I looked around the kitchen. Except for a bowl and spoon in the sink, it was completely tidy. I opened drawers: utensils neatly compartmentalized. Cupboards, ditto.
She probably ran the dishwasher only once a day because Thursday’s dirty breakfast dishes were still there, but no pots and pans.
Over the phone was a calendar with squares for each day. Today was supposed to have been a playdate with someone named Jason. There had been a PTA meeting earlier in the month. A notation about choir robes last Sunday. A dental appointment next Tuesday. “Lunch w/L&J” was penciled in for the coming Wednesday.
What really stood out on the calendar, though, was a line drawn through this weekend from Thursday to Monday, a line Jonna had labeled “MH.” Saturday and Sunday, yes. Those were the winter opening days for the Morrow House, according to Dwight. And the director had told him they usually worked a third day, either Friday or Monday. So why would Jonna have five days marked off like this?
Out in the utility room, all the laundry products were stored according to their function, with dog care items 18 on their own shelf. No jackets or scarves on the coat pegs, but a pair of little-boy boots stood on a mud tray beside the door, and the sight of them tore at my heart. The temperature was below freezing. Was Cal out there somewhere this bitter winter night, shivering with cold and fear? Surely no woman that he trusted would be so cruel?
I finished drinking my juice and put the glass in the dishwasher. Then, with Bandit at my heels, I crept back through the living room and up the stairs, grateful for the carpeted steps. Between the reflective snow that covered the ground outside and the streetlight down the block, I had no trouble finding my way without switching on extra lights. Dwight and Paul had made a lot out of the fact that someone had entered the house and gone up to the bathroom without stumbling over furniture, but once my eyes adjusted, it was no problem.
I went on down the hall to Jonna’s room and felt along the inner wall till I located a switch. A lamp came on beside the double bed, a perfectly made double bed. Despite the evidence of the couch, my first impression wasn’t wrong. She
WINTER’S CHILD
Martha could have decorated this room, though.
There were more frills here than downstairs—ruffles on the floral bedskirt and pillow shams, ruffles on the curtains—and the furniture was of the same style: four-poster mahogany bed and matching chest and dresser.
No computer on the corner desk or, now that I thought about it, anywhere in the house. Luddite or too frugal to buy one?
The desk had clearly been examined by the state police and I wondered what they had taken. One of the desk drawers was for hanging files. The one labeled “Bank”
was empty and I didn’t see a checkbook either. It might have been in her purse, though. Had her purse been in the car with her?
Something else to check on.
A diary would have been helpful, but who keeps one these days? If Jonna had, it was no longer here, and from the things her house was telling me, I doubted she was the type. A quick thumb-through of the hanging files in her desk drawer showed little of the sentimental. Cal’s folder contained his medical records, his school reports, group pictures from kindergarten and first grade, and one funny Mother’s Day card. Unless those two state agents had taken them, she did not seem to have saved personal letters from friends or family either.
On the other hand, there were several photo albums on the long shelf above the desk. No boxes stuffed with unlabeled snapshots for Jonna. Each picture was carefully dated and the people identified. No denying it: she had been a beautiful bride, and the picture of her and Dwight 18 on their wedding day took my breath away. I had forgotten how skinny he’d been back then. And that regulation haircut! Her dark hair had been much longer then, and in their picture, one strand had fallen over the front of her white satin gown almost to her waist. She was looking down at her flowers and presumably at her new wedding band, too. He was looking at her.
With love in his eyes.
Despising myself for the ugly jealous thoughts that coursed through my head, I quickly returned that album to the shelf and took down a later one. Ah! Pictures of Cal shortly after his birth, a tiny infant held by a man’s big hands. Dwight’s hands. But blessedly, no head shots of Dwight in this album. It covered the first five years of Cal’s life even though there were other occasions. Birthdays. Christmases.
I thought of my brothers’ wives. Most of them could produce a foot-high stack of pictures to document their firstborn’s first year. No way would a whole year fit in one album, much less five. Which is not to say Jonna didn’t dote on Cal as much as they doted on my nieces and nephews. He has the sunny good nature of a child who is loved and his room was cheerfully messy, which would indicate that she had not too rigidly imposed her own standards on him. Tidiness might have been instinctive to her and not necessarily a conscious choice.
As I flipped through the pictures, two faces kept reappearing: Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards. At a lake, at a luncheon, at a baby shower. There was a studio picture of Jonna with an older woman—Cal’s other grandmother?
