She was reaching for the door, her mind a million miles away, when she barreled into Wade as he stepped onto the sidewalk with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Oh no!” Christy-Lynn stared at his dripping shirt in dismay. “You’re soaked. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Wade seemed surprised to see her but took the coffee dripping down his shirtfront in stride, blotting the stain absently with a soggy paper napkin. “I didn’t expect to see you. Tamara said you were taking a few days off.”
“With Mother’s Day over, I thought it would be a good time.”
“You’re going, aren’t you? To see Loretta Rawlings?”
She forced herself to meet his gaze squarely. “Yes.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?”
No. She wasn’t. She’d thought about it, feeling she owed it to him after he had helped her, but in the end, she had decided against it. “I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”
“I already tried that. Clearly, it didn’t work. And you don’t need my approval.”
“No, I don’t. But I wish you could understand why I have to do this. I’m not going to Riddlesville to break Loretta Rawlings’s heart.”
“I know you’re not. And it’s not her heart I’m worried about.”
Christy-Lynn wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and so she said nothing at all.
“Take care of yourself,” Wade said, his voice suddenly gentle. “It’s a long way to West Virginia.”
“I made it here from Maine.”
“True enough. Still . . .” He reached for the cell phone peeking from the side pocket of her purse and began tapping the screen. After a moment, he handed it back. “All right. I’m in there. Just in case you get sleepy while you’re driving. Or if you just want to talk.”
She smiled awkwardly. His concern was both touching and unsettling. “I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, you will. Just the same, I’ll leave mine on.”
Riddlesville was a gray and gritty town, made all the more dismal by the steady drizzle that had been falling all afternoon. Christy-Lynn couldn’t help cringing as she drove through the derelict downtown—block after block of run-down buildings, vacant storefronts, and dirty sidewalks. She was relieved when she finally reached the stop sign at the edge of town, though what awaited her on the other side proved no less depressing. Ramshackle houses with crumbling chimneys and sagging porches, yards choked with broken baby strollers and cast-off recliners—all reminiscent of a childhood she’d just as soon forget.
Organized neighborhoods eventually gave way to a more sparse landscape, lots pocked with rusty trailers and rotting barns. Christy-Lynn’s stomach clenched when she spotted the sign for Red Bud Road. She’d been driving for hours, wondering if she’d ever reach her destination, but now that she was close her doubts began to resurface. How did one go about broaching the subject of adultery with a grieving grandmother?
Christy-Lynn followed the deserted clay track for more than a mile, wondering if she’d missed a turn or misread the sign. Finally, she spotted a small clapboard structure set back from the road, the yard a rough patch of sparse brown scrub. She let her foot off the gas, approaching at an idle, certain now that she had made a wrong turn.
The place was little more than a shack with a listing front porch and a roof patched in places with squares of weathered plywood. In the side yard, a cracked kiddie pool contained several inches of slimy green water, and there was an old Chevy slowly rotting around back, the rear windshield caved in, back tires flat to the rim. Surely no one lived here. But the number on the mailbox matched the one on the paper Wade had given her.
She pulled into the drive and got out, picking her way along a weedy track meant to pass for a path to the porch. Skirting a cluster of mismatched pots filled with pink and white geraniums—the only signs of life in an otherwise abysmal landscape—she mounted a set of creaky steps, took a deep breath, and knocked before she could change her mind.
It was some time before the door opened, but finally a wizened face with eyes the color of old chambray appeared through a narrow opening.
“Yes?” The voice was creaky with age and unmistakably wary.
“Are you Loretta Rawlings?”
“Who wants to know?”
“My name is Christine Ludlow, Mrs. Rawlings.” The name felt strange on her tongue, foreign after so many months as Christy-Lynn Parker. “My husband was Stephen Ludlow. Does that name mean anything to you?”
The door eased open another few inches. The old woman stood looking her over, heavily stooped at the waist and shoulders. “You’ve come then,” she said hoarsely. “I wondered if you would.”
