‘Let’s take it a step further,’ Charlie said. ‘Suppose Robert
did
kill her in a fit of rage, then set it up to look like suicide. There’s still no proof. Not unless we were to have the remains exhumed. It’s possible—not likely, mind you, but
possible—
that with the advances in technology since the first autopsy, a forensic pathologist might turn up something that was missed.’
The gruesome thought had occurred to Mary as well. Even so, she was quick to discard it. ‘Oh, God. I don’t even want to
think
what it would do to Nora. Isn’t there another alternative?’
The three fell silent, wisps of steam rising from their mugs in the cooling air. Mary was surprised by the intensity of her sadness after all these years. It was as if in some ways she’d put off grieving until now. Poor Corinne. The thought of her friend, alone and scared, was almost too much for her to bear. It was a place she knew intimately. She, too, had feared being cut off by her family and wondered how on earth she was going to manage without their support. In her case those fears had come to pass. And Corinne, dear, impressionable Corinne, had witnessed it all. No wonder she was desperate.
Mary glanced across the table at Charlie, who sat with his arms folded in front of him wearing a pensive look, a man who’d borne his own share of grief. Yet there was a streak of optimism in his face as well, a sense of life’s glass being half filled in the lines that radiated like sunbursts from the corners of his eyes and in the upward curl of his mouth.
Noelle leaned forward on her elbows. ‘We don’t need proof to stir up suspicion. What if we were to just rattle Robert’s cage? Like you’ve been doing with your editorials, only the kind of stuff that would get people
really
talking.’
Mary eyed her daughter, once again noting the difference in her. A new determination had put color in her cheeks and a bit more flesh on her bones. Again, as she had the night of her arrest, Mary felt an almost visceral pull toward her daughter, a desire to guard her at any cost. Yet it was clear that Noelle was perfectly capable of defending herself. Mary leaned sideways instead to slip an arm about her and was touched and a bit surprised when Noelle brought her head to rest against her shoulder.
Charlie looked dubious. ‘I already thought of that,
but
it could just as easily backfire. Robert’s stock is still pretty high in this town. His supporters, not to mention his lawyers, are sure to take a dim view of any mudslinging that doesn’t have a solid basis in fact. And believe me, with an election coming up in November, the weight of public opinion won’t be overlooked by the honorable Judge Ripley.’
‘There’s another reason to watch our step,’ Mary said, thinking of her run-in with Noelle’s husband the other night. ‘We all know Robert isn’t the type to take things lying down. If you back him into a corner, he might
…
well, I wouldn’t want any of us to get hurt.’
‘He doesn’t know yet what it’s like to be backed into a corner. But
I
do.’ Noelle spoke with a fierceness that Mary had never heard in her. ‘The way I see it, I have nothing left to lose. If having Corinne’s remains exhumed is the only way of finding out whether or not—’
She broke off at the scrape of footsteps on the back porch: Bronwyn, back from walking Rufus. The door banged open, and the big yellow dog charged in, tracking mud across the kitchen floor, followed closely by Charlie’s younger daughter, bringing a draft of cool air and a sudden change in mood.
Bronwyn yanked open the refrigerator. ‘Anything to eat? I’m starved.’
‘lust some potato salad left over from supper,’ Noelle told her.
With a groan the girl pushed the fridge shut. ‘I’m not
that
hungry.’
Charlie glanced up at her distractedly. ‘There’s ice cream.’
Bronwyn turned to glare at him. ‘Honestly, Daddy. If
you
had to spend all day staring at great big tubs of ice cream, you’d know better than to suggest such a thing.’
Charlie appeared to take no notice of her bad temper. Maybe
he
was used to it, but Mary wasn’t. She frowned. If one of her young interns had spoken to her that way, he or she would’ve been fired … or at the very least given a stern lecture. Noelle hadn’t been like that as a teenager, had she? Mary remembered her as being quiet, perhaps
too
quiet. Maybe she
should
have talked back more. Maybe none of this would be happening now if she’d learned to stick up for herself when she was younger.
Bronwyn’s foul mood lifted as quickly as it had descended. She slipped up behind Noelle and twined her arms about her sister’s neck. ‘I know. Why don’t I make waffles?’ she proposed sweetly. ‘With those blueberries we picked in the woods this morning.’
