Dew Drop Dead (13 page)

“It sounds like you were running away from him,” Corrie said.

“We were.” The directness of the woman's response startled them.

“But why?” said Corrie. “Why didn't you help him?”

Catherine Weatherall drew her legs under her and folded her hands in her lap, reining in her body as if protecting it from the attack she anticipated. “Bill is a very sick man,” she said. “And a very difficult one. He's been in and out of institutions all his adult life. Years ago, when it first became obvious he was ill and my parents had him committed to a hospital, he started blaming them for all his troubles. As soon as he was released, he unleashed all his anger on them, hounding them night and day, making their lives miserable. I was away at college then, so I escaped what was an unendurably painful time for my parents.

“A little over five years ago, my mother died. Soon after, my father met a French woman on a cruise and with remarkable haste, married her. Imagine, he didn't speak a word of French, but he didn't hesitate to pick up and move to a small village in France. It was, for him, a new life. Or a chance at one, at least. I was furious with him at the time. Now I understand. And I don't blame him at all.

“Without my parents around, Bill turned his
anger on me. We had been very, very close as children. I loved him dearly. But he was not the same Bill I had known as a child. And clearly he didn't see me as the same Catherine, either. He began calling me Catherine the Second. By his logic the first Catherine—the one who had loved him, the one who had been kind to him as a child—was dead. I was someone else, Catherine in name only. Catherine the Second. He took to calling himself Isaac some time later.”

“Why Isaac?” Sebastian asked. “And where did Abraham come from?”

“In the Bible, Isaac was the son betrayed by his father. Bill saw himself as betrayed by his family. I don't know why he took to calling himself Abraham later on. He had his reasons, I'm sure.”

“He called me Catherine the First,” said Corrie.

“Probably because you reminded him of me when I was your age.” Catherine Weatherall took something from Alex's desk and handed it to Corrie. It was the photograph, now removed from its frame. “Look. Look what it says on the back.”

“‘With Catherine and Bill on the Cape, summer 195?.
Happy Times
freshly painted.'” Corrie turned the picture over. “So this is his family, his real family. I still don't understand how you could all run away and leave him. He's your brother.”

“I have children, Corrie, a boy and a girl. He
tried to turn them against me and when that didn't work, took to spying on them and shouting obscenities at them. What could I do? I had to protect them and I had to protect myself. We moved, and he followed us. We moved again, and he followed us again. We bought the inn during one of Bill's hospitalizations a few years ago. We thought our moving days were over. But somehow he found us, and it started again, all the unhappiness. Finally, we had no choice but to vanish.”

There was a long silence as Corrie studied the photograph. “I was just thinking,” she said. “The people in this picture look so nice.”

She handed it back and Catherine said, “Do you want to keep it? It makes me too sad.”

Corrie shook her head. “It makes me sad, too,” she said.

“Please don't hate me, Corrie. What I've done is harder than you can possibly imagine. It's a terrible thing to have to choose between your brother and yourself. But that's the choice I had to make.”

“What will happen to the picture if neither of us takes it?”

“I suppose it will be thrown away,” said Catherine Weatherall.

“I'll keep it then,” Corrie said. “I'll save it.”

“For Abraham?” The woman knew which name to use.

“Yes,” said Corrie. “I'm sure he misses it. Maybe I'll see him again someday and I can give it back to him.”

The woman nodded.

“I mean,” Corrie said, “it's the only family he's got left.”

LATER THAT AFTERNOON
, Sebastian was lying on his bed reading when a piece of fallen paper caught his eye.

“Dear Koji,”
he read, picking it up.
“How's everything with you? I'm having a pretty good year in school. Mom and Dad are fine. Gram is busy with all her projects, as usual. There's not much happening here.”

It seemed like a million years ago that he'd started this letter to his pen pal. What a letter he could write now! Dear Koji, My friends and I found a body in an abandoned inn. We thought the guy had been murdered, but it turned out... it turned out...

Sebastian wondered how Josh's novel would turn out. His
Dew Drop Dead
would be so different from the real thing. He wondered if it would make him laugh.

Just then, he heard laughter coming from the kitchen. The sound surprised him, and his surprise made him realize how long it had been since there was any
real
laughter in the house.

He went down to the kitchen where he found his father helping his mother make dinner.

“What are you doing home?” Sebastian asked.

“Well, hello to you, too,” said Will. Then, with a nod to the clock on the wall, he added, “It
is
after six.”

“Did you get fired?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

Will ran some water over a head of lettuce. “I was informed that a few changes will be made once the ‘transition' is complete,” he told his son.

“That doesn't sound so bad.”

Katie laughed lightly. “It's all code, Sebastian,” she said. “When you're told directly that a few changes are to be made, what it means is that
you
are one of the changes.”

Sebastian looked back and forth between his parents. “I don't get it,” he said. “You guys look happy. I heard you laughing.”

“Well, don't make it sound like a disease,” said his mother.

Will put the lettuce into a salad spinner and handed it to Sebastian while he started to chop some carrots. “We're relieved,” he said. “We've been worried and scared and feeling sorry for ourselves for too long. And you know something? Now that we realize it's really going to happen, it's not so bad.”

“In a way,” said Katie, “it's like being given a chance to start over. We've been talking about all the things we could do with our lives.”

“Like what?” Sebastian asked, getting worried.

His mother thought a minute. “Like living on a beach somewhere and making masks out of coconut shells to sell to the tourists.”

“Get real,” Sebastian said.

“Well,” said his father as Jessica entered the room, “we
did
entertain the notion—”

“For about twenty minutes,” Katie interjected.

