Close to Home

by Jenna Bennett

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “D’you think my dad and Maybelle will have kids?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I think Maybelle’s probably too old.” She must be over forty, so chances were she wouldn’t risk a pregnancy at her age.

  “Good,” Austin said and turned to Alexandra as she came back down the hallway, the excess eye-makeup cleaned off. “Ready to go ?”

  She nodded. “Will you be OK, Savannah?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s just Shelby. Listen.” I addressed Austin. “Do me a favor and don’t tell David that I asked about him, OK? His parents may not want him to know anything about it, and that’s their decision.”

  “ Whatever ,” Austin said with a shrug. The two of them left, and ten minutes later, so did Shelby and her friends. They weren’t actually interested i n buying the townhouse ; they were just curious about how their neighbors lived, and taking the opportunity to find out.

  “Give Bradley my regards,” I called after them as they walked out. “Tell him congratulations.”

  Shelby said, somewhat reluctantly, that she would. I grinned.

  I spent the little bit of time that was left of the open house pulling up the White Pages on my phone. West Meade is a well-to-do area on the west side of Nashville, and since I was already halfway there, I figured I might as well swing by before heading east, for home. When I struck out—there are so many people foregoing landlines for cell phones these days—I did what I should have done all along, and checked Nashville’s property tax records instead. The Flannerys lived in a 1960s ranch on a street called Pennywell.

  Pennywell turned out to be cut into a steep hillside, with the driveways in either direction roughly vertical. The lots were oversized, all the houses sat back from the road, and there were a lot of trees. In the summer I probably wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. By now, most of the leaves had fallen, and in spite of the occasional fir tree, I got a pretty good look at the Flannery house. It was built of brick, long and low, and had charcoal gray trim with off-white accents. The driveway rose steeply before widening into a parking area. A basketball hoop was screwed to the wall above one of the garage doors.

  There were no cars parked in the driveway, but I hadn’t idled on the roadside more than a few minutes when a pearly white Chrysler came up Pennywell behind me and headed up the drive.

  At that point I suppose I should have left, before they noticed me sitting there, but it was too tempting to linger, just in case I could catch a glimpse of David Flannery. I kept my eye on the Chrysler as it pulled to a stop in the driveway. After a moment, one of the garage doors rolled back remotely, and the car disappeared into the basement of the house. I put my own car in gear—they’d surely enter the house through the garage now —but I hesitated when the garage door didn’t start rolling down again as soon as the car was inside. After a moment I was rewarded when three figures exited the garage into the driveway.

  They were too far away for me to be able to see details, but Mr. Flannery—his name was Sam, or so the tax records said—was African-American, tall and bald. Mrs. Flannery, Virginia, was short, plump, and blonde. David was just about as tall as his mother, with caramel colored skin and short-cropped dark hair. All three of them were dressed in their Sunday best, and I guessed they’d been to church this morning, and had perhaps gone to lunch and then to a friend’s house or to visit relatives or something.

  They headed up what must be a walkway to the front door; Mr. Flannery and David in the lead, goofing around, and Mrs. Flannery bringing up the rear. She was looking around, and I shrank down in my seat. I couldn’t see her clearly, so I knew there was no way she could see me, not through the windows of the car, but it was as though I could feel her eyes on me. When the front door closed behind the three of them, I took my foot off the brake and rolled down the hill.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” I told Dix later that evening, by phone. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind right now, and I’m sorry, but we really should do this.”

  “What is it?” His voice was tired, without any of its usual humor.

  “I found the boy in the photograph. His name is David Flannery. I know where he lives. I’ve even seen him, but only from a distance.”

  “OK,” Dix said.

  “I need you to call his parents and ask permission to come talk to them about Elspeth. That way I can go over there and meet him.”

  “You don’t work for Martin and McCall,” Dix said.

  “They don’t know that.”

  “You and I do.” He drew breath and then blew it back out. “ We can go together .”

