Farthest House (26 page)

32

Willow held Prairie in her arms and stared out at the people gathered around Julian’s grave, a spattering of fifteen or twenty
.
She wanted to thank them for giving up their morning and curse those who hadn’t, thank them for their prayers and curse what they might be thinking—that Papa had been drunk and smoking.

Prairie reached and touched the tears on Willow’s face, tiny round fingers exploring the wetness. “It’s all right,” Willow whispered in her ear, not imagining how it could ever be so again.

Her gaze lifted above Papa’s casket and over the headstones of carved angels, crosses, and wide slabs flat as stone cellar doors. A week before, there had been ice, but the warm front that moved in almost immediately after remained, and the weather was spring-like. She wasn’t sure of the exact date, only that the calendar was somewhere in the first week of April. She looked to where the sky rolled, layer upon layer, the blue fading in the distance like unevenly-dyed silk.

In those gathered, she saw half-remembered faces from the years when Papa worked on the force, men who came to the house to watch football and jumped to their feet every time the Huskers scored.

Red stood beside his wife and held his hat in his hands. Willow supposed others were Greenburr locals who’d grown up with Papa or Tory. To her left, Mable sniffed, and the ends of her dark shawl fluttered in the breeze. To her right, Tory stood with no sniffling or display of emotion, her shoulders back and her chin resolute. Willow appreciated both women: Mable’s deep feeling and, knowing that Tory and Julian hadn’t been close, her aunt’s composure and hard honesty, no pantomiming tragedy.

Jonah was half hidden between men and women who stood head and shoulders over him. She’d wanted to spend time with him the night before, but after reaching Farthest House, finalizing the funeral Mass with Tory and the priest, and getting Prairie down for the night in a strange room, the yard to his small cottage lay in darkness. She could have taken a flashlight, but standing at the kitchen window, her face pressed to the glass and her hands cupping her eyes against the inside glare, she’d not seen even the warm glow of a low-watt bulb showing in either of his inky windows. Nor could she bring herself to wake him, just because she ached for his company.

A striking man dressed in a black suit stood next to Jonah, and the two made a study in contrasts: old and young, black and white, short and tall, a concentration of forms. Whether it was because of the interesting composition they made to her artist’s eye, or something in their postures and proximity, she believed they came to the funeral together.

She dropped her gaze back to the black casket with its simple silver cross; Papa was dead, and nothing else mattered.

The Greenburr parish priest, having swung his censer over the body in the local church, an aromatic cloud of incense rolling up to accompany the soul, now sprinkled holy water, his final anointing. “Though we are separated from Julian for a time, we all share his destiny and will meet again at the resurrection on the last day.”

Hollow words, Willow thought. This was a murder.

Jeannie’s grave lay on one side of Julian’s, Mémé’s on the other, and the closeness of the three plots gave Willow some comfort. Papa wasn’t alone. There was no grave for Mémé’s husband, Papa’s father, and she wondered why Papa never mentioned him. Had Mémé divorced the man?

The priest finished his prayers, and too soon, the undertaker touched Tory’s elbow and pointed her to the walk and then touched Willow’s, “This way.” Well-wishers formed a line to offer final condolences, extending hands Willow shook while holding Prairie close, a blur of faces sliding past, lips moving. She tried to concentrate, and as Tory supplied names, she thanked them for coming and resisted telling each one, “He was murdered.” She waited for Jonah so that she could take hold of his old hand and the shaking in her own would stop.

The man she saw standing next to him earlier was alone now. He shook Tory’s hand, smiled at Prairie, and extended his hand to Willow. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Behind him only Red remained, which meant Jonah hadn’t stayed to see her.

“How good of you to come,” Tory said, her voice flowing. “Willow, I’d like you to meet Dr. Hartford.”

He smiled. “It’s just Clay.”

Handsome, she thought, with his sandy-brown hair and mauve-speckled blue-gray eyes. But the fact that she was making assessments of his looks, dog-faced or dashing, on the day of Papa’s funeral threatened to start her crying again.

“Dr. Hartford teaches the English classes at Briarwood. One course is on Mom’s novels.”

She’d heard of the small college outside of town, but she didn’t know anyone who went there. Had someone asked her about its professors, she’d have guessed they were old, matronly women who also taught piano on Saturdays.

Clay smiled at Tory’s comment. “I teach three literature classes out of a couple dozen the University offers.”

The joking and teasing, when Willow felt half sick with loss and as if her head were full of lead, made her ache for Mémé’s old bedroom: the dark and quiet where she spent the previous night.

“Dr. Hartford,” Tory said, “is in charge of building the library honoring Mom.”

“I help chair a
committee
,” he gently corrected. “Every member is important to the project.”

“What library?” Willow asked.

He leaned in instinctively, as though he hadn’t quite heard, then straightened, his face questioning, telling Willow that her surprise surprised him.

Tory cut in. “Willow, you’ve been under such stress. Have you forgotten the Luessy Starmore Library?” Then to Clay, “Since my brother’s accident, we haven’t gotten a chance to talk about the library again.”

Again?
Willow wondered. Papa hadn’t mentioned a library. If he’d known, he’d have told her. “When’s it going to be built?”

