“You’re right,” Clare said. “This is called a clerical collar. I wear it so people can see that I’m a priest. Kind of like a police officer wearing a badge. If I weren’t holding Cody, I could show you where it fastens and unfastens in the back. It’s not even really attached to my shirt.”
“Neat,” Whitley said. “Put the baby down and show me.”
“Whitley!” her mother said, reaching for her.
“You have quite a conversationalist there,” Clare said.
“Yeah, it’s a shame she’s so shy and retiring.” Debba’s face softened. “And here’s my boy.”
The child who followed Lilly into the kitchen was clearly Whitley’s brother. They had the same fair skin and finely etched features. But where the little girl’s brown eyes were direct and penetrating, her brother’s wandered, sliding away from faces, seeming to track dust motes in the air. He walked hesitantly, moving his arms back and forth like a child trying to feel its way through a dark and featureless landscape. Debba knelt down and circled her arms around the boy, holding him loosely, anchoring him in space. “Sky, this is Reverend Fergusson. Can you say ‘hello’?”
He was a beautiful boy. He fastened his eyes on the table, not like a kid disobeying his mom, or like a shy child. It was as if, Clare thought, he didn’t even see her.
“When we meet somebody new, we say ‘hello,’ ” Debba went on. “Can you say ‘hello’?”
His gaze was still on the table. “H’lo,” he said, still ignoring Clare. He tapped the fingers of one hand in the palm of the other and circled them around.
“Sure, you can draw. Get up on your chair.”
Skylar headed for where Clare had been sitting, and she jumped out of his way. He climbed into the seat while his mother laid a stack of blank papers and a pencil in front of him.
With fierce concentration he bent over the paper. “Whatcha drawing, Scoot?” his mother asked, although it was obvious. Under Skylar’s pencil a bus was emerging, startlingly accurate and in perfect perspective.
“Grammy’s bus,” he said. “The tires, the windows, the door, the lights…”
“Mmmm. I like your busses.” Debba stroked his hair while the boy finished one picture, thrust the sheet away, and started another. The second bus was identical to the first. Clare watched Debba’s hand, rising and falling, like a benediction said over and over. What was it like to love that fiercely? How much would you be willing to pay to make your child healthy, wealthy, happy, wise? What would you do to protect your child? As she watched Debba reach over and slide a box of crayons toward Skylar, tempting him with color, she knew the answer: anything.
Chapter 10
THEN
Friday, April 9, 1937
Dead and gone. Niels Madsen contemplated the phrase as he turned the pages of the Ketchem file. It implied first the one, then the other. Turning that natural order around was going to be difficult. He squared the papers within the green baize folder and pressed the yellow button on his intercom.
“Miss McDonald, will you send in Mrs. Ketchem now?”
A moment later, he heard the tack-tack-tack of heels on wood, and his office door opened. He stood up, came around his desk, and crossed to greet her.
“Mrs. Ketchem.” He shook her hand, gesturing to one of two leather chairs positioned in front of his desk. “Make yourself comfortable.” He studied her from beneath half-closed eyes as she sat down and smoothed her dress over her knees. His awareness of fashion didn’t extend much beyond an approving nod at his wife’s purchases and an occasional groan of pain when he got her bills, but even he could tell Jane Ketchem’s brown wool dress was several years out-of-date. Her shoes, polished to a shine and neat below her crossed ankles, were worn at the heels.
“Can I have Miss McDonald get you some coffee?” he asked, seating himself behind his desk.
She shook her head. “No, thank you.” Beneath her hat, he could see the gray threading through her glossy brown hair. They had met a few times over the years-he had drawn up the papers when she and Jonathon bought their farm and had advised them when the Conklingville Dam project was buying them out. Jane had had a fresh farm-girl sort of beauty in her younger days, the kind that should have aged into plump cheeks and soft jowls by now. But the events of her life had laid waste to that softness, and the forty-one-year-old woman looking calmly at him from across his desk was drawn, sharp. Someone he didn’t recognize.
