Legacy of Masks

by Sallie Bissell

  “Gosh,” said Dana sadly. “We haven’t even gotten to play tennis. . . .”

  “I’m not all that good,” Mary admitted. “You’d probably have been bored.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going back to Atlanta.”

  The next person she needed to tell was Hugh Kavanagh. Mary pulled up in front of his barn and found him standing by the paddock fence, directing young Turnipseed as to the proper way of longeing a horse.

  “I’ve got some bad news,” she said as she walked up beside him.

  “Oh, God, is it Ridge?” The color drained from the old man’s face.

  “No. Ridge is fine. It’s me.”

  She told him; he teared up, then swiped at his eyes with a blue bandanna. “Please don’t go, girl.”

  “Hugh, if I thought I was doing a damn bit of good, I would stay. But I’m not. Ridge won’t talk to anybody and I’m just in Ravenel’s way.”

  “I’ll go get in Ravenel’s way myself, then,” Hugh threatened, balling his thick-veined hands into fists.

  “You don’t have to, Hugh.” She wrapped her arms around the old man. “Ravenel will do a good job. He’s got excellent credentials.”

  “Is he going to get the boy off?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary answered truthfully. “I don’t think anyone can answer that.”

  After that, she headed to Irene’s farm. She drove the half mile to the turnoff and rolled down the driveway. Parking beside the rickety footbridge that spanned the trickle of a creek, she got out of the car and gazed at her inheritance. The little yellow house sat under the trees as warm and inviting as the woman who’d been Mary’s friend. Mary sighed. How she wished things had worked out! How she wished she could have practiced law here and carried Irene’s legacy forward.

  “It just wasn’t meant to be, kiddo,” she told herself as she started across the jouncing footbridge, fighting the world-atilt sensation it always left in the pit of her stomach. “Not in this lifetime, anyway.”

  Inside, she threw some clean clothes in a suitcase. Tomorrow she would call off Turnipseed and his well-drilling. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to return to Little Jump Off and the man who ran it. Moving to Atlanta might be a hard sell as far as Jonathan was concerned, but she would give it her best shot. She glanced once more around her bedroom, then headed toward the front door, stopping in front of the portrait over the fireplace.

  “I tried my best, Irene,” she said, her apologetic words ringing in the house. “But I just don’t fit in here anymore.”

  25

  She told him she’d quit the moment she stepped inside the store. He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise accepted the news with the same equanimity with which he’d greeted her decision to help in Standingdeer’s defense. They grilled hamburgers on the porch for supper, helped Lily catch fireflies in a mayonnaise jar, then released them later, over the river. The tiny flickering dots of light reflected in the dark water as Lily squealed with delight. Later, after they’d put her to bed, Mary told him the rest of her plan as they sat on the porch steps, sharing a glass of Jonathan’s homemade wine.

  “All night I’ve been thinking about what we should do,” she began.

  “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” He looked at her, alarmed. “You’re not going to rejoin this case?”

  “No, no. I was just thinking that we might do something totally different.”

  “Like what?”

  “How about we move back to Atlanta?” She said it flat-out and open. Beating around the bush with Jonathan was pointless.

  “Atlanta?” He took a sip of the deep red wine and frowned. “Why?”

  “It would answer all our needs, Jonathan. I could start some kind of general practice with Alex Carter. We could buy a little house in Decatur. Lily could have playmates, good schools. There, they would consider her being Cherokee something special.”

  Jonathan passed the wine to her and, for a long moment, pondered the stars. “What would I do? Go back to selling fishing tackle?”

  Mary had known that was coming. When he’d lived with her before, he’d worked the hunting-and-fishing aisle of a sporting goods store, and had hated every minute of it. “No,” she said, giving him a quick kiss. “You do what you love to do here. You hire out as a guide. Nobody knows the Southeastern forests like you do. There are a thousand rich Atlanta businessmen who would love to take advantage of your expertise.”

  “Think so?”

  “I know so,” she assured him, encouraged that he hadn’t said an immediate no. “You could go and not have to worry about Lily. I would stay and take care of her.”

