nice day and you’re conducting a fucking interrogation of her.”
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
“Fiona, sometimes… sometimes you just don’t know the effect you have on people. You can’t… Is empathy beyond you?”
“How dare you,” she seethed. “I’m only asking her these questions because I care about her welfare.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s something else going on with you. Is it because there’s something about this Ann Slocum you’ve never liked?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw the way you acted with her at that purse party or whatever it was called. You had nothing but contempt for her. You were looking down your nose at her all night.”
She stared at him. “That’s nonsense. I don’t know where you’re getting this.”
“I’m just saying, I’m shutting this down. You’re not going to hound this child anymore. We’ll take her shopping, we’ll drive her around to those schools if you want to, although I swear, what makes you think Glen’s going to give up his daughter Monday to Friday I have no idea, and then we’re going to take her home.”
“She’s my granddaughter, not yours,” Fiona said.
“Funny, then, that I’m the only one who’s worried about her.”
Fiona started to say something, but then realized that Kelly was standing two feet away, an ice-cream sundae in one hand and her cell in the other.
She held it out to Fiona. “My dad wants to talk to you.”
SIXTEEN
I felt shaken as I went back into the house following Darren Slocum’s visit. I dialed Kelly’s cell the moment I was in the kitchen.
“Hi, Dad,” she said.
“Hi, sweetheart. Where are you?”
“Getting some ice cream at the mall.”
“Which mall?”
“Stamford.”
“Could you put Grandma on?”
“Just a second. She’s at the table.”
I could hear mall background noises-people talking, bland music-and then Kelly saying, “My dad wants to talk to you.”
“Yes, Glen?” Fiona’s voice was as warm as the ice cream Kelly was eating.
“Fiona, you up to taking Kelly for overnight?” I knew Kelly already had pajamas and a toothbrush and several days’ worth of clothes at Fiona’s house.
A pause, then she whispered, “Isn’t it a bit soon, Glen?” It occurred to me that she was trying to keep Kelly from hearing.
“Excuse me?”
“For you to have someone over? Is it that woman who lives next door? The Mueller woman? Sheila told me about her. I saw her hanging out the door, watching as we drove off. My daughter hasn’t even been dead three weeks, you know.”
I felt the anger welling up inside me. “Ann Slocum’s husband came over here after you left, very distraught.” I closed my eyes a moment, counted to three.
“What?”
“He was being, I don’t know, pretty unreasonable. He wanted to talk to Kelly, and I can’t see any good coming out of that. Just in case he decides to come back here later and try again, I think it’d be better if Kelly stayed with you.”
“What do you mean, unreasonable?”
“It’s a long story, Fiona. What would really help me, at this moment, would be if you could keep Kelly until tomorrow. Until I know this has all blown over.”
“What’s going on?” I heard Marcus ask.
“In a sec,” Fiona told him. To me, she said, “Yes, of course, she’ll stay with us. That’s fine.”
“Thank you,” I said, and waited to see whether she might offer up even the slightest apology for what she’d first assumed my motives were.
Instead, she said, “Kelly wants to talk to you.”
“Dad? What’s going on?”
“You’re going to spend the night at your grandmother’s. Just the one night.”
“Okay,” she said, not excited, but not disappointed, either. “Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart.”
“Did you find out what happened to Emily’s mom?”
“It was an accident, honey,” I said. “She got hurt when she got out to check a flat tire.”
Kelly paused a moment to take it in, then said, “So now Emily and me really have something in common.”
While Darren Slocum had claimed to be satisfied that I’d told him the extent of what Kelly had heard his late wife say on the phone, some instinct told me he was lying. As I’d told Fiona, I was worried he might come back, and keeping Kelly at a distance for another day seemed like a good idea. And I had no idea what he was talking about when he’d suggested I’d come into a windfall recently. The grass wasn’t even growing yet on Sheila’s grave, and he was intimating I’d had some kind of good fortune because of her fatal accident?
I didn’t know what else to do but chalk it up to the distressed ramblings of a man who’d just lost a wife himself.
I did end up going to the offices of Garber Contracting after lunch. The business was off Cherry, just before you get to the Just Inn Time hotel and about half a mile down the road from the Connecticut Post Mall. While I was able to do some general tidying, I wasn’t able to concentrate when I started checking the voicemails. I’d had every intention of calling these people back, but suddenly I couldn’t face talking to any of them or going by their houses to listen to their complaints about why things weren’t done. But I made notes of the messages so Sally could get back to everyone on Monday. While her choice in boyfriends was, to my mind, suspect, Sally was always on the ball at work. We called her our multitasker, who could keep the details of countless projects in her head at once. I’d seen her carry on a complicated phone conversation with a tile supplier about what we needed at one job while making notes about plumbing supplies we required at another. She liked to say she had several programs running in her head at once, adding that she’d earned the right to have a total system meltdown one day.
After the office was locked up, I went to the nearby ShopRite to pick up a few things. A steak for myself for dinner, some salami and tins of tuna and carrot sticks for lunches for Kelly and me through the week. I wasn’t big on the carrot sticks, but Sheila would have wanted to see them not only in Kelly’s lunch, but mine. It was odd. I was mightily pissed with my late wife, but still wanted to honor her wishes.
When Kelly was attending first grade, the first time she’d had to take a lunch with her every day, she begged Sheila and me to include a bag of potato chips. Her friend Kristen got potato chips every day, so why couldn’t she have them? Well, if Kristen’s mom wants to give her that kind of crap every day, that’s her business, we said. But we’re not doing it.
Kelly asked if Rice Krispie squares would be okay. Even if they had melted marshmallow in them, the cereal was healthy, right? So Sheila had helped her make up a batch. Melted the butter and marshmallow, mixed everything up in an enormous bowl, flattened them out in a pan. The two of them had made a huge mess in the kitchen. Kelly happily took a square to school with her every day.
About a month later, when Kristen was over playing with Kelly, she happened to ask if we could put chocolate chips in the Rice Krispie squares. She really liked them that way. She’d been trading her potato chips for Kelly’s squares every day.
As I was passing through the cereal aisle, the recollection made me smile. It seemed like a long time ago. It
