He caught up with her, feeling a piece of his heart leave him. It would follow her, he was sure, all the way to New Jersey, never to return.
Chapter Fifteen
Two days later, Uncle Mike stood in the kitchen of Dinah’s mother’s house—or was it Dinah’s house now?—and surveyed the overflowing counters. “Funerals sure do make people hungry, don’t they? I thought your cousin Frederick was going to confiscate every shrimp in the house the way he was going at the buffet table.”
Dinah couldn’t laugh. They’d just buried her mother. Who cared about how many shrimps cousin Frederick ate? Still, it was hard to believe that person in the casket was Patty Hopkins. Everything about her mother’s face seemed wrong and unfamiliar, her clothes perfect but somehow all wrong, her hands bearing the correct rings but shaped all wrong. Only the photographs—the myriad of portraits and snapshots and Christmas card photos they’d mounted around the room at the funeral home—seemed to show the real Mom.
Uncle Mike’s hand slipped onto her shoulder. “You okay?”
“No.”
He leaned wearily against the counter. “That’s the right answer, Dinah. Don’t go trying to make it all okay just yet. It was a terrible shock to all of us—most people didn’t even know she was as sick as she was. Respect your grief and give it time.”
Give it time? Respect it? Did she have a choice? It held her hostage, wrapped itself around her so that even the smallest tasks felt monumental. Finding containers for the leftover food felt like a challenge beyond her strength. “Yeah,” was all she managed, forcing herself to start opening cabinets and looking for things like aluminum foil. She’d grown up in this house, but she’d been gone so long she couldn’t remember where things were in the kitchen. The choke hold of grief threatened to overtake her again.
Uncle Mike put his hand over hers where it was tugging on a drawer. “She was so glad to have you coming back home. It was all she talked about. I know you two had trouble finding a way to get along, but it meant the world to her that you were going to come back. Maybe that’s why she could leave. The hospital chaplain told me that dying people often hold on for the one thing they really need, then they seem to be able to let go. She held on until you two reconnected and then, I guess, Patty could let go.”
Dinah looked up at her uncle, too overcome to make any reply.
“It’s better for me to think of it like that. That way, it feels like Patty got what she wanted, instead of being robbed of her last days. And you know your mom.” He choked up a bit and held her hand tight. “She always got what she wanted.” They fell into each other’s arms and Dinah heard her uncle weep for his baby sister for the first time since they’d begun the exhausting funeral preparations. “You can come stay with us tonight,” he said when he finally straightened. “Shannon thinks you should.” Aunt Shannon was always certain she knew what other people needed and often rather insistent about giving it to them.
“Thanks, but I want to stay here.” Dinah needed silence, needed to be surrounded by her mother’s things. How many times in the past two days had she stood in front of her mother’s closet, just running her hands over all the clothes? Outfits she long remembered, others she neither recognized nor could picture her mother wearing. How had they grown so distant? And now, that gap loomed un-crossable, that estrangement fixed forever this side of heaven. Dinah regretted so much it took her breath away. She mourned both her mother and the goodbye they didn’t really have. It was a double-grief that stole the hopeful person she used to be and left a numb shell in its place.
“You’re sure?” Mike blew his nose on a handkerchief from his pocket before he reached for his coat. “You’ll be okay?”
“No,” she said, remembering his earlier advice, “but I’ll be here in the morning.”
He gave Dinah an understanding smile. “Shannon and I will come by at ten and take you to breakfast. Might as well tackle all that paperwork on a full stomach.”
Howard Epson opened his barn doors and ushered Cameron inside. “I was going to ask you an important question, but I think I’d better ask you what’s wrong first. You look miserable. Started looking for a new renter yet? I told Peter to talk to you about running an ad in the paper. You could even move in there yourself, now. Have you thought of that?”
“No, I’ll put in an ad when it’s time, but I told Dinah I’d hold both of the spaces for her for a month or so, until she gets her plans worked out.”
