by Darcie Chan
Michael looked around as his uncle readied the coffin cart and unlocked the cupboard containing the hobo’s body. He noticed that of the several charity caskets that had been stacked beneath the cross the first time he’d been inside the vault, only one remained.
A knock on the door of the vault startled him. He looked at his uncle, panicked.
“Hello? Is someone in there?”
His uncle stared in the direction of the door before whispering to Michael. “I don’t recognize the voice. Now, listen carefully. I need you to go over to that casket.” He pointed to the lone coffin in the shadows near the far wall. “Act distraught, as if someone you love is inside it. Keep your head down and try not to make eye contact with whoever this is. I don’t want you to say anything unless it’s in response to a question I ask you. Do you understand?”
Michael nodded. His heart was pounding, and he felt a bit light-headed. His uncle gave a single nod and quickly relocked the cupboard he’d opened and went to open the door. Michael knelt before the spare casket, glancing back just long enough to see who had knocked.
A uniformed police officer stood on the other side of the door.
Michael snapped his head back around and bowed it as if in prayer.
“Good evening, officer. I’m Father Frank Lynch. May I help you?”
“Oh, hello, Father. I was just driving past the church here—my shift ended a little while ago, and I was heading home—and I saw the light on. Given the hour, I thought there might be someone in here who wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Ah. I appreciate your checking. I opened the vault for the son of one of my parishioners.” His uncle spoke more softly, his voice filled with sympathy. “That’s his father in the box there, the poor child.”
Michael was kneeling before the casket with his back to the door of the vault, and he took his uncle’s words as a cue. Slowly, he clasped his trembling hands together and rested them on the lid of the empty coffin. He also sniffed loudly.
“That is a pity,” the officer said. “But why are you here at this hour?”
“Arrangements have been made for the boy’s care. He’s been staying at the rectory temporarily, but he’ll be sent to live with an aunt in Maryland early tomorrow,” his uncle replied. “Since the ground is barely thawed, we haven’t been able to hold a burial yet. He saw my light was on and came to ask for a moment with his father to say goodbye before he leaves. I didn’t have it in me to refuse.”
“Well, if that isn’t something. That’s mighty good of you, Father, mighty good. I’m so sorry for intruding, just wanted to make sure everything was on the up-and-up.”
“Of course, and it was no intrusion. You were just doing your job. Thank you again, Officer—?”
“Kelly. Officer John Kelly. Good night, Father.”
Michael didn’t turn around again even when he heard the door of the vault swing closed. He let out a long breath, one that he seemed to have been holding for several minutes, and gasped with relief.
“You did well,” his uncle said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll wait a little while to make sure he’s gone before we finish what we came to do.”
They stayed inside the vault for another hour, and his uncle took a thorough look around outside before he unlocked the vault box containing the hobo’s body. Once they’d pulled it onto the coffin cart, they turned out the light and carefully wheeled it to the grave site.
“There’d be no way the two of us could lower him down there in a casket,” his uncle said as he peered down into the grave. “Even simple wooden ones weigh over a hundred and fifty pounds empty. You’d need at least four strong men, preferably six, to handle this fellow in a casket.”
His uncle positioned the coffin cart parallel to the grave and then turned the crank on the end to lower the body as far as it would go. “All right, Michael,” he said, kneeling beside the body, “we’re almost done.” Michael squatted next to his uncle, ready to push the body in and push the entire ordeal out of his mind. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”
Together, they rolled the body, still wrapped in the horsehair blanket, off the cart and over the edge of the grave. It hit the bottom with a muffled thud.
Frank grabbed the two shovels stuck in the dirt and handed one to Michael. In a few minutes, they’d shoveled enough soil over the body to cover it completely. “That should be fine,” his uncle said.
“What if someone finds him before the funeral? Or what if an animal of some kind gets in there and digs him up?” Michael felt the panic rising again.
“Highly unlikely. I’ll keep an eye on the grave, but he’s well hidden. At the burial on Monday, a casket will be lowered on top of him and the grave will be sealed. This will be his permanent resting place.”
“What if he has a family out there? They’ll never know what became of him.”
His uncle exhaled slowly before he began to speak. “He might have a family, or he might not. Given his actions toward your mother, I shudder to think how he would treat his own family. But this is one of those tough situations, Michael, where there are no good solutions. It isn’t possible to do something right without somebody else getting hurt or paying a price. These situations will come up every once in a while during your lifetime, and you need to recognize them and choose which solution does the least harm and who should suffer that harm.
“With this fellow, we could’ve gone to the police and explained what happened, but there’s no telling whether they’d have believed us. We don’t even know if anyone can identify this man to notify his next of kin. We could have left him somewhere—a remote forest, maybe—where he might never have been discovered. Of course, he wouldn’t have had a proper burial then, and if someone did end up finding him and linking him back to us…Well, you see how that would make for a very complicated situation.
“Leaving him buried here will avoid any problems with the law, and your father can stay at his job without being called home. True, the man’s family, if he has one, will never know. They’re the ones who pay the price, if it can be considered that. But I look at it this way: He’s in consecrated ground, and my family is protected. That’s two out of three positives, and the best choice, in my book.”
