Moonlight in Vermont

I had just gone through an unpleasant divorce and was asked by my married sister to come up to her house in West Dover, Vermont to relax. Truth be told, I wasn’t that keen to drive up, but I also wasn’t in the mood to spend my time in a hotel or look for an apartment in the next few weeks, since my ex got our condo and my Mercedes to boot. Nor did I want to take up my mother’s invitation to stay with her in my old room, who would remind me of how she told me so, so many times, not to marry that bitch. 

So, I took a week off from my work and borrowed my brother’s car because he now lives in the city and never uses it. It’s an old Blue Chevy Sedan that he keeps at our mother’s house, hoping it won't break down up there on some snowy road. It didn’t, except for the heater, which died about a hundred miles away, freezing my butt off.

I arrived at West Dover late at night. The sky looks quite different here. Unlike the city, the sky is clear and you can see the Milky Way up there and you wonder sometimes how insignificant we on earth are. I pulled over and stepped out of the car to take a look. I stayed but a minute when suddenly I saw a shooting star above. I almost made a wish but I didn’t believe in these things anymore.

West Dover is a small town with a ski resort which I dreaded. I wasn’t in the mood to ski and hoped my sister won't ask me to go up any slopes. Apparently, West Dover is also a village with circular roads so I kept taking wrong turns and till I saw a woman in a red jacket with two kids down the block making a snowman in her yard. I wanted to ask her direction but as I drove closer she seemed to give me an unwelcoming look, so I just passed her by. Fortunately, as I kept going around the curved road, my sister’s house, suddenly came up not far away on the left.

I pulled into the driveway and there in the door stood my sister and her husband happy as larks, with a welcoming smile. I haven’t seen them in over a year.

“Well, I see you finally had the guts to drive up and in winter to boot. So good to see you, Edward.” Thomas always called me by my full name and expected me to call him by his, rather than the familiar Tom or Tommy. He was a big guy and held me in a bear hug so tight I fought for my breath till my sister pulled him away and hugged me herself a bit milder.

After I settled myself upstairs in the guest bedroom I came down to a roaring fire in a 1920s old fireplace with a cup of hot cider that just hit the spot and warmed up my numbing body. Now I had to tell my divorce story once again, this time in person. The gist of it was, that my wife was an artsy person and I was not. On one of her trips to a downtown art gallery, she found an artist that threw multi-colored splashes of paint on colossal canvases and that was love at first sight. He was a successful icon in the artsy circles of Manhattan, so my wife, I mean my ex-wife, thought that was who she would rather be with than with me, a strait and narrow guy like myself.

After a refill of my drink, my sister kept pestering me, like my mother, why I married my wife in the first place. I changed the subject and asked her about that woman I passed making a snowman with those two kids.

I said. “She seemed very unfriendly.” Then, in a facetious way, I said. “I thought Vermont was a friendly state.”

My sister looked at Thomas and shook her head. “Oh, you probably mean Linda Morgan…” Thomas said. “We don’t know her personally, despite her living on our street. No one is saying anything. The only thing we do know from another neighbor is that she had an altercation with her husband and shot him.

“They seemed like a nice happy couple once,” my sister added, “but you never know what’s behind closed doors. They had moved from Boston about half a year ago when the husband took over his father’s hardware store in the village.” 

“Actually, when you go back up to your room,” Thomas volunteered, “you’ll be able to see the back of her house through the window.”

We left it at that. I was tired from the trip and started to yawn. Well, what did I care anyway about that woman? I only asked because I didn’t want to talk about my divorce anymore.

We had a quick supper, I didn’t even want dessert, even though it was a lemon meringue pie, my favorite, and went upstairs to my room. Once there, I brushed my teeth, got undressed, and just plopped under the warm covers when I remembered what Thomas said about that woman’s house being seen through the window. So I just had to get up and take a look out there, not that I expected to see anything of interest in the dark.

But it was a cloudless moonlit night so it turned out I could see pretty well across my sister’s yard into the other one. There were no trees obscuring the view just a wooden fence separating the properties. Everything was bluish-white, the snow made a silvery carpet on the ground and anything that wasn’t white stood out like a sore thumb.

What I saw was almost ghostly but there was no way to miss the dark shape of a person walking about the yard. It must be that woman, who else could it be. The shape wasn’t sneaking about like a thief. 

I watched for a few minutes and was about to get into bed when suddenly the figure stopped and looked up at me. I stepped back quickly. I don’t know why. She couldn’t have seen me in the dark room. I certainly wasn’t afraid, still, it shook me up. I waited for another few minutes and decided to see if she’s still there, but when I looked, the yard was empty, so I went to bed and fell asleep right away.

I hardly ever dream much but this night I dreamt about that woman shooting me. Crazy no? Of course, that woke me up in a hot sweat and when I sat up and looked at the time I saw only a few hours have passed since I went to bed.

Why would I dream of her I couldn’t imagine? I saw her for what? Five-seconds the most, when I passed her house before. I got out of bed again to get a drink of water and as I passed the window I couldn’t resist and take another careful look, but there was nothing there except stillness. 

The rest of the night I was wide awake thinking up all sorts of wild situations about her till the sun came up and I smelled coffee coming up from downstairs. I decided to go down but once again I couldn’t pass the window without a peak, but of course her the yard was still empty, only her footprints in the crisp snow were still visible. 

I met my sister on the way down and told her of my dream last night and she laughed. “You have some imagination Edward, you should write a novel yourself.”