Howard took a bucket off the wall and began scooping some kind of feed into it. “That’s mighty nice of you. I reckon that helps smooth things out a bit.” He handed the bucket to Cameron to hold as he added two cubes of something that looked like hay and a trio of different powders.
“It seemed like the least I could do.”
“It’s more than that. You’ve done a lot for her and for the town in the short time you’ve been here. I like that about you. Reminds me of myself when I was your age. Not afraid to jump right in and get involved.”
Cameron thought it was more like Howard had dragged him in far earlier than he was ready to get involved, but he kept that to himself.
“You got those building permits all lined up for that house of yours?”
“I’m behind, but we’re getting there. First set of forty-degree days and we should be able to pour the foundation.”
“Good. So, then, what’s really getting under your skin, Rollings?”
What and who, if you want to get right at it. Then again, Cameron had actually planned to talk over his legal dilemma with Howard. He’d taken a tremendous liking to the puffed-up old man, as if his lack of Middleburg history had enabled him to see a side of Howard Epson no one else could. Cameron suspected Howard was willing to be a target, willing to be the guy everyone complained about, if it got things done in town. Willing to play “bad cop,” as it were, because someone had to make the hard or unpopular choices a struggling town needed to make. Sure, he had faults—loads of them, actually—but Cameron was feeling pretty faulty himself these days and while he couldn’t explain his kinship with Howard, he couldn’t resist it, either.
“Howard, have you ever found out something about yourself that you really didn’t like?” Cameron hadn’t meant to start out quite so bluntly, but there was something about the quiet of the horse barn, the companionship of walking with this older man through the slatted sunlight and warm hues. He found himself desperate to talk about it with someone. “I mean, thought you did something for a noble reason, only to discover you really only did it to serve yourself?” He added after a second, “Maybe even for an uglier reason than that?”
Cameron was glad Howard didn’t reply right away, but gave his question considerable thought as they walked toward the stalls at the far end of the barn. “I have,” he said eventually, “and I remember it making me pretty miserable. Perhaps not too far from the way you look now, son. A man meets himself in those dark corners, and I reckon everyone’s got them, but only the wisest of us are ready to own up to it.” They’d reached the stall and Howard said hello to his horse in warm, grandfatherish tones as he gave her the feed. Once the bucket was dumped out, he stroked the mare fondly for a moment or two, then turned his attention to Cameron. “I find it’s much easier to solve problems if you know what they are. How’s about you come out with whatever it is that’s eating you?” Howard pushed open a door that led out to the pastures. “Don’t worry, I won’t think less of you to find out you’re human just like the rest of us, even if you do come from that big city out east.”
“I don’t know how much Aunt Sandy’s told you about my abrupt departure from New York.”
“Enough,” Howard said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “‘Whistle-blower loses job’ isn’t so new a story.
Sounds like you lived it on a slightly larger scale, though. Takes bravery on any scale, if you ask me.”
“I thought I was being brave. I was sure I was doing it for the right reasons. For justice and to keep people from bein
g hurt. All the classic stuff—righting a wrong, standing up for the truth and so on. And all through the state attorney’s proceedings, I believed it.” Cameron reached down and picked a twig up off the brown earth, turning it over in his hands. “I admit, I liked the way people thought of me after I’d done it. I became the hero instead of the moralizing Puritan everyone stared at. I don’t think they liked me, but I felt like they respected me.”
“It’s no sin to want respect. Men are hardwired to want that. To know we occupy a place in the world.” The way Howard said it, it sounded like he was quoting one of his own speeches. Affected, but heartfelt just the same.
“After the criminal trial, I started the process of personally suing Landemere. Then I decided against it, thinking it was a better choice to just walk away. I’ve been given a final chance to change my mind, though, and go through with it.”
“And will you?”
