Mitch launched into an imaginary tale that sounded as if it had come from
The Pirates of the Caribbean.
Mitch and Jean had always eaten Christmas dinner with the Grays and Marissa recalled year before last Mitch telling them how he’d loved the movie and announcing with gusto he could have played the Johnny Depp role of Captain Jack Sparrow.
The memory was so painful to Marissa, she shifted her gaze from Mitch to a desk in the corner. In the muted light, she still managed to see small, framed photographs. Jean and Mitch on their wedding day; two pictures of their beloved Betsy, one as a baby in arms, one that must have been taken shortly before her death; a picture of Annemarie and Bernard; another of Catherine and Marissa as teenagers; one of the
Annemarie
; and one of Aurora Falls. Then Marissa focused on a particularly nice shot of the church on Gray’s Island with the sun bouncing off the stained-glass windows and the white steeple soaring against an azure blue sky.
Marissa realized Jean was looking at her intently and her attention snapped back to Mitch. Apparently, he’d finally remembered Catherine.
“I’ll be graduating from Berkeley this spring,” Catherine was saying. “Nobody thinks I’ll ever finish school, but at last I will!”
“You always were smart as they come. We’re all proud you’re gonna be a surgeon like your daddy.”
No one corrected Mitch. Marissa could tell he was trying to show how sharp his memory had remained.
His gaze turned to Marissa. “And my beautiful Betsy with the sapphire eyes. Give Daddy a kiss, sweetheart.”
Marissa felt as if something had sucked the air from the room. Everyone seemed turned to stone, while Jean gasped and Mitch’s eyes rested fondly on Marissa. He held out both shaky hands, and without thinking Marissa stepped forward and grasped them in both of hers. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Where’ve you been, baby? Playing outside? It’s mighty cold now, but when summer comes, Mama and Daddy will get you a puppy. You love puppies, don’t you, darlin’?”
Marissa swallowed hard, not knowing what to say or do. She smiled faintly and Jean said loudly but lovingly, “Mitch, dear, this isn’t our Betsy. This is Marissa. She’s Annemarie and Bernard Gray’s daughter. You remember Bernard—you two had the same grandmother. Different grandfathers. You were cousins. Would that be first half cousins or half first cousins? I always get mixed up.”
Marissa didn’t know if Jean had simply boggled Mitch’s thoughts with tangled family connections or if he was getting tired of her interruptions. “Don’t try to fool me, Jean!” he said sharply. “I know my own little girl when I see her!” He pulled Marissa closer to his face. “Mama’s trying to fool us, but she can’t.” He looked at Jean. “Did you already hide the Easter eggs? Betsy and I want to find them.”
What little color Jean had left drained away and Marissa thought the woman might drop on the floor. Marissa said, “I love to hunt Easter eggs. I’ll see if Mama has them hidden yet.”
He gave her a weak smile and then fell into a violent coughing attack. Jean rushed to him, slipped her arm under his shoulders, raised him higher, and grabbed a few tissues from the box on the bedside table. Mitch coughed wretchedly for another couple of minutes, then took a sip of water from a glass Jean held out to him. He gasped for breath and Marissa thought they should be calling 911 when Mitch finally began to settle down.
Marissa and Eric glanced at each other while Catherine watched Mitch. After a minute, Catherine said, “Jean, I’ll take over now. You look like you could use some water and Mitch will need some more water when he stops coughing.”
Mitch looked at Catherine and nodded vigorously, a slight tinge of pink appearing in his cheeks. Marissa didn’t know if it was from embarrassment or the exertion of the coughing fit.
Jean hesitated and then allowed Catherine to step in for her, handing her a fresh bunch of tissues. “I’ll get the water,” Jean murmured. She looked at Marissa. “Would you like a glass of water?”
My God, yes! Marissa thought. She started to walk around Mitch’s bed toward the kitchen where Jean had disappeared. Mitch pulled away from the tissues, looked Marissa in the eyes, and tapped the small table sitting beside his bed. “What is it?” she asked.
“This is yours, Betsy. I made it for you.”
“It’s beautiful. Thank you.” Marissa smiled and nodded. He’d begun to cough again as she walked into the kitchen. Jean stood over the sink in the kitchen looking out at the starless night. Her expression revealed calm defeat and Marissa couldn’t stop herself from going to the woman, closing her arms around Jean’s waist, and laying her head on her shoulder. “Jean, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how you bear it.”
