OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (15 page)

Keeley walked to the table and took the chair she’d left minutes before. Christiana knew that no matter how relaxed she might look, chances were her knees were as rubbery as her own. After a moment sitting quietly, Keeley asked, “Forgiveness? That was the actual word she used?”

Christiana nodded. “Yes. She said the killing was an accident, that she hadn’t intended it to happen, that she’d done the right thing by him—whatever that meant—but that she couldn’t leave with—” She wanted the exact words, found them. “’A lie’s blood on her soul.’”

Keeley swallowed visibly. “What did you say?”

“A ranting woman I barely knew had called me in the middle of the night to tell me she killed my birth father,” she said. “I didn’t know what to say, how to react. And I think my silence upset her, because she hung up on me. When I’d rallied a few mental resources, I called back. There was no answer. I called again the next morning. Spoke to a woman named Truitt. She told me Mary had died in her sleep.” She shivered and rubbed her arms. “I think she must have passed within minutes of her hanging up the phone from me.”

“Nothing else? No details? Nothing more about your mother, other than she was an actress?”

“Nothing. You know everything I know.” Christiana let go of the fork she’d been twisting and folded her hands in front of her on the table. “I tried to forget about it, put Mayday House, Mary Weaver, all of it, out of my mind. I thought it was the smart thing to do.”

“Why?”

Christiana had trouble meeting the straightforward, questioning eyes now meeting hers. A gaze that said a lie wouldn’t be acceptable. Each of her hands nearly strangled the other in the tight lock they formed on the table in front of her. She loosened them. “Earlier, I mentioned my television show. It’s important to me, I’ve worked hard to get this chance, and its success depends on my having the right image.”

“Meaning?”

“So far my life—small-town girl, solid West Coast family, widowed mother, worthy community service record—is an open book. I wanted to keep it that way. I know that sounds selfish, but the fact is that suddenly—and publicly—becoming the daughter of unknown birth parents whose father was killed in a women’s refuge won’t do much for my career. A career I’ve worked years to build.”

Keeley eyed her. “You’re right. It does sound selfish.”

Christiana felt her face redden but said nothing.

“But you’re here now,” Keeley said. “Which means you’ve changed your mind. Why?”

“I didn’t change my mind, but I can’t keep doing what I’m doing without knowing the truth.”
Because if I know the truth, there’s a chance I can control it.
She kept the last to herself because in her heart she knew it was more dumb hope than grand plan.

“It also sounds as if you’re scared.” Keeley reached across and touched her clasped hands. “And I don’t think you should be. In the last few months before Mary died, she suffered from dementia and toward the end it was severe.” She pulled her hand back from Christiana’s. “Mary Weaver was the kindest, gentlest woman I’ve ever known and the grandmother I never had.” She stopped. “Like you, I was born in this house. Unlike you, I never left. After my mother had me, she had nowhere to go, so Mary let her stay on, help her run Mayday. Mom died in this house a week after I turned eleven. And from then on it was Mary who raised me, loved me.” She paused. “And tried to teach me—with limited success—to always ‘care for something bigger than my wee self.’” A smile came with the memory and hovered briefly over her lips. “I can still hear her words. ‘The world is short on mercy and long on need, girl, so you make sure your life’s work goes on the right side of the ledger.’” The look she gave Christiana was deep with conviction, when she added, “Does that sound like someone who could kill another human being?”

Christiana prayed Keeley was right, but she couldn’t get Mary’s rambling, crazy phone call out of her mind. “No, but—”

“Anyone can kill—given the right set of circumstances.” A deep male voice said from behind them.

Both women turned to see Gus Hammond standing in the doorway.

Keeley, after glancing at the woman who’d just made such startling accusations about Mary, and who now looked as if she’d been turned to stone where she sat, stared at Gus. “How long have you been there?” she asked.

“Long enough.”

Christiana shot to her feet.”This was a private conversation. You had no right—”

“I had every right. My job is to look out for this place”—he gestured with his chin toward Keeley— “for this woman. And I make the decisions on how to do that job.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stood dead still in the doorway. “And if there’s one thing always in short supply in the protection business, it’s information.” His interested gaze slid to Christiana. “And your information is A-l.”

