The Sparrow Sisters (33 page)

Patience lifted her hand to touch Rob, but he waved it away.

“I don't deserve your touch,” he said. Patience looked at him in surprise.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I know what you can do. I know that you helped Matty and that, if I let you, you could help me.”

“Why won't you let me?”

“Because, as I said, I don't deserve it.”

“Everyone deserves to be happy, to be well,” Patience said and knew that Rob Short had probably not been either since his wife died.

“Well, that hardly seems true after what I did to you,” Rob said.

“You didn't do it,” Patience said. “You weren't thinking straight, and then the police and the prosecutor, they were all so eager, then the town got in on it.” She shook her head. “The tragedy is Matty, but this place seems to have forgotten that.”

Rob ground his cigarette out. “Well, I can help remind them. I can tell them how easy I made it for Matty to get lost, make sure you're not lost too.” He walked back to the foxglove. “Why were you burning this?”

“Because I agree it's what killed Matty. He must have come back to the Nursery alone so he could take some. He believed it could cure a broken heart. But it broke his.” Patience ex
pected Rob to react, shout or cry or at least gape at her. But he only nodded.

“Matty tried to tell me about all the things he learned here, but I couldn't make sense of them. Maybe he didn't either. I guess that's as good a theory as any.”

“The coroner said his heart just stopped.” Patience pointed at the pile of flowers that had now begun to smell very bad. “Foxglove can do that to a person.”

“Oh, lots of things can do that,” Rob said. “I've been walking around for a year with a heart that doesn't work.”

“That's what I mean.” Patience came around to stand next to Rob. “Matty thought it was medicine for heartbreak, not heart trouble.” As she said it, she realized how sad it really was that a little boy had to worry about anyone's broken heart.

“When I found Matty, I couldn't move. I just stood there looking at him.” Rob rubbed his face again. “He was at the table, in the kitchen. His head was on his arms, and I thought he'd fallen asleep, like I had at the store. When I felt his cheek, I knew.”

Rob began to cry silently, convulsively, and Patience wanted so badly to touch him that she made fists with her hands behind her back. Her body leaned toward him, and the scent of fresh lavender and lovage flowed around them both.

“I thought about his mother and how she'd chosen to leave us, and I thought for a second that Matty had done the same. I couldn't imagine what could make him so sad that he'd want to do what his mom did.” Rob wiped his eyes with the back of
his hand and lit another cigarette. He'd stopped offering them to Patience.

“I quit smoking when I met Annie,” Rob said. “I quit drinking when she got pregnant.”

Patience didn't know what to say to that. Clearly Rob Short had been drinking almost constantly since Matty died. Somehow, she'd always imagined Rob as a drinker. Maybe it was all the times Matty told her his dad was asleep on the sofa, or out with friends. The truth was that Rob slept on the sofa because he couldn't bear to be in the bed he had shared with Annie, the bed where he'd found her. And when he was out with friends, he wasn't. He was sitting in the office at the back of his hardware store, staring at the account books and drinking cup after cup of coffee. Once, when Patience brought Matty home from the Nursery, Rob watched them as he stood in the shadows down the street. He saw how his son let her touch him, how he smiled at something Patience said. Rob couldn't remember the last smile he'd gotten from Matty.

“You should put new gates up,” Rob said. “Anyone could get in and take stuff. I could get you a real lock, put it up tomorrow, get some wood for a proper swing gate.”

“Don't bother, there's nothing left to take,” Patience said and waved her arm. Even in the dark it was clear that everything was dead or dying. Before, there had been so many plants of varying heights covering the land that it looked like breakers rolling in to shore. Now a thin layer of mist settled over the still, flattened landscape.

“It's a shame,” Rob said. “Everything gone, everything dead. It's a goddamn shame.” Of course he didn't mean the Nursery, not really.

“Well, there's nothing to do about it now,” Patience said. “Let's go home.” She left the foxglove where it was and shoved the box back under the step. She'd forgotten that Rob had her mother's lighter.

