“Quicker than going through channels.”
We set our bags in the entryway and I looked around while Dwight switched on lights and turned up the heat.
Jonna’s taste seemed to have run to genteel Old South: drop-leaf side tables, brass candlesticks, an old hand-pieced patchwork quilt used as a wall hanging, lots of polished mahogany. Most were reproductions of antique pieces, though no doubt some of them would turn out to 16 be authentic. Old but still beautiful oriental area rugs lay atop wall-to-wall carpeting.
A framed sampler hung opposite the quilt. The linen was tattered and badly foxed and the embroidery was so faded that I had trouble reading that it had been made in 1856 by “Eliz. Morrow. Age 10 yrs. 7 mos.”
“That’s new since my time,” said Dwight, reading over my shoulder. “I bet she’s the ghost.”
“Ghost?”
“At the Morrow House, where Jonna worked. It’s supposed to have the ghost of one of the Morrow daughters, who died of a broken heart during the Civil War.” He put his arms around me and, in an effort to ease our fear and tension over Cal, said, “Would you die of a broken heart if I got shot?”
I didn’t want to joke about something like that. Instead, I turned in his arms and let my lips meet his. His jacket was unzipped and I slid my arms inside to feel the warmth of his body as we kissed again. Only thirty-six hours since he left yesterday morning, yet it felt as if we’d been apart for weeks.
He kissed me again and said, “I’m glad you came.”
Before we could get into the specifics of just how glad we were to see each other, I heard a sharp bark from deeper in the house.
“Bandit,” Dwight said. “I’d better let him out.”
I tagged along past the dining room (Sheraton table, centerpiece of artificial fruit, lyre-back chairs, glass- fronted china cabinet, two oil portraits), through the kitchen (corner breakfast table, dated oak cabinets, standard appliances), out to the utility room (usual coat hooks, washer, dryer, closed cabinets). The dog was cute—a small terrier with brown eye patches that did look a bit like a bandit’s mask. Dwight told me that he was only a year old and lived in this large wire crate whenever Jonna and Cal were both away. He barked at me a couple of times, then wiggled his little docked tail to show he really didn’t mean it.
Dwight let him out into the fenced backyard and kept the door open for me. “Come meet one of the neighbors.”
We walked across the frozen ground and I saw a white-haired man sitting at the window of the house next door with a dim reading lamp over his shoulder. Dwight gestured for him to open the window. “Mr. Carlton, this is my wife. She came up to help us look for Cal.”
“A pleasure, ma’am,” he said with old-fashioned cour-tesy. “Although a sad occasion.”
“Mr. Carlton’s keeping an eye on the house in case Cal comes back or anything odd happens.”
“That’s very kind,” I said. “Thank you.”
“No bother. This is where I usually sit to read anyhow.”
It was too cold for an extended chat through an open window so we followed Bandit back inside, where Dwight discovered that his hands were black from the fingerprint powder left on the doorknob. He picked up the duffel bag I’d packed for him and announced that he was going to take a shower and change into fresh clothes.
There was a powder room off the entry hall and a full bath that serviced both bedrooms above.
I followed him upstairs to Cal’s room with its single twin bed, and that’s when Dwight finally realized that yes, Houston, we did have a problem.
“I guess you’re not going to want us to sleep in Jonna’s room, are you?”
I shook my head.
“That’s okay. You can have Cal’s bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I don’t suppose it opens up?”
He gave me a blank look.
“You take your shower. I’ll check.”
While Bandit sat outside the bathroom door, I went down to lift one of the sofa cushions and discovered that we were in luck. There were sheets and extra blankets in the linen closet upstairs. Only one extra pillow, though, so I grabbed Cal’s as well.
I tried not to let myself dwell on his room—the boyish treasures, the books, the posters, the school papers on his desk, the once loved, outgrown teddy bear on a bottom shelf. My heart turned over, though, when I caught sight of a champagne cork on his nightstand and realized he had kept a souvenir from our wedding last month.
Unlike many children of divorce, Cal had no illusions that his parents would ever get back together. They had separated before he was a year old, so he had no memory of Dwight as part of a threesome. With his base in Virginia secure with Jonna, he had been okay with our marriage and seemed ready to fit me into his North Carolina family. But now that Jonna was gone?
Pushing down my fears, I busied myself with the task at hand. The coffee table and a couple of chairs had to be shifted before I could open up the couch. Oddly enough, it already had sheets and a blanket in place, and I saw a short dark hair where the white sheet had been folded back over the top of the blanket. I knew Jonna had worn her hair long. Had her guest been a man or a woman? I pulled the sheet back and saw another short dark hair.
And pulling back the sheet also revealed that whoever slept here last had used a musky perfume with floral over-tones. Something sweet. Not magnolia or roses. Honeysuckle? Gardenias? It was too faint to be certain.