“Hello,” the old man said, giving her a friendly little wave, a pass of gray wool gloves with brown leather palms.
“Hello.” Cate wiped her eyes again, remembering that people in small towns always said hello. She had been in Philly too long. When he drew closer, she asked, “Am I in your way?”
“No, not at all.” The old man smiled pleasantly, his teeth even, and brushed back a sparse, flyaway white thatch that had fallen over his lined forehead. His light blue eyes flashed with liveliness behind his bifocals, and he had a bony nose, pink at the tip. “Pardon me, but aren’t you…Deirdre’s daughter, Cate?”
Cate’s felt her lips part. “Yes.”
“My, my. You have your mother’s good looks.” The man smiled again, offering his handshake. He was tall, almost six feet one, and too thin, even in a navy blue down jacket. He wore tan Timberlands with his brown slacks. “How nice to meet you, finally. My name is Ed Pell.”
“Hello, Ed,” Cate said, though she didn’t recognize the name.
“Deirdre was very proud of you. My condolences on this very sad day.”
“Yes, thank you.” Cate felt mystified. “How did you know my mother?”
“Deirdre was an old friend of mine, a very dear friend. We knew each other after you left for college.”
Cate thought back. “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”
“You were too upset to see anything that day.”
Mr. Pell’s eyes strayed to the grave, and Cate watched them move across the headstone, reading it. After a moment, he said, “It’s funny, all the fussing and the fighting, the things that matter so much in life, all come to nothing, in death.” He grew suddenly sad, the crease from his nose to his chin deepening. “Excuse me, would you?”
“Of course.”
He shuffled to the head of the grave in the snow, and Cate reached out to support his elbow as he leaned slowly over and placed a bouquet of pink carnations at the foot of the monument. “All my love, dear,” he said softly.
And she almost didn’t believe the answer.
CHAPTER 36
Cate found herself sitting on a worn brown plaid couch in the small, cozy living room of Mr. Pell’s apartment, waiting for him to return with the tea. Handmade bookshelves filled with plastic-covered biographies, history books, and mystery novels bought at library sales lined the room, many still bearing the yellow stickers of Sherlock Holmes. Amateur photographs of local landscapes, enlarged and mounted on foamcore, covered the paneled walls. The rug was a shaggy brown, and lamps on the end tables had heavy wooden bases. Across from the couch sat an old TV and a matching plaid chair, on which an overweight gray tabby slept in an oblivious ball.
“Here we are.” Ed entered the room with a tumbler of ice and a can of generic cola. He’d taken off his coat and, with his brown slacks, had on a maroon sweater vest over a white shirt, well-worn but spotless. “I’m out of tea. Is Coke okay? It’s a classic bait and switch, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks.” Cate rose, accepted the glass, and set it down on a cork coaster on the table.
“Do you mind if we share the couch?” Ed came around the coffee table and gestured at the cat. “I can’t disrupt Mr. Puggy. He looks asleep but he’s on the job, you know. He’s a paperweight, for chairs.”
Cate smiled. “How old is he?”
“He’s seventy-five. I’m fifteen.”
Cate laughed, and so did Ed.
“Well, this is nice to have you here,” he said, patting his leg and leaning back, regarding her through the bottom half of his bifocals. “You do look so much like Deirdre. Yes, you’re almost a carbon copy.” Ed searched her face in a way that managed not to be creepy. “You have her blue eyes and the exact same color of her hair. You’re both lovely women.”
“Thank you.”
“She was so proud of you, as I said. Of your record as a student. And she was so thrilled that you were going to law school.”
“So you knew her just before she died.”
“Yes.”
Cate felt a twinge. Her mother’s life insurance had paid for her tuition at Penn Law. She never could have afforded it otherwise.
“How she would have loved to see you become a judge, even with your troubles of late. I’ve been following them in the newspaper.” Ed shook his head. “Up here, Philadelphia seems like a different world, with its murders and such.”
“Oh,” Cate said, surprised. She hadn’t realized that he knew she was a judge. Bait and switch indeed.
“Oh now, I can see I’ve gone and upset you. My apologies.” Ed frowned. “I can be too blunt. My wife always says that.”
“Your wife?” Cate glanced around. It was clearly a man’s apartment, everything set up for one.
“I’m a widower. My wife, Melinda, died three years ago. I met her at a photography class I was teaching. Did you come up for the day, today, to visit Deirdre?”
“Uh, no. I’ve been up-” Cate started to explain, then stopped herself. “How did you meet my mother?”
“I used to be an investigator. Here, I brought this out to show you. It’s my favorite snap of us.” Ed pulled a curled photograph from his sweater vest. “Don’t judge my photographic abilities by it, please. We took it with the self-timer on the camera. Set it on a ledge at a custard stand, on the boardwalk.”
“The boardwalk?” Cate took the photo. It was of her mother and Ed, both grinning broadly, their cheeks pressed together. The sun shone high in a cloudless blue sky and shimmered on the sea behind them. They were giggling, their arms around each other, their love palpable. Cate couldn’t get over it. Her mother, with this man. And happy, even After.
“I have many, many pictures of your mother.”
“You do?” Cate asked, gazing at the photo. She held it under the low lamplight, with wonderment.
“Boxes and boxes. She was my favorite subject.” Ed nodded, his mood lifting. “That one was taken on a trip to the Jersey Shore. Atlantic City.”
“My mother went to Atlantic City? I didn’t think she went anywhere.”
Ed frowned behind his bifocals. “Don’t be so hard on her. It was very hard for her to be happy. You must know that.”
“I do,” Cate said, oddly chastened.
“I believe it was what did us in, ultimately. She just couldn’t permit herself to be happy again after her baby died, that way. She thought the fire had something to do with it. The fumes. I think she was right.”
“It may have. If the government had paid them sooner, she would have moved in a minute. So how long did you see her for?”
Ed squinted, thinking. “We met the spring of ’87 and saw each other for the next year and a half. I asked her to marry me on my birthday. I told her the best gift she could give me was her heart, for the rest of my life. So I blocked her in. She had to say yes.” Ed laughed.
“And she did?”
Ed nodded, unmistakably proudly and Cate tried to process the information.
“So you saw each other for a year and a half and even got engaged, and she didn’t tell me? I talked to my mother every other day, at least.”
