he had asked.
While Mrs. Shay bustled around reheating the soup, chattering about her health, the weather, and where on earth Jonna could have gotten herself to, Dwight examined the kitchen for some sign of Cal. A rubber baseball sat amid oranges and apples in the fruit bowl on a side counter and there was a colorful picture on the refrigerator of an ornately decorated tree and wobbly cursive let- ters that spelled out “Merry Christmas to Nana—Love Cal.” But there was no jacket or gloves; and, most tellingly, there was no place set for him at this table.
Mrs. Shay filled his bowl and seated herself in the chair opposite his, clearly prepared to continue making polite conversation. Knowing that he would get no more information out of her the moment he told her Jonna was dead, he said, “When you talked to Jonna Thursday morning, what exactly did she say?”
“Exactly?” Mrs. Shay frowned. “Well, let me think. We talked about the snow. The boy who usually shovels my walk has the flu. He was supposed to send his brother, but he never came and I almost slipped going down my steps that night. The brother finally came this morning and now here it is snowing again. I’ll be so glad when Cal is old enough to do it for me. He’s such a nice child. And so mannerly. Don’t you think Jonna’s doing a good job with him?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Never mind that she had tried to turn Cal against him for remarrying. “Did she say what her plans were for the day?”
“She was going over to the Morrow House to work on the inventory. There hasn’t been one in twenty years and so much has been donated to the house since then. It was my grandparents’ home, you know. I don’t remember my grandfather, but I was well in my teens when my grandmother died so I spent many a night there before we closed the house and the Historical and Genealogical Society took it over. Did you know she’s their new president? She’s really looking forward to tomorrow. You haven’t touched your soup, Dwight. Don’t you like it?”
He looked down at the steaming bowl. He had not felt 11 hungry before, but now the aroma of creamed vegetables and smoked ham made him suddenly ravenous.
Gratified by his evident enjoyment, Mrs. Shay rattled on about how she used to take the girls over when she was helping the SHGS document the original furnishings that had been there during her own girlhood, especially those that had belonged to the pre–Civil War Morrows.
“They loved to run around and hear their little voices echo in those big empty rooms.” She crumbled a half cracker over her soup and dipped her spoon in.
“Grandmother sold quite a few of the later things, but she had a firm sense of history and she wouldn’t part with any of Peter Morrow’s possessions, not even the ivory toothpick he brought with him from Philadelphia back in eighteen-twenty-three,” she said proudly. “I plan to leave my great-grandmother’s rocker to the house and Jonna is going to return the portrait. We may not have as much money as some of the new donors, but
Dwight tried to draw her out about Jonna’s friends and whether there was anyone she would have left Cal with.
“No, dear. If she’s gone away for a couple of days, she’s surely taken Cal with her. Otherwise, he would be here with me. Not that she does go away without him very often. And not that she would go away this weekend with her big day coming up tomorrow. I keep telling her she should get out more, meet new people. I understand that you’ve remarried?”
Dwight nodded.
Mrs. Shay pursed her lips. “I was younger than Jonna when my husband died and left me with two difficult little girls to raise. It was too much to ask of another man, although there were two or three who professed themselves willing.” She gave a coy smile. “Jonna only has the one and Cal’s so easy. But she doesn’t want to hear me talk about it.”
“So she isn’t seeing anyone?”
“I didn’t say that and it’s hardly proper for you to ask, is it?”
“Cal’s my son, too, Mrs. Shay,” he reminded her. “And I need to find him.”
“I shall certainly have Jonna call you as soon as they return.” She pushed back from the table and stood up.
“Now, are you sure I can’t offer you dessert or something to drink?”
Dwight knew that this was his cue to excuse himself and leave and there was nothing he would have liked better. He looked down at his watch.
12:20. Less than forty-five minutes before he was due to turn up at Paul’s office. It was now or never. He took a deep breath. There was never an easy way to say what she had to be told.
“Are you all right?” she asked when he continued to sit there.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid I have bad news.”
As he spoke, her eyes grew wide, then filled with tears.
She sank back down in her chair and shook her head in disbelief and denial.
“No,” she whimpered. “Not Jonna. Oh, please, not Jonna.”
“Is there someone I can call for you?” he asked. “Your other daughter?”
Knowing that Jonna considered her sister, Pamela, a 11 total flake, he wasn’t sure how much comfort she could be to Mrs. Shay or how quickly she could get here from—where was it? Tennessee?—but she, too, would have to be told and surely she would come.
“Not Pam,” said Mrs. Shay, trying to choke back the sobs that nearly strangled her. “My cousin Eleanor. She’s right around the corner.”
She managed to give him the number. The cousin was shocked and said she would come immediately. True to her word, she was there within minutes, a sturdy woman with salt-and-pepper hair who folded Mrs. Shay in her arms and rocked her back and forth. Mrs. Shay lifted her ravaged face to Dwight.
