Promises of Home

by Jeff Abbott

  I thought I’d get those restoratives right away. Until I opened the front door and saw my house had been ransacked.

  “YOUR TIE IS CROOKED,” I SAID, STRAIGHTENING the dark knot at Mark’s throat.

  “Does it matter?” He squirmed under my ministrations.

  “Yes, it does matter. You want to look nice for your father’s funeral.”

  “No one’ll care. He wouldn’t have.” Mark twisted away from me, knocking his tie further askew. I surrendered and watched him storm off. He’d passed from pretending that he hadn’t seen his father’s life leak away on that cold kitchen floor to anger toward Trey—and toward the world. And I, friend to his father, bore the brunt of most of Mark’s wrath.

  The back door slapped against the frame as he bolted onto the porch. I settled on the couch. The house had returned to a semblance of order after I’d found it in disarray yesterday afternoon. At first I’d figured we’d been burglarized, but nothing was missing. Drawers were pulled out, papers scattered, books yanked from shelves, pictures wrenched off the wall. A hurried, frantic search had been made.

  Mama, first in my thoughts, turned out to be enjoying a visit to Candace’s cafe with Clo. Mark had been out for a long walk with Scott Kinnard. (I found that highly interesting, but Mark volunteered no details. I didn’t pry. If those boys could be friends, share memories of the man they’d both wanted for a father, I wouldn’t interfere.) No one had been home, no one had been hurt. I’d called the police and reported the break-in (apparently accomplished by knocking out a pane of the backdoor window) and had started a desultory cleanup by the time Sister got home. A good night’s sleep had done wonders for my constitution.

  Now I reclined on the couch, watching Mark stare out at the yard. Sister came downstairs, dressed in a black skirt, a white blouse, and a black jacket (she didn’t have a proper black dress, and I felt a pang that maybe I don’t provide enough for her), and putting in her earrings. Her eye remained discolored. She’d applied makeup to the bruise, but a purplish half circle still shone beneath the cream.

  “Not much makeup is going to do for that shiner,” I observed.

  She didn’t break stride as she went to the window to watch Mark. “I tried to hide it, but I’m stuck with it. I’ll wear dark glasses.”

  “Who hit you, Sister?” I might as well try again.

  “I told you, no one.” She glanced at me in irritation.

  “I know you’re lying. And I know you were at Trey’s house the morning of the murder.” I stood. I wasn’t going to stand there and smile like a wimp at her prevarication.

  Her jaw worked. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I found a shred of fabric on a nail on the Kinnards’ back steps right after Trey died. It was from those batik print pants I gave you. You were wearing them that morning.”

  Her shoulders gave a slow heave, as if creaking out from under a heavy burden.

  Sister turned away from me to look out at Mark. “And what did you do with this scrap? Give it to Junebug? Is that why he took himself off the case?”

  “No. I hid it.”

  “Maybe that’s what our burglar was looking for.”

  “I don’t think so. No one knows I have it.”

  “And what are you going to do with it? When were you planning on giving it to the police?”

  My throat felt dry. I thought when I confronted her with my shred of evidence that there would be protestations of innocence, pleadings, denials, possibly a full explanation—anything except this calm discussion. She was implacably set on her own unknown course, and nothing I said swayed her. “For God’s sake, tell me. Did you kill him?” With quivering hands she put on her sunglasses. “It’s nice to know your own brother thinks you’re capable of murdering someone.” She turned away and went outside on the porch, putting her arms around her boy. They held each other, lost in their own world of bereavement and betrayal. I stood and watched them until it was time to go.

  Like nearly everyone, I don’t like funerals, although for some reason I find the Mirabeau cemetery peaceful and oddly reassuring. Perhaps I take comfort in knowing where my bones will lie.

  Mirabeau’s new Episcopal church, St-George’s-on-the-River, had been finished just a few months ago to much fanfare. It was the first new church in town in fifteen years. (We local Anglicans, who’d been raised in churches in Bavary and La Grange, took great pleasure in its opening.) Although Clevey had strayed from the flock, Truda Shivers had remained a steadfast Episcopalian. Trey, although baptized, did not have a steady faith, according to Nola. Since he’d been married in the Episcopal church, a service at St. George’s seemed appropriate for him as well.

