A Stillness of Chimes (37 page)

“You okay?” Laura asked.

“I spent half the night having the most wonderful knock-down-drag-out argument with Drew,” she said with a funny little smile. “I’ll explain later.”

“Come on in. What’s in the box?”

“You’re not going to believe it,” she said, coming inside. “Mom can’t keep denying that she took anything. She’d stashed all kinds of stuff in her scrapbook cupboard.” Stepping carefully through dozens of journals on the floor, Cassie made her way to the couch and sat down, still holding the box. “You ready for some craziness?”

“I hope so.” Laura sat beside her.

Cassie held up the bottle of Jean Naté. “It’s a scent Laura wouldn’t wear anyway,” she said in a spot-on impression of Ardelle’s voice. “Then there’s this.” She held up a tube of peachy-pink lipstick.

“That looks exactly like a lipstick that used to be on my mom’s bathroom counter.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Cassie reached into the box again. “She had these photos of your mom’s flower beds—my mom says that’s okay, they’re duplicates and she’s sure you wouldn’t mind—and a copy of your mom’s obituary, but that’s not something she swiped. It’s been sitting around our kitchen for weeks. And there’s one of those garden markers. Let’s leave it in the box. I don’t want to get dirt on your couch.”

Bewildered, Laura shook her head. “Is there more?”

“Oh yeah, and it gets weirder. She had the chain your dad used to wear.” Cassie reached into the box again and handed Laura the chain with the silver cross and the dog tag still dangling from it.

“What? I’d put them away in a drawer! Why would she snoop like that? And take something that’s not hers? A memento of my dad, of all things.”

“She didn’t even try to explain that one. Or these.” Cassie fanned out three Red Cross blood-donor cards on the couch. Red and white plastic, like credit cards.

Laura spread them out further to read the names. “What on earth? She had my mom’s card, your dad’s, and
mine
? She took it out of my wallet? When? How?”

“I don’t know.” Cassie shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t get it.”

“Me either. If I wasn’t home, I would have had my wallet with me. And if I
was
home—” Laura stopped. “When I was here for the funeral, she came over to help with housework. She was here for a couple of hours—so she could have taken my card and Mom’s, right under my nose. But why?”

“That’s what Dad was trying to get out of her when I left. He’ll call me if he can make sense of it.”

Laura took a closer look at the Red Cross cards and her dad’s dog tag, and her brain seemed to shut down. Maybe she was in denial, but she couldn’t accept the most logical explanation. It didn’t jibe with what she already knew. Or thought she knew.

Why
Gary’s
donor card?

“This is all wrong. Cassie … remember in high school … those boxes? What are they called? Punnett squares?”

Cassie frowned. “Don’t ask me. I didn’t do well in geometry.”

“Not geometry. Genetics. Biology with Preston. Oh, I wish I’d told you everything a long time ago—but this doesn’t fit anyway.”

“Laura, what are you talking about?”

“I’m pretty sure my mom had an affair. With Gibby.”

Cassie’s mouth fell open. “Gibby?” With wide eyes, she stared at the
Red Cross cards. “What are you saying? What does that have to do with …”

“I don’t know. My brain’s on strike.” Laura’s voice cracked. “I need to borrow someone else’s. Who understands genetics?”

“Preston.”

Of course. Preston.

Laura picked up her phone and called him. Afraid she’d lose her nerve, she jumped into it the moment he’d said hello. “Mr. Preston, this is Laura Gantt. I have a quick science question for you. About blood types. If the mom is AB and the father is A, can they possibly have a baby with Type O?”

“That scenario isn’t bloody likely.” Preston laughed at his pun, then launched into a rambling explanation that included alleles, genotypes, and phenotypes. Laura, focused intently on the dog tag marked with her dad’s blood type, wasn’t in the mood to grasp every last detail, but the gist of the matter was clear.

Unless either the US Army or the American Red Cross had made a serious clerical error, she wasn’t Elliott Gantt’s biological daughter.

