The Sound of Glass

by Karen White

  “You were my brother’s wife, which means you’re part of my life now, too, whether you want to be or not. You don’t seem very forthcoming with details about yourself, and I got tired of waiting.”

  I looked away. “There’s absolutely nothing to know. Nothing that interesting, anyway.”

  “I know that you’re very brave. I know very few people who would leave everything they’ve always known, pack up their car, and head to a new town where they know nobody. But I have a suspicion that you have no idea how brave you really are.”

  “Because I’m not. I just did what I thought I needed to do. Here was this house I’d never known about, and this place where my husband had been born and raised. The museum where I’d worked was downsizing, and my husband was dead. It’s not like I had a lot of options.”

  “Sure you did. You just picked the hardest one.”

  “According to Loralee, the easy road is the fastest way to hell.”

  He smiled, but it seemed he was holding part of it back. “She’s a smart woman.”

  I looked down at the jar in my hands, where the blinking had slowed to a somber pulse, almost as if the fireflies were waiting for some sort of sign. “I’ve been thinking about that Sandy Beach woman we met the other day. Did Cal really date her?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately. That was the type of girl he normally went for.”

  I felt his eyes on me again, but I couldn’t meet them. He didn’t need to explain to me what “the type of girl” meant. However she might be described, the most obvious way would be not like me.

  “I don’t blame you for not believing my story of how Cal and I met. Especially after meeting Sandy. I agree—it doesn’t make sense. I’m just left to wonder, Why me?”

  “We can’t always choose who we love.”

  A corner of my mouth twisted upward. “You’re starting to sound like Loralee.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  We listened to the sound of Owen running through the garden, shouting out his victory with each captured insect.

  Gibbes cleared his throat. “I brought over the folder I’ve put together about the plane crash. I thought you might be interested.”

  I remembered my initial excitement at the thought of discovering more about the ill-fated flight. But now I could see no purpose to it. One of the few treasures Cal had brought from his childhood home had been a bolt from the plane. It had once meant something to him, but he was gone now.

  I shook my head. “Not really. Not anymore. Now that I know why the plane was up in my attic, I feel there’s really nothing else to know. Your grandmother had an affinity for crime investigation, and perhaps believed there was more to the story than what the police came up with, but apparently there wasn’t. Case closed.”

  “I think I have a thousand!” Owen called out.

  “I think he’s going to win,” I said with a smile as I faced Gibbes.

  He was looking at me closely, his expression serious, and my smile faded.

  “Did Cal ever hit you?”

  I remembered once as a child when I’d climbed too high in a tree, despite my grandmother’s warnings not to, and couldn’t find a way down. Unwilling to have to admit that she was right, I’d decided to shinny down the tree the way I’d seen monkeys do on TV. I’d fallen about ten feet onto my back, miraculously not breaking anything, but knocking the air from my lungs. I felt that way now, gasping for air that seemed too thick to breathe.

  “Don’t,” I finally managed.

  “He was my brother, and even though he left here when I was just Owen’s age, I remember that he wasn’t always a nice guy. He’d lose his temper and become somebody else. He was always sorry later, but that rarely made it better. He had lots of girlfriends like Sandy Beach, girls who were probably used to rough treatment at home and didn’t find getting knocked around to be something they didn’t think they deserved.

  “But you’re not like them. I thought maybe he’d changed when he met you. But every time I make an unexpected movement, you jump. And your eyes.” He shook his head. “It’s like the light goes out in them.”

  I stood, feeling faint. “I don’t feel well. I’m going inside. Tell Owen to take his shower and I’ll have his ice cream ready when he’s done.”

  Gibbes stood, too. “Whatever he did to you, you didn’t deserve it. You’re a strong, smart, and beautiful woman, Merritt. I don’t want to believe that he ever made you feel less than what you are.”

  “Don’t,” I said again, stepping away from him. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  Something clanged on the ground, and we looked down and saw the lid of my firefly jar, which in my agitation I must have twisted off. I looked back at the jar in time to see the last firefly lifting into the air, its body glowing brightly, then fading again like a wave good-bye as it disappeared into the branches of the oak tree.

  Without a word I turned toward the house and entered the kitchen. I placed the empty jar on the table, accidentally knocking a file folder that had been perched on the edge onto the linoleum floor, a single sheet escaping and coming to rest next to the folder. I bent to retrieve the folder and paper, glancing at the page as I attempted to stick it back inside. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at until I saw the header at the top of the typewritten page.

  Northeast Airlines Flight 629, July 25, 1955. List of Passengers.

  The purple text was from an old carbon-copy machine, the letters faded to a pale lilac.

  I was about to close the folder and return it to the counter when my attention was caught by a single name about halfway down the list: Henry P. Holden, Bangor, Maine.

  The fluorescent light above the kitchen sink began to flicker as I stared at the name, the intermittent buzzing matching the tempo of the blood that throbbed in my temples. I closed my eyes for a moment and almost felt Cal’s breath on the back of my neck as I recalled his words. A backdraft is an explosive event caused by a fire, resulting from rapid reintroduction of oxygen to combustion in an oxygen-depleted environment.

