Still Waters (3 page)

Didn’t he realize by then that that third wasn’t coming home at all?

The vast quietness of the small house echoed through her, touching all the empty spots inside her. With only the yellow glow from the one lamp next to the window and the light spilling out of the kitchen door across the dining room, the place looked like a stranger’s home. For a moment, Jenna could almost imagine that she’d stumbled into the wrong house by mistake.

Or maybe it was the wrong life altogether.

She placed her hands flat against her cheeks, breathing deeply. Get a hold of yourself, she thought sternly. There are going to be plenty of lonely nights in this place, so you’d better get used to it. Don’t fall apart now.

Her gaze wandered around the room. A solitary window faced the front of the house, where Bud had always planned to build a fireplace someday. That spot currently had a walnut sideboard, a good piece that she’d picked out herself. On top were several family photos — Jenna and Bud’s wedding picture, her father looking smart in his uniform, Bill and Kitty at their twentieth anniversary party. The one of her father had been taken only a month before he had passed away. Happier days. Happier times.

Lightning flashed outside, glinting off the sleek silver frames around the photos. Jenna blinked at the unexpected glare reflecting off the dustless surface of the sideboard.

And all of a sudden, something clicked. Dustless surface, gleaming silver frames.

She turned around slowly, surveying the room with an accusing eye. The oak floors had been swept clean. The cushions on the sofa looked freshly plumped. The magazines on the coffee table were neatly fanned out in a way Jenna herself would never lay them out.

Someone had cleaned.

It wasn’t Stella, she knew that. Jenna had specifically told Stella
not
to clean. Feed Fritz and take him for walks, yes. But not to clean. And Stella would have done just as Jenna asked without questioning why. That’s the kind of friend she was.

No, it must’ve been some of Bud’s aunts. God knew there were enough of them. Blood-aunts, aunts by marriage… They had formed their own little flock at the funeral. Crêpe-draped hens huddled together, clucking out their grief. At some point in the past two weeks, they must have come in here, obnoxious with their intrusive helpfulness, and cleaned the house.

Fear seized Jenna with unexpected force, gripping her around the middle like an iron corset. Could they have found…?

In two steps, she crossed the small living room to the sideboard. She yanked the top drawer so hard it slid all the way out, scattering the contents on the floor. The drawer fell, striking her leg. It didn’t hit hard enough to hurt, but she yelled anyway. It felt good to yell.

She heard Fritz retreating into the kitchen and turned in time to see his backside round the corner as he slunk away. “Coward,” she called, then immediately felt ashamed. Would she ever learn to behave like a human being?

Jenna turned back around and looked down at the papers littering the floor. She went nearly limp with relief when she saw a photograph sticking out from underneath the previous month’s copy of
Life
magazine. Its back was to her, but she recognized it anyway.

Thank God. It was still there. No one had found it. Just the thought of trying to explain the image to Bill and Kitty made her sick to her stomach. She couldn’t even explain it to herself. But the fact that the photo was still in the drawer showed that no one was the wiser, because if one of Bud’s aunts had seen it, she wouldn’t have been able to resist taking it to his parents. And Jenna definitely would have heard about it if that were the case.

She knelt down and picked the photograph up by its corner. She started to turn it over, to look at it again, but changed her mind and instead slid it into the pocket of her robe. Out of sight, out of mind.

If only that were true.

Jenna began to pick up the contents of the drawer and put them back, stacking methodically as she went. The drawer was always full of old magazines, articles clipped from newspapers, grocery lists.

And as of two weeks earlier, the day her husband had died, it had also contained a photograph — the one now safely hidden in her pocket. The picture was of a smiling baby, held in the arms of a beautiful woman, who was herself held in the arms of a handsome man.

The man happened to be Jenna’s husband. Jenna had no idea who the woman might be. Or the baby, for that matter.

She scooped the papers off the floor and back into the drawer, then stood and re-inserted the drawer into the bureau. And all of a sudden, the grief and confusion overwhelmed her again. Her long body bowed almost in half as she bent slowly, until her forehead rested on the cool solid wood of the sideboard. She felt the sobs well up inside her, a great vomiting mass of dry heaves about to erupt from her lips, and she pressed both hands to her mouth, determined not to give way.

Every night for the past fourteen days, it had been the same thing. During the day, she had managed to be relatively composed. But alone at night, in the big bed in Bill and Kitty’s spare bedroom, it would all come raging back. Her face, pressed against the cool smoothness of the pillow, would flame with the loss, and the questions, and the anger, and the grief. Oh, God. The grief was the worst. It was a physical thing, a tearing and splitting of the body, a jagged gaping hole in the soul, painting itself in fiery tones of red and orange.

Gone
, her mind would scream at her.
Gone, gone, gone
.

Not coming back.

Always, her logical mind tried to grapple with the irrational, hideous, offensive nature of her loss. It was an affront to reason to think that such a thing could be possible, that Bud could really and truly be gone. But always, eventually, the truth of the situation would settle in. Then grief would claim her, and she would weep out her anguish until she was drained into unconsciousness.

But not tonight. She couldn’t lose control tonight. Because here, alone in this house except for the family dog, there was no reason to pull herself back out of the fog if she descended into it. No one to compose herself for at breakfast. No funeral to plan. Nothing except the dreary stretch of days rolling out in front of her, one day following the next until she died.

With effort, she pushed herself upward to a stand. Trembling fingers straightened her robe and re-tied the sash around her waist.

