She still had Tory’s room to clear, that stifling closed-up dungeon, where more dire findings might still be lurking, the filthy nests hanging from the ceiling, likely full of dead spiders, the boxes of dolls likely mixed with bees. She wouldn’t leave it to Mable. Clay would help; she wouldn’t be able to keep him away, and if there were more secrets, he’d help her destroy them. Maybe then, maybe with that task out of the way, she’d feel better.
She couldn’t be sure when she had her last dose of poison, at least the three days since Tory’s death, but with the prior crippling weeks, the discovery of Tory’s room, the sheer horror of Tory’s death, and her own role in that, she felt as exhausted as she had all summer long. She scolded herself for not feeling more relaxed. She needed a break from thinking about anything connected to Farthest House. “Could we drive out to Briarwood and see the library?”
Clay’s face brightened, “You got it.”
The afternoon was warm, and at the car he removed his coat, tossing it into the back where he strapped Prairie into her seat. Watching the two of them gave Willow hope. As crazy as the last few months had been, she still had things to be thankful for, and as Clay drove, she looked out over the serene lawns and family homes. This was her hometown, now, and she needed to fit herself into the rhythms of its people. She needed to build a life forward, an artist’s life.
Clay reached over, the back of his hand running a warm line down her jawbone from her ear to her chin. “However it unfolded, Tory is the only one responsible.”
She did her best to smile. Of course Tory’s death was Tory’s fault. But entirely? Tory hadn’t been alone in the library, and Willow wished there was a way of going back to that moment before she traded cups. She wouldn’t. She’d carry the tea back to the kitchen and dump it. Pride and anger made her challenge Tory. She knew Tory would never back down.
Greenburr continued to pass by her car window. So many times Papa had driven her down this road. Papa. Now that Tory was dead, she’d do exactly as he did, hide more truth than she told. Except this time, no one was going free, and no more people would be hurt.
Clay pulled onto the campus grounds, driving slowly over the narrow and winding streets and past old buildings. “Loeffler Hall, right there,” he said. “My office, second floor.”
She could see through the glass panes in the heavy wooden double doors to a broad wooden staircase. She sighed, remembering the delicious weight of new textbooks and the groan of such stairs in ancient collegiate buildings. “Who’s Loeffler? Another rich alumni?”
“He was one of the music world’s greatest and most famous composers. The music hall is in the basement.”
“Sounds noisy.”
“I don’t hear anything unless I go downstairs, which I love doing. At the top of the stairs is a replica of a large, charcoal portrait of Loeffler, the work of John Singer Sargent.”
“Really?”
He enjoyed her surprise. “You’ll want to see it. Someday, we’ll visit Boston and see the original, if you’d like.”
From the backseat, Prairie began singing a sleepy-sounding song, her small hands clapping. Students moved between classes. Two squirrels ran one after the other across a green lawn. Everything looks peaceful, Willow thought, and yet, her stomach fisted and sent pain shooting toward her ribs.
“There it is,” Clay said.
They parked at the curb. The library sat twenty yards away, across a wide sweep of grass. Groups of students sat in pairs or small clusters beneath stately burr oaks spared during the library’s construction. At the building’s entrance, balloons bobbed on strings, and carved above the door was the inscription, Luessy Starmore Library.
Studying its size and the new stone and glass, Willow couldn’t help but wish Papa and Mémé were there to see it. “It’s beautiful.” The pride on Clay’s face pleased her. “Mémé would love this.” She lifted a shaky hand and ran a fingertip down his jaw, solid, yet soft. Flesh and spirit. “You really like being here, Greenburr and this school.”
“It’s become home. I am happy here. What would a bigger, over-crowded university offer me? Probably a much smaller office for one thing, so many students I’d never learn their names or anything about their lives, and have less time to write.”
From the backseat, Prairie kicked in her seat, and Clay reached over and squeezed her toes through her soft shoes. “Okay, okay,” he said. And to Willow, “She’s ready to get out and move.”
I ought to be ecstatic, Willow thought. I have everything I wanted.
“Hey, if this is too much too soon,” Clay was studying her expression, “we can do it another day.”
