In those gathered, she saw half-remembered faces from the years when Papa worked on the force, men who came to the house to watch football and jumped to their feet every time the Huskers scored.
Red stood beside his wife and held his hat in his hands. Willow supposed others were Greenburr locals who’d grown up with Papa or Tory. To her left, Mable sniffed, and the ends of her dark shawl fluttered in the breeze. To her right, Tory stood with no sniffling or display of emotion, her shoulders back and her chin resolute. Willow appreciated both women: Mable’s deep feeling and, knowing that Tory and Julian hadn’t been close, her aunt’s composure and hard honesty, no pantomiming tragedy.
Jonah was half hidden between men and women who stood head and shoulders over him. She’d wanted to spend time with him the night before, but after reaching Farthest House, finalizing the funeral Mass with Tory and the priest, and getting Prairie down for the night in a strange room, the yard to his small cottage lay in darkness. She could have taken a flashlight, but standing at the kitchen window, her face pressed to the glass and her hands cupping her eyes against the inside glare, she’d not seen even the warm glow of a low-watt bulb showing in either of his inky windows. Nor could she bring herself to wake him, just because she ached for his company.
A striking man dressed in a black suit stood next to Jonah, and the two made a study in contrasts: old and young, black and white, short and tall, a concentration of forms. Whether it was because of the interesting composition they made to her artist’s eye, or something in their postures and proximity, she believed they came to the funeral together.
She dropped her gaze back to the black casket with its simple silver cross; Papa was dead, and nothing else mattered.
The Greenburr parish priest, having swung his censer over the body in the local church, an aromatic cloud of incense rolling up to accompany the soul, now sprinkled holy water, his final anointing. “Though we are separated from Julian for a time, we all share his destiny and will meet again at the resurrection on the last day.”
Hollow words, Willow thought. This was a murder.
Jeannie’s grave lay on one side of Julian’s, Mémé’s on the other, and the closeness of the three plots gave Willow some comfort. Papa wasn’t alone. There was no grave for Mémé’s husband, Papa’s father, and she wondered why Papa never mentioned him. Had Mémé divorced the man?
The priest finished his prayers, and too soon, the undertaker touched Tory’s elbow and pointed her to the walk and then touched Willow’s, “This way.” Well-wishers formed a line to offer final condolences, extending hands Willow shook while holding Prairie close, a blur of faces sliding past, lips moving. She tried to concentrate, and as Tory supplied names, she thanked them for coming and resisted telling each one, “He was murdered.” She waited for Jonah so that she could take hold of his old hand and the shaking in her own would stop.
The man she saw standing next to him earlier was alone now. He shook Tory’s hand, smiled at Prairie, and extended his hand to Willow. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Behind him only Red remained, which meant Jonah hadn’t stayed to see her.
“How good of you to come,” Tory said, her voice flowing. “Willow, I’d like you to meet Dr. Hartford.”
He smiled. “It’s just Clay.”
Handsome, she thought, with his sandy-brown hair and mauve-speckled blue-gray eyes. But the fact that she was making assessments of his looks, dog-faced or dashing, on the day of Papa’s funeral threatened to start her crying again.
“Dr. Hartford teaches the English classes at Briarwood. One course is on Mom’s novels.”
She’d heard of the small college outside of town, but she didn’t know anyone who went there. Had someone asked her about its professors, she’d have guessed they were old, matronly women who also taught piano on Saturdays.
Clay smiled at Tory’s comment. “I teach three literature classes out of a couple dozen the University offers.”
The joking and teasing, when Willow felt half sick with loss and as if her head were full of lead, made her ache for Mémé’s old bedroom: the dark and quiet where she spent the previous night.
“Dr. Hartford,” Tory said, “is in charge of building the library honoring Mom.”
“I help chair a committee,” he gently corrected. “Every member is important to the project.”
“What library?” Willow asked.
He leaned in instinctively, as though he hadn’t quite heard, then straightened, his face questioning, telling Willow that her surprise surprised him.
