The Clouds Roll Away (30 page)

Picking up the phone, I called Zennie. She answered on the fifth ring and yelled at me. She was fine, don't ever call this early, get a life.

I pulled on sweats, gloves, and a knit cap, then clipped my cell phone to my waistband. I stuck my Glock in the hip holster, covered it with a windbreaker, and kicked through four inches of snow crossing the courtyard. Madame, prescient as ever, had scratched the fake snow from the bottom panes of the French door. When I opened it, she shot out like a cannonball and we ran down Monument Avenue. No footprints on the sidewalk, no car tracks on the road. In the muffled quiet, the only sounds were my running steps and my breathing, both as methodical as a metronome.

At Monroe Park, the dog and I traced separate paths through the undisturbed white landscape. My thoughts drifted back to last night, to the church and the priest and the silent offer of confession. This morning, there was no mistaking the sensation.

It wasn't the snow. It wasn't the city's standstill. It was the feeling of a burden lifted, a relationship restored, a promise kept.

If I thought it felt good to come home to the place I loved and find that it waited for me, it was nothing compared to the feeling of returning to a God who loved me and who waited for me. That was home, true home.

At Oregon Hill, I slowed to a walk, Madame falling in beside me. The blue-collar neighborhood overlooked the James River, and my sister Helen lived here in creative squalor with her partner, Sebastian Woodlief. Their row house was close enough to VCU that Helen could walk to classes and humble enough that Sebastian could pretend he was a working-class guy.

I stretched my calves, standing outside their house, kissing my endorphins good-bye. The clapboards were painted a blue leaning toward purple—what I considered fluorite—while the windowpanes were pink—or poor-quality rubies. The colors were especially striking since next door the porch had a dented freezer on it with an orange extension cord running through a conveniently cracked window. I kicked the snow off the stairs, knowing Sebastian would never shovel it, then knocked on the front door.

“What's wrong?” Sebastian said.

He had aqueous blue eyes and his paisley pajamas appeared to be missing their ascot. Descended from some sort of nobility, Sebastian Woodlief was that curious spur of modern Britain, the self-loathing privileged class. I never doubted his tales of land holdings in Scotland or Wales or wherever, but these days even gentry scrabbled for cash and my guess was that Sebastian opted out of hard work and good accounting in order to come to the New World and impress us with his elegant accent and barely veiled condescension.

“Is Helen home?” I said.

He looked down at Madame. She was panting happily, the snow dusting her black nose.

“I'm allergic to canines,” he said. “She can't come in.”

He turned, leaving the door open. Since British schools drilled etiquette, there was no doubting when Sebastian was insulting. I told Madame she deserved better—but so did my sister—and asked her to sit on the doormat. She obeyed. I left the door cracked a few inches and made my way down the tight hallway to the living room. It was filled with gigantic contemporary masks. Spooky things. Empty eye sockets. Encephalitic foreheads.

They were Sebastian's “art.”

“Helen,” he called up the narrow staircase. “It's your sister.” The last word sounded like an affliction.

Helen clomped down the stairs wearing flannel pajamas and wooden clogs.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“Woodchip asked the same thing.”

“Wood
lief
,” he said. “My name is Woodlief.”

“And Sebastian asked because you only come around when something's wrong,” she said.

“You don't come around at all,” I pointed out.

“Excuse me.” Sebastian allowed a sardonic smile to tug at his pasty face. “I'll leave you
ladies
to your conversation.” Pecking Helen on the cheek, he stepped around a papier-mâché footstool shaped like a turtle. More art. He left the room.

Even at eight in the morning, wearing wrinkled flannel pajamas, Helen looked beautiful. It was too bad she had the temperament of a fishwife.

“What's wrong?” she demanded again.

“Mom wants you to go to Weyanoke for Christmas,” I said.

“Weyanoke—the Fielding plantation?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, please.” She brushed a loose auburn curl from her perfect face. “Tell her I can't; tell her I made other plans.”

“Helen, how about some effort here? This is all Mom is asking for for Christmas.”

She twisted her mouth and frowned petulantly, yet only managed to look even better. My sister was a living, breathing example of the color wheel, where opposites created some kind of artistic perfection. Helen was gorgeous, and she was rotten.

“You can even bring Woodshed,” I said.

“Wood
lief
.”

“Right. Bring him.” And then I wouldn't have to face DeMott again. They could take my mom and I could . . . I was still trying to think up a reason for not going.

“Sebastian would never set foot on a plantation. It's a matter of principle.”

“Oh, I'm sure. But why not ask him? It's free food.”

“Fine.” She lifted her swanlike neck, calling out, “Sebastian, darling?”

He hovered into view. “Yes, darling?”

“Some old friends of my parents are having an open house. A Christmas tradition here in Virginia. Mother would like us to go with her. But, well, I'm afraid these people live on a plantation.”

“A plantation?” His watery eyes filled with the assumed indignities of British colonialism. “Are you mad, Helen?”

My cell phone went off. They swiveled their heads, glaring at me.

“Excuse me.”

I stepped down the narrow hall. Madame waited patiently on the doormat. “Good girl,” I said, opening the phone.

