Vultures at Twilight (21 page)

‘Maybe it was one of them?' she offered.

‘I can't do this,' I said. ‘I know we promised Tolliver, but it's too much.' My stomach churned; how could she say things like this? And there was no way to answer back. She and Bradley were dead; what possible use could this serve? And what other accusations lurked inside those college-ruled pads? ‘Ada, I need to take a walk.'

‘I'll go with you.'

‘No, I need to think . . . I have to think.'

‘Lil, are you sure?'

I headed for the door, and looked back at her. My thoughts were swimming, everything turned upside down, including my feelings for Ada. ‘I need to think,' I stammered, barely able to find words, and before she could object I walked out.

A crisp leaf-whipped October wind buffeted my cheek as I headed down my walk toward the road.

It was too much. Two years after burying my husband, this girl, although she was a woman when she wrote that entry, accused him of molesting her over a decade before. It was obscene. It was not my Bradley . . . It couldn't be.

Without thought to direction, I headed toward the walking path that circled the ten-acre lake in the center of Pilgrim's Progress. Geese squawked as I passed, and a pair of swans headed toward me, anticipating I'd come to throw breadcrumbs. I stared at the crushed gravel and thought about Bradley and the year of our courtship. He was older than I was, twelve years, but I was no child. I was twenty-one. And didn't pedophiles like them young; wouldn't that argue against his guilt? Our sex life had been good. Although, I didn't have much to compare against. I'd been a virgin on our wedding night. Ours had been a quiet sort of lovemaking. Not the romance novel, bodice-ripping kind of thing. For lack of a better word, it was normal and gentle; and, over time, less frequent. But he'd hold me at night, before we went to sleep. We kissed every night and every morning. I could still feel his Saturday morning stubble against my cheek.

I remembered the late-night emergency calls, his black bag always ready by the front door. Sometimes our bell would ring at two or three in the morning and I'd get up with him, throw on my robe and slippers and go down to meet whatever emergency had come knocking. How many children with croup or broken bones had there been? How many drunken men who had fallen, and rather than stumble home bruised to their wives, had come to Bradley to get patched up and to practice their excuses. He was the keeper of secrets and I was his partner. He took to the grave the knowledge of which men had cheated on their wives and visa versa. There were things he would never write in his patients' charts. ‘We'll just keep this between the two of us,' he'd say, after administering a shot of penicillin to a local alderman who had contracted gonorrhea in New York City. He knew all the little-town lies and truths that if they ever leaked could destroy families and careers. He knew of the abortions and even mercy killings; he never judged. ‘It's hard enough,' he'd say about a family struggling with a terminally ill parent. ‘You have to give them choices, help them through.' On more than one occasion, I know he hastened death with the gentle kiss of morphine. He was there at the birth of his patients and we always attended the funerals. Not once was he sued. And while our move to Pilgrim's Progress was supposed to presage his retirement, he practiced medicine until the day he died.

He'd loved Grenville, even though he'd been born outside of Boston. We would joke about how you couldn't really be accepted in Grenville until you'd lived here at least three generations. But he had been accepted, and respected, and loved.

I veered from the footpath edged with clumps of purple and rust mums, and headed toward the road. Everything here in Pilgrim's Progress was too tidy. I needed to see something older, something real. I thought about going back for the car but I needed to walk. I moved quickly toward the gated entrance to the community and turned right on to Cedar Swamp Road.

As I passed Miller's farm and the riding stables, I thought of Wendy's poem. There were a couple other doctors in town, none of them in white houses, none of them GPs. And most of them weren't even around when Bradley was in practice. For years he was the only physician in Grenville. More importantly, he had been
her
physician.

