Cedarbones

Chapter 8: Dinner with Connor

Past the large family garden, through the well-worn path through the white pines, and amid a grove of birches, Shelley sat cross-legged near her mother’s shale gravestone, nestled in a bed of harebell, wood lily, and purple milkweed. Birch trunks shimmered white among the shadows of towering red pines farther up the ridge, their needles whispering in a warming zephyr. Among the birches, ferns unfurled in thick carpets on the forest floor, and wildflowers nodded gently in pockets of sunlight that spilled through the canopy. In the small, secluded glade, the leaves left dappled light over the weathered stone. A soft racket of katydids chirping drifted through the air, mingling with the distant trill of a chickadee, a sound as pure as prayer. The decades of forest long past and decomposing filled each breath with a rich, earthly scent below, and the sweet whisper of chlorophyll above. Moss crept up the base of the headstone, tender and green, as if the forest itself had reached out to embrace her. All around, life moved in quiet reverence, and the grave seemed less a place of endings than a place folded gently into the heart of the woods.

“I touch that rail every night going to the bathroom,” Shelley said. She sat nestled in the grove, dappled by sunlight pouring through the canopy. A large mug of coffee sat in the nest of her legs. A breeze breathed through the white pine branches like a shush from someone wanting to keep a secret.

“I hope it happened fast, Mom. You deserved that much,” she said. Shelley lifted the Algiz pendant hanging from her neck and squeezed it in her palm against her chest. “I don’t know if I can do all this. Dad’s got a substance abuse problem. I think I found a therapist for him. She’s retired. About his age. She makes house visits instead of the office. I’m hoping it’ll help.”

Shelley lifted her mug for a sip of coffee. “I have a meeting with a lawyer to help me get a better custody arrangement for Vee. I don’t have much money left after the trial. I hate to ask Dad about it, even though I’m sure he’d help.”

She plucked a wide blade of grass and nibbled the white end of it. “And Connor has a story he wants me to help with. I know I have so much to do with Dad and Vee, but this is a gruesome thing, Mom. Something terrible happened here years ago, and no one knows who did it. Whoever did it probably moved away or died years ago, but it’s stuck in my head. Who could brutalize and rape that woman and leave her to die in the woods? And if they’re still alive and in this community, the people deserve to know. Right?”

Shelley set her coffee mug aside and leaned toward the gravestone. She preened away the weeds and found a vine of ivy woven in the longer grass. With her fingers under the tender ivy vine, Shelley extracted it from the overgrowth and laid it down toward the stone. “Looks like you have a beautiful friend by you,” she said to the grave.

“Who are you talking to?” Ove said.

Startled, Shelley turned to her father and grabbed her coffee. He stood in his overalls, t-shirt and boots and held a plate of pancakes. “I was just talking to Mom.”

“Mom’s dead, sweetheart,” he said and extended the plate of pancakes to her. “I made pancakes.”

Shelley wanted to clap back at him, but the futility of it all settled in her stomach like curdled milk. “Thanks,” she said and stood up to accept the pancakes.

They walked back to the house. Their shoes grew damp with the morning dew. “We have to make morning deliveries,” Ove said. “I got the crates ready to go. Just need to get picking. I have a beef roast thawing on the counter for dinner. I don’t know much about cooking besides eggs, bacon and pancakes, but I’ve only burned three or four roasts.”

“Oh, Dad,” Shelley said, a pang of guilt fluttering through her chest. “Connor invited me over for dinner. He’s cooking.”

“What’s he cooking for you?”

“He said Swanson TV dinners,” Shelley said. “But I think he was joking.”

“Well,” Ove said. “There will be roast beef when you get home if you're still hungry. And glazed carrots. Your mom did them different. But I learned that if you put butter and brown sugar on them, they taste marvelous.”

Shelley shook her head and said, “Butter and brown sugar make anything taste good, Dad.”

“I know!”

“I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, okay?” she said. “I’ll cook. Steaks and cheesy potatoes.”

“That sounds real good,” he said.

After the day’s deliveries with her father, Shelley showered, got dressed for dinner and drove into town for her dinner with Connor. She stuck with jeans, but from her Minneapolis collection. And instead of a t-shirt, she chose a tri-color cotton blouse with lace sleeves on the forearms. Flats instead of boots. Looking in the rear-view mirror, she picked at the blouse and straightened it. She cocked her head to inspect the messy bun of hair at the back of her head, with a few loose strands falling around her neck. Silver hoop earrings dangled from her lobes. She tapped one to see it jangle in the mirror. Not too flashy. Just enough girl next door to cancel out the celibate mother just released from prison.

