South of Shiloh (16 page)

Trembling, she felt bile ripple up in her throat and push more tears from her eyes. A whole shelf of grief collapsed her to her knees and she vomited on the pavement.

Rane was standing there as she shuddered against the side of the car. When the spasm passed, Rane took her arms and helped her to her feet. He handed her a blue bandanna to wipe the vomitus from her face. Then he handed her one of his ubiquitous bottles of water to rinse her mouth.

They were alone.

In the shadow of Paul’s death.

And they had a daughter.

“I’m going to drive you home,” Rane said firmly.

This time Jenny did not protest. She let him lead her to the passenger seat. Saw him for what he was: hard-edged and extremely competent. Right, for now.

She sat trying to marshal her thoughts as he got in and strapped the seat belt. As he put the car in gear, she said, “I want a cigarette.”

“I quit,” Rane said.

“Me too. Everybody did. I want a cigarette.”

Before they reached the freeway, Rane stopped at a Holiday station, went in, and bought a pack of American Spirits and a lighter. When he returned, Jenny lowered her cell phone and said she’d called her mother and that Molly was going over to her friend Rachel’s house.

“You tell her?” Rane asked.

“No, but she could tell from my voice, something’s wrong.”

Rane nodded, brought the memory out of storage, meeting her folks. The mother had been fit, animated. But the father, who was tall and lanky, and projected brooding quiet, had peered into Rane’s eyes and, seeing something familiar, had warned him away with one somber look.

He handed Jenny the pack of cigarettes. Her fingers fumbled with the cellophane, so Rane took the pack, opened it, put one in his mouth, flicked the lighter, and inhaled tobacco smoke for the first time in what, five years? He handed the cigarette to her.

Jenny took it from his fingers and put it to her lips. The burning tobacco hissed in her throat like a fuse that was going to blow open a vault full of memories. Already had. Lying side by side, passing a smoke. Had to be shock, denial, an out-of-body joke. Mindless libido trying to face down sudden death?

When she started to tremble, Rane said, “Delayed reaction. Just keep breathing.”

When he said “breathing,” she stared at the cigarette, then tossed it out the window with an icky reaction, like she’d discovered a spider in her hand. But she tucked the pack in her purse and then gave him directions to the house.

Had to be shock. Paul was dead and she was watching the familiar landmarks stream by as they drove east out of the city, toward the St. Croix River. She tried to remember the last time she and Molly had talked about human death. Not a cat, not a hamster, not a goldfish. Okay. Her dad. But that was three years ago. Molly was eight and she and Mom had stage-managed the funeral. Had Dad cremated so Molly wouldn’t see…

She watched Rane in profile as he concentrated on the road, staring straight ahead, steady behind the wheel. Neither spoke. Words were too flimsy, and her thoughts lost their sync, inappropriate. Damning.

I had thoughts about this man, adulterous thoughts.

They threaded into the cul-de-sacs. She pointed at the house, Rane pulled into the driveway and parked the Forester, and they got out.

“I better go grab a cab,” Rane said; low-key, respectful, handing her the keys.

Jenny nodded, but when he started to turn away she touched his arm. “No, wait,” she said. “Stay.”

18

MOTIONLESS AS WAX FIGURINES, RANE AND JENNY
watched a smiling woman push a stroller along the street; this beaming, ruddy-cheeked new mother, as plump as her bundled baby.

Rane looked after her. “No sidewalks,” he wondered in a detached voice, then he turned to Jenny.

“Have to tell her,” Jenny thought out loud.

“Tell her the truth. It’ll hurt now but she’ll remember all her life if you give it to her sideways,” Rane said with conviction.

Jenny pursed her lips. “I might need help.”

Before he could respond, she turned away and walked stiffly up the drive and went into the house. Rane watched her go and realized he was counting under his breath: one thousand one, one thousand two. It was an old bracing reflex from the army, exiting the jump door, waiting for the chute to open.

Except he didn’t have a parachute or a net under him; not in this scene. Jesus. He should leave.
Trespassing here.
More than that, it was a dilemma. This eerie sensation drifted through his chest, that he was on personally dangerous ground, that he was way too close and naked without his camera. If he didn’t leave he would be in trouble.

Then he saw Jenny emerge from the front door with her mother, a trim woman with short salt-and-pepper hair. They moved in slow motion, walking underwater, fixed stares. Rane followed the direction of their eyes, and a moment later he saw a girl skip from the open garage of a house across and down the block. She wore jeans, a blue striped T-shirt, and largish tennis shoes. Rane noticed that her shoelaces were not securely tied and trailed along the street. But she was light on her feet, lean and graceful. He recalled observing over time that girls stopped skipping when they were eleven.

Molly was eleven.