He folded his hands. “What can I do for you today?” he asked, redundantly, because he knew what she must be here for, had known it as soon as his secretary had shown him the name in his appointment calendar.
“I want you to have Jonathon declared legally dead.”
“It’s been seven years now, has it?”
“It has.” Her face was still calm, but he could see her hands tightening over her purse, the leather also polished but worn, like her shoes.
He leaned forward. “I don’t want to offend you, Mrs. Ketchem, but if we’re going to pursue this, we’re going to have to touch on some personal matters, so I’m just going to jump in with both feet.” He softened his voice. “Are you in financial straits? Because-”
“The life insurance company went under. Yes, I know. I got your letter, and another one from them, and I certainly haven’t forgotten either. No, I’m not facing the poor farm.” She glanced down at her out-of-date dress. “Though I suppose that’s another thing folks in this town like to speculate about. Truth is, I’m keeping a Scotsman’s grip on whatever comes in. I want my daughter to go to college.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A laudable ambition.” He touched the file on his desk. “You do realize that if we petition the court of probate to rule Jonathon dead, it won’t be cheap. My retainer alone is one hundred dollars, and there may well be expenses and fees beyond that, depending on how long it takes.”
She nodded. “I know. I asked your secretary what your price was when I asked to see you.”
“Are Mr. and Mrs. Ephraim Ketchem going to join in the petition? To help you with the cost?”
“No.” Her face softened a fraction. “They’d just as soon go on hoping he’ll turn up one day. The good Lord knows I can understand their feelings. There’s nothing hurts as bad as the death of your child, and if they can keep on pretending he’s alive…” She shrugged. “It’s a comfort to them.”
A hard, cold comfort, Niels thought. “Do you worry that you’ll be taking that away from them if we succeed in having Jonathon declared dead?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. He could see the beginnings of fine lines, the slight extra droop where her eyelid would someday sag onto itself. She startled him by opening her eyes and staring directly into his. “I love Mother and Father Ketchem dearly, and I wouldn’t hurt them for the world. But I’ve been saying that my husband is dead for seven years. It’s what I told Chief McNeil the day after Jonathon disappeared, and I knew it was true then as I know it’s true now. They choose to believe otherwise. I don’t think anything I do will change their minds.”
“What about your daughter?”
“Her father disappeared when she was barely six. She missed him something fierce at first, but seven years in a child’s life is forever. I can’t even recall when she last mentioned him. And now she’s getting to an age where she can hear the gossip, and be hurt by it, and I don’t want her to go through what I’ve had to go through.” She let her purse drop flat on her lap and leaned forward, her hands curling over the edge of his desk. “For seven years I’ve been not fish nor fowl nor good red meat. Not a widow and not a wife. Every soul in Millers Kill either pitying me because they think my husband abandoned us or wondering what I did to drive him away. I can’t have a cup of coffee with my brother-in-law or have Father Wallace pay a call without setting tongues clacking all over town. My friend Nain once overheard Tilda Van Krueger saying in the beauty shop that it was mighty convenient having an absent husband, because if I turned up in a family way, I could just claim he stopped b
ack in for a visit.” She took a deep breath. “I want my respectability back, Mr. Madsen. I want to be able to set up a memorial stone for my husband and put him to rest once and for all.”
Niels Madsen thought about his client while he strolled home for a 12:30 dinner with his family. He paused at the walkway to his home, square and roomy and comfortable, and thought about her keeping her own roof over her head instead of moving back in with her parents or in-laws, as so many other women would have done. And when Marion, his oldest, danced past him with the suggestion of a kiss and an “Off to Helen’s house” tossed over her shoulder, he thought about the difficulties facing a single mother of a growing girl.
In the dining room, after a heartfelt thanks over a good lamb stew and quizzing the younger children on how their mornings went at school, he asked his wife if she had ever heard any gossip about Jane Ketchem.
