Four Steps to the Altar Page 13

  “My house? No. Cassie said they were staying here.”

  “Nope. Not here.”

  “Then where are they? And where’s your mother?”

  “Look, Mr. Kennedy,” the kid said, inhaling a deep drag. “I don’t know where the girls are. My mother’s out. On a date. She won’t be home till late.”

  Marilla’s mother was not one of Andrew’s favorite people. She’d had three sons (fathered by different men) before Marilla and was rumored to spend more time looking for a husband than at her job as a checkout clerk at the local IGA. But Cassie had convinced him the woman was harmless and that, more importantly, Marilla needed a friend. So he’d allowed the friendship because Marilla seemed like a nice, shy girl, and who was he to condemn a child because of whispered stories about her mother? He supposed he should have been a better parent.

  “If you find them,” the boy continued, “tell Marilla she’s grounded.” He took another drag then closed the door in Andrew’s face.

  Andrew stood there a moment, wondering what on earth he had been thinking to have allowed Cassie to visit that secondhand-smoke-riddled, unchaperoned environment. But instead of pounding on the door, instead of threatening to call the cops, Andrew took a deep breath, regained his balance, and knew that there was only one person who could help him now.

  “Cassie is missing,” he said when Jo opened the door. “Please. Please help me find her.”

  Jo froze for a moment, the fright that sparked in her clear green eyes matching the fright that sparked in his.

  And then, because she loved Cassie too, because she loved him and he surely did love her, Jo grabbed her jacket from the back of a kitchen chair. Without a word she locked the door and followed him toward his car.

  23

  Whenever anyone died it all came back to Lily in a horrid rush: the police at the door, the description of the tuna-fish can, the damn smell of lilacs.

  Frank was on the telephone in the kitchen of the Forbes family home, while Lily sat in the parlor, trying not to stare at the rectangle of dust on the dark hardwood floor where the hospital bed for his mother had been. His father sat next to Lily and explained that Frank and Mr. Harding removed the bed right after the ambulance had left, right after Eleanor had gone.

  She took his hand, held it in hers. “I am so sorry, Mr. Forbes,” she said.

  “Please,” his tired voice whispered, “call me Ralph.”

  “Ralph,” Lily said.

  From the other room, Frank’s low voice carried. “Just a little while ago…. Yes, it was a blessing…. The church will take care of the arrangements.”

  Lily didn’t remember making any calls. She supposed Aunt Margaret had done it.

  “May I get you something, Ralph?” she asked. “Coffee? Tea?”

  “Brandy would be nice. Eleanor let me have it once in a while. After she took sick I sneaked it sometimes. I think she knew it, but she never scolded me.”

  Lily patted his hand.

  “It’s in the dining room,” Ralph added.

  She stood and went into the other room. On the ancient sideboard a crystal decanter of brandy stood, its bronze liquid gleaming, as if it had been waiting for Ralph and for this moment. Next to the decanter was a single snifter. Lily’s hand trembled a little as she began to pour.

  “Thank you,” Frank said, coming up behind her. “Thank you for doing this. For being here.”

  She set down the glass. She turned around, wrapped her tiny arms around him, felt his envelop her. “This is so sad,” she said.

  “It will be fine,” Frank replied. “She doesn’t hurt anymore. Worse than her physical pain was the pain of knowing that her ‘boys’ were watching her suffer. She called us that,” he added. “She called us her ‘boys.’ ”

  Lily wondered if that included Brian but didn’t ask.

  “And Dad will be fine,” Frank said, reassuring himself. “He’ll be lost for a while, but he will be fine. He’s a strong man.”

  “Like you.”

  Frank didn’t answer.

  “What can I do?” Lily asked. She slid from his hug, touched her fingers to his cheek. “To make this easier for you?”

  He smiled. “Just be here for me. I know that might sound insignificant, but, believe me, it’s not.”

  And then Lily remembered that she couldn’t be here and be with Antonia too. The muscles in her back, her arms, her legs all tightened. “Will you hold a wake?”

  “No. Just the funeral. Probably Thursday morning. Mother never liked much of a fuss.”