Tory cut in. “Willow, you’ve been under such stress. Have you forgotten the Luessy Starmore Library?” Then to Clay, “Since my brother’s accident, we haven’t gotten a chance to talk about the library again.”
Again? Willow wondered. Papa hadn’t mentioned a library. If he’d known, he’d have told her. “When’s it going to be built?”
“You’ll have to excuse us,” Tory said. She gave a pointed glance to Red and his wife still waiting in line. “You’ll be up to the house soon.”
“Absolutely,” he nodded at Tory and then Willow. “If you’re going to be in town for a few days, I’d love to show you the site.”
Willow tried to smile and seem interested. She felt made of rain and cloud.
Red offered his condolences to Tory and motioned for Willow to walk with him. As soon as they’d stepped away, she grabbed his forearm. “Have you arrested her?”
“There are no signs of a forced entry.”
“What about the back bedroom window? It might have been unlocked.”
“The windows were all down. Even if we found a latch open, that’s not evidence against Mary Wolfe. The cigarettes—”
“But she lit them and put them where they’d start a fire.”
“Walking around without his waking up? She has an alibi.” He paused. “She spent the night at the neighbor’s. The Crats. Mrs. Crat says she never left. Think about it, that was an ugly night for her to be out driving around looking to set fire to somebody’s house.”
The fierce headache pounded in Willow’s head. “She would have walked, not driven, and it wasn’t somebody’s house. It was Papa’s.”
“There’s one more thing you should know. There were bottles on the kitchen table. It looks like he’d been drinking.”
No reception followed the funeral. Prairie and Willow returned to Farthest House, and while Mable took Prairie to the kitchen and Tory went up to her room to change, Willow headed outside for the hilltop air she remembered. Hopefully, Jonah would be out, too.
Standing on the portico, her gaze took in the sweep of the wide lawn and garden. She told herself this is how it will be, nature won’t stop. Minutes will pass in the distraction of living, shaking strangers’ hands, and taking care of Prairie. The minutes will creep, until after a very long time an hour will have passed and then a second, Papa always receding.
Jonah wasn’t uncovering roses or checking his bee hives, which stood nearer to his door than she remembered. The door to the tool shed was closed, and she hated to knock on his. He hadn’t remained at the cemetery to talk to her, and she had no way of knowing the depth of his sadness, or fatigue, or his desire to be alone. She’d walk around and hope that he came out, maybe even open his door and invite her in.
The grass held a spring-green cast, thick buds pushed through furry casings on the magnolia trees. Tulips and daffodils poked thick, short fingers out of brown beds.
My attention went to the pile of gray and white sun-splashed rocks where Thomas and I had bones buried. At least this time, my ghostly specter wasn’t there. Luessy used to recite a poem I loved, and scraps of those lines returned to me, “… death like a shoe without a foot in it, death like a ring stoneless and fingerless …”
Willow made her way across the yard to where the formal lawn ended and the uncultivated hillside dropped away to new switch grass, volunteer milo, pigweed, tickseed, and to where Mémé taught her to watch for pheasants and bobolink
s. In the valley, the river shimmered through the trees covering its banks, and farther still Greenburr looked small and quaint. A tractor droned in the distance, and Willow wanted to spend the afternoon sitting there, doing nothing more than watching the clouds and the slow tractor cross the field. She’d spent the years since Mémé’s death bordered by gray asphalt, rather than living green, light poles rather than trees, and standing on the hill felt as though she stood on the edge of possibility. Her body as interwoven with the trees, grasses, and the farmers in their seasonal work, as a reed in a basket. In the years she’d been away, she tried to untwist herself from the land, but she felt she lived those years with bends and empty kinks, never fitting as well as she had at Farthest House. Now Tory wanted her to stay.
Mable opened the door off the kitchen, her voice rising, “The tea is ready.”
Willow started back. Jonah wasn’t coming out.
Holding Prairie and a small cup of dry Cheerios, she sank into a chair across the table from Tory. The dining room looked unchanged. Mémé’s burgundy-colored rugs, the heavy velvet drapes the color of new pears, the polished mahogany dining-room table with its twelve high-backed chairs and cushions of claret and dusk, and one wall, still, with a grouping of half a dozen botanicals I painted.