She puffed up her cheeks and exhaled.

It would be fine. Connor wasn’t a stranger. He was her best friend, even when they broke up. There was no danger in gently blowing on a once moldering campfire. What could go wrong? She had already torpedoed her entire home life, anyway. Maybe rekindling with Connor would be good for her. For them. After talking with Lana, Connor wasn’t happy with how everything turned out. Gunnar’s words echoed in her ears.

Second chancers.

Three blocks before the main drag in Grand Marais, Shelley took a left down a street lined with cookie-cutter ramblers and ranch-style houses. She slowed the truck and watched the GPS on her phone. A few more houses down. Someone lit a lighter in one of the beat-down parked cars on the street. Another neighbor watered his lawn with a hose. An older woman knelt beside her rose garden and pruned her flowers. She pulled into Connor’s driveway and got out of the truck.

His house was a brown Rambler with white windows. The driveway bore four to five major cracks in the worn asphalt. A carpet of crabgrass had taken over his lawn. Young sprigs of maple trees grew from his clogged gutters. Thistles had overgrown the juniper bushes flanking the front step. She stood at the front door and pressed the doorbell, but she couldn’t hear a sound from inside. She rang again. No sound. Instead, she rapped on the door with her knuckles.

Steps rushed from behind the door, and it swung open to Connor in an untucked dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and khakis. He looked her up and down and said, “You didn’t have to dress up.”

“Says the man in khakis,” she said and stepped inside the house. “You know you have trees growing in your gutters.”

Connor took a deep breath and said, “I know. I’ve been meaning to get to them. Just haven’t had the time.”

Connor had sparsely decorated the sitting room off the front door. A simple navy blue couch and coffee table with nothing on it. A painting of a fishing trawler on Superior hung on one wall. On the other wall hung a portrait of Bob Dylan painted by a local artist. He led her around the corner to the kitchen, where some kind of war had broken out with the kitchen appliances and his cookware. Plastic Tupperware containers towered in the sink from meal prep work. A stockpot boiled on the stove. The brine of salted water and pasta filled the room. A saucepan bubbled with marinara, heavy on the basil. And the light on the oven revealed a sheet pan of roasting meatballs.

Shelley’s eyes drew wide. “You did not have to go through all of this for me.”

Connor stepped to the stove and tasted the sauce. He tried to hide his reaction. “Well, ah,” he said. “I rarely have the opportunity to entertain someone, so I at least wanted to try.” With the pasta dipper, he removed a long, very uneven noodle that was trying hard to be fettuccine but was failing.

“Did you make homemade pasta?” Shelley asked.

Connor bit into the noodle and winced. “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to try it, you know.”

Shelley set her purse on the counter and sat on a stool at the nook. “You need help with anything?”

He pointed to the wine rack nestled on the cupboard to the left of the crowded sink. “You can choose the wine.”

Shelley stepped over to the wine and said, “Sure.” She pulled each bottle out and looked them over. Riesling. Chardonnay. Pinot Gris. Sauvignon Blanc. Another Reisling. “You don’t have any red.”

“Aw, shit,” he said. “I knew I was missing something.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shelley said and opened a chardonnay. She poured two glasses and resumed her spot on the stool, while Connor finished cooking. He took out the meatballs and added them to the sauce, then drained the pasta over the mountain of Tupperware in the sink. He prepped two plates for them and joined her at the nook.

Shelley looked down at the meal and said, “It doesn’t look half bad.”

Connor smiled and sipped his wine. “Hopefully, it tastes as good as it looks.”

They both twirled their sauced pasta and a meatball and took a bite together. Connor chewed for a while, but spat it back onto his plate. “Don’t swallow,” he said. “It’s terrible.”

Shelley winced and did the same. “It’s not that bad, Connor.”

“I knew that was too much salt,” he muttered.

“And eggshells,” Shelley said, picking a fragment of shell from her teeth.

Connor downed his whole glass of wine and said, “Dammit! I just wanted it to be special.”

Shelley drank her wine, swished it in her mouth like mouthwash and swallowed. “I’m fine with the Swanson dinners.”

An hour later, Shelley and Connor sat on the leather couch in his living room. The empty trays of two Swanson turkey dinners with mashed potatoes and cranberry cobblers resting in their laps and a second bottle of chardonnay on the nook.

“Look at it this way,” Shelley said. “Now the wine matches.”

Connor clinked his glass with hers and drank. “At least one thing went right, huh?”

“So what’s up with the shirt and khakis?”

Connor looked down at his ensemble. “Covering city hall this afternoon.”

