“Amy!” Celia exclaimed in horror as the nurse, wide-eyed, tried to shake her off. Celia grabbed Amy’s hands and she released the nurse, whose arm was lined with angry red scratches that bloomed with blood.
Sarah watched in disbelief as Amy squirmed from Celia’s grasp and shoved past them, out of the room.
“Are you okay?” Celia asked.
“I’m fine,” the nurse said, clearly shaken, blotting her bloody arm with a tissue.
“Shouldn’t someone go after her?” Sarah asked, heart pounding.
“No, just let her go,” Jack said. “Let her cool off.”
“Jesus Christ, she’s fucking crazy,” Dean hissed, his voice tense with anger.
“Please!” Hal interjected. “For God’s sake, have some respect for your mother.” Everyone froze and a mix of shame and grief washed over them. Hal’s head fell heavy in his hands and the room filled with the soft sobs of a man who just lost his wife. “Fifty years,” he said mournfully. “We were married fifty years.” He looked up from his hands, his eyes wet and bloodshot. “Fifty years and she had to leave me this way?”
The nurse watched from the doorway as Jack’s family seemed to collapse under the weight of their own grief. “I’ll have to ask you to step out for a few minutes, Mr. Quinlan,” she said kindly. “We’ll take care of your wife and get the room cleaned up, then you can come back in and take as much time as you need.”
The room looked like a war zone. The floor was slick with water and flower petals. Shards of glass from the broken vase crunched beneath their feet. Hal remained by Julia’s side until Dean gently took his arm and guided him from the room. Sarah bent down and picked up the handmade quilt that had fallen to the floor. She folded it neatly and draped it over the back of a chair.
Jack paused at Julia’s bedside and looked down at the woman who had welcomed him into her home after his parents had died. He whispered into her ear and lightly brushed her cheek with his fingers.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the nurse said. “We have to ask you all to step out, please.”
Sarah held her hand out to Jack. Together they stepped into the hallway and Sarah pulled him into her arms. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured. She felt Jack’s heart thrumming against his chest.
Jack released Sarah and went to his uncle. “She loved you,” Hal said, taking Jack’s hands in his own. “You and Amy, just like you were her own. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” Jack replied, his voice hoarse with emotion. “She always believed in me. No matter what.”
Sarah embraced Hal. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”
“I know who to call,” Celia interjected in a way that struck Sarah as oddly aggressive.
“What about Amy?” Sarah asked. “Do you think someone should go check on her?”
“I think it’s probably best to just let her be for a while,” Celia answered. “Let her catch her breath.”
Sarah wrapped her arms around Jack’s waist, and he rested his chin on top of her head. “Did you know Julia had a do-not-resuscitate order?” she asked.
“No. And Amy must have not known, either. I’ve never seen her act like that before.”
“I should call the girls, let them know what’s going on.”
“No, not yet.”
“I could make arrangements to have them fly here?” Sarah offered.
“No,” Jack said quickly.
Sarah pulled back and looked up at him. “But...”
“Sarah,” he said in exasperation. “I said no.”
Sarah didn’t understand Jack’s reluctance to bring the girls to Penny Gate. They should be here with them. That’s what families did; they were there to support one another when times were difficult.
The tension between them was broken by the sound of determined footsteps. They shifted their gaze down the long corridor, where a woman in a long white doctor’s coat and a man who appeared to be a security guard were approaching with quick, long strides.
“This can’t be good,” Jack said in a low voice. “Can you find Amy?”
Sarah hesitated, glancing at Jack with uncertainty.
“Sarah, please just go!”
She started down the hallway, hurt by Jack’s harsh tone. When she reached the end of the hallway, she turned to see the doctor and security guard confront Jack in the doorway of Julia’s room. He held up his hands in placation, as if trying to calm them.