‘It’s after ten,’ Noelle told her. ‘I should be getting home.’
‘There’s no rush. Your aunt Trish said she’d stay over,’ Mary volunteered.
Bronwyn shot her a glance that seemed to say,
Don’t get any ideas about being part of
this
family.
Yet the look she directed at Charlie was almost plaintive. ‘Daddy, how do you think it makes me feel when you stop talking the minute I walk in? I’m not stupid, you know. I
know
what’s going on. And if you don’t let me do
something,
even something as idiotic as making waffles, I—I don’t know, I’ll explode or something.’
Charlie shot her a wry grimace. ‘Point taken. I didn’t mean to leave you out, pumpkin. I just didn’t think it was fair to involve you any more than was necessary.’ A slow smile spread across his face, and the kitchen—with its faded wallpaper and lacquered pine cabinets darkened to the color of cider—seemed to brighten. ‘Blueberry waffles? Well, now, that strikes me as a fine idea.’
‘Oh, Bron.’ With a sigh Noelle reached up to give her sister’s arm an affectionate pat. ‘just promise mc you’ll never have children with a man you don’t trust.’
‘Who says I’m ever having kids?’
Bronwyn straightened and padded over to the counter, where she began opening cupboards and pulling out mixing bowls and measuring cups. Reaching into the refrigerator for a carton of milk, she stood poised a moment, staring sightlessly ahead, the harsh glare casting a long blade of shadow over the scuffed linoleum. Then she shook her head as if to clear it and shut the door. The kitchen was soon filled with the clattering of spoons against bowls and the aroma of waffles sizzling in the iron.
Mary thought,
I could get used to this.
Late nights about the kitchen table, listening to the chirp of peepers and crickets outside. No ringing phones or blinking message lights. No frantic clients calling from tiny airports in the Midwest, shrieking that they’d missed their flights. No traffic sounds, even. Just this: the quiet of an evening in which, even with a crisis looming, there was time to sit back and enjoy life’s smaller pleasures.
She surprised herself by devouring three waffles smothered in butter and drenched in maple syrup from a farm up the road. When everyone’s plate had been scraped clean, Charlie and Noelle got up to wash the dishes, shooing Mary onto the porch. No sooner had she settled into a chair than the screen door creaked open behind her. She turned, a bit taken aback to see that it was Bronwyn.
The girl hesitated before crossing the porch and sinking down on the top step. For an instant, silhouetted against the silvery lake wreathed in mist, her long legs folded in against her chest and her waist-length hair spilling over her knees, she could have been Corinne.
‘The waffles were delicious,’ Mary told her. ‘I ate too much, though.’
‘You can afford to. You’re skinny enough.’ It didn’t sound like a compliment.
After a moment of awkward silence Mary made another attempt. ‘I’m glad it’s cooled down a bit. The breeze feels nice, doesn’t it?’
Bronwyn shrugged. ‘Summer’s almost over.’
‘That reminds me, your father tells me you’ll be starting your senior year in the fall.’ Mary plowed on gamely. ‘You must be thinking about which colleges to apply to. I remember when Noelle was your age, she couldn’t wait to be on her own.’
Bronwyn shot her a look that seemed to say,
No wonder. If I were your daughter, I’d feel the same.
But the girl
wasn’t
hers. And when you got right down to it, wasn’t that the point? ‘My PSAT scores weren’t so hot,’ she confessed. ‘I’ll be lucky to get into
any
college.’
Mary chuckled knowingly. ‘I felt the same way when I was applying. Who was going to take a single mom with a baby? But six years later there I was with my bachelor’s degree.’
‘I know. Noelle told me all about it.’ In the moonlight that had found its way through the mist Bronwyn’s olive skin gleamed pale gold. She brought a hank of hair to her mouth, brushing its ends over her lips. ‘She said you were gone a lot in those days.’
Mary felt a familiar stab of guilt. But rather than leap in with justifications, she merely replied, ‘She’s right. I was.’
There was another lengthy pause; then out of the blue Bronwyn asked, ‘Did you know my mother?’
‘I met her only once. She seemed very nice.’
‘She was. Pretty, too. People couldn’t get over how pretty my mother was.’
‘You look a little like her, you know.’
‘Everyone says I look like my dad.’
