A Comedy of Heirs (15 page)

“Thank you,” she said. “This will work out good. The new baby can have my room.”

“You're
moving?
” I asked, incredulous. “You don't have to move.”

“Oh, Colin is going to move in here with you and Rudy, Rachel, Mary, and Junior,” she stated.

No way in heck could I live with the sheriff in this house. I could barely live with the fact he lived in the same country. “No, I guess not.”

There was a long, heavy silence between us. A tear ran down my cheek and I was surprised by this. I swiped at it quickly. “That's great, Mom. Congratulations again.”

“Victory,” she pleaded. “Don't cry.”

“Don't cry? How can you tell me not to cry? I can cry if I want. My uncle just died. My mother is getting married. My mother is moving out of my house. And I'm pregnant, dammit. I can cry if I want to!” More tears fell and I continued to be surprised. If somebody had asked me what my reaction to my mother moving out would be, I would never have guessed that it would have been crying like a thirteen-year-old girl who's just been told her best friend is moving to Kansas.

“I'm going to miss you,” I managed to say. “I … I can't talk now. I'm going to go lie down.”

“I'm not moving a thousand miles away. We'll probably buy a house in Wisteria or here in New Kassel,” she said.

I didn't care. I didn't care what words she spoke to try and make me feel better. My feelings were hurt. We were a team. We were best friends. I could give two hoops in the chicken coop if she moved in right next door. I was crushed.

I also realized somewhere in the back of my mind that I was being terribly childish and selfish. Try and rationalize that to an exhausted pregnant woman at midnight. What the heck had happened to my life? In one week it had just been torn upside down.

“I'm going to bed,” I said. “I'm happy for you, Mom. Regardless of how many tears you see, I am happy for you.”

With that I left her seated at the table and went upstairs to find Aunt Sissy sprawled sideways on my bed. I knew I couldn't sleep, but I was going to try before I found something new to cry about.

Nineteen

The room was dark and I could barely make out Aunt Sissy's form lying across my bed. She still wore her royal blue velvet jumper that she'd worn to the dinner. It was the only time other than weddings that I had seen her actually dress up. Black and white saddle oxfords were still on her feet, hanging off the side of my bed. I don't know anybody that can get by with wearing those after they turn eight. Aunt Sissy could. Actually I'm not sure that she could really get by with it either, she just did it and didn't care what people thought.

“Shut him up,” she whispered. “Shut him up.”

It didn't take me long to figure out that she was dreaming. I sat down on the bed next to her and she began to rock back and forth like a child does. “Aunt Sissy,” I said.

“Ooooh, shut him up,” she said. Small whimpers escaped her and she began to sob. She repeated that same phrase over and over in a trancelike rhythm.

“Sissy,” I said, more firm. “Wake up.” I shook her shoulder and repeated her name a few times. Finally, she startled awake and sat up, her eyes wide with fear. For a split second she came across like she was about ten years old.

“Shut who up, Aunt Sissy?”

Tear-filled eyes narrowed on me. She swiped at her face to remove the evidence that her dream left on the conscious world. “Nobody,” she whispered.

“Were you dreaming about Uncle Jed?” I asked.

“No,” she said and shook her head. “Poor Jed. Have we heard anything new?”

“Not yet,” I answered. I figured out of all of my aunts and uncles, Sissy would be the one to be the most upfront with. What did I have to lose? “Were you the one that sent me the newspaper articles?”

She ran her fingers through her hair and looked confused for a minute. “No, I didn't.” So far, I had collected about fifty-five signatures and hadn't had a chance to compare them with the note that came with the newspaper articles.

“What newspaper articles?” she asked.

I really didn't know how to broach the subject so I just shrugged my shoulders at her. “Never mind,” I said. “It's nothing.”

“You wouldn't have asked if it was nothing. Don't go acting like coy Wendy,” she declared. “Go on, spit it out.”

“I received newspaper articles on the death of Nate Keith,” I declared. I watched her face closely to see what sort of reaction I was going to get. Disappointment was all I got, though. It was far too dark to read anything real subtle and there was no overwhelming reaction from her.

“I was wondering when it was going to come around and bite us in the ass,” she said.

“Who? Bite who?”

“Us. The family. We've tried so long to keep it from everybody.”

“Why?”

“A murder,” she said. “An unsolved murder at that. Wasn't exactly the conversation you wanted to bring up when your boyfriend came to dinner. We all made a pact that nobody would know.”

“How could you keep that from everybody? I can see, like your husband, he wasn't from Partut County. But what about Uncle Jed's wife and Uncle Isaac's? They were both from that area and adults when it happened. How could you keep that from them?”

“I don't know what Jed and Ike told their wives. If they told them, it never went to the next generation,” she said.

“Why?”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Tell me what you know,” I said. It wasn't a request. I stated it simply and plainly.

She sized me up long and hard. A deep long sigh came from within her. It seemed as though the sigh had been waiting fifty years to come out. “I really don't know very much,” she said.

“You were there,” I accused.

“It was hot,” she said. “God, it was so hot, you could see the steam rising off of the chicken coop. Your dad and I had been down at the creek swimming with the neighbor kids. We were supposed to be eating dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's, which we did a lot. About four times a week Mom and Dad would take us all over there and help with the chores and cook dinner.”

I didn't dare interrupt her, she seemed to be in a trance of remembering.

“Grandma had said to be back in time to milk the cows and get dinner going. So we came back around four or so. We noticed right away that something wasn't right,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well, Jed had gotten married in the spring, and they lived in town. Jed was the only person that could calm Grandpa Nate down, and make him hear sense. If Jed was there, Grandma and Grandpa had been fighting. That's all there was to it.”

“They fought a lot?”

