Suspicion of Innocence (6 page)

He finally turned around and she met him at the last row of chairs. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Quintana."

"Please, call me Anthony." He took her hand. "I was very sorry to hear about your sister," he said. "We will all miss her."

"You knew Renee?"

"Yes. From the title company." When Gail looked at him blankly, he said, "My law firm owns a title company. Renee worked there in the closing department. I thought you knew."

"No, I—" She tried to remember precisely what she had heard from Irene or Ben. "I knew Renee had a job for a title company, but I didn't know where." Gail began to walk with him back across the room. "You didn't mention Renee the other day when we met."

"Should I have?"

Gail considered. "No, I suppose not."

He said, "Would you introduce me to your mother? I'd like to offer her my sympathy." Anthony Quintana's manners were impeccable, even courtly.

Irene didn't recognize his name, but brightened when he spoke of Renee.

He said quietly, "She will be missed, I tell you this sincerely. Her sense of humor. Her compassion for other people's troubles." He reached into his jacket pocket. "She left this on her desk," he said. "There were other things, but nothing so personal."

"Oh, my." Irene unfolded it, a gold-colored photo frame with two hinged sections. She studied each one.

There was a photograph of a Caribbean harbor, Renee in the foreground in the stern of a fishing boat. The other made Gail hold out her hand. "Mother, may I see it?"

Irene gave it to her, then turned to talk to Anthony Quintana.

Gail held the frames closer to the lamp. She saw two little girls flying up in a backyard swing, both in shorts and sneakers. The smaller one was sitting down, legs straight out. The other girl stood up, leaning back, holding onto the chains.

Gail remembered the chirp of rusty metal, the sun in her face, the lurch of her stomach as they reached the zenith and fell back, the earth rushing toward them. Renee was laughing, a giggle that wouldn't stop. A shadow cut across the grass—whoever took the picture. A man. Their father, probably. The colors were faded now. One corner was torn.

Gail stood there, the frame in her hands, until her mother tugged it away.

Irene said, "Thank you so much, Mr. Quintana. You were very kind to bring this."

"Not at all."

Gail walked with him to the door.

"Call me Monday, if you think of it," he said. "Maybe we can work on settling that case."

"Oh, yes. That." Gail shook her head. "I'm afraid I haven't drawn the order yet."

He looked at her for a long moment, then said, "The photograph upset you."

"No. Well, perhaps a little. I haven't seen it in years."

"You looked so much alike," he said. "Your hair was the same color then."

"I was the taller one, of course." She laughed. "We were so skinny, weren't we? That was our backyard."

"Yes." Then he added, "Renee told me."

"Did she? You knew her well?"

"We met about a year ago."

"Ms. Connor?" Owen Finney had come up behind her, his hands clasped. He said softly, "Father Donnelly is here. He asked to speak to you."

Gail glanced back at Anthony Quintana. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

"We'll talk next week," he said.

She followed Owen to a room further along the corridor, a small office. Father Donnelly—Gail assumed the elderly man in the notched collar must be the priest—was hanging his coat on the back of a chair at the other end of the room. A white robe on a hanger lay across the desk.

He turned when she came in, smiled at her, and nodded. "Missus Connor, is it?" He was a short, balding man with broken veins on his cheeks.

She hesitated. Mrs. Metzger, actually, but she didn't use Dave's last name. "Yes," she said.

He met her across the room and took both her hands. He was breathing quickly and his face was flushed. A wisp of gray hair, wet with perspiration, angled across his broad forehead. She noticed his cheek where his razor had missed, leaving a patch of white stubble.

"God comfort you in your time of sorrow," he said, and squeezed her hands.

"Thank you." She glanced again at the robe. It wasn't necessary. It was too ceremonial for a funeral home. She had expected only the black suit and a simple stole around his neck.

He patted a tissue across his forehead. ''Please forgive my tardiness, Missus Connor. I lost my way. And the traffic!" His accent sounded even thicker to her now than it had over the telephone yesterday. Pure brogue.

Gail reached into her pocket for the envelope containing the money he had asked for.

"Oh," he said. He took the envelope as if he had no idea what it was, then dropped it into the pocket of his coat. "I am sorry to bother you with such things."

Gail said, "Have the director let us know when you're ready to begin." She turned to go.

"No, wait a bit. Wait a bit." The priest stuck his thumbs under his suspenders, which made two lines down his shirt, curving over his belly. "This is a difficult thing, your sister. Unfortunate. But I'm glad to help. She had her burdens, didn't she? As do we all. I ask, shall she be shut out of heaven because she couldn't carry them, and stumbled?"

The late afternoon sun was hitting the small, high window. Gail could see the shadow of steel mesh behind the curtains.

"Father Donnelly ... is there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Sit down, if you like. I'll be only a minute or two." He lifted his white robe off its hanger. "When I was in Ireland, I had a parish. A small parish, and I knew each family well. It was in Clonmel. Did I tell you?"

"Yes," Gail said. "You did."

He nodded, sliding his arms into the wide sleeves, one, then another. The robe belled out, catching a puff of air, then settled over his black trousers. "I have no parish of my own now," he said, "but still I like to know the loved ones I pray for. I have done so many I could read the service with my eyes closed, and be thinking about my supper. But that's not right, is it?" He zipped the robe to his neck.

Gail frowned slightly. "I thought Mother told you about Renee."

"She did, bless her, but—" Father Donnelly's cheeks colored and he smiled sheepishly. "When I spoke to your mother, I wrote it down, what she told me, on a little piece of paper. And I seem to have lost it."