“I’m not here to cause trouble, Mrs. Rawlings. I just . . . there are questions. About your granddaughter and my husband. I was hoping we could talk.”
The old woman glanced back over her shoulder, as if she might have something on the stove. Christy-Lynn tried to peer inside but could make out nothing beyond an old plaid couch and a floor lamp with a yellowed shade.
“Give me a minute, and I’ll be out.”
She closed the door then, leaving Christy-Lynn standing on the porch. Moments later, she returned with two glasses of lemonade. She wore a scruffy wool sweater despite the afternoon heat. “There,” she said, nodding toward a pair of plastic chairs. “We’ll sit there.” She handed Christy-Lynn a glass that was already beginning to sweat, then fumbled in the pocket of her housedress, eventually producing a soft pack of Basic Menthols and a disposable lighter.
She eased stiffly into one of the chairs, waiting until Christy-Lynn had taken the other to withdraw a cigarette from the pack and clamp it between her lips. Her hands, blue-veined and skeletal, trembled as she lit it. “Hope you don’t mind. I don’t smoke in the house anymore.”
“No. Not at all.”
Christy-Lynn studied the woman as she took that first long pull, her leathery cheeks caving in as she dragged in a lung full of smoke and then exhaled it with a faint rattle. It was impossible to guess her age. She was skin and bone, all joints and sinew, her skin the texture of old parchment. Somewhere in her eighties was probably a safe bet, though she could have been younger. Something told her life had been less than kind to Loretta Rawlings.
For a time, Christy-Lynn said nothing, balancing her untouched lemonade glass on her knee and wondering where to begin. In the end, it was Mrs. Rawlings who broke the silence.
“Ask what you came to ask,” she said in her flat, phlegmy voice. “I’ll do my best to answer.”
“I know how uncomfortable this must be for you, Mrs. Rawlings. It’s uncomfortable for me too. But there are things I feel I have a right to know, like the precise nature of your granddaughter’s relationship with my husband.”
Loretta Rawlings turned her head, her hazy eyes unsettlingly steady. “You don’t need to mince words, Mrs. Ludlow. I’ve been around a long time. Not much shocks me.”
Christy-Lynn nodded, wishing she could say the same. “All right then, was your granddaughter having an affair with my husband?”
Loretta took another long pull on her cigarette as she mulled the question. “I’d stopped thinking of it that way, but I suppose that’s what it was. No way around it really, since it was you wearing the wedding ring and not my Honey.”
The blunt answer left Christy-Lynn scrambling for a response. She had expected something else, a defense of her granddaughter’s behavior, excuses, justification. Instead, she had answered the question head-on. “Can you tell me how long they were . . . how long they knew each other?”
She seemed to give the question some thought, tracing a shaky finger around the rim of her glass. “I suppose it must be almost four years now. It was right after the book about the plane crash. Honey loved that book. When she heard they were making it into a movie, she convinced herself that if she could just meet the author she could talk him into giving her the part of Sandra. Used to walk around practicing her lines like she was moving to Holl
ywood any day.”
“Your granddaughter was an actress?”
Loretta smiled sadly. “My granddaughter was a dreamer, Mrs. Ludlow. And determined to get out of this town.” She turned her face away, her voice suddenly thick. “She got half her wish.”
Christy-Lynn squirmed as the moment stretched, sad and more than a little awkward. “I’m sorry you lost your granddaughter, Mrs. Rawlings.”
“No one calls me Mrs. Rawlings. Call me Rhetta. And thank you for that. It’s big of you to say after . . . everything. How did you find out?”
“I was asked to identify your granddaughter’s body at the morgue.”
Rhetta’s head snapped around, eyes flashing. “Bastards,” she growled, flicking her cigarette off the front porch and into the weeds.
“Yes.”
Silence descended again, a moment of shared anger punctuated by the dreary patter of drizzle. Rhetta fished out another cigarette, putting it to her lips with an unsteady hand. “The pictures were awful,” she said, staring out into the yard. “That’s how I found out she was dead. I was standing in line at the IGA, and there she was, splashed across the front page like one of those movie stars from the 1950s.”