Then Jenny’s mother’s knees misfired and she stumbled. Jenny put her arms around her to steady her. Molly had broken into a jog, and as she came closer, Rane saw a frown crease her clear forehead. Her mother and grandma didn’t look right. She shot one fast look at Rane standing at the foot of the driveway; a stranger out of place in her yard.

Molly slowed her pace to a tentative walk.

Jenny summoned Molly with a curt jerk of her hand, a teacher’s reflex. Molly’s walk slowed to a wary, loose-limbed amble, and she called out, “Mom?” Rane could see her physically tense as her body stepped into the radius of the pain coming off Mom and Grandma. Her mind hadn’t caught up.

Jenny put one hand on Molly’s shoulder, said something, then reached fast with her other hand as Molly pulled away. More words. Faces getting terrible. And Rane knew they were talking around it.

By instinct and experience, he absolutely knew that the kid would resent sugarcoating and evasion all her life…at this moment she needed to know the truth.

The truth.

He rocked back at the invisible barrier of complicity in the large lie he and Jenny had nurtured.

Screw all that.

Rane started forward. The kid should know.

Molly shook her head, hugged herself with both arms, and jumped back, dancing away down the driveway. Jenny and her mom slowed down with the weight of it. The girl…his mind grinding, could feel the gears move, teeth engaging.
Molly.
His daughter, not his daughter. Molly went the other way and bolted.

“Molly! Stop!” Rane’s voice reached out, the sound as foreign as a naming ceremony in his mouth. But his clear, hard voice caught her up and she halted, frightened now. As Rane walked toward her, he saw that her wide green eyes were angry. Good, he thought, better pissed than cowed.

But then she shook her head again, and Rane could hear Jenny and her mother coming up behind him. Molly began to cry. Then she turned and broke into a dead run.

Rane dashed after her. Damn, the kid was
fast
. They darted between the houses, doubled back across the street and up a slope toward a tiny stand of trees in the sea of new houses. Rane overtook her, worried that she’d trip on the bad footing, snaked an arm around her waist, and hoisted her, kicking and pummeling him. “Let me go,” she screamed.

He firmly pinned her arms and carried her to a walking trail, where he saw a bench. He placed her on the bench and knelt before her. From the corner of his eye he saw Jenny jogging up the hill.

“Let me go. Who are you?” Molly blurted.

“I’m Uncle John,” Rane said.

“I don’t have an uncle John.”

“Yes you do,” Rane said in an even voice. “Now listen to me.”

“What?”

“Your father is dead.”

“Is not,” she insisted.

“He died in an accident in Mississippi,” Rane said firmly.

“The reenactor thing?” Molly sniffed and looked away.

“Yes. Now listen to me,” he repeated, waiting for her eyes to return. When they did, he went on. “There’s no right way to say this. Usually bad stuff happens to other people…but today it happened to you and your mom.”

“Uh-uh,” she sniffed, staring into his eyes.

“You won’t see him again alive,” he said as he held her, firm but steady, a hand cupped on each of her shoulders. In an attempt to contain the spasm roiling in her body, his grip tightened and he himself trembled at the sensation. Like a transfusion, the pain coming off her was an open wound bleeding into his hands.

He was holding his own flesh and blood, and nothing would be the same again.

“Why?” Anger raged through her tears, demanding an explanation.

Rane was unsure, trying to calibrate his words for an eleven-year-old mind. “Molly, listen to me: maybe there’s a reason, maybe there isn’t. That’s for later. Right now all you have is other people, like your mom and grandma, you all need each other now.”

He watched the words slash at her eyes. When her eyes began to roll up and away, he repeated, “Listen to me.”

She responded to his tone, faced him, and leveled her eyes.

“You need to be with your mother now,” Rane said. “She’s coming up the hill. When I let you go, walk down to meet her.”

Molly nodded, raised her forearm, and wiped it across her nose. Rane released his hands. She rose from the bench and walked, stiff-kneed, from the path, through the stretch of brush to the edge of the trees. Rane followed her at a distance. When she got into the open, she looked back once. He nodded encouragement. Molly walked down the slope. When Rane cleared the trees, he saw Molly and Jenny arm in arm, turning and walking slowly down the hill, supporting each other like walking wounded.

Rane followed, and the grandmother came up to meet him. The woman extended her hand. “I’m Lois, Jenny’s mother.”

“Yes. Lois and Greg Hatton. We’ve met,” Rane said.

“Years ago, when Jenny was pregnant with Molly,” Lois said pointedly, with a touch of frost coming briefly to her damp eyes. The edgy moment passed. “Greg, my husband, Jenny’s father, died…”

“Three years ago,” Rane said.

Lois cocked an eyebrow over a watery eye.

