Death in the Cards (20 page)

He looked confused. “I am telling you about this. It just came up this morning. I'm stunned by the turn of events myself.”

I shook my head. He just didn't get it. The man had multiple PhDs, and at times he was still as dumb as a box of rocks when it came to practical matters of human relationships.

“When were you going to tell me you and Tori had started e-mailing each other? You've been in contact for almost two months, and it never occurred to you to tell me?”

Owen sighed. “Oh, come on, Josie. It's not like I'm having some seamy cyber affair with someone I met in a chat room.” He studied me, then said, very slowly, “Tori is my ex-wife.”

I jumped up from the rocker, turned around—that was as much angry pacing as I could manage in the overstuffed spare bedroom he called an office—and glared down at Owen, who had pushed back from the sloppy desk and his computer. He was looking up at me, completely mystified. Which irritated me further.

“Don't patronize me!” I hollered. “I know Tori is your
ex-wife. But only because you were more or less forced to tell me last summer about her and about your son and about—about—''

“Careful,” Owen said quietly. Something passed across his face, something that warned that he'd withdraw from ever connecting with me again if I didn't choose my words carefully.

The fact he'd killed another human being, even in an act of self-defense for which none of the witnesses could fault him, had burdened him for life. The depth of his feeling about that had increased my tenderness toward him. More deeply than most, he knew from the central tragedy of his life—as I knew from tending to Guy—that life is precious and fragile and not to be taken for granted. It was a shared knowledge, born of different experiences, which had bonded us together.

But not, I thought bitterly, closely enough that he would open up to me about the essentials.

I took a deep breath, sank down into the rocker. I picked up the glass of sweet tea Owen had given me—I'd taught him the proper way to make sweet tea and knowing that it was one of my favorite beverages, right up there with Big Fizz Diet Cola, he kept a pitcher for me in his fridge. I took a sip. He'd made it well. He'd made it just for me. I tried to cling to that fact as I spoke carefully.

“I am happy for you that you will finally get to see Zachariah. I truly am. I am happy for you that you and Tori are able to communicate with each other. I truly am. I think that is best for you and for her and for Zachariah,” I said. “But you have been e-mailing with Tori for almost two months and you haven't even once mentioned this to me.”

Owen groaned. “Oh, Josie, don't tell me you're jealous. My marriage to Tori was never good. The only good that came out of it was Zachariah. There's nothing to be jealous of.” He gave me a big, goofy grin that I normally found endearing.

At that moment, I wanted to slap it off his face.

He held his arms open to me.

And I was supposed to put down my sweet tea, and accept his comfort, let him think I'd suddenly realized that I was being a silly little jealous thing, that we could just laugh all this off. That would be an easier game to play than not playing any game at all and facing the truth.

I wasn't playing that game.

I sat, still, sipping the sweet tea, which suddenly seemed just a mite too sweet, and stared dead evenly at him.

Slowly his arms sank down to his sides. His grin started to fade. I waited until it disappeared completely before I spoke my final piece.

“I am not jealous, Owen, and you know that. If you don't, then you've been dating some image of me—not the real me. What I am is angry. Something important has been developing in your life the past two months—a chance for a relationship with your son. And you haven't shared a bit of that with me. I've been trying to trust—to believe—that you would always be open with me about your thoughts and feelings, about anything important to you, ever since this past summer.

“You'd tell me in great detail about a great antiquarian book find. How could you not tell me something like this?”

He stared at me for a long moment, bewilderment radiating from his gaze. My heart sank. He didn't get it.

Finally he said, “I guess I just thought this was from my personal life and I'd tell you about it if something came of it. I was going to tell you when I'd confirmed my flight.”

I felt as if I'd been hit so hard my solar plexus had turned inside out.

I stood up. “Owen, do me a favor. Have a good trip and enjoy visiting your son. But find a few minutes to think about this—if you want a relationship with someone, you share your personal life with him or her. In fact, that's the point of
a relationship. Whether it's with your son. Or with me. I don't want just fun times, Owen.”

