Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (13 page)

The next day his parents had driven him to a
college
seminary in Pennsylvania
.
The first few weeks he was there, almost everyday
either he
phoned Mary or she phoned him
.
But, gradually, her calls came less and less frequently and, when he tried to contact her, more often than not, she wasn’t home
.

His parents were thrilled that Mary finally had a social life
.
Andrew tried to convince himself that his leaving had been good for Mary; that she’d depended on him so much that she hadn’t developed other friendships
.
He wanted that to be the case; he wanted her to be
happy.

Then
, in the middle of the night, he got a phone call from his mother
.
Mary was dead;
a drunk driver had hit the car she was in head
on and she’d died instantly. Andrew thought his
tears would never stop, that his heart would break
in half
.
He tried to console himself by rationalizing; at least she’d been having fun, not sitting at home,
missing him and
crying
.

Over the next few months, in bits and pieces, he got a clear picture of what really went on after he’d gone away
.
Without him to turn to, Mary had been desperate for love and attention
.
She’d gotten involved with a bad crowd, doing drugs and drinking every night
.
Andrew knew that, if he’d been there, she never would’ve
done that and she would not have
died
.
He cursed God, that stupid bitch,
Amanda
, his parents and the driver of the car that killed his baby sister.

He
heard the sound of the vacuum cleaner out in the hallway
.
How long had he been lost in thought
?
He sat down at his desk and scanned Ann’s job application
.
The name seemed to jump off
of
the page at him
:
Malone
.
Ann’s maiden name was
Malone
.
A common name, he told himself
.
There had to be lots of Malones in the area
.

Still, c
ould it possibly be
?
Could
Ann be related to
the drunk driver who had killed his sister
?
He leaned forward and covered his
face
with his hands
.
He sat there for a few minutes, unable to move
.
He had to know
and he knew how he could find out
.
The church records would reveal the truth to him, one way or the o
ther.

He got up and went over to the window, looking out at the adjacent cemetery. He watched Ann weave her way carefully between the tombstones. I can’t do anything about the
past, he decided
.
“But” he said aloud, “there’s plenty I can do
now
.”

Chapter 1
4

AS SHE LEFT THE CHURCH, ANN THOUGHT
about her interview with Father Andrew
.
She’d been surprised to see that he was
so much
older than she’d thought
.
He’s
probably in his
early forties
, she guessed
, judging by the fact that h
is hair was graying at the temples and there were lines at the corners of his eyes
.
He was tall and
slim and,
from a distance, he’d looked
like a man in his mid to late twenties
.

Until today, s
he’d never seen him up close because she and the kids always sat in a back pew
at Sunday mass
.
That way, if Davey got too restless
and started fidgeting
, which he often d
id, they could leave at any
time without disturbing the other parishioners and, on the Sundays that they actually made it through the whole mass, they could exit quickly too.

She had
ambivalent
feelings
about her visit with the priest
.
She was excited that she’d gotten the job but she felt uneasy about the priest’s reaction when she’d told him about the problems in her marriage
and
intimated
that she’d considered leaving her husband
.
Father Andrew’s
brown eyes had turned darker; they were almost black.
She remembered how the
concerned
expression on his face had
so drastically
changed
and how
he’d pointed a finger at her and all but screamed, “Divorce is not an option!”
She shivered, recalling how the room had suddenly felt damp and cold.
For a few seconds, I actually felt afraid of him
, she thought
.
Why did I even say that
though
? I don’t want to leave
David
.
I love him
.
I should never have said that
.
B
ut why did Father Andrew get so
angry with me? I know The Church is against divorce but I thought you were supposed to be able
to talk about anything
with
a priest
.
Why did he react so strongly?

I’ll visit Mom and Dad and then go talk to Nana, she decided; that always makes me feel better
.
As she walked behind the church and down the path to the
secluded section of the
cemetery where her parents and grandmother were buried, she thought back to the first time Nana had brought her sister and her to the cemetery to decorate their parents’ graves
.
She remembered sitting on the bench with Nana and Marnie, all three of them crying
.

And she remembered a later visit, the first time she’d “talked” to her parents, how she’d looked around to make sure no one was watching her; how she’d felt so foolish
.
She didn’t feel that way any longer
.
Now, it only made her feel close to them
.
She weaved her way through the tombstones, careful to avoid stepping on any of the plots, until she came to her parents’ graves
.
She stood, looking down at the headstones.

