I picked up an eight-by-ten of Katie at about four, her blue eyes at the same time both mischievous and direct as if challenging the camera, a ghost of a smile lighting her lips. An angel child. So like my Emily at that age.
Hal found me sitting on the sofa, the photograph pressed to my chest, tears pooling on my cheeks, where they were trapped against them by my sunglasses. “Hey. Hey.” He sat down and circled me with his arm. “I think I’m doomed to offer you napkins all day.”
I accepted the napkin that dangled from his extended fingers, lifted my sunglasses, and dabbed at my eyes. I didn’t start out to tell him about Emily. I seldom mention that sad chapter in our lives to anyone.
“It’s just…” I turned the photograph in his direction. Sun glanced off the silver frame and flashed across the ceiling. “Katie looks-looked-so much like our daughter, Emily, at that age.” I started to cloud up again. “When I think about how many times we nearly lost her…”
Before I knew it, I was telling Hal about the miserable weeks we spent worrying while Emily hitchhiked around the country following Phish, sleeping with God knows who and ingesting God knows what substances. “And just when we’d given up hope of ever seeing her again, she breezed back home, acting as if nothing had happened!”
“I followed the Dead around California once, eating incredibly bad food and sleeping in cars.” He smiled as if recalling something amusing. “It really wasn’t as dangerous as most parents imagined. Pretty harmless, actually. Fifty years ago she’d have been running away to join the circus.”
I did a quick calculation. “But you were an adult then, not a headstrong fifteen-year-old without the good sense God gave a goose.”
Hal gave my shoulders a squeeze, then draped his arm casually along the top of the sofa. There was something about the way he sat there, rock solid and steady, that made me want to confide in him. “We didn’t ask for much, Hal. Passing grades, calling home if she was going to be late.” I massaged my temple, where a dull throb signaled an oncoming headache. “Then she got mixed up with this boy who was into computer games and fantasy role playing, and suddenly her father and I had turned into ogres. How did she put it?” I mustered my best Valley Girl accent: “Like, you’re squashing my creativity, Mother. You’re interfering with my life concept just when my creative juices are at their most fertile!”
Hal threw back his head and roared with laughter. “I wish you could hear yourself!”
“I suppose it did have its funny moments, but I certainly didn’t think so at the time.” I set the photograph down on the coffee table, angling it so I could still see Katie’s face.
Hal leaned forward, took the photo in his work-worn hands, and studied it in silence. I expected the silence. What was there to say after all? The usual BS: “I know how you feel” or the ultimate in New Age sympathy-speak, “I feel your pain.”
Hal turned the frame facedown on the sofa cushion. “I imagine the grieving never stops. A parent never gets over the loss of a child.”
I stared at him while dabbing at my nose with his napkin, surprised by his sensitivity. “No, you never do. That’s why all this has hit me so hard. As if finding Katie’s body obligates me somehow to find out who killed her.”
“I suspect they’ll discover it was an accident.”
“I don’t think so, Hal. Lieutenant Rutherford told Connie that Katie had been shot with some sort of small-caliber pistol.”
Hal sat silently for a moment, then swiveled his body in my direction. “Sure you’re all right?”
I blew my nose and crumpled the napkin in my fist. I offered it to him on an open palm. “I don’t suppose you want this back?”
He chuckled, a rich, warm sound. “I don’t think so.” He stood and offered me his hand. I took it, surprised at the firmness of the grip and the roughness of the skin. He pulled me to my feet. “Better?”
I nodded and tucked the napkin into my sleeve. “Well, if I’m going to play at Jessica Fletcher, Ubiquitous Small-Town Snoop, I think I’d better start outside with the boyfriend.”
Hal pushed aside the sliding glass door to the patio, motioned me through ahead of him, then followed me out onto a low wooden deck with three steps leading down to the lawn and to a garden just beyond. Near a wall where espaliered spring roses climbed, heavy with white, honey-scented blossoms, the pallbearers clustered. They drank beer from tall glasses and looked as if they would be much more comfortable had someone given them permission to loosen their ties, unbutton their shirt collars, and drink straight out of the can.
“Hey, fellas!”
The pallbearers turned their heads in our direction. Chip and his friends wore a variety of hairstyles but were uniform in age, height, and present facial expression, which was something akin to annoyance at being interrupted.
“I’d like you to meet Hannah Ives. You might remember her husband, Paul. He grew up on the farm between the old Nichols and Baxter places.” Two of the former players rudely wandered away at this point, so I was introduced to someone named Spike, to Bill Taylor, whom I already knew from Ellie’s store, and to David Wilson, a handsome man in a Leif Ericson sort of way, sporting the most distracting pair of stark white eyebrows. Hal left to fetch me another glass of wine from a bartender at a table set out under a wistaria arbor while the Wildcats and I stood around, awkwardly staring at one another.
I was trying to think of a clever way to break the ice when Chip stepped forward. “I wanted to thank you. I understand you found Katie’s body.” Of all the things I’d imagined he’d say, I certainly hadn’t expected a thank-you. He set his beer glass, half full, on a small, round table that held a tray with six or seven empty ones. “You can’t imagine how relieved I was to know what happened to her after all these years of wondering.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, meeting his steady gaze.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “I’m married now, with three kids.”
“I think I saw them today at St. Philip’s.”
“You did. They’ve gone on home to Baltimore with Sandra. I’ve been criticized for bringing them so young, but I don’t pay much attention to narrow-minded people like that. Funerals are a part of life, a celebration of having lived. I don’t believe we should shield our children from life, do you, Mrs. Ives?”
I didn’t know what to say to such an earnest declaration, so I changed the subject, picking my words carefully, particularly since the wine was beginning to make significant inroads caused by my sending it down into a stomach empty of all but a large Kalamata olive and a few pitiful bits of fruit and cheese. “I was talking to Angie at her mother’s the other day, and she told me that you and Katie used to date.”
“That’s true. We’d been going out since that summer. I used to stop by the Royal Farms, where she worked, for a cold Coke after practice. I’ll tell you the truth, I was sweet on Katie. She was a fun kid, but she was interested in a more serious relationship. I started dating Katie when David here broke up with her.” David, an inch or two taller than Chip, looked like an ex-marine with his hair worn in a short, closely cropped crew cut that a midshipman would have described as “high and tight.”
David shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fists firmly stuffed into the pockets of his trousers. “Katie dated most of us at one time or another, but the only one she was serious about was Chip.”
“Katie was an atheist,” Chip said, as if that explained everything. Seeing my look of confusion, he added, “I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior when I turned sixteen, Mrs. Ives. It never would have worked out with Katie and me.” He ran long, slim fingers through his hair.