The Sparrow Sisters (22 page)

And finally, the chief interviewed Patience at Ivy House. Minute by minute he walked her through Matty's last day. Halfway through her recitation, Simon Mayo flew through the front door shaking rain from his hair.

“Not another word, Patience,” he barked. “Joe, you know better,” he said as he stood behind Patience's chair.

“I'm merely trying to establish what Matty's movements
were the day before his death,” Kelsey said. “None of us want to be having this talk.”

“Then you won't be bothered if I end it right now.” Simon gestured for Kelsey to stand. “Let me see you out.”

As soon as the two men were gone, Sorrel rounded on Nettie.

“Did you call Simon?”

“I did,” Nettie said with uncharacteristic snap.

Simon came back in before Sorrel could lash out again.

“Right, that was the last time you are alone with anyone from the police.” He turned to the Sisters. “The last time any of you do anything without me.”

“Jesus, Simon, we're not criminals,” Patience said.

“And let's keep it that way.” Simon took a pad out of the briefcase he'd slung onto the sofa. “Start at the beginning, Patience.”

An hour later they'd moved to the kitchen. It was dusk, and four bent heads were reflected in the back door. Pages covered the table, and a bottle of Scotch sat at Simon's elbow. He'd had one drink and felt as unsettled as if he'd had too many. On the surface there was nothing in Patience's statement that should trouble him, but he'd felt the shift in town since Matty's death. Simon knew that it didn't matter who was telling the truth, just who told it best. One look at the inscription on the band shell was enough to remind everyone in Granite Point how long it had been since panic seized the town, and how fast it had nearly destroyed it. If there was to be another witch hunt, it certainly had a strong start.

“I've arranged for you to make a formal statement tomorrow at the station. That's why we're nailing it down now,” Simon said.

“If I could just talk to Rob Short properly, tell him how sorry I am?” Patience asked.

“No!” Simon nearly shouted. “Never apologize. It's an admission of guilt.”

“But I'm not guilty of anything, am I?” Patience was picking at her nails. They were disturbingly clean. She hadn't worked in the soil since Matty died.

“Of course you aren't guilty, Patience,” Sorrel said. She turned to Simon. “No matter what this one says.”

At that Nettie returned from her brief sojourn into confidence and began to flutter.

“I had to call him, Sorrel,” she said. “I mean who else do we know? Mr. Gibson?”

“Mr. Gibson would have been fine,” Sorrel said.

“Isn't he drifting away from the dock a little, Sorrel? I saw him at the library talking to an umbrella handle.” Nettie leaned into the table until her chin hovered over the bowl of plums at its center. “Simon Mayo is the best lawyer in this town.”

“The entire Southern New England region, actually,” Simon said. “I have a plaque.”

Sorrel snorted and put her head in her hands. “Fine.”

Patience took a sip of Scotch. She didn't even feel it in her mouth or her throat. It seemed chilling instead of warming. Everyone was gathered at the table to take care of her, as if she
were a difficult child who needed to be handled carefully. She hadn't been handled in years, and it saddened her. She should have been angry, but she just couldn't gin up the energy.

A strangely festive air had settled over Sorrel and Nettie. They were relieved to have a lawyer on board, and it made them punchy. But Patience couldn't join in. Matty was dead, she was rattled by the Nursery search, and she hadn't seen Henry since Saturday night. She couldn't help but think that he suspected her too.

But Henry
had
tried to see Patience: first on Sunday when he called the empty house and then on Monday evening when he stopped by after his last appointment. He didn't know that Patience was asleep in the back garden then. She was lying on the grass covered in a thin, nearly white mist that gathered in her eyelashes and brows, the weave of her tee shirt and the delicate hairs on her arms. Henry would never have imagined that scene as he stood at the front door in the fine rain that replaced the storm and now seemed to have been falling all day. He'd turned away and driven home only moments before the Sisters came back from the Nursery. The to-ing and fro-ing was amusing, worthy of a French farce had anyone been in the mood.

