Night Light (15 page)

Aaron just nodded.

Kay and Doug walked the sheriff out.

“He’s lying about the gun,” Scarbrough said in a low voice. “Maybe he just needs time to think it over. Keep working on him, will you? And when he’s willing to talk, send for me, any time of day or night.”

“I will,” Doug said. “But right now I have to break it to the rest of the children, and find a way to notify the relatives.”

“We’ll have to schedule an autopsy,” the sheriff said. “But you might want to go ahead and have a funeral service without the body, just to give those kids some closure. By the time you get word to her relatives, maybe the body will be ready for burial.”

twenty-five

“T
HEY FOUND
M
AMA, AND SHE
’
S DEAD
.”

Aaron’s words were not the ones Deni would have chosen to tell the other three Gatlin children of their mother’s demise, but now that they were out, she couldn’t snatch them back.

But the children didn’t react. They only stared at their brother.

“Where was she?” Joey asked finally.

“Laying in the woods.” Aaron’s tone was cold, belying the tears still glistening in his eyes. “Somebody shot her.”

Joey was silent then. Finally, little Luke spoke up. “Then she ain’t coming back?”

Sarah’s thumb went to her mouth. Clutching her baby doll against her stomach, she turned her big eyes to Aaron.

“No, she’s not coming back,” he said. “I told you, she’s dead.”

Kay took Luke’s hand. “She would come back if she could, Luke. But the important thing is that she didn’t just leave you all to fend for yourselves. She would have been there for you if she could. I’m sure her heart would have been broken to know what you guys have had to do to survive.”

“Yeah, right.” Aaron’s words were hard, sharp.

“We need to have a memorial service for her,” Kay said in a soft voice.

“What’s that?” Joey sat slumped on the couch, staring at her.

“It’s a time to remember the good things about her. To lay her to rest.”

“Like a funeral?” Joey asked.

“Yeah, like a funeral. But we can’t do a burial. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

Kay didn’t want to tell them that they had to wait for the autopsy to be done. “We’ll wait until we get in touch with your grandparents for that. But it would just be a nice way to say goodbye to your mom.”

Luke and Sarah weren’t crying, which surprised Deni, but she supposed they’d been away from Jessie for so many weeks now that they felt detached from her. Joey looked like he needed to crawl under a bed somewhere, where no one would see, and cry his little eyes out. But she didn’t know what Aaron needed.

“We’ll have the service after supper,” she said quietly. “Is that okay with everybody?”

The children just looked at her.

“Okay, then. Be thinking of some nice memories. Good things to say about her. That would be a nice way to say good-bye, wouldn’t it?”

Tears escaped from Joey’s eyes, and he nodded his head and slid his knuckles through the tears.

Sarah looked at him, fascinated. “Why are you cryin’, Joey?”

Luke patted his hand.

“No reason.” His face reddened with the effort to stop.

Sarah moved to sit beside her brother. Putting her arms around his shoulders, she laid her head against his. “Don’t cry, Joey. It’s okay. You’ll see. Everything’s gonna be just fine.”

Deni smiled at the comfort the child was offering. Someone in her life had said those words to her many times. Despite Jessie’s problems, she apparently had had some maternal instincts. Deni tried to picture her holding a crying Sarah, petting her and whispering assurances into her ear. Now Sarah was passing that on to her brother.

Maybe Jessie had left a bit of a legacy, after all.

T
HAT EVENING AFTER SUPPER
, D
OUG ASSEMBLED THE CHILDREN ON
the back patio, pulling their chairs into a circle, for the memorial ceremony that Kay hoped would bring closure to these children.

Joey had stopped crying hours ago and now wore a hard mask of indifference. Sarah and Luke seemed excited about the ritual, and Aaron still brooded.

Doug wanted the children to participate. “I’d like to start this with a song,” he said. “But I’m not sure what song you all know.”

“How about ‘Jesus Loves Me’?” Beth suggested. “Do you know that?”

Sarah’s hand shot up. “I know it!”

“Me too,” Luke said with a grin. “We learned it at vacation Bible school.”

Kay’s eyes widened. “You guys went to church?”

“Just Bible school,” Aaron muttered. “They had a bus from one of the churches that came to get us. We learned stuff there.”