  The church, not large to begin with, was packed. The celebrant, Father Greene, preceded the pallbearers wheeling the caskets into the church. The families of the dead men followed like hushed sheep. My arms around Mark and Sister, I walked down the aisle with them, faces leaping out at me from the crowd: Davis; his wife, Cayla; their son, Bradley, looking awkward and fidgety in a suit; Ed and Wanda (who had fortunately decided to bypass her Elvis regalia); Ivalou Purcell, frowning at us; Steven Teague, a look of professional sorrow on his face, standing with Eula Mae. One corner held my library contingent of Itasca, Florence, and even Gretchen, and I felt touched they were here. Candace’s parents sat in a row near the family reserve. Junebug’s clan was absent, still maintaining their ceaseless vigil at the hospital.

  When we settled into our seats, the front left pews were full of Shiverses from near and far, while the right front pews held Sister, Mark, me, assorted relatives of ours, Candace, Hart Quadlander, and the Kinnards. I saw Nola shoot Sister a particularly venomous glance at one point, but Sister didn’t notice. Nola caught me looking and defiance crossed her face. She stared down into her lap, a lock of loose brown hair dangling over her forehead.

  “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,” Father Greene began as we joined in, prayer books in hand, those not used to the service fumbling to the correct page. I mumbled along, trying to convince myself I was actually saying these words for Trey and Clevey. My throat felt molten—this was the beginning of goodbye.

  “O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered. Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servants Clevey and Trey, and grant them an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints—” Father Greene implored, and I thought: Trey will find the fellowship of saints quite dull. A cousin of Clevey’s rose and stepped to the pulpit to read the usual passages from Isaiah and Lamentations. “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him,” he said, and I thought of minutes stretched into hours, into days, into years that we had waited for Trey.

  Mark sat between Sister and me, my arm around him, my hand on her shoulder. She held her purse stiffly, staring straight ahead, ignoring both prayer book and Bible, her sunglasses hiding her marred face. I couldn’t see if tears moistened her eyes. Mark’s neck felt rigid against my arm. I watched Truda Shivers; she sat between her sisters, her head held high. She would see her son off in dignity.

  I risked a glance over my shoulder. Hart Quadlander had a comforting arm around Nola Kinnard, who was dabbing at her tears with a wad of tissue and making snuffling noises. Scott held her hand and his eyes met mine. Oddly, he smiled shyly, then looked down again at his mother’s lap. It suddenly struck me that they had known an entirely different Trey than I had; a man with a family he’d abandoned, a past he’d just as soon not acknowledge. I wondered if he was happy with them, or if he was ever lonesome for his own child when he played with Scott, or missed the soft press of his wife’s arms when he hugged Nola. They were probably decent enough folks, but I didn’t think they were worthy substitutes for Sister and Mark. I admit to personal bias.

  Hart caught me looking and I turned back toward the pulpit. While psalms were read, I thought again about what Thomasina Clifton had told me: Hart Quadlander was one of her clients, and she remembered at least one time when Rennie had gone out to the Q
uadlander farm to help her clean. I wondered if he knew the girl, or remembered her. But then wouldn’t Trey have known her? He’d always maintained Rennie was a stranger to him.

  We stood for the Gospel and were duly told that in our father’s house are many mansions. I didn’t pay much attention to the service, having gone through it by rote too many times. I felt guiltily glad Sister and the Shiverses had declined to have Communion at the service. Before I knew it, we were standing, ready to continue the service with the Committal at the grave sites. We stepped out into kind sunshine, a welcome break from the drizzly rains of the last several days.

  Clevey’s burial came first. I hung back from the crowd, conscious of Davis and his family near me. I listened to the calming tones of Father Greene and tried not to think about the gap-toothed carrot-top I’d grown up with who would lie moldering in that casket. I started when the dirt hit the coffin. Slowly, people walked toward their cars, to head to the Quadlander farm. Louis Slocum, Trey’s father, was buried there and we’d arranged for Trey to be buried next to his father.