  Thursday morning, she thought. Tomorrow was Tuesday. Which meant she could spend tomorrow with Antonia, couldn’t she? Frank wouldn’t need her, would he? But then, what about Wednesday? She bit her lip, stopped herself from crying out.

  “I know this is a busy time for you,” Frank said, as if reading the anguish as it danced across her face, “what with that woman here. Who is she, anyway?”

  Ah, she thought. That woman. Her front-tooth caps dug more deeply into her lower lip. What had she said to Antonia in front of Frank? What had she said to Frank?

  “Is she a new client?” he asked.

  She said, “Yes, in a way,” because she didn’t know how else to respond. She might be good at scheming, but she was lousy as a liar.

  “I heard you say you’ll go with her to Tanglewood tomorrow,” Frank continued. “Is she part of the kindergarten teacher’s wedding?”

  “Well, in a way,” she said again.

  He smiled. “So you can spend the night here.”

  Lily blanched. “Here?”

  “Well,” he replied, “yes.”

  Besides the other complications, Lily had never been in a house where someone had just died, at least not to her knowledge. Would strange things happen? Would the lights dim or the curtains flutter or would doors close of their own accord?

  “It would be a comfort to me,” Frank said. “And to Dad.” His eyes became small pools of sadness.

  “Oh, Frank,” she said, taking his hands.

  “You’d have to stay in the guest room, though,” Frank said, nodding toward the parlor. “So Dad won’t be upset. Please, Lily?”

  “Well,” Lily said, her thoughts colliding again, “I suppose…”

  “It would be great, Lily. Then you’d be here tomorrow when everyone starts coming.”

  She blinked. She turned back to the sideboard and picked up Ralph’s glass. “What do you mean?”

  “The minister, the funeral director, the church ladies, you know.”

  No, Lily didn’t know. She’d been through this only three times in her life: when her parents died and she’d been too young and too grief-stricken and too guilty to remember; when Aunt Margaret died and had pre-arranged it all; and when Reginald died and Lily had been overtaken by Antonia, who took care of everything without consulting Lily.

  As for Frank, he’d obviously forgotten that she had plans tomorrow. “But,” Lily tried to speak very gently, “you know I have to work tomorrow, Frank. That I have to pick up that woman and go to Tanglewood.” She said the words that woman as if Antonia was a stranger. She wondered if Frank’s mother now knew the truth about Lily Beckwith, if she had some sort of universal insight now that she was on the “other side.”

  “You can’t change that until the afternoon?”

  Just as Lily looked back at him, the small pools of sadness spilled down his cheeks. She reached up and dabbed his tears. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I’ll stay here tonight. But why don’t I just scoot out in the morning and take care of business. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  She hated what she was saying, hated the deceit. She hated herself even more when Frank so trustingly said, “Okay, Lily. Thanks.”

  Jo was grateful that Andrew let her drive, that he admitted he was too upset to get behind the wheel. The busier she could be, the less time she’d have to feel guilty that she had not warned Andrew that Cassie was changing, hiding things from him, growing up maybe too fast. The les
s time she’d have to let worry overtake her, the way it had overtaken Andrew, who was rigid and pale and who swung sharply from utter silence to bursts of short sentences:

  “Why did she lie, Jo?”

  “Where the hell is she?”

  “Why hasn’t she called?”

  He held on to his cell phone as if it were his lifeline. No one would guess that Andrew was famous for leaving his phone at home or at the office or in the pocket of a jacket that he’d worn three days earlier. It was another way, he supposed, in which he was a lousy parent.

  They went directly to the police station, where Jo asked for Russell Thomas, Elaine’s former brother-in-law. Jo had known Russell and Lloyd, Elaine’s ex-husband, most of her life, because they’d all grown up together: Russell, Lloyd, Frank, Brian. And Jo.

  Sergeant Thomas was not in, he worked days, the man behind the old desk said.

  “Call him. Please,” Jo said. “This is an emergency. A child is missing.” Then she remembered Marilla. “Two children. Girls.”

  “If it’s two, they’re probably together somewhere. Run away maybe. One’s what you have to worry about. One girl missing and we’ll put out an Amber Alert.”