Good, Doug thought. That gave them a starting place. “Okay, then let’s sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ ”

It had been years since Doug had sung the words to that song, but as they sang, he realized the message bore an eternal truth. One he desperately wanted these children to learn. Aaron, arms crossed and head hanging, didn’t sing. Joey followed suit, but Luke and Sarah sang their hearts out, delighted that the others knew their song.

When they finished singing, they all sat down.

“Guys, I didn’t know your mom. But you did. Why don’t you tell us some of the good things you remember about her?”

Luke raised his hand. “I know something.”

Aaron frowned at him.

“Go ahead, Luke,” Kay said.

He gave them a self-conscious grin. “She was pretty, and her hair was soft. And she was always nice.”

Kay stroked his hair. “Good, Luke. That’s a nice memory. Anything else?”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah. She told me a story one time.”

One time? Kay glanced at Doug.

“It was about a turtle and a rabbit.”

The Tortoise and the Hare
, Doug thought. “I think I know that story.”

“And she never hit us or nothin’.”

The last phrase stopped Doug cold. Why would a kid remember that as a happy memory?

Sarah popped her thumb out of her mouth, and gave him an indignant look. “Yes, she did, Luke.”

Luke frowned and shook his head, as if to silence her. “No, she didn’t. She was nice. And her hair was soft.”

“Did too hit us,” Sarah said again.

Aaron spoke up then, as if to draw attention off his sister. “Sometimes she was fun. She would take us to the park and play Frisbee with us.”

Joey shot him a confused look. A signal seemed to pass between them, and finally Joey jumped in. “Yeah. And she liked to decorate for Christmas. She’d bring home a Christmas tree and have all these presents under it. We always got more than anybody else at Christmas.”

Doug looked at his wife. Were they making it up?

Sarah looked confused. “When?”

“Last Christmas,” Aaron said. “Remember when you got your baby?”

Sarah looked down at her dirty baby doll, as if trying to remember when she’d gotten it. It looked much older than eight months old. That doll had been dragged around for years, probably by someone even before Sarah was born.

But she slowly put her thumb back into her mouth and accepted that.

Anger roiled up inside Doug at the woman who had been such a poor mother that her own children couldn’t think of anything honest and good to say about her. He wondered why Jessie hadn’t just given the children over to her parents, if she cared so little about them.

When there was clearly nothing more to say, Kay got the potted rosebush she had dug up from the Caldwells’ yard, after Brad and Judith decided to dig up the flower garden so they could plant vegetables.

“Now we’re going to dig a hole at the back of the yard,” she said, “and we’ll plant this little rosebush in your mother’s memory. As it grows, you can remember her.”

They went to the back of the lawn and dug the hole, then Kay gave the plant to Joey to put into the ground. He set it gently down, then pushed the mound of dirt on top of it and patted it down.

“The best thing your mother ever gave you was each other,” Kay said softly. “And for that, you can be thankful. If you’d like to say good-bye to your mom, why don’t each of you take a handful of dirt and sprinkle it at the base of the rosebush?”

When none of the children stepped forward to do it, Deni did, then Beth, then Logan and Jeff. Finally, Luke came forward, that self-conscious five-year-old grin on his face again. He swept up some dirt into his hand and sprinkled it carefully over the fresh soil around the plant.

Then Sarah stepped up and took some dirt into her hand. Sprinkling it, she said, “Asha to asha, dirt to dirt …”

Kay stooped next to her. “What did you say?”

Sarah was happy to repeat it. “Asha to asha, dirt to dirt …”

Deni frowned. “Did she mean ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’?”

Luke’s grin grew bigger. “Yeah, that’s it!”

“Where did she learn that?” Doug asked Aaron.

He shrugged. “Who knows? TV prob’ly.” He picked up his own handful and tossed it onto the dirt.

Doug talked a little about heaven, careful not to give assurances that Jessie was there. As he spoke, Joey, Luke, and Sarah hung onto every word.