  Louis Slocum had been interred near the creekside oaks where he’d gotten rip-roaring drunk so many nights. I sometimes wondered if he’d favored the quiet company of the leaves and the breeze and the trees more than of people, He had teen terribly neglectful of Trey, and I’d always thought him a low fellow because of it. Now Trey was coming home, and would share his father’s company forever. Death conducts every final reunion.

  We stood again by a grave, the second ceremony seeming like an eerie echo of the first, as though Clevey’s burial had been a dress rehearsal and Trey’s was the true performance.

  “Thou knowest, Lord,” Father Greene intoned for the second time that day, “the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer….” The secrets of our hearts. I glanced at Sister, with her terrible secret, her bruised face a badge of deception. Why wouldn’t she tell me the truth? Who could she be protecting? Candace’s hand closed around mine and I squeezed it.

  The sun shone bright, the clouds having retreated to a bluish-gray smudge near the horizon, but the day was still chilly. I saw Mark shiver as Father Greene cast earth upon his father’s coffin. Mark did not look at his mother or at me. He stared down into his father’s grave like it was some distant mirror. Candace leaned against me and I wrapped my arm around her, feeling her comforting warmth.

  This was the legitimate goodbye, I thought. The goodbye to Trey was never said before because he walked away from us. Was he watching us now, a slight smile on his face that his wife and his son were—

  “Bitch,” a voice softly said, barely breaking the drone of Father Greene’s somnolent voice. I had almost thought I’d imagined it until the word repeated, harder, more forcefully. “You bitch, you killed him!”

  At one corner of the grave Nola Kinnard stood, her hands clenched into fists, her upswept, overmoussed brown hair not moving in the breeze. Tears mottled her angry face. She was too close to the edge of the grave and a rain of pebbles and muddy clods rained down on the casket.

  “Nola, for God’s sake!” Hart seized her arm and pulled her back from the open ground.

  She wrenched free from him. “I can’t stand here while the bitch that murdered him stands there and watches him put in the ground! Look at her! Look at her face!”

  Scott seized his mother’s arm and tried to hush her. “Mom, please, don’t! Don’t!”

  “We all know you did it! You hit him! You told him to stay away from your precious brat! And when he didn’t want to, when he wanted to see his boy, you killed him! You killed him!” She broke into heaving sobs, cradling Scott’s head in her arm as he struggled against her.

  Hart shot me a look of distress and tried to steer Nola and Scott away from the grave. She jerked away from him, releasing Scott, and launched herself at Ed Dickensheets, burying her face against his shoulder. Embarrassed, he held her awkwardly, trying to stroke her hairsprayed helmet of hair in comfort. Wanda gaped at Nola, not knowing what to do under these funereal circumstances. Ivalou was more inventive, yanking on Nola’s arm, calling her a mean-faced little hussy in a sharp whisper.

  I turned to my sister. She stood statue still. I couldn’t see her eyes behind the midnight dark of her sunglasses. Mark pressed against her side, watching the spectacle of Nola with horror. Candace embraced Sister from behind, murmuring comfort.

  I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. Those dark lenses were boring through me. What was I supposed to say? This morning I’d made the same suggestion, although not quite so aggressively as Nola.

  Nola, perhaps realizing the focus of attention had shifted from her, broke away from the red-faced Ed, shoved her way past an outraged Ivalou, and stormed toward Sister. I interceded, hearing a dismayed Father Greene begging Nola to calm down, moving in front of her as she stepped over the corner of Trey’s grave.

  “Listen here, you just stop this right now,” I demanded, and she slapped me once, smartly, across the face. I seized her hand and she slapped me with her other. I seized it as well, my cheeks red as Christmas cherries, and I shook Nola in fury.

  “Stop it! Shut up!” I screamed in her face, and she wrenched away from me, trying to kick me in the shins. She would have toppled into the grave if I hadn’t had hold of her. Suddenly Davis was on one side of me, Hart on the other, pulling Nola away. She flayed me with a look of pure poison as I released her and Hart hurried her toward the house. She stumbled once but did not look back at us. Steven Teague followed at a respectful distance, probably ready to provide vast amounts of psychotherapy.