As he’d done when they first left the body in the vault, his uncle quietly said a series of prayers and blessings. Michael stood alongside him, waiting.
In his mind, he replayed the horrible events of the night the hobo had attacked his mother. He wished with everything in him that, by some miracle, his memories of that night would disappear. Yes, the man had attacked his mother. Yes, part of him hated the hobo and realized that he’d been justified in taking the hobo’s life. He knew that. He knew it. And yet the guilt was still there. He’d pushed it aside as much as he could while his mother was becoming more and more ill, but right now he wasn’t as focused on her. That left an opening for the guilt to come roaring back.
In the dark, quiet cemetery, as he listened to his uncle pray for the soul of the man he’d shot, the human being he’d removed from the earth, Michael’s eyes welled up and overflowed. For the first time that night, a wisp of wind brushed through the graveyard and over his face, cooling the moist paths down his cheeks. It left as quickly as it came, and all became still once again.
Chapter 19
Late on Saturday evening, after Rowen was asleep, Claudia was canoodling with Kyle on his living room sofa. It was the first time they’d been alone all day.
“So,” Kyle asked in a soft voice with his arm around her shoulders, “I’m dying to hear what you thought of Misty.”
Claudia sat up a little straighter. The whole afternoon with Kevin and Misty had been miserable. “She is beyond awful,” Claudia said, and Kyle gave a chuckle. “Shallow, self-absorbed, obsessed with designer things that cost a fortune. The way she acts around Kevin—I wonder whether she really likes him at all. And he seems so taken with her.”
“I know,” Kyle said. “She’s another loser.”
<
br /> “Exactly. But why can’t Kevin see that?”
“It’s so typical of him,” Kyle said. “Kevin is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. But he’s always had problems with women. He’s a little overweight and insecure about it, so he tries to compensate by being funny and really accommodating. Like, almost naive-pushover-level accommodating. I think having Misty walk into his office and then agree to go out with him really blew his mind.”
“I can just see it,” Claudia said with her hand on her face. She could truly empathize with how Kevin must have felt. “I mean, I’m sure lots of men find Misty attractive, and if Kevin had problems meeting attractive women…”
“Exactly,” Kyle said. “I still remember him calling me up the day he met her. By the time she left his office, they’d made plans to have dinner together, and he was gushing about how this gorgeous woman had dropped into his life and taken a huge interest in him.”
“Maybe he’s so enamored with her looks that he doesn’t realize what she’s really like as a person.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Kyle said, “although her looks don’t hold a candle to yours.”
“I’m relieved you feel that way. She smiled at you an awful lot.”
“I noticed that,” Kyle said as he rolled his eyes. “Maybe it was just her nerves. I hope it was innocent.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t. She was trying to flirt with you.”
“Maybe, although she’s really an idiot if she thought it would be effective,” Kyle said, drawing her closer. “I don’t know why Kevin would be with someone like that, but I’ll bet he didn’t notice.”
“You’re sure not like your brother in that department,” Claudia said as she leaned back into Kyle and rested her head against his shoulder. “You’re good at reading people. Even now, when you look at me, I feel like you can tell exactly what I’m thinking.” Slowly, she traced her finger up Kyle’s chest. He caught her hand in his.
“You make it easy,” he said. He pulled her closer as he kissed her, and the urgency of his touch left no doubt in her mind that she was right.
“This couch is a little small, don’t you think?” she asked when she could. “Besides, Rowen might see us out here if she wakes up.”
Kyle pulled back slightly and stroked his fingers down the side of her face. “Yeah, but wait. There’s something I wanted to talk with you about.”
“What?”
“I was thinking…it wouldn’t be easy for us, but maybe we should sort of…hold off on certain things until our wedding night.”
Claudia blinked and studied his face. “Seriously? I don’t get it. First you tell me that I’m way better-looking than Misty. Then, you kiss me like that, so all I can think about is…you know…being with you, and then you tell me you don’t want us to do that again until we’re married. What is this, payback for me seducing you in the Jeep?”
“No, no,” Kyle said with a laugh. “I suppose I didn’t do a very good job of broaching the subject. We don’t have to if you don’t think it will be worth it, but…do you suppose that, maybe, it would make our wedding night even more memorable than it will already be?”
“Our wedding is still two months away. I don’t think I can make it that long.” Claudia freed her hand from his grasp and slid it back down his chest, then a little lower. “I’m willing to bet that you can’t, either.”
“It would be a challenge,” Kyle said. “But imagine how it would be if we did. It might be like the first time all over again, but better. More…intense.”
She thought back to their first night together, the night of Valentine’s Day, when an unexpected snowstorm had cut the power to Kyle’s apartment. The thought of waiting for two months and then making love with Kyle on their wedding night in December, when the snow might be whirling around outside once more, sent tingles down her spine. Then again, she had no idea where they would be spending their wedding night or what the weather there might be like.
“I’d be willing to try it,” she said finally, “but I have three conditions.” She leaned over and kissed him again, a soft, sensual kiss with her lips barely brushing his.
