by Nora Roberts
“Why don’t you go down to Martha’s for some supper?”
“I got a sandwich. Alice gave me a sandwich. A BLT on wheat toast, hold the mayo.”
“She’s all right.” Cam stepped off the sidewalk. The walk back from the funeral parlor hadn’t mellowed his mood. But seeing Annie stroking his car had his lips curving. “How’s it going, Annie?”
She focused on him. Her bracelets jingled as she fussed with the buttons of her blouse. “Can I have a ride on your motorcycle?”
“I don’t have it with me today.” He watched her bottom lip poke out, a little girl gesture that was pathetic on the aged face. “How about a ride in the car? Want me to take you home?”
“I can sit in the front?” Sure.
When he bent to pick up her sack, she grabbed it and pressed it against her. “I can carry it. It’s mine. I can carry it.”
“Okay. Climb on in. Do you know how to put your seat belt on?”
“You showed me last time. You showed me.” Hefting her bag and her hips into the car, she set her tongue between her teeth and went to work on the seat belt. She gave a little cry of pleasure when it snapped into place. “See? I did it myself. All by myself.”
“That’s good.” Once inside, Cam let the windows down. Since Annie had skipped a few baths, he had to be grateful the evening was warm and breezy.
“The radio.”
He pulled away from the sidewalk. “It’s this button.” He pointed, knowing she wanted to turn it on herself. When Billy Joel rocked out, Annie clapped her hands. Bracelets slid up and down her arms. “I know this one.” The wind ruffled her gray hair as she sang along.
He turned down Oak Leaf Lane. When they passed the Kimball house, he slowed automatically, but he didn’t see Clare in the garage.
Annie stopped singing and craned her neck to keep the Kimball house in view. “I saw a light in the attic.”
“There wasn’t a light in the attic, Annie.”
“Before there was. I couldn’t sleep. Can’t walk in the woods at night. It’s bad at night in the woods. Walked into town. There was a light way up in the attic.” She screwed her face tight, as one memory lapped over another. Had someone screamed? No, no, not this time. This time she hadn’t hidden in the bushes and seen men hurry out and drive away. Hurry out and drive. She liked the rhythm of those words and began to hum them to herself.
“When did you see a light, Annie?”
“Don’t remember.” She began to play with the power window. “Do you think Mr. Kimball was working late? He works late sometimes. But he’s dead,” she remembered, pleased with herself for not getting mixed up. “Dead and buried, so he wasn’t working. The girl’s back. The girl with the pretty red hair.”
“Clare?”
“Clare,” Annie repeated. “Pretty hair.” She twined her own around her finger. “She went away to New York, but she came back. Alice told me. Maybe she went up to the attic to look for her daddy. But he’s not there.”
“No, he’s not.”
“I used to look for my mama.” She sighed and began to play with her bracelets, tracing the engraved letters on the silver one. “I like to walk. Sometimes I walk all the livelong day. I find things. Pretty things.” She held up her arm. “See?”
“Mmm-hmm.” But he was thinking of Clare and didn’t look at the silver-plated bracelet with Carly engraved on it.
Clare felt foolishly shy as she walked around to the side entrance of the Cramptons’ neat two-story brick house. The patient entrance, she thought sourly, then sighed. But she wasn’t going to see Doc for a simple checkup, or a case of the sniffles. She just needed to see him, to hook one more link in the chain that led back to her father.
Still the memories came sneaking back, those childhood images of sitting in Doc’s lemony-smelling waiting room with its paintings of ducks and flowers, reading tattered Golden Books, then ancient copies of Seventeen. Going into the examining room to sit on the padded bench and say “ah.” Being rewarded with a balloon regardless of whether or not she’d cried at the prick of a needle.
There was comfort here, in the smell of freshly cut grass, in the gleam of new spring paint on the window trim, and in the quiet voice she heard singing, off key.
She saw him bent over his lilies of the valley, patiently weeding. Gardening was the obsession Doc Crampton had shared with her father—an obsession that had cemented their friendship in spite of Doc’s being a good deal older than Jack Kimball.
