She slipped out of the church before the benediction, fearful of ruining the feeling of ease she had achieved by having to mix and mingle. And the sense of calm remained. It was joined by something else, something unexpected, the sense that for those few moments, sitting quietly with the rest of Lake Henry, she had belonged to a community.
She couldn’t remember when last she had experienced that feeling.
Even before the whispers reached John, he knew that Lily was in church. Bidden by a sixth sense, he had looked up at the exact instant when she entered. He was in the far opposite end of the pew ahead of hers. No regular churchgoer himself, he had arrived just minutes before.
And why was he here? After spending the night with an erection that wouldn’t die, he had felt a need to elevate his thoughts. One look at Lily, however, and his good intentions were shot. So he devoted himself to singing his heart out with every hymn and listened to the minister’s sermon, listened intently to every word. By the time the service was done, he was in full control.
At that point, physical awareness became intellectual awareness, and he tipped his hat to Lily in other respects. She had shown courage coming to church, braving whispers and stares. Yes, she had left early, but he had left town events early, too, when he had first returned to the lake. The difference was that he had fully earned the wariness of the townsfolk. Lily hadn’t. She should have been able to walk right up that center aisle and sit with her family. It bothered him that she couldn’t.
He was grappling with that thought outside the church, watching the townsfolk stream down the steps into the warm fall sun, when he spotted Cassie Byrnes. She was standing with her husband and was holding one child in her arms. Two others hovered by her hip.
When her husband left to talk with the pastor and she headed for the car, John maneuvered himself so that he met up with her halfway. He swooped up to his shoulders the younger of the two standing children, a four-year-old boy named Ethan, and walked alongside Cassie with the child clutching his chin.
“Did you see Lily there?” he managed to ask in an audible way, despite the pull on his jaw.
She shot him a facetious look. “How not to?”
“She said you were representing her. How’s it going?”
“If you’re asking for the sake of the paper, I have no comment.”
“I’m asking as a friend.” It was half the truth, at least.
“Lily’s?”
“Yes.”
She stopped and searched his eyes. He didn’t know how much she saw, but a minute later she began walking again. “The answer is it’s going nowhere. I sent a fax to the newspaper Friday to remind them that they have a week to issue a retraction before we file suit. The week expires tomorrow.”
“Do you think they’ll do it?”
“Do you?” she returned. “You know these people better than I do.”
He did at that. “They’ll let you sue. They’ll stand behind their story. They have a tape.”
“Lily told me. That’s a plus and a minus.”
“She didn’t know it was made.”
“That’s the plus,” Cassie said as they reached her car. “It’s against the law.” She slid the child on her hip into a car seat in back. Lowering the boy from his shoulders, John passed him to Cassie for similar tucking away. When the third child climbed into the car on his own, Cassie straightened and faced John. “This case sucks. Even if Lily weren’t my client, even if she weren’t the underdog here, I would feel for her. I remember her when we were growing up. She suffered.”
“Because of the stutter?” John asked. Lily hadn’t stuttered once the night before. He wanted to think that it meant she felt comfortable with him.
“Because of Maida,” Cassie said. They were far enough from the nearest ears; still, she lowered her voice. “Hey, I had problems with my mother. Every girl does. She and I didn’t exactly breeze through my teenage years. But I remember being very grateful—and more than once—that Maida wasn’t my mother.”
“She was that bad?”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “A perfectionist. Everything had to be done just so.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. I only know what my mother said.”
“Which was?”
“That Maida was that way from the first, way back when she came here and married George.”
“So, was her life perfect back then, before Lily was born?”
“That was the image she cultivated. Who knew the truth?”
But the truth interested John. People did things for reasons. His mom had been raised in a family that was socially skilled, which made living with Gus a trial. Gus had never seen a functioning husband, so he didn’t have a clue about functioning as one himself. Growing up, John had never had Gus’s approval, so he was still seeking it at forty-three. And Maida? Maida Blake wanted perfection. He wondered why.
“Who does know?” he asked Cassie now.
“Not me, and not my mother,” she said, holding the car keys out to her approaching husband. “Try Mary Joan Sweet. She knew Maida back when.”
* * *
Mary Joan was the head of the Garden Club. Central casting couldn’t have chosen better. A small, delicate woman with gray hair fringing her face, a dusting of blue shadow on her lids, and a smudge of pink on her cheeks, she reminded John of the pansies that the club planted in town window boxes each spring. She was quiet, reputedly saying more to plants on any given day than to humans. Indeed, she was breathing words of praise to the fiery burning bush outside Charlie’s after church when John spotted her from the parking lot and loped across the street.
“We do go back,” she admitted when he mentioned Maida’s name. “I was in the club when she first joined. I was older than her, but we were immediate friends. When Lily ever walked into church…” She sent John a sad look. “Poor Maida.”
“Poor Lily,” said John.
“Poor Maida,” Mary Joan insisted. “She did try with Lily. This was her greatest fear.”
“Do you believe the newspapers?”
