No River Too Wide (45 page)

“Were you able to help?”

“There’s kind of a strange twist.”

“What could be stranger than everything we already found out today?”

“Adam thinks your father might have been having an affair.”

Harmony was silent so long Jan was afraid she was going to cry again.

“Honey?”

Harmony wasn’t crying. Her voice dripped disdain. “I’m just imagining the other woman. What was wrong with her?”

“Your father could be unbelievably charming.”

“Like a cobra.”

“When I first met him I didn’t see anything except his kindness. He was devoted to me and determined to make my life easier. He was handsome and polished and smart. I thought he was the answer to all life’s problems.”

“You got that wrong. He was their cause.”

“I don’t think he was responsible for global warming.”

“What makes Adam think he was...you know?”

“Well, he asked a lot of questions.” She didn’t share the ones Adam had asked after he dropped the affair-bomb, questions about changes in their sex life or Rex’s sexual appetites, but she told Harmony the others.

“I had forgotten a lot of things, but Adam teased out the answers. The final picture was of a man who was sprucing himself up and disappearing for long hours without explanation, a man who’d been focused on everything I did and was suddenly not nearly as interested.”

“Dad having an affair.” Harmony said the words slowly, as if she was searching for the punch line.

“Adam concentrated on women at the office. He asked me to remember who your father talked about most often.”

“Did he ever say good things about any of them? I never heard him say anything good about women ever.”

“Not
good
things, just how often Rex talked about anybody and what he said.”

“Did you remember anyone in particular?”

“I remember that Liz Major, the office manager, was the subject of a lot of conversations.”

“The same Liz on his bowling team?”

Jan was surprised. “You remember, too?”

“Of course. Even back then he went on and on about the way she dressed, describing it in detail, and the way she acted like she was the equal of every man there. I used to hate dinners when he got started on all the awful things poor Liz had done that day. I never figured out why he didn’t fire her and hire a man.”

“She could have sued for discrimination, and he would have hated a public lawsuit. That’s the only reason he even hired women in the first place.”

Harmony mulled that over. “Why would he start an affair now?”

Adam had come up with a theory, which he had shared with Jan to get her input. “Remember I told you I was trying to make your father think I had given up on life? So I began behaving like the puppet he’d been struggling to create all those years. Maybe he thought he’d finally won. With nothing else to accomplish at home, Adam thinks maybe he decided to find another woman he could humiliate and manipulate.”

“He was a sick man.”

Jan could tell that Adam’s theory was, in fact, plausible to her daughter. “He’s going back to Topeka tomorrow or the next day. But he’s not going to be able to investigate for the insurance company. He said that wasn’t an option anymore.”

“Did they fire him?”

“I think maybe they did, or at least took him off this case. I think he’s just helping now because he believes in me.”

Harmony reached for a tissue. “This has just been such an awful day. If they don’t find out who really killed Dad... If they try to pin this on you...”

“They’ll find the real killer. But right now let’s talk about you. You must be feeling a million things.”

“I don’t want to talk about me.”

“I know there’s a lot you can’t understand or forgive,” Jan said carefully, “but please listen to me. I know your childhood was light-years from perfect. I wish it had been different. More than anything I wish it, and I always will. I lost so many things when I married your dad, but I struggled to raise you to be independent and compassionate and not fall into the patterns you were forced to witness. Now I watch you with Lottie and I know I succeeded at that much. You’re a wonderful mother and a wonderful person, and somehow you still came through everything at home with so much to give.”

“I’m not compassionate. I will never forgive him. I’m so angry at everything he put us through. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being angry, even though he’s dead.”

“You’re going to be okay, just not right away. Don’t expect more of yourself than any truthful person could give.”

“If we forgive him, isn’t that like saying he didn’t have choices? That we’re excusing the awful things he did?”

Jan knew that both of them would wrestle with this for a long time, but she tried to put her growing insight into words. “It’s not about making excuses for your dad. I think forgiveness is just letting go of the hatred and not letting it have power over us anymore. Maybe it’s shutting that door once and for all and not holding on to him and the world he tried to create. If we don’t move on, your father will win.”

Harmony was crying now. “I don’t know another woman, not a one, who could have guided me safely through my childhood with all its obstacles, Mom. Since you came to Asheville I’ve been angry at everybody, but I’ve never really been angry with you. I’ve just been wishing so hard that things had been different, that somehow you could have waved a magic wand and changed it all. But I know, better than anybody, what you faced. I know you triumphed, even if nobody else ever understands how much.”

Jan swallowed the lump in her throat. “That means everything.”

That sat in silence for a long time, Harmony’s head on Jan’s shoulder, Jan stroking her daughter’s hair, until Harmony finally spoke again.

“Does Adam think you’ll have to go back to Topeka?”

“I won’t go back until I have no choice.”

“Rilla called Brad. He wants to talk to you.”

“Tomorrow.”

“What will they do with Dad’s body?”

No matter how Harmony felt about Rex, he was still her father. But Jan knew that the responsibility for final rites was hers alone.

“Your father would expect a funeral in our church with eulogies about how much good work he had done and how beloved he was to his family. He bought a plot beside Buddy where he wanted to be buried.”

Harmony sat up straighter and turned to her mother. “Please tell me you’re not considering that. Is his death going to be a lie just like his whole life? Are we going to keep pretending?”

Relieved, Jan put her hand over her daughter’s. “No, I’ve spent too much of my life doing what your father demanded. So if you agree, I’m going to have him cremated, and I’m going to ask that his ashes be quietly disposed of in whatever way is legal. But no matter what, he won’t rest next to my son, and
nobody
will stand up in church on my watch and tell lies about him.”

