A New Song (52 page)

“Both,” Dooley said with feeling. “I want to vet both.”

“Good!” he said. “Good.”

 

“Harley, thanks for making such a long trip. Sorry Omer’s plane won’t hold but four.”

“Don’t even think about it, Rev’rend. Hit was good t’ git on th’ road.”

“What do you see of our tenant?”

“Seen ’er twice. She looked kind of hunkered down, like she’s scared of ’er own shadow. Somebody said she was lettin’ ’er piana students go, an’ headin’ back up north. She ain’t tryin’ to run out on th’ rent, is she?”

“Oh, no, she’s paid up. Well, God be with you, Harley, Poo, Dooley.”

“ ’Bye, Dad.”

“ ’Bye, Buddy. See you down here for Christmas, OK?”

“OK!”

“Harley, we want you to come, too.”

“Yes, sir, Rev’rend, we’ll be here.”

“All right, hold her between the ditches.”

Feeling a kind of emptiness, he watched the red truck pull out of the motel parking lot and head left on the highway toward Mitford.

 

“Fella down th’ beach said he was sittin’ on his deck, said he’d just pulled out his glasses to read th’ paper when a book fell in his lap,
whop.
”

“No kidding.” He had to get out of here fast; he’d only popped by to see how Ernie’s reconstruction was coming.

“I’m tellin’ you!” said Ernie, who appeared to be more like his old self. “
Th’ Mustangs
by Frank Dobie is what it was. That book come right offa my shelf.”

“Amazing,” he said, wanting to be respectful.

“Bull,” said Roanoke.

“Th’ storm was Thursday, th’ book dropped in ’is lap Sunday. Must’ve blowed somewhere to dry off, then was picked up by a stiff wind and sent south.”

Roanoke fired a match head under the tabletop and lit a Marlboro. “I ain’t believin’ that.”

“Told me he liked th’ book all right, but wouldn’t give two cents for th’ endin’.”

“That’s gratitude for you,” said Roanoke.

He didn’t want to do this, not at all.

“Walter Kavanagh here.”

“Walter ...”

“Timothy! What in blazes happened down there?”

“Storm. Bad. Busy.” Sheer dread had reduced his speech to primitive monosyllables.

“Well,” said Walter, “I’m afraid you’re not going to like this.”

“It never once occurred to me that I might like it.”

“D’Anjou says a love letter accompanies the holographic will, which makes the old man’s personal feelings and legal intentions perfectly clear and in accordance with the will.”

“How do we know it’s Josiah’s Baxter’s handwriting and not some forgery?”

“D’Anjou seems to believe that matter is sufficiently demonstrable in court, he didn’t say how. Frankly, I think d’Anjou is behind this thing and pushing hard. He’s been minding the family’s affairs for years. I get a sense of personal greed here. If it were my case, I wouldn’t feel so confident—I mean, no one coming forward for fifty years? But he thinks he can convince the jury.”

“What about the money Miss Sadie left to Dooley?” Walter and Cynthia were the only other living souls who knew that Miss Sadie had left Dooley more than a million dollars in trust. “That was her mother’s money. Surely this legal action couldn’t—”

“No, I don’t think so. Don’t get ahead of things, Timothy. In any case, it looks like we have to go through with this. I’ll work with you on the response to the court; we’ve got three weeks to pull it together. Can you call me Wednesday night? I have some ideas.”

Though he knew full well there was no sorrow in heaven, he hoped, nonetheless, that Miss Sadie wouldn’t get wind of this deplorable mess. Shortly before her death, she’d learned of an illegitimate half-sister, born to her mother before she married Josiah Baxter. This dark secret, however, had an exceedingly bright side—Miss Sadie ended up with Olivia Harper as her beloved grandniece, which had been, of course, an inarguable benediction.

But another illegitimate half-sister? It seemed like pure fiction; he hated to think what this lawsuit might have done to his old friend and parishioner if she were still living.

In ways he couldn’t yet fully understand, he sensed his life would be entwined with Sadie Baxter for the rest of his days.