“Hey, Doc.”
He straightened quickly, wincing a little at the creak in his back. His round face brightened. Beneath a battered old hat, his white hair flowed, making her think of Mark Twain.
“Clare, I wondered when you were going to come by for a visit. We didn’t have much time to get reacquainted the other day at Jane’s.”
“Alice told me you take a half day off now and then during the week. I was hoping to catch you when you weren’t busy.”
“You did. Just tending my ladies.”
“Your flowers are lovely.” It hurt a little to look at them and remember Doc and her father discussing pruning and fertilizer. “Just as always.”
Though she was smiling, he saw trouble in her eyes. A general practitioner in a small town learned to listen to problems as well as pulse rates. He patted the stone wall and sat. “Keep an old man company. I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to.”
She sat and told him a little because they both knew it would help ease her into what she had come to say or to ask.
“So, Mom and Jerry should be back in Virginia in a couple of weeks. She likes it there.”
“Since you’re this far, maybe you’ll go visit them before heading back.”
“Maybe.” Eyes lowered, she brushed at a smudge on her slacks. “I’m glad she’s happy. I really am glad she’s happy.”
“Of course you are.”
“I didn’t know it would be so hard.” Her voice shook, broke. She had to take two deep breaths to control it. “I went upstairs last night. Into the attic.”
“Clare.” He reached for her hand, tucked it comfortably between his. “You didn’t have to do that alone.”
“I’m not a child anymore, afraid of ghosts.”
“You’ll always be your father’s child. You still miss him. I understand that. I miss him, too.”
She gave a shaky sigh, then went on. “I know what a good friend you were to him. How you tried to help when he started drinking. And how you stood by us when the scandal came out.”
“A friend doesn’t turn his back because of hard times.”
“Some do.” She straightened and smiled at him. “But not you. Never you. I was hoping you were still his friend so that you’d help me.”
Disturbed by the strain in her voice, he kept her hand in his. “Clare, you’ve been coming around here since you could toddle. Of course I’ll help you. For Jack. And for you.”
“I’ve made a mess out of my life.”
His brows drew together. “How can you say that? You’re a very successful young woman.”
“Artist,” she corrected. “Pretty successful there. But as a woman … You’ll have heard I was married and divorced.” The faintest trace of humor lit her eyes. “Come on, Doc, I know how you disapprove of divorce.”
“Generally, yes.” He huffed a bit, not wanting to sound pompous. “A vow is a vow, as far as I can see. But I’m not so set in my ways that I don’t understand there are sometimes … circumstances.”
“I was the circumstances.” Reaching down, she plucked a blade of grass that grew close to the wall. “I couldn’t love him enough, couldn’t be what he wanted. Couldn’t be what I wanted, I guess. So I messed it up.”
Now he pursed his lips. “I would say that it takes two people to cause a marriage to succeed or to fail.”
She nearly laughed. “Rob wouldn’t agree, believe me. And when I look back over it and the other relationships I’ve had, or tried to have, I realize I keep holding something b
ack.”
“If you believe that, you must have an idea why.”
“Yes. I—I need to understand how he could have done it,” she blurted out. “Oh, I know all about addiction and alcoholism as an illness. But those are just generalities, and he was my father. He was mine. I have to understand, somehow, so I can …”
“Forgive him,” Crampton said gently, and Clare closed her eyes.
“Yes.” That was the one thing, the single thing, she had refused to admit no matter how Janowski had prodded. But the guilt wasn’t so painful saying it here, with her hand clasped warmly in the hand of her father’s closest friend. “Last night when I went up there, I realized I never had. I’m so afraid I never will.”
Crampton was silent for a moment, smelling the smells of his garden, listening to the birdsong and the light ruffle of leaves in the spring breeze. “Jack and I talked about more than mulch and beetles in those long evenings. He used to tell me how proud he was of you, and Blair. But you were special to him, the way I suppose you understand Blair’s special to Rosemary.”
