Shelley had been quiet. Now she said, "I was surprised to see Grace Axton at the funeral this morning. You'd think as much grief as Stonecipher had given them, she'd have just been glad he was gone."
“Grace feels strongly about appearances and manners," Patsy said. "Some Puritan strain in her. Most of us would have thought we should show up and then thought up excuses not to. But Grace doesn't give herself excuses. She's a tough lady. Tougher with herself than anyone else. At least since her divorce, which was about the same time we met in an accounting class. She had to be strong to get out of that marriage in the first place, and then make a life and profession for herself. I really admire her."
“How long ago was the divorce?" Shelley asked.
“Oh, a good ten years ago, I think. Maybe only eight or nine. And she was just starting out with her accounting business when Sarah went to pieces. She had to drop everything. Grace's ex-husband had disappeared and wasn't making the house payments like the settlement ordered. Grace gave up the house, her fledgling business, and everything to go to her sister. That's how she ended up living with her grandmother when it was all over. But I never once heard her complain."
“Poor Grace. And poor Sarah," Jane said. "I can't imagine having only the one child and never even getting to take it home.”
Patsy looked at her curiously. "What do you mean, never take it home?"
“Wasn't it born with brain damage? That's what Grace said.”
Patsy shook her head. "I think you misunderstood. The baby was born normal. He was a year old when he died."
“Oh. I guess I did."
“I misunderstood, too," Shelley added. "But now that I think about it, Grace just said they had a child who was severely brain damaged. She didn't say it was born that way. What happened to the child?"
“It drowned in the bathtub," Patsy said. "Well, didn't quite drown. Sarah had forgotten and left something on the stove, smelled it burning, and dashed to turn off the burner. She was only gone a few seconds, but it was long enough. The paramedics did their job too well. It would have been better if they hadn'trevived — oh, well. Not for me to say, I guess. Anyway, the baby never regained consciousness, was on life support. It must have been horrible. About the only thing in its little brain that didn't die was whatever triggered convulsions.”
Jane was appalled. "Oh, that's so much worse than I imagined. And it goes a long way toward explaining why Sarah is still unbalanced. It wasn't just fate, it was her fault. How unutterably awful."
“I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have told you," Patsy said. "It's horrible even knowing, but it does explain Sarah's condition. And Grace's concern.”
Shelley stood up and came around to the cat's box. "I need to cuddle a kitten," she said.
“We all need to," Patsy said with a smile. "Shelley, you know you've fallen in love with them. Why don't you just admit it to yourself?"
“No way," Shelley said, stroking the mother cat. "I don't like cats. Never have. What's her name?"
“Abby," Patsy said. "Not very original."
“Don't feel bad. Shelley's got a French poodle named Frenchie," Jane said. "She may be my best friend, but I have to say she's not good at names. I've always been sort of amazed that she didn't name her children Boy and Girl.”
18.
“You know you're going to cave in," Jane said as they drove home.
“No, I'm not," Shelley said. "Those kittens just cast a temporary spell over me. Now that I'm away from them, I'll get over it in no time.”
But she still had a dreamy, goofy look on her face.
Jane glanced at her watch. "There's supposed to be a soccer practice at four. I imagine it's canceled." "Why?"
“Won't Tony Belton still be tied up with funeral stuff? You don't suppose Rhonda will let go of him so he can coach a bunch of little boys," Jane said.
They pulled into Jane's driveway. Shelley said, "There's a calling committee. If it's been canceled somebody will have told us.”
But neither of them had a message on her answering machine. And since it was beginning to cloud up, they decided to drive the boys to the practice later and stick around to remove them if it rained. Jane had an hour to kill, looked around the kitchen — which appeared to have been the site of a food explosion — and decided it could wait to be cleaned up. She went to the basement with the intention of getting a little writing done and ended up playing solitaire on the computer while her mind churned over Emma's death.
By the time Shelley knocked on the door upstairs, Jane had done nothing but further confuse and frustrate herself. They rounded up their boys and Suzie Williams's son and went to pick up the other two in their car pool and delivered them to the soccer field behind the high school. Summer vacation was still new enough that the boys were hyper and the trip seemed much longer than it really was. Tony Belton was already out on the field, demonstrating various techniques to the early birds.
“I'm surprised he doesn't have a glamorous middle-aged widow still hanging on his arm," Shelley said.
“If you look closely, though, you can see the talon marks," Jane said.
A few other mothers and one father were sitting in the bleachers, but Shelley and Jane didn't know any of them well enough to feel obligated to sit with them. Instead, they settledby a pile of paperwork and equipment in the center front that presumably belonged to Tony Belton. Shelley was fidgety.
“What's on your mind?" Jane finally asked.
Shelley thought for a minute and said, "Well, I'm hardly even willing to consider it, much less talk about it, but has it occurred to you that Patsy Mallett is a very strong, determined woman and—"
“And a very likeable one," Jane said, nodding.
“Yes, that's why I'm reluctant to even say this, but she did know both Stonecipher and Emma."
“Right. I have to admit I thought about that, too. But while she knows a little about them, what could Emma have known about her? That seems to be the key here."
“Something dreadful about the bookkeeping she does?" Shelley suggested.
“Like fudging some extra profit out for herself? I guess it's possible in theory," Jane said. "But you'd have to put a cattle prod to the small of my back to make me believe it. If nothing else, there's the practical consideration: if you were going to cheat somebody, would you pick a particularly bad-natured attorney?"
“Not unless you were sure you could get away with it and were cheating everybody. I don't believe she's capable of it either, but I had to say it, just to get it out of my head. It makes me feel slimy to even think about it."
“That's the tough thing about this," Jane said. "There's nobody but maybe Rhonda that I'd really like to pin this on. And she's not even a good villain, just an annoying woman."
“Speaking of annoying women—" Shelley said, gesturing toward a newcomer who was dragging coolers and cardboard boxes out of a station wagon. The team's mothers took turns bringing snacks for the boys to indulge in after the practice. Jane, Shelley, and several others had objected repeatedly and almost violently to this tradition on the grounds that the boys went from soccer practice straight home to dinners they didn't want to eat because they were full of snacks. But the tradition persisted. Most of the mothers at least attempted to bring something halfway healthy, but one — the one now approaching the field — brought the most appetite-repressing things she could find. Sodas instead of juice, Twinkies and chocolate-chip cookies instead of granola bars, and far too much of everything. Nobody could figure out whether she did it to be hateful, or just had no common sense.
“I think she means it well," Jane said, trying to be generous. "She likes that stuff, her tubby little boy obviously loves it, and for that matter, so do the rest of the boys. Her kid probably goes home and tucks away all his dinner,and she wonders why the rest of us have such picky eaters.”