“Enough. And when they did it was a doozy,” she said. “So I headed into the house to put some clothes on and your dad went on to the barn to start milking the cows still in his swimming trunks. When I got inside, Mom took me aside and told me to go upstairs, that Della Ruth and Nate had been fighting something fierce and that Grandpa had threatened to kill Grandma.”

Very interesting.

“I wasn't in the adventurous sort of mood, so I did what Mom said and went on upstairs. About ten minutes later I heard the gunshot.”

Goosebumps danced down my spine and arms as I sat in the dark and listened to this fifty-year-old account of a tragedy.

“Well, my heart went in my throat,” she said. “And it stayed there. I remember crouching down at the steps with my ear against the floor. Grandpa lay out there on the porch for hours. He was there at least three or four hours because it was dark before it stopped.”

“Before what stopped?” I asked.

“Him. He moaned and cried and begged for help,” she said, a sob tearing from her throat. Hands instinctively went to her face as she wiped at her eyes. I imagined that she was trying to wipe the vision of the memory away more than she was wiping at tears.

My goosebumps got goosebumps. “What?” I whispered. “You mean … nobody … you mean he just lay out there and nobody went to help him?”

“That's right. I heard Grandma tell Aunt Ruth that if she went near that door she'd put her in her own grave. Nobody was to touch him,” she said. “And nobody did.”

I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. She couldn't be for real. Could she? My entire family sat inside the house waiting for the man to die? Was that possible?

“I don't understand,” I said and I didn't. “How could Della Ruth keep grown people from going outside? Aunt Ruth was in her twenties!”

“I only know what I was told,” Aunt Sissy said. “'Cause I never left my spot on the floor in the attic until he shut up. But I was told that Grandma sat at the front door with a shotgun across her lap and threatened anybody who went near the door with it. That's just what I was told,” she said. “Like I said, I never left the floor.”

Twenty

I awoke the next morning wondering if my family were the models for the folks out of
Deliverance.
Rudy came in very late and slept on the couch, while I slept the rest of the night curled up next to Aunt Sissy upstairs on our bed. I used to sleep curled next to her a lot as a kid, and she still smelled like White Shoulders perfume. When you're an only child and you go to stay at people's houses for a week without your mother, well, you find mothering arms.

I stumbled down the stairs to find Sheriff Brooke sitting at my kitchen table. A serious look pinched his features so that he looked like he was sitting on a sharp rock. I glanced down to see what I was wearing, and was relieved that it was the same purple and black velour outfit from last night.

“Good morning,” I said.

“You look terrible,” he answered.

“Same to you,” I said as I got the orange juice out of the refrigerator. “Is Mom up?”

“I don't think so,” he said. “Rudy let me in.”

I looked in the living room at Rudy sprawled on the couch. The green and brown afghan that my mother made about ten years ago was barely covering him, and his mouth was open as he snored to high heaven. “That's the same position I saw him in last night.”

“Well, I didn't say he woke up, he just unlocked the door and lay right back down on the couch,” the sheriff said.

“Hmm,” I said. I poured a big tall glass of orange juice and sat down at the table.

“You always have eyes this puffy in the morning?” he asked.

“You're just a bright bearer of glad tidings, aren't you?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Just don't think I've ever seen you look this … haggard.”

“Wow, you just keep going.”

“I don't mean it bad … your mom told me you were, you know.”

“Pregnant?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He shrugged his shoulders. “She called me late, about two in the morning.”

I got it now. Some people think that once you're pregnant that means you're frail and you're going to be sick and swoon and all that preconceived rhetoric. “I'm fine. I cried for about three hours last night. That goes a long way to making superpuffy eyes.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I don't want to make things worse…”

“Oh, but you have just by being in my house before seven-thirty in the morning,” I said with a big fake plastered smile.

He tried his best to ignore the insult. “We found this in your Uncle Jedidiah's pocket,” the sheriff said and held up a clear baggie.

I looked at him with venom. I wanted to be able to hurt him with just a look, but it never worked. I just came across looking like a hormone-driven housewife from hell. I took the baggie from him and looked at its contents. It was the piece of paper I had written
Roger McCarthy H's son
on, on that day when the sheriff had called me to tell me that he had found the investigating officer, Hubert McCarthy. The same piece of paper that I turned my back on and when I turned back around it was gone. Uncle Jed had taken it after all.

“Does this mean something?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he said in a haughty tone.

“Get out of my house,” I said.

Shock crossed his face. “I have the right—”

“You don't have the right to do anything!” I spat. Although he probably did have the right, I didn't think so at the moment and it was my house. “My uncle died last night and it's not even eight in the morning and I have a house full of grieving relatives. Sleeping grieving relatives, but grieving all the same. You just waltz in here to ask me about a stupid piece of paper … and you're marrying my mother and you can just go right back to your stuffy little office, with its icky brown paneling and stupid NFL decorations, and do this by the book. You come back at a decent hour!”

The look on his face was priceless. It was as if he'd never seen me before in his life. Which I didn't exactly understand because I know I've been a bitch before. This wasn't a new personality trait by any means.

He stood up and took the baggie from me. The look on his face was completely unreadable. His law enforcement training was switched on full power, suddenly. “They are doing an autopsy today, about three. I'll come by afterward.”

“Good, you do that,” I said.

I drank my orange juice as I heard the storm door shut after the front door. God, was my life ever going to be normal again? I wanted my life to be normal. I wanted Sylvia to yell at me. I wanted the mayor to threaten me. I was up to my neck with my family. I firmly believe that one can only take so much of one's family before one has to be fitted for a white jacket.

*   *   *

Two hours later the telephone rang.

“Hello, may I speak with Torie O'Shea,” a female voice said.

“Speaking,” I said.

“Hi, it's Robin Keifer,” the voice said. Robin Keifer. Robin Keifer. Who? “From the library in Progress.”