  Jo glared at the man.

  “I’ll call Russell,” he said, and picked up the phone.

  She wanted to call Elaine. And Sarah. Then her mother. She would not bother Lily, who had enough to worry about right now. Jo wanted to call the others for support, but she supposed if she was going to be Cassie’s stepmother she needed to learn how to handle these situations with Andrew. On their own. No other opinions interjected.

  Oh, God, she thought, this is so hard.

  While they waited for Russell to arrive, Jo dropped coins into the vending machine that stood at the far end of the room. Andrew paced, then sat, then paced again. Jo watched as a small cup filled with coffee, doubtful Andrew would drink it.

  “We need to speak with Marilla’s mother,” she said, carrying the paper cup to the bench where Andrew had sat down again.

  “She’s on a date,” Andrew hissed as he took the cup. “Her son has no idea where they are. If the mother cared, she wouldn’t have left him in charge, would she?” He stared up at the ceiling, his words not really succeeding at blaming anyone but himself.

  “Andrew,” Jo said, sitting beside him. “Maybe the girls are fine. Maybe this isn’t the first time. All those other nights…when Cassie said she was at Marilla’s…when you and I were together…”

  His head rotated like the girl’s head in The Exorcist. “What?” he asked, as if to say, How dare you?

  “Well,” Jo said, her body stiffening, “all I’m saying is maybe the girls have done this sort of thing before….”

  Andrew stood up, threw his full coffee cup into the tin wastebasket. Brown liquid splashed against the putty-colored wall. “So Cassie lied to me, is what you’re saying. Well, I’ll believe it when she tells me. And not before, okay?”

  Jo leaned back against the wall and wished she’d never kept anything from Andrew, wished she hadn’t tried so hard to be the perfect stepmother that she surely wouldn’t be.

  24

  Lily spent the night with her eyes open, braced, listening for Eleanor’s soft bumps to permeate the night. She stayed on a small twin bed tucked under the eaves in the guest room that had once been Eleanor Forbes’s sewing room and now smelled faintly of damp wool and cedar. She lay on her left side, face toward the wall, so she wouldn’t have to look at the wire dress form that stood in the corner, the shape, no doubt, a replica of Eleanor’s dimensions. She had been taller than Lily thought.

  When her parents were killed, Lily had slept until noon the next day.

  “She’s in shock,” she’d overheard the doctor say to Aunt Margaret. “It’s nature’s way of protecting her from the pain.”

  The doctor was wrong. Lily might have slept, but she’d still felt the pain, still felt the thud of each wrecking-ball word that had swung into her stomach, leaving a raw and empty hole.

  “They’re…both…dead.”

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Billy telephoned the next morning. Someone at the academy had told him about the accident.

  “I can’t talk to him, Aunt Margaret,” Lily had cried. “Please, don’t make me talk to him.”

  He was at the funeral, amid the flags and the formations and the damn gray, cold stone buildings. Lily clung to Aunt Margaret and tried not to look at Billy. How could she look at him when it was his fault, their fault, for loving each other?

  Two days later, Billy showed up at Aunt Margaret’s house. Through the closed back door, Lily said she could not see him, not then, maybe not ever. If they hadn’t wanted to be together, if they hadn’t had sex that afternoon in the shed behind the garage…if, if, if.

  Lily thought she’d never be able to have sex again, surely not with Billy. Without sex, they couldn’t have the kids they’d talked about. It would be Lily’s penance, if there was such a thing.

  Billy came over half a dozen times and called nearly twice that. But Lily wouldn’t see him, she wouldn’t talk to him. Within weeks the visits and phone calls tapered off, then ended.

  In the meantime, Lily skipped her period. The next month she skipped it again. When the third time came around, Lily stood in her underwear at the full-length mirror in her bedroom. She studied her belly, decided it looked swollen, wondered what to do. That’s when Aunt Margaret had walked in.

  “Are you?” Margaret asked.

  Lily quickly dropped her hand. “Am I what?”

  “Pregnant?”

  It had amazed Lily that her aunt was that perceptive, until the woman said she noticed that the number of Tampax in the bathroom cabinet hadn’t dwindled lately.