“My plan was to leave it behind me. No revenge, no after-battle, just a clean getaway. But now…”
Howard sat down on a large log that ran beside the path they had been walking. “But now, with the last chance in front of you, you’re surprised at how much you’d like to take it.”
Cameron stood still, startled by Howard’s exact assessment. “Burning with it. I didn’t think I was that kind of man. I shouldn’t be that kind of man. And now as I look back at everything I did at Landemere Properties, I realize I blew the whistle for the wrong reasons. I blew it to hurt Frank. Not even because Frank was doing wrong, but because he treated me so badly. I just wanted to take him down. And now I still do. I hate that I could do that and fool myself that I was being some sort of hero.” Cameron couldn’t decide how it felt to say those words out loud. He was both freed and condemned by the admission, which mostly just left him miserable and confused. He sunk onto the log next to Howard, not daring to look the man in the eye.
Howard stretched out his legs in front of him. “So you did the right thing for the wrong reasons.”
“All the wrong reasons. All the worst reasons.”
“Hard to live with, ain’t it? To know you’re capable of the same evil they are.”
Cameron couldn’t help but look at Howard now. “That’s just it—it makes me just like Frank. He was such a creep and now who’s to say I’m not just like him?”
“Well, I think you’ve hit on it—‘Who’s to say?’ I think we are who we decide we are. We’re all capable of horrors, Cameron. Little ones and big ones. It’s the man who forgets that who shows himself to be foolish. The moment I forget I’m a pompous old windbag, I’ll just be a fool instead of a man willing to be pompous for a good cause. Maybe you just have to be mean for a good cause.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Well, now,” Howard chuckled, “you’re just young enough to still expect the world to make sense. Life looks black and white when you’re young. Clear-cut and all. Once you put on a few years and a few pounds, you discover there’s more fuzzy gray than you ever signed up for. The question becomes, what are you going to do with all that fuzzy gray?”
“Meaning am I going to sue or not?”
“Well, that’s part of it. Only you can decide if your reasons for calling the cops on that man in the first place have any bearing on whether or not you want to go forward with a lawsuit. Your motives—however pure or impure—don’t change the wrong he was doing. Never confuse the facts with your interpretation of them—that’s what I always tell Peter.”
That was good advice for a newspaper reporter. It was rather obtuse advice for a man facing the moral dilemma Cameron was facing. “Are you saying I should just look at the facts before me and not get so caught up in who I think they make me?”
Howard stood up. “Actually, I’m saying I think you should make cookies.”
Cameron looked at him. With his mouth open, probably. The man went from being wise to making no sense at all. “Huh?”
“You’re just now figuring out who you are outside of that job. Outside of New York. So be who you are here, in Middleburg. And that, for better or worse, is the guy who can get cookies made.” Howard planted a beefy hand on Cameron’s shoulder, like he always did before he was about to make one of his unrefusable suggestions. “And we still need cookies made. The Cookiegram fund-raiser is two weeks away and we just lost our baker. But what we do have is a bakery, volunteers and a young man who’s proven he can manage them pretty good. And that young man just happens to have a little time on his hands and a lot of thinking to do.” He gave Cameron’s shoulder a squeeze and started back toward his barn. “That’s what I had you come up here to talk about. Makes more sense than ever to me now.”
Cookies did not solve moral dilemmas. Cameron was facing slightly larger problems than the logistical threat to Middleburg’s inaugural Cookiegram fund-raiser. Perhaps his affection for Howard had been misplaced. Or dead wrong.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I think this is just the ticket. You need something simple to do with undiluted goodness attached to it. Do you have to give your response to this lawsuit thing right away?”
Lying, saying he had to fly to New York to consider his options within the next twenty-four hours, suddenly seemed like a good reply. Instead, he said, “Um, not really.”
“It’s settled, then. I’ll have Sandy call you this afternoon. I’ve asked her to double up on the volunteers she got you last time.”