Christy-Lynn silently cursed Daniel Connelly for his greed. “I’m so sorry,” she said softy, because she was. “I’d hoped you hadn’t seen them.”
“We get the papers here just like everyone else. I saw your picture a few times too. It must’ve been terrible being in the middle of all that.”
“It was. I had to move. I live in Virginia now.”
Rhetta lit her cigarette then blew out a long plume of smoke. “I’m sorry your life got turned inside out because of Honey. I told her nothing good would come of it. I told her the first time she brought your husband around.”
Christy-Lynn felt the words like a physical blow. It never occurred to her that Stephen would have come to Riddlesville. “You’ve met my husband?”
Rhetta blinked at her through a lingering cloud of smoke. “Of course I’ve met him.”
“Here?”
Rhetta’s weathered face puckered with a sour smile. “We weren’t what he was used to, but he came around when he could.”
“I’m sorry. I just thought—”
“I know what you thought. I thought it too, at first. All that money and those fancy clothes. Never a hair out of place. I couldn’t think what a man like that would want with Honey. But then, people aren’t always what they seem.”
Christy-Lynn allowed the remark to sink in, trying to decide if it was aimed at Stephen or Honey. She was about to say that she’d learned that lesson the hard way when a shadow darkened Rhetta’s face. She had gone still, her head inclined toward the door, as if she’d caught some faint sound.
And then Christy-Lynn heard it too, a high-pitched keening that seemed to be drawing closer by the second. There was a sudden look of alarm as Rhetta tossed her cigarette over the rail and struggled to her feet. Before she could reach the door, it opened and a small face appeared.
“Nonny!”
She was a tiny thing, pale hair pasted stickily to her head, eyes luminous with panic. Rhetta reached for her, scooping her up into her arms with a harsh rattle of breath. “Hush now,” she crooned against the child’s wet cheek. “I’m right here. Nonny’s right here.”
The girl quieted almost immediately, though her breath still came in muffled shudders, her face burrowed in the crook of Rhetta’s shoulder. Christy-Lynn’s heart squeezed as she watched the scene. She recognized the aftermath of a nightmare when she saw it. And judging by Rhetta’s practiced attempts to soothe her, it probably wasn’t the first episode.
She was curled in Rhetta’s lap now, pulling furiously at the thumb in her mouth. Rhetta patted her back gently, crooning against her cheek. “That’s my big girl. We have company.”
The child turned to look at Christy-Lynn, her mouth suddenly still around her thumb, as if noticing her for the first time. She was lovely, a pale fairy of a girl with hair like corn silk and enormous violet eyes.
Her mother’s eyes.
Something cold and slippery roiled just south of Christy-Lynn’s ribs as she inventoried the child’s features. Heart-shaped face, skin like a china doll’s—and a prominent dimple in her tiny chin.
Stephen’s chin.
Rhetta’s eyes locked with Christy-Lynn’s. “This is Iris.”
The porch seemed to shift, the soft thrum of rain receding as she stared at Stephen’s little girl. The one she had vowed to never have. The one Honey had given him instead.
TWENTY-FIVE
“We’d better go inside,” Rhetta said, struggling to get out of her chair with Iris clinging to her. “No sense airing the family laundry on the front porch.”
Christy-Lynn looked up and down the deserted road, wondering who on earth might overhear them, but it wasn’t worth the argument. She stood, worrying briefly that her legs might buckle as she turned to follow Rhetta inside.
The living room was small and cluttered, the air thick with stale cooking oil and decades of old smoke. She eyed the sagging curtains, the ancient television stacked with dog-eared copies of TV Guide, the cheap bric-a-brac covering every available surface. It was like a secondhand shop where no one ever bought anything.
Rhetta jerked her chin toward the old plaid couch. Her lips had gone a funny shade of blue, and she was huffing like an old tractor. “Have a seat. I need to get her quieted down, and then I’ll be back. Meantime, drink your lemonade. You don’t look so good.”
