“She never…” Mrs. Marshall peered more closely at her old friend. “She never said anything to you about it?”
Mr. Madsen actually tore his gaze from the road and looked at her. “Good Lord! Of course not.”
She sagged back into her seat for a second and then stiffened again. She twisted to face Clare. “Do you remember what Allan said, that day we went to tell him? About my mother?”
“He said you had no idea what the clinic had meant to your mother.”
“Do you think he knew? Do you think she told him?” She pressed her spindle-fingered hands against her sunken cheeks. “Oh my God, what if he knew what happened to my father all these years and he never told me!”
Clare rubbed her knuckles against Mrs. Marshall’s arm. “Even if he had some sort of knowledge of your father’s death, I’m sure the only reason he would have kept quiet was to protect your feelings. He must have known how much you loved your mother. He wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to tarnish her memory for you.”
Mrs. Marshall closed her eyes for a moment. “All these years, I thought he had left me. I thought my father abandoned me.” She opened her washed-blue eyes, and Clare was struck by how much the pain of the very old looked like the pain of the very young. Vulnerability, and disbelief, and nowhere to hide from it.
“But he didn’t. He was taken away, but he didn’t leave me. All this time, I thought…” She blinked, and the tears spilled down her cheeks and collected in the soft folds of her skin. “He used to tell me he loved me, when I was a little girl. And for years now, years, I didn’t believe him. But he was telling the truth. All those years.” She pressed her hand against her mouth. “He didn’t leave me.”
When Clare reached her office, it was to find Lois with a handful of pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT slips. “If anyone sends you clippings, make sure I get a copy for the parish scrapbook,” Lois said, handing them over.
“Sure,” Clare said. “It’ll make good reading for the next priest. Kind of a what-not-to-do list.” There was one from a Post-Star reporter and another from a columnist at the Albany Times Union. There were two new messages from the diocesan office, one from the bishop’s secretary and the other from the editor of the newsletter. Three were blessedly normal, someone with a question about Easter Eve baptisms, a couple wanting to reschedule a premarital counseling session, a dinner invitation from Dr. Anne. One was from Hugh Parteger.
She ought to get right back to the bishop’s office. She could ask them what to do about the reporters. And of course she needed to return her parishioners’ calls. She picked up the phone and dialed Hugh’s number.
“Vicar!”
“Is this a bad time?”
“I’m just going over a proposal from a pair of twentysomethings who feel now is just the right time to break into the dot-com market with a luxury-car directory and delivery service. All they need from us is a half mil for start-up and a big, encouraging hug.”
“Are they going to get it?”
“Indeed not. I’m going to smack them upside the head, as the natives say, and tell them to go get real jobs. The Internet is dead. Silly buggers.”
“So, you called me.”
“Vicar, I’ve called you four times the past month. You’re hard to get hold of. Listen, there was an article in the Times yesterday.”
“The New York Times?”
“No, the Kankamunga Times. Of course, the New York Times. It’s all about how this lady whose husband went missing showed up at the home of his alleged mistress-”
“Oh God, it doesn’t say mistress, does it?”
“-and said lady proceeded to hold the mistress, her mother, her two children, and the town’s Episcopal priest at gunpoint until the police arrived. Dateline, Millers Kill, New York.”
“It doesn’t give out my name, does it?”
“Hah! I knew it must have been you. No, it only named the wife and girlfriend. The article said it was the priest who phoned the cops.”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Good God, you’re a regular Xena, Warrior Priestess, aren’t you? I’ve got to get you down here so I can show you off to my friends. You poor baby. Were you frightened?”
She smiled at the conjunction of Warrior Priestess and poor baby. “It was scary. But I was pretty sure Mrs. Rouse didn’t really want to hurt anyone. She just cracked under the strain of her husband’s disappearance.” Unlike Jane Ketchem. “I knew if we could just keep her talking, the police would get there and everything would be okay.”
“Did that surly chief of police show up? Rip Van Winkle?”
“Russ Van Alstyne. And he’s not surly.”
“Hah. At that dinner we went to last summer, he practically patted me down and administered a field sobriety test before he let me drive you home.” His voice shifted, went warmer. “Look, I really do mean it about you coming to the city to visit me. And not just because you’re a fifteen-minute celebrity.”
“Please tell me no one else has seen the article.”
“It was on the third page of the Region section. Must have been a slow news day.”
She groaned.
“What do you say?”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “It’s not a good time. Three Sundays from now is Easter. Things are going to get frantic.”
“And after Easter?”
She hesitated. “If I came down to see you, I’d need someplace to stay. Not with you.”
“My animal sexual magnetism is simply too much in close quarters. I know. I get that all the time.”
One of the things she liked best about him was the way nothing was ever serious. Nothing ever counted for too much or weighed too heavily. “When I get caught up in the middle of things, I’m not always as careful as I ought to be about what people will think of my actions. So when I can spot a problem in advance, like my congregation’s reaction if I overnight in New York with a handsome single man, I like to take steps to cut it off at the knees.”
“Handsome single man, eh?”
“With a British accent. Known to be devastating in the U.S.”
“You do realize, don’t you, that you’re the only girl I’ve ever dated that I didn’t have sex with. I feel like the reformed rake in one of those Barbara Cart-land romances.”
“So shineth a good deed in a naughty world.”
He laughed. “Okay. If I get a female friend to issue an invite, will you come for a visit after Easter?”
“This wouldn’t be one of those innumerable girls you’ve had sex with, would it?”
“Despite what you see on HBO, New York isn’t entirely overrun with single women desperate to sleep with a heterosexual investment banker. Alas. So no, I think I can find someone whose favors I haven’t shared.”
“Maybe you know a nun?”
“A lesbian nun.”
“A blind, senile lesbian nun. With a flatulent dog.” She smiled into the phone.
“All right. I’ll get you a berth with a blind, senile lesbian nun and you’ll let me take you out to dinner. Sounds fair.”
“It’s a deal.”
She said good-bye smiling. She always felt better, talking with Hugh. Lois was right, she ought to keep in touch with him more regularly. Her mother would love him.
Her intercom buzzed and Lois’s voice came into the office, the Ghost of Phone Calls Yet to Be Returned. “While you were on, Karen Burns called. She wants to talk to you about this Debba Clow person. Also, Roxanne Lunt called from the historical society. She has some research packet the librarian there left for you.”
She didn’t know exactly what Karen wanted, but it was bound to take longer and be less pleasant than Roxanne’s research packet. She rang the historical society director.