“What's in that box?” Rob asked.

“Stuff that belonged to my sister Marigold, my mother, a letter my dad wrote to me when I was born, memories, Matty's marble.”

“A blue one?” Rob asked.

Patience nodded. She'd slipped it into the box when she went for the lighter.

“Oh, God, how did I lose him?” Rob put his head in his hands, and Patience saw Matty. Finally, she touched him, putting her hand on his back. She felt his tears ebb, the muscles relax as he took a last, heaving breath. She smelled the anger and regret leave him, a sweet and sour smell like lemons left too long in a bowl. His grief stayed, smoky and dark, as did hers, but that was right, so she just stroked the top of his shoulder once more before she put her hands in her lap.

“I'm going to call Hutchins in the morning, tell him to stop the hearing,” Rob said, his voice hollow in the circle of his arms.

Patience almost laughed. “Rob, you can't stop this. You didn't start it, not by yourself.”

“What are we going to do then?” he asked.

“See it through.”

“When it's over,” Rob said, “I'm leaving Granite Point. I never really belonged here anyway.”

Patience looked at him. He was as tired as she was and as desperate to disappear somehow, to start over as if nothing had happened.

“Rob, you can't leave,” she said. “You do belong here because Matty belonged here.” She swept her hand around the Nursery. “He was happy here. You could be too.”

“You think?” Rob asked. “Do you think anybody can forgive me?”

“Well,” said Patience, “let's wait and see if anybody can forgive me.”

“I forgive you, Patience,” Rob said. “I thank you for what you gave Matty.”

“Thank you,” Patience whispered.

As they turned to walk back to the gate, Rob slowed his step and, making sure Patience had her eyes forward, he flicked the lighter and threw it over his shoulder. The foxglove was smoldering by the time they got to their cars.

W
HEN
R
OB TURNED
off onto Main Street, he flashed his headlights at the Nursery truck. Patience shivered with the oddest feeling of anticipation, but she wasn't cold. She felt her bones moving under her skin as she swung her legs out of the cab. Her fingertips tingled and buzzed as she opened the back door.
She tiptoed upstairs and slipped under the sheets, her bare feet leaving a trail of bruised clover and ground ivy. Henry stirred and turned to her, his body so warm that steam rose from the damp sheets, and they dried as she watched his chest rise and fall in the moonlight. She slid her hands around his waist and pulled herself closer until her chin bumped on his collarbone and Henry woke with a gasp.

“Were you gone?” he asked.

“I was, but only for a little while,” Patience said. “I went to the Nursery. Rob Short was there.”

“Jesus Christ!” Henry sat up. “Did he go after you?”

“God, no.” Patience curled into Henry so that her voice was muffled when she told him what had happened. Her breath blew against him and as she talked, he felt heat rising into his throat. By the time she finished, Henry was covered in a sheen of sweat. He smelled of chervil and yarrow as if he too had been to the Nursery.

“I can't even think about what he might have done to you, how things might have been very different tonight, how angry Simon and Charlotte would be that you squandered the help they've given you,” Henry said. He lifted Patience's head and gently pushed her back so that he could see her face. “Do you understand how dangerous Rob Short is?”

“He's not,” Patience said. “He never really was.” She lay down and pulled Henry with her.

Henry slipped his arms around Patience. He wanted to make
love to her, but he was overtaken by lethargy. He closed his eyes and as he drifted away into a dream about the woman next to him, he heard Patience say something, but it was already too late for him to understand the words.

“Charlotte is pregnant,” she murmured.

