Blue Diary (23 page)

Jorie does indeed recall that she and Anne used to fix that exact picnic nearly every day after their father left them. It was the only summer when they spent any amount of time together, and now it comes back to her, how they used to walk to Lantern Lake, the long way around, past the old orchards that grew spicy russets and buttery Keepsake apples, along with Mclntoshes and Macouns. It was the only time they had ever felt close to each other, gorging on that wretched menu no one else would have cared to eat, wanting only what was salty and sour to ease their pain.

Jorie knows Anne is taking good care of Collie, yet for what is perhaps the thousandth time, she wonders if she's done the wrong thing in leaving her boy. She cannot imagine he will understand that this trip was hardly a matter of choice for her. How could she ever be sure this place existed if she hadn't flown to Baltimore, and rented a midsize car, and followed her map of the Eastern Shore? She needed to do these things, just as she needed to sleep in this hotel bed and dream her terrible dream, and wake on this sunny morning in Holden, Maryland.

Most people look inside to know what they feel, but Jorie has nothing left inside anymore. The truths by which she has lived her life have evaporated, leaving her empty of everything except the faint blue static of her own skepticism. She has never been a person to question herself; now she questions everything. Yes, she is looking out the window at town hall as she sips the coffee room service has brought her, but mightn't that vista—the knobby gray stone building, the lustrous trees and wrought-iron benches—just as easily be a moonscape? Magnolias don't grow on the moon and red-winged blackbirds don't fly there, or so she has always been told. Yet how does she know that for sure? Where are the documents, the photographs, the hard and fast proof? In a matter of weeks, Jorie has become a disbeliever in just about everything, including herself She, who took people at their word and always trusted her own instincts, is now a woman who wants only facts, black ink on paper, eyewitness accounts.

As soon as the clock on the night table is at nine on the dot, Jorie leaves the hotel to go across the street. It's another hot day, and she's already overheated by the time she finds her way to the department of records. The woman behind the desk, busy with some mail and muttering to herself, ignores Jorie, until Jorie asks to see a death certificate. The clerk, a local woman named Nancy Kerr, who's never lived anyplace but Holden and has never wanted to, is suddenly interested. Nancy is a few years younger than Jorie. with dark curly hair and a no-nonsense demeanor. She's the person folks in Holden come to when they want to complain about something, and after a few years at the job, most of the soft edges she once had have been eradicated.

“Whose death in particular?” When Nancy hears the name Rachel Morris, she shakes her head. “Poor thing.” For an instant, Nancy almost seems like the girl she once was, vulnerable and easily wounded, long before she got divorced and took on this job in order to raise her daughter. But that reverie doesn't last. Nancy gives Jorie the once-over, and as she does, her face takes on a clouded cast. “You're not a reporter, are you?”

“I'm just interested in the case. I'm trying to figure out what happened.”

“I can tell you exactly what happened. Somebody killed Rachel fifteen years ago, and now they caught the fellow, up in Massachusetts. You can read all about it in the papers.”

“Well, I thought I'd start by taking a look at whatever files you had.”

“And the reason I should do this for you would be?”

“It's a personal matter.”

“Really.”

They look at each other and Jorie realizes Nancy Kerr had probably gone to school with Rachel Morris. Shed probably grown up right alongside her.

“You sound like you're from Massachusetts, so I'm guessing it's pretty damned personal.” Nancy is smart and she's not afraid to speak her mind, but she's had a rough week, with her daughter in bed with a stomach \ irus. All the same, she finds herself being won over by the fact that Jorie's eyes are glassy, the sure sign of a woman who's a stranger to a good night's sleep, much as Nancy is herself. Perhaps this is the reason Nancy Kerr goes to a file cabinet and comes back with a folder. “Well, now I know I'm crazy. I just hope I'm not going to regret this as much as I do everything else in my life,” she says as she hands over the information.

