A Stillness of Chimes (6 page)

She’d loved her dad. Crackpot veteran or not, he was her father. When other kids had made fun of him, she’d stuck up for him every time. Sean had helped her finish a few of those school-yard scraps.

She’d mellowed, though. She’d conquered the hair-trigger temper she’d had as a kid, maybe because she didn’t want to be like her dad, but sometimes Sean missed the girl who’d shown her raw emotions without filters. Without apologies.

He checked his phone for the time. He should have been holed up in his workshop, but he just couldn’t get motivated. He had a few new instruments lying around the house too, so he could break them in, but for once in his life, his fingers didn’t itch to play. It all seemed so unimportant.

A night creature rustled in last year’s fallen leaves by the side of the house. Probably one of those raccoons living in the big oak. One of the young ones was an albino. With pink eyes and a white-ringed tail, it made an eerie sight, especially on moonlit nights. A ghost raccoon.

The animal outside moved closer. And coughed.

Sean sat up straight. That was no raccoon.

Maybe it was Dale, wanting to wheedle more money out of him. But why so quiet and sneaky this time? Why on foot?

Because the house was dark. He thought nobody was home. Thought he’d play burglar, maybe.

Sean waited, holding his breath. The skin on the back of his neck prickled.

Feet padded up the back steps, and his senses snapped to full alert.

The doorknob rattled. The hinges creaked. The kitchen light came on. A knock finally came, an afterthought, not on the door but on the wall. He smiled, knowing who his visitor was.

“Sean? You home?”

He rose to his feet. “Hey, Laura. Come on in.”

When she walked into the room, her glasses were so wet he didn’t know how she could see through them. In a shabby, rain-sprinkled sweater, she looked like a lost little girl. She’d twisted her thick hair in a damp, red mess on top of her head.

Reluctantly, he vetoed the idea of pulling her into his arms. Right now she needed a friend, not a pursuer.

“Out for a walk in the rain?” he asked.

“Well, it had let up for a while, wasn’t raining when I started. It turned loose again when I was passing Gary and Ardelle’s house—their old house, I mean. I was about to run to the door when I remembered they haven’t lived there in a long time. I came here instead.” She spun in a circle. “You’ve done a lot of work. It doesn’t look like the same place.”

She was talking too fast, too brightly, in a scattered and disjointed way. It wasn’t like her.

“Sit,” he said, waving her toward the couch, hoping she’d relax. “And tell me again why you’re walking around town in the rain.”

She didn’t sit. “I just needed time to think about the … the situation.”

“Sure, I can understand that. You have a lot to process.”

“This news about my dad … It changes everything.” Her voice shook.

“Not news. Rumors. Somebody saw a man who looked a little like him, and that somebody told other people, and the story has grown out of proportion.”

Her eyes burned like sweet brown embers. “But what if it’s really him? Have you thought about the implications?”

“Implications,” Sean repeated slowly, trying to imagine where she was
headed with it. “Well, I can imagine your dad—if he’s alive—would need medical care and counseling, at the very least.”

“That’s part of it. Oh, Sean. If it wasn’t an accidental drowning, if it was deliberate, it knocks my feet out from under me. I have to question everything.”

Sean studied her, trying to decipher her words, her expression. He’d been so focused on hard facts that he hadn’t given enough thought to the questions that would spring up for anyone who chose to believe the rumors. If Laura was hurt and confused, he didn’t want to make matters worse with careless words.

“Those are big ifs, though.” A lame response but the best he could come up with.

“I know they are.” She pushed up the ratty sleeve of her sweater to check a watch that wasn’t there. “I’d better get going,” she said in that too-cheerful way.

“You just got here.”

She smiled at him. “I’m tired, Sean. I didn’t get to bed until three in the morning, and then I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the road in front of me. You know what I mean?”

His heart melted as he pictured her driving fourteen hundred miles of interstate highways alone, facing the sad task of tying up the loose ends of her mother’s life. “I’ll give you a ride, then. Don’t argue. It’s still raining, and it’s dark out.”

“Well. All right. Thanks.” Laura wiped moisture off her cheeks. She turned and hurried into the kitchen, her shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor.

Sean followed, wondering if she’d wiped away tears or rain.

Laura was intensely thankful for the ride home. It would have been a dark and spooky walk past the stretch of road where they used to pick blackberries.

She looked behind her when Sean turned on a floodlight that transformed the drizzle to a thousand tiny falling diamonds. He strode toward her, the wind ruffling his hair and his shadow looming large as he pulled on a flannel barn jacket.

He used his remote to start the door cranking upward on the little garage that stood apart from the house. “Same old truck,” he said with a smile.

“I noticed. But didn’t you sell it to the Browns years ago?”

“I did, but he’s had to give up driving. I offered him a good price, and he took it.”

“You have a brake light out. I noticed this morning.”

“Yeah? Thanks for telling me. One more thing on my to-do list.”

His garage smelled like motor oil, lumber, and paint. Laura walked past his lawn mower and a neat array of tools on pegboard. It felt wrong to go to the passenger side of the truck. Back in the day, she’d climbed in through the driver’s door. They’d sat so close, she’d had to crane her neck to look up at him.

They climbed in simultaneously, shut their doors simultaneously. Sean turned the key. The engine roared to life, and the radio came on. No bluegrass purist, he had it tuned to raucous country-rock.

Putting his arm across the back of the wide seat, he looked over his shoulder and reversed the truck into the brightly lit driveway.

