Rowan did look beautiful, if you stopped thinking about the fact that she didn’t talk. Her hair was growing long, almost to her shoulders. Beautiful and absent. Gone.
“Well, you know,” Mona said, “I’ll probably keep coming until you give me a sign. I know that doesn’t absolve me, or make it okay to be the pest of a shocked and mute person. But when you’re mute like this, you sort of force people to act, to make choices, to decide. I mean, people can’t just let you alone. It’s not possible. It’s not really kind.”
She let out her breath, and felt herself relax all over.
“I’m too young to know certain things,” she said. “I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I understand what happened to you. That would be too stupid.” She looked at Rowan; the eyes looked green now, as if picking up the tint of the bright spring lawn.
“But I … ah … care about what’s happening to everybody, well, almost everybody. I know things. I know more than anybody except Michael or Aaron. Do you remember Aaron?”
That was a dumb question. Of course Rowan remembered Aaron, if she remembered anything at all.
“Well, what I meant to say was, there’s this man, Yuri. I told you about him. I don’t think you ever saw him. In fact, I’m sure you didn’t. Well, he’s gone, very gone, as it stands now, and I’m worried, and Aaron’s worried, too. It’s like things are at a standstill now, with you here in the garden like this, and the truth is, things never stand still-”
She broke off. This was worse than the other approach. There was no way to tell if this woman was suffering. Mona sighed, trying to be quiet about it. She put her elbows on the table. Slowly she looked up. She could have sworn that Rowan had been looking at her, and had only just looked away.
“Rowan, it’s not over,” she whispered again. Then she looked off, through the iron gates, and beyond the pool and down the middle of the front lawn. The crape myrtle was coming into bloom. It had been mere sticks when Yuri left.
She and he had stood out there whispering together, and he had said, “Look, whatever happens in Europe, Mona, I am coming back here to you.”
Rowan
She was too amazed to speak or move. And she was frightened to do either, frightened that Rowan would look away. She wanted to believe this was good, this was ratification and redemption. She had caught Rowan’s attention, even if she had been a hopeless brat.
Gradually Rowan’s preoccupied expression seemed to fade as Mona stared at her. And Rowan’s face became eloquent and unmistakably sad.
“What’s the matter, Rowan?” Mona whispered.
Rowan made a little sound, as if she were clearing her throat.
“It’s not Yuri,” Rowan whispered. And then her frown tightened, and her eyes darkened, but she didn’t drift away.
“What is it, Rowan?” Mona asked her. “Rowan, what did you say about Yuri?”
It appeared for all the world as if Rowan thought she was still speaking to Mona, and didn’t know that nothing was coming out.
“Rowan,” Mona whispered. “Tell me. Rowan-” Mona’s words stopped. She’d lost the nerve, suddenly, to speak her heart.
Rowan’s eyes were still fixed on her. Rowan lifted her right hand and ran her fingers back through her pale ashen hair. Natural, normal, but the eyes were not normal. They were struggling….
A sound distracted Mona-men talking, Michael and someone else. And then the sudden, alarming sound of a woman crying or laughing. For one second, Mona couldn’t tell which.
She turned and stared through the gates, across the glaring pool. Her Aunt Beatrice was coming towards her, almost running along the flagstone edge of the water, one hand to her mouth and the other groping as if she were going to fall on her face. She was the one who was crying, and it was most certainly crying. Bea’s hair was falling loose from her invariably neat twist on the back of her head. Her silk dress was blotched and wet.
Michael and a man in ominous plain dark clothes followed quickly, talking together as they did.
Great choked sobs were coming from Beatrice. Her heels sank into the soft lawn, but on she came.
“Bea, what is it?” Mona rose to her feet. So did Rowan. Rowan stared at the approaching figure, and as Beatrice rushed across the grass, turning her ankle and righting herself immediately, it was to Rowan that she reached out.
“They did it, Rowan,” said Bea, gasping for breath. “They killed him. The car came up over the curb. They killed him. I saw it with my own eyes!”
Mona reached out to support Beatrice, and suddenly her aunt had put her left arm around Mona and was near crushing her with kisses while the other hand still groped for Rowan, and Rowan reached to take it and clasp it in both of hers.
“Bea, who did they kill, who?” Mona cried. “You don’t mean Aaron.”
“Yes,” Bea answered, nodding frantically, her voice now dry and barely audible. She continued to nod, as Mona and Rowan closed against her. “Aaron,” she said. “They killed him. I saw it. The car jumped the curb on St. Charles Avenue. I told him I’d drive him over here. He said no, he wanted to walk. The car deliberately hit him, I saw it. It ran over him three times!”
As Michael, too, put his arms around her, Bea slumped as if she would faint, and let herself fall to the ground. Michael collected her and held her and she sank, crying, against his chest. Her hair fell in her eyes, and her hands were still reaching, trembling, like birds that couldn’t light.
The man in the ominous clothes was a policeman-Mona saw the gun and the shoulder holster-a Chinese American, with a tender and emotional face.
“I’m so sorry,” he said with a distinct New Orleans accent. Mona had never heard such an accent from such a Chinese face.
“They killed him?” Mona asked in a whisper, looking from the policeman to Michael, who was slowly soothing Bea with kisses and a gentle hand that straightened her hair. In all her life Mona had never seen Bea cry like this, and for one moment two thoughts collided in her: Yuri must be dead already; and Aaron had been murdered, and this meant perhaps that they were all in danger. And this was terrible, unspeakably terrible above all for Bea.
Rowan spoke calmly to the policeman, though her voice was hoarse and small in the confusion, in the clattering of emotion.
“I want to see the body,” said Rowan. “Can you take me to it? I’m a doctor. I have to see it. It will take me only a moment to dress.”
Was there time for Michael to be amazed, for Mona to be flabbergasted? Oh, but it made sense, didn’t it? Horrible Mary Jane had said, “She’s listening. She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
And thank God she had not sat still and silent through this moment! Thank God that she couldn’t or didn’t have to, and was with them now.
Never mind how fragile she looked, and how hoarse and unnatural her voice sounded. Her eyes were clear as she looked at Mona, ignoring the policeman’s solicitous answer that perhaps it was better she did not see the body, the accident having been what it was.
“Bea needs Michael,” said Rowan. She reached out and clasped Mona’s wrist. Her hand was cool and firm. “I need you now. Will you go with me?”
“Yes,” said Mona. “Oh yes.”
Three
HE HAD PROMISED the little man he would enter the hotel moments after. “You come with me,” Samuel had said, “and everyone will see you. Now keep the sunglasses on your face.”
Yuri had nodded. He didn’t mind sitting in the car for the moment, watching people walk past the elegant front doors of Claridge’s. Nothing had comforted him so much since he’d left the glen of Donnelaith as the city of London.
Even the long drive south with Samuel, tunneling through the night on freeways that might have been
