I stood in the churchyard beneath a steeple that had once been painted black.
St. Michael’s.
A gray veil of early dawn mist hung over the city, shrouding the upper part of the steeple. The chilly air darkened the tombstones with moisture. Every step I took among them as
I searched the names crushed the grass blades that had hung perfectly balanced with heavy dew, and I left behind a trail that plainly showed my intrusion. The city had not yet risen, and the hush of gray wrapped me in an aching loneliness.
I had slept poorly during the night. Not because of what
I had learned about Helen or about Lorimar Barrett.
But because of what I had learned about myself, from Claire.
I had been a father but responsible twofold for the reason I had been denied a chance to embrace my son’s entrance into the world. I had abandoned him before his birth, and in so doing, allowed the circumstances that took his life.
I had dreamed of his soft cries reaching across the city to me from the cold ground of St. Michael’s churchyard, and I had not been able to fall back to sleep. The innocence in those cries echoed in the room, haunting me with such tender reproach that I had dressed in darkness and sat outside on the balcony until the black of night had ebbed and I could see through the mist to the sentinel trees of the park across the street.
I joined my son, here at St. Michael’s ten minutes after beginning my slow walk down the deserted cobblestone streets, when I found his small tombstone.
I stood, then kneeled, uncaring of the dew that soaked through the knees of my pants. I leaned on my hands on the tombstone, balancing on my good leg.
I tried and failed in my attempt to not think of my son’s tiny perfection at birth, of a hand that could have wrapped its grip around my finger, of eyes that would have stared up with unblinking trust, of first laughter and first steps and first words.
“I am sorry,” I whispered to him. “I am so, so sorry.”
**
Consequences.
For years I had read the Bible, not as a believer, but because I felt any man of education needed to be familiar with the one book that has most affected the history and direction of mankind. I wanted to be familiar with it so that when tedious evangelists quoted pieces out of context, applying fanaticism to make up for lack of knowledge, I could at least reply from safe and studied grounds. Even before my return to Charleston, I would have always admitted without hesitation that the Bible truly is the most impressive piece of literature produced in the history of man. Drama. Pain. Hope. Beautiful language that has not suffered through translation.
It is a glorious book, and when I finally understood how the Spirit of God infused it with so much of what we as humans need to live complete lives, my response went from intellectual appreciation to profound gratitude.
Consequences.
After my mother had run from Charleston, I was still required to go to church with Pendleton and his parents, who swallowed their hangovers from the inevitable Saturday night parties and gave a wonderful show of devotion as they let the soft drone of the sermons lull away the pain of their headaches. Although the four of us shared the same pew, even when pressed from the other side by elderly women who fussed to set their purses beside them, I always made sure there was a gap between the three of them and me, a small space of varnished hardwood just wide enough to establish that I did not want to be part of that family.
I was guilty, too, of ignoring the sermons, and my pretended devotion came as I kept my head bowed and read through the Bible. I particularly loved the Old Testament, with its fascinating descriptions of savage battles and the dramas of undisguised passionate human sins.
One passage in Exodus, however, disturbed me greatly. In reading this passage, I had keenly felt the bitter pain of abandonment and wondered, if there was a God unfailing in love as he claimed and as my mother had claimed, why he would choose to make me suffer for her sins.
I am the Lord, I am the Lord, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness. I show this unfailing love to many thousands by forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. Even so I do not leave sin unpunished, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.
I had always believed this meant that God had chosen to prescribe this arbitrary punishment because whatever he did to the parents could not be enough, that he wanted to be able to condemn their children too.
That kind of anger, I could understand. It was anger without forgiveness.
**
In St. Michael’s graveyard, shrouded by the light fog that the sun had yet to burn away, my revelation was this: it is not God’s anger that casts punishment onto the next generations, but the consequences of our own selfishness.
This was not a special revelation, nor a difficult one to see or understand. But I had been blinded by a humanist philosophy that kept me in the prison of seeing this world in terms of relative good, not the absolute good of God’s wisdom.
At my stillborn son’s grave, I suddenly knew why that passage was in Exodus. God understands—surely in a sadness we cannot comprehend—that children and grandchildren suffer as an inevitable consequence of their parents’ actions. Those abused in childhood become abusers themselves, and their children abuse so that the cycle continues. Children raised in the shadow of the greed or selfishness of their parents learn that greed and selfishness themselves.
Indeed, my hollow existence without God’s presence was a testimony to the repercussions of events that had begun before I was born, just as the baby put into the earth here had been born dead because of the choices of the people responsible for its conception.
Yet, and this was important for me to later understand,
I still had a choice. Remain victim. Or find a way to drop the chains from my body.
But where would I find that redemption?
I thought of Samuel and his tear-soaked prayer of gratitude and sadness in his church the day before.
**
“Is that the answer?” I spoke clearly, looking upward in the shroud that covered the steeple that had once been painted black.
I stood. “I’m ready, then,” I said. “I believe. Reach me. Touch me. I believe.”
Nothing answered my challenge.
