Free Coming Home by David Lewis Page B

don’t seem the gazebo type.”
    “Oh, Bill. Just exactly what is the gazebo type?”
    He paused. “The type of person who sits and thinks .”
    She nearly came uncorked. “Sometimes you’re like a porcupine in a balloon shop. So now you’re calling me stupid?”
    “I’m calling you busy .”
    “Build it, Bill.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” …
    Doris watched the hunched-over cowboy, and he seemed to sense her eyes on his back. He turned and smiled, waving his white paintbrush, then thumbed proudly toward his work and made a humorous grimace.
    She shook her head, recalling Bill’s argument against painting the gazebo. “Aw, Dory, why would you want to hide that natural wood?”
    “Paint it white and don’t call me Dory.”
    “How ’bout I stain it redwood and see what you think?”
    “White.”
    “How ’bout I just seal it, leave the wood natural, and you see what you think?”
    “No.”
    “How ’bout a white stain ?”
    “No.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    And then she added, “While you’re at it, put a swing in it.”
    “Oh boy,” he said to himself as he started walking away. “Maybe the squirrels will like it.”
    “Oh, and Bill?”
    He turned, his features pained. “Yes, Dory.”
    “Paint the swing white, too.”
    Bill appeared at the doorway, leaning against the threshold and crossing one leg over the other. She finished licking an envelope. “Gazebo looks good.”
    “Whadd’ya say we take it for a spin?”
    “I’m too busy.”
    He smiled. “The paint is dry inside, the weather is cool, and the swing is dying for affirmation. It told me so.”
    “How ’bout later?”
    He chuckled, whispering under his breath, “How ’bout never,” and headed for the kitchen so Doris could answer the ringing phone in privacy.
    It was Betty Robinette. “It’s sixty-seven degrees up here, Doris.”
    Although they rarely conversed more than two or three times a year, it had become a ritual to compare Colorado Springs weather with Palmer Lake temps, twenty miles to the north.
    “Bill?” Doris called across the family room. “What’s the temperature?”
    “Seventy-five,” Bill called from the kitchen, where he was throwing something together for dinner. Years ago, he’d hung a thermometer just outside the window.
    “Isn’t that something? Betty voiced. “Nearly ten degrees different.”
    “How’s the garden?” Doris asked, referring not to Betty’s but to Mrs. Browning’s.
    “It’s still the seventh wonder of Colorado.”
    “I need to send Bill up. He could learn a thing or two from that woman.”
    “I heard that,” Bill called in a matter-of-fact voice from across the house.
    “You know how hard it is to get good help, Betty.”
    Betty chuckled.
    “Just as hard as it is to get good employment,” he yelled back.
    They made more small talk until Betty seemed to hesitate and the call began to take a different turn. “I debated whether to call you, Dory… .”
    Another moment of silence as Doris began putting it all together. She had suspected this wasn’t just a social call. It had something to do with the house in Palmer Lake … or … a stray thought nudged her: something about Jessica. Doris just assumed that her granddaughter would never call her, but she’d hoped that perhaps one day Jessica might contact Betty. Doris felt her spirits sink. More than a decade had passed since Jessica had lived with Doris, and only one foster family had taken the time to forward pictures. The most recent ones she had were of Jessie at age fourteen, and Doris still carried the pictures in her purse.
    She ventured into the dark, navigating by nervous intuition.
    “How is she, Betty?”
    Betty sighed audibly, and Doris felt sorry for placing her friend in such a position.
    “She seems fine,” Betty replied, but the undertow in her voice told Doris more than the words themselves. Doris opened her mouth but didn’t know what to ask or say next. She waited instead. Betty filled the silence. “She