guarded surprise on Mel’s face. “I acknowledge that’s not the most appropriate term,” she said.

“It’ll do for now,” he said and extended his hand to her. “We haven’t met properly. I’m Mel. Mel Greene.”

She decided to not let on that she knew his name as his hand, large and warm, wrapped around hers. It would only prove how much more significant he was in her life than she in his. “Daphne Merlotte.”

Mel carried on to the taxi driver and held out his hand. “Hello. How are you today?”

The man in a tunic and head scarf stared at Mel’s hand as one would stare at an unknown but sweet-smelling food. Daphne felt for him. Who made such an expansive gesture to a total stranger for no apparent reason? Was it a cultural faux pas on Mel’s part, or was it simply something Mel did? And if so, why hadn’t he done the same to her when they first met? Was it because she was wearing the hideous nightie, and was she overthinking this?

“I—I’m...fine,” the driver stuttered. As if to prove it, he thrust his hand into Mel’s and gave it a quick shake.

Stepping away from each other, the two men regarded Daphne. “Fran’s checked in, and I was returning to Spirit Lake,” she said to Mel. “To attend to the RV,” she added.

“I parked it over at the town campsite. I can drop you off there easy enough, and give you the keys. I had to come into Red Deer to pick up a few things and thought I’d swing by.”

He really had come to see her—Fran—them. So expansive gestures to strangers were part of his nature. The taxi driver frowned at Daphne. Fran pulled the same look when Daphne was on the cusp of refusing her. She handed the driver a ten-dollar bill. “To cover me calling you here.”

His lips thinned. Daphne kept the money outstretched.

“Seems fair to me,” Mel said.

The taxi driver snatched the bill from her fingers and muttered his thanks through gritted teeth. He pulled away and Mel waved, as if the man was family leaving home. The driver lifted his hand in farewell.

Mel turned to the hospital doors. “How is she?”

“As well as can be expected.”

Mel pulled on his baseball cap. “Not sure who’s expecting what.”

“You do know that Fran has terminal cancer? You were there when she told Linda.”

“Yes. Only—” he nudged his cap up to show his face more “—I’ve not much experience with Fran, and I want her to feel easy around me.”

Daphne felt as the taxi driver must’ve—surprised by kindness. “But you mustn’t feel obliged to visit her at all.”

This time when he smiled at her, it was too weak to reach his laugh lines. “I know. I guess... My mom died of cancer, but she had her family around her...and Fran doesn’t have that.”

“I’m family,” Daphne said, more sharply than she intended. “I mean, we treat each other like family.” Or, at least, Fran and Frederick, when he’d been alive, had invited Daphne to their family functions, and she’d tried to fit in. Into a corner with a good book.

Mel pulled on his baseball cap. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

She was annoyed that he’d spotted a disconnect between Fran and Daphne. Still, she could hardly blame him for that. “No offense taken. She’s sleeping right now. She does in the afternoon, at any rate.” She suddenly remembered her good news. “Oh, and they’ve also increased her pain medication, which means she can’t possibly travel for the next five days until her body adjusts.”

“Oh.” Mel scratched his temple. “I don’t know if—”

“Yes,” Daphne said. “I completely agree. The good news is I have five days to think of a way to delay her further.”

Mel was staring at her with his full hazel scrutiny. The Edward Ferrars look. Wait. Had Austen noted the color of his eyes? Or Mr. Darcy’s? Or any of them? Surely after her endless readings, she ought to remember something as basic as that. Had she been so absorbed in issues of metatexts and contexts and textualizations and intertextualities that she’d overlooked a simple character description?