They were still slowing down when the light turned green again. “No, Mother never worked. Of course, few women did, even in those days. There was so much more work to do at home than there is now, you know. It was hard for her, but she always managed to pinch by. She had investments. She and my father helped Uncle David start his garage, and that certainly did well over time. We never had luxuries, but I never wanted for anything important. And when the time came, I was able to attend college. I was the only girl in my high school class to do so. That was before the GI Bill and student loans and all that.”
“Where did you go?” Clare asked, imagining one of the state universities or subsidized colleges.
“Smith. Class of ’47.”
Clare blinked. “Good school. Were you a work-study student?”
“No, Mother paid for it all.” She risked another glance at Clare before returning her attention to the road. “She never spent anything on herself. Everything she had she spent on me, and then on the clinic, and then it went into the trust at her death.”
Clare opened her mouth to point out that Jane Ketchem hadn’t done too badly for a woman with no job and no visible means of support, but her grandmother Fergusson hissed in her ear, Nothing’s more vulgar than talking about money! So she snapped her jaw shut and watched as they turned with great deliberation onto Elm Street.
Several cars were parked along the street in front of the Rouses’ house, including, Clare noted with no surprise, the chief of police’s pickup truck. Mrs. Marshall pulled in as close as she could, and Clare juggled the casserole dish out of the car while Mrs. Marshall retrieved a cherry pie-“Store bought, I’m afraid”-from the backseat.
This time, Clare didn’t have a chance to admire the deep moldings and polished brass on the Rouses’ door. The minute Mrs. Marshall set foot on the steps, it whisked open, revealing a little pear-shaped woman with a face like a homemade dumpling. “Lacey Marshall, you be careful on those steps,” she said, reaching for the pie. “Give me that. Come on in. Oh, is that a casserole? How nice. Renee will be set for a few days at this rate. Which’ll be a help. Although you know, sometimes puttering around in the kitchen can be a relief from thinking about your problems. Oh! Who is this?”
During the course of the monologue, Clare had followed Mrs. Marshall into the foyer, set the casserole dish on a marble-topped commode that had probably stashed mittens and hats in the Rouses’ child-rearing days, and unwound her scarf from around her neck.
“Yvonne, I’d like you to meet the Reverend Clare Fergusson, our priest at St. Alban’s. Clare, this is Yvonne Story. Yvonne was our librarian at the Millers Kill Public Library until she retired, much to our loss.”
“Oh, I had to retire in order to fit in all the other things I was doing at the time. Not that I didn’t love being librarian. Everyone always said it was a natural fit, a librarian named Story.” She snorted at her own joke. “So nice to meet you. I’d heard the Episcopalians had a new minister. I used to be a Methodist myself. But when Dr. Gannet left, it all went straight downhill. That new fellow couldn’t preach his way out of a paper sack. So I abandoned ship. Now I watch this nice television preacher. So much easier than getting up and dressed on a Sunday morning!”
Clare tried to squeeze in a how-do-you-do while Yvonne Story pumped her hand, but it was futile. She settled for smiling and nodding.
“Isn’t this terrible about poor Allan? I mean, I hate to assume the worst. But there’s not much of a way you can put a good face on this, is there? Poor Renee. I hope he left her well set up. She’s never had to work, like me. What will she do without him? That’s the downside of having a husband. That’s why I never got married.”
Clare felt her smile glazing over. Deliver me, O Lord, she prayed.
“Yvonne.” Renee Rouse appeared in the doorway between the front hall and the living room. “Would you be a dear and go make some more coffee? And a pot of tea. I’m sure everyone would like something warm on such a cold day.”
“Oop. Of course, Renee. And I’ll put this pie in the kitchen for you, Lacey. Did you get it from the IGA? They do nice pies. Not as good as homemade, mind you, but good.”
“Thank you so much, Yvonne,” Mrs. Rouse interrupted.
“Oh, you’re right. To the kitchen for me. Ta-ta. See you later. Nice meeting you, Reverend.” She continued to talk as the door to the kitchen shut behind her. Clare took off her coat and hung it in the hall closet. The librarian?
Renee Rouse closed her eyes. She was holding the edge of the archway, her knuckles white.
“How long has she been here?” Mrs. Marshall asked.
“Since nine.” Mrs. Rouse tried to smile.
Mrs. Marshall picked up her casserole. “I’ll pop into the kitchen and keep her occupied for a bit.”
“Bless you, Lacey.” Renee Rouse squeezed one of Mrs. Marshall’s slender arms. She was dressed much the same as the older woman in a simple sweater and warm slacks. Classics. Her grandmother Fergusson would have approved. But unlike Mrs. Marshall, who radiated warmth in her marigold sweater and lipstick, Renee Rouse looked cold. The wall that had held life’s problems at bay had crumbled in the space of an evening, and now she was drowning in reality.
“Reverend Fergusson.” She blinked, as if she had just noticed Clare. “Thank you for coming by.” Her smile was a bad copy of the smooth social face Clare had seen on her last visit.
She took Mrs. Rouse’s hands. “How are you doing?”
“Okay. It seems to vary from minute to minute. Last night, when the officer called to tell me about Allan’s car, that was very bad.” She bit her tongue, and for a moment, it looked as if she was going to cry. “But Chief Van Alstyne is here, and from the things he’s been asking me, I know he’s still holding out hope Allan is… all right.”
Clare squeezed her before letting go. “No one will do more to get your husband back than the chief.” Then, because even hopeful speculation about the future would likely be painful, she said, “Tell me about Allan. You two seem very close. How did you meet?”
This time, Mrs. Rouse smiled the genuine smile of happy recollection. “It was the oldest cliché in the book. I was his secretary.” She linked her arm in Clare’s and led her through the living-room archway. “He was fresh from his residency in New York and had just started working at the clinic. The old secretary couldn’t spell and refused to take dictation from a machine, so he fired her.”
Clare could see three women in the living room, grouped together on the sofa, and another pair at the gleaming dining-room table, visible from the doorway separating the two rooms. Someone had evidently brought a Bundt cake, and the tables were littered with porcelain dessert plates and straight-edged coffee cups in saucers, as if the gathering were a morning bridge game that had taken on an unexpectedly somber cast.
“I had been working for the Glens Falls Insurance Company, but I wasn’t terribly happy there, so when my mother told me about the handsome, young, single doctor who was looking for a secretary, I jumped ship.”
“And it was obviously a good career move.”
Renee Rouse laughed. The three women around the sofa glanced at her, as if checking to make sure it wasn’t the opening salvo of a hysteric fit, and then returned to their conversation. Mrs. Rouse led Clare to a love seat tucked between two bookcases and sat down. “It was the best thing I ever did. Allan had been in New York for several years, in medical school and afterward, and he was the most cosmopolitan and sophisticated man I had ever met. He had been dating a woman in New York but wasn’t seeing anyone here, and he was always complaining at the clinic about how his life was all work and he never had any fun. One day I screwed up my nerve and said to him, ‘Why don’t you come to Lake George Saturday night with me and some friends?’ I was sure he’d think the carny rides and boardwalk would be stupid, compared to what he was used to in New York. But we had a wonderful time, and we went the next weekend, and the next, and one thing led to another, and we were married the next summer.”