Not Guilty (5 page)

As one of the attendants pushed it, the gurney rattled toward the pool, while another man began to unfold a large, black polystyrene bag.
With Sergeant Henderson’s help, Keely staggered to her feet. Evelyn Connelly approached Dylan and started to guide him back inside the house.

“Mom,” Dylan cried, breaking away from the older woman and reaching out for his mother, awkwardly trying to slip an arm around her. “I know you told me to come home and do my homework, but I just went out skating for a little while.”

In her mind’s eye, she could still see that skateboard beside the pool when she’d looked out of the kitchen window after dinner. And she knew what had happened. Dylan had ridden his bike home and then, not wanting to go in and do his homework, he had retrieved the skateboard from where he’d left it, beside the pool. He had gone on his way, leaving the gate open behind him. So that Abby could toddle down there while Mark was busy looking over some brief for court tomorrow.

Dylan had gone off, and Mark had been absorbed in his brief, thinking Abby was playing somewhere near him. Somewhere safe. And meanwhile, Abby had wandered. It was a chain of carelessness. Each little oversight not significant in itself. Linked together, they had the power to devastate. And where had she been when this chain of carelessness had been forged? When her life was about to be upended again? Sorting through silk ties. Reading the jacket copy on a bunch of books and CDs. Each little decision a link in the chain. The chain that was squeezing the breath out of her now. Making her feel almost faint with fury at her son, who stood before her, apologizing for going out, not even acknowledging his part in all of this. His oversight was the worst—the fatal one.

“How many times did I tell you to lock that gate around the pool?” she said through clenched teeth. “How many times?”

“What do you mean?” he said. “I didn’t—”

“Your skateboard was out by the pool. Don’t deny it. I saw it there after dinner.”

Dylan was white with horror. “I know. But . . . I locked the gate, Mom. I did.”

Don’t lie to me!
she wanted to shout.
You didn’t think about
anyone else! Mark, the baby. You were mad about the bike, and mad at the world. So you went on your way and left that gate swinging open. You set this disaster in motion. Your sister nearly drowned. And Mark . . .
She wanted to scream at Dylan. She could feel it rising in her throat.

“I know I locked it,” Dylan cried.

Keely turned away from him and dug her fingernails into her palms.
Don’t do it,
she told herself.
Don’t rage against him. He’ll never get over it. He’ll never forget it.
She could feel him beside her, staring at her helplessly. It would take every ounce of the love she had for him not to berate him. To be compassionate. To spare him. Desperately trying to stifle the words she could never take back, she looked wildly around her. The house, the pool. Their perfect little world. Hadn’t a little voice inside warned her not to agree to the house with a pool? Hadn’t she known better than to put that danger in their paths? Why hadn’t she followed her instincts? Wasn’t that the first act of carelessness, after all? Wasn’t she herself to blame?

She turned back to face her son and saw his eyes, feverish with fear and anxiety.
No point in blame,
she thought bitterly. She remembered all the times she had blamed herself for Richard’s death, berated herself for failing him, and felt guilty. What good had it done? There was no use in it. It wouldn’t bring Mark back to her.

She summoned all her will and her love for Dylan. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s not your fault,” she said. “It was an accident.” Then her tears welled up and spilled over again as she began to face the harsh reality of her life.

“Mom, I didn’t—”

She shook her head, needing to silence him. “Don’t. Please, let’s leave it at that. Let’s go in the house. We need to help each other now. And Abby. Please, Dylan. I need your help . . .”

Sergeant Henderson came over and offered her an arm. The EMTs began the process of removing the body. He urged her to lean on him. She shook her head angrily and then stumbled as she started up the path to the house.

“Dylan,” Keely called out faintly from the path. “Come inside.”
When he did not respond, Keely turned to see her son, rooted to the apron of the pool, staring at the lifeless body of his stepfather. He did not flinch as the EMTs lifted the corpse and unzipped the body bag. “Dylan,” she cried. He remained staring, remote and dry-eyed, as if he were a bystander who had happened on the aftermath of a wreck.

T
he mourners at the funeral for Mark Weaver had filled every pew of Our Lady of the Angels Church, and now the crowd at the neighboring cemetery spilled out across a dozen graves. Keely sat on a metal folding chair, wearing dark glasses and the same black suit that she had bought in haste at an Ann Arbor dress shop the day after Richard had died. The weather had been much the same on the day of Richard’s funeral, too, she thought as she stared at the bier of her second husband. Cool and windy, with a brilliant blue sky. A perfect day to go for a brisk walk or apple picking. Behind her sunglasses, she closed her red, swollen eyelids and imagined it. A bright orchard, leaves that camouflaged green fruit, and baskets too full and heavy to lift. She and Mark and Dylan, laughing as they bent to their task, and Abby, toddling precariously among the broken apples on the ground . . . a scene that never had, never would, take place.