“I thought I was ready, but seeing the library…,” she stopped, thinking of all the time he spent on the project and how she had whined about one thing or another their entire relationship. “It’s beautiful, it’s amazing. You don’t see any yellow cars, do you? Or Tory’s ghost peering out from some shadow?”
He looked around, “No. Do you?”
She took a deep breath. “We’re here. I’d love to see it.”
“We won’t stay long. Next time though, you’ll have to suffer the campus-wide tour.”
She stepped into the warm air while Clay unstrapped Prairie, and she told herself her uneasiness was just nerves. She’d spent so much time afraid, that now, fear nested in her hair.
They started up the walk, Prairie in Clay’s arms when he stopped. “Hang on a second, I’m going to grab my coat.” He set Prairie down and turned back for the car. “You never know who you’ll see. Tory’s funeral may have pulled donors from the woodwork.”
Prairie started off in the direction of the balloons. Willow started after her but caught herself. Today’s the day. The day I start learning to relax. Prairie wasn’t running for the street, but away from it, and twenty pairs of eyes watched her.
Two male students passed, hardly catching Willow’s attention until one stopped. “Hey,” he said. “How you doing?” A smile cracked across his face.
She smiled back. She supposed she might not have caught his attention had she been in a pair of jeans, the every-campus uniform. But in her black skirt, quitting just above her knees, and her heels, she stood out.
Beside the car, Clay unrolled his sleeves before reaching for his coat. “Hey, Butler,” he called, “the lady is with me.”
Both students turned to him and grinned. “Dr. H., how you doing?”
Willow wanted to run back to the car and kiss Clay for announcing their relationship to his world, but she couldn’t let Prairie get too far ahead. She mouthed the words, “I love you.”
His voice rose over the top of the car, “Very well, I might add.”
On the sidewalk, Prairie moved quickly, still with a toddler’s forward tilt, as though her feet tried to keep up with the rest of her body. “Prairie,” Willow called. Something unquiet had begun to tick in her ears, “Stop.”
Half way up the walk, Prairie did stop and turn to watch Willow.
Safe. Still, breath by more rapid breath, Willow found she struggled to pull air into her lungs. Each gasp left her more desperate. She opened her mouth wider, wheezed harder for oxygen, and felt as if her lungs were quitting on her. Her peripheral vision began to darken, heavy curtains slowly closing on a stage. A classic panic attack? A heart attack? Would she actually drop, or worse, in front of Prairie? She waved her hand, tried to shoo her daughter on, keep her from seeing. “Balloons,” she said. “Prairie, get the pretty balloons.”
Clay caught her as her knees buckled. “Whoa, there, you okay?”
Slunk against his chest, the world spun, but she managed an apology. “I’m sorry,” or hoped she did. Her voice sounded reedy in her ears.
He held her tight. “Come on, let’s get you back to the house.”
The world continued to circle. She didn’t understand the ticking, only that it came from within the listening, talking place. It wasn’t residual poison in her system, but the “listen up” hollow, where she saw image
s of crones, where warnings caught her, and she’d seen Papa dying.
“Prairie,” Clay called, “come on back, now.”
His voice in Willow’s ear startled her. Pieces rattled down and clicked into place. Mary was there. The line from my journal slammed into her head. I, the one who knew him. She was the only one who truly knew Mary. Then a second line from my journal: Death rides into a village holding the reins of three horses. Papa and Tory, Willow counted, her heart hammering. “Prairie! Get Prairie!”
“She’s okay,” Clay said, “I’m watching her.” Willow twisted in his arms, but he held her. “Hang on would you? Let’s get you in the car first, Prairie’s not going anywhere.”
Trees spun faster. The ticking increased. Her dizziness put Prairie there and there and there. She struggled to force words that would not rise over the crest of her panic. She heard Mary’s threat from nearly two years earlier: Your baby is going to die, too. “Get Prairie,” she was sobbing.
“Okay, okay.” He let her go, took a small step back, but kept his hands out as if he might have to catch her again. “Calm down. You’re scaring the hell out of me. I’ll get Prairie, and we’re going straight to the hospital.”