  “I don’t want you to have to come up to Nashville again. I’m sure you’ve got enough to do, with Abigail and Hannah and everything that’s going on.”

  “It’ll give me a change of location ,” Dix said. “And something else to think about. Catherine can take care of Abby and Hannah .”

  “If you’re sure. I don’t have the phone number—it’s either unlisted or they don’t have a landline—but I can find it if I have to.” I could call Alexandra back, and have her ask Austin to ask David for his number.

  “I can get it,” Dix said. “I guess I’d better ask them to meet us in the evening sometime. After school’s out. You do want to see the boy, right?”

  “Please.” I felt a little guilty holding back what Dr. Seaver had said about Elspeth’s son being stillborn. But if Dix knew that, he might not think it necessary to talk to the Flannerys , and I needed his help with this . And besides, Dix really did need something else to think about. Although Sheila and what had happened to her was a sort of constant dull ache in the back of both of our minds—and probably sharper and much more immediate in his—he needed something to take his mind off it, even for just a little while . I remembered those horrible eight hours when I’d thought that Rafe was dead, and then I multiplied them by four—for the time since Dix learned that Sheila was dead—and multiplied them again—since Dix and Sheila had been married for eight years and had two children together while Rafe and I hadn’t even been on speaking terms until four months ago—and considering all that, it was obvious that Dix’s grief was so much more than mine had been, even though I’d felt like the world had suddenly come to a dead stop when I got the news.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Dix said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, OK?”

  “Sure. Is everything all right?”

  “No,” Dix said, “it isn’t. My wife is dead, and my children are crying, and something is going on that I don’t understand, and I don’t really have time to talk about it right now. I’ll call you tomorrow. But I have to go take care of Abby and Hannah now . OK?”

  “Sure,” I said and hung up the phone, feeling even worse than I had when I’d called him in the first place.

  Chapter 9

  At six o’clock the next evening, I was back in West Meade, this time heading up the steep driveway toward the house on Pennywell, watching the trees go by from the front seat of Dix’s car.

  He had called in the morning to tell me we were on for tonight. He must have been extremely persuasive to get them to agree to a meeting so soon. Or perhaps the mention of something to their advantage had tipped the scales for the Flannerys. The hint of an inheritance sometimes has that effect, at least in books.

  “That was fast,” I’d said when he called.

  “Guess they want it over with,” Dix had answered. “I’ll see you tonight, sis.”

  “Wait a second. Is everything OK?”

  “No,” Dix said. “I’ll see you later.”

  He picked me up at five thirty, looking bad. If I hadn’t known it was impossible, I would have said he’d lost ten pounds since Saturday morning. His skin was gray, his eyes were dull, and his face was drawn. The black suit seemed to hang from his shoulders. When I asked him how his day had been, he merely shook his head, and we spent the drive from East Nashville to West Meade largely in silence, except for Dix asking dire
ctions and me providing them. It wasn’t until we were two blocks away, heading up Pennywell toward the house, that he started talking.

  “I did some research. There are no adoption records for David Flannery.”

  I turned to look at him. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not likely to make a mistake about something like that. He was born in St. Jerome’s Hospital, and the mother and father listed on his birth certificate are Virginia and Samuel Flannery.”

  “I’ve never heard of St. Jerome’s,” I said. Nashville has plenty of hospitals—health care is a huge industry here—but St. Jerome’s wasn’t one I was familiar with.

  “It’s private,” Dix said. “And small. With some sort of religious connection.”

  With a name like St. Jerome’s, I’d assumed as much. “Apparently the family’s religious. Austin said Virginia Flannery works for her church.”

  “Her husband’s a financial advisor,” Dix said. “He emphasizes a Christian approach to money. And he seems to be doing all right. Nice house.” He ran an assessing eye over it as we pulled up into the parking area outside the double garage.

