“Yes, Father?”
He was pouring more tea for them and frowned when he noticed she had hardly touched hers. But instead of lecturing her on the healing qualities of his special tea, he said, “What can you tell me about breakfast with your daughter?”
“Oh, that. It was nice,” she lied, not wanting to confess that they hadn’t even ordered breakfast before Maggie bailed out on her. “I told Maggie that perhaps we could do Thanksgiving.”
“And? I hope she won’t make an excuse that she has to be off profiling some important case, will she?” He seemed so concerned that her relationship with her daughter work out. With all these other problems to deal with, Kathleen felt guilty that she had given him one more concern.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. She seemed very excited about it,” she lied again, wanting to please him. After all, he often said the end justified the means. He had so many pressures of his own. She couldn’t add to that. Besides, it would all work out just fine with her and Maggie. It always did.
“I’m excited about cooking a real holiday meal. Thanks so much for suggesting it.”
“It’s important for the two of you to repair your relationship,” he told her.
He had been encouraging her to do so for months now. She was a bit confused by it. Usually, Father emphasized that members needed to let go of family. Even tonight with Martin and Aaron, he had lectured that there were no fathers and sons, no mothers and daughters. But she was sure Father had a good reason-if he was insisting it must be for her own good. He probably knew that she needed to repair the relationship before they left for Colorado. Yes, that was it. So that she could truly feel free.
Just then, she wondered how Father knew that Maggie was a profiler for the FBI. She was quite certain she hadn’t told him. Half the time, she couldn’t even remember what it was called. But, of course, Father would have taken it upon himself to know. She smiled to herself, pleased that he obviously cared a great deal about her to bother with such a small detail. Now she really would need to make an effort to have Thanksgiving with Maggie. It was the least she could do if it meant that much to Reverend Everett.
CHAPTER 30
Maggie leaned her forehead against the cool glass and watched the raindrops slide down her kitchen window. Wisps of fog descended upon her large, secluded backyard, reminding her for a second time in two days of swirling ghosts. It was ridiculous. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She believed in things she knew, black-and-white things she could see and feel. Gray was much too complicated.
Yet each time she viewed a dead body, each time she helped slice into its flesh and remove what were once pulsating organs, she found herself reaffirming-or perhaps it was hoping-that there had been something eternal, something no one could see or even begin to understand, something that had escaped from the decaying shell left behind. If that’s the way it worked, then Ginny Brier’s spirit, her soul, was in another place, perhaps with Delaney and Maggie’s father, all of them sharing the horrific last moments as they swirled in wisps of gray fog around the dogwoods in her backyard.
Jesus! She grabbed the tumbler of Scotch off the kitchen counter and drained what was left, trying to remember how many she had drunk since getting home from the morgue. Then she decided if she couldn’t remember, it didn’t matter. Besides, the familiar buzz was preferable to that annoying hollow feeling she couldn’t shake off.
She poured another Scotch, this time noticing the wall calendar that hung alongside the small corkboard above the counter. The board was empty except for a few pushpins with nothing to hold up. Was there not one goddamn thing she needed to remind herself about? The wall calendar was still turned to September. She flipped the pages, bringing it to November. Thanksgiving was only days away. Had her mother been serious about cooking a dinner? Maggie couldn’t remember the last time they had attempted a holiday together, though whenever it was, she was sure it had been disastrous. There were plenty of holidays in her memory bank she would just as soon forget. Like four years ago when she spent Christmas Eve on a hard, lumpy sofa outside the critical care unit of St. Anne’s Hospital. While others had been buying last-minute gifts or stopping at parties for sugar cookies and eggnog, her mother had spent the day mixing red and green pills with her old friend, Jim Beam.
She stood at the window again, watching the fog swallow entire corners of her landscape. She could barely see the outline of the pine trees that lined her property. They reminded her of towering sentries, standing shoulder to shoulder, shielding her, protecting her. After a childhood of feeling lost and vulnerable, why wouldn’t she spend her adulthood looking for ways to be in control, to protect herself? Sure, in some ways, it had also made her cautious, a bit skeptical and untrusting. Or as Gwen would put it, it made her inaccessible to anyone including those who cared about her. Which made her think of Nick Morrelli.
She leaned her forehead against the glass again. She didn’t want to think of Nick. Her mother’s accusation that morning still stung, probably because there was more truth in it than she wanted to admit. She hadn’t talked to Nick in weeks, and it had been months since they had seen each other. Months since she had told him she didn’t want to see him until after her divorce was final.
She checked her watch, took another sip of Scotch and found herself reaching for the phone. She could stop at any second, she could hang up before he answered. Or maybe just say hi. What harm was there in hearing his voice?
One ring, two, three…She would leave a brief and friendly message on his answering machine. Four rings… five-
“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Yes,” Maggie said, not recognizing the voice. Maybe she had the wrong number. It had been months, after all, since she had dialed it. “Is Nick Morrelli there?”
“Oh,” the woman said, “is this the office? Can’t it wait?”
“No, this is a friend. Is Nick there?”
The woman paused as if she needed to decide what information a friend was entitled to. Then finally she said, “Umm…he’s in the shower. Can I take a message and have him call you back?”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll try back another time.”
But when Maggie hung up the phone, she knew she would not try back anytime soon.
CHAPTER 31
Tully hoped his gut instinct was wrong. He hoped he was being an overprotective father who was simply overreacting. That’s what he kept telling himself, yet before he left the morgue he made a copy of Virginia Brier’s driver’s license photo and stuck it in his back pocket.
He had called Emma earlier to let her know he wouldn’t be home until later, but if she wanted to wait for dinner, he’d pick up a pizza. He was pleased when she asked for lots of pepperoni on her side. At least they would be sharing a meal together, perhaps one they could both enjoy. Between the two of them, their culinary skills didn’t extend much beyond grilled cheese sandwiches with soup. Sometimes when Tully was feeling a bit adventurous he’d throw a couple of chunks of meat on the grill. Unfortunately, he had never been able to figure out how to keep it from becoming a shrunken, charred hockey puck, and there wasn’t much treat in that.
Their small two-bedroom bungalow in Reston, Virginia, was a far cry from the two-story colonial they’d lived in in Cleveland. Caroline had insisted on keeping the house, and now Tully wondered if Emma would ever want to come back here after spending Thanksgiving vacation in her old room. Only recently had this house begun to feel like home, though it had been almost a year since they’d made the move. No matter how much he complained about this parenting stuff, he couldn’t imagine what this house, the move, the new town and new job-what any of it
