Occasion of Revenge (20 page)

I thought about the small fortune we’d spent educating Emily at Bryn Mawr. Deirdre was working on her Ph.D. That meant a prior B.A. and probably a master’s. Where had the money come from? “How on earth did you manage?” I asked.

Deirdre wiped her chin with her napkin. “Scholarships. Part-time jobs. Actually, Lynwood was willing to help out with college fees, but Mom said absolutely not. She had this theory that the only things we appreciate are the things we have to work for.” Deirdre grimaced. “She’d rather spend Lynwood’s money on cruises.”

I wondered if Darlene had truly appreciated the
men she had worked so hard to catch. “You’ve come a long way on your own, Deirdre. Didn’t Darlene tell me you’re working on your Ph.D.?”

“Uh-huh. In biology.”

I nibbled around the circumference of my fried potato while I wondered if students working in biology labs had access to drugs like clonidine hydrochloride. “Did Darlene give Darryl money for college?” I asked.

“Hah!” Deirdre grunted, her mouth half open. Straight white teeth hovered over both sides of the hamburger bun then slammed shut. “Not him, either. Mother held on to every freaking penny. Why do you think Darryl works here?” She bit down on the bun.

Good question. I peeked at my watch. Deirdre’s little brother was nearly twenty minutes late for his two-o’clock shift. Maybe, courtesy of Ruth, he’d come into sudden wealth and quit the job. “It’s well after two, Deirdre. You don’t suppose that Darryl’s won the lottery and told McGarvey’s to shove it?”

“That’s a laugh! Last month he hit me up for half his rent.” She turned in her chair, spotted our waitress leaning against the raw bar, and waved her over. “Have you seen Darryl?”

The waitress tucked our check into a plastic service wallet. “He was supposed to work today, but I just heard he’s coming in late. His car broke down.”

“Damn him! He
knew
I was coming. Jerk’s avoiding me.”

“Dessert?” the waitress asked helpfully.

Without consulting me, Deirdre said, “Just the check.” She seemed in a hurry to leave.

Deirdre pawed through the saddlebag that served as
her purse and came up with a worn leather billfold. I would have given my collection of
National Geographic
magazines to see what else was in that purse. I laid a ten-dollar bill on the table and said, “I’ll walk out with you. Do you want to make a pit stop first?”

Deirdre studied the bill. Maybe math wasn’t her strong point.

“Is ten enough?” I asked.

“Sure. Fine.” She added a ten of her own to my ten on the table, laid the check on top of them both, closed the bill server, and said, “Yeah, I could use the rest room. I’ve got a long drive.”

I hoped Deirdre wouldn’t realize I lived close enough to downtown to simply walk home to wash my hands. Although I thought it would probably be a complete waste of time, I followed Deirdre up the steps to the second floor. She disappeared immediately into a stall, leaving her purse propped up next to one of the sinks. “Watch my bag, will you?” The stall door creaked closed and I heard the squeak of the latch being thrown.

I stared at the purse, not believing my luck.

I don’t know how it is with guys, but women like to
blah-blah-blah
in rest rooms. In elevators we just stand there, eyes glued front, and never open our mouths, but in rest rooms those same mouths are flapping a mile a minute.

From inside her stall, Deirdre announced, “Darryl’s counting on being on easy street now that Mom’s dead.”

I eased Deirdre’s purse open with two fingers while keeping one eye on the door to her stall. “Was your mother well off, then?” I peered into the yawning
mouth of the saddlebag and saw the billfold, a calculator, two lipsticks, a jumble of used tissues, a wad of credit cards held together with a rubber band …

“She was quite comfortable. Not rich, but comfortable.”

“I was just wondering,” I said, “because of the Porsche.”

“Oh, that!” She chuckled. “Lynwood’s pride and joy. He bought it used and spent every night and weekend restoring the damn thing!”

To the
lub-lub-lub
of toilet tissue coming off the roll, I plucked out Deirdre’s credit cards and thumbed through them quickly. American Express, Visa, and MasterCard, all in the name of Deirdre Kay Donovan. Another Visa card belonged to Darlene Tinsley. That was interesting.