“When he was but a child, Mark’s parents were taken from him suddenly,” intoned the elderly priest. “I remember the day they were laid to rest. He kept asking where they were, and when they were coming back. After that, Mark was alone in the world, and often despairing, despite the best efforts of many good people. He was smart, but he was also angry, and he lashed out at the world for a while. Then, with help, he took himself in hand and began to work hard, and he made a great success of his life. But he remained a lonely man. Until that day when he finally met Keely and found what he had been seeking all those years. His very own family to belong to . . .”

Oh Mark,
Keely thought.
You were so sure we had all the time in the world. And you made me, who should have known better, believe it, too.
She felt somehow that she was being punished for having tried to make
a new life. She knew that people had gossiped when she remarried. It was as if she had been disloyal to Richard’s memory by starting over. Even though Richard’s mother, Ingrid, had given her blessing to the match, Keely realized that she had always felt guilty for finding happiness again. But she was young and she had needed love in her life.
Isn’t that what God wants us to do? To love one another? How can that be wrong?

She realized that her thoughts were wandering, and she forced herself-to pay attention to the words of the priest, who was trying to offer comfort and hope.

“And so, we commit the mortal remains of our brother, Mark, to the ground. We remember that he gave up his life to save the life of his beloved daughter, and we say farewell, hoping and believing that his heavenly Father will welcome him into his many mansions on high. Jesus said, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for another’ . . .”

Keely’s tears dripped off of her chin. She was hardly conscious of them anymore. The last few days had been pain, waking and sleeping. She reminded herself of how much worse it would have been if Mark had failed to save their baby girl. Today, when she returned from this bleakest of ceremonies, Abby would be there, unaware of why or how her father had left her and wanting only to be held by her mother.
You’ll never know him,
Keely thought.
But you’ll know how much he loved you, how precious your life was to him. You’ll have that for all your life. You’ll always know that the only reason he left you was to save you.

At that thought, she could not help but think of her son. On her right, Dylan sat, just as he had at Richard’s funeral. He had wept inconsolably on the day his father was laid to rest. Today, he stared at the ground and avoided the gaze of anyone who tried to speak to him or express sorrow. Of course,
he
was not wearing the same clothes he had worn to his father’s funeral. His size had nearly doubled in four years. Yesterday, Lucas Weaver had taken Dylan to his favorite men’s shop and purchased a blazer and pants, which he insisted on paying for. Keely studied the closed, scowling expression on her son’s face. His father had chosen to leave him, to escape the pain of living.
His love for us was not
enough to make him stay,
she thought. All grief was the same in the first wave. But Richard’s death made for a much more bitter loss over time. She laid a hand gently on Dylan’s forearm through the fine fabric of his new blazer. Dylan did not acknowledge her gesture. It was as if he had not even felt it.

A prayer began, and Keely murmured along, unable to take comfort in the familiar words.
It’s almost over,
she thought, and a panicky sensation seemed to take her own breath away. She wasn’t ready for it to be over. She wasn’t ready to return to the house and greet all these people who had come. Lots of people were here to offer comfort. Her two older brothers and their wives had come from the Midwest. She’d known that they would come, even though she wasn’t close to them. People Mark had known for most of his life and clients from his practice had arrived in force. Lucas Weaver, of course, and his wife, Betsy, were seated in the front row. Keely felt vaguely worried about the old couple. This past winter, they had lost their other son, Prentice. Prentice had led a sorry life, his youthful promise deteriorating into an endless cycle of benders and rehabs, with a record of minor scuffles with the law. He suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and was forbidden to drink. His life ended, at the age of forty-two, in a seedy bar, where he’d systematically drained a bottle of vodka and collapsed.

Betsy, normally so circumspect, had wailed in grief at his funeral. There was no way for a mother to come to terms easily with burying the child she’d carried under her heart, no matter how sorry his life had been.
And now this,
Keely thought. Mark, who was more of a son to Lucas than his own son had been, his heir apparent, the one whom he had chosen and groomed all these years, was gone. Lucas looked up to see her gazing in his direction and gave her a grim nod.

Keely had to admit to herself that it was comforting to have people share in your grief. In the crowd, she saw Evelyn Connelly and others she recognized from their neighborhood. Squeezing hands, squinting in the sunlight, were Dan Warner, a widower who lived down the street from them, and his teenaged daughter Nicole. The breeze whipped Nicole’s blond hair across her face. Keely had spoken to Dan a couple of times, when he’d brought them a package and some mail, mistakenly
delivered to his house, because of the similarities of their last names and street addresses. Nicole was in two of Dylan’s classes at school. Still, Keely marveled that they would take the time to turn out for a family they hardly knew. People often surprised you with kindness when there was a tragedy in the family. Even Susan Ambler and Jake showed up. And Ingrid, recently recovered from back surgery, had insisted on coming. Keely could imagine how painful it was for Ingrid to be reminded of their last funeral together, when Richard had died.

