This was not a new state for her. She had lived in The Mill for all of her forty-three years, and in the last ten she liked what she saw in her hometown less and less. She worried about the inexplicable decay of the town's sewer system and waste treatment plant in spite of all the money that had been poured into them, she worried about the impending closure of Cloud Top, the town's ski resort, she worried that James Rennie was stealing even more from the town till than she suspected (and she suspected he had been stealing a great deal for decades). And of course she was worried about this new thing, which seemed to her almost too big to comprehend. Every time she tried to get a handle on it, her mind would fix on some part that was small but concrete: her increasing inability to place calls on her cell phone, for instance. And she hadn't received a single one, which was very troubling. Never mind concerned friends and relatives outside of town trying to get in touch; she should have been jammed up with calls from other papers: the Lewiston Sun, the Portknd Press Herald, perhaps even the New York Times.
Was everyone else in The Mill having the same problems?
She should go out to the Motton town line and see for herself. If she couldn't use her phone to buzz Pete Freeman, her best photographer, she could take some pix herself with what she called her Emergency Nikon. She had heard there was now some sort of quarantine zone in place on the Motton and Tarker's Mills sides of the barrier - probably the other towns, as well - but surely she could get close on this side. They could warn her off, but if the barrier was as impermeable as she was hearing, warning would be the extent of it.
'Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,' she said. Absolutely true. If words could hurt her, Jim Rennie would have had her in ICU after the story she'd written about that joke audit the state had pulled three years ago. Certainly he'c blabbed aplenty-o about suing the paper, but blabbing was all it had been; she had even briefly considered an editorial on the subject, mostly because she had a terrific headline: SUPPOSED SUIT SLIPS FROM SIGHT
So, yes, she had worries. They came with the job. What she wasn't used to worrying about was her own behavior, itid now, standing on the corner of Main and Comm, she was. Instead of turning left on Main, she looked back the way she had come. And spoke in the low murmur she usually reserved tor Horace.'I shouldn't have left that girl alone.'
Julia would not have done, if she'd come in her car. But she'd come on foot, and besides - Dodee had been so insistent. There had been a smell about her, too. Pot? Maybe. Not that Julia had any strong objections to that. She had smoked her own share over the years. And maybe it would calm the girl. Take the edge off her grief while it was sharpest and most likely to cut.
'Don't worry about me,' Dodee had said, Til find my dad. But first I have to dress.' And indicated the robe she was wearing.
'I'll wait,'Julia had replied... although she didn't want to wait.
She had a long night ahead of her, beginning with her duty to her dog. Horace must be close to bursting by now, having missed his five o'clock walk, and he'd be hungry. When those things were taken care of, she really had to go out to what people were calling the barrier. See it for herself. Photograph whatever there was to be photographed.
Even that wouldn't be the end. She'd have to see about putting out some sort of extra edition of the Democrat. It was important to her and she thought it might be important to the town. Of course, all this might be over tomorrow, but Julia had a feeling - partly in her head, partly in her heart - that it wouldn't be.
And yet. Dodee Sanders should not have been left alone. She'd seemed to be holding herself together, but that might only have been shock and denial masquerading as calm. And the dope, of course. But she had been coherent.
'You don't need to wait. I don't want you to wait.'
'I don't know if being alone right: now is wise, dear.'
TU go to Angie's,' Dodee said, and seemed, to brighten a little at the thought even as the tears continued to roll down her cheeks. 'She'll go with me to find Daddy' She nodded. 'Angie's the one I want.'
In Julia's opinion, the McCain girl had only marginally more sense than this one, who had inherited her mother's looks but - unfortunately - her father's brains. Angie was a friend, though, and if ever there 'was a friend in need who needed a friend indeed, it was Dodee Sanders tonight.
'I could go with you...' Not wanting to. Knowing that, even in her current state of fresh bereavement, the girl could probably see that.
'No. It's only a few blocks.'
'Well...'
'Ms Shumway... are you sure? Are you sure my mother-?'
Very reluctantly, Julia had nodded. She'd gotten confirmation of the airplane's tail number from Ernie Calvert. She'd gotten something else from him as well, a thing that should more properly have gone to the police. Julia might have insisted that Ernie take it to them, but for the dismaying news that Duke Perkins was dead and that incompetent weasel Randolph was in charge.
What Ernie gave her was Claudette's bloodstained drivers license. It had been in Julia's pocket as she stood on the Sanders stoop, and in her pocket it had stayed. She'd give it either to Andy or to this pale, mussy-haired girl when the right time came... but this was not the time.
'Thank you,' Dodee had said in a sadly formal tone of voice. 'Now please go away. I don't mean to be crappy about it, but - ' She never finished the thought, only closed the door on it.
And what had Julia Shumway done? Obeyed the command of a grief-stricken twenty-year-old girl who might be too stoned to be fully responsible for herself. But there were other responsibilities tonight, hard as that was. Horace, for one. And the newspaper. People might make fun of Pete Freeman's grainy black-and-white photos and the Democrat's exhaustive coverage of such local fetes as Mill Middle School's Enchanted Night dance; they might claim its only practical use was as a cat-box liner - but they needed it, especially when something bad happened. Julia meant to see that they had it tomorrow, even if she had to stay up all night. Which, with both of her regular reporters out of town for the weekend, she probably would,