The Sparrow Sisters (25 page)

Simon waited a few yards down the hall with the chief, who had examined the clothes as if they were themselves a threat, before he passed them back to Henry. Kelsey allowed Henry into the cell only because the police chief was starting to worry about getting home in the weather, concerned that if Patience got agitated, he'd be stuck at the station or knocked out by a
falling branch. He wanted to settle Patience before he passed her on to his deputy. He understood that Henry could do that.

Henry sat beside Patience, and she moved the clothes onto her lap.

“This is a really big mistake,” she said, loud enough for the men in the hall to lift their heads. Henry heard an echo of the old Patience and put his arm around her shoulder, drawing her closer. He stuck his nose into her hair and realized it was wet, as if all her tears had gathered there.

Patience stripped her jeans off and wriggled into the sweats. She pulled her heavy hair into the elastic Nettie had wound around her brush. She looked at Henry. “I don't have my glasses,” she said.

“I do.” Henry pulled them out of his shirt pocket. He reached into his pants pocket and produced a toothbrush, toothpaste, and her contact lens case.

“Oh,” Patience said as she folded her hand over his. “You are wonderful.”

“I am,” Henry agreed. “And I'm right here no matter what happens.”

But then Chief Kelsey came back and told Henry to leave. Henry held Patience's hand and nodded witlessly, trying to communicate that everything would be all right. He and Simon changed places, and Henry followed Kelsey out to the office. There were two other officers at desks, and both looked up when Henry appeared.

“Take his statement,” the chief said to one of them.

As they asked Henry where he'd been the night Matty died, if Patience had been with him the entire time, if he had ever seen her give Matty any of her remedies, Henry began to realize how very much trouble Patience was in. Because, although he hadn't seen the remedies pass from Patience to Matty, had in fact never seen Patience dose anybody—even during Sally's labor Henry couldn't say he'd watched Patience administer anything—Henry knew she had given both of them something. She never hid that fact.
What does that mean?
he thought.
Am I a suspect, too?
An accessory?
But then he thought that in order to be those things, Patience had to be guilty, and Henry swallowed the bile at the back of his throat.

Simon came through some minutes into Henry's interview and gave both the officer and the chief such a poisonous look that Joe Kelsey pulled up a chair and gestured for Simon to sit.

“Clearly you want to be in on this,” he said as Simon dropped his briefcase and sat.

“Clearly you thought I didn't need to be,” Simon said. “There is absolutely nothing in this whole procedure that feels right, Joe, and you know it.”

After that the questions were not so disturbing, more nonspecific and less dangerous to Patience. If nothing else, everyone now knew that Patience had spent that night in Henry's bed. Within minutes Simon had Henry by the arm and was leading him out of the building. Every step Henry took away from Patience sickened him.

“They will try to connect you two through Patience's work,
make it seem as if you helped her,” Simon said. “I want to make sure they can't. That will only make her look as if her moves were intentional. You need to tell me everything.”

Henry admitted that he hadn't really credited Patience's remedies, not until he began to fall in love. By the time that happened, he believed everything she did was extraordinary whether it involved a salve made from cider vinegar, dark green drops from passiflora, or the way she curved her hand around his neck when she reached up to kiss him.

“That's good, that's fine,” Simon said. “If you thought the stuff was harmless, if she didn't ask you about conventional medicine, as a doctor or colleague, it goes a long way to showing that she couldn't have poisoned Matty.”

Henry thought about how they'd planned to be colleagues to save Matty, but he said nothing.

“My God, Simon, how is this happening?” Henry leaned on the hood of his car and bent over until his head hung. He noticed the rain dripping off his hair, onto his hands; he was soaked, and he didn't care. A few shoppers wandered the sidewalks looking to buy something to make the wet day worthwhile. Henry's display qualified.

Simon nudged Henry's leg with his own. “Stand up,” he said. “I don't want them to see you upset.”

A cluster of three or four people had paused to watch as Henry fell apart. He thought he recognized a patient, and the older man was definitely the cantankerous guy who ran the news shop. Henry straightened up and shook Simon's hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “Will you come for her tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Simon said and headed for his own car. “I'll bring her to Ivy House as soon as possible, but I suggest you wait till the evening to see her. She'll need to be on her own with the Sisters. They'll know what to do.”

