My face burned. Carol and I walked to the door, carefully not looking at each other. On the stoop, Carol turned around.
“Ginny, I don’t understand. If your sister’s respectable now — a husband and two kids — why are your parents still shunning her?”
Through the crisscross pattern of the screen, Ginny blinked. “Because Margaret turned Catholic,” she said, and closed the door in our faces.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Carol said.
“Me, too.”
“Do you think we should go home?” She took her eyes off the S-curve coming up and looked at me.
“If you think that’s best...”
I turned around to put the beans on the counter and caught Brad glaring at the platter of baked chicken. I started, so busy with my thoughts I hadn’t heard the back door. Outside, Honey barked excitedly, wading in to greet her daddy.
“Rough day?” I asked.
“I stopped off to get my oil changed.” Brad’s fists bunched.
“Oh.” I thought of the garage owner ranting at his missing wife, his red face turning purple.
“Goddammit!” Brad shoved the platter with his fist. Chicken flew, skidding across the floor, smacking into the wall. “You know I don’t want you mixed up in this business.”
The counter edge dug into the small of my back. Honey’s barks were reaching hysteria. “I was just out for a ride with Carol. She asked Mr. Hoxmeier a few questions. That’s all.”
“That’s all!” The serving fork bounced off the wall. My plastic water glass followed it. “Don’t lie to me, Annie. I gave you a home and a family. If that’s not enough to satisfy you, you know what you can do about it.”
“Brad... Brad, come back!”
He stomped out the door. I ran after him. Honey strained against her leash, her barks high and piercing.
“Brad!” I called.
The van screeched out of the driveway. I called after him once more, but it was useless.
“I’m sorry, Honey.” Brad kissed her head and tickled her ear. She rolled over, her four legs spread. He rubbed her stomach. I kept my eyes on the TV weatherman, not looking away when he was replaced by a commercial for California oranges.
“Sweetheart?” Brad ruffled the back of my hair — much as he had done to Honey — and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Forgive?”
The oranges changed to a movie preview. Mel Gibson waving a gun. Emily was a Mel Gibson fan. Me, I still lusted after James Garner.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart: Don’t be mad.” Brad moved in front of me, dropping to his knees. Honey jumped up and licked his face. I laughed. I laughed and I laughed.
“Oh, baby.” He rose and took me in his arms. In a moment I was sitting on his lap. “Say you’ll forgive me, Annie. I keep thinking about the woman in the swamp, and I’m so afraid you’ll be next. To you it’s a game, but someone played it for real. Promise you’ll stop snooping? Promise you’ll forgive me?”
I nodded, and he pulled me closer until my head lay on his shoulder.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered into my ear.
On the floor, Honey whimpered.
I made my last call as an amateur detective. I owed Helen that much.
“My dear,” she said, “you’re an adult. Isn’t it time you made your own decisions? If Brad starts one of his tantrums, call me and I’ll back you up.”
“Brad’s right. It’s none of my business. I’ll stick to my poetry from now on. Besides, it was all so sad. The last woman I talked to...”
“Yes? What did she say?”
Helen’s eager voice made me smile slightly. “Her mother disappeared sixteen years ago, when the woman — girl, really — was only six. She hired a detective, who found her mother living with a second family in San Francisco. The girl flew down last March for a reunion.”
“That’s not sad, Ann. That’s happy.”
“The sad part is she couldn’t tell anyone. She was afraid of hurting her stepmother’s feelings. I can’t help but wonder if Emily and Tom have flown to Palm Springs to meet their mother without telling me.”
“They’d be wasting their time. Didn’t Brad tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Brad asked a friend to write those letters to keep the children from feeling abandoned. Brad never knew where Lainie went. She’d been threatening to leave for months, and one day she just disappeared.”
“He’s never heard from her?”
“Never. Neither did her family, although that wasn’t surprising. Lainie didn’t get along with her parents.”
“Haven’t you ever thought something might have happened to her?” Such as death? Such as murder? I felt numb, my fingers cold. Such as your son — my husband — killing the wife he hated? I tried to reject the thought, but it came back.
“Perhaps we should have called the police.” The excitement drained from Helen’s voice, leaving it muted. “But you have to remember, that was over twenty years ago. We didn’t automatically think of foul play in those days.”
“Excuse me, Helen. I have to go.”
“Something important?”
“Deadly,” I said.
I hesitated, my hand on the phone. Honey, sleeping at my feet, made snuffling noises. When I called the police, if I called them, it would be over. My life as it was now. Brad would hate me, the children would hate me. Our money would go for his defense. I would have to work. My qualifications as a librarian were twenty years out of date. I would be lucky to get a job as an aide.
How could I think about that at a time like this? Why wasn’t I worrying about the husband I was so crazy about? How could I be so positive he killed Lainie anyway?
It was the only answer. The swamp so close. Brad’s fits of violence. The wife he hated — still hated. Oh yes, oh yes, I knew he’d killed Lainie the way I knew he would kill me if he knew I knew.
But he didn’t know. He would never need to know, and my life could go on as before.
All our assets were in Brad’s name. The house, the bank accounts, the stocks and bonds. Even Honey’s adoption papers were made out to Brad.
The children were his, not mine.
Then I thought of all the years I had felt so smug, looking down on women who worked, telling myself my real job was taking care of Emily and Tom. For intellectual fulfillment, I had my poetry, didn’t I? Even though my income from it didn’t cover my postage.
I pulled my hand from the phone. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the bones weren’t Lainie’s’ Maybe she was heading a Fortune 500 company in New York City right this moment. And maybe... maybe someday the skeleton in the swamp would be... me.
The deputy asked my name. I hung up. Brad might guess I turned him in, but he couldn’t prove it. The children wouldn’t believe it of me. No one else would. Except, perhaps, Helen.
Honey barked at a car stopping at the top of our driveway. As if it were any normal day, I hooked Honey’s leash on her collar and walked her to the mailbox. The editor of Nature’s Rhythms had written, asking for a poem on wildflowers.
I threw the letter in the trash.
9 from 12 Leaves 3
by Steve O’Connell
“The conclusion is inescapable,” Albert Florian said. “Someone in this club has been murdering its members.”
Which one of you two — besides me — has been murdering members of this club? I wondered fretfully.
“When we organized in 1946, there were a round dozen of us,” Florian said. “For thirteen years we met annually on the twentieth day of October. But now we discover that within the space of one year nine of our members have met with fatal accidents.” He regarded Gerald Evans and me rather severely. “I believe we all agree that this looks a bit suspicious.”