Silver Lies (39 page)

He handed the glass to her. "So, is it French, as advertised?"

She sipped and thought a moment. "It’s been a while since I’ve had real champagne, but it tastes heavenly."

The extended notes of an open A announced that the musicians were tuning up for the next set. She quickly finished her drink. "Let’s dance. You move so exquisitely, I hate to stop."

He took her hand and they moved to the floor for another waltz. As he drew her close he said softly, "Who knows when I’ll have another chance to hold you this close. We’ll stay as long as you like."

999

When Reverend Sands helped Inez down from the rig two hours later, it was still dark. Standing before her small frame house, Inez looked up. No stars, no moon.

"Clouds. Storm’s coming." She swayed slightly. The reverend slipped an arm around her waist and she leaned against him, grateful for his steadiness as they mounted the two steps to the porch.

"Tired?"

Inez smiled, fumbling in her pocket for the key. "No, not really." Her fingers touched Joe’s pocketwatch. "Oh." The fuzziness in her head evaporated like her breath in the cold dry air.

She pulled out the watch by its chain. "Joe Rose’s pocket-watch."
And the perfect excuse to invite him in
. "Would you mind coming in a moment? I’d like to talk with you about this."

She opened the door, and they entered. He stopped her by the entryway. In the near darkness, she could see him cock his head, listening.

"What?" she asked.

"Probably nothing. Wait here, I’ll look around." He melted soundlessly into the unlit interior. She shivered and pulled the door closed behind her. A moment later, a shape reformed from the darkness and touched her sleeve. "No one lurking behind the doors. Everything’s fine."

Inez lit a parlor lamp while the reverend coaxed the still warm coals in the fireplace back to life. After adding a few chunks of wood, he came over to the piano where she waited. She opened her hand and they both looked at the watch, gold and silent, lying on the palm of her glove.

"Whoever’s had it all this time hasn’t bothered to wind it," he noted.

"Angel gave it to me. In the alcove, before Mrs. DuBois appeared."

She flipped open the dustcover. A photo of Joe, Emma, and Joey was mounted on the inside of the casing. A small bit of folded paper fell out and tumbled down the skirts of her dress to the floor.

Sands retrieved the paper and handed it to Inez. Unfolded, it seemed a small rectangle ripped from a larger sheet. A finely engraved border ran along two edges with a blank space at the corner. The border’s design was vaguely familiar to Inez, but it was the penciled message that drew her attention. In careful, child-like printing, it said: "Joe knew."

"Joe knew," Inez repeated in puzzlement. "Knew what?"

"Can I see that?" The reverend carried the paper to the lamp. He turned it over, examining the other side.

"Interesting." He refolded it and set it on the end table. "So, what are you going to do about the pocketwatch?"

"Return it to Emma, of course. Oh dear." Inez looked down at the family portrait, an echo of happier times. "I can’t tell her who gave it to me. I guess we know how Joe spent his last hours."

She closed it with a snap and carried it to the sideboard. The gold chain slithered through her fingers to coil in a shining heap between the pocketwatch and the brandy decanter. The golden liquid in the decanter glimmered. Inez righted a clean glass and poured herself a healthy dose.

"He’s not the first married man to stray, Inez." The reverend stood by the loveseat, hands in trouser pockets. "I know it’s small comfort, but on the large scale of things, it’s a small sin."

"That may be your view, but it’s not Emma’s. Or any married woman’s, for that matter."

"Inez, you can’t tell me women—married or otherwise— don’t sometimes suffer from the same human frailties as men." He gathered his hat and gloves.

"No, please." She set down the glass. "Don’t go."

The reverend slowly tossed his hat and gloves back on the sofa.

The room felt charged with an understood, but unspoken potential. In the fireplace, a piece of wood snapped loudly as it disintegrated in a leap of orange flame. The reverend took one deliberate step toward her. She drew a breath, almost gasping, "Would you like me to play something for you? On the piano?"

He halted as if she’d suddenly slapped a line of fortifications between them. He considered her curiously, then smiled. Glancing over to the pile of books and sheet music heaped haphazardly on top of the parlor grand, he asked, "My choice?"

"Whatever you want."

"Whatever I want." He studied her a moment. She felt the room begin to whirl slowly around them, in a strange approximation of a dance.

He walked to the piano and began leafing through the stack. "Mozart, Mozart, Bach, Bach, Bach…hmmm. No Stephen Foster. No hymnals. Ah, how about Mendelssohn?"

Inez took the dog-eared music book from him and flipped through the pages. "‘Lieder ohne Worte.’ Songs without words. Some of the first pieces my mother taught me."