The nurses must have alerted security about Amy’s outburst and they were coming to...what? Escort Amy from the building? Detain her until the police came to arrest her? Sarah quickened her pace, though she wasn’t sure what she would say to Amy if she found her. Should she tell her to run, to get out of there as quickly as possible? Or should she try to convince her to come back upstairs to talk things through?
Once again she bypassed the elevator and raced down the stairs and through the lobby. The automatic doors slid open and Sarah saw Amy shivering on a bench just outside the hospital entrance. A brisk wind had swept the clear skies away and replaced them with dark clouds heavy with rain. Amy had stopped crying and was blankly staring upward, a cigarette pressed to her lips. She had one arm wrapped protectively around her waist, the same way that Jack always did.
“Amy.” Sarah cautiously approached her sister-in-law. “I’m so sorry about Julia. Are you okay?”
“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Amy swiped at her nose with the back of one hand. “I can’t believe she’s really dead.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her bloodshot eyes. “I really freaked out up there. Did I hurt that nurse?”
“Just a few scratches.” Sarah sat down on the bench. “She’s fine. But everyone’s worried about you.”
“I bet Dean went ape shit.” She gave a short bark of laughter and then started to cry again.
Sarah wasn’t sure what to say. She barely knew Amy, but what she did know was that she was volatile and unpredictable. But this was Jack’s sister and she also knew that Amy loved her aunt and was grieving terribly. Sarah slid closer to her and put an arm around Amy’s thin shoulders. “Do you want to come back inside?” she asked once Amy’s cries subsided. “I bet if you apologize to the nurse, she’ll forget the whole thing.”
“I can’t go back in there,” Amy said, taking a shaky drag on her cigarette. “Not now, anyway.” She gave the cigarette a tap and watched the long ash fall to the concrete below. In her other hand she held what looked to be a round silver charm. The kind you might find on a bracelet or on a necklace.
Amy caught Sarah looking and held it out for her to see. Engraved on one side was a cross and on the other was the word faith. “It was lying next to Aunt Julia when I found her. I was going to hold on to it until she woke up and then give it back to her.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I can face them.” She looked up toward Julia’s room. “It’s all my fault.”
“What do you mean it’s your fault?” Sarah asked.
Amy didn’t answer. She dropped the cigarette to the ground and squeezed the charm tightly in her palm. “Amy,” Sarah prodded. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if I had gotten there fifteen minutes earlier...”
“You can’t think that way about it. You’ll drive yourself crazy,” Sarah said. “Just think about what could have happened if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
Amy shrugged, unconvinced. “When are you leaving town?”
“We’ll stay for the funeral, of course, but will probably need to go home soon after.”
Amy nodded and lit another cigarette. “That’s probably a good idea. People who stay around here too long either die or go crazy. Jack had the right idea. He left Penny Gate as soon as he could and didn’t look back. If my mom would have just left...” Amy trailed off.
“You
can’t blame the accident on your mom’s decision to stay in Penny Gate,” Sarah said. “There’s no way to know what would have been different.”
“‘The accident’?” Amy gave a skeptical snort. “Is that what Jack is calling it these days?” She stood, took a deep pull on the cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “You need to talk to your husband,” Amy said as she started to walk away. “You know Jack. Always full of secrets.”
Sarah’s stomach clenched. What else hadn’t Jack told her? She watched as Amy walked away, her gaunt frame hunched against the sharp wind. She considered chasing after her but to what end?
Maybe she had been overreacting about Jack’s name, and even about Celia. But Jack was definitely keeping something from her. Something important.
5
THE ACCIDENT? Is that what Jack’s calling it these days?
Amy’s cryptic comment tumbled in Sarah’s mind. Tears pricked at her eyes as she ticked off the half-truths and lies that Jack had told her. She was tired of all the secrecy, the avoidance. Yes, Jack was reserved, private. But she had thought they had both known the important parts of each other’s lives.
She pulled out her phone and entered Jack Tierney into the search engine. Three hundred and eighty-one thousand results.
