Old Wounds (28 page)

No, no, never, never no more.
The mournful refrain of an old ballad had sounded in her head as she pulled open the cardboard box. Inside was a tiny oval wooden box, smaller than those he had made for the girls. She had run her fingertips over the complex knot of initials incised on the lid and fought back the tears that had risen to her eyes.

And within the little box, resting on a piece of folded silk, had been an antique wedding band, its warm pink-tinged gold decorated with fanciful vines and leaves.

23.

L
OST
B
AGGAGE

Monday, October 17, Tuesday, October 18, and Thursday, October 20

“A ring, Sam
gave me a wedding ring that last Christmas. I’d lost my original one and he found a beautiful old band of rose gold. I took it off when you and I…I don’t know…it didn’t seem right.”

“No, I see what you mean.” Phillip was clearly uncomfortable with the subject, but he persevered. “I remember noticing it…before. Leaves and stuff on it. I thought it suited you…with all your herbs and flowers. Could I take a look at it? If it’s the last thing Sam gave you, it could be what we’re looking for.”

It was in the top drawer of her bureau, in the little box Sam had crafted for it. She took the ring out, resisting the impulse to slip it onto her finger, and carried it to Phillip.

“Nothing engraved inside.” He shook his head in disappointment. “And the design—you say you think the ring was old? No chance that he had it made?”

“No chance at all. Sam told me that he found it in an antiques shop in Asheville. And it just
felt
old, if you know what I mean—all worn and smooth.”

Phillip held the ring under the reading lamp, turning it this way and that. Finally he shrugged. “No, I don’t think this is what we’re looking for.” He gave it a last admiring glance. “It does suit you. Sam had a good eye.”

“There was another part of the present—the ring was inside a little carved box he’d made.” She took the ring from him and absently slid it back onto her finger.

“I didn’t know Sam was such an artist. This is really nice—great carving, all around the sides and across the top.”

As he’d done with the ring, Phillip took the little box to study under the reading light. “He had to have worked under a magnifying glass. Amazing detail for such a small amount of surface area, and all of it carved. And these must be your initials, here on top—what’s your middle name?”

“It’s my maiden name: Grey. Which means, unfortunately, that my monogram is—”

“E.G.G.” Phillip returned the little box to her. He grinned. “So that explains the shape of the box and the letters. Sam did love a pun. But, damn, for a minute I thought we had a clue.”

The popping sound, followed almost instantly by the ding, made Rosemary catch her breath. Her dark eyes flicked to the bottom of the laptop screen where a flashing icon proclaimed INCOMING MAIL. Abandoning the story she was working on in mid-sentence, she opened her in-box. A smile spread slowly across her face.
Yes!

The e-mail began abruptly:

I wish it were Thursday night already. I can’t believe what’s happened: the skinny little kid who lived next door—all long legs and big eyes—has turned into a college professor…and a beauty. She’s back in my life and Thursday we’ll be together again.

You can’t know, Rosy, what it means for me to be with you. You’ve brought something back into my life that I’d almost forgotten. I hope that we can spend a good portion of your fall break getting to know each other again—and much better.

But I’ll save all of this for Thursday night. I just couldn’t resist e-mailing, to remind myself that you’re out there.

BTW, I’ve been thinking over what you said about that retarded man (Cletus?). You’re right: he was definitely spooky and he did seem somewhat fixated on you little girls. I remember once he tried to get Krystalle to go with him up into the woods. He told her he would show her a nest of flying squirrels, or something like that. Of course, Patricia the
über
-mom was on the case and yelled at Krysty to come inside before she got her clothes dirty.

All of which proves nothing. And you tell me the man in question is dead. It may be hard at this point to prove anything. But I trust your instincts here and I respect your desire to pursue the question to some sort of resolution. I, too, would like closure.

Till Thursday night,
Jared

She read the e-mail through a second time, then printed it out and deleted it. She was reading the hard copy for a third time when a knock at her office door demanded her attention.

“Come in.” Rosemary slid the printout into her desk drawer just as one of her colleagues, an anxious-looking gray mouse of a woman, skittered in. “Hi, Letitia, you look harassed. Is there a problem?”

“No, not a
problem,
as such.” Letitia perched on the edge of one of the office chairs and looked around the room as if in search of something. Her slightly prominent front teeth and almost nonexistent chin intensified her resemblance to a small rodent.
She always looks around like that, like she’s afraid a cat will pounce on her. Or maybe she’s just looking for cheese.

“Well, Rosemary, as you know, Katherine, Nancy, Marion, and I have been planning a little trip over fall break—Charleston, Savannah, and the low country. Such an
evocative
area and so much fine writing has come out of there. We have all our arrangements and reservations at some really
nice
bed-and-breakfasts. And now Katherine says she won’t be able to go.

“We
think…”
The mouse leaned forward and lowered her voice. “We
think
she’s gotten involved with a
man.
So we were wondering…I know it’s dreadfully short notice—but then, you don’t have any family responsibilities, so we thought…we wondered if you might like to take Katherine’s place. With four of us to share expenses, it’s really a quite affordable jaunt.” Her nose quivered. “Would you be interested? We plan to leave early Thursday morning.”

“Thanks, it sounds terrific. But I have an appointment in Asheville on Thursday that I can’t miss.” She suppressed a fleeting desire to add,
And I think I’ve gotten involved with a man.

It wasn’t as if she’d never been involved with a man before, Rosemary reflected, driving toward Asheville on Thursday morning. There had been a few unsatisfactory interludes, none of any significant duration. The first had been during her freshman year, when she’d convinced herself she was in love with a tall, slim Bangladeshi graduate assistant who spoke beautifully accented BBC English. Hasibul had quickly disillusioned her: first, by suggesting that she bleach her hair; and second, when she declined to become a blonde, by finding someone who was. With a slightly guilty feeling of relief, Rosemary had returned to a life of chastity and scholarship until grad school.

Connor, of the pale skin, black hair, and piercing blue eyes, had been a fellow student, enrolled in many of the same seminars. This had led to late night study sessions at his apartment, which had led to very early morning sessions on the lumpy futon in his bedroom. It might have continued indefinitely—or at least through grad school—had she not dropped by his apartment one day to retrieve an overdue library book. There had been no answer to her knock, so she had used her key to let herself in.

Connor and Cassandra, a fluffy little MA candidate, hadn’t made it as far as the futon. They were a tangled, half-clothed beast with two backs on the sagging old sofa. Ignoring Cassandra’s squeals as she scurried for the bedroom and Connor’s half-indignant, half-abject attempts at explanation, Rosemary had stalked to the table where she’d left the book, retrieved it, and stalked out the door, tossing the apartment key over her shoulder.

“We’re all in this alone” had become an unspoken motto. Men betrayed you or wanted to change you. Happy marriages might exist—Mum and Pa’s had been happy, eventually, in spite of those two
…indiscretions, surely nothing more.
But then Pa had been killed, leaving Mum with a burden of grief that had oppressed her for years.

Baggage, that’s what the pop psychologists call it,
Rosemary thought.
It was all that baggage weighing me down, making me so cautious about getting involved with anyone. I guess I just decided that a life alone was better than disappointment, betrayal, and loss.

She smiled as she caught sight of the foothills, rising in the distance.
It’s odd, I seem to have lost that baggage somewhere along the line. And so has Mum. She and Phillip are so sweet, pretending that nothing’s going on between them.