  The door opened and Owen ran into the kitchen, followed by Gibbes at a more sedate pace. “I won! I won! I’m going to take the fastest shower ever and I’ll be down for my ice cream. I’ll let you have some, Merritt. And you can have some, too, Dr. Heyward,” he added as an afterthought as he raced through the kitchen door and headed toward the stairs.

  “What’s wrong?” Gibbes asked, shutting the door behind him.

  I held out the paper toward him, my finger pointing to the name.

  “Henry P. Holden,” he read before lifting his eyes to mine again. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  I nodded. My tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth, and it took me two tries to speak. “I’m not sure. I mean, this has to be a coincidence, right?”

  “What does?” he asked, his eyes wary.

  I swallowed. “Holden was my mother’s maiden name. Henry Patrick was her father. Either this is a very strange coincidence, or Henry P. Holden could be my grandfather.”

  We stood facing each other for a long time without speaking, listening as Owen turned on the shower upstairs, the water pipes creaking and groaning in the walls of the old house, but not loud enough to block out the memory of Cal’s words. There’s no such thing as accidents.

  chapter 24

  EDITH

  JANUARY 1989

  Edith led Gibbes by the hand down the church steps of Saint Helena’s and into the ancient churchyard, following his mother’s coffin. The old tombstones, some dating back more than two hundred years, leaned together conspiratorially. Gibbes was just two and a half months shy of his sixth birthday but looked like a little man in his black suit and tie, his sandy-colored hair a welcome shot of light against all the black.

  C.J. followed behind them, reeking of alcohol either from the previous night or that morning. He’d always managed to stay sober during the week, when he would show up at his law office or court or wher
ever he needed to be, but on the weekends he was always deep in his cups. But since Cecelia’s accident, his weekend binges were ending later and beginning earlier, so that it was hard to determine whether he ever sobered up in between.

  Cal was nowhere to be found. He’d been dressed for the funeral earlier at breakfast, looking sullen as he pushed his breakfast around his plate with a fork without apparently lifting any food to his mouth. He’d left the table as soon as his father had come in, and Edith hadn’t seen him since.

  She’d already told C.J. that she didn’t think Gibbes should be at the burial, so she continued to hold his hand and led him out of the cemetery to Church Street, just a short walk from Bay Street and home. She would finish laying out the food in the dining room for the crowd of people expected after the funeral, the family china, crystal, and silver gleaming on the white lace tablecloth, exactly as Cecelia would have liked it.

  Gibbes tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk, and when Edith slowed to help him regain his footing, she saw that his face was streaked with tears. She got down on her haunches and pushed his hair out of his eyes. They were his mother’s eyes. Edith had finally gotten her wish: a grandchild who resembled his mother in all ways, including a warm and tender heart. It was up to Edith to make sure it was preserved.

  He’d always been a sweet and quiet child, somehow knowing that his place in the family was as an observer instead of a participant. He watched everything, coming to his own conclusions, and never offered his thoughts unless asked. And Edith was the only one who knew to ask.

  “It’ll be all right. Maybe not tomorrow or even the next day, but one day it won’t hurt so much,” she said, wishing she could force sincerity into her words.

  “How come they couldn’t fix Mama? I want her to come home with me.”

  She hugged him tightly to her. “The doctors tried, sweetie, but she was too broken.” It had been a silly New Year’s Eve party, her heel clipping the back of her dress as she descended the stairs on her way out of the house. Edith had been up in the attic, finishing making a wind chime, hearing the arguing through the closed door. She’d wanted to believe it was an accident, wanted to believe that she had not raised a monster.

  “I could fix her,” Gibbes said with all the sincerity of a five-year-old.

  “I wanted to fix her, too,” Edith whispered in his ear. “But sometimes people don’t know they’re broken or that they need fixing.”

  Gibbes’s eyes widened. “I told Cal I could fix her, but he told me to go away.”

  Edith pulled back. “When did you say that to Cal?”

  “After Mama fell and she was sleeping on the floor. Daddy was there, too, and told me to go to my room, so I did. I thought they were going to fix her.”

  Pinpricks of ice dusted the back of her neck as years of denial and excuses jammed against her conscience. “Maybe when you’re older you can become a doctor and fix people. You can do that to honor your mother.” She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, then wiped his face with the sleeve of her black coat.

  Taking his hand again, she continued to lead him toward the house, pretending that her shivering was due to the winter wind that swept off the river and settled over Beaufort like a cold breath.

  She heard a rhythmic pounding as soon as they walked through the driveway gate, following the drive toward the back garden, where Cal stood facing the oak tree. As they watched, he drew back his fist and drove it into the trunk of the tree, making a hollow sound as impotent as his rage. He dropped his fist to his side, and she saw the blood running from his knuckles and staining the oyster shells beneath pink.

  “Cal!” Edith called out, realizing it was too late to shield Gibbes. Dropping the boy’s hand, she walked quickly over to Cal and examined his injury. “You probably have a broken finger. Let’s get you inside and put some ice on this and get it wrapped.”

  He didn’t move. “I told her to leave. So many times I told her to leave. But she wouldn’t. She said she loved him. Can you believe that? She loved him.” He turned back to stare at the tree trunk. “It’s her own damned fault.”