Keeley stood, and the two women faced him. Keeley thought
faced off
might be a better expression. With the electricity in the air, they were like a pair of cats bristling at a marauding dog.

“Mary Weaver didn’t kill anyone,” Keeley repeated, wanting there to be no mistake. “Before she died she was bedridden, in pain, and confused—very confused. God, she was probably dreaming.”

“Some dream,” he said.

“I’m telling you Mary didn’t—”

“Didn’t kill anyone. I know. And you may be right.” He pushed away from the door and came toward them. “But one thing’s clear.” Standing in front of them, hands on hips, he gave Keeley a measured look.
“Something
went on in this house, and more than one person isn’t too happy about it.”

Keeley opened her mouth, then sealed it shut. If she lived to be a thousand and turned this conversation over in her mind every minute of every day, she’d still never believe Mary would kill.
Could
kill. Ever! Some might call it denial. She called it faith. “Mayday House is a women’s refuge. Lots of things ‘went on’ here. But they didn’t involve killing anyone.”

“You don’t know that, Keeley. Not for certain.” Christiana spoke quietly but with a natural authority. “When Mary called me, she was distraught, full of repentance, and terrified of dying without forgiveness. Maybe she was simply confused, but you can’t leave it there. I know I can’t. Not anymore.” She paused and looked at Gus, standing in front of them silent as a church, then at Keeley. “If nothing else, you owe it to Mary to find out the truth.”

Keeley wanted to ignore Christiana’s sound logic—her down-home commonsense—but she couldn’t. Neither could she face the prospect of digging around in Mary’s good and honest life, a life that formed the model for her own. A life she’d failed at. First her church, then her husband. And finally Africa. Mary had given her the gift of Mayday House, the chance to start over, make things right. The idea of making them right at the risk of her good name smacked of betrayal and disloyalty. She didn’t know if she could do it.

I don’t know if I cannot. If it means clearing Mary’s name …

Silence filtered into the kitchen, rested among the three of them like a chilled mist.

“I owe it to Mary to protect this house and everyone in it,” Keeley said.
Including myself, my chance to start over and leave the fear and evil behind. Oh, Keeley, you selfish, selfish woman.
On that thought, her face heated, and she turned her back on both of them and walked toward the kitchen door. When she had it open, she looked back at the two people in her kitchen, both of them watching her, Christiana with concern, Gus with his usual detached speculation. “I need to clear my head,” she announced, her voice finding a level of firmness. “I’m going for a walk.”

“It’s hell-black out there,” Gus said. “I’ll come with you.” He took a step toward her.

“No.” She lifted a hand. “At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I want to be alone.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

A surge of irrational anger boiled up in her belly. “Whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea is irrelevant. It’s
my
idea.” She stomped out.

Gus was right, it was hell-black. Although Keeley had generally thought of hell as a hot fiery orange, this night with its chilling wind, groaning tree branches, and sinister clouds thick with rain, and offering glimpses of a spectral moon, came a close second.

Thank God, she’d grabbed a flashlight on her way out, because without it she’d have had trouble even finding the passage through the hedge.

In seconds she was in the churchyard, arcing light over the graves to find the path. She glanced up, afraid the lights in Father Barton’s house, adjacent to the church, would come on. They didn’t. She enjoyed Father Barton’s company, but not tonight.

She stopped a moment, made the sign of the cross at her mother’s grave, then walked around the side of the stone edifice to the heavy, planked, double doors leading into the church.

It was locked, as she knew it would be, but unless Father Barton had changed the rules, a key would wait behind the marble cross to the right of the door.

According to Mary, they’d started locking St. Ivan’s sometime in the seventies after a spate of vandalism, but the idea of a locked church didn’t sit well with Father Randall, so he’d found a place for a key and told St. Ivan’s faithful where they’d always find it, saying, “Moments of need do not always come between nine to five. Often they arrive after midnight.” Mary said the key was his way of putting a candle in the window for lost or troubled souls.

