A Light in the Window (43 page)

Emma answered the phone, then held her hand over the mouthpiece. “Whang-do,” she said, looking sour.

“I’m not in,” he snapped.

He got up and briefly stepped outside to avoid telling an outright lie.

Edith Mallory came in waves, like the ocean. Roar in, roar out seemed to be her style. If jumping from her moving car had not been a sufficiently eloquent expression of his feelings, what would be?

“She wanted prayer,” said Emma, setting her lips like the seal on a Ziploc sandwich bag.

The last person on earth he wanted to pray for ...

“Said she’s got a lump.” Emma drummed the desktop with her fingers. “I hope I don’t get struck by lightnin’ for sayin’ this, but I’d like to give ’er a lump.”

It was useful that Emma Newland sometimes expressed his true feelings, and he didn’t have to take the licking for it.

“Yes. Well. I will pray.” And he would. Right after he prayed to be forgiven for the smoldering anger that didn’t want to go away.

“I heard you was gittin’ married.” Grinning, Coot Hendrick stood at the door of Lew Boyd’s Esso, which, after all these years, hardly anybody called Exxon.

“Where did you hear that?” he asked, feeling the color drain from his face.

“At th’ Grill.” Coot was prepared to block the door until he got a satisfactory answer.

“Yes, well, I suppose they also told you that intelligent life has been found on Mars? Not to mention gas is dropping to fifteen cents a gallon.”

“No kiddin’,” said Coot, wide-eyed.

“I guess you also heard that Elvis Presley was seen shopping at The Local.”

“Well, I’ll be dadgum.”

Coot stood aside, scratching his head, as the rector of Lord’s Chapel strode through the door.

He checked Cynthia’s perennial beds for signs of life, even though he knew it was too soon. Early April was still a frozen time in Mitford, and spring a full six weeks away.

No local ever put a seed or a plant in the ground before May 15. That date might as well have been engraved in stone, because every time he planted earlier, he paid the price.

Row upon row of impatiens, planted on May 14 three years ago, had ended up as watery mush at the border of his front lawn. A year or two earlier, he had tried to sneak by with planting fifteen cosmos seedlings on May 12, only to find them keeled over the next morning from the hardest freeze they’d had all winter. No, indeed, you did not mess with that date
in
these mountains.

He sat at the desk in the study and put his head in his hands. Why had she insisted on bringing up the subject of marriage? Wasn’t the experience of going steady still fresh enough to last for a while, to count for something?

She was a complicated woman, after all, with deep feelings and a sensitive spirit. And, for the moment, he greatly resented that.

Father Roland, the hopeless romantic, wrote to say he was leaving his large New Orleans parish and going off to Canada: ...
to the wilds,
Timothy! Yes, indeed, a parish of a mere one hundred souls, many of them lodging in cabins. Rather the sort of place I imagine Mitford to be. No more stress, Timothy, no more burn-out ... just the call of wolves in the frozen night, and fresh trout, and time to seek refreshmentof the spirit.

A parish in the wilds of Canada. Now, there was an idea, if he ever heard one. And to think he was perfectly free to consider the very same thing.

But, no. Come what may, he was stuck to Mitford like moss on a tree.

“Doing her own laundry, I take it?” He was going through the mail that came to the house, looking for his
Anglican Digest
.

“Must be. Leaves th’ washroom jis’ like I leave it, clean as a pin. But it’s creepy she’s been here a whole week an’ I ain’t laid eyes on ’er. Only way I know she’s up there, I hear th’ toilet flush.”

“That’s one way,” he said. “Next time you’re upstairs, maybe you could bring down the
Country Life
magazine I stuck in the guest room for Stuart during the blizzard. There’s an article I’d like to review for a sermon—about basket weavers. There’s an intriguing dash of theology in basket weaving.”

“I still cain’t get in. Her door’s locked tight as a drum.”

“Aha.”

“I hate locked doors. They git my dander up.”

“Ummm.”

“How’s your neighbor? When’s she comin’ home?”

“End of April,” he said, feeling a constriction in his chest.

“I’m prayin’ for you,” announced Puny, heading toward the dining room with a bottle of lemon oil and a dust rag.

The phone woke him from a light doze on the study sofa.

“Timothy?”

“The very same. How are you, Cousin?”

“Only just recovered from seeing you in New York, to tell the truth. Katherine says you must never do that again—I could have a stroke.”

“Tell her not to worry.”

“Once was enough, was it?”

“You might say so.”

“And how are things with your neighbor? Rotten shame about your planes crossing routes in the air.”

“Walter, do you remember meeting Meg Patrick at Erin Donovan’s tea? One of the cousins.”

“Meg Patrick. Meg Patrick...”

“Tall. A Niagara of red hair. Wears bifocals.”

“Well, of course, you would remember all that, since you were only having sherry. Everyone else was drinking Irish whiskey out of teacups.”

“You don’t remember, then?”

“How many cousins were there—twenty-four? Thirty-two? No, I draw a blank. Why?”

“She’s turned up on my doorstep, out of the blue.”

“No warning?”

“Well, there was a letter some weeks ago, thanking me for inviting her. Blast if I can remember doing it. But... no matter. How’s Katherine?”

“Volunteering four days a week. Singing to the elderly and can’t carry a tune in a bucket—they love her. Doing art classes with handicapped kids and can’t draw a straight line—they adore her.”

He laughed. “Put her on. Then, I’d like to discuss a legal matter.”

“Teds!” How many times over the years her voice had cheered him. “How are things with your neighbor... with Cynthia? We let you get safely through Easter without calling to find out, but now the jig is up.”

“Katherine ...”

“And don’t play your cat-and-mouse game with me! Inquiring minds want to know, Timothy! You would not fly to New York if it weren’t terribly serious—either a death in the family... or love!”

“Katherine, you’re a nuisance.”

“I know it, old darling. Now tell me everything.”

“I think I hear the phone ringing...”

“Timothy, you are
on
the phone.”

“Rats,” he muttered darkly.

“From the beginning,” she said. Hundreds of miles away, in a suburb of New Jersey, he could hear her settling back in the plaid club chair, putting her feet on the ottoman, and clinking the ice in her eternal glass of ginger ale.

He was in for it.