  His breath came out in quickly evaporating clouds, carrying his words away.

  She grabbed the sleeve of his coat. “Come on, Cal. Let’s go inside. . . .”

  He yanked his arm away. “Why is there no punishment? You taught me that, Grandma—that every bad deed gets punished. Where’s the justice?”

  Gibbes had started to cry again, and she moved back to put her arm around his shoulders. She thought of a younger Cal and his fire truck, how punishment had been carefully meted out to those who were careless. But his mother’s death had shaken his world order, showing him cracks in the facade of black and white, right and wrong. Edith wasn’t sure whether she could glue them back together or if it was fractured forever.

  He slid down the trunk of the tree and rested his head in his hands.

  Gibbes pulled away from her and approached his brother. “We could go play chess if you want. Or we could go fishing.” His voice captured all the hope that an almost-six-year-old could hold that grief was a fleeting thing, an osprey lifting from a tree and flying away.

  “Go away,” Cal said, and Gibbes’s shoulders slumped as he turned to walk back to his grandmother.

  Cal looked up, his eyes burning with too many emotions. “I’m sorry.”

  Edith squeezed Gibbes’s shoulders and headed to the front porch. She recognized a familiar figure as they climbed the steps.

  “Deborah—it’s so good to see you.” As predicted, Deborah’s mother had lingered for a good ten years before she died, and her daughter had faithfully stayed by her side. It was too late to return to law school, so Deborah remained in Beaufort doing various types of community work and volunteering at the Heritage Society.

  “It was a beautiful service. I left early because I thought you might need help before everybody got here.”

  Edith smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Deborah. I appreciate it.”

  Deborah leaned down with her hands on her knees in front of Gibbes. “You look very handsome in your suit. Your mother would be very proud of how grown-up you are.”

  Gibbes regarded the woman with somber eyes, eyes that were the same as his brother’s under the same sandy hair. But the resemblance ended there.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Deborah tilted her head to the side, studying the boy. “I’ve got a little house on Fripp now. Lots of great places for crab pots and net casting and all kinds of fishing and swimming. Problem is, I don’t have any little boys to take advantage of all of it. So if you ever need a partner in crime to just hang out on a boat or in the water, just tell your grandmother and I’ll come get you.”

  The first real smile that Edith had seen since his mother’s death crossed his face. “Can Cal come, too?”

  Deborah didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. I’m a firm believer that there’s nothing that a boat and water can’t fix, no matter how old you are.”

  Deborah straightened and faced Edith. “I’m yours—just tell me what you need me to do.”

  Edith thought for a moment. “I need you to help me hang something.” She went inside to the hall table and pulled open the small drawer before taking out a wind chime. Bringing it out on the porch, she held it up so Deborah and Gibbes could see it. “I made this in memory of your mama, Gibbes. So that every time the wind blows, you’ll hear her voice.”

  Turning to Deborah, she said, “Since you’re so tall, I thought I’d lift Gibbes up and you can help him hang it on the hook I screwed in yesterday.”

  “Of course,” Deborah said. “Although I think I could use a chair, too.” She slid over a small child’s chair that Gibbes had long since grown out of but that Cecelia didn’t want to part with. Edith had been using it to hold flowerpots.

  As Edith handed her the wind chime, it slipped from her grasp and landed on the wood planks of the porch with a clatter. Edith bent to retrieve it, examining each piece of glass.


  “Did it get broke?” Gibbes asked, his eyes wide.

  Edith shook her head. “No. This glass has been rolled and tumbled about the ocean for years, so it’s seasoned and not so breakable. You should remember that—that not all glass is as fragile as it seems.”

  Edith handed the wind chime to Deborah again, then picked Gibbes up in her arms, wondering how much longer she’d be able to lift him. Deborah guided his fingers as he hung the string around the hook.

  “Good job,” Edith said. She took a deep breath. “I need you to go upstairs now and change your clothes. Then pull out your overnight bag from under your bed and pack your jammies and some clean underclothes. I’m sending you to the Williamses’ for a few days. Maybe longer. Until things settle down here. All right?”

  Despite Betsy Williams and Edith’s close friendship, their daughters-in-law had not carried on the tradition, even though their sons were around the same age. Gibbes and the two youngest Williams boys were great friends, but Cecelia and Kathy, despite an early friendship, had distanced themselves from each other. Edith guessed the friendship had ended after a combined family trip with the husbands and children, and had always wondered whether Kathy had seen or heard something Cecelia had not wanted her to. Kathy had phoned several times afterward, but Cecelia had never called her back. Kathy had been at the service earlier, and she and Edith had avoided looking at each other, as if guilt and blame had chosen a seat between them.

  Gibbes nodded, then headed toward the stairs. She watched him for a moment, wondering how long it would be before he could no longer remember his mother’s face or the sound of her voice. The young rebounded from grief more quickly than adults, but that also left them with more time to chastise themselves for forgetting.

  She thought of Cal and his bloody knuckles and his cry for justice, and for the first time in a long while she felt her old anger return, along with the sense of purpose that had propelled her into the police department with her first nutshell study.