“I wanted you to know. I am off the list. They found the killer. I’m not the man you think I am, Annie Chamovitz. I’ve been cleared. Yeah, I’m a bit messed up. I’m a drunk. I lose my temper. But I don’t kill people,” he said, looking over at Mike.
“Why do you care what my wife thinks of you?” Mike said, still furious.
He looked to the floor, out of breath, blood still pouring from his lip. “I don’t know. Maybe because she seems ... a lot like Maggie Rae. So smart. But so not like Maggie Rae, too. So good. So true. You know? I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare you... .”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Robert, we already know you didn’t kill Maggie Rae. But why wouldn’t I be afraid of you? You were trying to get in here one night when you were drunk. And I’m pretty sure you followed me home one night. So if you don’t want people to think you’re a freak, you better start checking yourself.”
Chapter 48
Vera wasn’t sure she could tell any of her friends what had happened in New York City. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her—and she couldn’t share it because it was also kind of embarrassing. Besides, she was just so busy getting the studio ready for the fall that she didn’t have much time to chat. She’d also been avoiding Bill.
“How was the workshop?” Annie asked after sipping a glass of white wine.
“It was lovely,” Vera said.
“Lovely?” Sheila mimicked. “Well, what did you do up there? Learn a new way to arabesque?”
“No, dear. We learned some different methods of teaching. I looked at different syllabi. I’m looking into something other than the Royal Academy of Dance’s curriculum. Oh, and I also made some great costume contacts. Thrilling stuff, you know,” Vera replied, feeling a blush creep onto her face. God, she hadn’t blushed in years. She hoped nobody noticed.
“Vera, you’re blushing,” DeeAnn said. She just placed a pictured onto a page and looked up at her.
“Oh, I am not,” Vera chided. “Mmm, love this lemon poppy seed muffin.”
“I think you are,” Sheila said. “Good muffin, I agree.”
“Spill the beans, lady,” Paige said.
“What?” Vera said, grinning.
They all stopped and looked at her. Annie’s beautiful oblong face, Paige with her rosy cheeks, DeeAnn with her freckles scattered across her nose, and Sheila, hair needing combing, but lipstick carefully applied, for a change. All eyes on Vera.
“I ran into an old friend,” she said.
“An old friend?” Annie asked.
“You didn’t know this, but I worked as a dancer the same year I graduated from college and I know some people there.” She smiled.
“A man?” Sheila prodded.
“Tony,” Vera said.
“Tony!” Sheila squealed. “Now I remember something about him. Now, let’s see. Is he the man from Brooklyn?”
Vera nodded.
“Uh-huh,” Sheila said. “Really hot guy?”
Vera nodded again.
“I remember. It’s all coming back to me now,” Sheila said. Her grin was as wide as her face.
“Well, tell us,” Paige said.
“Not much to tell, really,” Vera began.
Sheila cleared her throat. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“Well, you know. We were both so young, and it was in the days, you know, so much experimenting and things.”
“You slept with him?” DeeAnn asked.
“Boy, did she ever,” Sheila said. “I remember.”
“So?” Annie said. “Haven’t all of you ever slept with other men besides your husbands?”
The room was quiet.
“Oh, Annie, good Southern girls, well, we don’t usually talk about such things, if we do those things, you know,” Sheila replied, stumbling.
“Well, that’s strange,” Annie said. “God, you women have known each other forever. I think it’s time you compared notes.”
“Surely not,” Vera said.
“Let’s start with what happened in New York.”
Vera nodded. “No, I’m afraid not. What happened in New York stays there. Or at least for a little while longer.”
What happened in New York was that she found Tony, and it was as if no time had passed at all. He reached for her when he saw her and she slid into his arms, where she stayed for a good part of five days. She didn’t go to New York to look for him—he just happened to be in the same workshop, which made it very difficult for both of them to concentrate. He had an ex-wife, he told her, and a child, now eighteen. He had been divorced for several years.
“We tried,” he told her. “But we both have fallen out of love, I suppose. She’s had countless affairs. Me? Well, there’s been one or two. Finally we decided to just give up. You know.”
He was a little thicker—as was she—but the years were good to him. He loved her little baby bump and ran his hands over it with tenderness.
He had danced professionally up until a few years ago, when his knees just could not take any more, even after surgery.
It was difficult to leave him, not knowing if she’d ever see him again, if she’d ever feel this rawness, this energy, this passion—unrequited, though it was—one more time. He insisted he would come to Cumberland Creek for a visit. She said she’d love to have him, but in her mind’s eye, she could not see it. He’d stick out like a sore thumb—a dark New York man, with a strong Brooklyn accent. Tongues would start to wag. And, Lord, she didn’t need any more controversy in her life. The town didn’t need it, either, with reporters in and out, along with TV crews and radio crews. She just wanted things to get back to normal.
