The Sound of Glass

by Karen White

  Remarkable wasn’t the word I would have used, but I let it go. “You’re welcome to stop by and take a look at them,” I said. “It’s hard to sleep at night knowing they’re up there.”

  “Just consider them works of art,” Deborah said. “And I’d love to come see them. I suppose I could have just asked whether you’d found them, but it’s rather hard to explain. Better to see it in person.” She pressed her hand over her heart. “Finally, after all these years, we know what became of them. I had the horrible feeling that she’d destroyed them.”

  “Why did you think that?” Gibbes asked.

  She frowned again. “Because after Cal left, she changed. Not only did she reclaim all the ones she’d donated to the police department, but she stopped going out and didn’t answer her door or return phone calls. I never saw the light on in the attic anymore. She made a few more nutshell studies after her husband’s death, and continued to make wind chimes. She always gave those to her friends—I have five of them myself. She was working on some big project that she said was a secret. But everything stopped after Cal left. I guess I’ll never know what her special project was, or why it was such a big secret.” She peered closely at Gibbes. “And you knew nothing about her work?”

  “No. I wasn’t allowed up in the attic. After Cal left, she didn’t go up there anymore. I knew she was upset that Cal had gone, but she was so sad, too. Now that I know what it is, I’d say she was probably depressed.” He stared down at the doll with the cord around its neck, deep in thought. “She told me she didn’t want me spending too much time in the house with her, telling me that I was her last chance and she was going to save me. That’s pretty much when I began spending so much time at the Williamses.”

  His voice sounded stiff and agitated, but it was more than masking pain from an unwelcome memory. There was something else, something that made him stand still in the middle of the room, his gaze turned inward. I waited for him to say something, aware that an uncomfortable silence had fallen.

  I wanted to ask Deborah about the plane we’d found with the shoe boxes, whether she knew anything about it, but before I could, Gibbes leaned forward and kissed Deborah’s cheek, making her color. “Thank you, Miss Fuller. This has been very interesting.”

  We said our good-byes, and I had to almost run to catch up with him as we made our way down the creaking stairs. I paused long enough to say good-bye to Cynthia with a promise to have her over soon to see the rest of the house, and then ran outside onto the hot sidewalk. Gibbes stood motionless as passersby walked around him. Heat seeped through the soles of my loafers, and sweat dripped down my back. I wondered how long it would be until I found the heat and humidity bearable. And whether I ever would.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. He blinked several times before taking my arm and leading me back to the Explorer. He turned the key in the ignition and put the AC on full blast. We sat in silence with just the sound of the air-conditioning for a full minute.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked. I wanted to tell myself that I didn’t really care, that it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t. Because after Cal left, she changed. The mention of my husband’s name had reminded me that his ghost connected Gibbes and me in ways I didn’t yet understand. And that I would never be free of either of them until I did.

  He rubbed both hands over his face, his palms rasping the stubble on his cheeks. “I was ten when Cal left. I always thought that either I was clueless and unaware of any tension between my brother and my grandmother around the time he left, or maybe I’ve just blocked it all out, because I’ve never been able to remember any of it.

  “Cal and my grandmother were close, although I always got the feeling that she kept him close to keep an eye on him, to keep him reined in, I think is what Mrs. Williams said. You can still see the marks on the windowsill in Cal’s bedroom where he threw a chessboard after I beat him.” A sad smile lifted his lips, then faded just as quickly. “So that’s probably why I don’t remember much. But just now . . .”

  His chest rose and fell, pushing the past from his lungs. Those who refuse to acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it. I sat, waiting, afraid to hear what he would say just as much as I was afraid I’d miss it.

  “Just now,” he continued, “listening to Deborah, I remembered something. Something I never remembered before. I’d come home from school and the door to the attic was open, as if my grandmother had just come down. Cal had been working in the garden and I heard him dragging something inside—but I didn’t see what it was because I’d already gone upstairs. She told me to go to my room and not come out. I was walking down the hallway toward my room and I heard Cal yelling at my grandmother.”