T
he air was clean and fresh as Patience dressed for court. Henry had snuck out as soon as the sun rose and she felt, for the first time in a long time, that he was not where he belonged. Patience listened to her sisters down the hall. She heard Nettie laugh and Sorrel shush her. But, Patience thought, it was fine to laugh this morning. Whatever was about to happen, it was too late for any of them to stop it: not by being quiet or serious or even hopeful. But Patience did feel hopeful. She had only wished for Rob Short's forgiveness, but she had gotten much more at the Nursery. Even knowing that Matty had gone there
in secret, taking what he thought could fix him, knowing that somehow it was still her fault, Patience knew that whatever came next, it would be what she had coming. So her hope was of the kind that held in it an idea of ending, of finishing this terrible time.

Simon Mayo had already left the big house on the harbor. He was at his desk in his office reading Emily Winston's piece in the paper, then scrolling through the comments on the website and wondering who these people were who had the time to have an opinion of a small-town trial. He was amazed at how many strangers gave a damn about Patience Sparrow. It took him several minutes to realize that over three-quarters of the comments were from Granite Point residents, mostly women whom Charlotte had rallied. Infant colic, eczema, straying husbands, invisible lovers, migraines, insomnia, bitter blood, unfulfilled desire, infertility, longing, heartburn, and heartache. Woman after woman told her story. And Patience Sparrow was at the center of them all.
Well,
he thought,
this is something.

Charlotte was on her computer, too. She was feeling quite satisfied when she wasn't fighting nausea; never had heading so many committees been so useful. Charlotte took a sip of her tea. She figured her nerves were shot by the last few days; her hands trembled around her cup, and she swallowed acidy threads as they coiled in her mouth. Sitting in the Sparrow Sisters' kitchen, watching how Sorrel moved with unconscious
grace, the way Simon easily anticipated those movements, handing Sorrel a bowl, wiping the breadknife and putting it away in a drawer he knew, had not been as easy as it looked, and Charlotte was drained. She did not yet know what Patience had whispered to Henry.

Henry was drained, too. He'd scheduled evening hours and several early morning appointments on the days he'd been in court, and he was already bent over his exam table giving a surly teenager a test for chlamydia. His testimony was finished, but after last night there was no way he'd not be in the room today. By nine he was finished and left the office to his temp. He walked to the town hall without hunching under rain or wiping sweat from his neck. It was pleasant, warm, sunny, and lovely, really. This fact was so surprising to the town that anyone who was able, and some who weren't, had come outside. As Henry walked, he saw things that surprised him: Claire Redmond came to the Bakery door to smile at him and blow a kiss off her floury fingertips; Pete looked up from the moldy window box he was emptying to salute Henry; and a man he recognized as the same one he'd treated for hives shook his hand and whispered, “It will all be fine now.” When he reached the doors to the courtroom, the bailiff leaned in and Henry nearly flinched.

“You have a bit of shaving cream on your ear,” he said and opened the door.

Henry swiped at his face and blinked. The room was filled again, only now it was nearly all women. Old and young,
beautiful and marked by loss, angry and determined, women in the folding chairs, lined up against the wall, handbags and backpacks clasped in their laps, parked at their feet. There was a murmur as Henry searched for a seat. He saw Patience's back, straight in her chair, and Simon, who was turned in his seat to look at Charlotte sitting beside the Sisters. There was tenderness on Simon's face, and gratitude as he waggled his fingers at his wife. There was a rustling as the women in the last row shifted until an empty seat appeared at Henry's side. He sat, and the woman next to him patted his hand where it gripped his knee.

“Dr. Carlyle,” she greeted him, and he saw that it was Sally Tabor. He knew what it took for her to leave an infant at home, and Henry's eyes grew hot with unshed tears.

Judge Adams came in through the door from the town offices. His black robe swished around his calves as he climbed the single step to the bench and the bailiff called for order. Everyone stood, and the judge waved his hand without looking up. When he did, he saw his wife. She was halfway back and gave him such a sunny smile that he smiled too, at which point the entire room filled with twitching mouths. Judge Adams cleared his throat and banged his gavel with intent.

“Settle down,” he said to a mostly settled room.