When Jorie opens the file and sees the death certificate, she feels dazed, almost as though she's been blinded somehow. She has to sit down, quickly folding herself into one of the hard plastic chairs, each of which has a desktop conveniently attached. Here are the papers, right in front of her. Here is a photograph that doesn't even seem like a human form. Well, this is what she wanted, isn't it? She had to know the official cause of death, had to see it in black and white, and now she has the coroner's report in her hands. She forces herself to go over how the internal bleeding was caused by trauma, how the skull was cracked, leaving fragments of bone lodged in the brain. What she finds hardest to read are the simplest of facts: the color of the deceased's eyes, green, and of her hair, red as roses, and the grievous information offered by a crude sketch of the birthmark at the base of the girl's spine, a plum-colored blemish in the shape of a butterfly

When Nancy Kerr sees how pale Jorie is, her skin turning to ice on this summer day, she comes over and pulls up a chair. Nancy hadn't planned to be helpful, but the mention of Rachel Morris's name has opened her heart. Up close, she notices that Jorie has written down the address of the Morris farm.

“He won't talk to you, if that's what you're planning,” Nancy tells Jorie.

“He?” Luckily, Jorie has her trusty map in the car, for the address is a rural route east of town, out past a series of inlets and ponds. She thinks of butterflies and birthmarks, and of a sorrow so deep a person would have to dig with a shovel and a spade all night long just to reach its outermost edges.

“Rachel's brother, James. You can forget about it. He won't see you if you go out to the house. There were a lot of reporters hanging around when it happened, and some awful people with their own agendas, psychics who didn't have a clue and such. Everybody was looking to get their names in the papers. It wasn't more than a few years before Joe and Irene, Rachel's parents, both died, one after the other, the way people do when they don't want to live anymore. After that, James stopped talking to people. Especially reporters and lawyers. Now they're back, like flies. And even if that's not what you are, there's no way he's going to see you. Unless you give me one good reason to try and talk him into it.”

“I know the person who's been accused.” Jorie's face tilts upward, as if she half-expects to be slapped. “So I'm involved, whether I like it or not.”

“And you don't like it.”

“No.” Jorie closes the file on the Morris girl. She has already memorized most of the words within. “I hate it.”

Some people say Nancy Kerr is too soft-hearted for her own good once you get past her tough exterior. Certainly, it's not easy for her to turn down someone in trouble. Nancy takes a hard look at Jorie, then heads over to the phone and dials; she speaks in a hushed tone for a few moments, then signals to Jorie.

“It's James. He'll hear what you have to say”

Jorie takes the phone. She feels cold standing in the middle of this strange office, in a town she never knew existed before this summer.

“Go ahead. He'll talk,” Nancy urges.

“Hello,” Jorie says uncertainly.

There is deep silence on the other end of the line. Jorie can almost feel how conflicted James Morris is and how close he is to hanging up on her. Why shouldn't he greet this call with mistrust? Who in this town, or any other, can assure him that people are worthy of a moment of his time? It's the hour when the town offices are growing busier. The motor vehicle department is at the end of the hall and already a line of customers has gathered. Several people call out a greeting to Nancy as they walk past the office of records.

“I know you don't know me,” Jorie forces herself to go on, “but I'm related to someone who was involved in your sister's case.”

Silence again, and then after what seems like forever, a man speaks. “Are you referring to the murderer?” James Morris has a raspy voice, and he speaks so softly Jorie has to jam her ear up to the receiver in order to hear. “You think I should talk to you because you know my sister's murderer? Let me guess—you want to tell me what a good man he is. You want to tell me I should forgive what I don't understand. But the way I see it, if I listen to you, I'll have everyone who ever knew him in Massachusetts knocking on my door to plead his case. So, no, I don't think so.”

“You won't have everyone. You'll just have me.” Jorie can hear James Morris breathing. “He's my husband.”

There, she has said it, the nightmare sentence she's been dreading so, and with these words released she is melting, like green ice in the shallows of a pond, like crystals evaporating into flame. Before long, little blisters will rise on her tongue, the price, perhaps, for speaking the truth; she'll have to stop at the water fountain in the hallway for a long, cold drink.

“Your husband?” James Morris says. “And you want to come out here and talk to me?”

Nancy Kerr pretends to be busy with some files, but Jorie can tell she's listening in to Jorie's part of the conversation. How could a woman who's been raised in this town not be interested in this turn of events? When a second phone line rings, Nancy doesn't bother to answer. Instead, she lets the machine pick up.