“I have patients,” Henry said. “I can't, I don't know . . . what about Sam? He's good for her, could he . . . ?”

“Sam cannot be involved,” Simon interrupted. “He was first on the scene. He can't get near Patience now.”

So there it was. Henry and the Sisters were in charge of Patience. And Simon. Henry was certain that the lawyer had taken on a burnished look with his new responsibility; his eyes seemed brighter, more alert and aware, ready to ply his trade and save them all.

In the event, there was no one who could save Patience from her own town.

I
T HAD BEEN
a remarkably dry summer before Matty died so at first Granite Point welcomed the rain. It turned the greensward lush and fragrant as it rolled along in an unconscious echo of Big Point Bay beyond the harbor. But rain was one thing, the persistent deluge quite another. Small deep ponds had settled around the town green, and large ragged strips of lawn had buckled and shrugged, turning up at the edges so that the dark soil was exposed. Earthworms struggled to release themselves from the thick mud only to drop into the water and drown. Henry had forgotten to tell Patience about the wisteria, so no
red flags had been raised with the Sisters, but the piles of rotting vines and flowers around the gazebo had already started the talk.

The storm that came in as Patience was charged and herded into the little jail finally blew out to sea after a full day of punishment. It was strangely quiet on the morning of her appearance before the magistrate judge. Brackish water lingered at every street corner, and leaves stuck to the roads and footpaths, making them treacherous and sending cars and people skidding in frantic pinwheels around town. The sky was low and gray, as bruised and damaged as Patience. A new front threatened before the day was out. The whole town smelled of salt-water muck. The elm that had been torn out of the ground still lay across the road; one of Kelsey's deputies had to direct traffic with white gloves and a paddle. He was humiliated and anxious to get back to real work so he could watch Patience Sparrow fight for bail. You never know—there could be real excitement and here he'd be, kicking shattered branches and muddy roots to the curb.

As it turned out, the judge who had issued her arrest warrant (with Paul Hutchins's encouragement) had left on vacation after doing so. It was summer, after all, his assistant pointed out. What she didn't add was that the judge's wife had heard about his action. Being an occasional and satisfied Sparrow customer, she threatened him with various unpleasant consequences if he presided over the bail hearing or anything else to do with the Sisters. A locum tenens was called in to hear the charges and set
bail, or not. Simon Mayo didn't know whether to be pleased or concerned by the upheaval as he stood with Chief Kelsey waiting for Patience to change into the clothes he had brought her. Maybe a judge unfamiliar with the brewing gossip would be more likely to see how impossible the charge was.

The Sisters had insisted on coming, but they didn't go back to see Patience. They sat together on the bench facing the little bullpen. Ben Avellar sat with them, and both he and Nettie found their hands straying toward each other until, by the third time, Ben just grabbed Nettie's and set their clasped fists between them.

Simon brought Patience out. She was neatly dressed in fresh linen trousers and a white long-sleeved shirt. Thanks to Henry, her teeth were brushed, her lenses in, and she'd pulled her hair back into a low coil. Sorrel and Nettie stood in silence. Sorrel handed Patience a pair of sunglasses to cover her still-injured eye, and Ben followed Simon to the door. They were headed for the courthouse. Only Simon and Ben could see the crowd that had gathered outside. For God's sake, Simon thought, don't these people have to be at the beach or something? But of course, it was an ugly day and the tourists and locals alike had drifted into town in search of distraction. They found it. As the little group moved out to the chief's car, Kelsey gestured for a couple of patrolmen to make a path. Patience looked at the sunglasses in her hand and then at Sorrel.

“I don't know,” Sorrel said. “They seemed like the thing this morning.”

Patience shook her head. “This is completely ridiculous,” she said. They stood at the door for a moment longer, looking at the milling crowd. “I mean, no one really thinks I could hurt anybody, never Matty, right?” There were nods all around. “So I'm not worried, and you shouldn't be either.” Everyone, including Patience, smiled hideously.

“That's my Patience,” Simon said. “Pay no attention to these assholes, and we'll be in and out in no time. There is no way the new judge will uphold the arrest.”

