Free Last Chants by Lia Matera Page A

started us walking again. “Where are you going? I’ll come with you partway.”
    â€œI was going to take a hike.”
    â€œI’ll show you a good one.”
    She must have been five-ten to my five-two. And determination added to her stature. For the moment, I walked along with her.
    Our growing silence was less than companionable, at least on my part.
    I asked, “Are you a computer designer?”
    â€œI’m an artist.” Toni Nelson’s voice was unthinkingly, almost regally blunt. “I met Galen when he needed some art to digitize for one of his programs. He’s good with the mechanics and the conceptualization, but he’s not artistic. He’d seen my work at Menzies.” She pointed toward a tiny gallery down the street.
    Her face, blue-eyed and bow-lipped, was as sweet as a doll’s—when she wasn’t pitching a fit or smacking strangers in the nose.
    We traversed the main street at quite a clip. She steered us up a road with a sign giving the miles to Big Basin. We were heading in the exact opposite direction from Edward’s. If we walked far, I’d be a mass of aches and tight tendons tomorrow. I was about to demur when she spoke again.
    â€œI’ve made a garden trail on our property. A work of landscape art. Only no one ever walks it but me. Galen moved up here because he’s antisocial, basically, not because of the scenery. When I met him, he lived in a studio with almost no windows.” She looked down at me. “He was rich. I lived in a garage, but notbecause I didn’t want a house. Our business—mine and my ex-husband’s—went bust.” She shook her head wonderingly. “Can you imagine living up here, and not noticing?” She waved her arm at the scenery. “Look at all the greens—every shade you could mix. And the smells. Can you imagine becoming an expert in nasal ganglia, in the way we smell, without snorting this up like cocaine?”
    I caught the scent of warming fields, of tall grass and wild-flowers and manure.
    She watched me, apparently satisfied that I was making more of an effort than Galen.
    We veered into the woods, taking progressively narrower paths. She seemed lost in thought, paying little attention to the scenery she’d just accused her husband of ignoring.
    I began to worry: Would I be able to find my way back to Edward’s before dark? I didn’t want to test Arthur’s theory about enlightenment through terror.
    As we rounded a bend, I saw a house. Its appearance was so sudden it might have sparkled into being a moment before. The path was in solid wooded shade, but the house was in a tiny clearing, at this moment dazzled with afternoon sun. It was two-story, of chicly stained wood, with a wraparound deck and a profusion of hollyhocks, gladioli, and other tall flowers. It was as splendid as a Town & Country layout.
    I stopped, unaccountably afraid of the place. Maybe it came of being marched here by someone who’d recently socked me in the nose. I felt like Gretel, getting her first glimpse of the witch’s house.
    â€œEverything bloomed when Billy Seawuit came. Everything. The bulbs weren’t ready. They shouldn’t have bloomed yet, but they did.”
    â€œAn early spring?” I didn’t know anything about flowers; but I didn’t want to believe they bloomed magically for certain people.
    She walked swiftly, leaving me to trail behind. She was quite a sight: big-boned, big-hipped, big-chested, striding along in perfect fitness, not overweight but decidedly large in her jeans and bulky sweater. Her hair streamed behind her, partly caught with a ribbon, partly trailing like that of Venus on a half shell.
    I followed, feeling like her small, drab echo. Perhaps that waswhy Galen Nelson seemed so reserved and self-contained. Maybe he’d faded by comparison to his wife.
    When she reached the sunny clearing, she beckoned impatiently. “Come