“Tell me,” Kyle said, although the look on his face seemed to indicate that he was no longer in much of a mood to talk.
“All right.” She kept her face close, her mouth hovering over his as she spoke. “First, kissing is allowed, along with hugging and anything else we can do with our clothes on.”
“Agreed,” Kyle said. He leaned in again, but Claudia turned her face slightly and put her finger up against his lips.
“Uh-uh, I’m not finished,” she said with a smile. “The second condition is that you have to give me a hint about where we’re going to spend our wedding night.”
“Hmmm. A hint?” Kyle pulled back, his eyes narrowed in thought. “I can do that. I’ll even give you two hints.”
Claudia’s smile stretched wide as she enjoyed the feeling of gleeful anticipation.
“It’s somewhere very private, with a very large bed.”
“Those aren’t helpful hints.” She stuck out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout.
“You didn’t say it had to be a helpful hint.”
Claudia rolled her eyes. “Fine. I suppose I’d really rather not know, even though I’m dying to, because you want it to be a surprise, and I don’t want to take that away from you.”
“Thank you,” Kyle said, drawing her tight against him. “It’s only because I love you. I want it to be special, that’s all. Now, what is your third condition?”
She didn’t answer right away, but instead smoothed her hand down the side of his face and lost herself in his dark brown eyes before she kissed him again, hard on the mouth. He didn’t complain at her delay in answering, just ran his fingers through her hair, cupping them gently on each side of her jaw. Only when his lips found their way down to her neck did she whisper her third condition.
“The last thing,” Claudia began, then gasped as his hands slid down her body. She covered them with her own and guided them beneath her shirt. “The last thing is that the starting date for your little plan is tomorrow.”
—
On Sunday afternoon, Claudia walked to The Stitchery for her second fitting. Pauline met her at the door, just as she had for their first meeting. Claudia stifled a giggle when she looked down and saw three pins protruding from Pauline’s “wearable pincushion.”
“How is the wedding planning coming along?” Pauline asked.
“Everyone keeps asking me that,” Claudia said with a laugh. “We’ve got things set for the ceremony and reception. Pretty much everyone has RSVP’d, and I’ve given Ruth a deposit for the cake. I wish there were a florist here in Mill River, but since there’s not, I think I’m going to use Hawley’s in Rutland for the flowers. Other than those things, Kyle is taking care of the honeymoon plans, and he’s got some surprise in store for where we’re spending our wedding night.”
“Sounds like you’ve got everything under control,” Pauline said. “You’re ahead of the game on most of those things.”
“Maybe. But I don’t want to be stressing about anything on my wedding day. Nobody likes a Bridezilla, you know, so I’m trying to have everything in place well in advance.”
“You’re a smart girl for doing that,” Pauline said. “Even if something unexpected happens at the last minute, I’m sure you’ll find a way to deal with it and have a beautiful wedding. Things always have a way of falling into place. Now, I’m going to stop my yammering so you can get changed. Your shoes and gown are already in the booth there, ready for you to put on.”
“Oh, good!” Claudia said. “I can’t wait to see my dress!” She hurried down to the booth and went inside.
“If you need any help getting into it, dear, just call me,” Pauline said.
When Claudia emerged from the booth, a huge smile was plastered on her face. “This looks so good, Pauline! The length is perfect with my sh
oes, and it feels like it fits so much better in the bodice and arms.”
“As well it should,” Pauline said with satisfaction. “Come on up here in front of the mirror so I can take a good look.”
Claudia walked carefully up the steps to the three-way mirror, and Pauline began a detailed examination of the gown. “The sleeves do fit perfectly now,” she said. “But I think the bodice could be taken in a little more.” She pinched the fabric a bit. “Does that feel too tight to you, as I’m holding it?”
“No,” Claudia said, “but I don’t think I’d want it any snugger than that.”
“All right. I’ll just pin this little part here, but other than this, I don’t see anything else that needs to be altered.”
“I think it’s gorgeous,” Claudia said. “I can’t wait until Kyle sees it!”
“You’re doing it the traditional way, then? The groom won’t see the gown until the ceremony?”
“Yep. Although he teases me that he’s going to sneak a look at it before then.”
“And yet he’s keeping your wedding-night accommodations a surprise? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“I may have to put a lock on my closet,” Claudia said.
“Do you two have lots of family and friends coming?”
“Neither one of us has a huge family, but everyone we invited on both sides is planning to attend. Most of our friends are coming, too. It shouldn’t be a huge wedding, though. We’re expecting between fifty and sixty guests.”
“Not huge by today’s standards,” Pauline agreed. “I take it you’ve met his family?”
“Yes, everyone is just wonderful. Except…”
“Except?”
Claudia gave a little sigh. “Oh, Kyle’s brother has a new girlfriend. We met her yesterday, and she was a real piece of work.”
“Really?” Pauline straightened up and came around to face her. “What do you mean?”
“We didn’t have anything in common, and she seemed pretty disinterested in being there, except she smiled at Kyle a lot.”
