Free The Third Hill North of Town by Noah Bly Page A

the offered cookies. Julianna’s assertion of having grown up with somebody who was clearly forty years her junior was bad enough, but her hospital wristband had now caught his attention, as well. He was eyeing it with concern.
    “She doesn’t have any chicken, either,” Elijah added sullenly.
    Julianna pursed her lips, worried. “Oh, Ben, how could you possibly forget my name? We’ve been best friends since we were babies!”
    Jon’s mouth was hanging open, revealing a partially digested potato chip on his tongue.
    “She’s out of her goddamn mind,” Elijah muttered to the other boy.
    Julianna overheard this, but before she could chastise him for his rudeness a flashing red light appeared behind them on the highway, distracting her.
     
    Gabriel Dapper answered the phone in the office of his downtown Bangor hardware store.
    “Dapper’s Tool Emporium,” he said.
    The office was small and cramped (especially for Gabriel, who was six foot four and weighed nearly three hundred pounds), but the piles of paper on his desk were stacked in tight, neat piles, and the catalogs and ledger books on the wall shelf were plainly marked and alphabetized. The desktop itself was clear, save for a notepad, a compass, and a pencil, all of which Gabriel had been using when the phone rang.
    Edgar Reilly’s polite, pompous voice came through the receiver. “Gabriel? It’s Dr. Reilly.”
    Gabriel had been drawing interlocking one-inch diameter circles on the notepad with the compass; a closer inspection of the pad would have revealed dozens of virtually identical pages, with seven circles per page. Gabriel loved circles, and was also rather fond of the number 7.
    “Hey, Doc,” he responded cautiously. He knew better than to hope Edgar was calling to tell him Julianna’s condition had improved, but he made himself ask anyway. “Is Mom doing any better?”
    For Gabriel’s entire life, his mother had been more sane than anyone else he knew. Living in the same town as they did, he had seen her at least once a week for years, and prior to setting the fire in her neighbor’s garage a month ago, nothing in her behavior had warned him that her mind was preparing to desert her. On the contrary, she had seemed sharper than ever, reading book after book in preparation for the literature classes she taught at Shelby Cabot Grammar School; she had recently begun tutoring several students privately, too, in every subject from algebra to Latin. Ever since the garage fire, though, she had referred to him as “Lars, the blacksmith,” and whenever he looked in her eyes the woman he had known as his mother was altogether absent. It made his heart hurt just to think about it, and for the last few weeks he’d found himself on the verge of tears at the oddest moments: standing in line at the grocery store, tossing a steak on the grill, sharpening all his office pencils until they were a uniform length.
    On the other end of the line, Edgar Reilly held the phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Before dialing Julianna’s son, he’d placed an open bag of lemon drops in front of him on the desk, for courage.
    “I’m afraid I have some very bad news, Gabriel.” Edgar did his best to sound calm and professional but he was unable to keep a tremor from creeping into his voice. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but it seems your mother has escaped.”
    A prolonged silence followed this announcement and Edgar’s forehead began to sweat. He popped a lemon drop into his mouth and waited anxiously.
    Gabriel cleared his throat at last. “I don’t understand.” His voice was quiet, but ominous. “Where did she go?”
    Edgar explained as quickly as he could, recounting all he knew about Julianna’s escape from the hospital, her theft of his Edsel, and the subsequent police hunt for her. Then, sucking hard on the lemon drop every few seconds, he shared the information Deputy Oakley had given him only moments ago:
    “Late this