Free In Plain Sight by Lorena McCourtney Page A

discouraging reaction, but not necessarily final, I decided optimistically. Yet I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, as I do for anyone who doesn’t live with the wonderful expectation of eternity with the Lord.
    On the way home I saw a pickup parked at the house where elderly Lois Watkins had lived before her death. A man was lugging a couple of bulky garbage bags from the house to the pickup. Her son, I assumed, with the sad task of sorting through her things.
    On impulse, after I got home, I walked over to express my sympathies.
    I introduced myself, identifying my connection with DeeAnn and Mike and motioning to their house down the road where I lived now. He identified himself as Hanson Watkins, the son. We shook hands, his a solid, big-handed grip that swallowed mine. He was fiftyish, a large man with an overhanging belly, balding head, and an open, good-natured face that showed lines of wear and tear at the moment.
    “I’m so sorry about your mother. I didn’t know Lois well, but I usually stopped in to see her when I was visiting here. She was such a sweet woman, always so cheerful even though her arthritis must have been painful. She was very proud of you.”
    “Yeah, the only son. To Mom I could do no wrong.” He smiled ruefully. “But I keep thinking now that I did do wrong. I should have insisted she come out to California and live with Marianne and me. Then maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” “Most of us cling to living in our own homes, even if to an outsider it looks as if we’d be better off elsewhere. Lois was happy here. She never thought she was neglected.”
    “Most of us cling to living in our own homes, even if to an outsider it looks as if we’d be better off elsewhere. Lois was happy here. She never thought she was neglected.”
    “That’s kind of you. You’re the one I see driving around in that great old Thunderbird, aren’t you? When I was a teenager, that was my big dream, to own a T-bird.”
    “It’s been a little balky at times lately. I’ll probably have to take it in for a checkup.”
    “Maybe I can take a look at it while I’m here. I’m no expert, but I can tell an oil filter from an air filter and fix a few little things.”
    “Will you be here long?”
    “The house needs some repairs before we put it up for sale, so I’m working on that. But I have to take care of things with my plumbing supply business back home in San Bernardino too, so I’ll be flying back and forth.”
    “Sounds difficult.”
    “I have to see about selling Mom’s old motor home too. She hadn’t used it since Dad died, of course, but she never wanted to get rid of it. And then there’s all the lawyer stuff.” His disgruntled tone offered a wordless commentary on “lawyer stuff,” and I could sympathize, having been through some lawyer stuff when Harley died.
    “But the legal end shouldn’t be too complicated,” he added. “Mom had already transferred almost everything to me.”
    “That should help. It’s been nice meeting you. Again, I’m so sorry about your mother.”
    I walked home on the road so I could go by the mailbox at the end of the driveway. Most of it was for DeeAnn and Mike, of course, items I’d stick in a larger envelope and send on. A few pieces had been forwarded from the Madison Street address for me: a final bill for the electricity on the house, a solicitation from a charity and several other advertisements, and a postcard. From Mac.
    The picture side was a photo of a car standing upright, nose to the sky, tail end buried in the ground. Behind it were several similarly half-buried vehicles in kind of a vehicular Stonehenge arrangement.
    On the opposite side of the card Mac had written: This made me think of you.
    A half dozen vehicles with their rear ends buried in the dirt reminded him of me? I didn’t get the connection. And wasn’t flattered by whatever it was.
    Then I looked more closely at the vehicles. Thunderbirds! Old Thunderbirds, every one of