False Impressions by Terri Thayer

cheddar. With beer, of course. But he’s not drinking anymore, so no beer. I thought about getting the nonalcoholic stuff, but then I thought why even tempt him?”
    April watched, growing more dismayed as the girl rambled. What if this was hormonal? Kit had six-month-old twins. It might be some kind of postpartum depression or something. April was the last person equipped to deal with that. She mentally ran down a list of people she could call. Deana might know what to do.
    “You must miss him terribly,” she said quietly. It seemed like speaking softly was the right thing to do.
    Kit looked up and said at a normal volume, “Listen. I’m not crazy.”
    “I’m sure it feels like your uncle is everywhere . . .” April began.
    “No, seriously. April, he’s alive. It wasn’t him in the meth-lab explosion.”
    “How can that be? Didn’t they find his body?”
    “They found his truck and his license in the glove compartment. The house had burned to the ground. They didn’t find much that was identifiable,” Kit said.
    She looked away, staring at an icicle outside her kitchen window. Her gutters must have been blocked because the icicle was as thick as her forearm and tapered to a sharp, dripping point. April thought about how much it would hurt if it fell on someone.
    “My uncle wasn’t making meth, April, he wasn’t. He’d started going to AA as soon as he knew I was pregnant. Said he wanted to be awake and aware to enjoy my babies.”
    Kit’s voice broke then, and a sob escaped. She stuffed her hand into her mouth. April put a hand on Kit’s shaking shoulder.
    “Kit, do you want me to call your mother?” She took out her cell phone and began scrolling for Mary Lou’s number.
    “No!” Kit took April’s cell away from her. “We’re not telling my mother about this. He won’t come if we do.”
    Her face was like a young child’s. April could see what Kit must have looked like as a five-year-old, throwing a tantrum at the IGA because her mother wouldn’t buy her an Elmo balloon. Her lips were pursed, her eyes steely.
    “What do you mean?”
    Kit opened her eyes. “He wants to talk to me. Only me.”
    April searched Kit’s face. Her cheeks were flushed, and her fingers nervously scratched the surface of the cell phone. Underneath the ruddy blush, her skin was as pale as the icicle hanging from the roof.
    “No one can know he’s coming,” Kit said. She laid down the phone out of April’s reach and went back to arranging circles of kielbasa on a paper plate. “He’s waiting until after dark. If Yost or the state police catch him, he’ll get thrown in jail. We have to do this on the q.t.”
    April looked out the window. Darkness came quickly and early on these cloudy days. The sky was already dusky outside. Within the half hour, it would be inky black. The darkness unsettled April even more.
    “How can you be sure it’s him? What if it’s some kind of hoax?” April couldn’t hide her concern.
    “It’s not.” Kit was calm, her hands busy with the snack she was making. She stopped suddenly and looked around the kitchen. “We’ve got no place to sit. There are some folding chairs in the basement. Would you go down and get them?”
    Kit pointed to a door off the kitchen. She grabbed a wipe from her purse and cleaned off her hands. “I’ve got an empty five-gallon pail we can use for a table.”
    April looked at her in amazement. Kit was acting like her mother. The perfect hostess. The fact that the house was in a complete uproar didn’t stop that entertaining gene from surfacing.
    Why wasn’t Mary Lou here? April paused in front of the door.
    “Why me? Why ask me to come here?”
    “I promised J.B. I wouldn’t tell anyone yet. But I didn’t want to be alone. You see things that others don’t see. You have insights.”
    April blushed. Kit was flattering her, she knew. But it was somewhat true. She had had a knack for getting to the bottom of mysterious doings around