  “It’s a nice neighborhood. Expensive.” I glanced at him, wondering if maybe now would be a good time to tell him that Dr. Seaver had told me Elspeth’s baby had been stillborn. We were here, and he wasn’t likely to leave again without going through with the appointment.

  Then again, maybe Dr. Seaver was wrong? David looked so much like Rafe, at least in the picture, that it was hard to believe they weren’t related.

  “Ready?” Dix said.

  “I guess.” May as well get it over with. In a half hour we’d know something one way or the other.

  Virginia Flannery was graciousness itself when she opened the door for us, but there was tension bleeding from every pore of her body, and her speech was rapid and jumpy. “Mr. Martin? I’m Virginia Flannery. Come in. Let me take your jackets. The dining room is through here. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Dix said. “Savannah?”

  I shook my head. “No thank you, Mrs. Flannery. We don’t want to put you out.”

  “It’s no bother,” Virginia Flannery said, and I got the impression she wanted something to do with her hands. They were twisting together as she waited for us to come through the door from the front hall and into the dining room. “I’ll just put on a pot of coffee while we wait for Sam to come downstairs. He just came home from work and he’s changing.” She glanced nervously up the stairs to the second story.

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Flannery,” Dix said. “We’re not in a hurry.”

  She sent him a look that said, rather clearly, that the sooner we said what we came for, the sooner we’d leave, and it couldn’t be soon enough for her, but she bustled off toward the kitchen without uttering a word.

  “Nervous,” Dix muttered as he headed for the dining room table.

  I nodded, following. Making sure my voice wouldn’t carry to the kitchen I said, “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “At this point? Not sure. I didn’t tell them what this was about on the phone.”

  “To some people, that’s even more reason to worry.” I pulled out the chair next to his and sat down, leaving the two chairs opposite for Virginia and Sam Flannery. There were faint voices from upstairs; Sam talking to his son, I assumed. Maybe David was doing his homework.

  We were sitting at a mahogany table, on carved mahogany chairs with striped cushions. A big mirror above the matching buffet reflected the chandelier above the table, which sent prisms of light dancing across the walls. Under my feet was a faded but still beautiful Persian rug. It was all very tasteful, and quite expensive.

  Virginia came bustling back after a minute or so, carrying cups and saucers. She put one of each in front of each of us and disappeared again. Next came spoons, real silver with a matching pattern, carefully placed onto real cloth napkins. Then the sugar bowl and pitcher of cream, porcelain with painted violets. Finally a prosaic thermal container of coffee, that she put on the table with another nervous glance through the door to the hallway and the stairs. “He should be down any... Oh! I think I hear him!”

  She bustled back out of the room. Dix and I had time to exchange a look, but no more, before she came back, clutching her husband’s arm, her hand pale against the brown of his skin.

  Dix and I stood, and Dix extended a hand. “Mr. Flannery. I’m Dixon Calvert Martin, from Martin and McCall, attorneys, in Sweetwater. We spoke on the phone this morning.”

  Mr. Flannery nodded and shook. He looked less nervous than his wife, or maybe he just hid it better. He was tall and skinny, even taller than Rafe, but without any of Rafe’s bulk, and comfortably dressed in wrinkled khakis and a T-shirt.

  “This is my sister Savannah,” Dix introduced me, and we shook.

  “Have a seat,” Sam Flannery rumbled. He had a deep voice for such a thin man. For a few seconds everything was quiet as we all got situated and assessed one another across the table.

  I’d already had a chance to take stock of Virginia Flannery, who was plump, with short blonde hair touched with gray, and wary blue eyes, dressed in frumpy mom-jeans and an oversized blouse. Now I examined Sam for any resemblance to Rafe.

  There wasn’t any, other than the obvious one: they both had some African-American in their heritage. Sam probably more than Rafe: his skin was a few shades darker, and his features more classically black. His nose was a little flatter and broader and his lips fuller. He was bald, so I had to make a guess as to hair color, but I thought it would probably be black, or perhaps gray, and kinky. Rafe’s is dark brown, like espresso. Sam’s eyes, on the other hand, were lighter, almost golden brown. Rafe’s are so dark they’re almost black. And the eye shape was different: Sam’s eyes were deep set and close together; Rafe’s aren’t.