He had heard her words, but the way he hesitated told her he didn’t understand the urgency. “Prairie!” she wailed.
A yellow car. Impossible. She didn’t know from which direction the car approached, possibly it dropped from the sky or swelled up through the ground.
The TR6 jumped the curb behind a parked car, bounced onto the grass, settled on its shocks, and headed for Prairie.
Willow’s reaction was instinctive. Before her mind could think of the best thing to do, her arms lifted into the air, and she stepped from Clay and onto the grass, waving, “Here I am.” Leaving Clay baffled, keeping herself the center of Mary’s attention. Not this time, not again, she told herself, nothing and no one would take another from her.
She’d keep herself the target while Prairie escaped. How simple it seemed now, she and Mary. That’s how it started and should have remained. She wanted to yell but didn’t dare for fear the sound would distract Prairie. “Come on,” she only mumbled through clenched teeth. Mary couldn’t kill her. Tory hadn’t been able to. Papa’s death hadn’t. She waved her arms, both arms feeling strong, healthy, and fixed. Come on. She’d need only a second, half a second to jump behind the oak at her side.
“Hide!” Clay shouted. He pushed her behind the tree, upsetting her balance in the shove.
“No,” Willow screamed, as Mary’s attention turned to Clay and then to the child he raced toward. Time slowed, nearly stopped, as milliseconds curved in slothful loops. The yellow car changed trajectory, slow now, too. Mary could take both, double the loss, wait for just the right moment when together they entered her riflescope.
Students in the car’s path screamed, cursed, and scattered. Hearing the fright made Prairie, who’d reached the steps, turn and look back with fear. She saw Clay and began running back into the open, back to him, her arms out, her tiny dress flouncing, her small soft shoes patting, her face stricken.
Willow lay paralyzed on the ground. Her body frozen, as frame by frame the unfolding images struck her. She couldn’t outrun Clay, and she couldn’t look away.
Clay, who raced both for Prairie and Robbie, who could save one by saving the other, who might lose both, had ten yards. His fear made Prairie stop, made her knees bend to nearly a squat, her arms lift higher for him, screaming now.
With each of his long strides, horror hammered deeper into Willow’s chest. Her ears roared. She struggled to her knees, felt her whole body rocking, even with her hands flat on the grass. Mary was on them now, had hit the accelerator, her pearly hands clutched the steering wheel, and her white wolf eyes narrowed. Around her neck was the ruined black paper chain she’d pulled down.
With the car only seconds from impact, Clay grabbed Prairie around her waist. Slowing enough to pick her up caused an unwanted break in his stride, not the clean plant, pivot, and jump. Prairie was in the air and nearly slipped from his grip. Secured by his other hand, her head tucked under his arm, he led with his head and free arm. His hips and feet followed the momentum as he jumped, striving for perfect parabolic trajectory, his shoulder turning, his back hitting on the far corner of the hood, his body tucked as he rolled off.
Willow ran. Clay lay immobile on his back, Prairie still in his arms, close to his chest. Willow dropped to her knees at their side and saw Prairie lift her head, a stunned look on her face as she reached for Willow. Clay’s squinted eyes proved bells rang in his head, but he was conscious. “Is she hurt?” he managed.
Only then did it register to Willow that she had heard a crash and students and faculty closed in, streaming like ants from across the grass, coming in all directions. Mary’s car was slammed into an oak tree, the front end as crumpled as newspaper, the windshield shattered.
50
They gathered in the kitchen over coffee and cookies, and Mable presided in her brightest gold caftan, smiling as if at her brood. Clay, bruised and with bandaged ribs, turned pages in a seed catalogue. Jonah sat on one side of him, and they talked about ordering and planting bulbs before the first frost. Jonah’s eyes looked so clear that my heart soared. Willow sat on Clay’s other side, enjoying coffee in a thick white mug, occasionally leaning into his shoulder, or dropping her hand onto his thigh. Prairie pulled pans from a low drawer. Several banged.
“I think she needs a puppy,” Willow said.
Jonah set his cup down, kept his hands spooned around the warmth. “Always good having a dog around.”