  “And no criminals?”

  “No criminals, sweetheart,” she said, putting the wine down and kissing him for real. “I promise.”

  The next morning Mary awoke to the sound of a flute, playing amazingly close to her left ear. She opened her eyes to see a red plastic cassette player on her pillow and a little face beaming bright-eyed above it.

  “Mey-liii!” Laughing, Lily clapped her hands.

  “Is she awake, Lily?” Mary heard Jonathan’s voice somewhere above her head.

  With deep seriousness, Lily looked at Mary’s open eyes. “Unh-huh,” she told her father, nodding.

  “Then tell her you brought her some coffee. Just the way she likes it.”

  For a moment Lily looked at her father, as if trying to translate his words, then she grinned down at Mary again. “Kawfee, Meyli! Kawfee!”

  “Thank you, darling girl.” Mary sat up and pulled Lily into her lap. She smelled of soap and powder and was already dressed in a pink playsuit, her little sneakers tied securely on her feet. Jonathan stood by the bed holding a cup of coffee. He too was dressed for an outing, wearing khaki trousers and a blue dress shirt.

  “Did I miss something?” Mary asked sleepily as she took the coffee he offered. “Are we supposed to go somewhere?”

  “Maamaadowwww!” said Lily, punching the fast-forward button on her tape player. Suddenly the languid flute music sped to a manic tempo, as Lily waved her arms in frantic accompaniment.

  Jonathan laughed at Mary’s befuddled stare. “We’re going to Mother’s Day Out. I think Lily wants you to get up and come with us.”

  “Okay, Lily Bird,” said Mary, laughing at the child’s antics. “Give me five minutes in the bathroom, and I’ll be ready to go!”

  Mary brushed her teeth and pulled on a pair of jeans, and taking her coffee with her, rode with Jonathan and Lily to Hartsville’s First Methodist Church. She waited in the truck while Jonathan, along with several other parents, walked their children into a playground that opened off the Sunday school building. Despite Jonathan’s misgivings about her isolated upbringing, Lily did not act shy at all, but immediately ran over to join two other little girls playing in the sandbox. Jonathan was greeted warmly as well, with a hug from one of the staff workers, a dimpled, beaming brunette. Mary watched, amused. There was nothing quite as appealing as a handsome man who was totally unaware of his own good looks.

  “That went well,” she observed as he climbed back into the truck after conferring with Lily’s teacher. “Lily seems to fit in here just fine.”

  “She didn’t always,” Jonathan said, backing out of the parking space. “When I first started bringing her here, she would cry so hard that they would call me to come get her as soon as I got back to the store. Claudia took a special interest in her, though.”

  “Claudia the brunette?”

  “Yeah. She has a degree from Western in early childhood education. Said she wanted to try some new techniques out on Lily.”

  “Looks like Claudia’s had quite a bit of success.” Mary tried to squelch the smile that played at the corners of her mouth.

  Jonathan shrugged. “Lily likes to go there now. She doesn’t cry anymore and I get a few hours to get my own chores done.”

  They drove over to Nero’s, a diner on the highway between Hartsville and Cherokee. Mary
was glad to be out of the gossipy atmosphere of the restaurants in town and into the more straightforward service that Nero Greenwalt had dished out for the past forty years. The bandy-legged little man waved at Jonathan as they walked in the door and told him his table was waiting. Mary followed him out to a small deck that overlooked Tuckaseegee Creek. A waitress brought them coffee and a basket of hot biscuits, then took their breakfast orders back to the kitchen.

  Mary sipped her coffee, watching the water curling white on the creek rocks below. Though the sun warmed her shoulders and the caffeine eased her reentry into humanity, she did not feel one bit different about remaining in Hartsville. She’d opted out for good, and was ready to face whatever future she had with Jonathan. As she watched him turn a practiced gaze on the creek below, she suddenly realized that their conversation of the night before had not yet ended. She knew his face almost as well as she knew her own; it was clear he had something to say.