She was creating a new “normal” in her life, though. Once the baby came, her attention would focus on him or her, and her reality would switch again. Maybe then, she’d be ready for Bill. But she hung on to thoughts of Tony—even though she still loved Bill. However, she wasn’t sure she could trust Bill again, ever. He’d been screwing that young woman for years, and she’d never known it. He’d made a fool out of her in front of the whole town.
Yes, she knew it was her silly pride that was keeping her from taking Bill back. But it was also something more. She was more now.
Chapter 49
Beatrice popped another one of those painkillers that the doctor had given her. Damn neck. Her neck still hurt like hell every once in a while. It was the damnedest thing. It didn’t hurt when the knife was lodged in—but now it hurt like hell. The body’s a funny thing. She took a long drink of her water and felt the pill go down. She hoped the painkillers would help with her stomach pain—from all the stomach pumping—just to be on the safe side.
Her bare feet hit the floor, feeling its cool smoothness. She rose and walked down the creaky stairs to the kitchen, where the stove light shone into an otherwise dark kitchen. Oh, she’d forgotten about that slice of apple pie. She’d like to have it now, so she took the plate and fork back upstairs with her. Nothing like apple pie to start a Monday morning. She’d eat it in her own bed, too. Oh, luxury and joy.
A grandmother. Would it be a boy or a girl? she wondered as she plopped back into her bed. A girl would be sweet. A girl with a love of math and science. Oh, no, not a girl. Vera would dress her up and parade her around just like a doll. That wouldn’t do.
A boy would be nice, too. They’d not had a boy in the family. It would be a new experience for all of them. A soccer-playing boy. She grimaced at the thought of becoming one of those soccer grannies, but she supposed she would. She supposed she would—her heart leaped.
A baby.
Mmm. Damn this pie is good. A nice thick crust, just the way I like it. And is that bourbon in it? One more bite, hmm? Yes, it is. Just a hint of it.
What would Vera and Bill name a child? She wondered. They surely had some strange ways. It was hard for Bea to think old Bill actually had enough get-up-and-go to even make love to her daughter, let alone make a baby. Stranger things have happened.
Bill was go
ne for a few days on a business trip, so she didn’t hear him moving about the house. It was so quiet. Strange. It never occurred to her that he was a noisy man—but still, even quiet roommates make life noises. The creaking of the floorboards, the opening and closing of the refrigerator or a cupboard, and the running water of the shower. Beatrice missed it. She missed Bill. Then she laughed out loud at the thought of it. Bea had not really liked him when he was still living with Vera as her husband. Something, though, about the way he turned to her during their trouble endeared him to her, she supposed.
Then there was the night of the attic incident. They’d shared something that most people would have called them crazy for. Still, they were both there, and they had held on to one another as the paper in the attic had flown around and the dark specter had released itself through the window.
“Did you smudge the attic?” Rose had wanted to know when she called her to tell her what had happened.
“No. That’s the one room I didn’t smudge or put holy water in. I didn’t even think about it.”
“Interesting.”
“Well, she or it seems to be gone now.”
“And it all makes sense now?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. If I’d only remembered that I saw Tina Sue that morning, I’d have known. She killed her sister and she saw me on the sidewalk that morning and she is definitely the person who stabbed me. She’s on the tape. Well, her arm is. They could tell because of the purple jacket.”
“What is the world coming to, Beatrice, when a sister murders her own sister? That’s why I stay on my mountain.”
“But the world keeps spinning, Rose, with or without you.”
“We create our own reality.”
“That’s my line,” Beatrice said, and laughed.
Bea leaned back in her rocking chair and watched the hummingbirds feed. Such tiny, beautiful little birds. Fall was coming and soon they would be gone. It was quite a summer for her birds, for her daughter, and for her town.
She looked across the street and the homes and some of the shops at the edge of Cumberland Creek proper. Even with all the new populace and new shops, she supposed Cumberland Creek was better than that damn mountain, probably better than most places—except for maybe Paris. She smiled. She and Ed had planned to go there so many times—both could speak French, and Ed had a passion for French food. But he had died, leaving her alone with all of the dreams.
“You should go,” he said to her.
She looked over at him—his ghost was sitting on the wicker glider. “Go where?”
“Go to Paris.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m kind of old to go gallivanting around the globe, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, no,” he said sweetly. “I hadn’t. To me, you will always be that eighteen-year-old physics student, with a mind like a steel trap, the face of a goddess... .”
“Well, now,” she said. “Maybe I will go to Paris. If I die there, I die. Who cares? At least I’ll have seen it. For both of us.”
“I’ll be there, too,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you have. You are gone, Ed,” she said, with her stomach twisting. “You died twenty years ago.”
“But I’m still here. Here we sit, talking. We talk like this every now and then.”
“I know, but why haven’t you gone over, Ed?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“I’m waiting for you, my love,” he whispered.
