Catching the slight edge of guilt in my tone, Katie said, "I'm glad you hit him. I'm relieved you were willing to protect yourself first. Sometimes I worry about that."
"Don't."
"From now on I won't."
I moved to sit beside her and Katie sneaked in close-she knew how to read me and how to make it better. I'd catch her staring at the side of my face and realize she'd set aside her own worries to concentrate on mine. I slipped my hand onto her belly, which made her sigh, both of us falling into a weird pattern of being preoccupied with something so natural yet terrifying as this. I hoped she'd understand that no matter what happened we'd get through it all. I hoped I could believe it myself.
"Teddy Harnes may have faked his own demise," Anna said.
"Yes, but why?"
"It's something to consider. And you're quite right, Jonathan, I apologize for seeming narrow-minded when it was you who was personally involved with the situation this morning. That was foolish and thoughtless of me. It's correct to keep our possibilities open. Crummler may indeed have been provoked."
"Into defending himself, maybe." I shook my head. "I'm not sure how you can be provoked into shearing somebody's nose and lips off."
Anna's eyes filled with a great distance. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight cut down from the one shade less window, wreathing my grandmother in rose. "A psychiatric facility like Panecraft will be pure torture for him. . . ." She hesitated in following up, blowing out a thin stream of air that made Anubis' eyelids twitch, and stopping just short of saying, He'll go mad.
The bloody blade of the shovel came up toward my face again, with him whimpering about battling himself, perhaps not feeling any differently than I did now, yanked in too many directions at once. He wouldn't make it. Something lurked down inside him-he's no different from any of us-and whether it was a weeping boy locked in silence or a burgeoning call to lash out, Crummler wouldn't be able to handle being taken from Felicity Grave and the dead that gave his life meaning.
"I tend to agree," I said.
"Jonathan, are you holding anything back?"
I answered more easily than I would have thought. "I think I saw another side of him."
"Which side is that?" Katie asked.
"A part of him that might be sane."
Anna steepled her fingers and brought them to her chin as though she were trying to figure out which part of me might still be sane. "You know as well as I do, dear, that his sanity is not actually in question. Crummler is mentally handicapped."
"Mentally-challenged is the PC term nowadays. And I'm not sure what he is anymore, except that I saw someone else lurking beneath his usual self."
Anna worried her lips and sipped her tea. The chemistry had shifted between us with the introduction of Katie, as it had once before with Michelle. "Theodore Harnes married a friend of mine."
"Who?"
"One of my bridesmaids, Diane Cruthers. They met while I was on my honeymoon, had something of a whirlwind storybook romance, and eloped only days later. Of course, since he did not come from old wealth, this was before he'd amassed his fortune, Theodore Harnes proved to cut something of a deliberate, but shy, figure."
What had it meant when she'd frozen like that before just hearing his name? "So, you've met him."
"No more than three or four times." Her voice both gained and lost an edge, as though she did and didn't want to talk about any of this. My stomach started to knot. She cleared her throat and fell silent for a moment, and I knew she was editing her story for either my benefit, or her own. Whatever she was hiding would undoubtedly be ugly. "A year or so younger than us, actually, he was hardly more than a boy himself. I only saw Diane once again, very briefly. She was expecting their first child."
I scanned the photos on the wall, the large black-and-white of Anna's wedding; my grandfather standing there looking frightened in a bow tie before the rampant forest of his eye-brows completely consumed his forehead; a row of men and women in their wedding party, everyone grinning good-naturedly. I wondered who was Diane Cruthers. The ladies seemed so much alike in the somewhat worn-out, dark pictures, with a sort of glaze to them all. Youth and expectancy, eagerness perhaps. Which of these women would Harnes sweep away to Europe? Maybe he was only a foolish young man with feverish dreams at the time … or maybe a monster in the making.
Only rarely did my grandmother allow some prejudice to bubble up and break the surface where it could be viewed by someone who might notice. She gathered Katie's cup and the uneaten cookies back onto the platter and put it across her knees, and worked her wheelchair around and rolled toward the kitchen.
"Where is she now?" I asked.
Anna smiled blandly, one of her few acts of false bravado, and consequently a poor one. "She committed suicide shortly thereafter."
Katie paled and said, "Good God." She shifted against me, folding herself closer under my arm.
There had to be more. I hadn't really heard it in my grandmother's voice or seen it in the virtually wrinkle-free angles of her face, but the truth had been there, a tiny thing searching for a place to hide.
Anna had been jealous of Diane Cruthers for winning the love of an intriguing man named Theodore Harnes.
FIVE
Katie still lived at the Orchard Inn, a kind of boarding house run by the Leones. She'd found no reason to move, and I didn't blame her. The place was much bigger than my apartment in the city, and cheaper than just about anything else she might find in the Grove. It had a certain charm, with a trellis beyond the window, and doilies, floral chintz curtains, and rosewood everywhere you looked. She'd taken down the crucifixes and some of the statues of saints the Leones had left around, and politely kept them all in one corner. I'd sometimes glance over and feel the weight of a thousand years of Catholic canon upon me.
When we got back to her apartment we spent a long time in bed whispering and caressing before we finally made love. Need grew steadily. We worked with the slow madness of everything we'd been feeling lately, the fuel of frustration and passion, and wondering how it would all play out. My flight reservation back to the city had been made for this morning. I had weeks' worth of backorders to fulfill and auction lots to scout.
"Boy," she said as we drifted back against the pillows. I brushed the hair from her face, drawing my fingers in and out of her dimples. "Somebody had his Wheaties."
Wind howled like baying hounds and rattled the windows, the roof lurching and groaning. The night split open and that freaky hail started pecking at the glass again. Even the weather seemed out of sorts, working to get back on track. Katie shivered, clambered to her dresser, drew on a thick flannel nightgown that had either been out of style for six decades or had just come back in, and climbed back into bed where we huddled beneath the comforter.
She said, "You're looking at Jesus again."
"He's looking at me."
"You want to brood. I can tell. Hey, I know, we'll put on Mozart's 'Requiem,' is it too late for that? What time is it?" She leaned over and checked the clock on the night stand. Beyond her silhouette, the trellis bowed into view, hail driving a little harder now like some kid outside throwing pebbles to get our attention. "We don't want to wake anyone with funeral dirges, somebody might get upset. Why are you still feeling guilty, Jon?"
"Not guilty exactly, just pondering," I said.
"Your choices were limited."
"Yes, they were."
"When in doubt, wallop first."
"Wallop?"
"I kind of like wallop. Better than whatever you did to that loudmouth horsey-faced guy in the restaurant."
"Well, yeah."
"You going to join Oscar's gym?"
"I think I'll take a pass."