  His eyes met mine. “What did he say?” I asked softly.

  A sickly breeze teased us as it blew by, bringing with it the scent of the pluff mud. “He called her a murderer.”

  We stared at each other for a long time, horror mirrored in the other’s eyes. Finally I spoke. “Did you ever ask Cal?”

  Gibbes shook his head. “He was gone the next day. My grandmother told me I’d misunderstood, and that I should never mention it again. And I didn’t.”

  Facing forward he put the SUV in drive and drove us home with only the cold blast of the air conditioner to cushion the weight of his words.

  chapter 16

  EDITH

  APRIL 1972

  Edith sat on the garden bench and pulled in a long drag on her cigarette. With her other hand she rubbed her lower back and watched Debbie Fuller—now Deborah, since she was a mature twenty-five—yank out another clump of weeds. It had been a rainy spring, the dampness bringing with it a bumper crop of mosquitoes and weeds.

  Deborah caught Edith watching her and sat back on her heels and smiled. “Cigarettes are really bad for you, you know. They can even kill you.”

  Edith took a long last drag, then dropped the cigarette in the dirt before smashing it with the toe of her shoe. “Don’t be so dramatic, Deborah. I figure if life hasn’t killed me by now, I’ve still got a long road ahead of me. Besides, according to Lord Byron, ‘Whom the gods love dies young.’” Edith found the need every once in a while to remind Deborah that she wasn’t the only one with a good education whose life’s plans had been thwarted by circumstance. It was why she requested Deborah’s help in the garden: They both needed the mental stimulation.

  Deborah frowned, and Edith forced her face to remain serious. Deborah’s mother, Martha, had once said that her daughter had been born a forty-year-old nun, with a sober outlook on life and a seriousness of purpose. Her being the eldest of all those children was most likely to blame, but Edith wondered, too, if it had been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Deborah had graduated with honors from the University of South Carolina and was in her first year of law school when her mother became ill. As the eldest child and only girl, she’d taken the responsibility of moving back home and tending her mother. Almost two years later, nothing had changed, and, knowing Martha, it didn’t appear that things would.

  Edith picked up the trimmers on the bench next to her and moved to her azalea bushes. The blooms had been weak and paltry, their edges already turning brown by the time they’d opened. Which was fine with her, really. It matched her own lack of anticipation over the coming summer, when C.J. would be back from his second year at Carolina.

  She missed him—she did. He was her son. But she didn’t miss his moods, or the way she had to creep around her own house, afraid she’d upset the precarious peace she’d worked so hard to maintain. Or the way it sometimes made her feel as if Calhoun were still alive, her skin prickling with the knowledge that he would open the door at any moment.

  It would be good to have C.J. back, to have the house full of his friends again, to hear their footsteps clattering on the porch at night and their car tires rolling over gravel on their way out to one of the islands for a midnight bonfire. Her biggest hope wou
ld be that he’d meet a nice girl, a strong girl. Someone who could soothe away the hurts he’d been born with, the hurts that emerged every time thunder cracked the night sky, a fissure of light illuminating their memories of a night long ago.

  Deborah sat back on her heels, then wiped the sleeve of her blouse across her forehead, dislodging her glasses. She picked them up from the dirt and cleaned the lenses on her dungarees. “When C.J. gets home, I think you should have him pull out a few of your crape myrtles and plant orange trees instead. I’ve heard they keep the mosquitoes away.”

  Edith thought of telling her that the days of C.J. helping her in the garden had long passed, packed up and folded away like outgrown pants, toy army men, and his need to apologize and be comforted. She missed that part of her son the most and prayed each day that it would return as he became a man.

  She nodded, murmuring evasively, then returned to attacking the azaleas with the trimmer.

  “How’s your big secret project, Mrs. Heyward?”

