“Daddy, I’ve got notebook paper in my room!” Eve said and ran off to fetch it.
“I guess I knew that, but I forgot,” Emory said. He blinked his red eyes, seemed to wake up a little. When Eve dashed into the kitchen with several sheets of paper, he hugged her. She wriggled in his grasp.
“We have to start the list, Daddy!” She looked up at him sternly.
I thought that Eve had probably been hugged and patted enough for two lifetimes in the day just past.
She began the list herself, in shaky and idiosyncratic writing. I told her how to do it, and she perched on a stool at the counter, laboriously entering the food gifts on one side, the bringer on the other, and a star when there was a dish that had to be returned.
Galvanized by our activity, Emory began making calls from the telephone on the kitchen counter. I gathered from the snatches of conversation I overheard that he was calling the police department to find out when they thought Meredith’s body could come back from its autopsy in Little Rock, making arrangements for the music at the funeral service, checking in at work, trying to start his life back into motion. He began writing his own list, in tiny, illegible writing. It was a list of things to do before the funeral, he told me in his quiet voice. I was glad to see him shake off his torpor.
It was getting late so I accelerated my work rate, sweeping and mopping and wiping down the kitchen counters with dispatch. I selected a few dishes for Emory and Eve’s supper, leaving them on the counter with heating instructions. Emory was still talking on the phone, so I just drifted out of the room with Eve behind me. I pulled on my coat, pulled up the strap of the purse.
“Can you come back, Lily?” Eve asked. “You know how to do everything.”
I looked down at her. I was betraying this child and her father, abusing their trust. Eve’s admiration for me was painful.
“I can’t come back tomorrow, no,” I said as gently as I was capable of. “Varena’s getting married the day after, and I still have a lot to do for that. But I’ll try to see you again.”
“OK.” She took that in a soldierlike way, which I was beginning to understand was typical of Eve Osborn. “And thank you for helping today,” Eve said, after a couple of gulps. Very much woman of the house.
“I figured cleaning would be more use than more food.”
“You were right,” she said soberly. “The house looks so much nicer.”
“See ya,” I said. I bent to give her a little hug. I felt awkward. “Take care of yourself.” What a stupid thing to tell a child, I castigated myself, but I had no idea what else to say.
Emory was standing by the front door. I felt like snarling. I had almost made it out without talking to him. “I can’t thank you enough for this,” he said, his sincerity painful and unwelcome.
“It was nothing.”
“No, no,” he insisted. “It meant so much to us.” He was going to cry again.
Oh, hell. “Good-bye,” I told him firmly and was out the door.
Glancing down at my watch again as I walked out to my car, I realized there was no way to get out of explaining to my folks where I’d been and what I’d been doing.
To compound my guilt, my parents thought I’d done a wonderful Christian thing, helping out Emory Osborn in his hour of travail. I had to let them think the best of me when I least deserved it.
I tried hard to pack my guilt into a smaller space in my heart. Reduced to the most basic terms, the Osborns now had a clean house in which to receive visitors. And I had a negative report for Jack. I hadn’t discovered anything of note, except for Eve’s trip to the doctor. Though I had stolen the brush.
When Varena emerged from her room, looking almost as weepy as Emory, I put the second part of my plan into effect.
“I’m in the cleaning mood,” I told her. “How about me cleaning Dill’s house, so it’ll be nice for your first Christmas together?” Varena and Dill weren’t leaving for their honeymoon until after Christmas, so they’d be together at home with Anna.
Somehow, since my mission was to save Varena grief, I didn’t feel quite as guilty as I had when I’d told Emory I was going to clean his house. But I had a sour taste in my mouth, and I figured it was self-disgust.
“Thanks,” Varena said, surprise evident in her voice. “That would really be a load off my mind. You’re sure?”
“You know I need something to do,” I told her truthfully.
“Bless your heart,” Varena said with compassion, giving me a hug. Somehow, my sister’s unwanted sympathy stiffened my resolve.
Then the doorbell rang, and it was some friends of my parents‘, just back from a trip to see the Christmas decorations at Pigeon Forge. They were full of their trip and had brought a present for Dill and Varena. It was easy for me to slip off to my room after a proper greeting. I took a hot, hot shower and waited for Jack to call me.
He didn’t. The phone rang off the wall that evening, the callers ranging from friends wanting to check on wedding plans, Dill asking for Varena, credit card companies wanting to extend new cards to my parents, and church members trying to arrange a meal for the Osborn family after the relatives had arrived for Meredith’s funeral.
But no Jack.
Something was niggling at me, and I wanted to look at the pictures of Summer Dawn at eight. I wanted to ask Jack some questions. I wanted to look at his briefcase. That was the closest I could get to figuring out what was bothering me.
About eight-thirty, I called Chandler McAdoo. “Let’s go riding,” I said.
Chandler pulled into my parents’ drive in his own vehicle, a Jeep. He was wearing a heavy red-and-white-plaid flannel shirt, a camo jacket, jeans, and Nikes.
My mother answered the door before I could get there.
“Chandler,” she said, sounding a little at sea. “Did you need to ask us something about the other day?”
“No, ma’am. I’m here to pick up Lily.” He was wearing an Arkansas Travellers gimme cap, and the bill of it tilted as he nodded at me. I was pulling on my coat.
“
“See you in a while, Mom,” I said, zipping up my old red Squall jacket.
“Okay, sweetie. You two have a good time.”
I liked the Jeep. Chandler kept it spick-and-span, and I approved. Jack tended to distribute paperwork all over his car.
“So, where we going?” Chandler asked.
“It’s too cold and we’re too old for Frankel’s Pond,” I said. “What about the Heart of the Delta?”
“The Heart it is,” he said.
By the time we scooted into a booth at the home-owned diner we’d patronized all through high school, I was in the midst of being updated about Chandler’s two stabs at marriage, the little boy he was so proud of (by Cindy, wife number two), and the current woman in his life-Tootsie Monahan, my least favorite of Varena’s bridesmaids.
When we had glanced at the menu-which seemed almost eerily the same as it had been when I was sixteen, except for the prices-and had given the waitress our order (a hamburger with everything and fries for Chandler, a butterscotch milkshake for me), Chandler gave me a sharp, let’s-get-down-to-it look.
“So what’s the deal with this guy you’ve hooked up with?”
“Jack.”
“I know his damn name. What’s his business here?”
Chandler and I stared at each other for a moment. I took a deep breath.
“He’s tracing an…” I stopped dead. How could I do this? Where did my loyalty lie?
Chandler made a rotary movement with his hand, wanting me to spill it out.
Chandler had already told Jack several things, operating on his affection for me. But the actual physical effort of opening my mouth, telling him Jack’s business, was almost impossible. I closed my eyes for a second, took a deep breath. “A missing person,” I said.
He absorbed that.
“Okay, tell me.”
I hesitated. “It’s not my call.”
“What do you want from me, Lily?”
Chandler’s face was infinitely older.
