No answer.
She put her hand on the doorknob. Locked.
“Elwood, are you all right?”
Nothing.
Melanie pulled a bobby pin from her hair and stuck an end into the lock, turning it this way and that, jiggling it, then reinserting the pin upside down and jiggling it again until she heard the mechanism inside the lock turn.
She slowly opened the door.
The first thing Melanie saw was Elwood’s bed, stripped entirely of its linens as though it were laundry day.
She stepped into the room saying his name. “Elwood?”
The bookshelves that lined one wall were in order. The bedside table was clean. The dresser top was free of clutter, as was an amply stuffed armchair and the table beside it. There was no sign of Elwood.
Had he dashed into his closet to hide from her?
“Elwood?” She approached the closet and opened one of its double doors. The inside was full of clothes and shoes lined up with their mates, and boxes in neat stacks on the shelf above the clothes rack. But Elwood wasn’t hiding in the closet.
Elwood wasn’t upstairs.
Melanie dashed to Elwood’s bedroom window that overlooked the backyard, hoping that he was outside at last with the others and his roses and that she had just missed seeing him.
Below her, June and Eva were still on the blanket. Nicky was lining up what looked like chess pieces on the top of a low retaining wall on the far side of the yard.
Elwood wasn’t in the backyard, either.
Melanie made her way as quickly as she could back downstairs, alarm beginning to make her heart race. She looked for Elwood in June’s room, in the garage, in the utility closet, in the laundry room, even in the coat closet by the front door.
But Elwood Blankenship, the man who never left home, wasn’t inside his house.
19
For one fleeting moment, Melanie imagined Elwood had been rushed to the hospital with some awful injury while she’d been gone. But that was not possible. Not possible. June wouldn’t be relaxing on the lawn at that moment if he’d fallen down the stairs or cut his hand in the kitchen or accidentally swallowed poison.
Had he finally decided it was time for inpatient care to help him deal with his debilitating problem? Or had June decided enough was enough and called for a psychiatric hospital to come get him? Impossible on both counts for the same reason. June would not be sitting on a blanket in the backyard if either were true.
Had he never been in the house at all? Had she been talking to a ghost all this time? June, too? Talking and living with a ghost? Unthinkable. Eva had been coming over to the house for more than a week. She’d made meals for Elwood, washed his laundry. Straightened his slippers. He was no ghost.
Melanie threw open the Blankenships’ patio door.
June was still sitting on the lawn, but Eva had joined Nicky to line up the chess pieces atop a brick planter filled with pink andwhite flowers. Both women turned to the sound of the patio door banging open.
“Where’s Elwood?” she said.
June struggled to rise to her feet. Eva left Nicky with the chess pieces and started to walk toward her. Neither woman answered the question.
“Where is he?” Melanie demanded.
June brought a shaking hand to her forehead and brushed a few stray hairs away. “Melanie! I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Tell me where he is, June.”
June looked to Nicky, and so did Eva. The boy had stopped playing and was staring at Melanie.
“You need to keep your voice down,” June said evenly.
