looking for?”
“Yeah. Reminds me. Someone broke into Soupy’s parents’ house.”
“He didn’t report it.”
“What a shock.”
“Probably just some drunk kids.”
“Maybe.” I told her about the microfilm photograph I had seen at the clerk’s office, how all but one of the seven spelling-bee girls beaming with Sister Cordelia would, years later, have their homes broken into on bingo night.
“My mother’s house didn’t get broken into,” Darlene said.
“Maybe she was next.”
On the wall behind her head hung a framed aerial photograph of Starvation Lake. The water was indigo in the middle of the lake, shimmering to pale green along the shoreline. Pelly’s Point jutted into the water, evergreens leaning out from the bluff. Darlene’s father had ordered the photo for her from a shop in Suttons Bay. She had kept it because it came from him, although she said she didn’t know why she needed a picture of the place she had lived in all of her life, since it never changed anyway. I looked for our houses. There they were, next to each other, the big yard where I’d once tried to kiss Darlene lying between.
“Tell me,” I said. “Did your mother ever hear from someone supposedly doing a history of St. Val’s?”
Darlene thought about it. “When would this have been?” she said.
“Couple of years ago maybe.”
“If she did, she didn’t say anything to me.”
“Your mom wouldn’t have.” I told her about the woman who had called Soupy’s mom. Money had been offered, I said.
“God,” she said. “All these strangers.”
“What’s going to happen to you, Darl?”
“What do you mean?”
“If Dingus doesn’t keep his job.”
“I don’t know. With Mom gone… I don’t know.”
“I hope you stay.”
Darlene picked up our mugs and put them in the sink. Then she came and stood next to me. “My aunt Millie called,” she said. “She said Bea was acting like she’s getting ready to die or something.”
“What?”
“They spent yesterday afternoon basically getting her affairs in order. Went to see a lawyer about her will and took a bunch of money out of the bank.”
So it wasn’t even shopping and cribbage. Same old Mom. I could see Millie going along with it, standing by Mom’s side, then going home and rushing to the phone.
“She’s safe for now,” I said.
Darlene sat against the table facing me. “If I had just picked up my mom’s call, maybe we’d all be OK now,” she said.
“No, Darlene,” I said. “This is not your fault, or mine.”
Her eyes were filling with tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“The rug. It’s ruined.”
“What rug?”
“Me Sweet Ho.”
“Who cares?”
“I care.”
“OK.” I stood, put my hands on her shoulders. She looked up at me.
“I never told you,” she said. “Your mom was going to give me the rug.”
“When?”
“A long time ago. Before you went to Detroit.”
“Why?”
“Because… I loved it. Because I loved teasing you about it. Because it reminded me of all the fun we had together as kids, in your house and my house, out on the lake, up in the tree house. They were sweet places.”
“They were.”
“Bea wanted me to have it so I could”-Darlene put a hand to her mouth, swallowed a sob-“so I could have it fixed. So it would say Home Sweet Home. So I could, we could…”
“So you and I could have it in our house.”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No. No. Everything-there’s a reason.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.”
She reached down and grabbed me by the belt and pulled me up against her. I wasn’t sure I wanted this yet, wasn’t sure I wanted to believe in this again. But I didn’t stop her when she rose on her toes and kissed me, while she undid my belt and unbuttoned my plaid flannel, while she pulled my T-shirt out of my jeans and shoved it up on my chest. “Wait,” I said, but she bent and flicked the tip of her tongue along the edge of my rib cage.
I woke up on my back, the living room carpet scratchy on my shoulder blades. Darlene was awake, looking at me from where her head lay on my chest.
“Gus,” she said. “What do you believe?”
“I don’t like the guy, but I don’t think Breck-”
“Not that. I mean believe. Like faith. My mother, she believed in God, the church.”
“Did you know your mom had a rosary at the office? Kind of like the one in my mom’s lockbox. She’d set it next to her sometimes when she was writing obits.”
Darlene closed her eyes. “What about you?”
“I don’t have a rosary,” I said.
“Please don’t.”
I looked around the room. My gaze fell again on the aerial shot of the lake.
“I don’t know.” I said. “I guess I believe in doing my best, trying to be a good guy, be nice to my mom, take care of the people I love. Is that good enough?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” I said, “I hope it is. It has to be.”
“Why? Why does it have to be?”
I knew the answer. I’d known it for a while, but I hadn’t had the guts to say it.
“Because I’m here, Darlene,” I said. “I’m here because you’re here. You’re why I came back after screwing up in Detroit. OK? Is that good enough?”
She picked her head up from my chest. I looked at her.
“Really?” she said.
“Yeah.”
She leaned up and kissed my neck, then let her head fall back on my breast. My eyes drifted back to the picture of the lake. I thought of how we used to lie on our backs on the raft in summer, our eyes closed, our fingertips touching. I thought of Mrs. B, fingering her rosary beads, silently praying, then setting the rosary down and typing. I thought of my mother’s rosary, hidden away in a metal box.
I nudged Darlene.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hm?”
“Why didn’t that body wash up on Torch Lake?”
She slid a hand down my belly and let it rest on the inside of one leg. “God, I’m tired. What are you talking about?”
“Sister Cordelia. You know. The sheriff who got re-elected way back when? Who solved the nun’s murder?
