At the doorway, Jane hesitated; she always forgot how thedarkness blurred Ainsley’s features until they looked almost like those of anordinary child. From here, she could love her daughter. “You’re kind to yoursister, aren’t you?” Jane said. “You don’t give her a hard time when I’m notthere?”
“I love Rosemarie,” Ainsley said, in the same flatunrepentant tone which she had used to discuss the dying cat. “But she’s goingto get everyone in trouble.”
◊
Russula died without making a sound, but Rosemarie, being aPaley, knew what death looked like on an animal. She knelt on the floor besidethe pillow that the barn cat had appropriated as her own, and released, after amoment, a stifled little sob.
“Go out and check the snares,” was the first thing that Janesaid to the older children, who stood in the doorway watching Rosemary look atthe cat.
“There’s nothing,” Ainsley said, scowling. “We looked whenwe got home from school.”
“Look again.”
Ainsley sighed a disgusted pre-teenage sigh and went out,Devon following. Jane mentally tallied up the children’s absences. One lastmonth, two in March—the school district would make trouble if they missed toomuch. But tomorrow would have to be another sick day, because Rosemarie wasswaddling the dead cat in her tattered old blanket, sniffling, saying, “Can wehave the wake now?”
“We can do that,” Jane said. “Of course. But don’t you wantto keep your blanket?”
Rosemarie looked down at the cat, then shook her head.
“All right,” Jane said, fighting a ridiculous attachment tothe ratty piece of cloth. None of her children had ever successfully attachedto a stuffed animal or security blanket, but Jane mourned even the deaths oftheir second-tier toys. “Let me get him ready.” They would need a coffin, and agrave dug. She went out to the garage and scratched the old label—Devon’stoys—from a cardboard box so she could write the name Russula, hermarker hanging in the air above a birthdate that she didn’t know and couldn’twrite, because no one had cared about the barn cats back then. She took somesmall comfort in being able to note the date of death.
In the ferns at the back of the house, Jane dug a hole threefeet deep, a foot across, eyeing the box periodically to check the size. Shehadn’t buried an animal before. After Ainsley and Devon finished, there wasnever enough left. The scraps went into the compost, and the rest she scrubbedout of the cheap dishes that she’d bought just for nourishing. Jane was stilldigging, listening to the children’s footsteps loud and rough in theundergrowth as they returned from the snares, when a truck came rolling up theroad. Jane didn’t recognize the car, but she knew the man who got out.
“Henry,” she said, dropping the shovel and wiping her muddyhands on her pants so that her husband’s cousin could shake her hand. She hadnot seen him in perhaps ten years. She had not even been certain she had hisname right until he nodded.
“I was sorry to hear,” he said. “Real sorry.”
The children emerged from the trees like deer, big-eyed andfaltering, and stood there until Jane made all the introductions. “You heard?”she asked, once each of the children had said their shy hellos. “Who told you?”Her children knew no other Paleys, although sometimes Ainsley or Devon wouldask after cousins or grandparents, the family members that their schoolmatesmust mention. Jane could map out the Paley family tree from memory and shestill had the addresses of the other family properties from an old book ofWalter’s, but she couldn’t say for sure who was still alive. Only now there wasHenry, and he was standing in her backyard in a funeral suit.
“The children wrote to us up north. After Loretta, I’m thelast one there, you know.” Henry knelt down and addressed Rosemarie now, as ifshe couldn’t hear him from an upright position: “I’m glad you wrote. I shouldhave been here for Walter.”
Walter would have been a sore point between Jane and thePaleys, if only any of them were near enough to be sore at. After he died shehad written to them, she had even gone into town and found a payphone, emptyinga roll of quarters into a string of calls that no one answered. Paleys knew howto disappear. And precious few of them had landlines. Paley rules dictated thatno one besides family set foot on Paley property, and that included workersfrom the phone company.
“Well. You’re here now,” Jane observed, waiting for anexplanation.
“Do you mind my being here?” Henry said, but his toneindicated that of course she didn’t. He had been a child here, set up secretforts in the same patch of woods where Ainsley had her plywood hideout and eatenbreakfast at the table where Devon dawdled in the mornings. Jane wondered if hewanted the house back, now that Walter was gone. She almost wished that hewould take it back, turn them out, force her into the clean safe un-Paleyworld, but only almost. She knew what losing the farm would do to the children.Besides, Henry could have taken the house four years ago, if he’d wanted it,and he hadn’t.
“Let me get the body,” Jane said, the last word under herbreath as if Rosemarie wouldn’t still hear. Rosemarie was standing between hersiblings like they would protect her, the fingers of one hand curled aroundAinsley’s wrist, the thumb of her other hand stuck in her mouth. Another habit,like naming livestock, that she’d have to kick before kindergarten.
When Jane came out of the house with the cat, she knewalready that there had been some misunderstanding. Henry stood with his armscrossed while Ainsley talked and made indignant faces at him. The conversationdied before Jane got there, but she kept her eyes on Henry’s face as shelowered the cat