“Thank you,” Laura said. “That helps. I’ve got to run. Bye for now.” She managed to get through it without letting her voice break.

“What did he say?” Cassie asked.

“I’m pretty sure they had their affair when I was a teenager, so it doesn’t make sense that I’m—I’m the wrong blood type.”

“What? Laura, I don’t understand.”

“I’m the wrong blood type to be my dad’s biological child.” The weight of the statement pressed heavy on her shoulders.

Cassie’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “No way. Based on … you mean …” Her voice trailed off. “Wait a minute. Let’s think this through.
It could mean … either you’re wrong about the timing of the affair, or your mom had more than one affair. Shoot, I can’t imagine her having even
one
. But where did you get your idea about the timing?”

“I heard my folks arguing about it the summer after we graduated from high school.”

“So you thought it had just happened?”

“Yes.”

“But maybe that’s only when the truth came out.”

Laura nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

Cassie stood. “I need coffee.”

“There’s no coffee. No grinder. There’s tea.”

As Cassie walked into the kitchen, muttering to herself, Laura reached for the last item, the garden marker from one of her mother’s flower beds.

Hemerocallis Honey Redhead
.

Hemerocallis. The botanical name for daylilies.

Laura took a sharp breath. She lifted her hand to her hair.

My honey redhead, my redhead honey. Poor little carrot-top baby, you look more like your mama than your daddy
.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware of a vehicle roaring into the driveway. A door slamming.

“Whoa,” Cassie called from the kitchen. “My dad’s here, and he looks upset.
Real
upset, like he might be crying. Laura, this is scary. He never cries.”

“Yes he does,” Laura said under her breath.

She’d seen Gary with tears in his eyes. The day they’d dropped off the tuna casserole. She’d thought he was worried about Ardelle’s agitation, but he’d been talking about daylilies. Jess Gantt’s ordinary daylilies. They’d had the power to make him cry?

He bought me a daylily plant. He’s so sweet
.

He
, she’d written. Not
E
.

How quickly things can blossom overnight …

A month or two later, in a new journal, she’d added the gloomy line that made Sean say she must have been in a bad mood. Something about the brightest blossoms turning to rot. Laura had just read that entry but couldn’t quite remember it.

Burying her face in her hands, she tried to recall the other sentence that included the word “rot,” followed by three more words that had been scribbled over. A three-letter word, a four-letter word, and
me
.

Recalling their shape and size—and beginning to understand the context—Laura knew what her mother had written … and why. It wasn’t merely that she’d been in a bad mood. She’d been in the depths of despair. She’d written about it in a sort of code except for the last three words.

A beautiful plant can spring from the rot, from the dirt. God help me
.

An affair had blossomed quickly but went sour just as quickly? And then she’d learned she was pregnant.

Gary stepped inside, shutting the door with a clatter. His usually neat hair was a mess, and he was breathing hard. “Laura. Where’s Sean?”

“Across the road, looking for my dad.”

“He just might find him. The latest is that somebody saw him trotting alongside the road a few miles from here. Heading this way.”

Laura shot to her feet. Maybe her dad was the man who’d been on her porch—but that made it even more urgent to discuss the rest of it with Gary. She had to know.

“Gary …” She couldn’t believe she was about to say this. “There’s something you and I need to clear up, right now.” Ignoring Cassie’s bewildered
whispers behind her, Laura picked up the garden marker. “Did you give my mother an old-fashioned daylily called Honey Redhead? The one that has bloomed in her yard for thirty years or so?”

Gary swallowed, his eyes shifting from side to side. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Did you know about the carrot-top baby, the honey redhead who looked more like her mama than her daddy? No, you’ve never read my mom’s journals—but I think Ardelle has.”

With watery eyes, he stared at the sad little prizes on the couch. “I didn’t know. Not until now. She—Ardelle—just told me what all these things mean. She knew about Jess and me.”

Cassie gasped. “Dad!”

