Blackberry Crumble (40 page)

Sadie nodded, looking at the matching frames that reflected back numerous smiling faces of people whom Sadie assumed were Lois’s children and their families. She pulled her phone from her purse and quickly texted May to tell her that she was waiting for her at Lois’s house. “I bet you’re a wonderful grandma,” Sadie said after she put the phone away. She hoped May hurried home.

“The best,” Lois answered, laughing at her comment. “And I make sure to remind them of that fact as often as possible.”

Sadie scanned the photos, starting at the top left of the fifty-year march through Lois’s life. There was a sepia-toned wedding photo of a young woman with her hair in a bouffant hairdo and curls beside each ear, pressed up against a young man in uniform. The next photo was a headshot of the same girl with a nurse’s cap on her head, the hair not quite so flamboyant.

“You’re a nurse?” Sadie asked.

“I was,” Lois called from the kitchen. “I haven’t had a license for several years now. I don’t want anyone making me work. I still help out friends now and then, though. At my age, acquaintances are dying all the time.” Sadie heard tea cups clink against saucers and glanced out the window again. The car was still there. But why wouldn’t it be? It probably belonged to whoever lived at the house it was parked in front of.

Her phone dinged, alerting her to a new message. May had texted her back.

I’m on my way.

Sadie hoped she wasn’t texting and driving, that wasn’t safe—not to mention possibly illegal. She didn’t respond in order to be sure she wasn’t part of the distraction.

Sadie thought about what Lois had said about being a nurse. She was ready to see if she could fill in some of the blanks without tipping her hand too much. It was just Lois, but Sadie wanted to make sure she didn’t betray May’s trust any more than she already had by giving up too much information. “You know,” she said carefully, glancing into the kitchen, “Jolene was looking into hospice care yesterday.”

Lois was framed in the doorway. She poured tea into the cups.

“Was she?” Lois asked.

She didn’t sound very surprised to hear the news.

“May seemed convinced Jolene was getting better,” Sadie said.

“People are entitled to their secrets,” Lois said. “I’m sure Jolene had her reasons for keeping it to herself.”

“But she told you?”

Lois glanced up at Sadie. “Those Sanderson kids needed more of their mother than they got, and I’ve done my best to make up for that. They all come to me with their troubles.”

“I don’t know how May will handle Jolene’s death,” Sadie said, her heart heavy with the confirmation that Jolene wasn’t going to beat her cancer like her mother had.

“She’ll handle it like we all do,” Lois answered. “It will be hard, but eventually she’ll come to terms with it. I’ll help.”

But was an elderly family friend enough? Without Jolene, May was left with Hugh—and he was in no position to take care of his baby sister. Another wave of trepidation washed through Sadie, and she turned back to the window. Talking to May about all of this might be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

The rain had turned from a sprinkle to a downpour, and she watched the droplets bounce up as they hit the asphalt. Sadie looked through the blur of rain which had dropped a curtain over the view outside the window and found herself staring at the red car again.

Red.

Red.

Did she know someone who drove a
red
car?

Gayle drove one, but hers was more of a burgundy color. Then she remembered that Jane had a red car.

Instantly Sadie’s eyes went wide, and she leaned forward.
It couldn’t be!
There was no way Jane
drove
all the way up here. But she did have a cute little red compact that looked an awful lot like the car parked on the street. The rain prevented Sadie from being able to see whether anyone was inside, but her stomach tightened.
Of course
Jane would come to Jim’s house after Sadie blew her off this morning. She’d have suspected that Sadie would end up here eventually. The tightening sensation turned to steel.

What if Jane confronted May about what she knew, and what if May thought Sadie was trying to sell a story? What if another article popped up next week about Sadie and her murder-magnetic personality? What if Jane found out Sadie had been fired from her first job? What if May suddenly found her tragic circumstances in the public domain? Sadie almost couldn’t breathe for the anger and fear that gripped her as the possibilities rushed through her mind.

Why couldn’t Jane just leave well enough alone?

Sadie had no sooner thought the words than she realized May felt exactly the same way about her. She’d told Sadie not to look into her family matters, and Sadie hadn’t left well enough alone either. Sadie was being a hypocrite to judge Jane so harshly for doing what Sadie herself had done. Would she learn her lesson this time? Would Jane?

Sadie let out a deep breath, reminding herself to stay focused, and looked back at the photos, desperate for distraction.

The next two rows of photographs showed the march of life: from newlyweds to young parents to harried adults with four teenagers either smiling or scowling at the camera. When the youngest child looked to be sixteen or so, Lois was suddenly a single parent. The smiles looked heavier, and two of the older children had been joined by spouses. A single grandchild sat on Lois’s lap, and Sadie remembered that Lois had said she’d been widowed twice.

Her eyes went back to that first wedding picture. Those two young people in the frame had no idea what was in store for them. Sadie’s heart was heavy from all the loss she’d heard about over the last couple of days.
No one is spared heartache
, she thought, but she still had no explanation for why some people experienced more than others.

The distraction wasn’t working, and she felt her gaze pulled back to the car, despite the fact that she stubbornly refused to move her head. What was Jane doing out there? Was it really Jane at all?

“Bart,” Lois said from behind Sadie, causing her to startle. She hadn’t heard Lois approach.

“Your first husband?” Sadie asked after overcoming her surprise. She looked back at the sepia-toned wedding photograph. The more she looked at it, the more the young woman looked like Lois. Even the groom, Bart, looked familiar somehow.

“Here’s your tea,” Lois said.

