Winter's Child

just as if she were a teenager again coming home from school.”

“She still has a key?” Eleanor asked.

“Well, of course she does. Both my daughters . . .” She choked up as the realization hit her anew that now she only had one daughter.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“At two in the morning? I’m sure Kenneth would have liked that.”

“Mrs. Shay,” said Dwight, and from his tone, I knew he was about to lose it again.

“She knew about Jonna, Dwight, and she was heartsick. Said she knew it was going to turn out bad.”

“Knew what was going to turn out bad?”

“She wasn’t making sense. She said that Jonna would be a ghost now, too. She would be a guide to freedom.

That the trains were running and Jonna would be on one, riding to glory and freedom. Her voices had told her so.”

“Did you ask her about Cal?”

“I tried, Dwight. I really tried. She said he was asleep in the arms of Jesus.”

Ice formed around my heart. “Oh God!”

“No, no,” she assured me. “He’s not dead and not hurt, because she wanted me to give her some crackers and soda for him. She took a banana, too, and she said there was one more thing she wanted for him, but she would have to be a ghost to get it. It was all such a muddle. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was her voices.

They had told her that she had to watch out for the bloodhounds. Can you believe that? Bloodhounds! Nobody in this town has a bloodhound and the trains quit running years ago. I tried to tell her that, but she said she had to keep him hidden till it was safe to bring him out.

She promised me that she would bring him back. I told her he must be scared and cold, but she said no, that she and Jesus were keeping him warm.” She looked at 22 Eleanor helplessly. “And you know she was never religious. It’s those voices in her head.”

“She would have to be a ghost?” Dwight asked.

“That’s what she said, but it was just nonsense. It was so distressing. I’m sure this is not good for my heart.”

“Did you come over to Jonna’s house last night and take that teddy bear from Cal’s room?”

“Of course not!”

“So it was Pam. Bandit knew her. And she knew the house because she stayed there last week.”

The doorbell rang and I hurried down to answer it. I expected it to be Agents Lewes and Clark. Instead it was two attractive women, who looked to be a couple of years older than me. They were expensively dressed in an understated way—wool topcoats, cashmere scarves, high-heeled boots. One carried a large dish garden of mixed green plants in a beautiful ceramic bowl. I recognized a prayer plant, a peace lily, and some variegated ivy. It was accented with a huge white silk bow.

“Is Mrs. Shay receiving callers?” one of them asked.

“We’re old friends of Jonna’s. I’m Lou Cannady.”

“And I’m Jill Edwards,” said the other.

It would appear that church was over.

C H A P T E R

24

It is better to be envied than pitied.

—Herodotus

“Come in,” I told the two women. I took the plant and, after making sure the bottom was completely dry, set it on the hall table beside the funeral home’s guest register. “Mrs. Shay hasn’t come down yet, but I’m sure she would want to know you’re here.”

“Are you one of the Anson cousins?” asked Lou Cannady as she signed the register. She automatically peeled off the numbered tab beside her name and stuck it on the dish garden so that next week sometime, Mrs. Shay would know exactly who should be sent a graceful little handwritten note of thanks for it.

“No, I’m Deborah Knott, Cal’s stepmother.”

“Really?” said Jill Edwards. “Is there any news? Everybody’s so worried.”

“Nothing official,” I said.

Her small china blue eyes swept over me, and I knew she was cataloging my clothes, my hair, and my looks, which was okay since I was doing the same with both of them. The Three Musketeers had not been three of a 22 kind. Jonna had been a brunette and easily the prettiest of the three. Jill was a natural blonde with a square face, while Lou Cannady had a long thin face and dark red hair. Both women had the ease and confidence of those born to privilege. And yes, it might be the small-town version, but it was no less real than what I’d seen drifting in and out of chic stores in midtown Manhattan after Mother died and I tried to run away from school, from family, and, most of all, from a world she no longer inhabited.

In a demonstration of long familiarity, these two hung their coats in the hall closet before I could offer to take them and moved into the living room, almost as if they were the hostesses.