"She didn’t force you to memorize ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’?" His gentle teasing gave her the space she needed to breathe normally again.

"What do you expect from a woman who wanted to name her first two daughters Harmony and Melody?"

"So you’re the third? Is that how you escaped becoming Melody Stannert?"

"No, I’m eldest of two. Only two." She clasped the music to her a moment, as if hugging a baby. "Aunt Agnes let it be known in no uncertain terms that the first daughter would be named after her. No one ever gainsaid Aunt Agnes. Inez is a form of Agnes."

"Aunt Agnes sounds formidable." He flipped up the tails of his evening coat and sat on the small sofa. "Pick whatever tune you fancy, Inez."

She sat at the piano and slowly unbuttoned her gloves, aware that he watched her every move. She continued talking to fill the silence. "Mendelssohn said these songs were meant to arouse the same feelings in everyone. Feelings that can’t be expressed in words. My mother often said that music begins where words end."

She laid the gloves on the piano top and opened the keyboard cover. "When I was young, she would test me by giving me the opus and the number. I learned to play them all on demand and to her satisfaction." Inez smiled wryly. "I can still play them by heart. Some things, when you learn them young, stay with you forever."

She opened the volume and scanned the first score. "Opus nineteen, number one." She closed the book, positioned her hands on the keyboard and—just as when she was a child— held the silence inside herself for three heartbeats. With the first liquid notes, her own private universe opened to receive her. Her heart greeted each chord like an old friend.

When the last notes shimmered and died, a wave of completeness settled over her. Inez kept her eyes closed to savor the moment.

The reverend’s voice, directly behind her, broke the silence. "I’ve changed my mind, Mrs. Stannert. In that mural of yours, you should be painted with a piano instead of a sword. Hearing you play, Satan’s legions would lay their weapons at your feet." His tone was light, but hesitant, searching for the proper balance for the moment.

She sensed that, if she leaned back, he would be near enough to touch. It was as if they teetered on the edge of a cliff, a cliff from which neither dared to jump.

The cliff.

Inez remembered. Her small, stubborn toes digging into the ledge above the swimming hole, stockings and shoes lying in a heap nearby. Below—far below, in her ten-year-old estimation—boys from neighboring summer estates splashing, screams of "Jump! Jump!" piercing the humid air. Then, one voice above the rest: "She won’t jump! She’s just a
girl!
"

She leaped. The exhilarating fall was supplanted by the sudden impact, the cool water foaming about her. Boys’ screams, birds’ songs, all ceased. Opening her eyes, she saw her hair curling through the water in snakelike undulations. Her white lawn dress billowed in a green world of filtered sunlight and muffled sound. Triumphant, she pushed off the muddy bottom, rising toward the light.

Ascension.

Anticipation.

The promise of release.

Inez rose from the piano stool and turned to face Reverend Sands.

He retreated a step, as if the boundaries had shifted beneath his feet, leaving him in foreign territory. She followed and placed her hands on his shoulders. Inez could feel that he too was holding his breath. Waiting to break through the surface to the light.

She took his face in her hands and moved closer still.

Their kiss, tentative at first, intensified.

After a while, he gripped her arms and, with visible reluctance, pulled her away. "Inez, are you sure?" His voice, pitched low, held an edge of warning.

She placed her fingers on his lips.
No words.

He took her hand, kissing each finger before drawing her to him.

Lost in the passion of their mutual embrace, Inez dimly heard—as if from underwater or far away—faint musical notes, plinking out tinny and small. She realized her elaborate knot of hair was coming undone under his hands and the steel hairpins were falling, hitting the piano keys, the stool, the floor.

Taking a shaky breath, Reverend Sands ran an exploratory hand along the back seam of her dress. He lifted a loose lock of hair from her shoulder and murmured into her ear, "This isn’t one of those outfits with a hundred hooks and eyes up the back, is it?"

Inez placed his hand on the neckline of her dress, and guided it down the front of her bodice, along the fall of lace concealing the dress fastenings.

His eyes never left her face.

Inez rolled to the side, sleepily aware that Reverend Sands had slipped his arm from beneath her head. The feather mattress shifted as he rose from the bed.

Outside, the wind moaned and drifted into silence.

"Wind’s rising," Sands observed.

Inez sighed and rolled back, curling into the warm hollow he’d left behind. She watched him prowl about the bedroom, gathering his clothes. He pulled the undervest on over his head with an elegant economy of movement. He dressed like he danced—complete attention on the task at hand, physical grace in action.
And not only when dancing and dressing.