The officiating priest finished his opening prayer, gestured to them to sit, then turned his back to them so he faced the coffin and the altar beyond. Raising his arms in supplication, he began to speak. To Janet's surprise-and for the first time since she was a little girl and had attended the funeral mass of her own grandmother-she heard the rhythmical cadences of the Latin mass.
"Jesus," she heard Ted whisper beside her. "If we'd known this was the deal, we wouldn't have bothered to come!"
Janet shot him a warning look. "She must have wanted it," she whispered back. "And it won't hurt us."
Ted's eyes rolled scornfully, and a few minutes later his head dropped forward onto his chest as he fell asleep.
An hour later, as the last phrases of the prayer of benediction rolled from the priest's tongue, Ted came awake and, responding to childhood memories similar to those stirring in Janet, straightened in the pew and dropped automatically to his knees. He crossed himself once more, then made his way past his wife and children to perform the single act his aunt had required of him.
Joining five men from the undertaker's who entered the church from one of the side doors, he took his position at the head of his aunt's casket to bear her out of the church to her final resting place. Janet, holding a sleeping Molly, stood with Jared and Kim as the casket passed, followed by the priest. As she started up the aisle, Janet glanced into the side chapel where she'd seen the elderly priest just as the service was beginning.
He lay prostrate on the stone floor, his arms spread wide. He seemed oblivious to the tiny procession passing behind him.
Janet blinked as she stepped out of the cool gloom of the church into the sultry heat of the Indian summer afternoon. As she followed the coffin toward the open grave that waited in the far corner of the small cemetery adjoining the church, she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched. She tried to ignore it at first, telling herself that of course anyone who happened to be passing by the graveyard would glance in; perhaps even linger long enough to watch the burial. Surreptitiously, she glanced around, but before she could spot whoever might be watching, her eyes were caught by the inscription on a weathered bronze plate affixed to the door of a small mausoleum that stood by itself, set off from the rest of the cemetery by a rusting wrought-iron fence.
GEORGE CONWAY
BORN JULY 29, 1916
DIED JUNE 4, 1959
But how was that possible? Janet wondered. George Conway had committed suicide, hadn't he? Then how could he be buried here in sanctified ground? But when she saw the utter neglect the area around the mausoleum had suffered, she understood.
The ground upon which George Conway's mausoleum stood had been deconsecrated; the rusting fence had been erected not to protect the structure, but to shut it away from the rest of the cemetery, and all those who had died in a state of grace.
There was another crypt in the mausoleum, next to the one in which George Conway's body lay, and Janet assumed it had been George Conway's intention to have his wife buried there.
But the little procession passed it by. When the pallbearers stopped several yards farther on and set the coffin on boards that had been laid across an open grave, Janet saw that there were no other Conways buried nearby.
No two of the graves surrounding Cora Conway's bore the same last name.
Here, in the corner of the cemetery farthest from the church, was the final resting place of those who had apparently died as they'd lived-alone. Janet felt a great wave of sadness for her husband's aunt. As she struggled against the lump rising in her throat and the tears blurring her eyes, she felt a gentle hand touch her arm.
She heard a voice then, so soft that for a moment she thought she might be imagining it. "She wasn't crazy. She wasn't crazy at all."
The hand dropped away; the voice went silent. With Molly still asleep in her arms, Janet turned, but did not see who had spoken. Forcing herself to concentrate on the priest's words, she stared down at the open grave.
And once again she felt herself being watched.
The final litany done, the coffin was slowly lowered into the ground. Following Ted, Janet stepped forward, stooped to pick up a clod of the soft soil, then straightened up. Whispering a final goodbye to the woman she'd barely known, whose death three days ago had so totally changed her life, she let the lump of earth go. And then, as she looked up, she saw him.
She couldn't be certain how old he was-he might have been anywhere between forty and sixty. A thin black man in worn, nearly threadbare clothing, his face covered with a grizzled stubble. He stood on the cobbled sidewalk outside the fence, in the shade of one of the huge magnolias that spread over the cemetery. He was watching the little group gathered around the grave, and although deep shadows concealed the expression on the man's dark-skinned face, Janet could feel the emotion radiating from him like heat waves.
Hatred.
Hatred, and anger.
For a moment she froze, caught in the strength of the man's silent fury, but then he turned and moved away, shambling slowly down the street.
"Jake Cumberland," the same soft voice that had spoken to her only a few minutes earlier now said.
Startled, Janet turned to find a woman of about seventy watching the retreating figure of Jake Cumberland.
"Do you know him?" Janet asked.
The woman nodded. She was small and neat, wearing a pale lavender dress with a matching sweater thrown over her shoulders, despite the warmth of the afternoon. "Oh, yes. Everyone knows who Jake is. He lives in a cabin out by the lake. Just him and his dogs, and he hardly ever comes to town." She smiled brightly and offered Janet a tiny gloved hand. "I'm Alma Morgan. I worked at the Willows until they told me I was too old." She glanced down at her dress. "I hope you don't mind me wearing this," she went on. "It was Cora's favorite, and I thought she'd like it much better than black. Besides, black is much too hot for this weather, don't you think?" Without waiting for an answer, she plunged on. "You're Janet, aren't you?"
Janet nodded. "Actually, she was my husband's aunt-" she began, but Alma Morgan was already speaking again, this time leaning forward and clasping Janet's arm tightly.
"She wasn't crazy, you know. Don't pay any attention to what anyone says." Then, before Janet had a chance to respond, Alma Morgan was gone. Janet was still "trying to decide what the woman's words meant when someone else spoke.
This time it was the middle-aged woman who had been sitting at the back of the church. Now that the service was over, she'd pulled her veil back, revealing warm blue eyes that watched with amusement as Alma Morgan scurried out of the cemetery. "Now, the question-as I see it, anyway-is this: What is the exact state of Alma Morgan's sanity?" She smiled. "I'm Corinne Beckwith. My husband is the sheriff here."
Moving close to Janet, Ted extended his hand toward Mrs. Beckwith. "I'm Ted Conway. This is my wife, Janet. And this," he added, releasing Corinne Beckwith's hand to lift Molly out of Janet's arms, "is Molly, the true ruler of our house. Can you say hello to the nice lady?" he asked Molly.
Molly, just waking up, happily mumbled something, then demanded to be let down. A moment later she was darting off among the headstones, already lost in some game she'd made up in her own mind. And Ted, freed of his youngest daughter, set about charming Corinne Beckwith.
How can he do it? Janet marveled as she listened to Ted chat with the woman as if they'd been friends for years. How can he be so nice when he's sober, and so-
She cut the thought short, refusing to tarnish the moment by anticipating what the rest of the day might hold if Ted started drinking. Instead, she tuned into what Corinne Beckwith was saying.
"Just because what happened in that horrible old house took place forty years ago doesn't mean everyone's forgotten about it, you know." Corinne had fixed her attention on Ted as if she suspected he might be trying to hide something from her. "This is a small town, and people talk about things forever. And now with your aunt gone, we'll probably never know what really did happen that day."