Page 103 of Heidi Lucy Loses Her Mind
I watch, amused, as Heidi steps promptly into the townhome, following after him.
This woman. She goes for what she wants, and she’s not afraid to be insistent.
“How are the walls in these places?” she says as I close the door behind us. “Pretty thin?”
“Uh, yes,” Mr. Foster says, his voice wobbly as he runs one hand over his bald head again. “I’d say so.”
A large dog bounds around the corner, and I barely have a moment to react before he’s jumping on me, his paws on my chest, his tongue wagging.
“Whoa, boy,” I say, even though I’m not sure if the dog is male or female.
“Get down,” the man snaps at the dog, and it drops to all fours before padding over to Heidi and sniffing at her legs.
“Did you hear a lot of arguing from the unit next door, or not so much?” Heidi says, ignoring the dog. She keeps her voice casual, as though she’s not too interested in the answer, but I see the tension in her shoulders.
“Oh, yeah,” the man says, sitting down at his table. He doesn’t invite either of us to sit, so we remain standing, hovering awkwardly around the kitchen table. He relaxes further, maybe put at ease by the direction the conversation has taken. “They were loud.”
“Mmm,” Heidi says with a nod. “How so? It must have been irritating.”
Mr. Foster shrugs his narrow shoulders, his fingers drumming on the table. “There was a lot of yelling, but I’m used to it.” The dog comes and sits next to him, and he scratches it behind the ears absently, his eyes still on Heidi.
“Who did all the yelling, do you know?” she says.
The man snorts. “All three of them. The son and the daughter-in-law ganged up on the old lady a lot, but she did her fair share of yelling too. I heard them through open windows, too, while I was working out in the garden in the back.”
“Oh, did you?” I say, surprised. I hadn’t considered that.
“Oh, yeah,” the man says with a vigorous nod. “The old woman’s window faces the back. She sat there and stared outside a lot. And she yelled at the son a lot about his wife. She wanted her son to leave the wife. Said the fish didn’t like her.”
Heidi frowns. “The fish…”
“Didn’t like her, yeah,” the man says. “I didn’t ask. Sounded batty to me.” He pauses and then rubs the back of the neck. “Truth be told,” he says, his voice more reluctant now, “I feel kind of bad about what happened to that woman. Carmina, I mean. Bruce is pretty enthusiastic, and he likes to meet new people.” He pats the dog’s head. “He—uh, he sort of knocked the lady down one time.”
Heidi shoots me a glance before looking back at the man. “He knocked her down?”
“He didn’t mean to,” Mr. Foster says quickly. “But I—uh, well. I feel kind of bad about it. I said he didn’t do it.”
It’s easy to feel bad now that Carmina is dead,I find myself thinking.It’s easy for me to feel bad about fighting over that stupid chair now that she’s dead. Shouldn’t we have regretted these things while she was still alive?
My discomfort and regret are bitter on my tongue, but I don’t try to banish them. I swallow them instead, and when they hit my stomach, I commit them to memory—the faint nausea, the piercing sorrow, and the knowledge that things could have been different, and it’s partially my fault that they aren’t.
“You…” Heidi says, and I’m surprised to see her eyes narrow as she looks at Mr. Foster. She points at him. “You were there that day. When Carmina died.That’swhy you looked familiar.” She straightens. “You were at Paper Patisserie, weren’t you?”
“I—well—” he stutters, his face flushing a dull, mottled pink. “Yes, but only because—well—”
“What?” Heidi says, and some of her politeness from earlier disappears. “Why were you there when she died?”
Mr. Foster finally throws his hands up in the air. “I was following her, all right? I was following her. Just a little. Just—to see if she—if she was okay,” he finishes, his words turning sulky. “I’d noticed she seemed unsteady on her feet, and I was worried it might be my fault. Even though Bruce jumped on her months ago…” He shrugs. “She seemed very wobbly and slow when I saw her out on the sidewalk. So I followed her, just to see if I was imagining it. She might have sued me or something if there were long-lasting effects.”
Ah. So he wasn’t even really worried about Carmina; he just wanted to make sure he was in the clear.
This woman was surrounded by a lot of really lousy people.
Heidi continues to do the talking, for which I’m supremely grateful, because there’s a sudden lump in my throat that’s making it hard to breathe, much less speak. So I listen as she wraps things up with Mr. Foster and his dog, exchanging curt pleasantries that betray her disapproval and her desire to get out of there.
The polite smile drops off her face the second the door closes behind us, the fresh spring air a calming draught.
“Wow,” Heidi says, looking over at me. She plays with the ends of her hair as she looks back over her shoulder at the front door.
