Julia's head whipped around. Any illusion of youth or happiness fled. Her face was fine-drawn and pale, the eyes dark pools of pain. Slowly, as if weary to the bone, she pushed up from the ground, leaving her trowel jammed upright in the fresh-turned dirt. Stripping off the encrusted gardening gloves, she stood waiting, looking vulnerable and defenseless in her too-large, faded work shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and earth-stained sneakers.
"Mrs. Tarrant. We met at Miss Dora's—"
"I remember." What might have been a flash of humor glinted in her sad eyes. "It hasn't been all that long ago." There was an element of graciousness; she would ignore the boorish assumption that she had been too drunk to recall, if Annie would.
There was graciousness, too, in her shy smile. "Shall we sit in the gazebo, Mrs. Darling? It's very cheerful."
As they settled opposite each other in recently painted, white slatted wooden chairs, the kind Annie always associated with a boardwalk along a beach, Julia ineffectually rubbed her hands against her pants. "It's hard to garden without getting muddy even when you wear gloves," she confided. Then she looked at Annie, her gentle gaze as direct and open as a child's. "You want to talk about the Judge, don't you?"
"Yes, please." Annie wished with all her heart that the Judge was all she had come to talk about.
Julia pulled off her kerchief and fluffed her hair. "I never liked him." She looked quickly back at Annie. "Does that shock you?"
"No." Annie's answer was truthful. "He must have been a difficult man to live with."
Julia stared down at her dirty hands. "I never felt that 1 ever really knew him. He was . . . so distant. Among us, with us, but never one of us. It was as if some kind of invisible wall stood between him and the rest of us." She looked out at her lovely garden, but her vision was focused in the past. "He was perfect, you know." She spoke softly, sadly. "So we all had to be perfect—and we weren't. Whitney's afraid. He's always been afraid. He can't do so many things. Charlotte hides behind the Family. I don't know why. But there are so many things I don't know. Charlotte feels bigger, better because her last name is Tarrant. I wish—I wish I could take comfort there. But it doesn't matter." She gave a tiny, revealing, melancholy sigh. "Nothing matters very much to me." She shaded her eyes and looked out at the shimmering colors of the flowers and shrubs. "It's better," she said simply, "when I'm outside, when I can smell the fresh earth and feel the sun on my face. I feel a part of everything then."
"Did loving Amanda make you feel a part of everything?" It was the hardest question Annie had ever asked.
Slowly, Julia's worn face turned toward Annie. Once again that bruised look darkened her eyes. She sat so still in the big white wooden chair, she might have been a part of it. She said, "Everyone loved Amanda."
Annie, hating every minute of it, said gruffly, "Someone saw you and Amanda."
Julia was silent for so long that Annie thought she wouldn't answer. But, finally, her eyes evading Annie's, she spoke softly, like the wind sighing through a weeping willow. "False witness. That's what you say when people lie, isn't it?"
Annie shifted uncomfortably, steeling herself. "Was it a lie?"
Julia's lips trembled.
The coos of the doves sounded a mournful requiem, and the sharp thumps of a red-cockaded woodpecker were as loud as drums beating a dirge.
"What do you want me to say?" Julia asked. "You've madeup your mind, haven't you? Just like Judge Tarrant made up his—and it didn't matter what Amanda or I said to him." Tears glistened in her eyes. She swallowed, then said jerkily, "Have you ever—"
Annie leaned forward to hear that thin, tormented voice. "—walked into a room and looked into someone's eyes and thought, 'I love you. I love you!' "
That poignant cry touched Annie's heart. And she understood. Yes. Oh, yes, she understood. A few years ago, she had walked into a room and a young man—blond with tousled hair and the darkest blue eyes she'd ever seen—had looked at her and smiled and she had been swept by a passion that would shape her life forever.
Julia's hands gripped the little kerchief, clutched it as if it were a lifeline. "That's how I felt about Amanda." The kerchief twisted in her hands. "But it wasn't wrong." She stared at Annie piteously. "It wasn't wrong, I swear it."
"What was the Judge going to do?" Annie gripped the arms of the garden chair so tightly her fingers ached.
Those bereft eyes slid away from Annie's. "The Judge?" Julia's voice was as empty as an abandoned house. "I don't know. I'm sure we could have persuaded him."
"Persuaded him to do what?" Annie pressed.
"I don't know." It was the cry of a cornered animal. "I don't know. And what difference does it make now, after all these years?" She stared down at the crumpled kerchief in her fingers, then slowly smoothed it into a wrinkled square. "No one ever loved me except Amanda and Missy." It was a simple statement of fact. Not forlorn. Not angry. The anguish and rage had long since been spent.
Annie blinked back sudden tears. But it was too late to cry for Julia and Amanda. And much too late to cry for the Judge.
Softly, urgently, she asked again, "What was the Judge going to do?" Because that was the nub of it.
Julia lifted her chin defiantly. "I do not know what you are talking about."
Milam slouched on the worn couch, his legs thrust out in front of him, his paint-spattered arms spread wide on the upright cushions. This was not a living room that would be included in books describing the fine homes of the South. Old newspapers and magazines littered every tabletop, rested in stacks on the chairs and floor. The furniture was undistinguished, bland: rounded easy chairs and divans that could be found in countless department stores from Savannah to Pascagoula. The drapes must have been there for years, they were so faded, the green fronds of the weeping willows barely visible against the dulled lime background. The grime of many seasons dulled the windowpanes; handprints smudged the once-white panels of the doorways. Milam looked neither better nor worse than his frowsy, down-at-heels surroundings.
So far, Max hadn't succeeded in ruffling the painter's nonchalant attitude. He tried again, his words sharper. "You admit you were angry, so how can you say you didn't have any reason to kill your father?"
"Look, Darling, I didn't want him dead. I wanted—" For the first time, Milam's voice wavered. "—I wanted him to love me. When he died, I felt empty, like somebody broke me open and all the stuffing spilled out. There wasn't anything out there, no direction to take. All those years I tried to get his attention. God, the things I did to get his attention. And it was always the same, those cool gray eyes would look me up and down and I always felt dirty. That's because he thought I was dirty. I can see that now. Whoever killed him, killed something inside of me. I don't know what exactly. But I was getting over it. Because of Missy. My life started to come together, because of her. I might have been a good artist, a really good artist. Missy was like a perfect spring morning. Have you ever had a little girl--a beautiful little girl—look up at you like you're God? She was so sweet and funny and kind. She loved everyone. Me. Her mother. Old people. Kids. Black. White. Everybody. And she woke up early one morning and went downstairs and outside and she walked into the pond—I found her floating there. And nothing's ever worked,since then." He balled the stained rag and flung it across the room, his face as empty as a broken heart.
"He was going to make Amanda leave," Annie insisted.
Julia shook her head in slow, stubborn negation.
Annie would have sworn to it. She felt, at this point, that she knew Judge Tarrant only too well—implacable in resolve, immovable in judgment, untouched by human appeal. Oh, yes, she could see it all. Amanda would have to go, sent away from the only home she'd ever had as an adult, away from her children and her infant grandchild. What kind of panic had seized Amanda?