No sight or sound. No sensation. No change in my heart. The gray shroud did not part to show sudden sunshine.
I stared down at the tombstone again.
Even if God would not reply, what I wanted more were tears. My tears. For not once following my mother’s departure had I allowed myself to cry.
I opened my mind to the images that I had tried to block before. I thought of my son’s inert body, the softness of his pale skin as he was wrapped to be placed in the coffin. I thought of how it might have been had he lived, had I not abandoned him, of his arms wrapped around my neck and his face buried in my chest as I held him and comforted his tears. I thought of his hand, reaching up to mine as we walked down the street. I thought of Claire’s pain. I thought of my pain.
But I could not cry.
So I walked away.
Chapter 33
I stood in the presence of the Confederate soldier mannequin once more, surrounded by those swords that hung on the magnificent walnut panels of the admiral’s den walls. I’d arrived in front of his video camera at the front entrance only a minute earlier; knowing what I learned since visiting him a day earlier, I wasn’t surprised that he had agreed to let me inside. Nor was I surprised that he now gazed at me with thoughtfulness, as if waiting to see what weapons I would fire, and what counteraction he should take.
I wasn’t going to waste time.
“You were there the night my mother disappeared,” I said to him. “You were there with her.”
Admiral Robertson took his pipe from its stand and worked tobacco into the bowl. I knew this was a delay tactic. I pressed my advantage.
“You know more than you told me yes
terday,” I said. “I am certain of this because of a Colt .45 sealed in a plastic bag, labeled with the date of my mother’s disappearance and your initials—M.W.R. When the fingerprints are analyzed, they will be yours.”
The admiral bit hard on the stem of his pipe, confirming my hunch that McLean Robertson had a middle name that began with a W.
“Edgar Layton will die soon,” I said. I thought of Senator Gillon’s warning to Amelia. “How long do you think before an investigation opens into what he leaves behind?”
“A Navy Colt .45 with my fingerprints on it and what else?” the admiral said. “You come bursting in like Sherlock Holmes with a dramatic confrontation. Surely you have a way to link the gun to your mother. Her body, perhaps, with a bullet matching the gun? And an eyewitness placing the two of us together. Something that will hold up in court.”
I heard the subtext. “Her body, perhaps, with a bullet matching the gun. An eyewitness placing us together.” Was my mother dead? Had it happened after Amelia watched a woman leave her father’s car at the train station? I could not help my vulnerability in this moment.
“I was ten,” I said. “I just want to know what happened to my mother. You haven’t asked me where that gun came from, which tells me you know at least something.”
He lit a match and sucked hard on the pipe to draw flame into the bowl. When he was satisfied with his efforts and the smoke rose in thick curls, he unclamped his mouth from the stem and smiled. “Say I did know something. So what? My point stands. With nothing that will hold up in court, you and I have nothing more to talk about. Ever again.”
“Not quite true. I understand you have a Rottweiler as
a guard dog,” I said. “Am I correct?”
The admiral lifted his head and stared at me. We each understood what the other knew.
“I no longer have it,” the admiral said. He bit down on his pipe but did not inhale. “I took it for a walk two nights ago, as I normally do. He was struck by a car and killed. The driver kept going.”
The admiral made a point of continuing to lock eyes with me, playing this game of liars’ poker like a veteran with a winning hand.
“I’m sure witnesses can confirm this,” I said.
“Why would I need it confirmed?”
“Say you did. I’m sure your veterinarian can confirm this.”
“The dog was killed instantly,” Admiral Roberston said, pipe still in his teeth. “There was no need for a vet.”
“You filed a report with the police about the hit-and-run driver?”
“They couldn’t find your mother. Why would I expect them to find the driver of a car that hit a dog?”
“They might be interested in seeing your dog’s body if
I reported to the police that two nights ago a man of your height and build instructed a Rottweiler to attack me. But I’d much rather learn about my mother than go to the police.”
The admiral smiled from behind a new cloud of pipe smoke. “Your Sherlock Holmes approach is wearisome. I would tell the police the same thing I’ll tell you. I’m a navy man. I was fond of that dog. Yesterday morning I gave it a burial at sea. I’m afraid there’s no chance of finding its body. Even if they did find it, how could they prove it attacked you?”
“Of course,” I said.
As if summoned, the large bodyguard appeared in the doorway.
“Good-bye,” Admiral Robertson said. “Please don’t trouble me anymore.”
“Next Rottweiler you get,” I said, “make sure it’s not such a gutless pansy.”
I was rewarded with a tightening of the admiral’s jaw muscles, a subtle flinch. It wasn’t much satisfaction, but it was the best that I could do.
Chapter 34
When I arrived back at the inn at Two Meeting Street, Amelia was already on the porch, leaning against a column, staring without focus at the beauty of the flowers just past the porch railing.
She smiled as I walked the cobblestone path to the mansion.
With that smile, fresh tears filled her eyes, as if she had been waiting for someone to share her sadness with before allowing herself this grief.
“My father,” she said. “He . . . he . . . it happened early this morning.”
“I am sorry for you,” I said when I reached her.