I thrust my hand quickly to the bottom of the bag, feeling around to see if I could find any pill containers, but all I unearthed was a small bottle of Motrin and a flat, round dispenser of birth control pills.
Rats!
If Deirdre’d had any clonidine, or credit cards in my sister’s name, she must have left them at home.

The toilet flushed with a roar. With the palm of my hand I hit the button on the blow dryer and was rubbing my hands briskly under the hot air when Deirdre emerged from the stall. She picked up her purse and slung it carelessly over one shoulder. “There’ll be some money, of course, once we sell the house. But most of Mom’s money came from her widow’s benefits under Lynwood’s pension plan.”

I finished pretending to dry my hands by patting them on my jeans. “Did she have any life insurance?”

Deirdre sniffed. “The policy was taken out years ago. It’s hardly enough to bury her.”

“Inflation,” I said, “is a terrible thing.”

Deirdre shot me a look I couldn’t read and I thought maybe I’d stepped over the line. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said as she ran her hands quickly under the hot water tap. “You’re thinking Darryl killed Mother for her money.”

I nodded. “Or?”

“Me?” Deirdre’s laugh carried well over the howl of the hand dryer. “Believe me. Twenty thousand dollars in equity in a house that needs fifteen thousand dollars in repairs before I can even put it on the market isn’t worth spending the rest of my life in jail for!”

“Does Darryl know that?” I asked.

Deirdre’s face grew serious. “I honestly don’t know.”

chapter
14

When Emily left home for good, we got out
of the habit of giving barrelloads of Christmas presents, agreeing to hold the line at one or two, max. We’d made pacts with our siblings, too: a gift apiece and cash for the kids. I was always a little sad about that. It’s hard to get sentimental over cash, after all, unless it has James Madison’s picture on it.

We’d held the line this year, too. Sort of. Wrapped up under the tree was a hand-knit sweater for Paul, something in a small box from Aurora Gallery for me, and a half dozen gifts for Emily and Dante. But Santa had really turned the sack upside down for Chloe. It was all my fault. When I enter a store I must have GRANDMA written large on my forehead because the sales staff attach themselves to me like refrigerator magnets. How could I resist that green-and-white-striped dress with holly berries appliquéd on it? Or that fuzzy, cross-eyed bear? Or that wind-up turtle that bumps crazily into the furniture?

But what choked me up so badly that I had to hide
them in a closet, behind the overcoats, pushed way out of sight, were three gaily wrapped boxes intended for my father. I had been steeling myself for our first Christmas without Mother, but being in limbo about Daddy was just too much.

Yet I had to hold it together, if not for myself, then for my family. On Christmas Eve, with still no Daddy, I prepared our traditional supper of oyster stew, French bread, and salad. We left for the Naval Academy chapel early enough to get prime seats in the first row of the balcony. The Christmas Eve candlelight service was a tradition, too; maybe it’d help keep me centered.

We went as a family—at least, what family I had left. Connie and Dennis were still honeymooning, of course. Scott and Georgina had returned from Arizona, but they had to spend Christmas Eve in Baltimore where Georgina was accompanying the All Hallows choir in the Vivaldi
Gloria
, not to mention assisting Santa in his squeeze down the narrow chimney of their home in Roland Park. I suspected they’d be up till all hours, assembling the dollhouse they’d bought for Julie.

We sat in a row—Paul between Ruth and me, with Emily at the end of the pew next to Dante, who was cradling Chloe.
Once in royal David’s city
. I shivered as the sweet, pure soprano voice, bright and clear as the night sky, filled the chapel from the baptistery to the great dome nearly one hundred feet overhead. Christmas had truly begun.

Chloe zonked out in the middle of “Lo, How a Rose.” In the dim light I smiled at my slumbering granddaughter. She
was
a rose, a perfect little rose. As we sang the old, old song, I gazed down at the tall evergreens that flanked the altar. Each was decked with white
pin lights and white-and-gold Chrismons—handmade jewel-encrusted ornaments signifying Christian symbols such as IHS, Alpha, and Omega. Poinsettias in profusion, both red and white, decorated the altar and the ledges of the baroque cases that housed the organ pipes.
Joy to the world, the Lord has come!
The deep rumbling of the great pipes resonated with my bones, notes so low that I felt, rather than heard them.

