“You’re saying no?”
“I’m saying people will be wondering—”
“Not even a gentlemen’s agreement, for Carrie’s sake?”
Butts put the tips of his fingers together and looked at them. “Reports have to be filed. You’ll have to make a statement and swear to it. And don’t forget that Frank here runs a newspaper—”
“Damn it, Lowell, you won’t be reading about this in the Clarion!” Odell’s voice was reedy with anger.
“Well, fine, that’s fine. All I’m saying is that this is a small community, gentlemen, and we all know it. A thing like this, there’s bound to be talk, you can’t contain it, and once—”
“Forget it,” Tyler snarled, turning his back on him. But it wasn’t the sheriff he was disgusted with, it was himself.
Butts bristled with antagonism. “Maybe you should’ve thought about what was best for ‘Carrie’s sake’ a little sooner, Dr. Wilkes. Eh? What about that?” His voice rose as he warmed to it. “Maybe where you come from this kind of thing doesn’t mean much, maybe it’s an everyday occurrence, but around here it’s a little different, see?”
“Gentlemen,” Peter Mueller interjected smoothly, on the verge of a diplomatic lecture.
Ty spun around. “This ‘kind of thing’ means exactly the same where I come from as it means here. Not that it matters, and not that it’s any of your business, but Carrie and I are engaged to be married.”
The floored silence didn’t last long. In a matter of seconds the door opened again, and Officer Stonebrake ushered Carrie into the room.
She held herself carefully, but the long day of deception had begun to tell. She was waxy-pale from fatigue and strain; her eyes looked haunted and her mouth made a tight white line. How much longer would she have been able to keep it up, Tyler wondered, forcibly resisting an all but overwhelming need to touch her. She looked close to breaking—but she was strong; she might have gone on indefinitely. For five years she’d convinced the whole world she was mute, after all. He thought Carrie knew altogether too much about self-control.
She jolted when she saw him. Her carefully composed features gave way, and she took a step toward him, then halted, recollecting herself. It was painfully obvious that she was attempting to pretend he was nothing to her but her doctor, someone only peripherally involved in her unfortunate predicament. She even said, “Hello, Dr. Wilkes,” trying to feign surprise. Frank was right: she was the worst liar he’d ever seen.
“Have a seat, Miss Wiggins,” invited the sheriff, stern-faced. “Here, if you please.” He placed her in front of the desk, with her back to Ty—deliberately, so he wouldn’t be able to coach her. Butts sat back down and leaned his bulky torso toward her, his version of an intimidating posture. He nodded to one of his hovering deputies, who began to write in a tablet. Mueller, standing at Carrie’s shoulder, gave her a comforting pat. She looked up, but the smile she tried to return was unsuccessful.
Not a man to mince words, Butts went straight to the point. “Miss Wiggins, Dr. Wilkes has given us some new information and we’d like you to confirm it—or not—if you can. It concerns your whereabouts last night, especially during the time between 10 P.M. and 2 A.M. Is there anything you’d like to add to what you’ve already told us? Or anything you’d care to change?”
““You weren’t under oath before,” Peter Mueller pointed out carefully, “so if you weren’t being totally truthful when you made your statement, even though you signed it, you won’t be in any trouble. Understand, Carrie?”
She nodded slowly.
Tyler couldn’t see her face, just her rigid back, and her long neck looking thin, taut, and breakable. A wayward vision materialized unexpectedly, of her in his bathtub; he saw his fingers massaging that slender neck while she told him about the rape of a child. “Tell the truth, Carrie,” he said softly.
“That’s enough out of you,” Butts snapped.
But Ty didn’t give a damn. “Tell him,” he instructed her, louder.
The deputies shifted, restless, looking to Butts for direction. “Fine, then, tell me,” he barked. “The truth, Miss Wiggins, now. Where were you last night?”
Carrie’s hands flexed and relaxed on the arms of her chair. Ty imagined the debate going on in her mind, the guessing, the weighing of unthinkable alternatives. When she bowed her head, he knew she knew the game was up, because she’d figured out what he’d told them. Damn it, he thought with a flash of irrational anger, she’d better know.
