Coming Home to Greenleigh

Chapter 18

Image credit to Alexandra Bach (https://alexandravbach.deviantart.com/); you can see her beautiful work at her personal website also, http://alexandravbach.fr/)

The snow piled up overnight. While it had been a sloppy mess during the evening, when the temperature settled into the upper teens, it turned fluffy and thick, and fell fast. In typical nor'easter style, when it came in, it came in with attitude. It waited until after midnight, and then briskly took over.

After the snow, the temperature did a classic New England downturn into the single digits, causing schools to close and gas stations with tow trucks to enjoy a spectacular rise in business thanks to the cars stalled out on every road. As accustomed as they all were to fickle winter weather, a pre-Thanksgiving snowstorm of such magnitude was still worth plenty of space in the papers and lots of talk time on the television.

Mr. Kelly at the town hall had sent his second son Robbie and a high school buddy of his to dig Elisabeth out. There had to be at least a couple of feet of snow piled up about the house in drifts, and the low temperatures following the storm created the usual hazard of crusty ice, frozen solid beneath a layer of brittle snow, and the source of many a broken hip at the emergency room. Mrs. McPherson next door, in fact, had not salted or sanded her walkway sufficiently and was the unfortunate victim of a nasty fall. No broken bones, fortunately, Elisabeth learned when she went to call, but lots of bruises, including on one very tender ego.

Angela Stewart telephoned, apologizing that the weather made it difficult for her to come in person. She mentioned that Bob had called her at Mrs. Miller's but was behaving oddly. He was being very pleasant and cheerful, almost jovial, and had called her merely to update her on the children, all of whom had been worried because of the storm. It seemed that he hadn't found it particularly necessary to describe to them their current living situation. Did Elisabeth think this was all right? What did Elisabeth think his intentions were? Elisabeth bit her nails and worried. Was Bob going to get his act together and start taking charge of his life? Or was he going to completely muck this up? One false step and Angela was done. Done with him, done with their lives together.

Angela claimed to still want a divorce, but said that she was considering having Christine mediate. Now that she was formally off the case, Elisabeth felt oddly constrained. She didn't want to be a therapist, and without her lawyer title she didn't know where to hang her hat. It was ironic that as a lawyer, she offered plenty of counsel—as Shawn had pointed out, it was not exactly the correct, lawyerly thing for her to do, but she was working on instinct and human sympathy, not out of law books. And now that she was only Angela's friend and not her attorney, she didn't know what to say.

Perhaps it was this mess with Shawn that was causing her to feel confused. Elisabeth avoided Lawson & Lawson for a few days. In her mind she felt somewhat justified given the bad weather, but she was eventually overcome with guilt. After all, Ricky Junior was still counting on her. She also needed the money.

On her first day back in Lawson & Lawson's offices, she stole in guiltily very early in the morning, and hid in the library. When she emerged at about eleven o'clock to deliver a sheaf of paperwork to Ricky Junior, she heard Shawn's voice down the hall, and ducked into the ladies' room. She ended up scrawling Ricky Junior's name on an envelope and depositing her research on the receptionist's desk, receiving a very hostile look in response. Elisabeth fled.

She drummed up the courage to go in to see Ricky Junior several days later. Shawn, she discovered, was not in that day. Taking care of something at the factory, Ricky Junior said. He seemed almost a little relieved. Shawn was watching his every move, he complained mildly to Elisabeth, as if he were a junior attorney rather than a competent attorney of nearly ten years' experience. "Something's up with him," he said to Elisabeth. Elisabeth smiled wanly and did not reply. She knew what was going on, and it had to do with her.