— Hmm, yeah, Finus said.
The men stood there awkwardly a moment more.
— So, Finus said. -Well, Mrs. Terhune?
— Heart, Parnell said, doing the nod again.
— Umm hmm, Finus said. -Guess she probably ate a lot of her own fare.
After a beat, both men laughed a little awkwardly, though quietly.
— Well, I won’t keep you, Finus said. -I know you’re busy.
Parnell’s eyebrows jumped again and he shrugged his narrow little shoulders in the too-small black suit. He nodded.
— Yes, three funerals today, as I’m sure you know, Parnell said. -Sorry to be so distracted, Mr. Bates. He gave a nervous little laugh. -I’m terminally disorganized.
— Terminally, Finus said, and gave a little laugh of his own.
— Yes, oh, ha ha! Parnell said, standing up and starting to offer his hand, then withdrawing it as instead he came around the desk to usher Finus on out. -Well good to see you, Mr. Bates, sorry I couldn’t be more help.
— No, Finus said. -Just obligatory, newspaper business you know.
— Yes, Parnell said, already somewhere else, showing Finus to the door, and seeming already away from there into another room as Finus stepped out the door and said goodbye.
— Yes, Parnell said, thank you now, give my best to Mrs. Bates.
Though everyone in Mercury who knew Finus and Avis knew they’d been separated for years, a terminal separation, as it were. Well he was an odd one, Parnell.
Finus made his way on down the sidewalk in the cold gray of the afternoon. It was February. Earl’s wake tonight, services tomorrow, time would roll on. God help him, but he was thinking mourning period. He’d be visiting Birdie every now and then in between. Come late spring, he figured, all this would have pretty much died down. By then, it might be proper enough to propose that his visits take on a different tone. In the meantime, he’d check in on her every now and then to make sure she was doing okay.
BUT WHEN HE called her the next week she was upset. Wouldn’t say why at first, then finally told him she’d received two letters, unsigned, with no return address. The text of the letters was made from cut-out magazine headline words, odd sizes, accusing her of poisoning Earl, and threatening to have his body exhumed for an autopsy.
— It’s Levi and Merry, who else? Birdie said. -Finus, they have hated me and tormented me from day one, always jealous of me, jealous of Earl. And you should’ve seen them in the executor’s office the other day. They stood up after Earl’s will was read and said Earl would never have left them out, that something was funny, they were going to sue me, and just up and walked out. Hubert Cawthon called me and said they’d tried to get an order to dig Earl up, so I know it’s them.
Finus called Cawthon, the district attorney, and Cawthon’s assistant DA. Spud Meriwether confirmed, off the record, that Merry and Levi had indeed sought the order.
— Hell, Spud said, if anybody poisoned Earl Urquhart I’d think it his sister. Woman’s crazy. Besides, Parnell Grimes said he sent a sample from Earl’s heart to the state lab and came back negative.
— Is that right, Finus said, wondering why Parnell hadn’t mentioned this to him. -No poison, then?
— I reckon that’s what negative means, Spud said.
Finus knew from the grapevine that Spud had been one of Merry’s victims, too, only unlike Finus (apparently an exception) Spud had been stuck for a life insurance policy before getting out of his affair.
He went to see Birdie that afternoon. Creasie met him at the door, nodded and hardly spoke, disappeared into the back somewhere. He and Birdie sat in the den. He asked her if she wanted him to help her with a lawyer or anything.
— This is harassment and slander, at best, he said.
— No, I’m just going to ignore them, she said. She sat in a stuffed rocking chair in the corner, fiddling with a silk handkerchief and looking out the window on the long front yard. -I don’t want any more trouble.
— They’re making it, not you.
— I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.
— Well, you let me know if you change your mind.
— All right.
She still looked out the window. Her hair was down, and beautiful. Her face was lined and puffy with the strain of everything. Her hands were slim and still pretty. The pale blue of her eyes in the afternoon light, absorbing the color of her pale blue dress. It was a still moment in the small room, steam heat ticking in the radiator against the wall. Through the door to the foyer he could see beyond to the big living room, cold marble fireplace with the big mirror over it, mute grand piano black in the corner like a museum piece. Here she was, a duchess set up in her little estate, the duke now dead at an early age, wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
He wanted to ask her about Ann, Earl’s girlfriend down in Florida. Not sure why he wanted to ask about that, then.
— Birdie, he finally said though. -I know Earl hurt you. Ran around on you.
She said nothing.
— Do you want to talk about it? All that?
— You’re one to talk, she said. -You and Merry.
She was looking out the window. He shut up then, and they sat awhile in silence. Then Birdie opened a drawer in the little lamp table beside her and pulled out a letter in an envelope and handed it to him. It was addressed to Birdie, no return address. The postmark was back in September. There was another envelope inside, addressed to Earl at the shoe store, with a Tallahassee postmark from the same month. A letter inside it. He looked up at Birdie.
— Go ahead and read it, she said.
It was a letter written in what looked to Finus like a woman’s handwriting. The salutation wasn’t to Earl, was just a familiar Hey, followed by epistolary smalltalk, as well as some discussion of business. He looked up at Birdie again.
— It’s from Ann Christensen, who runs the Tallahassee store, she said. -Go on.
Finus hesitated. -Was she there, at the funeral, then?
— She had the decency to hang back, but she was there.
Page two became personal again. It was a love letter, finally. She missed him. She hated not seeing him more than once a week, twice at best, but often only once or twice a month. She cherished their time on the Mississippi coast. She ached for him whenever they would part, after those times. She didn’t even want to love someone as much as she loved him.
Do you think, she wrote finally, that Birdie would be all right if you did in fact leave? I want so much for us to be together, but I don’t want you to be miserable because of it. I don’t want us ruined by your guilt and fear and worry over her. Sometimes I get so jealous that you feel so protective of her, so fearful of her dependence on you. Wouldn’t she be all right, in that house, with Creasie there to help her out, and all her biddy friends? I feel terrible urging you to keep thinking about this, I don’t like to think of myself as a home-wrecker. But your children are grown and gone. They and your grandchildren could come to see us down here. We could run the businesses from here. Or hell, sell the Mercury store, let’s open another one in Mobile or Jacksonville. I’m sorry. I can’t help wishing for what I think is right, in spite of the fact that you are married. It’s me you love, we both know that. We should be together. I try not to think about it like this. I can’t help it. I love you. — Ann
Birdie was looking out the window at the day, a blustery wind blowing in a front, clouds sailing above the bare oak limbs in the front yard, bright blue between them. It had enlivened Finus, coming out. Now he felt they were in a muffled cocoon, buffeted by the wind and isolated from all that had made him feel good in it, before.