“I very much want to talk to you,” Jorie tells him. “Please.”

She has actually broken into a sweat talking to this man, James Morris, and it doesn't help that town hall isn't air-conditioned. She's close to begging for something she's not even certain she wants. All the same, she knows if she misses this opportunity to go out to the Morris farm, she'll never be sure of what she feels. If she doesn't walk along the same roads, breathe the same air, how can she ever understand what happened that night?

She has come hundreds of miles not to look for a way to pardon Ethan or to condone what he's done, but to see if she can find a way to live with what's happened. That's what James Morris doesn't understand; it's not so much his forgiveness she's searching for, it's her own.

“I won't take up much of your time. I promise.”

James Morris surprises her when he responds. “Sure, you can come out here.” Maybe he wants to get a good look at her: the woman who's spent all these years with the man who killed his sister. He must be standing near a window or out on a porch as he speaks to her, for Jorie can hear the chirrup of birdsong through the receiver. It's a mesmerizing sound, a chorus from heaven, sweetness from the skies up above. “But just so you know, you're not going to like what you find.”

Jorie takes down the directions, and when she hands the phone to Nancy Kerr, she's shaking. “Thank you. He never would have agreed to see me if you hadn't called him.”

“Don't be so quick to thank me,” Nancy warns. “And don't think just because he's going to see you he'll be nice to you, because James Morris isn't especially nice. Not anymore. And especially not to you.”

Jorie heads out to her parked rental car, left in the sunshine and hot as blazes, the steering wheel burning her fingertips as soon as it's touched. She opens the windows, then follows James Morris's directions, west on Main Street until the turnoff at Greenway Road and then left on Route 12. On her way out of town, she passes a block of stores and then a more residential section of the village, lanes of pretty brick homes surrounded by hedges of azaleas. As she drives along, Joric is thinking about Rachel Morris and the birthmark at the base of her spine. Rachel must have taken this same road a thousand times or more; she must have ridden her bike through the leafy shadows cast by the sweet gum trees and stopped to grab handfuls of fruit from the stands of wild cherries that grow here in such abundance. Surely, she bought her shampoo in the pharmacy on Main Street and ordered vanilla Cokes and French fries with vinegar at Duke's Diner on Greenway Road, where the crullers are fresh every morning and the menu hasn't changed for the past fifteen years.

Once again, Jorie has the feeling of having dropped off the face of the earth as she's known it. only to surface in another time, as if this deserted road is a tunnel leading back through the years. She is engulfed in the heat, dizzy with it. She has always thought herself to be a compassionate person, as sure of right and wrong as she is of herself, but now she's not so certain. The person she's always assumed she was would not be driving on this road in Maryland all alone, passing huge osprey nests balanced on telephone poles, heading farther into the countryside as scores of fish crows soar through the sky. After she passes a wrecking shop and a market and a tiny post office, she spies the turnoff James Morris has told her about—a swampy stretch ofpickerelweed and brackish water that was once a swimming hole with exceedingly warm temperatures. Now, the shallows are clogged with water parsnip and mallow; some mallow roses are blooming, pink and sweet as they manage to grow through the wool grass. No one goes swimming here anymore, and they haven't for years; these days, people worry about bacteria and leeches, they take into account factors no one used to even consider when diving into the murky depths of a natural pool that was so hot steam rose from the surface of the water and clouds formed only inches above the ground.

Jorie takes the turnoff and rides along until she finds the dirt road leading to the farm. The strain of her engine startles a covey of woodcocks in the thickets of dogwood and sweet pepper bush when she passes by. As the birds flap into the sky, prattling, Jorie feels a chill go through her, even though the temperature is hovering above ninety. Her heart is like one of those birds, easily startled, too quick for her own blood. She can see the white house, unpainted for the past several years, the black shutters sagging at odd angles. All she wants is the tiniest shred of information that will allow her to believe in her husband. At first, she'd been convinced that Ethan's confession was intended to cover up someone else's crime. Surely he must have a brother on a chain gang, or a cousin gone wrong, perhaps a best friend he'd vowed to protect on that August night so long ago.