The Taken Read Online Free

Cartwright appeared behind him. “There you are,” she said.
    “Where am I supposed to be?”
    “You missed all the excitement. We got a call from a hysterical lady up in Caplin. We sent three cars up there.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Says she found a body.”
    He immediately stood and put on his cap. “A body? Where?”
    “She said she found it in Gannon Lake. The body of a woman.”

] 3 [

    She was still sitting on the couch, lost in thought, when Glynnis unlocked the basement door and came in. She hated it when Glynnis used her key; she felt she deserved at the very least a courteous knock. Glynnis looked to the bed and then her eyes tacked across the room and found Hazel. “There you are,” she said.
    “World explorer.”
    “You want to eat lunch there or will you be more comfortable at home base?”
    “I’ll lie down.”
    Glynnis put a paper bag on the bedspread and came over to offer an arm. Glynnis was the one who lifted her, who carried her. Twice a week, she bathed her and that was the
sine qua non
of Hazel’s humiliation, an unthinkable abasement, to be bathed by the woman for whom her husband had left her. But she had come to accept that there was no other way. She wrapped an arm around Glynnis’s shoulders and the two of them hobbled to the bed. “You need a pill?” Glynnis asked.
    “I’m fine for now.”
    “I brought us tuna today. Okay if I eat with you?” She asked this even as she dragged one of the chairs to the side of the bed. “I know I’m not your preferred company, but it’s silly for me to eat alone upstairs and you alone down here.”
    “Is it?”
    “Yes.”
    “You should be careful,” said Hazel. “People might start to think you really care.”
    “Well, if they do, I can just smack you around a little and clear up any confusion.”
    Hazel took a long slug of her coffee. “Do you want to smack me around, Glynnis?”
    “I can wait until you’re done your lunch.”
    “See, I knew you cared.”
    Glynnis smiled. “Keep up that positive thinking, Hazel.”
    After lunch, Hazel reset the bed into afternoon sleep-mode, but when she lay down, she wasn’t as tired as she thought she’d be. Visits from Glynnis always rattled her. The woman’s kindness was the hardest thing: it would have been for anyone. Surely Glynnis deserved to be punished for her kindness? Everything else, Hazel had earned: Andrew’s cheating on her, the divorce, her life alone with her smart-mouthed mother. But did she merit this? This awful tenderness?
    She reached across to the bedside table to choose something to read. The gardening magazines were too much for a shut-in, and she chose instead Monday’s
Westmuir Record
. Her mother had mentioned it was publishing the summer story. She silently prayed it wouldn’t be a romance this year. She openedto the story. It was a little mystery called “The Secret of Bass Lake.” A man and his son fishing. A cooler full of beer. The sun peeking up over the horizon. Christ, she thought, it
is
a romance. The writer’s photograph was printed beside his name, a cheesy image of the man standing with his legs set widely apart and his hands in his pockets in a parking lot somewhere. She closed the paper and tossed it onto the floor.
    An hour passed. Slowly. She sat up and put her legs over the side of the bed. Dr. Pass hadn’t actually told her she was “coming along.” He’d gone down her left leg with a pin he’d taken out of his bulletin board – a nod to country doctoring – pricking her leg with it every few inches. She knew about these nerve paths because they’d gone dead on her so many times. He wasn’t dissatisfied with the neurological signs, but he told her off for the atrophy he found in the muscle. “You know what this tells me?” he said. She waited him out and he lowered her legs. “This is the sign of a woman feeling sorry for herself.”
    “Don’t you have to feel my head for that?”
    “These are legs shrivelling from