“I’m not the one bearing it, honey. Mitch is.”
“He’s bearing the physical pain. You’re the one whose emotions must be in tatters.”
“He thought you were Betsy. All of these years I’ve known he thought of her all the time, although he rarely mentioned her. She probably would have looked like you if she’d gotten a chance to grow up. Instead I—”
“Shhh. Don’t talk about Betsy now, Jean.”
“It was just her and me in the house on a cold December night with snow falling so heavy.” Jean’s voice sounded distant, almost singsong. Marissa had a feeling Jean wasn’t even aware of her presence. “Betsy loved the snow and I’d put her in her snowsuit and taken her out about five o’clock, before we lost the light. That didn’t satisfy her, though. She kept talking about the snow. I got busy…the search went on all night. People kept telling me to go inside—my lips were blue. But I didn’t even feel the cold….”
Annemarie had told Catherine and Marissa the story of Betsy Farrell’s death. She’d shuddered and said she didn’t know how she could bear such a loss, and Jean almost hadn’t borne it, either. She’d had a complete nervous breakdown and become a recluse for over a year. Mitch had always stood by her, though, and never said a word against her. If he’d blamed her for Betsy’s death, no one knew it.
Marissa gave Jean a squeeze. “Mitch is really going to need water. I’d like a glass, too. Shall I ask Catherine and Eric?”
“What?” Jean looked as if she were coming out of a dream. “Water? Oh yes. I made coffee and I have some milk. I should have shopped….”
“No you shouldn’t have. We won’t be staying long. You get some water for Mitch, and I’ll fix glasses for the rest of us.”
Five minutes later, as she returned to the bedroom, Marissa announced gaily, “Water!” She carried a tray of glasses full of lukewarm water and no ice. Eric and Catherine each gave her a quick look, then took their glasses and gulped as if they’d been dying for water all evening. Mitch’s coughing fit seemed to have stopped, and Jean gently held a glass of water to his lips so he could drink.
“Wish I could remember what bourbon tastes like,” he said in a growly voice, and even Jean laughed, although everyone knew she disapproved of drinking alcohol unless it was for medicinal reasons. Mitch had once joked to the Grays he’d nearly exhausted his imagination thinking up so many maladies that called for alcohol.
Mitch looked at Eric. “So you’re going to be a lawman. I was, too. I used to be sheriff of a place called Aurora Falls. I don’t recall if I retired or got fired.”
Jean closed her eyes, but Eric played along: “You retired, sir. They’d never fire a sheriff like Mitch Farrell.”
“Was I as good as him?”
“You
are
Mitch Farrell,” Eric said, not so heartily.
Mitch shook his head. “I think it’s time to move on to the next world when you can’t remember your own name.” He winced slightly. “I’ve got a pain…oh, to hell with my pains. Got ’em all over the place. They make me mad.”
“Maybe you’re getting tired,” Jean said gently.
“I’m not tired!” Mitch’s voice rasped and cracked. His pale eyes roamed the room and then fastened on Catherine. “How’s Bernie?”
“Bernie? Bernard? Dad?” Catherine looked startled. Marissa could tell her sister was battling with lying to Mitch or telling him the truth—that Bernard was dead.
Mitch saved her: “Bernard. Hah! He hated that name. We all called him Bernie. We went fishing last weekend. I caught a…a…something.”
“Fish?” Jean asked helpfully.
“Well, of course!” Mitch returned in loud irritability. “I recall now. It was a fifteen-pound bass.”
Marissa knew little about fishing, but she remembered her father’s joy when he caught a five-pound bass. Mitch must have caught a mutant, she thought, and smiled.
“It’s true!” Mitch had thought she was smiling about his great catch. He looked at Catherine. “Annemarie, you sure didn’t like cleaning that thing for me.”
“Ummm, no. Fish are stinky.”
“And you’re way too pretty to be stuck at home cleaning fish, Annemarie.” Mitch looked as if his body were slowly deflating. “Annemarie. Beautiful Annemarie.” Then he fell into another violent coughing attack.
Jean looked at her three guests almost pleadingly. Mitch was failing. They’d stayed long enough. Too long.
Eric raised Mitch from the pillows, supporting him while Jean wiped at the man’s cracked lips. When the coughing ended and he took a drink of water, he choked, coughed some more, and this time waved away the water.
“I wanna go fishin’ with Bernie,” he said in a thin, plaintive voice. “We had such good times. I got married. Good woman, Jean is. Good woman.”