“No,” she drawled, wrapping her mouth around the word. “But damage has been done. This is one more thing in Maida’s life. First Lily’s stutter. Then Poppy’s legs. Then George’s death. Now Lily again.” She shook her head and, cradling a spray of bright red leaves in her hand, murmured something to the shrub.
“I’m sorry?” John asked.
She straightened. “I said that Maida came here for something better.”
“Better than what?”
“What she had had.”
“What was that?”
Mary Joan smiled. Bending, she gently gathered branches and pulled them toward the center of the shrub. She gestured at the dirt she had uncovered. “See those little shoots coming out of the ground? They’re from the root system of this plant.” She released the plant with care, then straightened and looked him in the eye. “They’re suckers. I’m not. You’re asking too many questions, John Kipling. You’re beginning to sound like Terry Sullivan.”
“He called you?”
“One of many. It was natural, I suppose—my being head of the club and Maida being a garden person. He’s been the most persistent.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Just what I’m telling you.” She tipped up her pansy face, lips shut tight.
“Ahh,” John said, then tried, “but I’m not doing an article for the paper.”
“Maybe not. But Maida’s my friend. I won’t betray private things.”
“You know private things?”
“Of course. I’ve known Maida for thirty-five years.” Again that defiant tip of the head, those firmly sealed lips. She stared at him for a long minute while he tried to come up with an approach. When he couldn’t find one his conscience could live with, she gave him a smug smile and headed off.
John tried to imagine Maida’s secrets as he drove to the Ridge, but the things he came up with were all tired and worn. Still, it ke
pt his mind off the darkness he felt as he neared. He raised a forefinger to people on porches, but he didn’t meet any eyes or expect a wave in return. Pulling up to Gus’s, he scooped up a grocery bag and went inside.
Gus was on the sofa, not quite upright, not quite sprawled. He wore a pair of wrinkled green pants and an orange shirt that was misbuttoned. John had instructed Dulcey to shave him every other day, but he must have put up a good fight, because the gray stubble there now was older than that. With his lopsided eyes and his messy white hair, he was the sorriest sight John had ever seen. And his socks had holes.
That galled John. Clutching the grocery bag, he approached the sofa. “What happened to the new socks?”
“What new socks?” Gus grumbled without meeting his eye.
“The dozen pairs I put in your drawer last month.”
“I didn’t ask for ’em.”
“No, but I bought them. They were a gift to you.”
“I like mine bettuh.”
“Yours are torn.”
Gus looked up. His lower eye was half closed. “What’s it to you? If I want to wey-uh tawn socks, that’s my business. An’ you tell Dulcey Hewitt not to come. I’m tie-uhd of people tellin’ me what to do. Leave me be.”
He looked so unhappy that John didn’t know what to do. So he went into the kitchen, which was surprisingly neat. If he had to guess, he’d say that Gus had been on the sofa since Dulcey left that morning.
“Have you had lunch?” he called.
When Gus didn’t answer, he poked his head back into the living room. Gus was glaring at the floor. Rather than risk another argument, John unloaded the groceries, cooked up an omelet with buttered toast, and brought it out.
Gus shifted his glare from the floor to the plate.
“It has everything you like,” John said. “Ham, cheese, green peppers. The toast is from oatmeal bread baked fresh this morning at Charlie’s.”
“I hate green peppuhs.”
John didn’t believe it for a minute. This was a man who used to crush a crisp green pepper in his hand, tear off pieces, and eat them one by one. But he wasn’t arguing. No point in that. “Well, they’re good for you.”
Gus snorted. “They-ull make me strong? Make me young again? Hah!” But he took the plate.
Figuring that he would eat better if pride didn’t get in the way, John left him alone. Standing at the stove, he ate what was left of the omelet straight from the pan and washed everything up. Wanting to do more, he wiped down the refrigerator shelves. Most of the food he had brought last time was gone, though whether Gus had eaten it or Dulcey had tossed it out, he didn’t know.
After a good twenty minutes, he dared return to the living room. Gus was asleep. It looked like he hadn’t moved a muscle. But the plate was empty.
Satisfied, he cleared it away. Then he sat for a while in the old stuffed chair, watching, as he had forty years before, while his father slept. Gus had seemed huge to him then, a large man with large, all-seeing eyes and a large, barking voice. John remembered studying the prominent veins on his father’s forearms, the scars on his fingers, the hair on the curve of his ears. They had been signs of strength to him.
He had admired Gus. Telling him that was something else, however.
John didn’t know Maida’s secrets, but he did know Gus’s. There was the fact of being illegitimate and the fact of a failed marriage. There was the fact of a lifetime laying stone and the silence of that lonesome work.
So Gus wasn’t a talker. Part of John wasn’t either. That part was content to sit and write. Writing was lonesome work, too. There was even—despite what Gus said—an art to it.
Not that Gus would agree. Gus didn’t think much of what he did. Rudyard Kipling wrote fiction. That was creative. But nonfiction? As far as Gus was concerned, newspapermen wrote about the news because they didn’t have the brains to make the news. John could argue until he was blue in the face, but nothing he said would convince Gus.