His chest rose and fell in a big breath. “You have to understand.” His voice broke. “I … with Jess … it just happened. It didn’t last long.” He wiped tears away. “I never dreamed … Jess never said a word about a baby.” He met Laura’s eyes. “I always thought you were Elliott’s.”

She was bewildered to the point of numbness, but she had no reason to doubt him. “I believe you.”

He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before, and she stared back. Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, fruit of his sin—and her mother’s.

That sandy blond hair, the same color as her dad’s. Blue eyes. A similar build. Gary Bright and Elliott Gantt had sometimes been mistaken for brothers.

Gary started talking fast. “It wasn’t long after he got out of the service. She fell apart when she was telling me about his new moods. His black moods. I gave her a hug, a friendly, brotherly hug, and … that’s how it started. I never told Ardelle. I thought it would be better that way, but she knew. Or at least she suspected. All this time. It has been terrible for her.”

“No kidding!” Cassie’s sass began to come back as she got in his face. “Admitting it’s true is the first step. That’s what you just told Mom about a bottle of cologne. You hypocrite!”

“I didn’t … didn’t mean to be a hypocrite,” he said. “I only meant to leave it in the past. I’ve been faithful to your mother ever since. Cassie, I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

Cassie started talking right over his endless apologies. Laura, hardly listening, tried to process these strange new truths, but she could hardly breathe. Couldn’t think. And Gibby? He hardly seemed to matter now.

“I’m sorry,” Gary said again.

“Not as sorry as you should be,” Cassie said. “How can you claim you didn’t know? Look at Laura! I see it now. Sure, she has her mom’s eyes, but she looks like you too. Dad, I’m so ashamed of you.”

Gary nodded, hanging his head, then turned to Laura. “Your dad knew?”

“I don’t know. I heard him confronting my mom, years ago, but I thought he meant … someone else.” Her own voice seemed to come from a great distance.

Gary’s face turned pale. “What will he do to me if he comes back? I deserve it, but … oh God. He nearly strangled me once for making a stupid wisecrack. What will he do if he knows about me and your mother? And … and you? The baby.”

Shaky and cold, Laura studied the cross and the dog tag on the silver chain. Emblems of Elliott Gantt’s faith, his service to his country, and his blood type, but she hadn’t a drop of Gantt blood in her.

Had he found out suddenly, a month before her eighteenth birthday? And staged his own drowning?

She stood. “I can’t take any more of this. I can’t sit here and hash things out while my dad—” Tripping on that word, she met Cassie’s glistening eyes. “Looks like we’re half sisters.”

Cassie rushed her, enfolding her in a fierce hug. “There’s nothing halfway about it. We’re sisters. We’ve always been sisters.”

“Elliott was a brother to me.” Gary let out a gut-wrenching sob. “I didn’t just betray my wife. I betrayed my brother.”

With the silvery chain still dangling from her fingers, Laura hugged Cassie back, but she was frozen inside. Frozen and numb and very much afraid of what might happen next.

Feeling alone and naked without his gun, Sean had walked down the road a quarter mile in each direction. He’d found no clue about what those shrieking brakes had meant. No cat, no man, no vehicle.

Now, standing by Jess’s grave, he heard the whine of a motorcycle’s engine. No, two. Two high-powered bikes flashed into view, chasing the curves. Their riders crouched low in their bright leathers and whipped past, stirring the roadside weeds. The moment crystallized like a snapshot: the two bikers—life, noise, color, speed—flying past the mild-mannered sign in the church’s parking lot: C
OME WORSHIP WITH US
. P
ASTOR
H
ORACE
R
EESE
. T
HIS IS THE DAY
.

The day for what? They should have quoted the rest of the verse.

The sound of the bikes faded into the distance as Sean studied Jess’s grave. He felt cheated. No clues here. No footprints, no gray hair snagged on a branch. None of the convenient evidence that always popped up in TV shows.

The azaleas had fallen over again. This time, nobody had righted them.