Get control, she told herself sternly. She took two deep breaths and commanded her heart to slow. She needed food and a glass of milk, then sleep. She planned to spend the night on the couch. She would read until she dozed off. And she would be back up at six the following morning just as she always was. Routine equals control. It was the key to her survival.

She was turning around to head back to the kitchen when someone knocked on the front door.

At the same moment, a rumble of thunder vibrated through the house. Jenna jumped slightly, then paused. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine o’clock. Who would be knocking at this hour?

The knock was repeated, low but firm. Urgent. Fritz came barreling out of the kitchen, barking, his courage apparently restored.

Jenna hushed him sternly, although she was grateful for his presence. She swallowed. It must’ve been Stella, coming to check on her. Stella would do something like that — walk across the street in the pouring rain to check on her bereaved friend.

Yes, it must be Stella.

All the same, Jenna put the chain on the hook before she called out, “Hello?” She paused, then swallowed and spoke again, trying to sound as though she were in charge. “Who’s there, please?”

The answer came just as a crack of thunder split the air. But Jenna heard the voice from the other side of the door, and she recognized it in spite of the storm. Her eyes widened and her hands begin to tremble.

She would have known that voice anywhere.

It was Adam.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

S
HE FUMBLED WITH THE LOCKS AND
yanked the door open. A man stood there, tall and slim. The porch light glinted off the shiny black surface of his raincoat. Behind him, the rain was coming down in sheets. His face — that strong, dear face — was half cast in shadow.

Jenna leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms. “So. You’re finally here,” she said flatly.

He looked at her for a long time before tugging off his raincoat and draping it over a porch chair. He scraped his shoes carefully on the doormat, then he pushed past her and strode into the middle of the living room, bringing the smell of the night and the storm in with him. Jenna tried to ignore the tide of comfort she always felt at his presence. Even at a time like this, he was a flood of reassurance with an undercurrent of strength.

She closed the door and re-latched it, then turned to find him watching her with sorrowful dark blue eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jen,” he said.

Jenna wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged ungracefully. “Sorry for what? Because my husband died, or because you didn’t come to the funeral?”

“Both.” His voice was quiet.

“We waited two weeks for you,” she said.

“I know.”

“
Two weeks
,” she repeated. “Two weeks while Bud lay in a refrigerator in the funeral home.”

“I know.”

“And now you knock on my door at nine o’clock at night, in the middle of a storm, and just waltz into my house?”

He didn’t say anything.

She shook her head. “I should throw you right back out into the rain.”

He nodded slowly. “Probably.”

She took two steps forward, her face determined. But as soon as he opened his arms she found herself walking right into them. She felt tears well in her eyes again as she pressed her face against his chest. “Adam, he’s gone. He’s
gone
.”

* * *

They sat on the porch and ate cold tuna casserole. Jenna had offered to heat it, but Adam insisted that she shouldn’t go to the trouble. Though she hadn’t felt hungry earlier, once she started eating, she found she was ravenous.

Jenna sat on the porch swing; Adam took the chair next to it. Fritz lay near Jenna’s feet. He wasn’t thrilled about having Adam around, but after some suspicious sniffing and warning growls deep in his chest, he had yielded to Jenna’s commands and had curled up on the cool boards of the porch floor. Only his ears, still perked up on high alert, showed that he hadn’t completely let down his guard around this stranger.

After they ate, Jenna took their dishes into the kitchen and rinsed them, then returned to her place on the porch swing. The storm had subsided by then, and the rain was falling soft and steady, with only an occasional faint rumble of thunder in the distance.

They were quiet for a few moments, listening to the comfortable creak of the swing as it swayed gently. Adam leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. And Jenna knew that a question was coming — the question that had been revolving unspoken between them since she’d first opened the door.

“How did it happen?”

Although she had been expecting it, she still caught her breath at the words so gently spoken. She felt as though she had told the story a million times already, and it hadn’t gotten any easier. So she rocked back in the swing and asked him a question to counter his own, a stalling tactic that she had learned from her father. “How much do you know?”

He sighed. “Two weeks ago I was in Korea, and one night I found a telegram on my bunk. From your friend Stella, I guess.”

He looked at Jenna inquiringly, and she nodded a slow confirmation. “I asked her to cable you,” Jenna said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it myself.”

“You don’t have to insult me with apologies,” he said, not unkindly. “The telegram only said that Bud had — that there had been an accident, and that you were going to wait the funeral as long as you could so that I could be here. It gave the name of the funeral parlor. I pulled every string I could to get here at all, and I got here late.” He shrugged lightly. “And that’s all I know.”

Jenna nodded again. It was her turn now; there was no escaping it. “It was a Sunday morning. Bud and I slept late.” She smiled faintly. “We have a standing invitation to go to church with Bill and Kitty, but we try to get out of it as often as possible. There’s a new bakery that opened a little ways up the road, and we’ve been going there far too often. It’s Bud’s favorite thing to do on Sunday mornings. I’ve warned him a dozen times that I’m going to get fat if he doesn’t stop bringing me donuts, but he says he doesn’t care.” She heard herself speaking in the present tense and decided that it didn’t matter.

“And so that Sunday, he was getting donuts while I made breakfast. I was waiting for him to come back. It did seem as if he had been gone a long time, but that wasn’t too unusual. You know Bud — he always seems to find somebody to chat with. He can stand and talk for an hour and not even know the time has passed. He’s always been that way. So I was just making breakfast, as usual…”