Harmony squeezed her mother’s hand and they sat that way for a moment. “Whether you plan a memorial service or not, the church might have one, anyway. If they do, I’m going to go, and I’m going to speak. I’m going to tell everybody who Rex Stoddard really was. Maybe knowing there are men like him will help another woman in the same situation.”

For a moment Jan pictured that scene. She realized how much their lives had already changed. “Let it go, sweetheart. Just let it go. I don’t think we’ll need to make airline reservations. If Adam’s right about your father, the story will get out. If he really was an adulterer, and he was killed because of it, then his church won’t have a thing to do with him. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“After a lifetime of trying to control everybody around him, at the end your father couldn’t even control himself.”

Chapter 36

Taylor wasn’t surprised that at the end of her Monday morning class one of her beginning yoga students had pulled her aside and asked if she was feeling okay.

She
wasn’t
okay, and she had been preoccupied from the moment the class had begun to warm up. She hadn’t moved things along quickly enough, and she hadn’t paid enough attention to each student’s performance or given more than a few seconds of individual instruction.

She was glad the hot yoga studio was still on hold. She couldn’t imagine how those students would have fared today.

Now, sitting at her desk, she had to face exactly how exhausted and discouraged she felt. Last night sleep had eluded her. Every time she closed her eyes she had thought about Adam and a new surge of anger had filled her. She wasn’t sure exactly where the anger was directed, either. She was furious at him, furious at herself. She had emerged from sexual and emotional hibernation to find that the man she’d trusted had lied about who he was. What did it say about her that she had chosen so poorly?

She didn’t even want to consider what it said about Adam.

On top of everything else, in four nights she was giving a party for all the local artists and businesses who had suffered in the flood. She had invited the goddesses, too, and nearly a dozen other friends. Dante was doing most of the work, but under the circumstances, the party felt like a lead weight she was carrying everywhere she went.

Worse, right now she had to figure out what to do about Adam’s class. She had to either cancel it or find another instructor, but who could she find at this late date? She could call the karate studios in town and ask if they had somebody qualified to take over. There were five more sessions in the term, exactly the number Adam had already taught. She was sure her students wouldn’t be happy at the switch, but they would probably continue to attend if the new instructor was acceptable.

If she couldn’t find another instructor, then she could refund half their tuition, or even all of it if necessary, since they hadn’t gotten exactly what they’d paid for. But first she needed to make those calls.

Using the internet as a resource, she tried three different karate studios and left detailed messages on three different voice mail systems. When she looked up from the last one, Adam was standing in her doorway. She set down the telephone and cocked an eyebrow in question.

“I came to clear out the equipment closet. It won’t take long.”

“I’m sure if I’m lucky enough to find somebody to take over the class, they’ll have their own equipment.”

“You’ve made some calls.” It wasn’t a question, and she supposed he had heard the last message she’d left.

She closed her laptop. “I think it’s unlikely I’ll find anybody.”

“If you don’t, will you refund the tuition?”

“Why, do you still expect your share?” He had agreed to take his cut after classes ended, which, she supposed, should have been a warning sign.

“No, I was asking because if that’s your plan I want to write you a check to cover whatever you have to refund. You took me on in good faith, and it’s not your fault things happened the way they did.”

“‘Happened the way they did.’” She chewed her lip. “That’s an interesting phrase. You must have known right from the beginning you wouldn’t be here to finish the class. It was inevitable. I mean, who needs ten weeks to follow one abused woman and figure out if she’s a criminal or a victim? Things were bound to ‘happen.’” She made quotation marks around the last word with her fingers.

“When I took on the class, I intended to stay the ten weeks. I wasn’t in a hurry to move on to another investigation. Even if I figured out what Jan and her husband were up to fairly quickly, I planned to finish the class for you.”

“That was considerate.” Sarcasm tasted like acid on her tongue.

“I think we need to talk, and this doesn’t seem like the best place. Let’s take a walk down to the river and see the aftermath of the flood.”

She wondered if he had chosen that particular route to remind her that her own daughter had nearly died in the river, and he had been the one to get her safely to shore.

For a moment she considered refusing. Saying no would feel good, like punishment, only she doubted she meant enough to Adam that he would feel slighted. And didn’t she need a chance to tell him what she thought of him? Maybe then she could actually sleep tonight.

She got to her feet. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Thank you for letting me take some of it, then.”

She grabbed her water bottle from the edge of the desk and clipped it to her belt loop. Then she preceded him out the door.

They didn’t talk again until they were walking down the path to the flatter area below. The last time she had taken this route she had been terrified her daughter was going to drown.

Adam was the first to break the silence. They were walking single file since the path was steep and narrow, and he was behind her. “I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll just say I never wanted to hurt you, and I didn’t enjoy lying to you.”

“That’s small comfort.”

“I know, but I have to start with something. And sleeping with you? Taylor, that was never about my job. I knew from the get-go that eventually I would have to be completely honest about why I was here, and you would never understand. But somehow I pushed all that away.”

She was glad she was ahead of him so he couldn’t see how much he had hurt her. “We can definitely say that. Especially the part about me
never
being able to understand.”

“When I realized I wasn’t making any headway toward keeping our relationship casual, I thought about leaving town. Or getting somebody else to investigate Jan’s part in—”

Anger licked at her. “Jan’s part? You mean you still thought Jan had something to do with the money that disappeared?”

“Along the way I thought a lot of things. At first I thought maybe she and her husband had collaborated, that she was in Asheville waiting for him to appear so they could head into the sunset together. Then when I began to suspect Stoddard had used her as a punching bag, I wondered if she was so terrified of the guy she had to do whatever he demanded or face terrible consequences. By then I just didn’t see her as having an active part in what had happened. I saw her as a victim, and I wanted to keep her from getting in deeper.”