A Stillness of Chimes (23 page)

“The rat. I can’t believe she never told me.”

“I guess she wanted to spare me the humiliation.” He smiled a little. “But I never knew I wasn’t being talked about, so I felt humiliated for no good reason.”

“See, she’s the kind of woman who won’t talk about an ex-boyfriend.”

“I shouldn’t talk about her either.”

“This is a different kind of talking. The constructive kind. Wow, Sean, I hope she’ll stay long enough to give us some time to work on her. Maybe she’ll even move home, unless Mikey kicks the bucket.”

“Why would Mikey have anything to do with it?”

“Don’t you remember? She’s crazy about the cat because Elliott rescued him from a Dumpster or something. But she can’t have pets in her apartment, and nobody would want to adopt such an old cat.”

“What are you getting at?”

“As long as Mikey’s alive, there’s a chance she’ll keep the house and move home. You’d better work fast though. Go for broke.” Cassie stood up, rubbed Arabella the wrong way again, and headed for the kitchen.

Sean shook his head, remembering how Laura turned him down. The moment he’d realized she was saying no, her words had turned to muddy fuzz in his brain. He only knew she’d been kind. Now, to find out she’d never told her best friend about his stupid, misguided proposal … well, it only made him love her more. Even if she refused to love him—or refused to admit she did. There was a big difference.

Voices wafted toward him from the patio. Gary’s jovial banter and Ardelle’s breathless chatter. Laura’s low voice, carrying a hint of the West now. Cassie’s big laugh and Tigger’s giggle. Tig still sounded like a kid sometimes.

Both Bright girls were almost like sisters to Sean. Sometimes he wished they were his real sisters. Other times, he just envied them for having two reasonably normal parents who loved them. Gary and Ardelle were good to him too, but being a charity project wasn’t the same as being a son.

Absently smoothing the cat’s silky pelt and half listening to the bluegrass on the stereo, Sean closed his eyes and remembered after-school afternoons
at Elliott’s shop, soaking up the man’s music and his kindness. Sometimes Sean had imagined being his son, a fantasy that lasted only until he realized that would make Laura his sister. That would never do.

Exhausted from an evening of feigned cheerfulness and too many Gibby Sprague CDs, Laura kept her eyes on the center line as Sean drove her home. She tried to concentrate on the way the headlights ran ahead through the curves, but it didn’t help.

All night, she’d been reliving long-ago birthday parties with her parents and the Brights. They’d always had so much fun together. As if they were really and truly all one big happy family.

She made a sharp intake of breath, nearly a sob, before she could stop herself.

Sean squeezed her hand. “Everything’s finally hitting you,” he said. “Right on top of losing your mom, you have the rumors about your dad. It’s too much.”

Afraid her voice wouldn’t work, she only shook her head.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asked after a long silence.

Maybe she could get a couple of words out. “More sorting.”

“Why don’t you get some help from somebody? Cassie, maybe? Two birds, one stone. Visit with her and make some progress on the sorting.”

“Good idea.”

He parked in front of the house and shut off the engine. “Sit tight. I’ll get your door. It tends to stick.”

Like she didn’t know that? But she waited as he walked around the truck.

The dome light came on, making her feel exposed. She climbed out. Sean followed, hovering just behind her as she unlocked the back door.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said, keeping her left shoulder to him so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye.

“Thanks for inviting me. Hey, look who decided to come home. Mikey.”

She turned around, her heart instantly lighter. Mikey sashayed up the steps and wound himself around her ankles. She scooped him up, caught Sean’s smile, and remembered her earlier terror that Mikey had been hit.

“Oh, I forgot I’d been interrogating you,” she said. “You still haven’t explained what Annie said about a drowning. Aren’t you going to explain?”

“What she overheard was a figure of speech.”

“It wasn’t a literal drowning?”

He hesitated a little too long. “I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed a literal, human drowning in my life, and I hope I never will.”

“You have a way of not quite lying but not quite telling the truth, either.”

“It’s a gift.” He walked across the porch and down the steps, then looked up at her. “Next time we go out, it won’t involve six other people.”

“That was not a date, Sean. We were not technically going out.”

“But we will. Just you wait. Lock up, now.”

He climbed into his truck, but he didn’t start the engine until she’d had time to carry the cat inside, close the door and dead-bolt it. Then he flashed his headlights.

The old signal was as blatant as saying it out loud.
“Good night. I love you.”

She jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans so her fingers
wouldn’t be tempted to flash the porch light in answer. The truck roared out of the driveway and around the bend.

Laura checked the clock. It was early. Not even ten. And as tired as she was, she knew she couldn’t sleep. She might as well make a pot of decaf and try to accomplish something. Maybe she’d tackle those dresser drawers. She didn’t look forward to invading her mother’s private space, but it had to be done.

There was usually a bag of decaf in the freezer. Laura opened it and started poking around. Lots of frozen veggies and fruit. Not much meat. No red meat whatsoever, no convenience foods, and if there was any decaf it was well hidden.

Reaching to the rear of the top shelf, she found a store-bought bag of peas and then a clear bag full of blackberries. Her mom had always placed the berries on a small pan, leaving space between them so they wouldn’t stick together as they froze. Once they were solid, she’d tumbled them into plastic bags and returned them to the freezer, perfect little morsels of summer’s sweetness for blackberry cobblers in midwinter.