Christy-Lynn did as she was told, easing numbly onto the edge of the couch. In the kitchen, Rhetta kept up a soothing stream of chatter as she bathed Iris’s face and neck with a cool cloth. When she was finished, she stripped off her damp T-shirt and replaced it with a clean one from the wicker basket on the counter, then set the child down in front of the television with a small dish of fish-shaped crackers.
By the time Rhetta settled into the lumpy green recliner, she was an alarming shade of gray. “I’m sorry about that.” Her head lolled back against the chair. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this. In fact, I didn’t mean for you to find out at all.”
“Why?”
“No need to kick you while you’re down. You’ve been through enough.”
“I came because I wanted to know the truth.”
“And now?”
“I still want to know.”
She sighed, clearly exhausted. “Then I suppose you’d better ask your questions.”
“She’s Stephen’s,” Christy-Lynn said, fighting to keep her voice even. She didn’t need confirmation. She just needed a moment to sit with the truth of it. Of all the uncomfortable things she had expected to learn, the possibility of a child had never crossed her mind.
Rhetta was nodding gravely, her weathered face full of sympathy. “She’s a good girl, poor thing, but she’s having a hard time. We both are. There are some things you just can’t prepare yourself for. But then, I suppose you know about that.”
Christy-Lynn was barely listening, her attention fixed on the flesh and blood proof of her husband’s infidelity. It was jarring to see the features of both Honey and Stephen mingled in one tiny little face, perhaps because after a few minutes, it became impossible to say which features were her mother’s and which were her father’s. Finally, she managed to drag her eyes away. The sooner she had her answers, the sooner she could leave.
“Stephen and Honey . . . do you know how they met?”
Rhetta groaned, as if the memory was painful. “A book signing over in Wheeler. She saw in the paper that your husband was going to be there, and that was that. Shameful, that girl. I think she thought he’d give her the part right there on the spot. He didn’t of course—that’s not how it works—but something must have happened. Next thing I know she was flying with him to California to meet some director or other. She ended up as an extra, I think they call it. No lines, but she was convinced that sooner or later she was going to be a big star.
Maybe that’s what he told her, or maybe it’s just what she wanted to believe.”
Christy-Lynn closed her eyes, trying to dispel the images suddenly filling her head. She knew Stephen had fans. He had a ridiculous following on social media, and his signing events were usually standing-room only. She just never thought of those people as potential threats—and certainly not threats to her marriage. Though now that she did think of it, it wasn’t that surprising. When it came to turning on the charm, no one was better than Stephen.
“Was your granddaughter in love with my husband?”
Rhetta looked mildly startled. “She was twenty-five years old. What on earth did she know about love?” She sighed, closing her eyes again briefly. “Though I suppose she thought she was. She certainly wouldn’t listen to anything I tried to tell her. I warned her what would come of messing with a married man, talked till I was blue in the face. And then one day she came home and said she was pregnant. There wasn’t much sense talking after that. The damage was done.”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” Christy-Lynn said, wishing she’d never asked. But she had asked, and now there was nothing to do but sit stonily as Rhetta unraveled the time line of Honey and Stephen’s affair.
“Don’t get me wrong. I love that little girl to pieces, but I’m a bit long in the tooth to be raising a child. I’ve already raised three, God help me, and only one of them mine. Theresa—that was Honey’s mama—got herself pregnant by the first boy who offered her a ride in his truck, then ran off and left me to raise her daughter. Only saw her twice after that—the first time she’d gotten herself in a mess and needed money. The last time was to leave me with Ray—Honey’s brother. And now there’s Iris.”
“How old is she?”
“Three in March—the seventeenth.”
Christy-Lynn worked out the math as her eyes slid to the little girl in front of the TV. She had been conceived in July. Of course. Stephen had been in LA that summer, consulting on the screenplay for An Uncommon Assassin and rubbing elbows with director Aaron Rothman. And Honey apparently.
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