She plugged in two more words, Penny Gate, and it narrowed the search. Sarah clicked on the first link, a newspaper article headlined Penny Gate Woman Found Bludgeoned. Her eyes skittered down the page. The body of Lydia Tierney, thirty-six, was discovered yesterday afternoon in her rural Penny Gate home. Before Sarah could read any further, Jack approached.
“Sarah?” he asked, and she nearly dropped her phone. “What are you doing?”
Heart thumping, she quickly slid her phone into her purse. “I was talking to Amy. She just left,” she said. Jack’s eyes were red-rimmed and seemed to hold immeasurable sadness.
Jack sat down next to her, his leg pressing against hers. “They posted a security guard outside Julia’s room and made us leave,” he said. “They said that an autopsy has been ordered.”
“Why?” Sarah asked in confusion. “I thought it was an accident.”
“They wouldn’t tell us much of anything.” Jack rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Just that Julia’s injuries weren’t entirely consistent with an accidental fall down the stairs.”
“What does that mean? Like someone pushed her down the steps?” Sarah asked. “Who would do that?”
“I don’t know.” Jack closed his eyes and brought his hands to his face, forming a tent with his fingers. “It has to be some kind of mistake.”
“A home invasion?” Sarah wondered out loud.
“That’s the only thing I can think of that makes any sense. But then why wasn’t there any mess? Why was nothing taken?”
What was it that Amy had told Sarah earlier? It’s all my fault. Amy had dismissed it, but now Sarah wondered what she meant. Did Amy know more than she was letting on?
“Hal is a mess,” Jack added. “I don’t know how he’s going to get through this.” He reached for Sarah’s hand. His skin was cold and damp, and Sarah’s first instinct was to pull away, but he held tight. “He can’t face going back to the house right now, so we’re all going to go back to Dean and Celia’s. Do you mind heading there with Celia now? I need to stay here to help with some of the arrangements.”
“Whatever you need,” she murmured. She knew she had to be there for Jack and his family, but all Sarah really wanted to do was get back to the newspaper article she had discovered.
“I have to talk to Amy. Do you have any idea where she went?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
Celia emerged from the hospital. Her face was blotchy and her eyes swollen from crying.
“Cel,” Jack began, “Sarah will go back to the house with you. We’ll be right behind.”
Cel. Such a familiar use of her name. Sarah wondered if that was what Jack called her when they were teenagers.
Celia nodded. “Thank you,” she said, blinking back tears. “I really don’t want to be alone right now.”
“Of course. Whatever I can do to help.”
“I’ll call you later,” Jack said, and kissed Sarah on the cheek. His lips were cold and dry.
Sarah and Celia made their way to the hospital parking lot. “I can’t believe she’s gone,” Celia said, her voice breaking with emotion. “One minute she’s just lying there and the next she’s having a seizure.” Celia shivered. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Sarah stepped over a large puddle as she climbed into the passenger’s side of Celia’s truck. “Jack said that the doctor didn’t think Julia’s fall was an accident. How could she know that?”
“I don’t think anyone could know without an autopsy.” Celia started the car and then looked over her shoulder as she backed out of the parking spot. “It’s got to be a mistake.”
Celia offered a steady stream of commentary as she drove. “Our house is about a twenty-five-minute drive from here and Hal’s is just fifteen minutes farther. The funny thing is, you can walk through the cornfield right outside our door and end up in Hal’s yard in about the same amount of time. The town’s a little farther. I can’t believe you’ve never been here before.” She looked over at Sarah. “I’m prattling on and on. I think if I don’t keep talking I’ll start crying again and not be able to stop.”
“That’s okay,” Sarah said. “I was the same way when my dad died. If I kept moving, kept talking, I was okay. The minute things were quiet I fell apart.”
“I’m glad that Jack got here in time to see Julia before she died. I think he would have really regretted it, if he hadn’t. He’s always had such a soft heart.”