Laura tossed the peas back in and clutched the bag of berries with both hands. Her mom must have picked them last year—by herself, because her young helpers had grown up. Lost in bittersweet nostalgia for the days of berry picking in the lush growth near the tracks, Laura closed her eyes. She and her friends must have brought home thousands and thousands of berries over the years.

Her fingers were freezing. Gently, she placed the bag on the shelf and shut the freezer. Her mom would have chided her for leaving the door open so long.

The wind was stronger now, the sound of the wind chimes clearer. She’d
always loved their cheerful noise, but now it set her nerves on edge. She couldn’t stand it.

Halfway to the back door, she recalled the shadowy figure sweeping across the yard. Onto the moonlit road. Into the cemetery.

No. She didn’t want to go out there alone and thrash her way through the bushes to take down the chimes. They hung from a branch of the star magnolia, surrounded by a tangle of shrubs. It would be hard enough to find them in broad daylight but nearly impossible in the dark.

Far away, coyotes yipped, chilling her blood. Their eerie voices overlapped the random music of the chimes, like two radio stations coming in at the same time, competing with each other.

The shadow of the overhead fan batted incessantly at the wall, the blades making their swift circle. The coyotes went silent all at once. There was no sound but the wind in the trees and the chimes. Then the wind stilled. Everything was hushed, as if the whole world waited for something to happen.

Across the road, a small crowd of churchgoers milled around the doors in the usual preservice socialization time. Not wanting them to think she was spying on them, Laura settled into a chair on the porch where she’d be somewhat hidden by the lower branches of a pine.

Late last night, she’d found confirmation of one of her worst fears. This morning, in a fit of spite, she’d deleted her mom’s number from her cell phone contacts. She’d used up the last of those frozen berries too. She wasn’t sentimental about them anymore. Not after lying awake half the night, fuming over the note she’d found in her mother’s lingerie drawer.

A whiff of baking cobbler escaped through the kitchen window.

Her dad had always loved blackberry cobbler. With vanilla ice cream if they had it. Or whipped cream. Real whipped cream. And he’d never put on a pound.

“Oh, Daddy,” she whispered. His crazy accusation must have been true, after all.

She looked up at a cloud made of bands of white and gray, chevroned. The wind had run through them like a knife through marble-cake batter.

Across the road, the organist pumped out some unrecognizable hymn. Most of the churchgoers had disappeared inside the building, but stragglers were still arriving. She recognized a few vehicles, a few faces.

There was Gary’s car. He swerved into a space, climbed out, and ran around to open Ardelle’s door, then the rear door. Cassie climbed out of the backseat in jeans and a hot-pink sweater. The three of them walked toward the church entrance, pausing to speak with two young women in flowery dresses. Gary put his arm around Ardelle and threw his head back, laughing at something. The young women laughed too, the wind rippling their skirts. They clutched Bibles like anchors to hold them to earth in the strong wind.

Cassie looked over her shoulder toward the house. Laura leaned out from behind the pine and waved. Cassie waved back and made some kind of hand signal.

“Whatever,” Laura said, watching all of them file into the church.

Minutes later, Cassie sprinted across the road, across the yard, and up the steps. Breathless and laughing, she plopped herself into the chair beside Laura’s. “My folks probably think I’m sitting in the back.”

“My dad always said you were a corrupting influence,” Laura said.

“Well, I can be in church pretty much any Sunday, but how often do I get to sit and visit with my oldest friend? But if you want to go, let’s go.”

“Can’t. I have blackberry cobbler in the oven.”

“Mmm, that settles it. I’m not going to church.”

“It’s pretty obvious you didn’t plan to anyway. How’s your mom doing?”

“Pretty much the same. She has good days and bad days. She won’t talk about anything important, and she gets mad if we suggest counseling.”

Laura nodded. Her dad had resisted counseling too. Not that her mom had ever pressed hard for it. Maybe she hadn’t really cared.

Mikey hopped onto a windowsill and meowed at them through the glass.

“Poor baby,” Cassie said. “Can’t he even come onto the porch?”

“No, he’d be gone in a flash, and there’s so much traffic now.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t last long outside, but he’d die free and happy.”

“Happy? Under somebody’s tires?”

“But he might be smarter than you’re giving him credit for.”

“I doubt it. He always heads straight to the road.” Laura sighed. “I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to mention this, but I think you should know. Mikey escaped a couple of days ago because your mom let him out.”

“My mom?”

“Remember I told you she was overstepping her bounds? It was sweet of her to take care of things for me, but it was supposed to stop when I got into town. On Friday, she let herself in when I wasn’t home. She tidied up again, and she fed Mikey and let him out.” On the verge of mentioning the boxed-up journals, Laura stopped, troubled by the worry in Cassie’s eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Laura. I’ll say something to her.”

“Don’t. I just thought you should know. It might be part of the big picture of whatever’s going on with her.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about weird parents. I came to talk about marriage proposals. I cannot believe you never told me Sean asked you to marry him. And you turned him down?”

“He told you?”

“He certainly did, and if we hadn’t been in the middle of Trevor’s party I would have dragged you off somewhere and smacked some sense into you.”

“His timing was terrible, Cassie. It was right in the middle of losing my dad. And we were so young. Then I took off for college in Colorado, and Sean and I sort of grew apart.”