  While I was cataloguing differences, Dix was going through the motions, explaining that he was the executor for the estate of a woman who had died a few months ago in Sweetwater. Virginia turned to Sam.

  “Do you know anyone in Sweetwater, honey?”

  Sam shook his head. From the position of their arms, I thought they were holding hands under the table.

  “Her name was Elspeth Caulfield,” Dix said. I watched them both, but saw no flicker of recognition on either of their faces. “We found this in her house.”

  There was a pause.

  “Savannah?” Dix said.

  “Oh!” I opened my bag. “Sorry.”

  The picture of David hit the polished top of the table face up. For a second nobody reacted, and then I heard Virginia suck her breath in.

  “This is your son David, isn’t it?” Dix said, looking from one to the other of them. When neither answered, he added, “Can you tell me how it ended up in Elspeth Caulfield’s house?”

  Virginia shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before.” Her voice was weak.

  “But it’s your son?”

  She nodded.

  “You didn’t give it to Elspeth?”

  “I don’t even know who Elspeth is! I’ve never heard her name before, and I certainly wouldn’t give her a picture of my son.” She swallowed. “This is very disturbing to me.”

  It would be disturbing to me too, if David were my child and I learned that a stranger had a picture of him in her bedside drawer. A picture I hadn’t given her.

  “Is your son adopted?” Dix said.

  There was a pause, then—

  “Of course not!” Sam said.

  “How dare you insinuate—!” Virginia said.

  They both stopped to look at one another.

  “Elspeth Caulfield left everything she owned to her son,” I said into the silence. “This picture was in her house. She got pregnant when she was sixteen. More than twelve years ago. The boy she slept with looks a lot like your son.”

  “He’s dead, too,” Dix said into the silence that followed. I shot him a look, but couldn’t really argue with the party line. Not when I myself had t
old him to keep the fact that Rafe was alive under his hat. But if there was a time I wanted to tell the truth, it was now. If David was Rafe’s son, Rafe would want to know him. And David had a right to know Rafe.

  Virginia and Sam exchanged a look. “David is our son,” Sam said.

  “Of course he is.” Dix’s voice was calm. “Nobody’s arguing with that.”

  “You can check his birth certificate,” Virginia said.

  Dix turned to her. “I already have. Birth and death records are public.”

  “So you know we’re his parents.”

  “Of course you’re his parents,” I said. “You’ve taken care of him probably from the day he was born. But—please forgive me—he doesn’t look like either of you. He looks like Rafe.”

  “If you’ll allow me...” Dix said, digging in his briefcase. He brought out—I blinked—a Columbia High School yearbook. A couple of yellow Post-It notes stuck out of the top of it.

  Dix flipped it open and turned the book around so the Flannerys could see the page. It had rows of student portraits, one right next to the other. Dix put his finger on one. “This is Elspeth Caulfield. She’s a sophomore in this picture. She didn’t come back for her junior year. According to rumor, her parents took her out of school so they could hide that she was pregnant.”

  Virginia and Sam bent their heads together to take a look. I wondered whether that meant anything. If they had adopted David, would they refuse to look at his birth mother? Or would they want to?

  “Is Rafe in that book too?” I asked Dix, sotto voce. He glanced at me. After a second he nodded and leaned across the table to flip to the second Post-It.

  “This is Rafael Collier. It was his senior year. As you can see, he looks quite a lot like your son.”

  Neither of them answered. Sam leaned back, as if distancing himself from the yearbook, and folded his arms across his chest. I recognized the move from one of the many sales seminars I’d attended over the past few months, as a gesture of self protection. Of disassociating himself from what was happening.

  Virginia looked up at Dix. “David is my son.” There was a touch of desperation in her voice.