“I stayed at Dr. Wilkes’s house,” she said, in a voice so low he could barely hear it.
Butts couldn’t either. “You stayed where?”
“At Dr. Wilkes’s. I …” There was a long pause. “I wasn’t feeling well.” The next silence was a curious one, as everybody waited to hear what interpretation she would decide to put on her tale. She didn’t know exactly what he’d told them, so she was thinking it was still possible to put a different complexion on things. Nobody uttered a sound; suddenly it was as if seven gentlemen were deferring to a lady.
“I wasn’t feeling too well,” she resumed, in a murmur still so low they all had to lean toward her to hear. “I—my—head was hurting again. Dr. Wilkes thought I should stay quiet for one more night. And so …” She couldn’t finish. She wanted to leave it vague, to accommodate whatever he might’ve said. Specificity was the enemy.
No one looked at anyone else. But Ty had a feeling they were all smiling the same slight, sad, faintly amused smile that he was. Carrie was a terrible liar, but he wasn’t much better; it seemed comically ironic, now that it was over, that they’d both tried exactly the same clumsy lie. But her fragility had affected them all, he saw, including the sheriff, who didn’t even ask her why she hadn’t told this harmless story in the first place. They were all in on the conspiracy now: the conspiracy to save her from any more pain.
“Well, Sheriff?” Peter Mueller said, subdued. “Any further need to hold my client tonight?”
Butts cleared his throat and said after only a moment’s hesitation, “No, I guess not.” He frowned, no doubt thinking of all the work that lay ahead of him now to discover who had really killed Artemis. He glared at Carrie, annoyed with her—but still not enough to chastise her. “You can go, Miss Wiggins. We’ll want to speak to you soon about your stepfather’s acquaintances, his habits, and so forth. But for now, you’re free to go.”
She mumbled something that sounded like thanks, and stood up.
Tyler felt the accusing, ice-cold glares of every man in the room. His character had plummeted in their eyes, and no belated betrothal announcement was going to change that. But all he cared about now was getting Carrie out. When he took her hand, she started in surprise. He felt another surge of irritation. Did she think the charade could go on? Did she really think anyone had believed her? Her simplicity wrung his heart, at the same time it made him want to shake her.
Out in the dim vestibule, he said, “Wait here for a second, Carrie. Don’t go outside without me.” She nodded readily, but he hoped his precaution wasn’t necessary. It was after ten o’clock; surely the last of the gawkers had dispersed by now.
“Frank?”
Odell stopped in front of him. “This is a hell of a thing, Tyler,” he said in a grim, low-pitched voice. “A hell of a thing.”
“I’m aware of that. Is it all right if Carrie stays at your house tonight?”
“Of course it’s all right. Damn it, if she’d stayed with us in the first—”
“Thank you. I think we should go now.” With Frank trailing behind, he went back for Carrie. “You’ll be staying with the Odells tonight,” he told her. She looked startled, but he gave her no chance to respond. Taking her arm again, he guided her out the door, with Frank on her other side.
Miraculously, the street was empty. Even Broom seemed to have disappeared; if he was lurking somewhere, Tyler couldn’t see him. All the way down Broad Street to Truitt Avenue, nobody said a word. But when they reached the Odell
s’ small, clapboard-sided house, Ty said tersely, “Frank, would you mind giving me a minute alone with Carrie?”
He looked more uncomfortable than angry now. “Sure,” he muttered. “Sure, go ahead.” With an awkward salute, he turned and trotted up his porch steps.
Frank was barely through the front door when Carrie reached for Ty. “I wish I could stay with you,” she began, but he cut her off by unwinding her arms and leading her away from the dim pool of light the street lamp cast and into the blackness beside the privet hedge.
“Carrie—”
“Hold me,” she whispered.
This wasn’t part of the plan; he had to keep his head now. But when he felt how hard she was trembling, he gathered her up and held her fast. “Darling,” he heard himself call her, “are you crying? It’s all right, don’t cry anymore. It’s over now, it’s all right.”