  Shock silenced the crowd. Except for a sudden, screaming keen as Bradley Foradory sank to the ground.

  “That,” Candace offered as I poured her a cup of coffee, “was a hell of a service.” She maneuvered me gently against the kitchen counter and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I don’t believe you’ve sustained any permanent damage. Of course a more thorough investigation will be called for later.”

  I smiled at her teasing, her sweet way of coaxing me back toward everyday life. I needed days empty of tragedy and sorrow. I needed days with Candace, time with her, time with my family. I returned her kiss, tasting the spot between her eyes. “I’ll look forward to that, sweetheart.” I fetched a second cup down from the cabinet and filled it with fresh coffee. “Let me take this to Sister, see how she’s feeling.”

  The living room was finally empty. The mourners had returned to both our house and the Shivers place for the traditional postfuneral gathering, to eat and drink and converse in hushed tones. Our house was undoubtedly the greater social attraction; no one had called Truda a murderer during the funeral. I’d forced myself to maintain a placid air as people crowded and jostled each other on our porches, in our living room.

  Cayla and Davis Foradory had phoned their regrets in. “We just can’t make it, Jordy,” Cayla said in a forced tone. “Poor Bradley was just so upset by the funeral, it’s best he stay home. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Cayla. May I speak to Davis for a moment?”

  She coughed. “Well, Davis is getting Bradley settled. How about I have him call you when things calm down?”

  “Sure, Cayla.”

  “Please give my best to Arlene and Mark. And Truda.”

  “Of course.” I hung up the phone slowly, feeling the tinge of unease I always felt after talking to Cayla. Bradley Foradory might be retarded, but he was hardly high-strung. Generally he was a happy fellow, smiling and likable. Yet the funeral had thumped some horribly raw nerve to set him screaming and crying like that. What was wrong with Bradley?

  Although Bradley’s outburst generated a certain amount of talk, it couldn’t hold a candle to Nola’s dramatics. I’d caught Ivalou Purcell murmuring to her daughter, “Well, Arlene showed more restraint with that Nola than she did with Trey. She didn’t hit her.” I’d forced myself not to stop and chew the old bitch out. There had been enough unpleasant scenes today.

  Now Sister sat alone wi
th Mama in the living room. Mama had not attended the funeral, but Clo had dressed her in a dark robe. Always one to get an early start on the holidays, Mama was humming the tune of “Away in a Manger,” which she’d plucked somehow from the quicksand of her memory. Sister didn’t appear to be noticing, still wearing her dark jacket and skirt, her sunglasses finally off, her hair a blonde tousle around her shoulders.

  I sat down and handed the fee coffee. She accepted it wordlessly, took a sip, and said, “I have to get down to the hospital and see how Junebug’s doing.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve done enough for today?” I said. “I’m sure Barbara or the doctors will call us if there’s a change. You need some rest.”

  “There have been two men in my adult life I’ve loved, Jordy. I buried one today. And the other one may not make it out of the hospital. I don’t think I can sleep any.”

  “You’ll make yourself sick, Sister.”

  “Spare me the worried-brother act. You practically accused me of killing Trey this morning.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t believe you killed him, but I had to know for sure. You still didn’t answer my question.”

  She rubbed her eye. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Then tell me. Were you over there that morning?”

  Fatigue had won out against her defenses. “Yes, all right. I stopped by on my way to work. Even with it being a cold day, I wore those stupid pants ’cause it gets hot in the kitchen and they’re comfortable.”

  “What happened?”

  Her voice took a distant tone as she spoke, “He was there. Alone. He let me in, said he was even glad to see me as long as I wasn’t there to blacken his other eye.” She sipped at her coffee and closed her eyes.

  “Oh, he looked bad, Jordy. You’d seen him. He was a shell of the man he’d been. He’d had so much energy, so much power in his body. That man in the chair had nothing.” She shivered. “I apologized for hitting him—and said I hoped he wasn’t gonna press charges. He laughed and I started to cry. He said I looked wonderful to him. He said … he’d missed me.”