Bill wondered why until he heard Emma's voice shatter the silence.
"There she is!" she cried. "She was with them! She came with the ones who killed my Jimmy! Why, Grace Nevins? Why did you want to hurt my boy?"
The plump little woman raised her face toward Carol and her accuser. She shook her head. Bill bit his lip as he saw the guilt and remorse in her expression. But why should she feel guilty? He had talked to the crowd. He hadn't seen her there. He was sure he would have recognized her.
"She wasn't there—" he began, but Emma cut him off.
"Yes, she was! Jonah saw her in one of the cars!" Her face contorted into a mask of rage as her voice rose to a shrill peak. "You were there! You did this!"
Bill watched Carol's confused, teary eyes flicking back and forth between the two women.
"Please…" she said.
But Emma was not to be checked. She pointed a shaking finger at Grace.
"You won't get away with it, Grace Nevins! I'll see you pay for this!" She started toward Grace but Jonah restrained her with his free hand as she screeched, "Now get away from my boy's grave! Get away before I kill you myself here and now!"
Sobbing openly, Grace turned and hurried away.
After a moment of stunned silence, the embarrassed mourners began to offer their final condolences to Carol and the Stevenses, then drifted away.
Bill waited until the end, hoping to have a few private words with Carol, but Jonah and Emma ushered her away before he could reach her. There was something almost possessive about Jonah's protective attitude toward his daughter-in-law, and that disturbed Bill.
Eighteen
Thursday, March 14
1
Carol closed the front door of the mansion behind her and stood in the cool dimness. She didn't want to be here. Even now she didn't know how she had brought herself to drive past the iron spikes on the front gate. But she had no place else to go. Her own home was a blackened shell, and she couldn't stay with Jonah and Emma any longer. She couldn't stand Emma's constant hovering, her mad swings between rage and grief, and she couldn't bear another evening with Jonah sitting there staring at her. She had thanked them and had left first thing this morning.
She had tried to call Aunt Grace last night to find out if what Emma had said was true. Had she been outside the mansion with those nuts? But Grace wasn't answering her phone.
" She had been almost tempted to call Bill and ask if she could stay with his parents but then realized that what she wanted more than anything else was to be alone.
The empty mansion echoed hollowly around her.
This is it, Jim, she thought. You're gone, our house and our bed are gone, all the old photos, all your unsold novels—gone. There's nothing left of you but this old house, and that's not much, 'cause you hardly had any time here at all.
Her eyes filled. She still couldn't believe he was gone, that he wouldn't come bounding down the stairs over there with another of those damn journals in his hand. But he was gone—her one and only Jim was gone!
Her throat tightened. Why'd you have to die, Jim? She almost hated him for being so stupid . .'t> climbing up that gatepost! Why?
How was she going to do it without him? Jim had pulled her through her parents' deaths when she had thought the world was caving in on her, and he had been her rock, her safe place ever since. But who was going to pull her through his death?
She could almost hear his voice:
You're on your own now, Carol. Don't let me down. Don't go to pieces on me. You can do it!
She felt the sobs begin to quake in her chest. She had thought herself all cried out.
She was wrong.
2
"I'm sorry about your friend. Father Bill."
"Thank you, Nicky," Bill said.
He looked at the boy standing on the far side of his desk. There seemed to be genuine sympathy in his eyes. Bill realized with a pang that most of the boys here at St. F.'s were all too familiar with what it was like to lose someone.
It was Bill's first day back and he had three days' worth of adoption applications, reference checks, and assorted mail piled on his desk, and more coming. Outside it was rainy but warm, more like May than March.
"Aren't you going to be late for class?" he asked the boy.
"I'll make it on time. Was he a good friend?"
"He was an old friend who used to be my best friend. We were just getting to know each other again."
A lump formed in his throat at the thought of Jim. He had walled up the grief since the horrors of Sunday, refusing to shed a tear for his old friend. Jim would mock him out if he knew Bill had cried over him.
And what would Jim say about his dreams of Carol, more carnal than ever, now that she was alone in the world.
"Is it true what the papers said—"
"I'd really rather not discuss it now, Nicky. It's all a little too fresh."
The boy nodded sagely, like someone many times his age, then began his habitual wandering around the office. He stopped at the typewriter.
"So," he said after a moment, "when are you leaving?"
The question startled Bill. He glanced up and saw the half-written letter to the Provincial still in his typewriter. God! The teaching job in Baltimore! He'd forgotten all about it.
"How many times have I told you not to read my mail?"
"I'm sorry! It's just that it was sitting there in plain view. I just looked at it for a second!"
Bill fought the guilt rising within him.
"Look, Nicky, I know we had a deal—"
"That's okay, Father," the boy said quickly with a smile that was heartbreakingly weak. "You'll make a great teacher. Especially down there near Washington. I know you like all that political stuff. And don't worry about me. I like it here. This is home to me. I'm a hopeless case, anyway." „
"I've told you not to talk that way about yourself!"
"We've got to face facts, Father. You wait around for me to get adopted and you'll be in a wheelchair from old age! The deal's off. I screwed up my end of it, anyway. Wouldn't be fair to hold you to yours."
Bill stared at the boy as he turned away and continued his casual meander around the office. And as he watched him he heard Jim's voice echoing back from sometime during that night of beer and bad music and near death in the Village.
We should clean up our own yards and tend to our own neighborhoods first, then worry about the rest of the world. If we all did that, maybe there wouldn't be so much in the world to worry about.
Bill suddenly knew what he had to do.
"Give me that letter, will you, Nicky? Right. The one in the typewriter. And the one from the Provincial beside it."
Nicky handed them to him, then said, "I'd better get to school."
"Not so fast."
Bill neatly folded the letters in thirds and then began tearing them up.
Nicky's jaw dropped. "What are you doing?"
"Keeping a promise."
"But I told you—"
"Not just my promise to you but one I made to myself a long time ago." The one that brought me to the seminary in the first place. "Like it or not, I'm staying."
Bill felt lightheaded, almost giddy. As if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. All doubts, all conflicts were gone. This was where he belonged. This was where he could make a real day-to-day difference.
"But I'll never get adopted!"