“As long as it doesn’t interfere with your grades.”
“What if it does?”
“You may have to ask your new stepdad to help you out.”
“You sound like you’re pretty sure she’ll marry you.”
“I guess I’m pretty sure she will.”
Rhiann
Our street is called Cemetery Road because it meanders in wide switchbacks between two cemeteries situated on broad natural terraces. Below them, the slope drops steeply to the river, and the road zigzags down to Overlook. The Catholics are laid out in the lower curve of one of the meanders, next to their church. Union Cemetery is across the road and straight downhill from us.
Mickey’s buried there.
He and I used to sit on our porch, evenings, sharing our days and a cold beer—or hot chocolate, depending on the season—enjoying the peace. He’d told me on more than one occasion that he’d like to spend eternity here. And so he will, in a plot just below our porch. I was able to see it now that the trees had lost their leaves.
I’d been walking down to visit him, periodically, since he died, to catch him up on how we’re doing. Mickey was a generous man, an old soul. He’d have been happy to hear that Smoke returned, that he and I had found each other. So after I accepted John’s proposal, I headed down to share the news with Mickey.
And to say good-bye. I could let him go now; I had some kind of closure. All the persons missing from my life were accounted for. I was ready to start fresh.
It was nearly dark. Jimmy and Beth had gone off to a school dance. John was making a few business calls. I put on a sweater, put my flashlight in my pocket, and took the shortcut. Carrying a pot of red chrysanthemums, I squeezed through a gap in the cemetery fence.
I put the flowers down. I sat next to the headstone and told Mickey about my summer. About Beth and Jimmy. About John. I said good-bye.
When I got up to go, I noticed someone silhouetted against the last of the light. As he came near, he reached up and tipped his baseball cap.
He had just passed me, and I was stepping onto the shortcut path, when he whirled around and grabbed me.
“You ruined my life, bitch. You’re gonna pay.”
Rory Sinter!
“Then I’m gonna finish what I started with your brat.”
John
I saw Rhiann leave her house and cross the street to visit Mickey. I wasn’t spying this time; I didn’t mean to intrude. But something made me follow. I took the same shortcut through the cemetery fence and picked my way down between the trees buttressing the slope. I stopped where the path flattened out on the nearly level graveyard.
In the waning light, I could see two figures among the markers. Rhiann knelt by Mickey’s grave, her back to the road. The second figure was a man moving purposefully in her direction, silent as a ghost.
I’d seen that shade before, casting a pall over our summer—Rory Sinter.
Sudden panic made me plunge toward them. Quietly—to warn Rhiann was to forearm him.
Sinter tipped his cap as he approached her. Her body language broadcast inattention. She nodded and turned to come back home. He pounced on her from behind.
I ran.
He started dragging her toward the road. Rhiann struggled briefly, but he had her by the throat. She sagged in his grip. He let her drop.
As I closed the distance between us, my footfalls seemed to boom across the grass.
Sinter looked up and froze. The last glimmer of light reflected from the metal in his hand. A gun.
Fear for Rhiann made me light-headed. Rage spurred me on.
Sinter said, “Stop!”
Instead, I lunged at him.
The gun discharged. My shoulder struck his beltline. He fell back, with most of me on top. A metallic clatter signaled that he’d dropped the weapon.
We wrestled and flailed at one another, two dark figures against a darker ground. Headstones and markers surrounded us like ghostly witnesses.
Sinter rolled under me. I lost my balance. He shoved and kicked, and scrambled out of reach, out of sight in the dark.
I heard his labored breathing and moved toward the sound. I heard him move away, saw his silhouette against the pale background of a headstone. There was a brushing sound as he felt in the grass for his pistol.
Then a light—like an airport beacon in the darkness—pinned him to a gravestone. He had the gun again. A semiautomatic. He aimed at me.
The light went off just before the gun did. Muzzle flare marked his location. I charged again and knocked him sideways. But I tripped and lost my balance.
He must have located me by sound. The cold finger of the muzzle poked my chest. Sinter said, “Move a hair and you’re dead.”
I lay still as a corpse.
He yelled, “You with the flashlight. Turn it on yourself and come over here or I’ll shoot this asshole.”
There was no light. No reply.
Sinter straddled me and leaned his weight on the gun, digging the muzzle into my sternum.