On that Wednesday, the day after Chief Kelsey came to Ivy House, around the time that Simon Mayo rode to the rescue, the very moment that Patience sat bemoaning Henry's disappearance, he was at the hospice in Hayward. His oldest patient, Walter Gatmore, who had lingered at the doorway for
almost a week, stepped through it into death at last. His sons and daughters-in-law were with him, and Henry was grateful that he was too. Still, he felt no more than an usher: new life in, old out. As he listened to the last agonal breaths of a man who was so loved by his silent family, Henry wondered if Patience couldn't have eased the way for them all. And this scared him as he thought of how Matty had trusted Patience to ease his pain.

The rain stopped long enough on Thursday for the Sisters to get to the police station in a dry state. Simon drove, and as much as he begged them to stay behind, Sorrel and Nettie insisted on going along. It was far too much of an acknowledgment of how worried they were for Simon's comfort, and he managed to convince them to wait in the car. From the backseat of the dark sedan Simon had borrowed from his mother (the little Mercedes would have been thoroughly inappropriate), Sorrel and Nettie had a perfect view of the slow trickle of the curious as news spread that Patience Sparrow was in the station. They slunk lower and lower in the hour her statement took to be entered into the system, for Chief Kelsey to confirm every detail and for Simon to clarify it. By the time Simon led their sister out, he scanned the street wondering where Nettie and Sorrel were. Patience looked at the small crowd and met each person's eye as she fumbled to open her door. She smiled at Annica Martel, owner of the linen shop, who stood holding several packages to post, and she waved at Thomas Shea, who struggled to hold on to his bicycle as people jostled for a better
look. It was ridiculous. Several of them were customers at the Nursery. More than one of them had sought Patience's help. Yet all of them watched Patience with something that looked very much like fear.

Simon took the Sisters directly to the Nursery. He left them clustered around Patience on the steps of the shed. When he pulled into his own driveway, Charlotte was unloading groceries. She turned and frowned at the old sedan.

“Ah, Ford Fairlane,” she said. “Preferred by undercover cops in 1975 and your mother.”

“Hello, darling,” Simon kissed Charlotte's cheek. “I'm switching back to the Merc, car of lawyers in mid-life crises.”

“Is that what this is, Simon,” Charlotte asked as she handed him a bag, “this crusade on behalf of the Sisters?”

“No, it's the right thing to do.”

“Is it?” Charlotte asked.

Simon followed his wife into the kitchen. “I only ask because Granite Point seems to be doing that nasty small-town thing.”

“What's that?” Simon asked, but he already knew.

“The whole whispering, rumormongering, schadenfreude thing,” Charlotte said as she opened the fridge, taking out a bottle of leftover Founders' party wine.

Simon pointed at the wine. “If you want to get pregnant . . .”

She pinned Simon with a tired look. “We both know where that project stands.”

“Charlotte,” Simon took the bottle and placed it on the counter. He put his hand on Charlotte's arm.

“Don't feel sorry for me,” she said. “Your client is the one who's about to take a fall. Please do not go down with her.”

A
T THE
N
URSERY
the first thing the Sisters noticed was the morning glories, or rather, the lack of them. It was past ten but the Sparrow Sisters' morning glories bloomed all day, so blue they were nearly purple. Today every blossom was closed, clenched tight like a furled umbrella.

“Goddamned rain,” Patience said as she walked into the shed. She hadn't been back since the search, but the Sisters had made sure that all her supplies were re-ordered in their drawers and shelves. She ran her fingers over the logbook Ben Avellar had left for her and flipped it open to the last entry. “Rosemary for remembrance,” it said. Ha, thought Patience, like there's anything worth remembering about this week.

Nettie and Sorrel busied themselves sorting invoices until there really was nothing to do but go outside in the heavy air and weed the gardens. Patience watched them, their backs bent over the task, Nettie's hair a damp halo of near transparency and Sorrel's shirtsleeves rolled up over her strong arms. A rubber bucket began to fill with muddy bits. Sorrel pushed it along with her foot as Nettie pulled it with her hand. Once the sight might have made Patience melancholy: the solitary nature of her sisters at work. Today, as she stood at the shed door, Pa
tience was grateful that the two were tied to one another. More though, she was so, so sorry that they would need to be.