  “What’s up?” she asked, praying that he hadn’t soured on the Atlanta plan.

  Sheepishly he pulled a letter from his back pocket and gave it to her. “I guess I should have mentioned this last night. I got this job offer back in March. I was about to take it, when you came back from Peru, then I held off, waiting to see how things would go between us. I guess if you’re really serious about leaving Carolina, then we should consider this, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “A private game preserve over in Tennessee. The owner wants me to be the warden. The money’s nothing to write home about, but the benefits are great, and there’s free housing. Lily would have other kids to play with.”

  “Jonathan, that sounds wonderful!”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what you could do there, though. Chattanooga’s the closest town, and it’s thirty miles away.”

  “I could open a practice there. It would probably take me less time to drive thirty miles in Tennessee than it would to go ten blocks in Atlanta.” She studied the raised crest on the stationery. She had no particular desire to practice law in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but maybe it would be better for Jonathan to have the full-time job and her to be the family freelancer.

  “So you would consider doing that?”

  “Jonathan, all I want to do is live a normal life, preferably with you. Why don’t we eat breakfast, then go down and start cleaning out my office? We can talk about both our options.”

  “So you’re truly serious? No more Hartsville? No more law office? A brand-new life with no more criminals?”

  She thought of Officer Jane’s supercilious stare, the whispers that followed her each time she went to the jail, Deke Keener’s mania to fill her every waking minute with real estate maneuverings. Truly, she was deeply tired of it all. “A brand-new life, Jonathan. With no more killers or cops or land barons.”

  He leaned over and kissed her as a cool, damp breeze gusted up from the creek below. “This is more than I ever hoped for, Koga. I promise you will not be sorry.”

  They lingered at Nero’s, as if unwilling to leave the charmed circle that their agreement had cast around them. Jonathan bought a newspaper. Mary drank a second cup of coffee while he worked the crossword puzzle. For the first time in what seemed like years she was content; she even dared, at one point, to project herself into the future. Lily would be a teenager, maybe driving a younger sister or brother to school. She and Jonathan would be middle-aged—heavier and perhaps beginning to gray, but he would still be able to read the woods as no other, and she would––what? Conduct house closings? Write wills? It doesn’t matter, she told herself. You’ll have Jonathan and Lily. You’ll have a good life with the man you’ve always loved.

  By the time she finished her coffee, Jonathan had filled in the last word of his puzzle. “Well,” he said, tossing the paper onto the vacant table next to them. “Are you done? Shall we go get your stuff?”

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  They paid their bill and drove into town. Nothing had changed, although she didn’t know what kind of change she’d expected in the course of a night. Good-bye Mary banners might have been appropriate, she thought. Farewell to the killer of our beloved Stump. She sighed as Jonathan pulled up in front of her office. Though something deep inside her balked at the idea of giving up, she ignored it. She should have taken the hint when she’d first trudged up all those steps to Turpin’s office. A law career for her in Pisgah County wasn’t meant to happen.

  “How much stuff have you got up there?” Jonathan asked, rolling up his shirtsleeves.

  “A small desk, a couple of chairs. One of Mama’s tapestries. We should be able to get all of it in the back of your truck.”

  “Then we’d better get moving. It’s only going to get hotter, and we’ve got to pick Lily up at three.”

  They walked up the stairs hand in hand, just barely fitting on the narrow staircase. She pressed her finger to her lips to warn him to be quiet, but when they reached the top of the stairs she was the one who broke the silence as she saw Sylvia Goins, the girl from the hardware store, standing next to Sam Ravenel and his little Cherokee cohort. All three of them were gaping at her office door.

  “Hi, everybody,” she said, oozing cheer at Ravenel’s broad back. “What’s up?”

  They turned. Nobody said a word. Everyone just looked at her with expressions of awe and surprise.

  “What’s going on?” Growing alarmed, she moved closer, tugging Jonathan with her.

  The threesome stepped back, giving her the same kind of berth they might give someone with an active case of tuberculosis. Sylvia finally broke the awkward silence.

  “You’ve had some visitors up here, Ms. Crow.”

