her if—when—her bishop found out what she had agreed to do.
Emil held up well throughout the meal and dessert, but by the time Paul poured them coffee, his face was gray and strained. “Paul,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ve overdone it a bit. Could you…”
Russ pushed his chair back. “We ought to be going.”
“No, no,” Emil insisted. “I need a little help, but Paul would love to visit some more.”
“Do me a favor,” Paul said, turning to Clare as he pulled Emil’s chair away from the table and guided him to his feet. “Take the dogs for a turn around the meadow. They haven’t had a chance to get much exercise since we’ve gotten home. I’ll be down as soon as I’ve gotten Emil all set.”
Russ glanced at Clare. “Sure,” she said. She looked around the glass-topped table at Margy and Hugh.
“Not me,” Margy said. “I’m going to sit here and digest that wonderful meal.”
Hugh smiled apologetically at Clare. “Can you manage without me, Vicar? I hate to sound like a weed, but I’ve got allergies on top of allergies. My medication’s holding them at bay, but if I go strolling through all that goldenrod, I’ll turn into a giant inflated sinus. I won’t bore you with the details. It would be too disgusting.”
Clare laughed. “That’s fine. You two save some coffee for us.”
The men scraped their chairs away from the table as she stood, and, as if they had been eavesdropping, Gal and Bob bounded over. Russ and Clare both called their good-nights to Emil, who was making his way with difficulty through the French doors.
“After you,” Russ said, sweeping his hand toward the edge of the patio. She stepped into the grass, the dogs dancing ahead. “So,” he said. “This Hugh seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah.”
“You been seeing much of him?” He fell into step beside her.
“We met at Peggy’s party, that night I…the night you came to get me. He called me a few days later and asked if we could get together next time he was in Saratoga.” She shrugged. “So here he is. It’s our first time out together.”
“Oh.” He yanked a cluster of goldenrod off its stalk and flicked it, piece by piece, into the air. “You think this is going to go someplace?”
She looked him square in the face. “I thought,” she said, speaking deliberately, “that it would be a good idea for me to start dating. It doesn’t much matter with whom.”
He looked down, brushing the goldenrod fuzz off his hands. They walked on in silence. The dogs flushed a red-winged blackbird off its perch on a maple sapling and leaped about wildly, trying to catch it. “I understand you visited Leo Waxman before he went into rehab,” he said after awhile.
She welcomed the change of subject. “I felt like I had to apologize to him—for dropping him. You know the state’s fired him for not reporting the PCB contamination in the quarry pool. Although I understand there are hardly any traces of it now.” She tugged at a stem of Queen Anne’s lace and snapped it off. “They’ve confirmed it was planted there?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Do you have any idea who did it?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to tell.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I know it wasn’t my mother. If she had done it, she would have done it right, and stopped the project cold.”
She laughed.
“He’s going ahead with the construction. Did you know that?” he said.
“Who?”
“Opperman. He’s renamed the business BWI/Opperman and hired some guy from out of state to act as the general. He bought the land outright, too. No more leasing.”
“Peggy’s sisters sold it to him?”
“I guess after everything that happened, they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.”
“Huh. What do you want to bet he got the fire-sale rate?”
He laughed shortly. “He’s one of those guys who can fall into a pile of manure and come up with a fistful of diamonds.”
She paused. The sun had dropped below the mountains while they had been eating, and the gathering thunderheads were underlined by the dull red glow of the sunset’s echo. The dogs, nosing into a woodchuck hole, were making snuffling noises. She breathed in the smell of the long, ripe grass. “It’s beautiful out here.”
“Yeah.”
“I feel so bad for her.” He didn’t ask her to whom she was referring. “It was like she was poisoned by the contamination in the water. And it spread all around her, like a sickness. Everyone lost. No one won.”
“Opperman did.”
She swished the stalk of Queen Anne’s lace through the tall grass. “Yeah, well, like you said.” She paused. “He did win, didn’t he?” She looked up at Russ. “He’s got total control now—of the business, the land, the project.”
Russ nodded.
“What you said about not knowing how Peggy knew Chris Dessaint?”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t there any connections between his life and hers?”
