Mom, Apple Pie, and Murder (1999) Anthology by Nancy Pickard

Author:Nancy Pickard [Pickard, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Out of Africa

Nancy Pickard

Soccer mom and mystery writer Nancy Pickard practices both skills in the number one youth soccer state in the nation, Kansas. When shes not carpooling, she writes the Jenny Cain and Eugenia Potter mystery series and edits anthologies like this one. A former president of Sisters in Crime, she has won the Anthony, Agatha, Macavity, and Shamus Awards for her novels and short stories.

Theme music swelled, and a golden meadow in Kenya appeared on the television screen in Room 312. On top of the TV set, a bolted-down VCR unrolled Out of Africa, a movie that was made in 1985 but which was set back in 1913. It was a story based on truth and real people, and it told of a time when the skies above East Africa were blue and beautiful, and still empty of anything but clouds, spears, arrows, insects, and birds. The first airplane had not yet appeared to swoop around the hills, or to fly low and scatter the herds on the ground. No smell of gasoline or of diesel touched the senses of people accustomed to breathing dust raised by wind, by running feet and galloping hooves. Great numbers of animals ran free. Fabulous flocks of white birds took wing, as from an unfenced Eden. Hills rose all around, as if to protect and hold in their embrace all manner of species who didn’t know that their millions of years of freedom were drawing to a close.

In Room 312, Ward C, of the Heartlines Nursing Home, nurse’s aide Susan Stefano stared at the screen. She listened to the movie for a moment, and then she looked at the resident in the wheelchair.

“You really love this movie, Mrs. Golden,” she said, quietly.

Maude Golden’s gaze remained fixed on the screen.

“I like it, too.” Susan placed her right hand on the bony, veined left hand that rested unmoving on the arm of the wheelchair. She might have spoken louder, as she usually did with elderly residents who were hard of hearing. But she didn’t know how much this patient could hear, or what she understood. Susan felt that she and Mrs. Golden communicated mostly in unspoken ways.

“You hear the music, though, don’t you?” she asked.

Susan thought this movie’s music was beautiful, but it was so sad she couldn’t hear it without feeling as if she wanted to cry. Sometimes, she actually did shed a few tears, especially if she happened to be in the room during certain scenes. Such as when Robert Redford first took Meryl Streep up in his new airplane, and you just knew he was going to crash one day, and die, and leave her all alone. That scene always got to Susan, and she could hardly bear the one where Meryl Streep boarded the train to leave Africa forever. She just wanted to sob like a baby when she caught that one. The sad music got to her, every time.

But this afternoon, Susan had purposely come in at the start of the movie.

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