“Yes.” Her lips curved a little. “I know.”
“He wanted the best for you. He wanted the world for you.” Crampton sighed, remembering, regretting. “Perhaps he wanted too much, and that was why he made mistakes. I know this, Clare, that whatever he did, right or wrong, everything he did circled back to love for you. Don’t blame him too much for being weak. Even in weakness he put you first.”
“I don’t want to blame him. But there are so many memories. They drown me.”
He studied her with his solemn eyes. “Sometimes you can’t go back, however much you’d like to. Trying to go back can hurt more than it can heal.”
“I’m finding that out.” She looked away, over the neatly trimmed lawn. “But I can’t go forward, Doc. Not until I know.”
Chapter 11
No amount of reason could sway Jane Stokey from having an open casket. When a man was dead, it was the duty of those who had known him to look one last time at his face, to remember him. To speak over him.
“He was a mean motherfucker,” Oscar Roody commented, tugging on the knot of his tie. “After a couple of beers, old Biff would as soon punch you in the face as look at you.”
“That’s a fact.” Less nodded wisely as he studied Biff’s face. Rot in hell, you bastard, he thought. “Chuck sure knows his business now, don’t he? From what I hear, Biff was messed up good and proper, but it just looks like he’s taking a little snooze.”
“Probably used a pile of makeup.” Oscar took out a bandanna and honked into it. “You ask me, it’s gotta be creepy putting makeup on a dead man.”
“I’d do it if it’d buy me a pool. I heard he got every bone in his body broke.” Less shifted, looking for evidence and for the thrill. “Sure can’t tell it.”
They moved on and snuck outside for a smoke.
Jane was there, already seated in a chair at the front of the rows Griffith’s had set up. Since Biff had had no church affiliation, the simple service would be held right there in the funeral parlor, with Chuck officiating. She wore the stiff black dress, her hair neatly pinned back, and accepted the condolences and awkward words of sympathy.
People filed by Biff to pay their last respects.
“He tried to get his fat hand up my skirt more times than I can count.” Sarah Hewitt smirked down at the dead face.
“Come on, Sarah.” Flushing, Bud looked right and left, hoping no one was close enough to have heard. “You can’t talk that way here.”
“It’s stupid that we can say whatever we want about the living, but once someone’s dead, we have to say what a nice guy he was—even if he was a bastard.” She lifted a brow. “Did they really castrate him?”
“Jesus, Sarah.” Bud took her arm and pulled her to the rear of the room.
“Well, look who’s here.” Sarah’s smile became thoughtful as she watched Clare walk into the room. “The prodigal daughter.” She skimmed her gaze up and down Clare’s figure, envying the simple and expensive dark suit. “Never did fill out, did she?”
Clare’s heart was a hot ball lodged in her throat. She hadn’t known it would be so bad. The last time she had entered this room, had seen a coffin decked with flowers and flanked by townspeople, her father had been inside it. She would swear the same dreary recorded organ music had been playing.
The stench of gladiolas and roses spun in her head. There was horror in her eyes as she stared down the narrow center aisle between the rows of folding chairs and fought the urge to turn and bolt.
God, you’re a grown woman, she reminded herself. Death is a part of life. One you’ve got to face up to. But she wanted to run, run out into the sunshine, so badly that her knees were vibrating.
“Clare?”
“Alice.” She gripped her friend’s hand and fought to steady herself. “Looks like half the town turned out.”
“For Mrs. Stokey.” Her gaze flicked over faces. “And for the entertainment.” She was feeling awkward herself in her waitress’s uniform, but she had only managed to steal twenty minutes away. Besides, the closest thing she had to funeral gear was a black sweatshirt. “They’re going to start in a minute.”
“I’m just going to sit in the back.” Clare had no intention of marching up to the coffin and peeking in.
Hey, Biff, haven’t seen you for years. Sorry you’re dead.
The thought of it had her choking back a nervous laugh, then fighting off a wave of hot tears. What was she doing here? What the hell was she doing here? She was here for Cam, Clare reminded herself. And she was here to prove that she could sit in this little overheated room and get through a ritual like a responsible adult.