“I heard Mrs. Ketchem took an ax to her husband and buried him under her cellar floor,” ten-year-old Pauline said. “When there’s a full moon, you can hear him moaning, ‘Give me back my head! Give meee back my heeeead!’ ”
Doris, who was eight and still slept with a night-light, shrieked.
“Girls!” Ruth Madsen said. “Quiet down this instant or you’ll both have bread and water in your room. What nonsense.”
The girls giggled, but resumed eating. Mrs. Madsen turned to her husband. “One does hear a few things around town,” she said. She glanced at Normie, who was clearly bristling with something to say but too intent on showing up his sisters with his good manners to just blurt it out. “What is it, Normie?”
“Lacey Ketchem’s in my class,” he said.
“I know that, dear.”
“Well, she says that her father was away on a trip and that he was set upon by desperate men. Probably murderous hoboes who didn’t have a thing to lose. She says that there would have had to be a lot of them, because her father was a big, strong man, and that they killed him and stuffed his body in a tree and set it on fire.”
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Madsen looked at her husband.
He shrugged. “You’re the one who insisted we buy the radio. It’s no wonder all our children sound like announcers for next week’s episode of The Clutching Hand.”
“Can we get down, Mother?”
“Can we get down?”
“May we,” Mrs. Madsen corrected automatically. “Normie, are you finished? I want you to walk your sisters back to school.”
Normie excused himself and pushed his chair away from the table. Niels reached one hand out and took his son’s arm. He looked directly into the boy’s face. “What I was discussing with your mother had to do with the practice. And anything concerning the practice-”
“-is not to be repeated outside this house. I know, Father.”
“Good boy. You can come by the office after school if you like.”
There was a clatter of shoes and a general banging of the door, three, four, five times. Niels had never been able to figure out how three children could sound like a horde of Huns ransacking a town.
Satisfied that their offspring had well and truly departed, he turned to Ruth. “So, what sort of things does one hear around?”
“I’m curious. Why the sudden interest in Jane Ketchem?”
“She’s asked me to petition the court of probate to have her husband declared legally dead.”
Ruth arched her brows. “Interesting.” She broke open a roll and buttered it. “The general consensus among the gossips-not that I’m one of that number, mind.”
“Of course not.”
“Is that Jonathon Ketchem ran off on her. The disagreement is whether he took off because he couldn’t find work, because he had a girl waiting, or because she drove him away.”
“Huh. I hadn’t heard the story about there being another woman involved.”
“Oh, people say he was paying a lot of attention to one of those Henderson girls whose father worked on Ephraim Ketchem’s farm. I forget which one. Evidently, she did leave shortly after he disappeared. Supposedly headed out west to seek her fame and fortune.”
“That makes sense.” He helped himself to another serving of butter beans. “I never could believe it was poverty that made him take off for a shoe-leather divorce. Things were starting to get tight around here in ’30, but the younger Ketchems got a reasonable price for their farm when the dam was being raised. Certainly no worse than anyone else caught up in the shuffle. There should have been enough to buy new land elsewhere or start himself in a business.”
“Maybe he ran off with the money, too.”
“Maybe.” He thought about Jane Ketchem’s shoes and outdated dress. “What’s this about her driving him away?”
His wife looked at him speakingly. “Consider that the Ketchem girl was six when her father disappeared. Same age as Normie.”
“So.”
“So, in the six years after we had Normie, I had two more babies and lost a third. Maybe it was just that God chose not to bless the Ketchems with any more children…”
“Or maybe there wasn’t any chance for any more. I see your point.” He folded his napkin and stretched. “I’ll see what I can do for her, poor lady. If she did damp the fire down until he left for good, she’s paid dearly for it.”
Ruth stood and began to stack the dishes. “Can you really argue for Jonathon Ketchem to be declared legally dead? When no one except Jane and her daughter believe it? What on earth are you going to say to the judge?”
“Oh, no problem with that.” He grinned up at her. “I’ll just bring in Normie and have him testify as to how Ketchem was set upon by murderous hoboes.”