Pain cut through the red haze. Carl’s words damped my rage—something he’d told me about semiautos. “You can’t fire them with the slide pushed back.”
As Sinter peered nervously into the darkness, I grabbed his pistol with both hands—pulled with one, pushed with the other—and rolled. He lost his balance and fell away.
And I had the gun.
I couldn’t see him but I said, “Don’t move, Sinter, or I’ll shoot you.”
And there was light. It pinned Sinter against a monument.
I said, “Who’s there?”
Rhiann said, “It’s me, John.”
Something like despair crossed Sinter’s face. He looked old and evil in the harsh glare. He stared into the light, then at me in the reflection from the marker. He said, “You’re not gonna shoot me.” He started backing away.
I was tempted, but I lowered the gun.
He kept looking back as he bolted. Rhiann kept him in the flashlight beam. So we saw clearly—when he ran toward Mickey’s grave—what he didn’t see: the pot of red flowers.
He tripped on it and fell forward. His skull glanced off the headstone. He landed on the grave, head at a peculiar angle against the marker. His wide eyes didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.
Behind me, Rhiann said, “Oh, God!”
I turned and took the flashlight from her shaking hand. I realized I was still holding the gun. I put it on the grass and gave Rhiann a little hug.
“Stay here.”
“Where—”
Keeping the light on Sinter, I stepped around to feel his neck for a pulse. A formality. It was obvious from the angle of his head that his neck was broken.
Rhiann said, “Is he…?”
“Dead.”
In the light reflecting from Mickey’s headstone she seemed more shocked than relieved.
I walked back to her and took her arm. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Come on.”
“We can’t leave him there. On—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.
But I understood. “Mickey won’t mind. It’s just until the police finish.”
“Oh, God.” Rhiann was the toughest woman I’ve ever known, but she started sobbing.
I held her for a little while, then said, “C’mon, Rhi.”
She sniffled and nodded, then let me lead her up the hill.
Rhiann
We waited for the police at my house. Sheriff Linden picked us up himself and drove us to the cemetery—I couldn’t think of it as a crime scene. He wouldn’t let us talk about what happened until we got there and he had us locked in separate squad cars. If John was worried, it didn’t show.
I watched the cops go over the grave site with cameras and tape measures, and make diagrams before they took Rory away. Then they walked John—literally—through his version of events. I watched from the other squad car as the sheriff and state police investigator questioned John. And then
they did the same with me. Checking to see if our stories matched.
It would’ve been terrifying if I weren’t Mickey’s widow. Long ago, he’d explained how police investigations work.
The investigator’s name was Crowley, and he’d been called in because the deceased had been a deputy sheriff. There was more to it than that, but I knew they wouldn’t tell us.
When they were satisfied with our version of the tragedy, Crowley drove us home. “You’ll have to come in tomorrow and sign statements. For now you’re in the clear. It looks as if Sinter’s bad acts just caught up with him.”
John agreed. “Bad karma.”
Jimmy
Thanksgiving Day was in the sixties, so Beth and I sat on the porch with John and Steve.
I’d gotten Ma’s old yearbooks out of the attic so I could show Beth pictures of her dad, Billy, Steve, and John when they were young.
She paged through the book until she came to the inside back cover, to a drawing of a fat, bowlegged frog with a cigarette dangling from its mouth. The inscription read, “Have a hoppy summer, Rhi. ILU. Smoke.”
“Smoke?”
“What they used to call John in high school,” Steve told her.
“Really? Why?”
John just shrugged, so Steve told her. She thought it was pretty funny. John looked embarrassed, which Steve seemed to think was a gas.
Just then, Ma came out to tell us dinner was ready.
We all filed into the dining room where Ma had set the table with her good china. She’s a great cook, and the turkey looked like straight out of a cooking show.
After we said grace, Ma said, “John and I are getting married.” She held up her left hand to show us a gold ring with a little jade frog instead of a diamond.
“Congratulations.” Steve gave her a sad smile and held his water glass up in a toast. “About time.”
“What’s with frogs?” Beth asked.
“You know the fairy tale about the frog prince?” John said.
Beth nodded.
“Years ago Jimmy’s mother kissed me, and I turned into a human being. We’re finally going to live happily ever after.”
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