But Aaron wasn’t buying a word of it.

twenty-six

D
ENI
’
S EYES WERE TIRED, AND THE YELLOW GLOW OF THE OIL
lamp in her father’s study didn’t provide quite enough light. But Jessie Gatlin’s little memorial service had started her thinking, and as night fell, melancholy had set in. Jessie had probably had no idea that she would die young and leave her children without even one parent. Would she have done things differently, if she’d known the legacy she would leave behind?

Life was short. Too short to waste on fruitless things.

And the depression Deni had been fighting over Craig was fruitless.

Yes, she was disappointed in the letter he’d sent her. She had brooded long enough, nursing her wounds, trying to see it in a different light. She’d tried to latch onto Mark’s take on the letter, but somehow, deep inside, she couldn’t make herself believe that Craig’s unspoken love had been hidden between the lines.

But if they ever hoped for their impending marriage to work, she needed to be honest with him about how the letter had hurt her. So she started a new letter.

Dear Craig,

It was so good to finally get a letter from you, after eleven weeks with no word. I was disappointed in its tone, though. Maybe you didn’t mean to sound uncaring. I had just hoped for a little more.

She paused for a moment, hoping she didn’t sound like a lovesick teenager.

A high-pitched scream cracked through the night, startling her, and she got up and stood behind the door, listening for the source.

It was Sarah.

Deni ran up the stairs in the dark, feeling her way to the landing. She followed the sound of the crying to the room Sarah had been sleeping in.

Moonlight came in through the window, and against it, she saw the silhouette of someone in the rocking chair, holding the child. She stepped closer, listening to the words of comfort.

“Don’t cry, Sarah. It’s okay. You’ll see. Everything’s gonna be just fine.”

They were the same words Sarah had used to comfort Joey earlier. Sarah hadn’t gotten them from her mother, but from Aaron.

She might have known.

She stooped in front of them. “Everything okay?” she asked, stroking Sarah’s curls.

“Yeah,” he said in a soft voice. “She just had another bad dream. But she’s okay. I’ve got her.”

Deni knelt there for a moment, watching as Sarah’s eyes drifted closed in the safety of Aaron’s arms.

“You’re a good brother, Aaron,” Deni whispered.

He didn’t say anything. She wished she could see the expression on his face in the darkness.

Finally, she left them alone and went back to her letter.

twenty-seven

T
HE NEXT DAY
, A
ARON BEGAN PACKING
. T
OMORROW THEY
would leave here, he had decided. Now that the sheriff knew his mother was dead, there was no telling what would happen to them. Either they’d find the grandparents who’d spent years trying to break up their family, or they’d be separated out to foster families. Either way, it wasn’t likely that anyone would want to take in all four hungry children.

Joey came into the room. “What are you doing?”

“Packing. We’re leaving this place tomorrow.”

Joey looked at him like he was crazy. “Why?”

“Because Mama’s dead, and we’re orphans now. Do you know what they do to orphans?”

Joey sat on the bed. “No, what?”

“They lock them up, that’s what. In some horrible orphanage with bars on the windows. Or they split up families and give each one to some fat slob who gets money for taking foster kids, and he uses the money to get drunk every night and slap the kids around.”

“He won’t slap me around,” Joey said. “I’ll slap him back.”

“You and me might, but what about Luke and Sarah? They’re not old enough to defend theirselves. They need us to fight for them, Joey.”

Joey watched him throw all of his things into an old crumpled grocery sack. “But what about the Brannings? I like them. They’re nice. They said they’d keep us till they found our grandma and pop.”

“Yeah, that’s what they said. But use your head, Joey. They’re in it for money too. The disbursement is in just a few days. They want to take us through that line so they can get our money.”

“No, they won’t. They’re not like that, Aaron!”

Joey could be so dumb. “Everybody’s like that, Joey. They all want something.”

“But if we leave, we don’t get that money, anyway. We have to go with grown-ups or they won’t give it to us.”

“Then I’ll find somebody else to take us through. Somebody at the apartments.”

“What about Sarah?”

Aaron stopped packing and looked at his brother. “What about her?”

“She’s happy here. She likes having a lady taking care of her. She’s not gonna want to go. Besides, Beth promised her the part of a princess in that play she wrote. It’s about this dude who kills this big giant. And it’s got songs and stuff, and Sarah’s all excited.”

“You sure it’s her you’re talking about? Not yourself?”