“Well, now,” she finally said. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”
He was gone again, just like that, just like always—coming in and out of her reality at a whim, or so it seemed. The breeze chilled her as it moved across her papery, freckled skin.
Old age ain’t a pretty thing.
She rose out of her chair and headed for the kitchen. She lit the stove and put the pan of beans on it. Leftovers for lunch. She could eat beans and corn bread almost every day. And sometimes she ate it twice a day.
She stirred the beans and soon they were ready. Popped the corn bread in the microwave to heat it up a bit. She took a bite of it before she even sat down. “Damn, I make some mighty fine corn bread.”
Of course, it was her mother’s recipe. Women didn’t cook like this anymore. All the fat and sugar were no-no’s. But damn, they were good. Beatrice remembered eating corn bread on the porch of her family’s mountain home, looking out over the hills, at her mother’s feet. Her mother was humming “Amazing Grace” and stroking Beatrice’s young head.
It’s funny how food brought up such vivid memories. She placed her dishes in the sink and the skillet back in the refrigerator and walked into the library. She sat in Ed’s chair. She loved this room of their house. Could always feel him here.
“I’m waiting for you, my love,” he had said to her.
His words shook her. Is that why he had been in and out of her world all these years? For a woman who prided herself on her intelligence, sometimes her own stupidity amazed her. All he wanted was for her to join him.
She opened the desk copy of Leaves of Grass and read over one of his favorite passages:
“Miracles”
Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love....
Beatrice found herself unlocking the desk drawer and running her hands under the paper to the small pistol he had kept there for years. She pulled it out and held it in her hand.
“I’m waiting for you, my love.” His words came to her again.
The cold metal of the gun felt soothing to her. He was just waiting for her. Was it time to end it, here and now? She could pull the trigger and be with the man she longed for every day and every night, knowing there was really not much else to this life. But wait, there was Vera, who still needed her—even though she was quite happy. And the baby. Yes, she was going to be a grandmother. And who would feed her hummingbirds and take care of Bill? And then there was Paris.
Well, Ed’s waited this long, he can wait a little longer.
Chapter 50
Maggie Rae Dasher was nobody’s fool. Still, she ended up murdered in her basement, while her children were sound asleep upstairs. They did not hear the gun because it had a silencer and was muffled even more by the pillow—the fibers were found clinging to her lifeless body. None of the neighbors in the small town of Cumberland Creek, Virginia, heard the gun, either. Nor would they have ever suspected a murder in this quiet neighborhood—or the secret life this young mother of four was living.
“I didn’t know her that well,” says 80-year-old Beatrice Matthews. “It turns out that nobody did—not even her husband.”
Robert Dasher, her college sweetheart, who was the number one “person of interest” in the murder investigation, is a tall and almost painstakingly thin man. A long-distance runner turned accountant shortly after college graduation, and a quick marriage to Maggie Rae, he thought he knew her, too. They’d dated all through college—she enjoyed a good football game, came from a good Southern family, and was a brilliant writer, given scholarships and awards for her writing, but she always wanted a large family of her own. She grew up with just one sibling—a sister—and she’d always wanted more, so they started on the family early on, even though Robert had misgivings.
“She was always sort of fragile,” he said.
Which would be in line with the suicide verdict handed down shortly after her death. But things didn’t add up, according to Detective Adam Bryant. The placement of the gun in her hand—very few guns would stay in the hand like that after shooting oneself. And the angle at which the bullet entered Maggi
e Rae’s heart made it nearly impossible for it to be a self-inflicted wound. Besides, Maggie Rae was left-handed and the gun was in her right hand.
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence statistics, nearly one-third of female homicide victims that are reported in police records are killed by an intimate partner. In 70 to 80 percent of intimate-partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder. Had Maggie Rae been abused?
Maggie Rae’s papers, which included cards from her husband, apologizing for abusive behavior, would suggest that is the case. Robert Dasher denies these allegations and maintains his innocence, even when the papers are in front of him.
“These cards are personal,” he said. “Hurting doesn’t mean beating.”
If Robert Dasher was abusing his wife, he wasn’t the only one. Maggie Rae had a legacy of abuse in her family. She had never known another way.
Maggie Rae was labeled a “bad girl” from early on—even by her mother, then her stepmother, who saw her flirtations with her new husband (Maggie Rae’s stepfather) as a competition and could not wait for her to go off to college, and didn’t pay much attention when she was away from home for days doing God knows what. Her fears were well founded. Because Maggie Rae was abused by her stepfather, and she could not end it—even as an adult. If she thought moving to Cumberland Creek would prevent it, she was wrong.
Maggie Rae’s sister always suspected her sister and stepfather were involved. Once she asked her sister about it, and Maggie Rae said she hated every minute of it, but yes, she confirmed it. Tina Sue was shocked, frightened, and felt perplexed. He’d never so much as kissed her inappropriately. What was it about Maggie Rae that invited men to help themselves to her?
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