“I know, I am all right, I just need—this—”
He let her cry. Her angular, thin-boned body had never felt so fragile before. She wasn’t hysterical, and her weeping was more exhausted than despairing; but there was something desperate in the feel of her and in the shaky tension of her embrace. He thought of what she’d been through in the last three days, and wondered if she would break down now. But even as he thought it, he could feel her calming. At length she stopped weeping and began snuffling.
“How long were you locked up?” he asked, while she whiffled and blew into his handkerchief.
“Not long. They weren’t cruel to me. But they thought I killed him, and that was the worst. I found him, his—corpse.” She went stiff and began to shudder. “They never found his gun. They thought I shot him and hid it in the woods. I’ll never—” She choked and started to cry again. “I’ll never be able to forget how he looked, Ty. Oh God, I wish I could go home with you! But I can’t.” But a half-second later, she whispered, “Can I?”
“No,” he said gently. “Carrie, why didn’t you tell them the truth?” What he wanted to say was, How long would you have held out, till they hanged you ?
“I couldn’t,” she retorted, with a sudden hint of spirit. “And you shouldn’t have, either. In a way, it’s lucky that you’re going away now, because people are going to think badly of you. You don’t understand what it’s like here,” she explained patiently, wiping her eyes again. “You’re admired and respected, you’re a hero. But they’ll think less of you now that they know you’ve been with me … You know, been with me.” That was the best she could do. “Because I’m not respectable, Ty. I’m common. And even though—”
He shut her up with a rough hug. He felt numb and humbled, realizing all at once that she’d lied for the sake of his reputation, not hers!
“Carrie, Carrie,” he breathed into the air over her shoulder. “What am I going to do with you?” But of course, he already knew.
Releasing her, he kept her hands and bent close, wishing the light were brighter so he could see her face. “Listen to me, love. There’s no hope of any of this staying a secret. I had to tell Butts the truth, not that gallant lie you made up to protect me.” Which I tried on him first, he added to himself, with no better success.
“Oh.” She sounded dismayed but not surprised. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what you’d said. You told me to tell the truth, but I couldn’t be sure how much you’d already told them yourself. So—that means they didn’t believe me?”
“Not for a second.”
“Well, I didn’t think so, either. Nobody said anything, but I—had a feeling.”
He decided against letting her in on the general consensus that she was the most dismal and inept liar anyone had ever met. “The whole town’s bound to know everything within a few days, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Oh, by tomorrow, I think.”
She sounded reconciled to it, and she was probably right; she knew the town better than he did. He squeezed her hands tighter. “So there’s only one thing to do. We’ll get married.”
She was shocked into silence for a full ten seconds. “We’ll what?” she got out, on something between a laugh and a gasp.
“Dr. Perry arrives tomorrow, the last I heard. I can have my affairs settled within a week, and then we can leave. We’ll marry in Philadelphia, or”—it just occurred to him—“or here, if you’d rather, it doesn’t matter to me. You’ll stay with my mother and sister while I’m in Cuba. I wish I could tell you how long that will be, but I can’t. It could be a month, six months, a year—I just don’t know. I’m not sure where we’ll live afterward, either—Washington or Philadelphia, maybe Baltimore. But it’ll have to be a city, Carrie, if I’m to do my work. I’m sorry, I know the country suits you better, and I know it’s not what you’d have chosen. But we’ll find a quiet place, and it won’t be so bad, I promise.”
He paused to let her speak. She didn’t. “Well?” he prodded, trying for a lighthearted tone. “Aren’t you going to say something? I’ve never proposed to anyone before. If I didn’t do it very elegantly, there’s inexperience to blame. Carrie?”
She drew her hands out of his. “You do me a great honor, Ty,” she said with husky formality. “I thank you for it with all my heart. My answer is no, but I’ll never forget that you asked me. And it’ll be the happiest memory of my life.”
She’d whispered the last words, as if she were crying again. “Wait,” he said. She was moving back, away from him.
Behind her, a widening rectangle of light in the doorway silhouetted the diminutively pregnant figure of Eppy Odell. “Carrie, will you come in now, please?” she called out in a high, emotional, tightly angry voice. “Dr. Wilkes, will you say good night to Carrie now, please?”
