him.
I opened my mouth to rebut his blunt assessment, but I made myself think over what he’d said. Poppy hadn’t exactly been a rocket scientist, but she was shrewd, and practical, and a follower of world and local events. And she was articulate in voicing her ideas and opinions. That’s why she’d been tapped to be an Uppity Woman. Poppy was-had been-a very different animal than Lizanne, who admittedly had very limited interests. Lizanne’s intellectual boundaries had never seemed to bother any man before, as I reminded Cartland now.
“You know as well as I know, Roe, that being attracted to someone physically is not the same as being her constant companion.”
“But you’re not Lizanne’s constant companion. You go out almost every night to this or that meeting, and everyone knows you’re counting on a political future.”
“And the reason I did all that was at least partly to get away from Lizanne.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone running for office to avoid a spouse.” Cartland wanted to be our next state representative.
“I’ve done a lot of things lately I never thought I’d do.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I took a step away from him. “When did you last see Poppy?”
“I saw her last night. John David was going to be at some meeting, so I stopped by.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Went to the front door. I figured it might as well be an open visit, since it wasn’t going to last that long, not with John David due back within the hour. I helped her bathe Chase,” he said tenderly.
I could have beaten him on the head with a baseball bat. I was willing to bet Lizanne could have used some help bathing Brandon and Davis. Why did this man think he was any smarter than his wife? And I’d been considering voting for this jerk!
“When did you leave?” I asked after an appreciable pause to regain control.
“I guess about… eight-thirty. She was wearing a bathrobe, since she’d gotten wet bathing Chase,” he said dreamily. “Her hair was all curly from the humidity in the bathroom. She told me she’d think about divorcing John David. I think she would have done it.”
“And who do you think killed her?” I asked, conversationally throwing cold water on his fantasies.
“Her husband,” Cartland said, and he didn’t look like an overweight lawyer anymore. He looked dangerous. “I know it was John David.”
“And how do you know that?”
“She must have told him,” Cartland said reasonably. “She must have told him she was going to leave him for me, and he killed her for it.”
“Where were you all morning?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Roe! I went to my office and worked until about eleven, when I left to speak at the Rotary Club in Mecklinburg.” Mecklinburg was about fifteen miles away. “I was there, in front of about forty people, for the next hour and a half.”
I was going to have to talk to Lizanne soon, and I dreaded it. Those embroidered straps were still stuffed into my purse, and if Lizanne hadn’t gone to Poppy’s house and thrown them down in the driveway to let Poppy know she knew the situation, I was a Jersey girl.
“Okay, get out.”
“What?”
“Get out. I’ve listened to as much as I’m going to.”
Cartland looked stunned. “But Roe, I was trying to explain-”
“Go to hell. You’ve just told me you’ve been cheating on your wife, who is a good friend of mine, with the wife of my brother-in-law; and you are evidently assuming that your wife would be happy to raise two sons of yours on her own, while you raise John David’s boy! You actually think Poppy would have left John David? You’re a moron! Get out! And keep your grief to yourself!”
I had herded Cartland to the front door, snapping at his heels like a sheepdog, and now he left in something of a hurry. I slammed the door shut and glowered at it.
For a few minutes, I hovered outside Phillip’s door, afraid we might have wakened him. But there was no movement from the room, no rustle of sheets. Struck with the sudden fear that he’d crawled out of the window, I opened the door a crack, and was reassured by the sight of a big bare foot hanging off the end of the bed.
I eased the door shut as silently as I could, then I hovered in the hall, trying to think of what I should do next.
Amazingly, it was only 5:00 p.m. Since it was November, the daylight was almost gone, but I thought of some errands I needed to run. I hastily wrote a note and stuck it to Phillip’s doorknob. After checking his clean clothes for sizes, I pitched them back in the dryer and set off for the small branch of Davidson’s that Lawrenceton was proud to have. I got my brother a package of underwear, a bundle of socks, a pair of jeans and a pair of khakis, and two shirts, a T-shirt and a nice sports shirt, and a jacket. Crossing over to Wal-Mart, I quickly purchased a comb and brush, a toothbrush, and a razor and some shaving cream. I grabbed some gloves, too; his hands had been bare.
Satisfied that I could clothe and clean him, I made one more stop, at the grocery store. I had a dim awareness that teenage boys ate a lot, but I wasn’t really sure what they ate a lot of. I got some frozen pizzas, some Bagel Bites, and some egg rolls. I got some milk, too, and a bottle of soda.
By the time I’d unloaded all this booty and folded Phillip’s dry clothes, it was seven o’clock. I called Mother to find out what was happening. She sounded exhausted and tearful, and she said John wasn’t feeling very well. After a long, long “interview” with Arthur Smith, John David had arrived at the house to assume his role as chief mourner. Mother thanked me from the heart for running him to ground and getting him to go into SPACOLEC with Bryan Pascoe. “Avery was really angry for a while, but I think he sees now that you were right,” Mother said.
“I’m sorry if you’ve had to take the fallout from people who were really mad at me,” I said. The thought did cross my mind that it seemed to take very little to make Avery angry with me. “I had to stay with Phillip, to get him straightened out.”
“I do wish all this hadn’t happened at the same time.” I knew Mother had to have been really distressed even, to voice that much complaint about something that simply couldn’t be helped. “John told Avery that you’d done more practical things to help our family than had even occurred to him. John, that is.”
“That was sweet of John,” I said, abruptly aware of how fond I was of my stepfather. He was a better man than my real father. I felt cold and disloyal for that thought instantly, but I made myself face it and admit it was true. God wasn’t going to strike me dead for admitting my own father wasn’t a perfect man.
“How long is the boy staying?” my mother asked. Her voice was a little stiff. She had always had a hard time with the existence of another child of my father’s, but I hoped she would get over it right now.
“I think at least for this week. He’s out for Thanksgiving break now. I got the impression that things are going pretty badly between Dad and Betty Jo.” No point in spelling out my father’s peccadilloes. As far as my mother was concerned, it was an old story. “Phillip got caught up in the middle of that. He made his way over here, and I hope he can stay for a while. He’s so big now, Mother, you wouldn’t recognize him.”
“Just like Phil, messing up a second chance to get it right,” my mother said.
This was such a vulnerable way to put it, and her voice was so unhappy, it was hard for me to believe I was listening to the same stiff-backed woman who had created her own fortune after my dad had left her. The shock of Poppy’s death had cracked Mother wide open.
“Have Poppy’s parents come in yet?”
“No, they’ll be here in about an hour, I think. Then poor John will have to go through another emotional scene.”
“Why?”
“Well, he feels obligated.”
“No, Mother. John David is obligated, not his dad. You make John go to bed, tell him John David and Avery can handle the Wynns. In fact, they can all go to Avery and Melinda’s. For that matter, I can put the Wynns up. I have another bedroom, and all I have to do is go make the bed.”
That would make my life even even more confusing, but I wanted to help my mother any way I could.
“I’ll give you a call back on that. But you’re right,” she said resolutely. “John needs to rest more than he needs to worry. Avery and Melinda are perfectly capable of handling whatever comes up. And poor John, he keeps thinking
