Secrets of Eden

“I do. She’s smart. Funny. She’s going places. She’s not really active in the Youth Group anymore. I wish she were. But she’s a good kid, a good student. She’s usually in the school dramas and musicals. Right now her major form of adolescent defiance is a small stud in her right nostril.”

“Her father let her do that?”

“It was a surprise to both parents. Her father did not take it well,” I said, though I knew he had punished only Alice.

“I remember when I first pierced my ears.”

“Rebellion?”

“Emancipation.”

“Katie will do okay. She’ll get through this.”

“Yes, she will. But I still hate to see in my mind the things she’s probably witnessed in that home over the years. Has she been back to the house yet?”

“No. Some of us-her friend Tina’s mom, Ginny, me-packed the clothes that seemed most useful. Shoes. Sneakers. A nightgown. Cosmetics, some jewelry. But I have no idea if we brought the items that really mattered to her. The right hoodie, for instance. The right jeans. The right teddy bear. Think back to your adolescence and what your room was like when you were fifteen-how many outfits you probably tried on before you found what you really wanted to wear. The piles of stuff on the floor were just unbelievable. The mounds of clothes. The piles of DVDs and CDs and books. The cords for iPods and cell phones and her laptop, as well as her laptop itself. I had no idea which music mattered to her and which didn’t-what she had already put on her iPod and what she was planning to download when she had some time to kill. She actually had a bureau drawer filled with nothing but trolls and tins of jewelry and rub-on tattoos. Maybe she hadn’t touched it since she was seven. But maybe it was the most important thing in the room to her. I just had no idea. None of us did. So at some point Katie probably will go back to the house. She won’t ever live there again, because she’s only fifteen. But she will have to go back inside.”

“Oh, I disagree. She may want to go back. But anyone in the world would understand if she didn’t-if she refused to go back in there. I’m sure you or her friends or other parents would be more than willing to pack everything up for her.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Where will she live?” She seemed to ask the question with great care, perhaps because she was afraid I had been offended when she’d corrected me. Actually, I hadn’t been bothered at all. She had made sense.

“There are options,” I answered. “Her grandparents in Nashua are one possibility. But maybe she’ll live here in Haverill with the Cousinos-with her friend’s family. She might want to finish high school in Vermont and be with the kids she’s known since she was six.”

“And this Cousino family is okay with that?”

“So I gather.”

“Have you talked with Katie?”

“Yes.” This time I did find myself slightly affronted. As her pastor I had visited with Katie both yesterday and today, and so my answer may have sounded a little curt. Afterward I hoped I had sounded only surprised.

“How would you say she was doing?”

“She’s devastated, of course. In shock. But she’s doing what she needs to do,” I answered. It was the first thought that came into my mind. “She’s endured the questions the state police had about her parents, as well as the questions of a social worker and a therapist, and she’s volunteered all the information they could possibly want.”

“Is she incredibly angry with her father?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

She nodded. “But I’m sure she also feels some anger toward her mother.”

“For not getting out?”

“For allowing it to happen. For being a victim.”

“I imagine she’s feeling some of that, too.”

“I’d like to talk to her. She’s one of the reasons I’m here. Do you think that would be possible?”

“It’s certainly possible. But I’m not sure it’s appropriate. She already has a small army of grief counselors- amateurs and professionals-at her disposal,” I said.

“Is the house still a-what’s the expression?-a crime scene?”

“No. The state police and the investigators from the crime lab were done by the end of Monday afternoon. It was pretty obvious what had happened. A lot of yesterday is already a blur, but I think most of the official people were gone by four-thirty or five.”

“Ah, the official people.”

“You know what I mean. The medical examiner. The detectives.”

“Can I see the house? Or is that inappropriate, too?”

“The door’s locked. But I think Ginny has the key, if you’d like.”

“I don’t think like is exactly the right word,” she said. “But I do want to see the inside of the house.”

“A visit to the Book Depository while in Dallas?”

“Something like that.”

I shrugged. “I’ll call Ginny. The two of us can go for a visit.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You’ve been asking me questions for the last half an hour.”

“Just why do you blame yourself for George and Alice Hayward’s deaths?”

“I don’t blame myself precisely,” I told her, careful to keep my voice even, a monotone of reasonability. “But I do fear that I gave Alice permission.”

“To die.”

“Yes.”

“At the baptism you told me about.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you marry them?”

“No. They were married in Bennington years before I met them.”

“Did you want her to leave him? Just kick him out-or get the heck out of that house herself and never go back?”

Yes, I thought, in hindsight I did want her to get out of that house. Briefly, perhaps, I even wanted her to move into mine. Into this parsonage. But of course I didn’t say that. Because no one knew. Because Alice and I had barely even tiptoed around such a notion, even when we were alone in her home and content in the fog of a postcoital torpor-when, usually, all things seem possible and all lovers are optimists.

“I did,” I answered simply. “I kept hoping she would take Katie and run. Go anywhere. Move in with her parents in Nashua. Move in with Ginny right here. Perhaps get a place of her own in Bennington.”

“It’s not that easy. Not emotionally, not financially.”

“I know. She was married to a reprehensible man. She would have needed someone willing to step up and protect her. Still, I wish… ”

“What do you wish?”

“I never want to see a marriage go belly-up.” It was not what I had planned to say, but I had to say something.

“Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder?”

“Something like that. And sometimes I’m afraid that she tried to preserve the marriage for Katie.”

“That’s completely ridiculous, you know.”

“I do. And sometimes I’m afraid that she clung to the marriage because she was afraid she didn’t know what would become of her if she didn’t.”

“The devil she knew?”

“Precisely.”

“What about her friends? What did they want?”

I understood what she was getting at, and she was correct. “I know Ginny wanted her to divorce him. She