Eric made a show of looking at his watch and said, “Well, I guess it’s time for us to go, girls.”
“No!” Mitch tried to shout, his voice so gravelly Marissa knew that within five minutes he wouldn’t be able to talk.
“I think we’ve tired you out,” Eric said. “A nap will do wonders for you.”
“It won’t.” Mitch started to cry. “It won’t. Please stay.”
Marissa looked at Jean. She was doing the smart thing by not continuing to argue with Mitch and get him more agitated. She’d begun injecting what Marissa guessed to be morphine into the port of Mitch’s IV. Within a minute, Mitch seemed to quiet a bit, but he raised his left hand and motioned to Marissa. She walked to the left side of the bed and tried to take his hand, but he shook her off and tapped the table beside his bed.
“See this little thing I made?” he asked, nodding toward a pretty, octagonal table built of mahogany. On four of the eight sides he’d attached fancy antique-gold handles, and each of the other four sides bore a hand carved fleur-de-lis stained the same color as the handles. “I made this for you, my little girl.”
Marissa didn’t want to agitate Mitch by arguing that she wasn’t Betsy. “I love it, Daddy,” she said.
“I’m glad….” Mitch’s eyelids drooped. “It’s yours. You’re…my little girl.” His eyes popped open and he looked at Eric. “Boy, you gotta behave, and I mean it! No good is gonna come of the way you act!”
Eric looked shocked and then murmured, “I’ll behave. I’ll act better. I promise.”
Mitch’s eyes closed, but his head faced Marissa. “You’ll always…be my little girl.”
Chapter 17
No one said anything on the way home from the Farrells’ house. Eric pulled into the Grays’ driveway, turned off the car, and the three of them sat in silence for at least a minute.
“Thank God that’s over,” Marissa said finally. “Seeing poor Mitch was worse than my wreck. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”
Catherine stirred in the backseat. “We need coffee or drinks. Probably lots of drinks. Are you coming in, Eric?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. You have a deputy here on surveillance—you don’t need me—but I don’t think I can bear to go home to an empty apartment.”
“You’re very welcome in our home,” Catherine said, already climbing out of the car.
So he isn’t going to mention anything about wanting to talk to me about Gretchen, Marissa thought, relieved. Whatever was in the manila envelope Gretchen had hidden, Marissa wanted Eric to be the first to see it.
Lindsay waited for them at the door and as usual furiously wagged her tail when Marissa stepped inside. She bent, rubbed the dog’s ears, and gave her an especially tight hug. The dog offered love and comfort, and that’s what Marissa felt she needed more than anything.
Later, as everyone sat in the family room, Marissa said what she knew Eric and Catherine were thinking: “Mitch should be in a hospital even if that’s not what he wants. After all, he’s obviously not in his right mind, and I’m afraid Jean’s getting so run-down she might have a heart attack.”
“But you know how hard Jean has always tried to please Mitch,” Catherine said. “Dad told me everyone was surprised when Mitch married her—she was plain and not even well educated. Everyone thought he married her to get his hands on her father’s land, but Dad claimed her simplicity, her adoration of him, even her old-fashioned ways appealed to Mitch. He wanted children desperately, but he never complained when it took eight years for Jean to conceive Betsy. She died in Jean’s care, but Mitch never said a critical word about her. He went right on being loyal and kind and supportive of Jean even though there could be no more children and, as far as Dad knew, all of that valuable land was still in Jean’s name, not hers and Mitch’s.” Catherine sighed. “She is more than devoted to him. He is her whole life. I doubt if she would even think of doing something he wouldn’t want, like being put in a hospital.”
Eric looked up from a deep study of his bourbon and Coke. “Then consider how she must have felt when he said, ‘Beautiful Annemarie,’ then called Jean a ‘good woman.’” He looked up. “Was he in love with your mother?”
“Eric, what an awful—”
“Our mother would
never
—”
Both women burst out so loudly Lindsay jumped and quickly grabbed her teddy bear for protection.
Eric leaned back and nearly yelled, “Hey! I didn’t say they were having an affair. I just asked if Mitch could have been in love with your mother. She was beautiful, full of life and warmth and…” He looked at both of them. “Well, even I had half a crush on her when I was about thirteen. Mitch is a good guy, but he’s human. He couldn’t help comparing your mother to Jean now and again, especially when they came here to dinner so often. They attended the Fourth of July parties, too, if I remember right.”