With that everyone felt hopeful and, as if they were chained at the ankle, Patience, Chief Kelsey, and Simon shuffled to the car. At first, Patience thought she was being cheered, and she almost laughed
.
Really,
she thought,
people have way too much time on their hands in this town.
But then she got a look at the face of a man standing just behind the officer nearest the car. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth turned down in a thin peel. Has he ever been to the Nursery, has someone he loves come to me? Patience wondered. Is he local? But then she was in the car, and Joe Kelsey was reminding her to stand up straight and make eye contact with the judge.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

Kelsey had to twist around in the front seat to answer. “I'm only doing my job, and while the evidence may point to your plants, Patience, none of us feels good about our part.”

“So you don't believe I had anything to do with this horrible thing, but you arrested me anyway?” Patience asked. “You have to know how much I cared about Matty.” The little bra
vado she'd scared up had been spent on her sisters. She felt fresh tears coming, but with the handcuffs on she could only tilt her head back to keep them away.

“I have to follow all the steps. You're in the system. It's out of my hands now.”

The Granite Point courthouse was four blocks on, past the middle school and the A&P. The only reason the town even had a courthouse—in this case only a large high-ceilinged room that smelled like a schoolroom and a suite of offices in the town hall—was because Granite Point had briefly been the county seat. Hayward outstripped Granite Point, but the little harbor town kept the court apparatus and now it would see its first activity other than traffic or real estate disputes and civil marriages or uncivil divorces since the late nineteenth century. The little clump of ghouls had no trouble following the police car through town and now stood in almost identical order in front of the town hall. Chief Kelsey, being a husband and father and sick about all this, felt for his passenger. He directed the car around to the back so that Patience ended up meeting her destiny by way of a driver's ed class. Kelsey threw his rain jacket over her hands as she stumbled past four surprised teenagers and her old chemistry teacher.

Chief Kelsey removed the cuffs as soon as Patience was in the courtroom. Because she was the only defendant appearing that day, the judge was already staring at her from the bench. Judge Adams hadn't expected the folding chairs behind the attorneys' tables to be occupied, but word had spread, and there
was a shifting clot of people just behind the defendant's family. The Sparrow Sisters—he never could keep the girls straight, certainly not the twins. Well, here they were; he would have to keep them straight today.

Henry had closed his office for the afternoon, disconcerting his temp and feeding the rumor mill with the finest grist, heartbreak. Now he sat beside Ben and tried not to look worried. The audience shifted and murmured as Patience was led in. This interested the old man with the gavel, and he banged it energetically.

Thomas Adams was semiretired. He had lived all his life in the twenty-two-mile area around Hayward. This was the stretch that included the ocean beach at Granite Point, the bay beaches abutting Old Hayward, and the farms that lay along the railroad tracks. Although he went to law school in Cambridge (one never said Harvard—that would be boastful), Judge Adams returned to his hometown of Wewanett and worked his way through both the system and his family until he could retire. Now he filled in for the three judges in the area in the summer months. He told his wife it was because crime doesn't take a holiday, but really it was because he was overwhelmed by the tide of grandchildren that filled the house from June until Labor Day. Being called to Granite Point should have been a pleasant diversion, not for the defendant or the victim, but for Thomas Adams as he recalled his own summers in the ocean so near. But the weather was foul, and he'd had to ask for a second cup of coffee to wake
him. The rain was just too soporific as it drummed down on the flat roof.

Judge Adams looked at Patience Sparrow. There was a story to her, more than the one unfolding now, but he couldn't quite recall it. Perhaps his wife would remember; she still kept up with local families. He opened the folder on the bench, glanced at the charges, and every breath of sleep went right out of him: negligent manslaughter, a child. If this woman killed her child in some wanton manner, he really would be embarrassed by small-town life. He read further. What kind of woman was this? A practitioner of what: remedies, herbs, and tinctures? And, as he saw now, she was the youngest Sparrow. Yes, this was the trouble, no mother to raise her, that much he knew about Patience. He scanned the room. The two lawyers looked at him and then at each other. Judge Adams watched the people who had stopped their day to sit in his courtroom. He narrowed his eyes to look at Patience. She swallowed a gasp. She was frightened of Judge Adams.