As the service progressed, I stared at the Tiffany window over the altar: Christ walking on the water.
Please, don’t take my father! You have my mother. Isn’t that enough?

It worried me that I had almost forgotten the sound of my mother’s voice. With my eyes closed I tuned out the scripture reading and concentrated on trying to bring back her soft, slightly nasal, Cleveland-bred accent.
Open your heart and your mind
, Mom seemed to be saying,
and God will tell you what to do
.

Something was seriously wrong. Daddy would never have left us alone during the holidays, not willingly, this Christmas of all Christmases, our first without Mother. If he hadn’t contacted us, it was because he couldn’t. That meant he was either dead or incapacitated.

I ran over it again and again, trying to put myself in Daddy’s shoes. Much the worse for drink, he finds Darlene dead in her bath. He panics and drives to the airport, where he gets aboard … what?… and travels … where? Once there, he drowns himself in alcohol and despair. My father could be living on the street, one more faceless, hopeless, homeless veteran.

Find him, Hannah
.

I had survived breast cancer. A car crash. A sinking
boat. I had to believe there was a reason for that, some purpose for which I was spared. I wasn’t able to save my mother. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save my father.

As the service of Lessons and carols unfolded, I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me. Memories made bittersweet by the tragedies of the past year flitted in and out of my consciousness like butterflies.

Suddenly I was aware that everyone around me was standing and I leapt to my feet to join in the singing.
We three Kinks of Borry and Tar, Trying to smoke a rubber cigar. It was loaded and ex-plo-o-ded
 … I was back in Virginia Beach, huddling with Ruth in a drafty hallway, peeking through a crack in the door, determined to catch Santa as he came down the chimney. I glanced at Ruth. She had her eyes closed, too. Perhaps the same irreverent lyrics were running through her head.

Lully lullay, Thou little tiny Child
. My mother’s favorite carol. It transported me to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence where I stood hand in hand with Mother, awed, before Fra Filippo Lippi’s “Madonna and Child with Two Angels.” A tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. When I looked up again, Christ’s stained-glass face smiled for me. It wasn’t a miracle—the illumination came from a spotlight trained on the window from outside the chapel—but the smile was for me.

Oh, come all ye faithful
. The overhead lights were extinguished, plunging the sanctuary into darkness. Ushers advanced and lit tall candles, then carried them down the center aisle. As the flame passed from worshiper to worshiper, the light from nearly two thousand candles made the chapel glow with a honey yellow light. I could feel the warmth of the flames, smell the
burning tallow.
Silent night, holy night
. Paul’s arm slid around my shoulder and pulled me close as he touched his candle to mine, and the flame passed on. “I love you,” he whispered into my hair. And I cried for my mother, for my father, for Christmases past, but most of all, I cried for myself.

Christmas Day, 1999. Daddy had been missing for a week.

Just about the time Chloe was ripping through the contents of her Christmas stocking, we received a holiday phone call from Connie and Dennis, who were sunning themselves on the deck of their sailboat off The Baths at Virgin Gorda. “The sea’s rough today,” Dennis told me in a tinny voice that faded in and out with the satellite connection. “We’re bobbing about like a cork.”

Not half as rough as what’s going on here
, I thought. But I didn’t say a word. Connie would be royally pissed when she found out we’d kept the bad news from her, but after agonizing about it, we had decided not to tell them about Daddy. There wasn’t a thing they could do about it from the British Virgin Islands, and it would only spoil their honeymoon.

Besides, Dennis probably believes I’m an accident waiting to happen. He’s pulled strings for me before, and once or twice he’s had to bail me out, quite literally. Connie and I would still be clinging to a mast in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay singing old Girl Scout songs if Dennis hadn’t steamed to our rescue with the U.S. Coast Guard in tow. I’d leave Dennis out of it this time. When Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Rutherford returned to Maryland, all this mess would be behind us. Or so I hoped.

It was Georgina’s turn to host Christmas dinner. Under the circumstances, I’d encouraged her to take a leaf from my book. Last year I’d wimped out big time by making reservations at the Maryland Inn. But my sister Georginia was a domestic goddess. With her depression properly medicated, she was able to resume a punishing schedule of Christmas season services and still turn out a feast for five thousand.

Eleven, rather. Although there should have been twelve.