Chapter 11
NOW
Sunday, March 19, the Second Sunday in Lent
Russ hung up his parka in the mudroom, pried off his boots, and walked into his darkened kitchen on stockinged feet. Lord, he was tired. He had pulled two shifts a day since Friday, and his body was letting him know he was too old for that schedule. Contrary to his less-than-charitable thoughts, Lyle, like Noble, really had been knocked out by a nasty stomach flu. His deputy chief had told him over the phone that he hadn’t been more than five feet from the bathroom since the thing started.
He flicked on the light and went to the refrigerator to see if there was anything to eat. Linda was gone again-off for a week to visit her sister in Florida. Her girlfriend Meg had driven her down to Albany to catch the plane, because covering one-fourth of his department hadn’t left Russ with enough time to do it himself. That rankled. He hated not being there for her when she needed him.
He pulled a Coke out of the fridge, nudged the door shut, and wandered into the pantry, hoping there would be some Tuna Helper or something. Although he normally enjoyed cooking, to night he wasn’t up for anything more than opening a box and a can. Thank God he had had the sense to assign his two part-time officers tonight duty. If he’d had the patrol tonight, with its homeward-bound tourists getting lost and running into each other, or its domestic calls, which were always worse on Sunday nights, after a weekend of togetherness with another crappy Monday morning staring people in the face… he’d probably have driven off the Route 100 bridge into the river.
No Tuna Helper. He slid a box of macaroni and cheese off the shelf and got a pan from under the counter. He should have just told his mom he was coming over for dinner tonight, but the price for a hot meal would have been listening to her razor-thin slices at Linda for abandoning her hardworking husband for sun and fun with a divorcée. He had pointed out that he was welcome to join Linda on her annual sisterfest. The last time he had gone had been two years ago, and the pleasure of escaping from the cold March weather hadn’t made up for the boredom of hanging around a Fort Lauderdale condo while the two women shopped and got their nails done. Plus, he called the station house so many times to see how they were doing without him that Linda claimed flying back home would be cheaper than the phone bill.
He put water on to boil and collapsed into one of the kitc
hen chairs with his Coke. Linda had done something different with a St. Patrick’s theme. There was a new tablecloth on the table, new place mats and napkins, and curtains festooning the windows. All green-and-white fabrics, tweed and tiny gold-edged shamrocks and presumably Irish shepherds helping Irish shepherdesses over a stile. Their house was a laboratory for Linda’s burgeoning drapery business, which meant they were more or less in a state of constant redecoration. At least she had farmed out some of the work-three neighboring women stitched away at ruffles and blinds and whatnot, so Linda could meet her orders without sewing eighteen hours out of twenty-four.
The rattle of the lid on the pot told him the water had come to a boil. He heaved himself out of his chair and poured the macaroni in, stirring it with a big wooden spoon. Maybe he should have just said the hell with it and gone to Florida. Maybe he would. Just fly down there, surprise her. They could go out to dinner together, take a long walk, rent a boat and get out on the ocean. Well, no, she didn’t really care for long walks and she didn’t do too well on the water unless she was in something pretty big. Okay, he could swallow his dislike of sunbathing and lie around on the beach with her. He could make the ultimate sacrifice and take her shopping. Anything. They just needed to spend some time together and talk about something other than who bought the groceries and who was going to the bank.
He drained the pot, went upstairs, and changed out of his uniform into sweats. Back downstairs he ate his mac and cheese in front of the TV, flicking from one lousy show to another, wondering why the networks couldn’t schedule one of the NCAA finals on a night when he was at home. He rinsed out his bowl and loaded the dishwasher. He wandered down to his cellar workroom, but the thought of putting in time on one of his projects made him feel as if a lead blanket had been placed on his shoulders, so he went back upstairs. He thought about calling a few airlines to see how much it would cost for a last-minute ticket to Florida. He thought about calling his sister Janet, catching up with what his nieces were doing. He thought about calling his mom.
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