  Edith had told her many times to call her by her first name, but apparently the rule follower in Deborah couldn’t be overruled. She could imagine Deborah as an old lady, still living at home with her mother, and calling Edith “Mrs. Heyward.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve hit the doldrums with it. There’s too much missing information, and I don’t want to mess up everything I’ve already done with just guessing.”

  “Is it another crime scene?”

  Edith opened the trimmer as wide as it would go and stabbed at a drooping branch, its dying blooms bowed in the heat. “I don’t know why you keep asking me that, Deborah, because my answer never changes. It’s a personal matter, and there’s really only one person I believe I’ll ever show it to.” Edith smiled to herself. And I’ve never even met her.

  “I’m just curious is all. Daddy said that the police department wanted to give you an award to thank you for all your help with advancing crime-scene investigations, but that you refused. I told him before he even asked that you’d say no.”

  Edith straightened, regarding the younger woman with narrowed eyes, recalling that Deborah was the daughter of a policeman, too. “You sound very sure of yourself.”

  Deborah reached behind her to deposit a pile of weeds in C.J.’s old Radio Flyer wagon. Edith eyed it ruefully, remembering how C.J. had never wanted to be pulled in it, but instead had used it to create crashes of epic proportions involving all of his stuffed animals and the large oak that was unfortunately positioned at the end of the driveway. Both the wagon and the tree still bore the scars.

  Deborah placed her gloved hands on her thighs and looked up at Edith. “Because ever since I’ve known you, you’ve liked to keep things to yourself.”

  Edith just nodded, refocusing her attention on the azaleas as more and more wilted blooms plummeted to the ground at her feet like little sacrifices at the altar of truth.

  Realizing that particular conversation was over, Deborah said, “Did you hear about the eight-foot alligator they caught in a shrimp net at Harbor Island last weekend?”

  “I read that in the paper. They’re lucky none of those shrimpers lost a finger—or worse.”

  “That’s not all they caught in the net, you know.” Deborah moved to the right, closer to the lopsided statue, rolling the wagon with her. “They called my daddy to go see, which is how I know about it. I don’t think they put it in the paper yet, because they thought it was just trash. They’ll probably print it later in the week, once they file the police report.”

  “What was it?”

  “Daddy thinks it might be part of a plane that exploded over Beaufort in 1955. Do you remember that? I was only eight at the time, but I don’t think it’s something a person ever forgets. My mother was screaming up and down the hallway for all of us kids to get out of the house. She thought the roof was on fire.”

  Edith stilled, the trimmer stalled over an azalea branch like a stay of execution. “What makes him think it’s from a plane?”

  “There was still some paint on the metal—navy, he said. And it looked like the letter ‘N.’ He had to go look it up, but the plane that blew up was Northeast Airlines.”

  Edith put down the trimmer. “Would you like some iced tea or lemonade? I need to go get myself a glass. This heat makes me so parched.”

  “Yes, ma’am—whichever one you’re getting for yourself. Thank you.” She sat back on her heels, her eyes straying to the statue of Saint Michael. “He’s crooked. You should have Cal or somebody smooth out the dirt beneath him, or else I think he might fall over in the next storm. He’s already missing a hand; wouldn’t do for a saint to lose both. How could he perform miracles then?”

  She’d said it lightly, but Edith couldn’t find the humor in a powerless saint. She forced a small smile, then went inside. She had just pulled out the pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator when the door to the kitchen swung open and C.J. walked in, pulling on the hand of a petite sandy-haired girl who trailed behind him.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said, his father’s grin spreading across his face. He stepped closer and kissed Edith on the cheek. “I’ve decided to come home for the weekend and brought somebody special.”

  The girl waited until C.J. pulled her forward, putting his arm around her shoulders in a proprietary way. “Mother, this is Cecelia Gibbes. She doesn’t like to be called CeCe except by me, so everybody else calls her Cecelia. Isn’t that right, sugar?” He squeezed her to him and kissed the top of her head, and for a brief moment Edith thought she recognized something in the girl’s eyes, something that reminded her of the panicked look of an animal caught in a cage.