“You all right?” Alice whispered.
“Yes.” She took a long, cleansing breath. “We’d better sit down.”
As she and Alice took a seat, Clare scanned the room for Cam. She spotted Min Atherton in navy polyester, her face in solemn lines, her bright eyes gleeful. The mayor was beside her, his head bowed as if in prayer.
Farmers and merchants and mechanics stood in their Sunday suits and discussed business and the weather. Mrs. Stokey was flanked by townswomen. Cam stood to the side, a set, unapproachable look on his face as he watched his mother.
Chuck Griffith walked to the front of the room, turned, and waited. With murmurs and shuffles, people filed to the folding chairs.
Silence.
“Friends,” he began, and Clare remembered.
The room had been packed both evenings during the viewing. There hadn’t been a man, woman, or child in Emmitsboro who hadn’t known Jack Kimball. All of them had come. The words they had spoken had blurred in her head, leaving only their meaning behind. Sorrow and regret. But no one, no one had known the depth of her own grief.
The church had been packed for the service, and the line of cars heading out to the cemetery at Quiet Knolls had stretched for blocks.
Some of the same people were here today. Older, with more flesh and less hair. They took their seats and held their silence and thought their thoughts.
Rosemary Kimball had been surrounded by townswomen, just as Jane Stokey was. They had stood by her, a unified line of support, filled with sympathy for her loss, filled with relief that their own widowhood was somewhere down the road of a murky future.
They had brought food to the house—ham, potato salad, chicken—to feed the grieving. The food had meant nothing, but the kindness helped fill some of the empty spaces.
Days later—only days—the scandal had hit. Jack Kimball, well-loved member of the community, was now an opportunist charged with kickbacks, bribery, falsified documents. While her grief was still blood-fresh, she’d been told to accept the fact that her father had been a liar and a cheat.
But she had never accepted it. Nor had she accepted his suicide.
Cam saw her. He was surprised she was there and less than pleased when he noted that her face was too pale, her eyes too wide. She had a hand gripped in Ali
ce’s as she stared straight ahead. He wondered what it was she saw, what it was she heard. He was certain she wasn’t listening to Chuck Griffith’s words about eternal life and forgiveness any more than he was.
But others listened. With their faces blank and their hands still, they listened. And they feared. A warning had been given. When one of their number broke the Law, he would be plucked out, without mercy. The wrath of the few was no less than the wrath of the Dark Lord. So they listened, and they remembered. And behind their somber eyes and bent heads, they were afraid.
“I have to get back.” Alice squeezed Clare’s hand. “I have to get back,” she repeated. “Clare?”
“What?” She blinked. People were shuffling to their feet and filing out. “Oh.”
“I could only get time off to come for the service. Are you driving out to the cemetery?”
“Yes.” Clare had her own grave to visit. “I’ll be driving out.”
A half dozen cars slid into position in the back lot of Griffith’s. There were farms to run and shops to open, and the fact was there weren’t too many people willing to take the time to see Biff Stokey get plopped in the ground. Clare pulled in at the rear and settled into the short, stately drive. Ten miles out of town, the grim parade drove through the open iron gates.
Clare’s fingers were clammy when she turned off the ignition. She waited in the car. The pallbearers hefted their burden. She saw the mayor, Doc Crampton, Oscar Roody, Less Gladhill, Bob Meese, and Bud Hewitt. Cam walked beside his mother. They didn’t touch.
Clare got out of her car and, turning away, walked up the slope of the hill. Birds were singing as birds do on warm May mornings. The grass smelled strong and sweet. Here and there among the stones and plaques were plastic flowers or wreaths. They wouldn’t fade. Clare wondered if the people who had placed them there realized how much sadder their bright artificial colors were than drooping carnations or dying daisies.
There was family here. Her mother’s mother and father, great-aunts and uncles, a young cousin who had died of polio long before Clare had been born. She walked among them while the sun stung her eyes and warmed her face.