Sarah tried to ignore the flash of jealousy that sizzled in her chest. It was a long time ago, she told herself. Celia didn’t know him, the man he turned out to be. But then again, Sarah realized with a stab of regret, she wasn’t sure if she knew him as well as she thought she did, either.
“Hal said you and Jack dated when you were younger,” Sarah said, trying to keep her voice light. Conversational.
“Well, yeah.” Celia flashed a hint of a smile. “But that was ages ago. We went to school together. Jack and I were in the same class. Dean graduated four years before us. I got to know Dean through Jack. Didn’t Jack tell you that he and I dated through most of high school?”
“Well, yes,” Sarah fumbled. “Sorry, I didn’t make the connection.”
“That’s Jack for you, a man of few words.” Celia shook her head. “After Jack left for college I mooned around after him, hung around Julia and Hal’s house like a little lost puppy.” She gave a halfhearted laugh at the memory. “One evening, Julia had me over for dinner and Dean had just moved back to the farm. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and it was like the sun came out. A couple of years later we got married, and the rest is history.”
Celia turned onto a narrow two-lane highway that ribboned through the countryside, speeding past gold-and-green patchworks of cornstalks and soybeans, punctuated by an occasional farmhouse. Cattle gnawed languidly on grass, their tails flicking at unseen insects, their soft eyes barely glancing as they passed. It was beautiful, Sarah had to admit.
Once again, the sky had cleared and Sarah knew what Jack meant when he said the weather in Iowa changed on a dime. The air was clean and crisp like freshly starched laundry and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue that reminded Sarah of a time when the girls were four and Elizabeth described the sky as “so blue it hurts.” A blue so big and beautiful that it causes your heart to ache.
The thought made her miss her daughters more than she thought was possible.
Celia parked the truck and Sarah took in the view of the farmhouse and outbuildings that made up the Quinlan farm. Patches of the house were scra
ped clean of the paint that had once covered it, and the roof was badly in need of new shingles. The front porch was in disrepair, the steps leaning dangerously to the left. The barn and machine shed weren’t in much better shape. Long stalks of grass and weeds grew wildly, scorched and dry like hay from the hot Iowa sun. The property clearly hadn’t been well maintained over the years. The place looked like it was right out of a scary movie, and it made Sarah think about Amy’s “house of horrors” comment and the article she found earlier about the death of Jack’s mother. What other dark secrets was this house keeping?
“The outside isn’t all that much to look at, but the inside is great. Dean hopes to start working on the exterior next spring.”
Sarah smiled but didn’t respond. She wondered what Jack would think about the deterioration of his childhood home.
“Come. I’ll show you around,” Celia said as they stepped from the Bronco. “I know I need to start making phone calls, but I can’t bear to tell people the news about Julia yet. I feel like if I can put off telling them I can almost make myself believe she really hasn’t died.” Celia closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “But first things first,” she said, clapping her hands together. “I’ll get you a pair of boots. What are you, a size seven?”
“Eight, but really these are fine,” Sarah insisted.
“Oh, no. They don’t call them shit-kickers for nothing. Believe me, you’ll want to put on a pair of boots.” Celia walked off toward the house and Sarah surveyed the farmyard. A soft wind spun the blades of a tall galvanized-metal windmill that sat among the swaying switchgrass. There were three outbuildings: a midsize A-frame barn, a large prairie barn with a low-hanging, sloped roof, and a small shed.
The farmyard was overgrown and weedy in some spots, and brown and bald in others. Poking up from the weeds were riots of color just beginning to brown at the edges: purple and white aster, rose-colored sedum and cheery goldenrod. Tired browned remnants of once-spritely hollyhock slumped among the glossy green leaves of the bushes nestled against the foundation of the largest barn. The door to a small shed was open, revealing a cluttered array of farm tools and cracked clay pots. Well away from the barn was a pile of partially charred remains of what appeared to be an odd pyre of dried leaves, barn board and broken furniture.
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