Willow smiled to see Tory pour tea into the purple pansy cup, “You remembered.”
Tory slid the cup and saucer and steaming tea to Willow. She lifted the lid from a silver sugar bowl and slowly sifted sugar into her own tea. “Have you considered my offer?”
“You’ve already done so much.”
Tory stirred slowly. “Having you both here would give me such pleasure.”
Taking up the honey, Willow poured a thin, gold stream into her cup. She felt sympathy for her aunt, too. Tory also lost someone in Papa, and even if they hadn’t been close, losing him shut a door on any hope of reconciliation.
Prairie picked up pieces of cereal, still clumsy at feeding herself, more eating out of her hand than her hand finding her mouth.
“I believe,” Tory continued, “your living here for a bit is what you need, too.”
As a child, Willow avoided her aunt, but now, she studied Tory’s thin, angular face and how the window light striking the right side added to its equine shape. Handprints pressed into cement aren’t a hold on a piece of land, Mémé once said, and Willow wondered what Mémé would say now. Hadn’t Tory earned Farthest House? Choosing to live simply, staying in her hometown and childhood home? Papa was the one who chose to leave for what he must have thought would be glamorous work fighting crime.
Mémé had also said a person needed to become rooted to a place before the land spoke to him. Surely now, trees whispered to Tory.
Decades ago, I’d given Tory a three-legged sewing basket. Now, she pulled a doll leg from it. With mesmerizing movements and tiny gold, pelican-shaped scissors, she snipped a length of white thread, moistened one end on her tongue, and threaded the strand into a long silver needle. The needle dipped and rose, making two, three, four small stitches before Tory’s hand lifted, and she drew the thread through all the stitches at once.
“You must have made hundreds of dolls by now,” Willow said.
“I’ve no idea how many. Do you think Prairie would enjoy one?” Before Willow could answer, Tory continued on, as if she didn’t expect an answer or hadn’t heard herself ask the question. “I can’t offer you a permanent place,” she said. “When I die, Greenburr inherits all this. You do remember hearing Mom’s will read?”
A vision of Papa’s casket suspended over the inky outline of the grave below made Willow shudder. “Let’s not talk about dying.”
“Well, shall we talk about you?” Tory sipped her tea, and her eyes lowered again to her sewing. “Tell me more about your life.”
Willow toyed with Prairie’s hair, winding curls behind her daughter’s ears and considered what she could handle telling and what she best avoid. “I’d love to stay here. The thought of going back to my apartment, standing at the window, and not seeing Papa’s roof creeps me out. Without him there,” she took a breath and some time, “we have nothing left in Omaha.” And so many reasons to get as far away as possible. “I’m afraid, though, that after a couple of days we’ll wear out our welcome.”
“Nonsense.”
“You and I are just getting reacquainted. I’d like us to become close, not enemies. Then, there’s my apartment and classes.” She slowed considering school, “I’ve missed a paper and a test.” A deeper realization struck her. Even if her instructors let her make up what she missed, dropping Prairie off at a sitter’s now was unthinkable. Not with Mary out there. She and Prairie needed allies. With Tory, Mable, Jonah, and the solid security and distance of Farthest House from Omaha, Prairie would be safer.
Tory lowered the doll leg onto her lap. “We’ll do fine.” The petite scissors opened, flashed, and snipped thread. “It takes years to get over a death, and I’ve lived alone too long. If I’m ever going to have something of a family again, it’s time now.”
Prairie finished her last Cheerio and squirmed to get down. Willow sat her on the floor and watched her crawl for the kitchen and Mable, as though she already knew and felt comfortable at Farthest House. Mrs. Crat’s words rang in her head: Oh heavens, haven’t you any family. “I paint,” she said after a moment. “The oils smell.”
Tory looked up from her work. “You still paint, then? My aunt used to paint in the attic. You could work there.”
With so little sleep over the last several days, Willow’s body felt like a folding-chair collapsing on itself. She struggled to focus. The attic would mean a full-sized studio, her own space to work nights and during Prairie’s naps, and where her supplies could be spread out, not piled into a playpen. A dream come true, but the only thing that mattered at the moment was having Prairie in the safest possible place.