  Cecelia held a hand out to Edith and she took it, feeling small bones as delicate as a bird’s. Her eyes were a warm golden brown, the color of the marsh grass in winter. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Heyward.” She met Edith’s eyes briefly before turning them back to C.J.

  The girl seemed dwarfed by him, and not just in size but in personality. She looked at C.J. with adoration when he spoke, and seemed to wait for his approval before she said anything. Edith felt her heart sink, seeing her younger self standing in the same kitchen and meeting Calhoun’s mother. The only thing that had changed in the intervening years was the wallpaper.

  “It’s good to meet you, too, Cecelia.” Edith looked down at her crumpled and dirty skirt, then up at C.J. with reproach. “I wish I’d known you were coming so I could have cleaned up and had a room prepared for our guest.”

  “You look just fine, Mrs. Heyward,” Cecelia reassured her. “And I’ll be happy to put sheets on my bed. I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

  C.J.’s affable smile dimmed. “She doesn’t mind, CeCe. What else does she have to do?” He faced his mother with a wide grin. “What’s for dinner? It was a long drive from Columbia and I’m starved.”

  Edith’s thoughts were jumbled for a moment, refusing to settle. “I’ve got some shrimp and rice, and some wonderful tomatoes I got yesterday in Frogmore. . . .”

  “Great. Just make it fast. I’m going to show CeCe the rest of the house. She’s from outside of Greenville and swears she’s never seen such grand houses as we have here in Beaufort.”

  The back door opened and Deborah entered the kitchen, stopping suddenly when she saw C.J. and Cecelia. C.J.’s expression hardened as Deborah closed the door slowly behind her, then stopped with her back against the door facing Edith’s son, the two of them like fighters claiming their corners.

  Deborah had continued to babysit for C.J. until he was old enough to be left alone, despite his protests that he hated her. Edith soon realized that he wasn’t using that as an excuse, but he truly had a dislike for his babysitter. It hadn’t taken Edith long to understand it was because Deborah didn’t put up with any of C.J.’s bullying. Deborah was tall for a woman, with large bones and big, capable hands, and she was used to taking care of her siblings. This meant she wasn’t susceptible to C.J.’s charm or cajoling, and was intimidating enough physically to
make sure C.J. complied with her rules. C.J. hated rules and had spent most of his childhood circumventing them despite Edith’s best efforts. Even without his father there, Edith had always felt outnumbered.

  “Hello, C.J.,” Deborah said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Hello, Deborah.” C.J. just nodded at her, and didn’t introduce Cecelia.

  Ignoring the snub, Deborah turned to the girl. “I’m Deborah Fuller. I used to babysit for C.J. I must admit to being surprised that he survived childhood.”

  Cecelia gave a small laugh that was cut off by an abrupt squeeze from C.J. Sobering quickly, she said, “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Cecelia Gibbes. I’m at Carolina with C.J., studying nursing.”

  “Not for long, though, isn’t that right, sugar?” C.J. kissed the top of her head as Edith’s unease grew.

  “Is there something I should know?” Edith tried for a lighthearted tone, but she’d never been able to fool C.J. He looked at her as a person might look at a bug on a wall.

  “Not yet, Mother. But you’ll be the first to know.”

  She looked back at Cecelia and felt her heart shrink. She wanted to shout at her to run, to finish her nursing degree and find another life that didn’t involve her son. She hated herself for such disloyal thoughts, but she’d long since stopped praying for forgiveness.

  C.J. reached into the fruit bowl on the counter and grabbed an apple. He rubbed it on his shirt, then took a big bite before offering it to Cecelia. She took a bite, although it didn’t seem like she wanted any. “I’d like to show CeCe my favorite fishing spot over on Lady’s Island, but they’ve got the road blocked off. Any idea what’s going on?”

  Deborah turned on the faucet and began washing her hands in the sink. “They think they found parts of a plane that crashed over the marsh a while back.”