She stepped forward into my arms, naturally, and let me hold her.
Human nature is treacherous. She needed comfort. Yet against my will, my mind turned not to her sadness but to how wonderful she felt against me, even with the dull pain of the lacerations on my chest and belly far from healed.
As Amelia continued to cling to me, and even then, fully aware that I was betraying her childlike trust, I could not turn my thoughts or emotions back to her needs. I dwelt selfishly on mine, enjoying the sensation of wisps of her hair against my cheek.
And I thought of Claire.
With some shame, I allowed Amelia to sob against me, the sounds of her pain muffled against my chest.
I closed my eyes and waited. Laughter from the park reached my ears. An army propeller cargo plane droned overhead. A car horn beeped in the distance.
“Thank you,” she said. She delicately stepped back from me and began the task of composing herself.
I stared down at the flower blossoms she had not noticed earlier.
“May we sit?” she asked moments later.
“Of course,” I said, realizing how formal each of us suddenly sounded.
We did not face each other. There were many chairs on the porch, including several rockers. We sat side by side and looked out at the park. Charleston had provided us with postcard-perfect weather—no breeze, an achingly blue sky. The distant white specks of seagulls drifted high above the harbor.
“I don’t remember much of getting home from the hospital,” she said. “I thought I was ready for his death. I thought I was strong enough. I’d known he would die. Yet when it actually happened, I felt suspended in a zone of disbelief.”
She trusted me enough to talk.
“I wish it could have been different,” Amelia whispered. “My whole life with him, I wish it could have been different. But after that night . . . and he knew, all the time, that I’d been in the car. He couldn’t talk to me about it. I couldn’t talk to him. It drove us apart.
“His breath was going. He asked me to remember him for how he taught me to ride a bicycle, how he took me fishing.
“That’s when it hit me. My daddy was about to die. It seems ridiculous that I hadn’t understood it until that moment. As a doctor, of all people, I should know it best. All the clinical signs . . . the daily degeneration . . .
“I finally started to cry. How can a person contain such evil but also have that ray of love? This man loved me so much that in the end, it was me who hurt him. I continued to cry and . . .
“He cried too. Not much. His body wouldn’t let him.
I held his hand and the tears came down his face. The last thing he said to me was, ‘I’m sorry for that night. Losing
you wasn’t worth anything I ever gained instead.’ I told him I was sorry, too, but I’m not sure he heard me. And then Daddy was gone.”
I wondered if she had heard herself call him Daddy.
When she finished, she was in tears again. This time without my arms around her to give her the illusion that my heart shared the emotions of her heart.
I felt more treacherous because my thoughts were not on her pain. But on my needs.
He was dead. Edgar Layton now existed simply as old bones and old skin, and soon those too would be gone. He was somewhere on a hospital gurney, about to be shipped to a funeral home. No chance for me to learn anything from him about my mother.
I caught my thoughts and loathed myself for them. I had become like Edgar Layton. Concerned only for what a person could give me.
“He said something earlier,” Amelia told me. She didn’t bother to wipe her tears. “Something about you.”
“Your father?”
Amelia n
odded. “‘Tell Nick he promised.’ That’s what he said. ‘Tell Nick he promised.’ Does that make sense to you?”
I shook my head. Slowly. Trying to be a convincing liar. I’d tried to make a deal with Edgar Layton. Protection for Amelia if he helped me. That’s all. He hadn’t helped. There was nothing now to promise.
“He said something else too. Three times. ‘Dry sister. Dry sister. Dry sister.’ Does that make any sense to you?”
I shook my head again. And again, it was a lie.
Dry sister.
I think I knew what he meant. Although I had found it without his help.
Not dry sister. Try the sister.
Which I had already done.
Now that Edgar Layton was dead, and the admiral safe behind his silence, who was left to ever tell the truth about the night my mother left Charleston?
Chapter 35
Amelia leaned back in her rocker and closed her eyes.
“It kills me,” she said, eyes still closed, tears on her cheeks, “to think that he wouldn’t listen even once to what I so desperately wanted him to understand. As he was dying, all I could think about was a man named William Carruthers. He died in my care. Then came back to life.”
I nodded. A statement like that would get anyone’s attention.
She described it so well that I could imagine I was there.
**
It happened her first year out of residency. During a shift in the emergency department.
She’d entered the acute room, holding a clipboard chart for a sixty-three-year-old patient named William Carruthers, who was dressed in a hospital gown, sitting on the edge of a bed, hooked to a heart monitor. He was short and balding, with a triple chin, and flesh that looked like sludge piled on bones. Prime candidate for a heart attack. Standing beside him was Rachel Kritt, the charge nurse. Taller than Amelia and heavy boned, she wore her red hair tied back in a ponytail.
“Rachel?” Amelia asked.
“Pulse is 93. Blood pressure 110 over 80.”
Amelia took William Carruthers’s hand. It was limp, warm. “Mr. Carruthers,” Amelia said, “when did the pain begin?”
Out of the Shadows (Nick Barrett Charleston series) Page 19