The funeral director handed Keely two white roses and helped her to her feet. Part of her wanted to refuse to go, withhold her flower from the grave, have a tantrum like a child. The adult part shuffled forward, lifeless as a mannequin, and, at the close of the benediction at a signal from the funeral director, she placed the flowers gently on the shining coffin. One for her, one for Abby. The sounds of muffled weeping behind her came to her ears on the bright autumn breeze. She gripped Dylan’s hand and allowed herself to be steered, through the maze of headstones, toward the open doors of the waiting limousine.

When they reached the shining black Cadillac, Dylan scrambled into the backseat, but Keely stood beside the car, accepting the hushed condolences of people who would not be returning to the house. Automatically she brushed cheeks and thanked people for coming before they turned away.

Lucas Weaver waited at the end of the queue. Keely noticed that he was leaning heavily on his silver-headed walking stick today, which was a sure sign of his exhaustion. Lucas was a diabetic who suffered from poor circulation in his legs, but he kept his condition a secret from most people and pretended the walking stick was merely an affectation. Part of his Wild West collection, it had once belonged to Bat Masterson. Usually, he could pull off his jaunty disguise. Today, it was too much for him. “Keely, I hope you’ll understand if we don’t come back to the house,” Lucas said. “I’ve got Betsy in the car already. I’m worried about her. Last night, she was so distraught. I really got scared. I know we should be there, but . . .” Lucas’s wife was a Mayflower descendant whose bloodlines blueprinted for her a life of wealth and ease, but she
had not sprung back after Prentice’s death. There were blows that no amount of privilege could surmount.

“It’s all right, Lucas,” Keely said. “Everyone will understand. Betsy . . . both of you have been through so much this year. I know she isn’t well . . .” Keely grasped his cold hands in hers. “I want you to know how much I appreciate . . . everything.”

She embraced him, her arms encircling his frail frame.

“It still hasn’t sunk in. It’s too awful.” His voice was muffled against her shoulder.

“Who would have believed it?” Keely murmured as they separated. Lucas stopped to talk to an old associate who had approached them. Keely was about to turn and enter the car when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of one last figure in black, lingering among the headstones. She wondered if it was someone too timid to approach her. She knew from experience how difficult it was for many people to express their sympathies. They wanted to speak, but they became tongue-tied in the face of grief. They would lower their eyes and turn away when there was much that they wanted to say. She turned and looked at the last mourner.

Across several rows of monuments, under the shedding branches of an elm tree, she saw a cast-concrete statue of a disheveled, cherubic boy, wearing a T-shirt and untied sneakers, with angel’s wings on his shoulders. Beside the statue, a trim woman in a black business suit had rested a hand on the stone child’s wings. The woman’s hair was a fiery auburn with gold highlights glinting in the sun. Her even, perfectly made-up features were set in a stony expression. Dark glasses hid her eyes. But her gaze was not downcast. Just the opposite. Despite the dark glasses, Keely could tell the woman was staring at her.

Keely shivered and touched Lucas on the arm. He was still beside her, accepting condolences. “Lucas,” she said in a low voice. “There is a woman over there who is staring at me. Do you know who she is?”

Lucas turned to look and then he frowned and muttered, “That’s Maureen Chase.”

“Oh,” said Keely. They had never met, but Keely was well aware of who she was. She was the district attorney of Profit County, and the
woman Mark had been engaged to marry when he met Keely. “I see,” she said.

“I think that’s the grave where her twin brother was buried,” said Lucas. “Frankly, I’m a little surprised that she’s here. I had the impression that she never really forgave Mark for . . . you know . . .”

Keely knew what Lucas meant—for breaking their engagement and marrying another woman. “Did she ever mention it to you?”

“No. Never,” said Lucas quickly. “She’s not that sort of woman. She’s all business. That’s probably why she’s here. Just out of respect for their business relationship.”

Keely nodded, but in her heart, she doubted that Maureen’s presence here was about business. After all, she had nearly married Mark. She must have had strong feelings for him that still lingered. Keely thought that perhaps she should walk over to Maureen Chase and offer her hand. After all, this was a woman who had loved Mark, and who, presumably, would understand, better than anyone, how painful it was to lose him. And he was lost to them both now. Gone for good. The grave had put an abrupt end to any rivalry that might have existed between them. But when she looked up at Maureen Chase again, her good intentions shriveled. Maureen’s gaze was masked by the sunglasses, but the set of her jaw was unmistakable.

“I’d steer clear of her, if I were you,” Lucas advised.

Keely ducked her head and slid into the cool, shadowy interior of the waiting car. “Well,” she said, grateful to be hidden from that implacable gaze, “that shouldn’t be hard to do.”