Sadie accepted the dainty tea cup from Lois and put her purse down on the coffee table behind them so that she could use both hands for the tea. Lois moved the purse from the table to one of the chairs placed nearby; Sadie wondered if she’d missed a rule of etiquette that suggested purses weren’t meant to go on tables. But Lois didn’t seem offended and just smiled at Sadie.

“I put extra sugar in it. I figured you were probably having an extra-sugar kind of day.”

Sadie smiled and nodded, but as soon as she looked out the window again, her eyes locked on the car. Had it moved closer? The rain was heavier, and it was hard to tell for sure, but it looked like the car had moved up a car length along the curb. She felt her heartbeat increase in anticipation of Jane’s next move. And then she told herself, again, that there were millions of little red compact cars in the world and that she was jumping to conclusions.

Sadie turned back to the photos and raised the tea to her lips, taking a sip that startled her with its zing. A little bitter, but well-compensated by the extra sugar Lois had added. It heated her whole body as it traveled down her throat, and she felt herself relax—finally. She needed this. She needed to take a step back from the tension she’d been drowning in since facing May last night.

“Wasn’t he cute?” Lois said, sipping her own tea. “We were married twenty-seven years.”

“He was a good husband?” Sadie asked, thinking of Gary Tracey, who seemed ambiguous about the fact that his wife was dying, and who may also have had motive to kill Jim Sanderson.

“The best,” Lois said. She went on to describe the kind of man Bart had been: kind, hardworking, and generous. They’d traveled to Cannon Beach every summer with the kids and loved to sail—something Lois still enjoyed with friends. Sadie continued sipping her tea while trying to keep her mind away from the red car.

“I guess my only complaint,” Lois said a couple minutes later, “would be that he never could understand what a hamper was for when the floor was so much easier.”

“They’re never quite perfect, are they?” Sadie smiled, noting a funny feeling in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten well today. That, coupled with her current state of anxiety, must not be agreeing with the tea. When she looked out the window again, the little red car was definitely closer. Now it was parked in front of the house just east of Jim Sanderson’s. There was someone in the driver’s seat, but the only detail Sadie could make out was a spiky-haired silhouette.

It was enough.

The driver was Jane, and she was slowly moving closer and closer. Did she know Sadie was in Lois’s house? Sadie clenched her teeth together and wondered what she should do.

“No, they aren’t perfect,” Lois continued while Sadie tried to keep herself calm. “But he was a good man overall. A good husband and father. He died of Lou Gehrig’s disease two days after his fiftieth birthday.”

Sadie turned to look at the other woman, her heart brimming with sympathy as she tuned back into their conversation. A man from her church had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease a few years ago. Sadie had brought in meals once a week for the last few months of his life to help ease the burden on his wife who had to watch him slowly lose all of his faculties week by week.

“I’m so sorry,” Sadie said. “It’s a horrible disease.”

Lois nodded, still looking at the photos with a tender expression. “You never think it will happen to someone you love. When it does, all you can hope for is that they don’t suffer too much. If you’re lucky, you can help spare them a little.”

“Spoken like a true healer,” Sadie said, smiling at the other woman. As a nurse, Lois likely understood the frailties of the human body better than most and had committed herself to easing the suffering of people. It was a beautiful thing to realize that not everything and everyone in the world had ill motives for what they did.

Sadie looked at the car again. What were Jane’s motives? Why was she here? Sadie reflected on what Jane had said last night about wanting to help and not simply being here for a story. At least Sadie could take consolation in having been right about the choice not to trust the reporter. It wasn’t much, however, since she feared Jane was going to add complication to an already highly complicated situation.

Sadie looked back at the pictures and placed a hand on her stomach. She really didn’t feel very good. “Is that your s-second husband?” Sadie had to take a breath midsentence as she nodded toward a picture of an older Lois and another man, this one balding and thick around the middle. It looked like they were in Hawaii, since they were both wearing leis around their necks.

“Charlie,” Lois said, taking another sip of her tea as Sadie did the same.

Sadie blinked rapidly, finding it hard to focus her eyes on the next line of photographs—wedding portraits of Lois’s children, she assumed. Man, her lack of sleep from the night before and her intense all-day tension was catching up with her at the absolute worst moment. She needed to be in tip-top condition to deal with May and, possibly, Jane. This was not the time for the stomach flu!

She scanned the photos, trying to keep her focus, when they landed on the last photo in the lineup—a 1980s wedding, complete with big hair and light-blue tuxedos. Sadie stared at the bride. She looked like May . . . No, it looked more like Jolene from the family photograph over the fireplace at Jim Sanderson’s house.

Sadie knew the families were close, but to display Jolene’s wedding photos? Sadie turned her interest to the groom, Gary Tracey, and felt a different kind of heat rush over her. Her eyes snapped back to the sepia wedding photo of Lois and Bart, then back again as she compared the physical features of both men—both the same age, same build, same coloring. In a matter of seconds, Sadie looked through the lineup of family photos she’d skimmed through earlier, specifically noting the third child—a boy with sandy-blond hair; a boy, who as he aged, looked more and more like his father; a boy who was the man standing next to Jolene in the wedding photo.

She turned to Lois, who was watching her with a strangely intent expression on her face. Sadie’s head was feeling wobbly. “Gary is your son?” she said, and as soon as the words left her lips, all the nebulous details that had been swirling around the hypothesis she’d been putting together snapped into place.

“Yes. He’s my third child,” Lois said, sipping her tea and looking at the photos. “Didn’t you know that?”

“N-no,” Sadie said, stunned by this tiny piece of information and all that it might mean.

Gary was Lois’s son.

Lois was close to the Sanderson family.

Lois was a nurse.

No . . . it was impossible . . . but . . .