“Good,” Tory said.
“With his house burned down, Farthest House is the only other place Papa ever lived.”
“You don’t really believe someone set fire to his house?”
Willow leaned back and looked through the doorway to Prairie on Mable’s hip. On the day they buried Papa, Prairie was happy. Farthest House, Mable, Tory, Jonah, they’d all be gifts to Prairie. “There’s this crazy person named Mary. She threatened. For Papa to die like he did, because of a fire, and for it to be a coincidence, hardly.”
“But wasn’t he a heavy smoker? Didn’t the fire start with a cigarette?” And then, almost reverently, “There was his drinking, too.”
Papa had been lax about burning cigarettes; she couldn’t forget the one he left burning in the kitchen, its smoke curling up. “He didn’t drink anymore,” she said. “I don’t understand those bottles.”
“Willow, really? He was just a man.”
For a few minutes, they sat without speaking. Willow didn’t want to hear how Papa had been ‘just a man.’ She wanted to excuse herself, get an ice pack for her head and sleep, but Tory’s long-fingered, masculine-looking hands lifted the cozy off the teapot and poured again. “Who is this Mary?”
There were volumes Willow wouldn’t tell. “A blonde, too perfect on the outside, tormented on the inside. She drives a yellow TR6.”
Tory’s penciled brows rose. She set the doll leg on the table, a needle jutting out. “Yesterday, just before you arrived, I drove down to have my teeth cleaned, and when I came out of the dentist’s office, a small yellow car, I might have said gold, was driving very slowly down Main Street, right past me. An unusual, bright color. A roadster type, I don’t know models.”
Willow’s stomach clenched. Had Mary come to check out Greenburr? The location of Farthest House?
“My dentist was surprised to see me, Julian not yet buried,” Tory explained, “but I made that appointment months ago, and I’ve never in my life missed an appointment.” She picked up her sewing again, a purposeful set to her lips. “Anyway, a pretty girl sat behind the wheel, and a car that color is not t
he sort of thing an observant person misses. I didn’t recognize her.” Tory went on, “I mean she wasn’t one of our local girls. I don’t know the college students, of course. Briarwood draws them from all over the country.”
“Did the car have Omaha plates?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“I’m scared,” Willow’s voice lowered to a whisper, “for Prairie. I half expect a court order to come any day, forcing me into joint custody with Derrick.”
“She’ll be a year old this summer. If Derrick hasn’t cared yet, why would he now?”
“Because Papa is gone. Because now it’s safe. Because Mary has resurfaced, and she’d push him into it just to hurt me. And then, on a day he has her, an accident. Texas is not far enough away.” She felt the threat of tears again, and she looked over Tory’s shoulder and out to the drive and the canopy of trees beginning to bud. “Please, let’s talk about something else.”
The doll leg in Tory’s hand looked bloodless. “All right, dear.”
“It’s weird being here, weird that I was born here. Why not a hospital in Omaha?”
“Who can remember so long ago? Was it ’59, ’60? Just out of the 50’s at any rate. Home-births were common. If I remember, Julian was doing a lot of undercover work, spending many nights away, and Jeannie didn’t want to be so alone her last trimester. She loved Farthest House and the roses. She even enjoyed Mom. Julian came every chance he got.
“Dr. Mahoney,” Tory gave a tiny shake of her head, “what would this town do without him? He preferred home deliveries. Likely still does. With no hospital nearby, he’d waste a lot of time driving back and forth to Omaha, and that distance, especially if you were in heavy labor, with sometimes just awful roads? Who would want to risk having a baby while stuck in a ditch in a snowstorm? His wife always hung out her sheets the day after her babies were born, already bleached and white as snow. She’s an admirable woman.”
“That’s admirable? Who wanted those sheets out? Her, or him?”
Tory was still remembering. “Twenty years ago, doctors didn’t have to worry about lawsuits for every little thing. Death was seen as God’s will, and women often died in childbirth. Even in hospitals.”
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