He gave her a big hug, lifting her off the ground a foot, and then grinned down at her.
“You’re back again! I can’t tell you how great it is, Jude, meeting you and Hattie. I mean Shirley about knocked me out with a frying pan, I wouldn’t stop talking about you two. Spitting images of your mama, the both of you.”
Jude smiled, feeling warm at his comment. She had rarely been said to look like her mother, but here was her mother’s own brother saying it. Jude almost wanted to cry.
“Grimmel, after we visited the other day, Hattie had a vision,” Jude started, digging into her bag for the envelope of photos.
Grimmel nodded, rocking back and forth on his big feet.
“Okay, yeah.”
“She dreamed of the cabin, of Rosemary, and I guess dream isn’t the right word.”
“I understand, Jude. You don’t have to break it down for me. I get it.” He looked her straight in the eye and Jude sighed, relieved. He got it.
Jude pulled out a photo and held it to him.
He took it, turning it this way and that, holding up a meaty hand to shield it from the light.
“Hattie believes this is the man who killed Rosemary?”
“Yes.”
Grimmel leaned closer, squinting and then threw the photo away, catching it fast before the wind caught it and carried it into the street.
“Wow, sorry, that was weird. This guy only has three fingers on his left hand?”
“Yeah.”
“You said you met Rosemary’s brother, Dale?”
Yes. He directed me to you.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about his hands?”
Jude frowned, thinking back, and then opened her eyes wide.
“He wore a glove on his left hand, sheepskin or something. I figured he’d been working when I showed up.”
Jude pictured Dale sitting in his chair. He predominantly used his right hand, but Jude had noticed one thing - when he cracked open a can of beer, he balanced it on his knee and used his left hand to prop it in place rather than holding it full on as if he had an injury or…
“Only three fingers,” she murmured. “You’re telling me, this is Rosemary’s brother?” Jude looked at the picture imagining Dale. “But, why?”
Grimmel bit his cheek and shifted.
“Better give me a smoke,” he said.
Jude handed him one and lit it.
He took a few puffs, looking thoughtful.
“He was an odd kid. Kinda obsessed with killin’ things, animals and what-not. I mean we were boys and there wasn’t much else to do so odd ain’t exactly the right word, but Tim didn’t like him. He told me once if he caught me running around with Dale he’d box my ears, he liked to pretend he was my daddy sometimes.”
“Do you think Tim suspected him?”
Grimmel dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his foot.
“Maybe, I mean Tim used to talk about it to me and ma. He’d say the killer’s still out there and if we could prove who did it, then Sophia could come home, but my ma used to get pretty worked up. She was afraid if Tim started snooping around, the town would turn their attention back to Sophia and maybe this time they’d find her.”
“Shit,” Jude whispered.
“What?”
“I gave this photo to Detective Kurt Bell a half hour ago. Dale’s brother.”
Chapter 30
September 19, 1965
Hattie
“Don’t you like the alfredo?” Damien asked Hattie across the table.
She looked up, caught in a daydream, and then back at her plate. She’d barely taken a bite.
“No, I do, it’s great.” She wound her fork through the thick pasta and put it to her lips noticing the creamy texture, the slippery noodles, the taste of pepper. He had cooked her dinner, lit candles, poured wine - he watched her with his curious eyes, but Hattie kept drifting.
Jude had left her a phone message that morning. She was returning to Mason and would call later. Hattie had gone for a long bike ride into the country and encountered Damien on her way back into town. He invited her for dinner and though she had intended to spend the evening painting, she said yes.
“You seem far away, Hattie,” Damien murmured sipping his wine. “Literally and metaphorically.” He grinned and stood from the other end of the long table, coming to sit close to her. “My mom helped me decorate the house. She insisted on a formal dining table even though this is the first time I’ve used it. Usually it’s piled with books.”
Hattie blushed and smiled, allowing her blonde hair to fall over her face.
“Gram has a table like this in a big dining room. Jude and Peter called it The Room of Doom.” Hattie laughed, grasping her wineglass and holding it so tight the blood in her knuckles disappeared.
Damien reached for her other hand and Hattie started to shrink away and then paused, allowing his fingers to trace her own.
“Let’s move, shall we?” he asked.
Hattie glanced at him, his face so easy and relaxed, perfect white teeth gleaming. He had a little mole high on his right cheek. His eyelashes were long and blond like his hair, blond eyebrows, blond hair on his arm. Like me, Hattie thought smiling, weirdly at ease after that small connection - like me.
“Yes, okay.”
They stood, and Damien grabbed their plates while Hattie picked up the wine.
His house was large, gleaming wood floors and white walls covered in black and white photographs. He cleaned the common areas, but Hattie detected disarray beyond the observer‘s eye. A pair of tennis shoes on the stairway, a towel hanging over a closet door.
“I’m always trying to be tidy,” Hattie said as she followed him into the sitting area. He laid their food on a long black coffee table that butted close to a mustard colored sofa. Two red arm chairs flanked the couch all facing a bricked fireplace.
“Me too, though I’m not, at all,” he admitted.
“Orderliness is next to Godliness,” she murmured.
He grinned and shook his head, a lock of blond hair feathering his forehead.
“My mom used to tell me that too, garbage I say. Half the patients I meet have disorders that cause them to clean obsessively. I’d say cleaning is the devil’s work, not Gods.” He laughed, and Hattie laughed too, though the words made her gasp a little. If Gram heard them she’d hit the roof. “I want to hear you talk,” Damien said, settling back on the couch.
Hattie sat stiffly beside him. She’d never been good at dating, and the closeness of Damien made every muscle taut. Her lungs contracted, and she struggled to take her next breath.
“Tell me about your family,” Damien urged.
Hattie touched her black skirt, a Jude hand-me-down and pictured her sister who was shorter than her, but stronger times a thousand.
“Jude and Peter are twins,” Hattie started, reaching for the handful of solid memories of their lives before that summer, the summer where they lost everything. “Growing up they were so close. Mama and Daddy had me seven years after them, the best surprise, my daddy used to say. But I followed them like a puppy and they ran away from me like a pack of wolves trying to ditch the meek one, the sickly one.”
Damien studied her. Hattie felt his eyes so intent on her face she wanted to pick the afghan from the back of the couch and cover her head with it.
“I don’t mean it the way it sounds. They loved me. They were just older and different. I was more like Mama. That’s what my daddy always said. I lived with my head in the clouds and Jude and Peter were solid. Sometimes my mama would watch them coming across the yard and say here comes Fortress Judy and Peter.”