E
VERYTHING HAD GONE
so intensely green in Granite Point that the vegetation looked menacing as if Triffids had come to claim the town and its people. Henry had taken a walk, mostly to get away from Sally's temporary nurse replacement who was so eager he'd followed Henry down the hall to the very door of the bathroom before he caught himself and scurried back to the front desk. The gazebo offered Henry shelter from the temperature that rose along with the humidity. The sun had come out, but it was too hot to be anything but painful. By afternoon the drops of water covering every plant would heat to boiling, burning the tender leaves with ragged holes.

Henry sat on the damp bench and ate a tuna sandwich from the Dock, the snack bar on the harbor. He'd looked for Ben, but since his thumb was on the mend, Henry didn't see his friend as much. He was back fishing most days. After Matty's death everyone Henry cared about had drawn together and then scattered. He missed them all. He resolved to go to Patience that evening even if he had to climb the apple tree outside her window. That picture made Henry smile, and he stood to go back and race through his afternoon patients, to get ready for her. He brushed away a ropey wisteria vine that hung over the gazebo opening. It was limp, and the flowers—usually rich with a scent not so sweet as lilac or so sharp as freesia—were gray and slick. Henry lifted his fingers and saw that they were
smeared with slime. The vine itself had collapsed under his touch, and he had to shake his whole arm to release it.

He looked around for something to wipe his hand and settled, furtively, on the upright of the gazebo. Henry examined the rest of the wisteria, a particularly robust specimen planted by the Sisters when they started the Nursery and replanted after Hurricane Bill. Over the years it had climbed to cover the small building with a heady scent and outrageously large purple blossoms. Now it clung to the lattice and draped over the walls, borne up only by the woody twisted trunks that snaked out of the ground at the foundation. There wasn't a healthy inch of it left; even Henry could see that. He sniffed at the rot that still stuck to his hand.
Clearly the near constant rain had done something to it,
he thought. Another reason to see Patience. She would want to know, and she would know what to do. Henry rocked back to see the roofline and read the inscription that ran along it:
I
NNOCENT SHE WAS AND SHALL EVER BE
.

“If you say so,” he muttered as he crossed the green thinking about Ben's story, about Eliza Howard, the first Sparrow healer, the last Sparrow witch.

B
Y THE TIME
the doctor dictated his final notes, tidied the apartment, shaved, and filled his ice trays (Henry had an improbably vigorous hope that Patience would wish to stay with him), it was nearly seven and all he could think of was a gin and tonic with the woman he loved. The tang of juniper and lime seemed to have already washed over his tongue so that he kept
swallowing as he drove to Ivy House. He might have walked but, just in case Patience was in the kind of hurry he felt, he wanted a quick getaway. Henry suspected that she needed to get out of Ivy House, to leave behind the cloying care of her sisters. They both needed to fall upon each other in his bed. What is it about men, he thought? Why do we react to death with fervent desire, an extreme affirmation of our existence as we grapple a woman into our arms? Well, that was it, really, he supposed: a declaration of life.

Henry knocked on the big black door, waited a moment, and then went in. He followed the tick of the clock into the kitchen and found it empty and clean, the white sink blinding in the slanting sun. It was hot and as much as Henry had wanted gin, he now craved water. He took a glass off the draining board and filled it, leaning against the sink as he looked out at the garden. He reckoned the Sisters would be home soon; they'd see his car out front and know he'd come for Patience. He could wait.

It was cooler under the apple tree, and Henry was glad he'd moved out of the kitchen. He looked at his watch; after seven and still no Sisters. He'd never known them to go out to dinner, but then, what did he really know about the Sparrows? That rankled, both the lack of knowledge and the idea that they might be out enjoying a meal while he sat hungry, cranky, and sweaty in their garden.

It was Patience who found him. She stood over Henry's sleeping form and resisted the urge to brush his hair out of
his eyes. She knew his neck would hurt when he woke; it was cricked so that his chin rested just above his collarbone. She wondered how he could sleep in such an awkward position, how he could sleep in her garden at all.