  Mary hurried to see what they were staring at, then she gasped. Hanging from her door knob was the one thing that Aunt Little Tom had terrified them with when they were children and that even today gave her pause. On her door, someone had hung the most honored and horrific thing an Ani Zaguhi could send—the yonuh ahgudulo, the mask of the bear with bleeding eyes.

  26

  “The mailman just left!” Avis Martin leaned over her balcony, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the rural delivery Jeep as it roared back to the main road.

  “Let’s go see what came,” said Kayla.

  Leaving their game of Clue spread out on Avis’s deck, the two girls raced through her bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door. Kayla, the more athletic, easily reached the mailbox several strides ahead of Avis, but deferentially allowed her to retrieve her own family’s mail. She waited with increasing impatience as Avis first managed to spill all the mail on the ground, then scooped it up to flip through a Sears bill, four credit card applications, complementary address labels from the Defenders of Wildlife, and a Lands’ End catalog.

  “Anything from Ridge?” asked Kayla.

  Avis went through the stack of mail again, then shook her head. “No.” She looked over at the suntanned girl who, in the course of the past two weeks, had become her dearest and only friend. “Are you sure he can read?”

  “You saw that letter he wrote Bethany,” Kayla reminded her. “If he can write, he must be able to read.”

  “Maybe he got somebody to write that letter for him,” said Avis.

  “The only other person he knows is that crazy old Irish guy he lives with. Anyway, I’ve seen him read before. The menu at Bayberry’s, and once, the movie listings in the paper. We all went to see Troy together.”

  Avis tucked the mail under her arm and started walking back to the house. “Then I don’t know what’s wrong. He’s had lots of time to answer our letter.”

  “Maybe they won’t let him have any mail,” said Kayla. “Or maybe he didn’t understand that he was supposed to write back.”

  “But we worked so hard on that letter. We made sure he would be the only one who would know what we were talking about.”

  Kayla thought of the letter they’d labored for hours over—a rambling, two-page epistle in which Avis had underlined cert
ain key words (hide, insurance policy, where) for emphasis. A week ago she’d thought it brilliant; now it seemed idiotic. “Maybe we made it too hard,” she said miserably. “Maybe he couldn’t read it. Maybe he just threw it away.”

  “All I know is that until we hear from Ridge, we’re stuck,” Avis said.

  For the past week, Kayla had spent most of her time at Avis’s. They kept real food in the refrigerator here, and Mrs. Martin actually got out of bed and got dressed, unlike her own mother, who, after rousing herself for the one day of Ridge’s trial, had since disappeared back into her darkened bedroom. Though Kayla still found Avis weird, with her mystery books and peanut butter-and-Cheeto sandwiches, she was beginning to like her a lot. Avis wasn’t nearly as cool as Jeannette Peacock or Lauren Reynolds, but at least she treated her like a regular person and not the poor pitiful Paulette that everybody else on the softball team did.

  Mrs. Martin had taken Chrissy to a swimming lesson at the Y, so they dumped the mail in the kitchen, got two Cokes from the refrigerator, and retreated to the larger deck that sprawled out from the den. Above them, the white sky hung so hot and still that the earth seemed stalled in its rotation. The usually percussive cicadas managed only an occasional chirp, and even flight was apparently too much effort for the crows, which perched listlessly in the pine trees. The two girls collapsed in the big hammock that Mr. Martin had suspended on one end of the deck and sat together, drinking their Cokes and staring into the woods that surrounded the backyard.

  “I just can’t figure out what kind of insurance policy she would have gotten.” Once again Avis pondered the question that had plagued them ever since that first afternoon at Kayla’s house.

  “Jeez, Avis, I don’t know. We won’t know until Ridge writes us,” said Kayla testily. As much as she wanted to exonerate Ridge, Avis’s endless discussing of Bethany’s insurance policy was driving her crazy. If this was what real detective work was like, then she wanted none of it. Leave it to brains like Avis, who liked nothing better than to sit around and read creepy poems by some guy named Poe.