open and saw Clary walking briskly across the slate to the driveway. Like him, she usually rose and dressed early, even though she didn’t have a law practice to tend to, but they had made love this morning and she was still in her ankle-length red nightgown.
“What did I forget?” he asked her, though her hands were empty.
“Phone call,” she murmured, and he could see the worry on her face.
He nodded. The cordless phone didn’t work this far from its base. He tossed his briefcase onto the passenger seat of his car, thought of the body of the dead psychiatrist that once had lolled there in mangy old blankets, and strolled back to the house. He noticed that there was a perfect line on the grass where the rising sun had melted the frost: The grass was white where it was still masked by the shade from the house and green where the rime had turned to water.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Anise.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
In the kitchen he reached for the phone. “Good morning,” he began, “though I have the distinct sense based on the scowl on my wife’s usually lovely face that you haven’t rung me with good news.” Clary was standing in the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest. Her lower lip was quivering with anger; she looked profoundly unhappy.
“I just saw Reseda. She came by my house this morning.”
“Wonderful! I always want my girls to be friends.” He was absolutely sincere in that he did want all of them-the women as well as the men-to get along. But there was also a layer of black humor rippling just beneath the surface of his remark. He knew that Reseda and Anise would never be close, at least not in the way that most of the women were. Reseda was always going to be something of an outsider.
“It wasn’t wonderful at all.”
“No?”
“No, John. It wasn’t. She believes we killed both Hewitt and the psychiatrist. She said the death of the doctor-”
“Not dead, my dear. Only missing.”
“Presumed dead. It’s been a while.”
“And he has, more or less, fallen off the radar. There was nothing on the news last night-again-and nothing in the paper this morning. He had no wife, no children. A deceptively easy man to forget. That sounded rather harsh-certainly harsher than I meant. I’m sorry.”
He heard her sigh on the phone. “Reseda might not let him be forgotten.”
Once more it crossed his mind that in their enthusiasm they had all moved too quickly. The idea had been gnawing at him. The reality was that half the town already thought everyone in their small group was a little nuts. And while he viewed most of what they did as, well, rather a freedom of religion issue-a First Amendment issue- homicide represented an arguably unnecessary part of their practice. It was one thing to risk sacrificing one of the girls. But homicide? Now that was nasty.
“Well, I’m glad she went to you and not me,” he said finally, knowing-as they all did-that Reseda seemed incapable of reading Anise’s mind.
“She will come to you. Reassure me: There is no evidence?”
He chuckled. “Oh my, Anise, there is almost always evidence if you look in the right place. I’m quite sure if the State Police ever checked my car, they would find traces of the psychiatrist. A tiny hair. A piece of skin the vacuum missed. But they would need reasonable cause to search the car. And I tend to doubt any judge would approve a warrant because Reseda pulled a memory from me and went to the police.”
“She wants this over with now.”
“I do, too.”
“I meant something different.”
“I know what you meant. Reseda wants us to leave the twins alone and move on. Accept the inevitability that a person ages and dies. Well, that’s easy for her to say, given that she is still on the smooth side of forty. I’m on the deeply wrinkled side of… never mind. So are Clary and the Messners and the Jacksons. And you are precariously close to that Rubicon.”
“I think we should do it tonight.”
“Interesting. I was just thinking how we may have been moving too quickly. And now you want us to move faster still.”
“Tonight. Before Reseda can intervene.”
He stood a little straighter. He felt himself growing frustrated and shook his head. He had always tried to view Reseda like a daughter. Lately he had even begun to hope that someday she and Verbena-who still, much to his disappointment, insisted on being called Emily-would both be like daughters to him. And if Verbena was like a daughter, then her twins were like granddaughters. And why would he want to hurt one of his granddaughters? He wouldn’t! Really, what kind of man did Reseda think he had become? No, in theory nothing bad was going to happen to either of Verbena’s girls. Nothing at all. There was a risk. Sawyer Dunmore was proof that there was a risk. But look how the tincture had worked! There was every reason to suppose it would work again. It demanded a lot of blood, no question about it, especially given the number of adults who would be present this time and how much of the tincture would be necessary. But both girls were young and strong. And they fit the recipe perfectly: They were twins, they were preadolescent, their blood had been leavened by trauma.
“Intervene,” he murmured, repeating the word. “That would suggest that Reseda shouldn’t be present. That she really is no longer a part of our little group.”
“I don’t think she is.”
The answer made him wistful; he couldn’t imagine proceeding without her-though clearly they would.
“So, should we?” Anise went on. “I really do want us to try tonight.”
“Yes,” he said finally. “Make the arrangements.”
“But I also don’t want Verbena to wind up like her”-and here the old lawyer heard Anise pausing as she chose her word carefully-“ predecessor in that house. I don’t want her to wind up like Tansy.”
“Heavens, none of us do! But maybe that won’t happen to Verbena.”
“I hope not. I rather like her.”
“I do, too. And she’s a very good lawyer. Good, solid work ethic.”
“But if she does lose one of her children…”
“It will be a shattering blow. Absolutely staggering.”
“Do you think she’ll leave us?”
“She might. But now we know more how to handle such an… an eventuality. And I suspect that she’ll need us more than ever if something should happen to one of the twins. She really hasn’t any family.”
“She still has the captain. At the moment, he is neither dead nor committed.”
“No. But I think you’re correct: We do it tonight and we do it without Reseda. I don’t think we have a choice, as much as I wish the captain were out of the picture. Tell me, have you decided which girl?”
“Absolutely. We should use-”
“No, don’t tell me! Surprise me!” he said, an almost childlike giddiness in his voice. “It will be more interesting that way. It will be more interesting for all of us.” He looked at his watch and realized he would be late for a real estate closing if he didn’t leave soon. “Anise, I need to skedaddle. And I meant what I said: Don’t fret. We’ll iron out the details this afternoon, but go ahead and start preparing for the ceremony tonight.” Then he placed the phone back in the cradle, kissed Clary on the cheek, and strolled out to the car. He noticed the line of frost on the grass had moved a few inches while he was inside and smiled up at the spring sun. He really wondered how anyone couldn’t be happy just to be alive.
Chapter Eighteen
Emily thought Jocelyn Francoeur was more polite than she needed to be-and, perhaps, more polite than she had to be, given the circumstances. Although the idea initially had made Jocelyn uncomfortable, in the end she
