You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

Where we ran into each other back there? That was my dad’s favorite camping spot.”

Martijn did something really weird then. He grasped her wrist again, for no reason at all.

“Where we just were?” he said. “The place we just left?”

It was a tight grip. Too tight. She thought about her mom’s wrist and the bruise band, and the supposed dogs her mom had said she walked, which she didn’t walk.

Karin glared at him while she tried to shake her arm loose. “Give me my arm back.”

“Tell me,” he said. “Where?”

Chapter 24Caller

The caller’s house had a fence around it and a cobblestoned path that led to a quaint little cabin that looked like a gingerbread house from a fairy tale. It was painted dark brown, with a whimsical bright-yellow door, yellow trim, and the shape of a heart cut into the front door. Grace stepped onto a welcome mat that was shaped like a gingerbread house and let the surreal element of the moment touch her for a second.

She rang the bell, which chimed with a cheerful sound of reindeer bells. Immediately, she heard loud barking. It was not just one dog but many—maybe dozens of dogs. Some of them seemed to be throwing their bodies up against the front door to try to open it themselves. She heard scratching and falling.

It wasn’t long before the door swung open, and she saw a human figure pushing through the dogs amassed by the entrance. “Hush, now,” the human said. Grace couldn’t see her that well because of a screen door between them, but it seemed to be the woman. “Calm down, everyone. Quiet.” The dogs barked and yelped and jumped while the woman patted their heads.

Grace watched her maneuver. She could see that the woman was older than she’d anticipated, maybe in her late sixties or seventies. Her hair was big and round and silvery, reminding Grace of a halo in those medieval paintings, sort of hovering behind her head. The woman’s eyes were hidden behind large square-framed glasses and looked tired.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Grace said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

“Don’t apologize. I understand the urgency.”

Having pacified the dogs to some degree, the woman turned her attention to Grace, peering through the screen. Grace could see that she was very tall, with broad shoulders like a man’s, and she listed just a little to the left. She thought: Julia Child. A Dutch Julia Child. Grace imagined her, for another second, holding a meat cleaver up over lots of headless raw chickens, and smiling a big, mischievous smile.

The woman drew up her glasses to rest them on the top of her head. The expression on her face was serious as she finally opened the door. “I’m Maaike Bol,” the woman said. “You must be Grace.”

“Yes, Grace. Grace Hoogendijk,” she added. “I came as quickly as I could, but maybe too quickly. I got pulled over for speeding.”

“Oh, I should have warned you. They are always patrolling that exit. Did you get a ticket? Please come in.” Maaike pushed the screen door wide, and the dogs started barking again. “Don’t worry about them. They’re all sweet, friendly dogs. Susje here might jump up on you, but I just clipped her claws this morning. You can also just push her back down and she’ll obey.”

Grace took a step forward tentatively while making a mental inventory of the hounds: a lean, shaggy dog; a brown spotted dog with long ears; a pair of small sausage dogs; a scruffy terrier; and a big black Labrador. Six in all.

The little house was as quaint on the inside as it was on the outside, with mismatched antique furniture and lots of porcelain figurines everywhere.

“I know that I alarmed you,” Maaike said, ushering Grace into the living room, past the sniffing canines. “I was debating as to whether it was a good idea to get involved, but that’s me. If I see something that looks strange or suspicious, I like to help. If I were the mother, I’d want to know.”

Maaike had a matronly way about her, with her eggplant-and-squash-colored dress made of a thick organic cotton. On one foot she had a soft gray sneaker and on the other foot, her left foot, she had an enormous navy-blue boot, covering a plaster cast.

“Oh, you’ve hurt your foot,” said Grace. “Is it broken?”

“Yes, yes, it’s a ridiculous story,” Maaike began, ushering Grace into her house. “You know how one bad turn becomes another—in this case quite literally. My poor dear husband, Wim, who is now seventy-two years old, had to have his hip replaced. He’s needed it for a long time, but finally the pain got too bad and the orthopedist said it was a must. So I took him into the hospital on Tuesday, and we realized just after he was admitted that we had forgotten all his diabetes medications, and so I had to rush back home and get all that. And so I was leaving the hospital, and I guess I was just in too much of a rush because when I got outside there was a young boy there, and he had a skateboard, and I guess he was just rolling up and down the street for fun. Well, at some point he skated past me and then he fell into me—or maybe I ran into him, I can’t say—and he fell off the board, and then I tripped on the board, and there we were, the two of us lying on the pavement together. Luckily, we were right there at the hospital already. So they took us inside and then did some X-rays, and it turned out that I got the worse of it. He was okay with just some bruises and scratches—you know how kids’ bodies just bounce back from everything—and I had to get this cast for my ankle. But it’s not as bad as it looks. I can still walk on it.”

Grace was selfishly wondering how this