  Lily started to cry and Margaret made an appointment with Dr. Moore. Margaret said this was too important to leave up to “chance” by using one of those new home pregnancy tests.

  Pulling the cedar-smelling blanket up to her quivering chin now, Lily realized it had been years since she’d allowed herself to think about Dr. Moore’s office, about the small, square waiting room that had been packed with women and round bellies, women whose eyes all seemed fixed on Lily, who had looked so much older than she was.

  Aunt Margaret had waited in the car.

  When Lily was called she took a plastic cup into the ladies’ room and emerged with a urine sample. Later that day, a nurse from Dr. Moore’s office had called and said, “Negative.”

  Lily was both relieved and disappointed. Three days later, she packed her bags for college. The night before she left, Lily started her period. It had lasted her “normal” four-and-a-half days, as if nothing had happened.

  She’d never missed a period since then, had never figured out what it was all about, though she suspected it was some kind of female hysteria. Or just simply “shock,” as the doctor had said.

  As daylight sneaked into the room, Lily rolled onto her other side, facing Eleanor’s mannequin. She wondered what Frank’s mother would have thought of Lily if she’d known all her truths. Then she wondered what had ever happened to Billy, and if he’d ever known that Lily was sorry.

  With those last thoughts, Lily closed her eyes and finally went to sleep, saying a quiet prayer of thanks to Eleanor for her silence through the night.

  “You guys are weird.”

  Cassie’s voice woke up Andrew, then Jo. Both had fallen into exhausted sleep, still sitting in anticipation on the sofa in Andrew’s cottage.

  Andrew stood up quickly, as if he and Jo had been caught making love, which they had not. It would have been difficult to make love from opposite ends of the overstuffed relic.

  “Cassie,” he said, shaking off the sleep. “You’re home. Oh, God.”

  “Well, yeah. I need school clothes. For today.”

  She quickly headed toward the stairs. Andrew glanced at Jo, then back to his daughter. “Where have you been?”

  Cassie stopped mid-ste
p. “I slept over Marilla’s.” She continued up the stairs, her back toward her father.

  “No,” Andrew said sharply. “Where have you really have been?”

  She paused again.

  Jo wanted to say something. She wanted to leap from the sofa and say it was okay, Cassie was safe, which was all that mattered. Wasn’t that what Andrew had said over and over throughout the night, that if only Cassie was safe, he could deal with the rest?

  But watching as he stood there, hands raking his hair, Jo knew that it wasn’t her place, would never be her place, to interfere.

  “Cassie?” he called.

  Cassie’s little-girl shoulders began to shake.

  That’s when Jo felt an ache that crawled down to her toes. She thought about Cassie’s makeup and the short shirt and the attitude. And, for the first time, Jo wondered if this was all her fault—not for trying too hard to be a perfect stepmother, but for being there at all, for being the sole reason Cassie’s life was going to change.

  25

  Jo told Andrew she was going home to get ready for work, though he hardly noticed as he moved toward Cassie, toward the stairs.

  Slipping from the cottage, Jo took her cell phone from her purse.

  “I know it’s early, but please come get me,” she said to Elaine. “I’m at Andrew’s and don’t have my car.” Then she leaned against Andrew’s Volvo there in the driveway and breathed a moment, in, then out, averting tears that wanted to fall.

  She looked back to the cottage, to the small window set into the backdoor, to the Cape Cod café curtain that wouldn’t let her see what was happening inside, wouldn’t let her hear what Andrew was saying or how Cassie was responding.

  Turning her head slowly away, Jo called the police station. Cassie Kennedy was fine, she said, she had returned home, apparently it had been a misunderstanding.

  Then Jo closed her eyes and quietly waited for Elaine.

  “Honey,” Andrew said as he sat next to Cassie on her small bed, in the room where she’d grown from a little kid into a twelve-year-old young lady who, God help her father, now wore a bra and eyeliner and skirts that were too short. “Tell me what’s happened. Tell me what’s going on.” He didn’t, however, really want to talk; he would have preferred to cry along with her for everything that was happening in both their lives, for the things he understood, and the things that he did not.