He ground his teeth and uttered an oath. “Wait, Carrie. Listen to me, don’t say no like that. Think, what else can we do? I can’t leave you like this, to suffer the town’s disapprobation by yourself. It might not be the life either of us had in mind, but things are different now, the circumstances—”
“Does ‘disappprobation’ mean disapproval?” she interrupted, soft-voiced.
“What? Yes. The circum—”
“Then it doesn’t matter, Ty. I’ve lived with disapprobation for years and years, and I’m not afraid of it. Don’t worry about me, please don’t.” Her voice got fainter as she moved back. “I have to go inside now. It’s not good for Eppy and her family for us to be together like this. I didn’t think of that before.” She drifted farther away.
“Wait,” he said for the third time. “Damn it, Carrie, we have to talk!”
“We can’t. Let me go, Ty. Thank you, but I decline your proposal. Good night!”
She turned and fled, leaving him alone in the dark with his sadness, and his shame-faced relief.
19
CARRIE STAYED WITH THE Odells for almost a week, sleeping on a folding cot in what had been the pantry but was now Charlotte and Emily’s tiny first-floor bedroom. She never went out, except to weed Eppy’s vegetable garden or cut flowers for the house, so if there was “disapprobation” toward her in the town, it never touched her directly. She felt it, though, and from an unexpected source: Eppy herself. Her friend of five years, her only female friend, couldn’t hide how much she disapproved of what Carrie had done, even though she tried.
“I’ll leave,” Carrie had offered on the day after her arrest and release from jail, when it was already clear to her that her presence made Eppy uncomfortable.
“Where will you go?” she’d snapped. “You can’t go home, there’s a murderer on the loose. If you go to Doc Stoneman’s and stay there alone, people will talk worse about you than they already do. You’re stuck here, Carrie, and that’s that.”
So she tried to make herself useful around the house, taking care of little Fanny, playing for endless hours with the older girls, cleaning, making breads and cookies and great pots of beans—all the while trying her best to stay out of Eppy’s way.
True to his word, the sheriff came to see her after two days, and asked her a hundred questions about he
r stepfather. He particularly wanted to know about Willis Haight. She couldn’t lie, but she dreaded what would happen to all the Haights, Frances and the six children, if Willis got himself arrested. They lived on the edge of ruin every day as it was. Willis didn’t make much money doing whatever it was he did—selling the distilled whiskey he didn’t drink up by himself, from what she could tell—but if that source of income dried up, the family would be truly destitute. Luckily the sheriff asked her about four or five other acquaintances of Artemis, some she’d never heard of. In a way, it was a relief to find out he’d had even more enemies than she’d thought.
Broom visited her every day, sometimes more than once. His solution to her troubles was for her to come and live with him in his house, where they could be a family. Once, lying on her hard cot and listening to the soft breathing of the little girls sleeping nearby, she actually considered doing it. Not for her sake—she didn’t want to live with Broom—but for his. He needed somebody to take care of him. It was a miracle he hadn’t burned down his house yet, or accidentally poisoned himself, or fallen victim to a thousand other disasters he was too simple-minded to avoid. But she guessed she was just too selfish and mean, because she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Now that Artemis was gone, she could help Broom out a lot more, she told herself, in ways her stepfather would never have allowed. She could bring him nutritious meals, for instance, and sew up his raggedy clothes. It wasn’t enough, but it was all she could think of to do right now. Heaven help her, she just didn’t want to be Broom’s mama.
One morning she was out in the front garden, weeding and pinching back the dead blooms of snapdragons and strawflowers in Eppy’s annual border. It was a job she loved, even though it made her homesick for her own wildflowers up on Dreamy. Maybe it was a sound that made her stand up and turn around, shading her eyes with her hand under the brim of her borrowed sunbonnet, but it seemed more like a sensation, a feeling that somebody was watching her. She was surprised when she saw that it was Eugene. Not so much because she wasn’t expecting him, but more because of the way he held himself—still and watchful and maybe a little tentative, and the way he didn’t move for a few seconds even though he knew she’d seen him. It took a wave of her hand to get him out of the middle of the street, and a smile to move him through the privet hedges and up the slate walk to where she was standing in the yard.
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