The night before Nathan had actually cried from pain, and she had cried with him.
It had frightened Verna, and sent her out early on this morning to beg.
“Please,” she said to the silent grave. Please, please, please.
Maybe it was just the fact of saying it out loud to somebody, or maybe it was something else, but Verna was suddenly swept by a wave of peace such as she hadn’t felt in years. Her muscles, her internal organs, her very bones relaxed. It was wonderful, a feeling Verna wished she could keep forever. Even if her wish for Nathan never came true, at least she’d had this moment of unexpected, blissful peace of mind and heart.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the Virgin.
When Verna turned to leave, she discovered that while she had been concentrating on her errand, the mist had lifted, revealing a bit of sunshine, stretches of green grass, rows of gravestones…and the fact that she wasn’t alone, after all.
“Oh!” Verna exclaimed as a young woman in blue jeans and a green T-shirt stepped out of the fog. Her hands went to her heart, in shock. “Abby!”
“Verna, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What are you doing here so early?”
“Memorial Day,” Abby explained. Her T-shirt had white letters above her left breast: Abby’s Lawn & Landscape. “Gotta have it looking its best. What are you doing here so early?”
“Paying my respects,” Verna hedged, without admitting to whom. “I didn’t see your truck.”
“I parked behind the maintenance shed.”
It was only then that Verna noticed there were clippers dangling from Abby’s gloved hands, and now the fog also revealed a black plastic yard waste bag behind her. “How long have you been here? Did you hear me talking to myself like an idiot?”
“I’ve been here awhile.” Abby gave her an apologetic smile. “I came to get some last-minute work done, but then I couldn’t see a damned thing in the fog. So I was just sitting on a gravestone, waiting for the fog to go away, when you came up. I couldn’t see it was you, and I didn’t want to scare whoever it was, so I just kept quiet. By the time I realized it was you it was too late to say anything.” She made an embarrassed grimace and laughed a little. “I was kind of hoping you’d leave and never know I was here.”
“What did you hear me say?”
“Oh, nothing! Really. Not much. But…I’m so sorry that Nathan is having such a hard time.” Abby had taken to calling her parents’ friends by their first names when they encouraged it, which Verna Shellenberger did. Quickly, as if she just wanted to be tactful and change the subject, Abby said, “Verna, who do you think she is?”
It was impossible for Verna to pretend that she didn’t know who Abby was talking about. Abby had pointed the tips of her grass clippers straight at the tombstone.
Verna shook her head, afraid to say anything.
“What was it like, that night they found her, Verna?”
“What was it like?” The older woman looked at the grave rather than into Abby’s frank blue eyes. She had always loved Abby like a daughter, but at this moment she wished the earth would open up and swallow one of them so she didn’t have to answer questions like that from a girl she didn’t want to lie to. “What do you mean, what was it like?”
“I mean…what do you remember about that night? Did Nathan tell you about finding her, or did Rex? Was it awful for Rex? I mean, he was so young…”
“It was pretty bad,” Verna admitted. “I was sick that night…you wouldn’t remember this, but I had pneumonia and even went to the hospital the next day…and Rex came in and sat on the edge of my bed and told me they’d found…a girl’s body in the snow.”
“I thought I heard you tell…her…just now that your ‘boys’ found her.”
Verna’s breath stopped when she heard those words come out of Abby’s mouth.
“No, not both of them. Patrick wasn’t even home,” she stammered. “It was just the one of them, it was just Rex and his dad, that was enough, believe me.”
“Why did you say that Nathan doesn’t deserve her help?”
A chill of fear swept through Verna, so that when she breathed again, her body shivered.
It was obvious that Abby had heard every word she’d said, and now the girl was unnervingly curious about it. Just like her mother, Verna thought. Margie Reynolds had been bright and curious about the world, and so were her daughters. The Reynolds women liked to collect facts, even from people who were chary with them.
She fought to keep eye contact with Abby, to let nothing of the sick dread she was feeling on the inside show on her face. “Just that he’s an ornery old cuss,” Verna said, with a laugh that she hoped didn’t sound as forced as it felt coming up from inside of her. “You know Nathan, Abby. If he even knew I had come out here to ask for help from a ghost, he’d disown me. That’s all I meant, that he wouldn’t even be grateful if she helped him.”
Abby smiled and seemed to accept it. They were both quiet for a moment, and then Abby said, “Do you really think she cures people?”
Verna felt suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know.”
“I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“No,” Verna said, in a near-whisper. “I hope it doesn’t.”
“I wonder if I knew her.”
Verna’s head jerked up and she stared at Abby. “What?”
Abby wasn’t looking at her, but was frowning toward the grave. “I wasn’t paying attention, Verna. I was all swept up in Mitch leaving. But I’ve been thinking about that night, and how she…” Abby nodded toward the grave. “…was in my house that night.” She shivered visibly enough for Verna to see it. “My own father saw her all beat up like that. It must have been terrible for Dad, too, but we’ve never even talked about it.”
“Abby, I don’t think you ought to talk to your dad about that.”
Abby looked up at her, with a puzzled expression. “Why not? Verna, sometimes it seems like everything in the world changed that night, or at least everything in my world. It wasn’t just that Mitch left the next day. It was that my dad was never the same, either. It was like he withdrew and never came back to us again.”
“Well, it was…upsetting, Abby. Why would you want to make him remember?”
“But I’ve never even asked him about it. I’ve never told him I care about how it affected him. Maybe if I did, he’d open up and…”
“People don’t need to open up,” Verna said, with a feeling of desperation that went even deeper than what she’d felt in coming to the grave. “That’s just psychology stuff. People need to get over things and go on with their lives…”
Abby smiled at her, a sweet smile that told Verna that she was being humored.
“Okay,” Abby said in a pacifying kind of way. “Maybe I’d better get on with trimming around the headstones.”
“And I’ve got to get back to fix breakfast for Nathan.” Verna paused before turning to go. After a moment’s hesitation, a moment in which she told herself it would probably be better if she didn’t say anything else, she said, “Why are you so interested in the Virgin now, Abby? I’ve never heard you ask about her before. What’s different now from any time during the past seventeen years?”
She watched Abby take a deep breath and let it out like a sigh.