Town in a Blueberry Jam

They were piled on the table. One of them lay open, its papers strewn about.

In an instant Candy’s confusion was pushed aside as her anger rose. “You did take them!” she shouted, looking back at him, her gaze narrowing. “You broke into our house!”

“I had to,” he said, his voice deep and husky. “I had to know what was in them.”

“But Cameron — ”

“It’s all there,” he interrupted. “Didn’t you look at them?”

“Of course I looked at some of them but — ”

“I called him,” Cameron went on, the words tumbling out of him now as Candy glanced at Sebastian J. Quinn, then moved curiously toward the table. “I called him and told him I knew what he had done. I thought he was coming after us.”

“Called him? Who’s coming after you?” Maggie asked, a touch of fear creeping into her voice.

Cameron pointed, his eyes darkening eerily. “Him. He did it. He murdered my mother.”

“He... he what?” Maggie gasped.

“He did it, Mom,” Amanda piped in from where she stood near the doorway. “It’s true.”

“I don’t understand.” Maggie looked hard at Cameron. “What are you talking about? Your mother’s not dead. She’s still alive. I talked to her just last week. How could he have killed her?”

“Not that mother,” was Cameron’s answer.

Maggie turned to her daughter, shaking her head, still not understanding. “Amanda? What the hell is going on?”

Candy had reached the table now, and as her gaze swept across the papers on the table she suddenly realized what Cameron was saying. It all came rushing in, engulfing her like a wave, overpowering her, hitting her so hard and fast it almost hurt — all the missed clues, all the puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to fit, all the facts that had seemed so confusing but now became so clear.

She spun toward Cameron, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open.

She saw it now — the hair, the eyes, the posture — so like those of the man in the photo that rested on Sapphire’s piano, the man who stood beside the young Susan Jane Vincent, smiling easily, wearing a USM sweatshirt.

Candy raised a trembling finger, pointing it at Cameron, shaking it a little as the words spilled out of her. “Oh my God! You’re Sapphire’s son!”

Thirty-Two

“What are you talking about?” Maggie looked at Candy as if her friend had gone daft.

“That’s it! Don’t you see!” She jerked her finger wildly. “Sapphire Vine is his real mother. ”

“Whose real mother?”

“Cameron’s! He’s her son... Susan Jane Vincent’s son... aren’t you?”

She had turned back to face the teenager, her finger still held out toward him, though after a moment she forced herself to lower it.

In the stunned silence that followed, all eyes turned toward Cameron, who backed farther into the corner, seeking shadow, wary of the attention. Only his eyes shown out, bright and glistening in the muted light, mirroring his uneasiness.

Maggie tilted her head as she looked at him, her face a cloud of confusion that slowly, inexorably gave way to realization. Her mouth fell open, and for a rare moment she was totally, utterly speechless.

Even Sebastian appeared to be stunned. He sat stone still in the chair to which he was tied, studying the teenage boy with disbelieving eyes. Only Amanda seemed unfazed by the revelation, though she stood anxiously with her arms folded across her chest as she watched the others watch her boyfriend.

For a moment all were still. The only sounds were the crashing of the waves and the howls of the building storm outside the walls. Then Maggie’s voice, trembling and uncertain, broke into the silence. “It can’t be. It’s not possible.”

“It is, Mom. It’s true.” Amanda clutched her mother’s arm. “I didn’t believe it at first either, but Cameron told me all about it. Sapphire was his real mother.”

“But how can that be?” Maggie looked as if she were about to collapse as her eyes found Cameron’s. “You’re so handsome and so smart and so nice! And — ”

She clamped a hand over her mouth when she saw the look on Cameron’s face. She instantly regretted her words. “Oh, Cameron, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that — ”

“I know what you meant, and you’re right.” He wavered a moment, as if he were about to tip over, then lowered the gun and let out a long breath. “I know what you’re thinking. I understand how you feel. I was shocked myself when I found out. But it’s the truth. I’ve seen the proof.”

“But... how long have you known?”

He shrugged, as Maggie had seen him do so many times before, and for a moment he was the old Cameron she had known since he was a child.

“A few months now. She told me right after my eighteenth birthday.”

As Maggie questioned Cameron, Candy was barely listening, for her mind was racing back through all that had happened over the past few days. She finally spoke up. “It all makes sense, in some strange way,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s why you were so upset at Gumm’s that day, isn’t it? That was the first time you heard of Sapphire’s death. Of course you were shocked.” She paused, still thinking. “And that’s why you were staying up in Sapphire’s attic.”

Cameron cleared his throat, still shifting uneasily. “Yeah, I, um, stayed up there a few times. She liked to have me around. She said it made her happy, after being separated from me for so long. But I wasn’t crazy about it. I did it mostly for her.”

“And that young man we saw in the photo on Sapphire’s piano, and in her photo album — that was your father, right?”

“His name was David — David Squires,” Amanda explained. “He and Cameron’s mother were students together at USM.”

“USM!” Candy slapped her forehead with the flat of her hand. “I should have seen the connection!”

“What connection?” Maggie asked.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?” Maggie looked more confused than ever.

“The night of the pageant. When Bertha Grayfire introduced the judges, she said that one of them had taught at USM — the University of Southern Maine.”

“But that was...” Maggie’s voice trailed off as she thought it through. After a moment her gaze was drawn to the figure tied to a chair at the center of the room. “You don’t mean...?”

Cameron nodded, his face pale. “That’s why I’m here... with this.” He nodded down toward the rifle. “And that’s why he’s tied up there. He killed her.”

Candy shook her head. Much of what was going on was still so unclear. “But why? Why would he have killed her?”

Cameron stared hard at Sebastian J. Quinn, who was slowly shaking his head, his eyes hard again, unemotional. “They were all there together, on the campus nineteen years ago,” Cameron said, the tension deep in his voice. “My father was getting his master’s degree in English lit with a specialty in poetry. Apparently he was a pretty good poet. And that man” — he nodded with his chin toward Sebastian J. Quinn — “was his faculty advisor.”

Candy let out a breath of frustration. “And to think I never even opened his file! I was so distracted by what I had found out about Herr Georg that I barely checked up on anyone else.”

“It’s all there.” Cameron indicated the file that lay open on the table. “I went through it over and over again this afternoon. I didn’t even know it existed until you found it in that filing cabinet last night. I stayed up in that attic