Willow watched him, her hands matching his in the way her palms hugged the substantial cup and its warmth. She’d never have tea again, would rid the place of the thin chinaware, and would make Farthest House hers. “We’ll get two,” she said. “Two, as much like Friar as possible. We’ve got more than enough space.” The idea excited her, and she leaned forward, drawing one foot up under herself, and sitting back taller. “Puppies are just the new life we need around here. Two from the same litter, so they can play together, but one will be yours Jonah, if you want. He’ll spend his nights with you. I owe you a dog.”
Jonah tried to hide his emotion. “Yup,” he said. “Your grandmother always had a dog.”
Mable leaned over his shoulder, “More coffee, old man?” She topped off his cup and took a place beside him. “Did you know?” she said to Willow, “Luessy’s aunt came from France? She had your back. She was a tall, striking woman.”
Clay winked at Willow as if to say, “See what you are.”
“What made you think of that?” Willow asked.
“I used to watch her,” Mable continued, “she moved like a long ribbon. Even in her eighties, she carried herself that way. She turned heads. Your grandmother, was a little rounder. The night you were born, Luessy walked through the house saying, ‘Amelie-Anais has returned.’ Like she was telling the rooms. I think it helped her accept your mother’s death. She was promising herself that we all come and go, and Amelie’s return proved Jeannie was all right. She took a piece of your umbilical cord and buried it out by those graves. She believed this hilltop belonged to you. She meant to return it to the aunt who saved her life.”
The information, though only some of it felt new, settled over Willow. “Mémé once said, ‘I see my dreams are true.’ That’s what she meant, isn’t it? She thought I was Amelie-Anais?”
Clay grinned, “Maybe you are.”
“That’s superstitious,” Mable said. “Though who wouldn’t be with a graveyard out your door and your drowned husband in the river at the bottom of the hill.”
Willow dared not glance at Jonah who turned pages, a thick finger occasionally punctuating an interesting plant. She wanted him to believe his secret was safe.
“I hear he was a louse,” Mable went on. “A drinking louse. Now,” she enjoyed every bit of information she supposed she possessed, “he drowned a year before my time here, but e
veryone knew Luessy couldn’t keep help because of him going after everything in skirts. They found his car there but never any sign of his body. By now, there wouldn’t even be bones twisted up in the tree roots.”
Jonah’s eyes went from pink gladioli to the steam rising from his cup.
“Then, after he drowned,” Willow asked, “Mémé had her name legally changed back to Starmore?”
“She’d always kept Starmore as her writing name.”
“And Starmore for Papa and Tory?”
“The aunt insisted. Luessy might have done it, anyway. Of course, she would have, but the aunt wanted everyone to be Starmores, and it couldn’t happen fast enough. She took to saying, ‘Tory Starmore.’ She changed both of Tory’s names and called them out every chance she got like she was trying to give her a new identity. A she-wolf that one. When she died, didn’t any of us believe it. We never supposed death could win out and take her.”
The phone rang and Clay stood first. “Yes, sir,” he said a couple of times into the receiver. “I understand.”
They watched him. When he said good-bye and hung up, he returned to the table. “The University’s official report is that Mary’s death was an accident. She lost control of her car while speeding through the campus, where she was not a student and was unfamiliar with the grounds. She hit a tree because of reckless driving. There will be a toxicology report as well.”
Willow stood, picked Prairie up, and walked to the window. Fall was in the air, but Damask roses bloomed in more proliferation than she’d seen all summer. “I wonder why she picked the day of Tory’s funeral.”
“The Omaha paper announced it,” Jonah said. “Front page. A nice article about Luessy and how her last child died. Yup, Mary must a seen it, too.”
“If she knew you’d be at the funeral,” Clay said, “away from Farthest House and out with Prairie…” he let the sentence drop. “She was likely at the service and followed us out to Briarwood.”
Willow turned back to the window. Behind her was her unlikely family, and she loved each one of them. Looking out to where the hill dropped away, leaving only the blue bowl of sky, she put her lips to Prairie’s ear, “Angels are coming tonight.”
Farthest House Page 37