At one o’clock on Tuesday, he drove to the Mid-Way from a couple of home visits, and helped Cynthia load Jonathan’s things into the car. Jonathan talked endlessly.

“I’m goin’ home, Cyn’dy.”

“I know, dear.”

“Will you come an’ see me?”

“Of course.”

“An’ you can see Babette an’ Jason, too.”

“Will you come and see us?”

“Maybe I could sometime.” Jonathan put on his hat.

“We’ll bring your movies later. They’re at our house that fell down in the front.”

“You could, you could watch ’em again before you bring ’em to my house. That would be OK if you want to.”

He glanced at his wife as they piled into the car, and felt her suffering as his own.

 

He was fairly stunned when he saw Martha Talbot’s house, sitting quite alone at the end of an oyster-shell lane. A million smackers rising off the undeveloped bank of the Sound was a pretty impressive sight.

“Wow,” Cynthia whispered.

“You must be living right, Kavanagh.”

They parked in the two-car garage, simply because it was a luxury to have one, and went up the stairs to the front door.

“Here,” he said, giving her the key. “You do the honors.”

As the door swung open, they stood looking across the sunlit living room and through the wall of windows to the Sound. The water lay as smooth as a lake, glinting in the sun.

His wife gave a small gasp of wonder and delight.

“Now we’re talking!” she said.

 

They prowled through the spacious house like a couple of kids, amazed at their discoveries. Central vacuum system, enormous fireplace in both living room and master suite, glorious views all around, a room with the right light and location for her work, a room with a comfortable and easy spirit for his study, an intercom system, a large kitchen in which they felt decidedly lost, and a media room that, thanks to its dumbfounding technology and wall-size television screen, caused them to shut the door hastily.

They thumped onto one of two sofas in the living room, thinking to build a fire against the chill.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” she said.

He wouldn’t have mentioned it for the world, but he wished they had Jonathan to put some life in this place.

“Let’s unload the car, then. I’ll bring Barnabas and Violet up.”

“Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we had power?” she mused.

“Just in case, try the lamp.”

Sixty watts sprang to life at her touch. “Thanks be to God!” they shouted in spontaneous unison.

They leaped up and dashed to the kitchen and turned on the faucet, which spat and chugged and released a brackish stream of water into the sink.

“Try the phone!” she crowed.

A dial tone!

“The heat . . .” They trotted in tandem, searching for a thermostat.

Having located it at the end of the hallway, they grabbed each other and exchanged a fervent hug as the furnace roared into action.

“Priest and deacon die and go to heaven!” he whooped.

Ah, but no million-dollar house on the Sound could ease the sorrow of his wife’s heart.

He lay in the strange bed and held her as she wept.

 

Maybe the bright, three-quarter moon was keeping him awake. . . .

He got up and looked through the French doors that gave onto the upstairs deck. A ribbon of platinum cascaded across the water. Only a mile and a half from Dove Cottage and they were in another world. A miraculous thing.

He closed the draperies over the doors, patted his sleeping dog at the foot of the bed, and lay down again.

He remembered the sleepless exhaustion that had helped crank his diabetes into high gear.

Hadn’t Hoppy advised him to find a good doctor when he arrived? Of course. But had he done it? No way.

No more excuses, he promised himself. He would inquire around first thing tomorrow morning. And he must rid his mind of the lawsuit. It was useless to worry and fret about this alarming thing. He and Walter would do what they could; beyond that, he was dependent upon grace alone.

He began to mentally recite one of the verses he’d tried to live by for a very long time.

“Ahhh,” he sighed.

Not that again.

He tried to open his heart and mind to the answer, but dozed off and fell, at last, into a peaceful slumber.

 

As twilight drew over the Sound, he heard the front bell ring and trotted to the door, wondering who’d be poking around out here.

He saw a car parked in the circle, and a woman standing at the foot of the steps. Before him on the stoop were two small persons in pirate costumes, and a very much smaller person clad in a sheet and extending a plastic pumpkin in his direction.