“I read the obits in the paper,” Rane said. He shook her hand. “Lois, I don’t have my cell. I’d appreciate it if you called me a cab.”

“Of course.”

Rane waited awkwardly at the curb, pacing. Lois came out with a cup of coffee and the pack of cigarettes and the lighter he’d bought at the Holiday.

“Jenny thought you might want these,” Lois said.

Rane refused the cigarettes but took the cup.

“It’s my fault she went to see you,” Lois said.

Rane cocked his head.

Lois continued. “I’ve been after her to approach you and get a basic medical history, you, your parents. You know, to have on file in case anything came up with Molly.”

“Okay, I see,” Rane said. Then he motioned at the house with the coffee cup. “I think you better go back in with them.”

Lois said, “Right.”

But she stood watching him for several seconds, waiting for more of a response. When she didn’t get it, she said, “Just, ah, leave the cup on the curb.” She turned and left him at the foot of the driveway waiting for the cab.

In the living room Molly had stymied Jenny with a single word.

“Why?”

Jenny saw her mom come back in the house. She saw a thousand words, a hyper video stream behind her eyes. They were moving too fast and she needed to grab the right one.

“Why Dad? Why not somebody else?” Molly demanded. She shuddered and clamped her arms across her chest. “I never even said good-bye…”

Molly’s face was going as pale and cold as dry ice. She sat on the couch with her knees pressed together, her elbows rigid at her sides, arms crossed, fists clenched. No tears. They’d retracted, been sucked inside. Tears purged pain, washed it out. But her daughter was turning it inward. Like when heat-stroke victims stop sweating; it’s a signal that the process inside was busted.

“There was an accident,” Jenny said.

“A car accident?”

“No honey, they think an accident with a gun.”

Molly’s face receded, getting paler. She pulled her knees up and drew her elbows in tighter. Jenny watched her daughter try to physically disappear inside herself.

Jenny felt panic fill the house, ready to explode the air. It smelled like the lemon-scented disinfectant she’d used this afternoon, after lunch, to wipe down the granite counters in the kitchen…

To hell with this! She gritted her teeth at a surge of anger. Both of the significant men in her life had left her alone to deal with this: Paul by dying and Rane by standing outside waiting for a fucking cab.

She stood up, walked to the door, opened it, and called down the driveway to Rane.

“Get in here, I shouldn’t have to do this by myself. You’re
involved
, goddamn it!”

John Rane walked up the driveway, lowered his head, and entered the house. The first thing he saw was the jumble of shoes just inside the door; a larger pair of running Nikes alongside the smaller shoes were worn and comfortable. And empty. He ventured deeper into the house, past the piano room, to the kitchen, which was to the right of the family area. Jenny, Lois, and Molly were in a mannequin tableau among the cozy couch and chairs that now looked as cold and remote as moon rocks. A lifeless vacancy filled the room.

Lois sat on the couch next to Molly. Jenny stood hugging herself; her eyes grabbing at Molly without traction.

Rane took it in and adapted fast. Talk won’t work here. Do something.

As he turned his back, he caught a glimpse of Jenny’s raw eyes; a damning, resigned look at his leaving. He kept walking down the hall to the alcove that contained the upright Kawai piano. He opened the French doors, went in, sat down on the bench, and opened the keyboard. His fingers poised over the keys but then he knew intuitively where to go. His left hand spread, little finger and thumb extended to gently press the C-sharp octave whole note. The fingers of his right hand settled softly on G-sharp, C-sharp, E.

The slow, melancholy first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 must be played very softly,
adagio sustenuto
. The “Moonlight Sonata” had always impressed Rane as somber and mysterious but also rooted in reality.

Toward the end of the piece, he felt Molly slide onto the seat beside him. He finished playing and stared at his hands.

“You’re not really my uncle John are you?” Molly said in a wrung-out voice.

Rane looked up, saw Jenny standing, eyes brimming, behind Molly. Like an adept shortstop plucking up a fast ground ball, Jenny said, “It’s an expression, honey. It means he’s an old friend.”

Molly sniffed, stared at the keyboard.

Rane shifted to the side. “You play the piano?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Molly said in a shaky voice.

Rane waited patiently as she began to cry. Then he said, “Sometimes, when I’m down, I find it helps better than trying to talk. Sometimes,” he said gently, “you can go somewhere else…”

After a moment, Molly sniffed again and then experimented with a finger, touching the keyboard. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her nose, sat straighter, opened a music book, and started to play.

Rane eased from the seat. When Jenny started to speak, he shook his head once with finality. Lois moved next to Jenny and put her hands on her arms. Rane walked to the front door and let himself out. As he walked down the driveway to the waiting cab, he heard the tentative music pushing back against the emptiness in the house behind him.