I cleared the end of the road and turned left on to Main Street. I took in the shops and houses that had watched Town Plot for the past two centuries. The few Victorian mansions, with their multi-hued paint and busy gingerbread trim, were the most recent additions to the stoic colonial and federal homes. Even the office buildings dated back to the 1840s. Familiar, like the back of my hand, yet it all looked different, as though someone had taken Grenville and turned it into a movie set. I had always taken pride in how well we cared for the town; the yearly tree plantings, the near-fascistic historical society which mandated the size and style of every sign, door knocker or mullion placed on the antique homes. I loved the symmetry of Town Plot with its absence of graffiti, litter or other urban blight. As I walked past the one-room schoolhouse, now the headquarters for the historical society, I overheard a pair of tourists.

‘It's so perfect,' said a woman in Hawaiian print culottes and a blue cardigan as she read the bronze plaque.

‘Too quaint,' her friend agreed as she focused her camera on the bell-topped school.

I didn't slow.
Quaint?
A lovely town where people are murdered and young girls go mad and kill themselves. Yes, I know people are flawed, my life as the GP's wife took care of any illusions. I'd sit in church with people I knew were cheating on their wives, or were addicted to pain pills. I knew who was alcoholic, who suffered with depression, and who – despite being wealthy – never paid their bills. ‘It's just human nature,' Bradley would say as he'd write off thousands of dollars in unpaid fees.

What would he say to this? Could he write off the murders and the accusations? Sure it's human nature, but that doesn't make it OK.

I now stood in front of our house. It was still white, and the climbing pink roses and pale-blue hydrangea I had planted over thirty years ago were at their exuberant best; the last gasp of color before the first frost. The current residents had done little to change the exterior, and, secretly, I was grateful. The only notable differences were a new screened-in porch off the back and the gravel driveway was now asphalt.

I didn't really know the new family – the Jensens – a young doctor and his wife. I had met them at the closing and once or twice after that. I occasionally saw her in the grocery store and we would exchange hellos. I didn't like to think of them in our house. But there again, Bradley had been pragmatic.
‘They're almost rented, these old homes. Think of all the families that have come before us and those still to come.'
We had collected the records, our home's genealogy back to before the Revolution. I gave it to the Jensens at the closing.

And then I passed the eyebrow colonial where I had been born. For the past twenty years it had been an antique store. Occasionally, I would go in to pick up the scents of my childhood. Unfortunately, the current owners were prone to potpourri and I would find myself fleeing the noxious fumes. Now, in the front window – what used to be the living room – was a display of wrought-iron fireplace tools and rustic salt-glazed stoneware filled with dried leaves and flowers. I stared up at the tiny half window of my childhood bedroom. So small, like a doll's house carefully polished and preserved.

It's all a facade
, I thought as I turned and counted the antique shops, one after another. These had been homes. I could still remember the names of the families; many were still in town, just not in their original houses.

Then, out of the corner of my eye I caught someone crossing the street. I turned and saw Mattie Perez, coming toward me. I tried to work the corners of my face into a smile; it didn't work.

‘Lil, are you OK?' she asked as she hurried toward me. Her expression showed more concern than was warranted by my mid-afternoon walk.

‘I'm fine, why?'

She looked at me, trying to decide whether or not to say what was on her mind.

‘Just go ahead,' I said. ‘I'm a big girl.'

‘Well, for starters,' she said, looking down at my feet, ‘there's that.'

I followed her gaze and realized I had just walked three and a half miles in my pink bedroom slippers.

TWENTY-SIX

B
acon sizzled in the Brown Bear Diner, filling the air with a smoky tang as late-afternoon diners, most of them older, sat around bottomless cups of coffee and talked about the weather, the news, and of course the murders.

I looked up as the pretty young waitress, possibly a high-school student, filled our mugs.

‘It's good to see you, Mrs Campbell,' she said as she turned over the cups.

‘Thank you,' I said, searching for a name. ‘Joanie, isn't it?'

‘You remembered.'

‘Yes, but it gets harder and harder.'

She laughed politely and headed back to the kitchen of the Brown Bear.

‘It must be nice,' Mattie said, ‘living where you know pretty much everyone.'

‘You'd think so,' I offered as I watched the waitress.