“You both died so young. I can’t believe you’ve been gone for twenty-
three
years,” she said aloud, running her finger over the date, September
6
th
, 198
5
,
that
was engraved on her mother’s stone, the day she lost both of her parents in an automobile accident.

Her thoughts traveled back to a Monday night when she was nine years old. Her parents
had gone out of town
for the
long Labor Day
weekend
but
they
were due back soon
.
Nana
was spending the weekend with
her granddaughters
, at their house.
Marnie sat on the sofa reading and Annie and Nana worked on a puzzle at the dining room table.
It was a balmy September evening and
the
windows
were
open
to let in the fresh air.
Ann remembered
watching the sheer curtains billowing in the warm breeze and
hearing crickets chirping outside
.
O
ccasional
ly, a
firecracker
would
explod
e nearby, startling her
.

“Nana, when will Mommy and Daddy be home?” Annie asked.

The phone rang, as if on cue.

“That’s probably them now,” Nana said, getting up and
going
to the phone.

Annie
could hear the wail of sirens in the distance as she
went back to working on her puzzle. Her forehead furrowed and she tapped her foot as she tried to find the place for the piece she held in her hand. After a few minutes, she
heard her grandmother hang up the phone
.

“Was that …?” Annie started to ask but, when she looked up at her grandmother and saw
the expression on her face, she knew instantly that something was terribly wrong.

“Marnie, Annie, I have some bad news,” Nana said,
staggering
to the table and easing herself slowly down onto a chair
.
“I’m so sorry, girls
.
I don’t know
any other way
to say this
so I’ll just say it
,”
she
said, tears
welling up
in her eyes
.
“There’s been an accident
.
Your mommy and daddy have been killed.”

That fast, Ann’s whole life had changed
.
Never again would she and Marnie ride the bus to downtown Cincinnati with their mother for a girls’ day out, looking at the beautiful window
displays in all the
department
stores, laughing and having fun
.
Never again would her father hold her on his lap and sing “And you’re Daddy’s little girl” to her
.
Never again.

She would never forget the day of the funeral, how sad everyone had been. She
remembered sitting in the back seat of the limousine with her sister and her grandmother as they drove to the cemetery
.
She sat, huddled against the car door, hugging her stuffed
teddy
bear, Buddy, to her chest
.
She watched the rain pelt the window, tears spilling down her cheeks
.
It had all felt so unreal
.
She couldn’t believe it was happening, that her mommy and daddy were really gone
.

At the cemetery, people kept coming up to them, hugging them or patting them on the arm, offering their condolences
.
A lot of the people little Annie didn’t even know
.
They bent
down to her and looked into her tear
filled eyes, saying things like, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” “your parents are in a better place,” and “this too shall pass.”

It wasn’t until years later that
she
learned from
Marnie
that
thei
r father had had too
much to drink that night and lost control of the car, hitting another vehicle head on, killing himself, his wife and the occupants of the other car.
The accident had happened less than a mile from their house.
The sirens she’d heard that night, before her world cam
e
tumbling down, had been the police and emergency vehicles rushing to the scene of the crash.

“Aren’t you angry with my father?
” she’d asked her grandmother.

She
would never forget Nana’s words, “Everything happens for a reason
.
Only the Good Lord knows why He took your parents from us that night
.
It’s not for us to judge
.
We have to trust in God always
.
Remember, Ann, no matter what happens, life must go on
.
To be happy, we have to let go of the past
.
We have to forgive.”

Ann
stooped down to remove a few dried leaves from her father’s grave
.
“Why, Daddy
?
W
hy did you have to drink
?
Weren’t you happy
?
You had a family who loved you
.
Wasn’t that enough
?
Weren’t we enough
?
If only I could understand why you drank, maybe I’d be able to understand and help David
.
It’s horrible enough that I lost you and Mom
.
I don’t want to lose my husband too.”

A slight breeze rustled the leaves in the trees along the perimeter of the graveyard
.
She
glanced at her wristwatch
.
No time to visit Nana today, she realized
.
“I have to go now
.
I love you both,” she said
.
She turned and
trudged
up the hill toward the street and home.