Light from a Distant Star (49 page)

“Are you almost done?” her mother said.

“I just got in here!” Nellie called back, annoyed. Her mother left the robe on the hamper, then closed the door.
Message received
, Nellie thought—the days of leaving the shower wrapped in just a towel were over. She quickly rinsed out the shampoo, then turned off the water. Her mother obviously thought she’d been in here too long, wasting hot water and holding up everyone else. She wrapped her hair in a towel and dried her glasses, then put on the robe.

“I can’t see—that’s the problem. That’s why it takes so long,” she complained, opening the door, surprised to find both parents in the hallway.

“Why don’t you dry your hair, hon,” her mother said into the billows of escaping steam. “And then get dressed. Dad and I are just …” She looked at him, blankly.

“Go ahead, hon, just get dressed. Mom and I are just getting things ready here, that’s all,” her father said, stricken as he looked, yet managing a weak smile. “Go ahead.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Nellie said. Nothing, they kept trying to tell her, but if it was nothing, why were they out here? Why was her mother’s chin trembling? Why was her father raking his fingers through his hair? Why did they both look so helpless, as if they were waiting to be told what to do next? “Tell me!” she insisted. “What is it?”

“Honey, we just got a call,” her mother finally said. “From Aunt Betsy. They just heard it on the car radio. It was about Mr. Cooper. He died last night.”

“Oh no! What happened? How’d he die?” She was as confused and stunned as she was relieved and troubled by all the inappropriate questions racing through her brain. What about Max? What did this mean? Was it good or bad for him? At least she wouldn’t have to go through another trial. Or maybe she would.

“Pills, they think. Looks like he committed suicide,” her father said. His face was white and his hair hung lank over his furrowed brow.

“How could he do that? I mean, to his family?” Her mother shook her head, as if to shake off water or snap herself from a spell. “Those poor children.”

“Poor Jessica,” Nellie finally said because they expected her to. And because she wasn’t about to betray her friend’s confidence. Not now, anyway.

“I know,” her father said, pulling her close and holding her tightly. “But you can’t be blaming yourself for this. You just can’t!”

“I won’t.” Acutely conscious of her nakedness beneath the robe, she hunched away from him, but if he noticed, it was only to think her overwhelmed by guilt.

“It’s not your fault!” He sounded angry.

“I know, Dad.”

“You did the right thing, Nellie. And don’t you ever, ever for a single moment doubt that,” he said through clenched teeth and breathing hard.

“I won’t.”

“No, I mean that.” His voice broke. “Because you’re the strongest, most courageous person I know.”

“You are,” her mother agreed with the faintest note of surprise.

“Fearless! Absolutely fearless!” her father cried, and her mother
chimed in, telling her what a wonderful daughter and sister she was. Her father agreed, citing examples of her kindness and goodness, her generosity and selfless spirit, as if she were already a legend, one of his tales from the past, more than she was, more than she could ever hope to be.

Nellie listened as they comforted one another in their familiar way of smoothing down the jagged edges of memory, tucking each raw end into place, every doubt and fear about themselves, struggling to make sense of it all, needing containment, answers to their children’s questions, a story, so that life would right itself, be steady again for all of them, and safe. But it was Dolly she was thinking of, and poor Max. And Jessica. She couldn’t understand how life could get so messed up.

Or maybe that’s just the way it is, she thought. Maybe it’s the same for everyone as they get older, little by little, truth losing its energy, until, like particles in the air, it’s almost invisible. Maybe that’s just part of being an adult, rationalizing experience, changing it around until you forget a lot of the important things, things nobody has to tell some kids because they just know, that’s all. And remember.

S
PRINGVALE IS A LITTLE BIGGER THESE DAYS
. S
OME BEAUTIFUL
houses have been built in its once wooded purlieus, now manicured enclaves called Larchwood Estates and Montgomery Run and the tongue-tying Ridgechester Chase. The older homes in the center of town continue their paint-to-peeling cycle of beauty and blemish. A few old neighbors remain. The Humboldts are gone, moved to Naples, Florida. Two of the tree house walls blew down in the winter’s first blizzard, the rest in pieces, fragments through the years, though the weathered platform remains, to this day, stubbornly wedged between the three main branches.

Charlie had to endure his cancer only a few more months, and though it took years, the junkyard has finally been cleared. Because Sandy and Benjamin couldn’t afford the enormous cost of the stringent environmental cleanup, they transferred most of the land to the town. They held on to two back lots, hoping to sell them someday to a developer—their retirement, Nellie’s mother says. Peck Hardware is no longer. In its place a gift shop came and went, followed by a highend women’s clothing store that closed after one year. Not much of a businessman, maybe, but Benjamin Peck’s always there when you need him, a man with a big heart, everyone agrees. And in the end, what matters more? Nellie’s come to that now, respecting the man her father wants to be.

He teaches history at the high school, where it is well known that Mr. Peck has never flunked anyone. His principal and fellow teachers admire his work but continue in their exasperation with lectures that run too long, overlapping their classes, and his easy penchant for veering off the subject. But there is always a waiting list for his courses
and his students return every few years eager to share their successes with him. His typewritten history of the community fills four thick notebooks and is kept in the Springvale Library archives. It can’t be checked out but is available for anyone interested in the long, curious life of an American town, where ordinary people do their best to overcome flaws and foibles as they struggle to do the right thing, maybe not always but most of the time.

In the end, Mr. Cooper’s sad affair with Dolly was proved and widely known, as were relationships he had with other young women, many as trusting and vulnerable as she was. Even though his DNA did match evidence from the crime scene, there would always be doubt, just enough uncertainty to cloud the facts. Eventually, Max was released from prison. And yet to this very day, there are still people in town who believe he played some part in Dolly’s murder.

Being the kind of man he was
. Sometimes, they actually say that.

Because they don’t know the man she knew, Max Devaney, however near or far away, though clearly fixed in memory, the haunted man who entered her life at that time of perfect childhood in its dazzling sphere of wildness, freedom, courage, when everything was still possible. Everything.

What do you mean?

His innocence. And her own, but she doesn’t say that.

And you still think so? Even after all this time?

Absolutely.

How can you be so sure?

M
ARY
M
C
G
ARRY
M
ORRIS
was a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist for her first novel
Vanished
, published in 1988.
A Dangerous Woman
, published in 1991, was chosen by
Time
magazine as one of the “Five Best Novels of the Year” and was made into a major motion picture. Her next novel,
Songs in Ordinary Time
, was a CBS television movie as well as an Oprah Book Club selection in 1997, propelling it to the top of the
New York Times
bestseller list and making it an international bestseller.

Since then she has written four highly acclaimed novels, the most recent of which was
The Last Secret
, published by Crown in 2009. She lives in Massachusetts.