By now we were in the kitchen and she asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I remembered when we still lived with our parents she used to make delicious pancakes from some French recipe and reminded her of it. She gave me a smile and shook her head but as she opened the fridge she realized she had only one egg. 

“Crap,” she said. “…Thomas did some shopping yesterday but apparently, he forgot the eggs. Now I’m going to have to go to the minimart, it’s not that far away, I’ll be back in about half-hour.”

Well, I wasn’t going to let my sister go to the market just to buy me a dozen eggs so I could have pan pancakes for breakfast, so I volunteered to go, it wasn’t that far away she said.

“Oh, that’s nice of you Edward, just make a right on the corner, left on the next, and then it’s really straight ahead about half a mile down the road. You probably passed it on the way here, so you can’t miss it. Just be careful it might be slippery out there. Use our four-wheel-drive since your heater doesn’t work.”

So, I took their dark green Jeep and headed down the road for the market. After the next two blocks, the houses became a bit sparser and in half a mile it was mostly farmland. The road was a two-lane blacktop with snow-topped trees and a narrow ditch on each side. I drove very slowly because occasionally I felt the wheels slip.

As I came to a sharp curve I slowed down and saw a car up ahead sticking out of a ditch and the front hugging a tree, apparently it slipped and crashed. I saw its skid marks in the snow and the driver standing outside looking at the damage. As I approached closer the driver turned and I immediately recognized the red jacket again.

This is the third time I saw this woman within twelve hours. If this wasn’t some kind of fate, I don’t know what was.

I parked the car and got out. “Are you hurt?” I asked anxiously.

“Thank goodness no.” She said calmly. I guessed she didn’t recognize, well, why should she? I was driving another car and I’m sure she didn’t really get a good look at me through my car’s window. “I must have hit some black ice and went right into the tree. I’m glad that you stopped, I left my phone at home and it’s still too early for most people to get around on a Saturday morning. I couldn’t even call the local garage guy to get a tow. I think I killed the radiator.”

I asked if her kids were in the car and she asked me with furrowed eyes how I knew about them. I explained to her quickly that I passed her house yesterday afternoon and assumed they were hers. At that, she seemed relieved.

“Oh, that was you. I thought at first it was someone else.” But “no,” she said, “the kids are home, thank goodness.” She was just going to the store to get some eggs to make pancakes for them…at which I shook my head and smiled. Fate again.

Then I had to explain to her that I was also on the same mission to which she too cracked a smile which was the cutest smile I’ve seen in a long time. How could a woman with a face like that shoot anybody?

Regardless. Me having a smartphone didn’t help much, as on this spot there was no connection anyway, so I offered to drive her to the mini-mall where she told me the garage was. As she got into the car I was hoping lightheartedly she didn’t carry a pistol in her jacket pocket.

As soon as we got a signal on the way she called her children and told them not to worry, she’ll be home soon and to have some cereal instead. It took us about five minutes more to the garage but we were early and it was still closed. We had about an hour to wait until they open.

Then I called my sister and told her about the accident and that I was helping out someone and I’ll be a while getting back and that no one except the car was injured. I did not tell her who it was that had the accident.

There was nothing else to do except waiting. There was a small coffee shop a few stores down, so I suggested we go in for some coffee. We introduced ourselves and as we took our jackets off and ordered coffee and pancakes, and I then told her that I saw her yesterday making a snowman with her boys as I passed her house.

“Sorry, I probably looked a bit apprehensive, I thought it might have been my ex-husband, he drives the same kind of car.”

“Your husband? I thought you shot him…” I blurted out without thinking.

“What!” She cried out, making the waitress and a couple a few tables down, turn to look. “What do you mean I shot him? Where in heavens did you hear that?” Now in a lower voice.

I wasn’t going to squeal on my sister so I kept quiet.

“I bet I know. Nosy neighbors.” She said leaning back.

What could I say? The coffee came and we each put our hands around the hot mug as she stared at me then giggled. She looked so innocent, I wondered again how she could have shot anyone.

“I don’t know who told you I shot my husband, though he probably deserved it, but it’s not quite true. He came over one afternoon while I and the kids were playing outside. We were having an argument about him seeing one of the local girls a bit too often. She’s blond with black roots and large boobs. I suppose it was something new for my husband. Mine apparently wasn’t big enough,” and she blatantly pulled her woolly sweater up baring her shirt that barely stuck out. “See…”

My face turned pale I’m sure and I tried to hide it by taking a swallow of hot coffee and lowered my eyes. When I looked up at her again she had a smug look on her face.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” She said with an adorable laugh.

“No, it’s all right, we seem to have the same problem with our spouses.” 

Said I.

“Really?” She said raising an eyebrow.

I told her of my situation, she told me hers in more detail. In a way, it was almost like we have known each other for a long time ago and just met again by chance. The shooting spree turned out to be with a water pistol she and the kids were playing which seemed to turn out a big deal, for he shouted out loud enough that the neighbors could hear him. “YOU BITCH, YOU SHOT ME!”

“And that’s how the rumor started.” She said. “He’s a local boy and I was from the city. They stuck up for him, he now runs the hardware store in town where people always hang out.”

I finely told her who my sister was, she thought they were nice people but they were seldom around, always going away or in the house doing God knows what. Nobody really knew them and as far as walking last night in the back yard. “Yes, that was probably me.” She said. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t sleep so she just walked around her yard. “…and no, I didn’t look up at your window.” She said. “I looked up at a shooting star and made a wish I could meet someone saner than the people in this town.”