‘Well, yes. But you have her eyes. She had lovely eyes, I remember.’
Bronwyn studied her closely, as if searching for an answer Mary didn’t have. Then her eyes cut away, and she slapped her arm, remarking idly, ‘The mosquitoes around here, boy, they’ll eat you alive if you don’t watch out.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘Bet there aren’t many where you live.’
‘We have other kinds of pests.’ Mary smiled. ‘Muggers, rapists, you name it. Summer is the worst, for some reason.’
‘Well, nothing like that ever happens around here. You must find Burns Lake pretty boring.’
‘Oh, it has its charms.’
Under the cover of darkness Mary indulged a small smile. From inside came the sound of the tap being cranked off and Noelle’s voice blending comfortably with Charlie’s. When a mosquito landed on her leg, she gently brushed it away. Bronwyn, she saw, was eyeing her curiously.
‘Don’t you ever get homesick? I mean, for the city.’
At the moment Man- didn’t feel a bit homesick. But all she said was: ‘Sometimes. It isn’t where you live necessarily; it’s what’s familiar. You get so used to a certain way of life you can’t imagine it any other way. Then something comes along to upset the balance, and you realize there are lots of possibilities you just didn’t see before.’
Bronwyn went back to staring out at the darkened lake, with its pale fingers of mist trailing over the surface. ‘I guess,’ she acknowledged grudgingly. They lapsed once more into silence. Mary was about to get up and go inside when a girlish voice piped shyly, ‘Do you really think I look like her?’
‘Come over here where I can see you.’ Mary waited for Bronwyn to unfold from the steps and walk over to where she sat. She regarded the girl for a moment, this leggy creature like a character out of
Midsummer Night’s Dream,
tiny insects wheeling about her shining crown like fairy dust. She was Charlie’s, through and through, right down to the frown line that curved like an apostrophe over her right eyebrow, but some burst of compassion made her say, ‘Oh, absolutely.’
The faint clatter of plates drifted toward them. And a sound that might have been Rufus’s tail thumping against the floor. The spell was broken. Bronwyn dropped her eyes as if embarrassed to have been caught begging like their old dog for approval. Abruptly she spun about and dashed inside, the screen door slapping shut behind her.
Two days passed without incident. On Wednesday Mary drove into the city to meet with her biggest client, diet guru Lucianne Penrose, who was being interviewed by the
Ladies’ Home Journal.
Noelle, following her visit with Emma, spent the latter part of the afternoon exploring various options with her lawyer. And Charlie made a lightning trip to Albany to see if he could wangle a quote from Senator Larrabie. Though the
Register’s
broken windows had been replaced, the furor over its negative press on Robert and his cronies was still very much ongoing.
The following day brought a new outbreak of vandalism, though, this time an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. Windows were smashed, and a fire was set. Fortunately the blaze was put out before any major damage was done. Charlie nonetheless sent two of his best and brightest, Trent Robeson and Gina Tomaselli, to cover it. When Gina returned with a statement from Robert, denying any involvement, Charlie ran an article on the front page of Friday’s edition, under the headline:
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN QUESTIONED IN FIRE
Two days later a deacon at First Baptist arrived early Sunday morning to find the church defaced with graffiti. Far more distressing was the damage to its adjacent cemetery. Several headstones had been toppled, and in a particularly cruel twist of irony a marble statue of John the Baptist was found decapitated, its lichen-furred head gazing blindly up at the sky from a nest of brambles.
Bronwyn heard about it over the local AM station as she bicycled to work, plugged into her Walkman. She shuddered, thinking of that old expression about a goose walking over your grave. No
real
damage was done, true, but she had a feeling this rash of vandalism was only the beginning of worse things to come. Arriving at Scoops, she rushed to call Dante.
‘It’s me.’ She kept her voice low and an eye on Mr Norwood, bent over his adding machine in the back room. ‘Have you heard the latest? It looks like your boss is up to his old tricks.’
She could hear the blatting of an air gun in the background. Then Dante growled, ‘Yeah, I heard. And just for the record I ain’t workin’ for Mr V no more. I quit two weeks ago.’ She didn’t have to ask if he’d been questioned in connection to these most recent crimes; his tone said it all. A solid alibi was presumably the only thing keeping him out of jail.