My heart panged as an image or two of the fun times from the night before—after we'd come back here, after finding Ginny's body, needing to laugh and love to purge the sadness and horror from our hearts and minds—flashed across my mind.

“I want a close relationship with only the silences being comfortable ones,” I said. Like the sweet, comfortable silences Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace had shared on their front porch swing. I realized how much I wanted that with someone—with Owen?—myself. “Think about what I've said and if you want to talk about it, call me when you're back.”

I walked out of Owen's study, then out of his house.

I got in my van, taking care not to slam the door, taking care to pull out of his gravel drive casually and slowly.

I was almost back to Paradise before I realized that I had not told him a thing about Guy, or about the water main break, or about Ginny's suitcase or anything else I'd learned.

Then I remembered something else, too.

The night before, he'd asked me about the dream I'd told Ginny about. And I'd told him the same little white lie I'd told Sally and Cherry—that I'd dreamed about drowning.

Maybe a small thing, compared to him withholding his renewed e-mail relationship with his ex-wife.

But, somehow, it made me feel worse, about both of us.

15

I love the names of apples. I have no idea who came up with them or how they chose them, but there's something so poetic and earthy about them: Winesap. Rome Beauty. Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonathan. Even Granny Smith.

At Beeker's Orchard, across from the Red Horse Motel, I took comfort in the apple names, pausing before each bin to carefully read the handwritten placards as if this were the first time I'd ever encountered appledom's glorious variety.

The Red Horse Motel's parking lot was full and overflow parking had been set up in the fields in front of Beeker's Orchard. I'd parked my van on a grassy rise, being careful to set the parking brake.

The orchard was also busier than usual, even for a glorious Saturday afternoon in autumn. I selected two Winesaps—they would be good for a midnight snack in my motel room—and got in line and breathed in the sweet hay and apple air of the old barn.

The Beeker Orchard sells unpastuerized cider, impossible to get, except at a few roadside stands. Some folks worry that
they'll get sick if they drink unpasteurized cider, but generations of Paradisites and Masonvillians and folks from other villages and forks in the road in the county had grown up sipping the tasty beverage every fall, and I never knew of anyone to fall sick as a result.

Sometimes I think we just worry too much. You can't protect yourself from every possibility of ill health or disaster. After all, say you're in line at a convenience store to get the pasteurized cider, which is as bland in comparison to the real stuff, as flat soda is to fizzy. A nut ball could come in and decide to rob the place and shoot you dead.

You just can't predict everything, I thought. Owen couldn't have predicted that walking into that bar years ago, just wanting a cold brew to help him past the hurting of losing his brother, would lead to a tragic outcome that would take his attacker's life, and change his own forever.

The day before, I would have predicted that the weekend would be busy but pleasant. I'd never have foreseen Guy needing emergency medical help, Ginny's murder, the water main break, my decision to investigate Ginny's death, and Owen and I having a relationship-threatening fallout. If I had, I'd have crawled down between my field-of-flowers-fabric-softener-scented sheets and stayed there.

And maybe if any of these good folks knew what might await them in the next month . . . the next week . . . the next hour . . . they'd have stayed at home, too, also trying to avoid it. Maybe there was a good reason we couldn't see into the future.

And yet it had always been part of human nature to try. As much as Dru might protest such “witchery,” it was part of the Bible, too: Joseph with his dream interpretations for the Pharaoh; the Old Testament high priests with their Urim and Thummin for getting “yes” and “no” answers about God's will. Not that much different from flipping a coin, or jiggling
a Magic 8 ball, or reading from a crystal ball or a pack of tarot cards. Who's to say one is heavenly inspired, or directed by some psychic gift, and the other is not?

As I shuffled forward in the line, I refocused on the sights, taking comfort in the good scents from the barn, and in watching families pick out their fall goodies—bags of apples, cider, pots of mums, gourds, pumpkins, caramel apples, home-canned jellies and jams and relishes, apple pies.