With a silent thank you for Father Randall’s foresight and Father Barton’s willingness to honor the tradition, Keeley stepped into the narrow vestibule and closed the huge doors behind her, careful to do it as soundlessly as possible.

In the nave of the church, she took a seat in the last row. St. Ivan’s was a small church, sitting proudly on land donated by Mary’s fore bearers over a hundred years ago. To Mary that donation was a deep source of pride.

St. Ivan’s builders had been ambitious, giving it a touch of Gothic by including delicate pointed arches and a high ceiling. The floor was oak, rutted and scarred by the endless shuffle of the faithful along its aisles and between its benches. From where Keeley sat in the last pew, the tiered row of amber and red votive candles to the right of the altar were a soft colorful blur, glinting off the polished altar rail and spilling, flickering, to the floor.

On either side of the altar two tall cream-colored candles burned, lending a shadowy glow to the apse housing the linen-draped altar. A brass sanctuary lamp added its dim red glow. When Keeley’s eyes adjusted to the low light level, the broad outlines of the church, the Stations of the Cross, the confessional, and rows of sturdy benches emerged from the gloom, colorless, architectural ghosts settled in the darkness.

The church was the same.

But she was not.

She clasped her hands together in a ball and ground her palms together, then released them to rub the coil twisting in her stomach. She reminded herself she wasn’t here to pray, to ask for help; she was here to calm down, to think.

But memories came in the somber darkness….

Memories of the Sundays she’d come here with Mary and her mother, early so they’d get a front pew, neither woman wanting to miss a word of Father Randall’s gentle sermons; the countless hours they’d spent working for St. Ivan’s: the bake sale, the annual church bazaar, visits to “those less fortunate.” Keeley listened enrapt when her mother told her how, as a young girl in Ireland, she’d been called to be a nun, a good sister, but had ignored the call—ignored God’s plan for her—until it was too late. The story was always told in urgent whispers and followed by the plea for Keeley to listen hard, should that call come to her. And if it did, to respond with her whole heart and soul.

Keeley thought it had, but she’d been wrong—and Mary had been right. After a year of nursing, Keeley told Mary of her plans to become a missionary nun. Her response was unexpected. She’d said, “I know you’d like to do this for your mother, Keeley, and I admire our holy nuns, I truly do, but I can’t see you being one of them.” It was a remarkable admission coming from her devout godmother, but Keeley, convinced she was wrong, became a postulant, and three years later she took her vows. Five years later, in an African mission hospital, she’d met Marc LaSalle—

I shouldn’t be here. I don't belong.

She’d come here to think about Mary, about the awfulness of the accusations against her, but she’d made a mistake. The truth wasn’t in this church: it was in her heart. Mary didn’t kill anyone, and to believe it for a moment was insane. Its own form of sacrilege.

Disloyal

Smothered, boxed in by stone walls, crosses, burning candles, and broken vows, she stood abruptly. Her heart pounding—aching—in her chest, her throat painfully tight from the effort to hold back the tears, her soul stung by the lash of guilt, she left the pew and genuflected perfunctorily. Ignoring the holy water, she pushed through the two sets of doors to the rain-slicked darkness of the night outside.

Stopping in the dimly lit alcove outside the doors, she filled her lungs with clean chilled air and worked to rid herself of her treacherous thoughts.

“You okay?”

The words came from beside the church door and, low as the voice was, she started and pressed a hand on her leaping heart. “What are you doing here? I told you I wanted to be alone.” Her words came out sharp, angrier than she intended.

“You were alone.” Gus pushed away from his casual stance of leaning against the old stone wall. “I’ll walk you home.”

She rubbed at her eyes and sniffed away the last of the telltale moisture. Tears were for sissies, and sissies were lousy problem solvers. Gus’s being here reminded her she had more pressing problems than her own botched life: Mary’s name and the safety of everyone at Mayday House, for starters.

Keeley focused her attention on Gus, which seemed to be getting easier every day. Her stomach knotted. Not only was she a crybaby, she was indulging in a few too many foolishly female thoughts about her houseguest.”You take this protection stuff seriously, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked, curious, but also determined to take her thoughts out of her own cage of demons. “What’s in it for you?”