“—of buying the Dew Drop Inn,” Will went on. “We've had this dream of being innkeepers since we were in college and—”

Sebastian began vigorously turning the handle of the salad spinner. “And we wouldn't have to leave Pembroke!” he cried. “And Mom could keep her restaurant—or even move it to the inn—and Uncle Harry could come work for us and—”

“Oh, that man!” said Jessica, scowling. “I won't have
him
working at our inn.”

Sebastian turned to his parents. “But where would you get the money?” he asked. “Doesn't an inn cost an awful lot?”

“My sister Rose can help,” said Jessica, taking the salad spinner from Sebastian and placing the nearly dry lettuce leaves in a large bowl. “What does she need all her money for? She doesn't have any children and I doubt she's bought herself a new dress in the past ten years. She could become a part-owner.”

“Would she have to come live with us?” Sebastian asked.

Jessica gave Sebastian a long look. “You've never
liked Rose, have you? I don't understand that. She's terribly fond of you.”

“It isn't that I don't like Aunt Rose,” Sebastian said, “exactly. It's just, well, I don't know if I'd like her living at the inn with us.”

“Well, for goodness' sake, if she's going to put up the money, she's certainly entitled to
live
there. Which is more than I can say for Harry Dobbs.”

“But Uncle Harry will
work
at the inn. What will Aunt Rose do?”

Sebastian's parents burst into laughter. “Cut it out, you two,” Will pleaded. “We're not buying the inn.”

“We're not?” said Sebastian.

“Oh,” Jessica said, “Rose will be so disappointed.”

Katie urged the family to sit down to dinner. “I'll admit we did seriously consider the idea,” she said. “Briefly. We even made a call. But the inn isn't for sale.”

“It isn't?” Sebastian asked.

“No,” said Will. “It seems that Corrie's father has convinced the county to buy the place and turn it into a permanent shelter for the homeless.”

“That's great,” Sebastian said. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his grandmother shaking her head. “So are you going to look for another inn to buy?”

Katie laughed. “Not at the moment,” she said. “But you never know what the future will bring.”

“Well,” said Jessica. “One thing the future will
bring—and soon—is Thanksgiving. If one may be allowed to change the subject, I have something of the utmost importance I wish to discuss.” She waited to be sure she had everyone's rapt attention before continuing.

“This sounds serious,” said Will. “What is it?”

“Pies!” Jessica exclaimed. “I have decided to make a different kind this year. Mince.”

“Oh, Gram,” said Sebastian. “I hate mince. And anyway, apple and pumpkin are tradition.”

“Well, that's true. And tradition matters. But I love mince, and I never make it because no one else likes it.”

“Then I think you should make it,” said Katie.

“But what about tradition?” Sebastian protested.

“Perhaps,” said Katie, “the time has come for new traditions.”

“I'll drink to that,” Will said, raising his glass of water. “Here's to traditions: the old and familiar . . . and the ones waiting to be made.”

JESSICA HALLEM'S
pies—the apple, the pumpkin, and the mince—were three among many that Thanksgiving. For Sebastian's family, as for other families in Pembroke, carrying food from their homes in wicker baskets and old cookie tins to the long cloth-covered table in the center of the basement social hall at First Church marked the beginning of a new holiday tradition.

By the time all the food—the turkey and pot roast, the mashed potatoes and yam pies, the bread stuffing and bowls of cranberry mold—had found its place on the overcrowded serving table, more than eighty people filled the room.

Estelle Barker's daughter, Alyssa, eyed the bounty at a distance before daring to come up and touch the white cloth with one tiny finger. “I thought I was dreaming it,” she said.

“You are,” her mother told her. “Tomorrow it's peanut butter for you again.” Then, seeing the look in her daughter's eyes, she softened. “That's okay, honey lamb. You just fill up on this dream today.”

Estelle and her two children sat at a table with David and Rachel and Josh. When Rebecca Quinn joined them, Estelle cried, “Now I'm the one that's dreaming! Thanksgiving dinner with the police! You children mind your manners, hear, or you'll be eating tomorrow's dinner off tin plates!”

Sebastian and his family were seated at a table nearby. Uncle Harry asked Jessica politely if the chair next to hers was taken, and before she could think what to say, he took it. Harley and his sisters joined them. His father, Harley explained, had to work that day. “People need gas even on Thanksgiving,” he said. “And my dad needs his job.”

When Sebastian saw that there was one empty chair left at the table, he walked over to Marcus, who was sitting sullenly in a far corner of the room.

“What are you up to, man?” Marcus asked as Sebastian took him firmly by the arm and led him to the table.

“Nobody sits alone today,” Sebastian said.

He looked over to where Corrie was sitting with her own and another family—a mother, father, and three children who, Sebastian learned later, had been living out of their car for over two months. Corrie saw him pulling Marcus along and smiled at them both.

The Reverend Wingate ruffled his daughter's hair as he passed behind her, and Corrie smiled up
at him, too. She was proud that he had done this, brought all these people together—people with homes of their own who had chosen to celebrate Thanksgiving in a church basement instead, people without homes who today might have some small reason to celebrate.

She smiled to herself to think of Raymond Elveri, whose note had been given to her just that morning by the church custodian.
“Dear Corrie,”
it read.
“I've gone home to my family. Maybe they'll give me another chance. Maybe this time I will, too. Happy Thanksgiving. Your friend, Raymond.”

The cold November wind rattled the windows, and Corrie's smile faded. Abraham was out there somewhere. Perhaps near. Perhaps far away by now. It had been over a week since she'd seen him last. She thought of the photograph that she had tucked away in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She would save it for him in case he returned. In case she ever saw him again.

And she heard her father say, “Let us bow our heads and give thanks.”