Out front, kids clamored for the pony rides, one buck to go around the large flaming red maple tree three times on one of the four ponies, named Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Ernie, and Oscar the Grouch. Sonya Beeker Woods, who ran the orchard with her parents, had played with me on the volleyball team in high school. She had two kids now, ages three and four.

My eyes stung, and I realized I'd been crying for a few minutes now, quietly, my face slicked with tears. I glanced around. The couple in front of me was preoccupied with their two toddlers and a baby. I glanced over my shoulder. No one was behind me yet, but I saw a teenaged couple smooching over by the Winesaps, taking guilty pleasure from quick little pecks on each other's lips.

The line shuffled forward. Sonya was serving the family in front of me. I dug through my purse, pulled out a tissue and wiped my face, then stuffed the crumpled tissue into my pocket.

The family moved on, and Sonya's grin upon seeing me quickly shifted to a look of concern. “You okay, Josie? I heard about Guy taking ill.”

“You heard, huh?”

“Ella Withers heard about it from Naomi Crider who heard about it from Mrs. Beavy. Naomi was in your laundromat this morning and then ran into Ella up at the Pick-N-Save. Ella stopped by here on her way back from
Masonville and told me about it. Said she'd already put Guy and you on the prayer chain.”

I smiled at that. Ella's the head of the prayer chain at the Paradise United Methodist Church. I wasn't sure I believed that the chain really made that much difference in the outcomes of whatever the chain members prayed over, but it made me feel better knowing that many people would be thinking of me and Guy and caring about us. Maybe that was the real power of such things.

“Ella said she wasn't sure, but she thought Guy has . . .” Sonya dropped her voice to a whisper, as if that would take away from the power of whatever dread disease she was about to name. “. . . well, she heard he has leukemia.”

I shook my head. “God willing, not that. The doctors at the hospital tested him for all kinds of things. They think he has diabetes. I'm taking him in Monday for more testing.”

Sonya exhaled in relief, which made fresh tears well up in my eyes. “Well, diabetes is bad enough—my mama's had high sugar for several years now—but that's easier to deal with than the other. Do you mind if I get you on our prayer chain, too?”

I smiled. “That'd be fine.” I'd take good thoughts from everyone who wanted to spare a synapse generating them. Did Wiccans have prayer chains? I might ask, later, when I got back to the psychic fair. “Thanks. How about a pint of the regular?”

Sonya laughed when I said that. Beeker Orchard only sells one liquid refreshment, their homemade cider. It's not like you can get it in decaf, or low-carb/sugar-free. That's one of the beauties of cider.

“Just a pint?” she said, knowing I usually got a gallon, which lasted a week, as long as I portioned out a glass in the morning, another in the evening, making sure to savor it. You can only get Beeker's cider for a scant eight weeks out of the
year. Then you can buy pints or quarts and freeze it (after pouring a bit off the top, to keep the plastic jug from bursting), but I've just got a regular freezer, and only freeze two quarts at the end of the season. One I thaw at Thanksgiving, the other in February, on some particularly gray and gloomy and heartbreaking day.

“I'm staying at the Red Horse,” I said. “My place was evacuated because of the water main break. I just have a minifridge in my room.”

Sonya looked concerned. “I'm sorry to hear that. I heard there was a water main break, but not specifically where. You need anything?”

“Thanks, but I'm fine. I was able to get in my apartment long enough to get the essentials for a few days—clothes, toiletries, and such.” And green tomato relish to try with the crab Rangoons, tortilla chips, and a bottle of wine . . . but I didn't mention those things.

I heard some people get in line behind me. Sonya walked over to the large glass-fronted refrigerator unit behind her. “Well, now, you give us a holler if you need anything while you're over there,” she said over her shoulder.

She came back with a pint of cider and an apple covered in gooey melted caramel and chopped peanuts. I eyed the caramel apple.

“It's on us,” Sonya said.

I accepted her generosity gratefully and took comfort in the accepting. There are a few good things about living in a small town, after all.