He swung his gaze to the prosecutor and Rob Short. Neither looked well. Matty's father had bathed and shaved, but he'd grown so thin that his skin was pulled tight against his cheeks, and he was as pale as paper. Paul Hutchins had caught
Rob's case of nerves and was jiggling his ankle under the table so fast it was a blur.

“Mr. Hutchins?” Judge Adams asked. “Where are we?”

“I beg your pardon?” Hutchins said. He worried that the old judge had lost track of the hearing.

“You wish to recall the medical examiner?”

“Oh, yes,” Hutchins said. “The prosecution recalls Dr. Wilkinson.”

The M.E. walked to the stand and was reminded that he was still under oath.

“Would you please refresh our memories of your findings in the death of Matthew Short?”

Henry watched as Patience's shoulders sagged. Simon picked up his pen and fiddled with his pad. He had known Wilkinson was coming back up, but he didn't know why and that made him jumpy. He wanted to leap to his feet and shout “objection” just to get one in.

“Matthew Short died of cardiac arrest, coronary failure, to be more precise,” the doctor said. “Digitalis toxicity, as stated.”

“And what is digitalis?” Hutchins had stepped from behind the desk and buttoned his jacket.

“Well, as I said, it is derived from the foxglove plant. Death by toxicity is usually related to arrhythmia.”

“Get to it,” the judge barked. “We've heard this.”

“I'm trying,” Hutchins almost whined.

“Can you posit a theory as to how Matthew Short's body reached toxicity levels?” he said to the witness.

“I could posit any number of theories: a congenital problem heretofore undiagnosed, kidney disease, severe dehydration, an illness that put such a strain on the boy that a small amount of digitalis might . . .” He trailed off.

“And did your autopsy find any of these diseases?”

“No.”

“Being given this poison, administered a significant dose of it, is that a theory you could posit?”

Simon stood. Every woman in the courtroom hissed. The sound was startling; their breaths released a chill that fell over the judge. He found his wife's eyes as she whispered, “Shame.”
On me?
Judge Adams wondered and shivered under his robes.

“There is no evidence of purposeful administration,” Wilkinson said and looked at Patience. “None.”

“Accidental?” Hutchins asked.

“Well, clearly ingestion is unexplained. Digitalis was not found in the home.”

“Yes, but foxglove, could Matty have eaten foxglove inadvertently?”

“Maybe, but it is unpleasant tasting at best, and he would have to get hold of more than a petal or two.”

“Yes, he would, thank you,” Hutchins said with a bit of his former bravado.

The doctor left the stand, and Paul Hutchins turned toward Patience Sparrow. He was going to call her; he knew it would cause a fuss, he knew there'd be a recess, a chambers meeting,
but he also knew he had to get her up there in the end. She'd admit she grew foxglove, and she'd admit that Matty spent all his time with her in that spooky nursery. The prosecutor was beginning to think things were going his way again. He was as unprepared as anyone when Matty's father stood.

“Judge, I want to speak,” Rob said. “I have something to show you.” He held a worn black-and-white composition book; its pages were lumpy and crinkled. His face was empty, calm.

“Oh, for God's sake,” Judge Adams growled. “Control this man, counselor.”

“I have no idea what's going on,” Hutchins said, turning in a half circle.

Simon rose to object, but Patience grabbed a handful of his jacket.

Rob looked at Patience, and she nodded. Judge Adams looked at them both.

“Fine,” he said and waved his hand at Rob Short.

“Matty is gone. There is nothing we can do to change that, no trial, no conviction. There is no justice to find in this room,” he said and turned to take in all the women, the scattering of sheepish men. They tilted their heads at him, some nodding, some frowning in sadness.

“This was his book,” Rob said. “He hid it under his mattress, he hid it from me, from Patience Sparrow.”

“Your Honor, this is not on the evidence list,” Simon said.