“Anything big?”

Connor shook his head. “No. Just another working session on proposed commercial development.” He sipped his wine and sighed. “What about you? Learn anything at the Legion?”

Shelley smiled. “I did.” She paused to accentuate the tension. Connor cocked his head like a dog waiting for a treat. “That you and she used to hook up.”

Connor blushed and said, “I was going to tell you.”

Shelley waved him off. “Don’t be so uptight. I broke it off with you in college. You were a cage-free chicken.”

Connor drank more wine and said, “She’s nice and all, but, well, um.”

“You never got over me,” Shelley said. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. We both wanted two different things.”

Connor finished his wine and got up to pour another glass. “Yes, we did,” he said and came back to the couch. “I realize now that I made a mistake. I just - it was scary to me. To just leave. I mean, Madison was one thing, but Minneapolis? I think I had just worked so much up in my mind.”

“Well,” Shelley said. “Maybe we can start over. We’re both different people now. We’ve made our mistakes—“

“Some more than others,” Connor added.

Shelley nodded. “Yes. Some more than others.”

Connor extended his free hand to her for a handshake. “Hello, I’m Connor Headley.”

Shelley took his hand and shook it. “And I’m Shelley Renn—uh—Skarstad. Nice to meet you.”

Their hands lingered longer than needed for a handshake, before Connor took his back. “So,” he said. “Besides my terrible dating history, what else did you learn from Lana?”

“She gave me a bunch of potentials,” she said. “A Jimmy Nilsson. Had a domestic assault.”

“Yeah, that was over twenty years ago,” Connor added.

“A Karl Magnusson,” Shelley said. “Raped a girl, evidently.”

“Yeah,” Connor said. “Gunnar gave him a job on one of his crews.”

“Nilsson’s nephew too,” Shelley added. She held her hand up and added, “Gunnar Bergmann too. I had no idea.”

“Really?” Connor said. “He’s got it on his company website.”

“I think I forgot it,” Shelley said. “I searched through all the stuff in storage at Dad’s place to find the model jet he gave me when I was six. I just can’t believe I blocked that out.”

“Jeez, Shel,” he said. “Don’t be hard on yourself. You’ve been through a meat grinder.”

Shelley’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out and saw Vee’s number on the screen. “It’s Vee,” she told Connor. “I’ll be right back.” She walked past the kitchen and into the sitting room by the front door. She stood with her back facing the bay window and answered the call.

“Hey sweetheart, it’s late. What are you doing up?”

“He’s not letting me come up to visit you, Mom!”

Shelley paced between the fishing trawler and Bob Dylan paintings. “Calm down,” she said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“He won’t let me!” Traffic noise squeals over the phone, and a distant siren bellows on his end of the phone.

“Wait. Where are you?”

Vee sniffles on the other end. “Outside. I needed to get some air.”

Shelley scrunched her face in worry. “It’s after ten. You need to go back up to the apartment. It’s not safe.”

“I’m just walking to Andrea’s Pizza,” he said. “We’ve done it a thousand times.”

“With me,” she said, her voice stern. “But I’m not there.” She paused, thinking it through. “Where is your father?”

“Working.”

Shelley shook her head and rubbed her palm against her eye. “Of course. Listen, get a slice and go straight home. I’ll work it out with your father. This has more to do with me than you, kiddo.”

“Okay!” he said. “I can’t wait to see you and Grandpa!”

“We can’t either,” she said.

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, kiddo.”

Shelley hung up the phone and slid it into her pocket. Before she turned to rejoin Connor, the bay window crashed inward, and a large cinder block crashed onto the coffee table. Shelley swore in a panic. Connor ran into the room. Shelley had her arms over her head for protection. The cinder block lay on the coffee table, amid a halo of shattered glass shards all over the carpet. He wheeled to the door and took chase.

Shelley’s legs wobbled as she stepped over and sat on the couch. Outside, tires squealed on the pavement and a car roared out of the neighborhood. She waited to hear the thump of Connor being struck by the car, but thankfully, it never came. Connor raced back into the house and shut the door behind him. Winded, he bent over Shelley and said, “Were you hurt?”

Shelley shook her head and stared at the cinder block. “Did you see who it was?” she asked.

Connor shook his head. He said, “All I got was this,” and he handed her a sweaty baseball cap. “The asshole must have lost it hoofing it to his car.”

Shelley turned the cap over in her hands. It stank of sweat and acrid smoke. The cap featured a black logo of the American flag sewn vertically, and blue thread stitched the middle stripe in the flag.

“I know who it was,” Shelley said.