Ada Unraveled by Barbara Sullivan

again.
    “Which was when?”
    “Ada was found a week ago, during the
firestorms.” Andrea.
    “How old was Ada and how did she die?”
    Hannah answered. “I think she was about
sixty-two. We don’t know how she died. A physician was called in, I
believe he is distantly related to Jake and Victoria, he examined
her body, said she appeared to have died from complications of
influenza, and she was cremated within the day.
    “But…given that Luke had disappeared before
she was found, and certain…rumors some of us have heard about
domestic violence, we thought this should be looked into further,”
she concluded.
    “What about her son, Eddie?” I asked. “Can
he shed any light onto his mother’s death?”
    Andrea answered. “Eddie can’t.
He’s…confused.”
    Getting answers out of these women, even
when they were asking for my help, was an immensely frustrating
task, and one that I was frankly no longer up for.
     
    When I’d stood to leave the quilting room
and this long night of secrets, I wondered if my legs would get me
to the front door.
    At the front door I wondered if my head
would get me and my car home.
    And, at the front door, Hannah told me a bit
more about my new assignment.
    “There’s a book on the Stowall family in the
Carlsbad library. It’s some sort of genealogy written by John
Stowall. You might find that helpful.”
    “And here’s a copy of the family genealogy.
You might want to look at that first. I’m sorry about…all this. The
way it transpired. But….” Gerry pressed taped and folded sheets of
a computer printout on top of the pile in my arms. I pulled it
against my body, shielding it behind the quilt. The rain was just a
sprinkle now, but soon there would be more.
    “I appreciate how painful this has been for
all of you. I only wish I’d understood where this night was headed
in the beginning.”
    Right at that moment, I was concentrating on
getting in my car and driving for the better part of an hour. I was
wishing there was some travel god who could teleport me directly
into my warm bed.
    “Goodbye, Rachel. We’ll see you in a month,
if not sooner,” Elixchel called from the kitchen doorway. She sent
a tentative wave, similar to the feeble one I’d waved at her, way
back in the beginning of this long night.
     

Chapter 12: Road Rage
    I turned in a weary daze and chose the best
path through the mud to my car. They’d given me paper towels to
clean my shoes, but I decided it was best to just take them off and
place the mud caked Mocs on the floor on top of the towels. Ada’s
carefully folded quilt lay on the passenger’s seat on top of the
papers Gerry had just given me as I prepared to drive away.
    As the road passed under my wheels, I tried
to lift my spirits with thoughts of how clean the landscape looked
after this good washing. Then I tried the radio, but the first news
station I came to was blaring out the muddy details of a massive
slide in LA. I glanced at the beautiful quilt I’d been entrusted
with. What complex and masterful work. As I wondered about the
woman who had created it, I noticed a huge white truck with some
sort of device attached to its front bumper looming in my rear
mirror. Elevated abnormally on those wacky monster truck springs,
it was so close I was mostly looking back at its undercarriage—with
a cruel bumper above, a bumper made of metal pipes and a flat panel
of scarred sheet metal. It was a bulbar, wasn’t it? I
wondered briefly where that tidbit of fascinating information had
been buried. No doubt some long-ago reference question was the
source.
    I glanced up at the mirror again. What? Were
we playing Red-Light, Green-Light? The truck was much closer. The
narrow two-lane road curved before me. I sped up a bit. Jacked-up guy was probably late for work.
    The monster truck edged closer on its ludicrously oversized wheels . I wished I’d called Matt to
pick me up. At least the rude pig was keeping me awake. The white
truck lurched