‘What is it, Lil?'

‘What do you mean?' I tried to focus on Mattie, but my thoughts ran in a dozen directions. For instance, the waitress was about the same age as Wendy, at least the age I remembered. She had the same blonde-haired blue-eyed features.

‘Lil,' Mattie interrupted. ‘Are you OK?'

‘You asked me that before.'

‘Yes, and you didn't answer.'

‘I got some news today . . . I'm just distracted.' Noticing a local reporter at the table across from the pass-through kitchen interviewing an antique dealer over coffee and pecan pie. And two tables down from them were three men and a beautiful dark-skinned woman who I recognized from the Channel Eight news.

‘About Ada?'

‘No.'

‘Could you tell me what it is? I might be able to help.'

‘Thanks . . . but I don't think so.' I stared at my knife and fork, trying to focus on the paper placemat with its advertisements for local merchants: the well digger, two realtors with old Grenville names, the travel agent, the health food store, the blacksmith;
and how many towns still have one of those?

‘Is it something physical?' she persisted.

‘No, and please . . . no twenty questions.' My voice sounded harsher than I had intended. ‘I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be rude. It's just . . . someone I care about has had very disturbing accusations made about him.'

‘Accusations?'

You idiot, Lil! What a stupid thing to say to a detective. Oh well, in for a penny . . .
‘Child abuse.'

‘That is serious. What sort of abuse?'

‘Sexual.'

‘And he's denying it?'

‘He doesn't have to. I know he's innocent.'

‘That can happen,' she offered, her words carefully chosen. ‘And when it does, the damage from the accusation can be as bad as if it were true.'

‘Exactly,' I agreed. ‘Once the thought is planted in people's minds, that so-and-so is a pedophile, it doesn't matter if it's true. Your reputation is ruined.'

‘How do you know he's innocent?'

‘I know him too well. If that had been going on I would have known.'

‘OK, let me play devil's advocate. I've been involved in a lot of child-abuse cases, and the last person to know, or to suspect, is the person closest to the perpetrator. Often the wife or mother . . .'

I met her dark-eyed gaze. She so reminded me of my oldest, Barbara, a tough-as-nails casting agent, brutally direct and honest. She'd say it was part of the job, I think it went the other way, it was part of her and the job fit like a glove.

‘Was this something recent?' she continued. ‘Or in the past?'

‘Past.'

‘And now someone's made an accusation?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have they filed a complaint?'

‘No, and they won't.'

‘Why not?' Gently prodding.

‘Mattie, I really would like to confide in you, but I haven't thought this through and it's not like you're a disinterested party.'

‘Lil, if a crime has been committed, and a child has been hurt, someone needs to know about it. Because the thing about child abuse is if the accusations are true, perpetrators repeat. So you may not be talking about one child, but many.'

I watched as the waitress returned with our sandwiches. She had been one of Bradley's patients when she'd been a little girl; they all had. I'm sure she'd played with the toys and read the picture books we had always kept in the kiddies' corner of the waiting room.

‘Tell me about that,' I said. ‘If someone were molesting children, how do you know? I mean, if you don't catch someone . . . where's the evidence? You have the child's word, but children can lie. And now you have all these people saying they were molested as children, but didn't remember it for years. Can that really happen?'

‘Repressed memories. It's controversial. A few years back people took repressed memories at face value; now there's a lot more skepticism. Basically, you need some form of corroborative evidence to make a charge stick.'

‘But if something took place fifteen or twenty years ago, that seems hard.'

‘Almost impossible, unless evidence was taken, in which case you can run DNA and either confirm or rule out . . . Someone has made an accusation against your husband?'

I couldn't look at her. I had been deliberately dropping hints. She had picked them up and made the logical connections. ‘Yes.'

‘Have they asked for money?'

‘No,' I said, surprised at the question. ‘Why?'

‘Just thinking through the options. If they haven't gone to the police and they haven't asked for money . . . Do they have a therapist putting them up to it?'