There had been a raft of bits and pieces from Matty's room
in evidence: his last two marbles, the contents of his backpack, a collection of snow globes, chewing gum wrapper chains, and, of course, the dictionaries filled with pressed flowers and herbs. Matty was a magpie, drawn to shiny things, special things, things no one else quite saw. But the composition book, so carefully tucked away in his bed, was never uncovered in the search.

“Have you seen this?” Judge Adams asked Paul Hutchins.

“No,” he answered.

“You, Miss Sparrow?”

“No,” Patience said.

“It's full of stuff about the plants, and it's full of the plants he pressed in the big books,” Rob said. He turned one of the pages and dried leaves fell to the floor. “Belladonna good for fevers and nights terrors,” he read.

“Actually, belladonna can cause night terrors,” Patience said softly.

“Blood root,” Rob Short continued, “for asthma and the expectant.”

“Expectorant,” Patience whispered.

“See, that's just it,” Rob said. “Matty had this whole notebook that was not right at all.” He turned to Patience. “He listened to your words, and maybe he tried to make his own remedy from something he shouldn't have.”

The room hummed, and Judge Adams narrowed his eyes.

“Look, look at this.” Rob held the book wide in front of the judge and then turned to show the spectators as if they were
bidding on something. “This is foxglove! Four stems of it over these pages, flowers, leaves, even bits of dirt! Here's his writing, here's what he thought it could do for someone: Can fix a broken heart if you get it just right.”

“You can call it coronary failure or a cardiac episode, but what really happened was Matty died of a broken heart, maybe because he thought he could cure mine.” Rob Short blinked back tears, and a soft sob echoed from Sally Tabor. “And I'm not saying it's all my fault, but I am saying it wasn't Patience Sparrow's at all. Leave it be, leave her be now.” Rob sat down.

Judge Adams raised his gavel ready to slam everyone into silence, but there was no need. Faces, bright and attentive, were turned to him. Even Paul Hutchins looked eager for an end.

“Counselors, approach,” he said.

When the men stood before him, Simon with a hand on the bench as if he needed help staying upright, Judge Adams spoke. He made no effort to keep his voice down.

“This is over,” he said. “It should never have begun.” He shot a look at Chief Kelsey, who, other than the direct participants, was the only other man in the room. “I know it, you know it, and Mr. Short has been wise and gracious enough to declare it so.” He brushed Simon's hand off his bench. “Now, get back.”

“If, when I address this chamber, there is one sound out of any of you,” Judge Adams warned, “I will reconsider everything I am about to say.”

The room was so still that birdsong floated in through the open windows, and several people turned sharply, realizing that the air had been silent for weeks.

“I am dismissing this case and everyone in this courtroom, something I should have done on the very first day of this misbegotten hearing. You, Mr. Hutchins, have shown me no probable cause as to the commission of a crime, nor as to the accused's role in it.” He stopped to be sure his instructions had been followed, that the audience was quiet. “Mr. Short, I suspect that you were swept up in this hysteria and that your grief made you irresponsible with your accusations. I am relieved that you came to your senses before it was too late.”

“Patience Sparrow, go away. Go back to your plants, pick your flowers, and make your magic, but keep your methods to yourself. This court will not call you again.”

Judge Adams snatched his gavel and brought it down.

Not surprisingly, Emily Winston was the first out of the room.
Twenty-four hours after I got into it,
she thought smugly.
One day and it's all over.
There's a movie in this.
She slipped down the town hall steps, waving at the network producer who was standing in the shade of the satellite truck. She saw Ben Avellar pacing on the sidewalk at the foot of the stairs.

“Hey, where were you?” Emily asked.

“I couldn't take it anymore,” Ben said. “Besides, it was nearly all women in there.”

“Yeah, that's pretty weird. I guess Patience's got real girl power.”

Ben looked at Emily with such naked panic that she realized she hadn't told him what had happened.

“It was dismissed,” she said. “The case, it's done, she's free to go.”

Ben stumbled as his legs gave under him, and he grabbed the wooden banister that ran along the wheelchair ramp. He swung half down before he hauled himself up again.