Unforgettable

* * *

DEREK ENTERED THE LIBRARY, removed his hat, looked around. There were none of the usual patrons in sight and Edie was behind the desk, leisurely cataloging a new shipment of books.

“Hi, Mom,” he called out as he strode toward her.

Edie looked up, an expression of surprise on her round, still pretty face. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear and her short gray blond hair was tousled. “Hi, son. This is a surprise. Am I under arrest or did you get lost in the fog?”

Derek chuckled. “Okay, so I’m a bad son who doesn’t visit his mother often enough.”

“So, what catastrophic event makes today different?”

“Mom, you ever hear of any family around here named Millman?”

“No, never!” The pencil fell and Edie bent to pick it up, knocking a stack of books off the counter. She swore under her breath and Derek rushed around the counter to help her pick up the books. They bumped heads and Edie fell back on her rump, laughing and moaning and rubbing her forehead. Derek helped Edie to her feet and set her down on the stool. “Sit there. I’ll get the books.”

He stacked them on the counter and then turned to his mother. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. The Millmans. You’re sure you never heard of them?”

“I’m sure. What’s your interest in these people anyway, have they committed some kind of crime?”

Derek shrugged. “No, not that I know of. For that matter, I don’t even know if they ever lived around here.”

“So, who are they? Where did you get that name?”

Derek pondered how much to tell his mother. Now that he thought about it, she’d answered his question much too quickly, as though she’d been primed for it and rehearsed her response. With all the names Edie came upon through her work as head librarian, she should have had to stop and sift through her memory before answering.

“I met someone who thinks her parents came from here. Name of Millman.”

“Her parents? And she doesn’t know for sure where they came from? What’s her name?”

“Stacy. Short for Anastasia. Stacy Millman.”

Was it only his imagination or did his mother blanch at Stacy’s name? But she immediately bent to get something from the shelf under the counter and he couldn’t be sure. When she raised her head, she was her usual composed head librarian persona. She had her purse in her hands and was removing tissues. She blew her nose delicately and shook her head.

“Sorry, I can’t help you, Derek, and in my opinion, people shouldn’t go digging into the past, anyway. Tell your friend it’s better to live in the present than go snooping around into the past.”

Derek chuckled. “I’m not sure I’d call us friends. But as for your advice, it doesn’t apply unless you know of something someone has to hide.”

“Really, Derek, this is too much. I don’t see you for days in a town that has about a five-mile radius, and when I do you pump me for information and accuse me of hiding things from you.”

“Gee, Mom, how did you get all that out of a simple question about a family name?”

Her sputtering came to a halt and Edie fixed her son with a no-nonsense glare. “I’ve got work to do, Derek. Go away.”

He laughed and leaned forward to pinch her soft, reddened cheek. “See ya, Edie.”

He snatched his hat off the counter and ambled out. Standing on the front steps of the library, he set the Stetson on his head and surveyed the street. The fog had lifted and hung about seven feet over the pavements so at least people could walk around now and see where they were going. At this rate it would have dissipated by early afternoon and life would go on as usual.

What was unusual he mused, as he went down the steps to the street, was his mother’s strange behavior. First of all, she definitely knew something...the name was not unfamiliar to her. And secondly, she wore the stereotypical image of a small-town librarian to a tee, never allowing anything to ruffle her feathers, never raising her voice, even when bringing up a feisty boy with a father who was more of a dreamer than a disciplinarian.

Did those conclusions lead to support of Stacy’s determination that someone in town was out to get her, or to scare her away? Not necessarily. And then he realized what he’d left out in talking to his mother.

Hurriedly he retraced his steps, bursting into the library to find his mother on the phone.

She hung up as soon as she saw it was Derek.

He blurted his question before she had a chance to react to his return.

“Mom, can you think of any reason the Hunters would be upset by Stacy Millman’s arrival in town?”

“The Hunters? Why should they be? What makes you think they are?”

Again she’d answered too quickly. It made him think of something else that had begun to bother him lately.

“Mom, why did the Hunters pay for my college education? Whenever I’ve been around old Mrs. Hunter she’s been downright disagreeable, as though she dislikes me, so why should she give you money for me?”

He’d only found out about the money recently. At the time he’d been too stunned to question it.

“Mrs. Hunter has always valued industry in young people. When you juggled your job at the beach with gardening work on the estate, she felt you were entitled to help. You know she’s always seen herself as the town benefactress and she thought you were deserving of her charity.”

“Why should we need charity from the Hunters?”

He could see she was becoming exasperated by his questions. She slapped her eyeglasses on in the way she had always done to show the conversation was at an end as far as she was concerned.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Why don’t you ask them!”

Once again Derek left the library feeling that his mother was not being wholly truthful with him, and once again he was dismayed by her unaccustomed deceptiveness.

Funny, before Stacy Millman had shown up on the edge of town, he’d had fleeting thoughts that there were undercurrents of something unhealthy happening around him, but he’d always been able to push them away. He’d been a busy lad, never working less than two jobs from the time he was fourteen, and then the college years and three years in the army as a military policeman. When he’d returned home, he’d been hired immediately into the Wabasha County sheriff’s department as a deputy. When Sheriff Townsend had retired, Derek had run for sheriff, and though his election had been a landslide, there’d been plenty of work to occupy his mind with the campaign beforehand.

Now he was being forced to pay more heed to his unease concerning the Hunters, his parents, and some of the other townsfolk.

He glanced at his watch. He had a meeting with Sheriff Job over in Dakota County at two. From the looks of things, the fog was on its way out, and he’d be able to keep the appointment. He had time for a quick trip out to the Hunter estate before lunch. He’d check into the office and if everything was quiet, he’d drive out there.

He wasn’t a kid anymore. Old Mrs. Hunter could no longer intimidate him. He’d get some straight answers from her; she’d never been one to sidestep the truth, it was almost a weapon in her hands.

The Hunter estate, consisting of a huge white stone house with extensive grounds all around, was located just a mile outside of the town proper. Derek eased the car under the portico alongside the kitchen entrance at the side of the house.

He knew the cook, Vera, not only as a neighbor but from his summers of working the grounds. She’d always made it a point to have icy fresh lemonade for him on hot days and she used to add little treats to the lunches she’d been told to provide for the gardening crew.

Vera announced his arrival to Mrs. Hunter from the kitchen intercom and, after a deliberate pause, Derek heard Mrs. Hunter tell Vera to send him into the library.

“You know the way, Derek,” Vera reminded him. “And on your way out you’ll stop and have a slice of fresh cinnamon cake, yes?”

“If I can take it with me, Vera. I’m on my way to lunch from here.”

The library was a large square room, with a fireplace on the south wall and tall windows overlooking the gardens on the north. Bookshelves rose to the ceiling and wooden ladders on a ceiling track made the upper shelves accessible.

Selma Hunter was wrapped in an afghan, sitting in a wing chair in front of a blazing fire. To Derek, who hadn’t seen her up close in quite some time, she seemed more frail than he remembered, but that might have been a trick of the flames reflecting on her face or the gloom from outside that penetrated the room from the windows on the north wall.