He thrust his hand through a slit in his robe into his pants pocket "Now could I have . . He sighed. "Oh, well. Doesn't matter. Tell me about her. I'll remember what you say. She was ... a young woman, was she not?"

After a pause, Gail shrugged. "She was twenty-nine. Never married. No children. I'm her only sister. Our father died when we were very young."

Through the open door Gail could hear music begin to filter down the corridor from the visitation room. Strings and a flute. She looked at the priest. "What exactly do you want to know about her?"

"Tell me ... who she was," he said. "Her work. What she liked to do." He slid a narrow purple stole off its hanger and lightly kissed the cross embroidered on the center of it, murmuring words she could not hear.

Gail felt suddenly closed in, as if the room had grown too small. As if she had intruded into preparations for a rite of death that had nothing to do with her. Father Donnelly lifted the stole and put it carefully around his neck, smoothing the satin fabric, aligning the edges.

He glanced at her. "What was she like?"

"What was she like ..." The seconds seemed to stretch out. Gail's mind was reaching for something, anything. Did he want details he could sprinkle through his prayers, or did he want the truth? Her lips would not move.

And yet to say nothing was untenable. As if her silence would be weighed and judged.

"Renee had a beautiful voice. Or at least she did at one time. She could have sung professionally. But she . . . well, her lifestyle wasn't exactly conducive to sustained effort, you might say."

Gail's smile faded as Father Donnelly continued to look at her. He prompted, "And her work?"

"She . . . she worked in a real estate title company," Gail said, aware of how banal it sounded, how unreal. "I don't know whether she liked it or not."

He waited, not moving, standing quietly in his robe.

Her mouth was dry. "I don't know what to tell you. I don't."

The funeral director tapped at the open door. "Excuse me. Everything is ready."

Gail nodded. "Yes. I'm coming."

She looked back at Father Donnelly. His hands rested lightly on his chest, thumb and forefinger holding the edges of his stole. The nails were ridged, the skin like parchment. An old man's hands, she thought, and then noticed their peculiar grace.

Gail said, "Renee was expecting a child."

"I see."

"My mother doesn't know. I don't want to tell her."
 

"Renee confided in you, did she?"
 

"No. No, I found out from the coroner. She didn't— We weren't. . . close."
 

He nodded slowly.

"We used to be. As children, I mean. Then something happened between us as we grew older. I don't know why."

Father Donnelly picked up his liturgy from the desk— a thin, black book, its corners soft and frayed, showing cardboard underneath the binding.

Gail's throat felt tight. "I thought sometimes we should start over, you know. For our mother's sake. But ... we never did."

Turning the pages, he found the right place in his book, then closed it on his thumb.

"I think," he finally said, "that in our last hour, we are all forgiven." He looked up, smiling at her. "Go take your place. I shall say ... Renee Michelle, beloved daughter and sister. It's enough."

When Gail returned to the visitation room, everyone had moved to the rows of chairs facing the casket. Ben's arm was around her mother's shoulders. Dave had come back with Karen. Her hair was brushed into a ponytail and tied with a ribbon. Gail sat between Karen and her mother.

There was a soft buzz over the sound system, then "Ave Maria" came through the speakers, a clear soprano voice singing in Latin, soaring, resonant.

Karen pulled on Gail's arm. "Mommy."

"Shh."

"Mommy, come here."

Gail turned to her, whispering. "What is it?"

"Is Renee in there?"

Gail nodded.

"Why can't we see her?"

"Because . . . We can't. I'll explain later."

Karen sat quietly, her feet crossed at the ankle, swinging back and forth a little. Gail glanced at Dave. His eyes were shiny with tears, the muscle in his jaw tensing into a hard knot. It occurred to her she ought to reach across Karen's lap to take his hand, but this reversal of sympathy was too strange.

They all were trapped in a surreal play, she thought. All of them playing parts. The casket was a painted prop. An urge to laugh ran through her, and she clenched her hands together. The soprano on the tape was reaching for the last high notes now, and making them easily, her voice rich and liquid, pouring into the room like a kind of light.

"Mommy." In the momentary silence Karen was tilting her head up to speak. "Why did she kill herself?"

Gail gave Karen a look hard enough to make the girl face front again, but then put her arm around her shoulders.

As if from a distance she heard Father Donnelly begin the liturgy, but Karen's question repeated itself in her mind.

Why? The reasons were there, if you looked. Depression, anger. A woman hitting thirty, with nothing to show for it. Too many burdens, as the priest had said. Not hard to understand, if you knew Renee.

Gail gradually became aware that Father Donnelly was leading the room in prayer. She smiled at the Irish accent. He said, "We pray that God may free our sister Renee Michelle from punishment and darkness."

The people around her gave the response, a murmured chorus.
"Hear us, Lord, and have mercy."

Gail could not speak.

"We pray that in his mercy God may forgive all her sins."

"Hear us, Lord, and have mercy."

"We pray that God may give her peace and light forever."

"Hear us, Lord, and have mercy. "

Gail's eyes fixed on the casket, the candles at either end flickering in their red glass holders.

When her father had died, it must have been June because the poinciana in the park across the street was in full bloom. Blood-red blossoms made an arching canopy. Renee had run across the street, legs pumping, hair streaming out behind her. Irene screamed for her to stop. But Renee was already in the park, grabbing handfuls of blossoms from the lowest branch. Ben carried her back across the street, kissed her, then lifted her up to let the red flowers fall into their father's casket. At thirteen, Gail had looked sullenly on, wishing she had been the one to think of it.