He asked Aunt Sandy? Before he asked him? Suddenly his own arrogance seemed minor in comparison to the assumptions Howard made. And as for Aunt Sandy, she had probably egged him on—thought it was a stellar idea. This was Dinah’s blessed “community” gone horribly wrong.
Dinah was making piles out of the memorial gifts and condolence cards, trying to sort them in some kind of order, when her cell phone rang. Cameron’s number flashed on the screen, and she gave a small smile as she flipped open her phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, how are you?”
She remembered Uncle Mike’s admonition. “I’m here.”
“How was the funeral?”
Dinah got up from the kitchen table where she had been working and walked onto the sun porch. It was a gray winter day, but she still preferred the room to any other in the house.
“It was nice, actually. Lots of people came, the music was beautiful, and when the pastor invited everyone to come up and tell ‘Patty stories,’ it became a real celebration of all the things Mom did in her life. I actually heard stories I’d never heard before. That felt really nice, you know? As if it’s not all over, just one part of it is.”
“I’m glad. I always thought funerals should be sad celebrations but still celebrations. They don’t always seem to work out that way, but I was praying it would for you.”
He’d been praying for her. That made something hum in her chest.
“Everyone’s been praying for you,” he added, as if he’d somehow sensed her reaction over the airwaves and didn’t want to get too personal. “Check the mirror. You might just be glowing, there’s so much prayer headed in your direction.”
“I thought I felt something funny run down my spine a minute ago.” It struck Dinah that she’d just made her first joke since her mother died. It was a good feeling. “And here I thought it was just exhaustion.”
“Those things are exhausting, aren’t they? I’m guessing you have so many tasks ahead of you it’s hard to know where to start.”
“I’ve come up with a strategy of sorts in the two days since the funeral. Every time I think of something that needs doing, I put it down on this big yellow pad. Then I take an index card and pick five things to do off the yellow pad and put the pad out of sight. I just work off the index card until I’m ready for another one. The first day I tried and I got through two cards. Yesterday I didn’t get anything done. I think it’s gonna be like that for a while.”
“That sounds really smart. Hey, maybe you should make one more index card with things other people could do to help you
. That way when you get all those ‘let me know if I can help’ calls, you’ll be ready.”
Dinah sunk down into the chair and put her feet on the coffee table. She stared up at the collection of hanging plants in the sunroom. She should try to remember to water those. “That’s a pretty smart idea yourself. Want to come over and water Mom’s plants for me?”
“I have a black thumb. Plus, that’s a pretty long trip. But there is one thing I can do. Do you have access to e-mail?”
“Mom’s got a computer, yes.”
“If you give me your e-mail address, I’ll refer you to two local real estate brokers I’ve found. You’ll need someone to help you with an appraisal of the house, whether you decide to stay or not.” There was just the slightest hesitation before he said “or not.” She didn’t know what to make of that. She still didn’t know what to make of the astoundingly gentle kiss he’d placed on her forehead the day she left. How many times over the past four days had she touched her forehead, unable to stop thinking about how tender the kiss had been. How potentially dangerous it was. If she went back to Kentucky, it would be her head making the decision, not some tingly spot on her forehead. She owned a house now. The only family she had left was here. These things had to be taken into consideration.
“That’s nice of you.” She gave him the address and told him to go ahead and send it, being careful to point out she didn’t know what would happen from here or when she’d be able to make any kind of decision.
“It’s been only a few days. Stick that on your yellow pad and you’ll get to it when you’re ready. Are you baking?”
“Am I what?”
“Baking. I just thought maybe you’d bake out of—I don’t know, comfort, I suppose.”
She hadn’t even thought about baking. Now she thought about how much less empty the house would feel with something in the oven. “Well, you’re just full of good ideas, Mr. Rollings. No, I haven’t baked, but it’s an idea.” She pulled the index card out of her pocket and wrote “bake” above the other five items. Suddenly it seemed like she couldn’t turn the oven on fast enough. “A really good idea.”
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