“You still listen to that stuff?” she asked.

He smiled. “Sure. Especially when you’re here to complain about it.”

He lowered the volume, started the wipers, and hit the remote again. The garage door rattled shut. The truck rumbled backward down the drive, escaping the reach of the floodlight and leaving them in darkness except for the dim glow from the dash. The gas-guzzling engine sounded strong, and someone had installed a new windshield to replace the old one with its cobweb of cracks.

“The truck sounds good, Sean.”

“Because it is good.”

“You’ve always been Mr. Fix-it.”

“Had to be,” he said with a laugh.

True. The Hallorans had rarely had the money to buy anything new, or if they’d had it, Dale had spent it on liquor. Sean had always been so steady, though. So strong.

She wanted to scoot over and lean into his solid warmth, but she kept hugging the door. He kept both hands on the wheel. Now it was too dark to see him. Too dark for him to see her, and Laura was glad. He didn’t need to know what a mess she was.

Neither of them spoke as he drove out of his own neighborhood and past the Brights’ old house, its lights glowing behind overgrown shrubs. Then, in a flash, they’d passed the old berry patch.

Sean barely slowed the truck to cross the tracks at the bend of the road where town met country. In the old days, she would have sat close to him, laughing as the truck rocked over the rails and jounced her against him. Now she clung to the edge of the seat and held herself upright.

He pulled the truck around the corner, more or less ignoring the stop sign. The church steeple, softly lit from below, came into view above the
trees. Sean swung into the circle drive and parked in front of the house. The truck idled, deep-throated and smooth.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Sean said.

“No need. Thanks, though.”

“Got a key?”

“In my pocket.” She pulled on the door handle. Tugged harder. Nothing happened.

“Sticks sometimes,” he said. “Gotta fix that.”

He reached for the door, his flannel-clad arm brushing against her, his face nearly touching hers. She closed her eyes and leaned hard against the headrest.

Muttering a word best left unspoken, he manhandled the latch. The door clunked open, letting in a rush of chilly air, and the dome light burned brightly against her eyelids.

His breath warmed her. That meant he’d turned toward her. If she tipped her head forward the least bit, her lips would touch his. But she couldn’t let it start.

“It’s good to have you home where you belong, Red.”

The nickname from high school jolted her eyes open. He was so close that she couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think.

Next thing she knew, he’d be calling her “honey” again, and “sweetheart,” and finally “darlin’,” and then he’d start stealing kisses and telling her he loved her. But it could never work.

He drew away by a hair’s breadth. “I’ve missed you, Laura.” His low voice went rough and ragged.

“I’ve missed you too.” She wanted to hug him, but then she’d start
crying and never stop. “Good night. Thanks for the ride.” She gently pushed him away, swung her legs out, and climbed down.

“Wait.” He leaned toward her, the strong planes of his face emphasized by the glow of the dome light. “There was something you’d started to tell me. The implications, you called it. You said ‘that’s part of it,’ but what’s the rest?”

“I don’t want to say it.”

“You can tell me. It won’t go any further.”

“I know. I know you’ll keep it to yourself.” She hesitated, afraid she’d say too much but desperate for help in carrying the burden. “You remember what it was like, Sean, the night they started the search. You remember how we walked back and forth on the shore, praying and crying.” She couldn’t go on, but she didn’t need to. The grief in his eyes mirrored the grief in her heart.

“Of course I remember.”

She took a moment to regain control, then sped through the rest of it. “Was my dad out there, watching? Was he in a hideaway on the other side of the lake, maybe? Spying on us? Hoping we believed he’d really drowned?”

“No,” Sean said softly. “Laura, he really did drown.”

She knew he hoped to console her, but the strange situation had put her beyond consolation. “I don’t know, Sean. On one hand, I hope he’s alive. I would love to have him back. I want to see his face and hear his voice and bring him home. But if he’s alive, why did he do it? Why did he make Mom think she was a widow? I hate to say something so terrible, but was it some kind of cruel joke?”

“No,” Sean said again. “He had his issues, but he was never cruel.”

“No? I’d almost rather believe he drowned.” The words tasted like poison on her tongue. “If he drowned, I can keep believing he really loved us.”

“He did. He loved you and your mom, both.”

“I wish I could know that for sure.” Shutting the door before Sean could argue, she turned for the house and ran. She didn’t know what to believe.

Stepping inside, she studied the kitchen clock. A sleek, modern model, it replaced the antique her dad had shattered with a well-aimed cast-iron trivet.

The argument between her parents still rang in her head like discordant bells. Her mother’s voice had been brittle and angry beneath a false calm.
“You have blood on your hands.”
She hadn’t spoken such inflammatory antiwar rhetoric in years. Maybe he’d hit her hot button, so she’d hit his, forgetting to handle him with kid gloves.

“Don’t try to hold that over my head,”
he’d answered.
“You’ve been unfaithful. Don’t deny it. Don’t lie to me.”

Laura, standing in the darkness just around the corner, had held her breath and waited for her mother to offer a sensible, soothing response to his irrational accusation. But he’d hurled the trivet, smashing the heirloom clock into a hundred pieces of glass and wood. Laura had let out a squeak of terror that went unheard and tiptoed away.

She’d never told anyone about her dad’s accusation. Not even Sean. She hadn’t believed a word of it at the time. She still didn’t, but her father must have. He’d disappeared a month later.