“You’ll have to excuse us,” Tory said. She gave a pointed glance to Red and his wife still waiting in line. “You’ll be up to the house soon.”

“Absolutely,” he nodded at Tory and then Willow. “If you’re going to be in town for a few days, I’d love to show you the site.”

Willow tried to smile and seem interested. She felt made of rain and cloud.

Red offered his condolences to Tory and motioned for Willow to walk with him. As soon as they’d stepped away, she grabbed his forearm. “Have you arrested her?”

“There are no signs of a forced entry.”

“What about the back bedroom window? It might have been unlocked.”

“The windows were all down. Even if we found a latch open, that’s not evidence against Mary Wolfe. The cigarettes—”

“But she lit them and put them where they’d start a fire.”

“Walking around without his waking up? She has an alibi.” He paused. “She spent the night at the neighbor’s. The Crats. Mrs. Crat says she never left. Think about it, that was an ugly night for her to be out driving around looking to set fire to somebody’s house.”

The fierce headache pounded in Willow’s head. “She would have walked, not driven, and it wasn’t
somebody’s
house. It was Papa’s.”

“There’s one more thing you should know. There were bottles on the kitchen table. It looks like he’d been drinking.”

No reception followed the funeral. Prairie and Willow returned to Farthest House, and while Mable took Prairie to the kitchen and Tory went up to her room to change, Willow headed outside for the hilltop air she remembered. Hopefully, Jonah would be out, too.

Standing on the portico, her gaze took in the sweep of the wide lawn and garden. She told herself this is how it will be, nature won’t stop. Minutes will pass in the distraction of living, shaking strangers’ hands, and taking care of Prairie. The minutes will creep, until after a very long time an hour will have passed and then a second, Papa always receding.

Jonah wasn’t uncovering roses or checking his bee hives, which stood nearer to his door than she remembered. The door to the tool shed was closed, and she hated to knock on his. He hadn’t remained at the cemetery to talk to her, and she had no way of knowing the depth of his sadness, or fatigue, or his desire to be alone. She’d walk around and hope that he came out, maybe even open his door and invite her in.

The grass held a spring-green cast, thick buds pushed through furry casings on the magnolia trees. Tulips and daffodils poked thick, short fingers out of brown beds.

My attention went to the pile of gray and white sun-splashed rocks where Thomas and I had bones buried. At least this time, my ghostly specter wasn’t there. Luessy used to recite a poem I loved, and scraps of those lines returned to me, “… death like a shoe without a foot in it, death like a ring stoneless and fingerless …”

Willow made her way across the yard to where the formal lawn ended and the uncultivated hillside dropped away to new switch grass, volunteer milo, pigweed, tickseed, and to where Mémé taught her to watch for pheasants and bobolinks. In the valley, the river shimmered through the trees covering its banks, and farther still Greenburr looked small and quaint. A tractor droned in the distance, and Willow wanted to spend the afternoon sitting there, doing nothing more than watching the clouds and the slow tractor cross the field. She’d spent the years since Mémé’s death bordered by gray asphalt, rather than living green, light poles rather than trees, and standing on the hill felt as though she stood on the edge of possibility. Her body as interwoven with the trees, grasses, and the farmers in their seasonal work, as a reed in a basket. In the years she’d been away, she tried to untwist herself from the land, but she felt she lived those years with bends and empty kinks, never fitting as well as she had at Farthest House. Now Tory wanted her to stay.

Mable opened the door off the kitchen, her voice rising, “The tea is ready.”

Willow started back. Jonah wasn’t coming out.

Holding Prairie and a small cup of dry Cheerios, she sank into a chair across the table from Tory. The dining room looked unchanged. Mémé’s burgundy-colored rugs, the heavy velvet drapes the color of new pears, the polished mahogany dining-room table with its twelve high-backed chairs and cushions of claret and dusk, and one wall, still, with a grouping of half a dozen botanicals I painted.

Willow smiled to see Tory pour tea into the purple pansy cup, “You remembered.”

Tory slid the cup and saucer and steaming tea to Willow. She lifted the lid from a silver sugar bowl and slowly sifted sugar into her own tea. “Have you considered my offer?”

“You’ve already done so much.”

Tory stirred slowly. “Having you both here would give me such pleasure.”

Taking up the honey, Willow poured a thin, gold stream into her cup. She felt sympathy for her aunt, too. Tory also lost someone in Papa, and even if they hadn’t been close, losing him shut a door on any hope of reconciliation.

Prairie picked up pieces of cereal, still clumsy at feeding herself, more eating out of her hand than her hand finding her mouth.

“I believe,” Tory continued, “your living here for a bit is what you need, too.”

As a child, Willow avoided her aunt, but now, she studied Tory’s thin, angular face and how the window light striking the right side added to its equine shape.
Handprints pressed into cement aren’t a hold on a piece of land,
Mémé once said, and Willow wondered what Mémé would say now. Hadn’t Tory earned Farthest House? Choosing to live simply, staying in her hometown and childhood home? Papa was the one who chose to leave for what he must have thought would be glamorous work fighting crime.