Once again, the sheriff from Charles City County.

“I'm afraid to ask,” I said.

“You should be,” he said. “Think you can get out to Rapland somehow?”

“Is it urgent?”

“It was,” he said. “The medical examiner's on her way, if she can get through the snow.”

“I'll be there.” I closed the phone.

They were still in the living room, discussing Christmas.

“Actually, darling,” Helen was saying, “you know who might be there? Collectors and curators. The art patron crowd. You would have a chance to discuss your work, perhaps even sell a piece.”

Indignity drained from his eyes. It was replaced by an expression I liked even less.

“I have to go,” I said. “Call the house when you decide.”

Madame and I raced through the Fan District, cutting down Park Avenue and into the alley. When I opened the patio door, letting her jump inside, I was already figuring on wrapping chains on my mother's car. I closed the door.

But I opened the door again.

My mother's sleepy face turned to DeMott like a morning blossom seeking sunshine. He stopped talking midsentence and my mother sat up.

“Raleigh, look who came to see if you're okay!” she exclaimed.

I looked at DeMott. “How did you get here?”

“Is that the only question you can think to ask?” she demanded.

“We keep a bunch of plows on the farm.” He moved his hands, showing my mother. “The blade just hooks to the front of my truck, ready to go.”

She touched his arm. “But it was still very, very difficult to get here, wasn't it?”

“Oh, yes, ma'am.”

She threw me a look, insinuating his white horse waited at the curb.

“I need a ride,” I said.

“Raleigh, sit down,” she said. “There's nowhere to go on a day like this.”

“I got a call from work.”

“That office, what is wrong with that office?” She touched his arm again. “They call her at all hours. As if the rocks are in a hurry.”

“Five minutes?” I asked DeMott.

He nodded and I was closing the patio door when I heard my mother attempt a whisper.

“Don't let Raleigh fool you,” she was saying. “She's actually quite lonely.”

DeMott plowed a path to Stonewall Jackson and said, “I'm really sorry about the other night.”

The tire chains chinked down the road, the rubber wipers stuttered across the windshield, sweeping away fresh snow. The words I wanted to speak were stuck in my throat, but I forced them out.

“I was wrong, DeMott, not you. I put my job ahead of everything else, including family and friends. It wasn't fair to put you in that situation. I'm sorry.”

He stopped at the light on the Boulevard and Broad Street. “So we accept our mutual apologies?”

I nodded.

“Excellent.” He smiled. “Which way to your office?”

“I'm headed to Rapland.”

“What?”

I stared at the CVS drugstore across the street. The windows were shuttered and dark.

“Oh,” he said. “Something else I'm not supposed to know about.”

“It doesn't involve you,” I said. Then, remembering Stuart Morgan, I added, “At this point, I can't see that it involves you.”

He ignored all the other traffic lights, slowing down just long enough to glance both ways. But the streets were empty and white, the snow falling in thick bundled flakes. His truck chugged up the overpass by the baseball stadium, then down the other side to the interstate. In the haze of snow, a bright red garland of brake lights carved the highway's middle lane. We joined the procession, inching toward I-64.

“You're still coming for Christmas, right?” he asked.

“If I can get there.”

“I'll pick you up.”

After several minutes of silence, I took out my phone and called Zennie. She sounded only slightly less cranky than earlier, but still nobody had contacted her.

When I hung up, DeMott was taking the exit for Williamsburg Road. He asked, “How long have we known each other, Raleigh?”

“Since sixth grade.”

“It was the first spring dance, to be exact,” he said. “St. Catherine's girls and St. Christopher's boys. You were wearing white pants before Memorial Day. I think I fell in love with you right there.”

He stopped at the light for Williamsburg Road. I didn't dare turn to look at him. I watched an army of jacked-up pickups with snow blades scraping the road to Varina, refusing to wait for help.

“Do you remember that dance?” he asked.

“You wore a shark's tooth on a leather string around your neck.”

“Raleigh, look at me.”

All of the reflected light from the snow seemed to gather in his blue eyes.

“If I thought it would convince you, I'd climb out of this truck right now and get down on one knee in the snow.”

“DeMott—”

“No, listen. The whole time you were in Seattle, all I could think about was you meeting somebody else. When I heard you were back, I knew it was time to tell you how I really feel. No more playing games and acting cool. I've always felt this way about you. But you don't like surprises—”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” he said.

“Yes, I don't like surprises.”

“Oh.”

“The light's green.”

The truck's back wheels spun, then the chains caught, carrying us through Varina. The streets were clear, the sidewalks shoveled, even though more snow was falling.

Inside the truck, there was more silence.

Finally he said, “I had all these romantic ideas how I would ask you. Then I realized it would just push you away. So here's the deal. I'm asking if you would consider getting engaged, maybe at some point in the near future?”

I stared at the falling snow, unable to look at him.

But I nodded.

We drove in silence. When we reached New Market Road, the stone elephants looked like white hummocks. At the keyhole at the other end, two county cruisers and the sheriff 's vehicle were parked in the driveway, chains on the back wheels, snow packed into the undercarriages.