A commercially successful book might do it.
The fax that was waiting at the office when he stopped on his way back from the Ridge gave him a lift. It was from Jack Mabbet and was informative on two fronts.
Paul Rizzo had launched his career on a false resume. He claimed to have an undergraduate degree in English from Duke and a graduate degree in journalism from New York University. In fact, he had started at Duke, flunked out, transferred to the University of Miami, and dropped out of that. So there was no undergraduate degree. As for NYU, he had never applied to any program there, much less enrolled. He had deceived employers and readers alike.
And Justin Barr, champion of home, hearth, and chastity? He had a predilection for kinky sex, as vouched for by a small ring of call girls who specialized in doing things for married men that their wives wouldn’t do. They dealt with a privileged clientele that paid a premium for privacy. But there were records. There were photographs. No doubt about it. They had Justin Barr cold.
Had John been Terry, he might have begun scheming about the most shocking, most injurious way to use this information. But John wanted to be better than Terry. He wanted to be more decent. So he didn’t scheme. Rather, he tucked the information away, simply pleased to know it was there should the time come when it might be of help.
CHAPTER 20
Before leaving for the cider house Monday morning, Lily called Cassie. There was no retraction in that day’s paper, and the week was up. Cassie promised she would have a suit filed by the end of the day, but Lily was deeply disappointed. She had been praying for a faster resolution. Her life was in limbo. She needed to settle things and move on.
The rhythm of the cider press was more welcome than ever. Dressed head to toe in rubber, she threw herself into the work. She lifted, pushed, pulled, and folded, even took over hosing down the floors when Maida left to get more apples. When the others stopped for coffee, she drove the loader herself. It took several tries before she maneuvered the metal scoop in a way that would properly position the large crate of fruit at the end of the bath, but she did it—with no small amount of satisfaction. As soon as the others returned, she was back on the platform beside the press, layering racks and cloths and mash.
Come time for lunch, she knew what she needed. She cleaned herself quickly and ran down to the main house, but she didn’t go to the kitchen this time. She went to the beautiful baby grand in the living room, sat down on the mahogany bench, and opened the lid.
She felt relief before she touched a single key. Here were old, loving friends. She brushed them with the pads of her fingers and breathed in their aged, ivory scent. Then she positioned her hands and began to play. She didn’t think about songs, just let her fingers move on their own, and they knew her heart. They created sounds that were sweet and melancholy, like her emotions—a little lonesome, a little confused, but pleased, so pleased to be here.
Closing her eyes, she let the beauty of the chords take her away. The tension in the pit of her stomach began to dissolve. Her thoughts calmed. When she felt strength return, her hands fell still. She took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and opened her eyes.
Maida stood in the middle of the living room. With one hand on the back of her neck, and her head tipped, she seemed as taken as Lily. She dropped her hand and straightened her head with a sigh. “No one else can bring quite that sound from those keys,” she said in a wistful voice. Then she took a breath and said a more neutral “Would you like lunch?”
Lily was warmed by the compliment and, yes, suddenly hungry. She started to get up.
But Maida was already on her way out. “Stay here and play. I’ll bring it in.”
A second compliment? Maida waiting on her?
So Lily played, choosing songs that her mother liked, in part to thank her, in part because entertaining people was what she did best. She continued to play when Maida returned carrying a large silver tray. She might have been an invited guest, for the way Maida set out ham and cheese sandwiches and poured fragrant
tea.
“Thank you,” she said when they were seated on the sofa.
Maida busied herself squeezing lemon into her tea. “It’s the least I can do. You’ve been good in the cider house.”
“I like the work.”
“I should pay you.”
Lily had raised a sandwich half. She put it right down. “Don’t do that.”
“I pay the others.”
“They aren’t relatives. I don’t mind helping. What else would I do?”
“You could be over at Cassie’s,” Maida said. She brushed crumbs from her lap. “Are you really filing a lawsuit?”
“I don’t have much choice.”
Maida took a bite of her sandwich. Then she put it down and smiled. “Do you remember Jennifer Hauke? She was your year in school. She’s Jennifer Ellison now, married to Darby Ellison, that dark-haired little boy. She just had a baby. It’s their third. Another girl.”
Lily didn’t know what the connection was between Jennifer Hauke’s new baby and her own lawsuit, but the baby was certainly a more neutral topic. “That’s exciting. Do they live here?”
“No. They have a house in Center Sayfield. Anita Ellison died last month.”
“Darby’s grandmother? I’m sorry.”
“She was one of Celia’s good friends.”
Lily remembered that. She had spent enough time at Celia’s to know her friends, because Celia loved entertaining. She invited groups at a time, seeming in her element when the small cottage was filled. Lily remembered curling up in the bed in the loft while the ladies laughed themselves silly over something she didn’t understand. Those somethings usually had to do with men. Lily would have liked to listen in on them now.
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