Page 100 of The Surprise
That I’m not who he thinks I am. I don’t deserve the pedestal.
But now, instead of getting in my car, I’m stumbling down the main street of Manila until I kick some pot that’s sitting on the sidewalk. It tips over and breaks.
“Hey!” Dolores Jenkins is the scariest woman in Manila. Her hair’s grey, but not a soft grey that you see on grandmas the world over. No, hers is gunmetal grey, battle-ax grey, and it has been exactly that same color since she was young, or so people say. She’s totally insane—she talks to her plants like they’re people in broad daylight and yells at almost anyone else she meets.
Some people say she killed her husband and put his body parts into pots all over her garden until the plants hid the evidence that she killed him. Some people say that she’s so mean because her husband left her for someone who spent less time around plants and more time around people. Some people say she has her husband tied up in a room and doesn’t ever let him out.
I’ve always wondered why everyone thought she had a husband.
She’s holding something long, and she’s practically running toward me. I stumble backward and fall on my butt in the street. Luckily, Manila’s not exactly a bustling metropolis, and there aren’t any cars driving in either direction.
“You alright, girl?” She’s bending over me now, the long hoe she’s carrying drooping slightly. Her face doesn’t look angry anymore. She looks concerned. “Here.” She offers me a hand, and even though it strikes fear into my heart, I take it.
She flings me back up to my feet easily. She’s surprisingly strong for someone who must be in her sixties or seventies. Actually, maybe she’s older than that. She looks almost as old as Amanda Saddler.
“I’m so sorry about your pot,” I say. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“No, I guess you weren’t.” She eyes me up and down, her face softening even more. “Why don’t you come inside and have something to drink.”
I open my mouth to tell her that I can’t. I don’t want to be locked up and kept in a room or chopped up and hidden in pots. But then I see Ethan walking down the road, kicking rocks.
Coming right at us.
“Okay, great.” I barely squeeze past her bright red door and close it behind me before he would have seen us. I turn and lean against the back of her door, sighing.
That’s when I take a good look around her house.
Now that adrenaline is receding, fear rushes back to replace it. Are there people tied up in here, like Ursula’s garden of lost souls? Does she have a wall covered in newspaper clippings, with crazed notes scrawled and yarn connecting them all?
But no. It’s more mundane than that.
From the floor to the ceiling, there are piles of things made with yarn. So many different things. Blankets. Scarves. Sweaters. Potholders. Hats. Mittens. What looks like. . .a book cover? Do people make those out of yarn? Against the windowsill, there are stuffed animals made of yarn standing in tight rows. Ducks, dogs, cats, owls, and even fruit. Pineapple. An apple. A giant variegated green ball that sort of looks like a watermelon.
“Oh,” I say.
“I don’t invite people in much,” Dolores says.
“Okay, well thanks for making an exception for me.” Because otherwise, I might have had to talk to Ethan, whom I just hit with a baseball bat of traumatic information.
“What happened?” The woman walks into the kitchen, carefully skirting around stacks of scarves and hats. “Do you like tea?”
I nod.
“Great.” She shoves a teakettle under the sink and turns the water on. “Lemon?”
I shrug.
“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, but at least you know I won’t tell anyone.”
I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have anyone shecouldtell. “I thought you only liked plants.”
“Plants fill my soul,” she says. “Crocheting soothes it.”
“Right.”
“I’m not crazy,” she says. “And I know that normal people don’t often have to say that, but it’s still true. I’ve been to see several doctors, and they said that crocheting and gardening are both healthy outlets for me.”
She has a therapist? One hundred percent would not have guessed that. It doesn’t look like he or she is earning their money. “Okay.”