“Trick or treat!” said Jonathan Tolson.

 

Feeling oddly distant from one another as they sat in the chairs that flanked the fireplace, they piled onto a sofa. “You know what I’m craving?” she asked.

“I can’t begin to know.”

“Your mother’s pork roast with those lovely angel biscuits.”

“My dear Kavanagh, who was it who refused to tote the Dutch oven on our journey into the unknown?”

“I was wrong and I admit it. Can’t you make her roast without it?”

“I never have.”

“Does that mean you never will?”

“A pork roast in that oven is a guaranteed, hands-down success.

Why should I be tempted to veer off on some reckless tangent, like wrapping it in foil or roasting it on a pizza pan or whatever?”

“You’re using your pulpit voice,” she remonstrated.

“A thousand pardons,” he said, getting up to fiddle with the dials on the home entertainment system and trying to make something,
anything,
happen.

“Julia Child didn’t require a Dutch oven to make a pork roast,” she said, arching one eyebrow.

“And how did you come by this arcane knowledge?”

“I looked it up in her cookbooks in our new kitchen.”

“Well,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

“Five pounds of flour . . . ,” she murmured, making a list. Cynthia Kavanagh was bound and determined to have biscuits on her dinner plate, whate’er betide.

“Do we really want to buy flour, only to haul it back to Dove Cottage?”

“How long do you expect we’ll be here?”

“They said the job will probably take three weeks, four at the most.”

“Right. Now, double that prediction, thanks to lumber that doesn’t arrive on time or is out of stock altogether, and for the crew who decides to go to another job for a whole week, and the rainy weather that makes the floor too tacky for us to move in for ten days, and . . . you get the idea.”

“Two months,” he said. “Buy the flour.”

 

Cynthia saluted him with her glass. “Here’s to Martha Talbot!”

“And here’s to Miss Child, bless her heart!”

He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but this was as toothsome a pork roast as a man could want, not to mention their first square meal at Sound Doctrine, the name they found engraved on a plaque at the door.

 

“Three guesses!” said Emma, munching what sounded like popcorn.

“Andrew won by a landslide!”

“Well, he won, all right, but not by a
landslide
, a lot of people who were born in Mitford voted for Coot. Anyway, guess what else.”

“Just tell me and get it over with.”

“No, you have to guess. Guess what’s going to happen to Coot as soon as Andrew’s sworn in.”

“He’ll be the envoy to our sister village of Mitford, England?”

“No, but I love the idea of a sister village! Somebody ought to recommend that to Andrew, he’d pick right up on it. Guess again.”

“I give up.” After one guess, she usually let him off the hook.

“Andrew’s goin’ to appoint him to chair a historical committee!”

What he’d always feared might be true, he now knew for a fact—in appointing Coot Hendrick to chair any committee at all, Andrew Gregory had proved to be a man of far greater largesse than himself.

 

He’d done his utmost to sever the umbilical cord that typically united a parish to a long-term priest, and felt it was at last a done deal. Indeed, he hadn’t heard a word from Esther Bolick or anybody else at Lord’s Chapel in a month of Sundays. So, the heck with his interim bishop and two-for-a-penny wisdom, he was calling the Bolicks.

“Esther?”

“Who’s this?”

“How quickly you forget. It’s your old priest.”

“Father Hammond?”

“Just kidding. How in th’ world are you? We hadn’t heard from you in a coon’s age.”

“Lots to do in a new parish, but I think about you and Gene and pray for you faithfully. How is he?”

“Better. I’ve tried to stop worryin’ myself sick.”

“I’m very glad to hear it. And you may be glad to hear that your fame now extends to Whitecap. In truth, I’m calling with a total of eleven requests for your marmalade cake recipe. I know you don’t give it out, but they implored me to ask.”

“Eleven?”
He didn’t know whether she was pleased with the number or disappointed.

“I’m sure as many more are interested, but I’ve personally received the names of eleven, including that of the Baptist preacher who’s renowned for his lemon meringue pie.”