almost see the slim and fashionable matron who had come to this house in the 1960s. “I’m making a meal to take to Renee Rouse, poor thing. Ham-and-cheese strata. It’s wonderful, because you half bake it ahead of time, and then when you want to eat it you pop it in the oven and out it comes, hot and ready.”
Clare hung up her parka in the hall closet while Mrs. Marshall extolled the virtues of her dish. “How did you hear about Mrs. Rouse?” she said, advancing toward the kitchen.
“She was calling everyone she knew yesterday. Frantic, poor thing. I telephoned her this morning, and she told me the police found Allan’s car, but not Allan.” She ushered Clare into her kitchen. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“No, thanks.” Clare looked around. Unlike the rooms she had seen before, the kitchen had been thoroughly remodeled, and recently. Everything was creamy walnut, glossy dark granite, and brushed steel. As up-to-the- minute as the rest of the house had once been. Clare wondered how old she would be before the flush-to-the- cabinets Sub-Zero would be considered as hopelessly unfashionable as an avocado Kenmore.
“If it’s all right with you, dear, I’m going to put you to work.” Mrs. Marshall withdrew an apron from a drawer and handed it to Clare. “Will you chop up the ham and the broccoli for me? The knife’s on the cutting board.”
Clare obediently fastened the apron around her waist and went to the thick butcher’s board next to the sink. She found a head of broccoli waiting to be rinsed and turned on the water, considering how to get into the topic that was foremost in her mind. “So Mrs. Rouse told you about how they found Dr. Rouse’s car,” she said, turning the broccoli beneath the spray. “Did she mention where it was?”
Mrs. Marshall pulled a metal mixing bowl from a cupboard and put it on the counter across the sink from Clare. “Off the road, up into the mountains, she said.” She shook her head, her silver-white hair catching the light. “Bad news. Not what a wife wants to hear.”
“It was by a place called Stewart’s Pond Reservoir.”
Mrs. Marshall crossed the room toward the refrigerator.
“Do you remember that woman who was so upset the day we went to see him? Debba Clow? He asked her to meet him out there. He showed her a little cemetery at the edge of the reservoir.”
Mrs. Marshall faced the open refrigerator, her back to Clare. “Stewart’s Pond,” she said. “We used to call it the lake.” She bent down, pulled a box of eggs from a lower shelf. “So that was where he went missing. I didn’t know.” She straightened, returned to the side of the sink with her egg carton in hand.
“I was there last night. Debba had come to the rectory to talk with me after… after she had met with Dr. Rouse. Chief Van Alstyne wanted her back up there to see if she could help them figure out where Dr. Rouse had gone.”
Mrs. Marshall looked out the window over the sink. “Why on earth would he take anyone there?” she said. Clare didn’t think the old woman was talking to her.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Clare steadied the broccoli on the cutting board and watched her hands as she cut off the thick stalk. “I saw the headstones. Sons and daughters of J. N. and J. A. Ketchem.”
There was silence for a moment. “My brothers and sisters.” Mrs. Marshall blinked, then looked at the egg carton. She picked up an egg and cracked it over the edge of the bowl.
“Would it disturb you to tell me about it?”
Mrs. Marshall turned to her, her expression almost surprised, as if she had lost track of the fact that her priest was in the kitchen with her, sleeves pushed up, chopping broccoli. “Disturb me? No.” Then she smiled a little, the smile of a woman who has lived long enough to appreciate human nature. “Besides, if another man’s gone missing it won’t take too long for all the old stories to resurrect themselves. That’s the trouble with living in your own hometown. Long memories.”
Clare dropped her eyes to the cutting board and began slicing off the florets, halving the larger ones and peeling away the woodiest part of the stems. “What happened?”
“Diphtheria.” Mrs. Marshall bent down and pulled a waxed cardboard milk carton from beneath the sink. “Compost garbage in there.” She tossed in her eggshell and reached for another egg. “They called it the black diphtheria back then. It took all four of them within a matter of a week or so.”
“But not you.”
“I wasn’t born until five months after.”
Clare slid the cut broccoli to one side of the butcher’s block board. She thought about her own mother and dad, heartsick after her sister Grace’s death, their lives narrowed to a long, dark tunnel of mourning. “I can’t imagine how parents could live with a grief that huge.”
“My mother never talked about them. Ever. Everything I know, I found out from my grandparents.” Mrs. Marshall cracked another egg, tossed the shell. “But the loss was with her always. Every day.” She looked directly at Clare. “She loved me ferociously, I never doubted that, but at the same time, I know I was a constant reminder of my brothers and sisters. The pain of it just hollowed her out eventually.” She shook her head. “After I was grown and married and gone, there were a few accidents that weren’t accidents. She always got stopped in time, but it became obvious to me that she was trying to do herself harm. That’s when Henry put in for a transfer so we could move back here. To look after Mother.”
Clare reached out and rested her hand on Mrs. Marshall’s thin arm. It felt like bird bones wound in wool. “I’m so sorry. Is that how she died?”
“No, surprisingly; she lived to be seventy-four years old. She was finally taken by pneumonia. Allan Rouse was her doctor, at the end.” She smiled again, that small, sad smile. “He was her protege.”
And now he had gone missing, after a last visit to the graves of Jane Ketchem’s long-lost children. “Can you think of any reason why he would have taken Debba Clow to see your brothers’ and sisters’ grave site?”
“She’s the woman who’s been protesting against vaccinations, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suspect he was hoping what happened to my family would be an object lesson to her. According to my grandma, the children died because my parents wouldn’t have them vaccinated.”
“You’re kidding me.” Clare touched her mouth. “Excuse me, that sounded flippant, and I didn’t mean to be. I guess I meant, it’s hard to imagine.”
“Well, the diphtheria vaccination was quite new then, and not widely used. My grandma never blamed my parents. She said lots of folks in those days worried that the vaccinations themselves were the cause of a growing list of ills, everything from mental retardation to social diseases.” She cracked another egg and tossed the shell. “And, too, folks living a clean, healthy life out on a farm didn’t think they were likely to have to face the diphtheria. It was supposed to be a disease of the slums, passed around by poor unwashed immigrants.” Mrs. Marshall gave Clare a dry look. “You’ll recognize that line of reasoning. It seems human nature doesn’t change, just the name of the disease.”
“Do you think your parents blamed themselves?”
“I’m sure of it. They made what they must have thought was a good decision, in the best interests of their children, and they lost everything.” Mrs. Marshall rested her hands on either side of the metal mixing bowl, cupping it abstractedly as she looked out the window again. “I believe that’s the real reason I never had children.”
Clare must have made some involuntary gesture, because Mrs. Marshall turned to her.
“Oh, yes, it was a choice. People assumed Henry and I simply weren’t fortunate, but we knew before we got married that neither of us intended to have children. In fact, I turned down two men who asked me first, because I knew they wanted their own families one day. But thinking about it”-she paused, worrying her lip so that a tiny smudge of marigold appeared on one of her front teeth-“I see that it wasn’t the fear of what losing a child would do to me. I mean, that was always there, but… I think it was a fear of the responsibility. My parents took on that responsibility, and in the end, it destroyed them.”
“What happened to your father?”
“Well, you see, that’s why people are going to start repeating the old stories. Now that Allan Rouse has suddenly gone missing. My father walked out of our house the night of April first, 1930, after having a fight with my mother. He climbed into his car, drove away”-Mrs. Marshall sighed and turned to Clare-“and was never seen again.”
Chapter 17
