Secrets (23 page)
The difference this morning was that after church, he went to the graveyard. The older section held lots of interesting graves, but he was there with a purpose. He needed to find someone—or not. Half an hour later, he did.
Vittorio DiGratia Shepard. March 13, 1883–1931
. So it wasn’t a tomb he’d unearthed. Rese would be relieved, but then she’d get curious all over again. Better not to tell her. Not yet.
He studied the tombstone one more time, then looked to the one beside it. Helena Glorietta Shepard. The blond woman in the photo? Year of death 1918. There’d been a number of deaths in this graveyard that year. Some epidemic? He didn’t know his history well enough to recall. The marker next to that read Carina Maria DiGratia Shepard, and she had died in 1929, two years before her son.
Helena’s grave bore a verse from St. John:
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live
. But Carina’s marker had a poem.
So a soul traversing life, alone until it finds, one to which it cleaves, and for eternity it binds
. And the name Quillan Shepard. A last tribute to his bride? Lance looked from that marker to the next, and the others beside them. Where was Quillan’s grave? He searched the nearby stones, but Quillan was not among the family. Strange.
He’d expected to be missing a grave for Vito, not his great-great grandfather. Maybe the marker had been there but was lost to age. But there was no gap between those stones and another family’s markers. Maybe he was famous enough to have a place of honor. Lance walked the cemetery, but found no grave marker for Quillan Shepard. No doubt he lay in some other yard with moss on his stone and grass covering the mound. Shaking his head, he returned to his bike, drove back to the inn, and went inside.
Rese met him in the entry. “Where were you?”
“Church.”
“On Thursday?”
He caught his thumbs in his jeans. “Yes.”
Her brows crowded together. “You go every day?”
“Unless I have reason not to.” What was with the third degree? He had no set hours, though all the other days he’d been in before she got up. Perusing the cemetery had held him up, but he’d have thought she’d sleep in today.
She jutted her chin. “Why?”
What did she care why he went to church? “I just do.” A habit established from his birth, one he was compelled to continue. The first time he’d served on the altar he had felt personally called by God. Swelled by the desire to do something great, he’d gone home and given Sean McMahan his Mickey Mantle card. When his pop made Sean give it back, he’d realized it was not easy to find God’s will. Try as he might, he’d been missing it ever since.
Rese was obviously not satisfied with his answer, so he added, “I’m better for it.” God only knew how badly things might go otherwise.
She leaned against the banister. “Better how?”
How was he supposed to explain the need to start his day in the Lord’s presence, the way he left feeling commissioned to make a difference and hoping one day he’d get it right? After last night any explanation would fall limp.
She straightened. “There’s a mouse in the pantry.”
“Really?” Was that what had her all worked up? He followed her down the hall. A rodent in there would have slim pickings because he had yet to stock the shelves with food. He had set up an account with a specialty foods purveyor for the imported items he would need if they served dinners, but had not ordered anything yet. Rese had her own delectable choices in the cabinets with his basic ingredients, but there was nothing to entice a mouse into the pantry, only the equipment he had stored there so far.
Rese pulled open the door. He looked inside, searching the floor, then along the shelves, stretching up on his toes to inspect the highest. He raised his brows at Rese.
“It was in there.” She closed the door and crouched to examine the crack between the door and the floor. “No way it got out here.” She opened it again, stepped in and searched the empty space. “There must be a hole somewhere.”
None offered itself to view. “I can set a trap.” Though he frankly didn’t see where or how a mouse would get inside unless the door was opened. Maybe one of them had failed to click it shut.
Her hands pressed her hips. “How could it get out? I closed the door the minute I saw it.”
He cocked his head. “I don’t know, Rese. But it’s hardly a national threat.” Though it might be to her after what she’d shared about her lunch box. He drew her out of the pantry and shut the door. “I’ll set a trap. If it’s hiding in there, we’ll get it.”
“I just don’t see how it got out.”
She was fixating. He looked her over. “Did you get any sleep?”
“An hour and a half.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans.
“That’s not healthy.”
“I’m used to it.”
“That’s even worse. Maybe you imagined the mouse. I’d be seeing things on that amount of sleep.”
“I didn’t imagine it. Do you want some oatmeal?” She motioned to a pot on the stove.
“You’re cooking?”
She shrugged. “You weren’t here.”
He wasn’t that much later than usual, and some mornings he hadn’t cooked at all, but that hadn’t inspired her before. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation.
He leaned on the counter. “Sure, I’ll have some.” He eyed the pot on the stove. At the level she had the heat, it would be interesting.
“Lance, about last night… .”
“I’m sure the floor is lovely.”
She turned from the stove. “I guess it kept you awake.”
“Only at first. Then it was kind of hypnotic.”
She dropped her chin with a half smile. “Sorry.”
“You worry too much. How’s Star?” At her hesitation he added, “Mind my own business?”
She shook her head. “If she’s going to stay here, you’ll see it all for yourself.”
“You mean there’s more?” By her frown he guessed that sort of joke unacceptable. “What’s her story?”
Rese chewed her thumbnail, then lowered her hand. “She’s had lots of junk. All her life really. She was born addicted to amphetamines.”
So he’d been right about the chemically altered brain. “Is she using?”
“No way. She won’t even drink.”
“You sure?”
Rese nodded. “Not with what she’s lived with. Her mother checked into a country club clinic, dried up enough to keep Star, then went home to more booze and pills.”
“Not pretty.”
“It wasn’t.” Rese folded her arms. “But Star spent most of her time with me.”
“I don’t think you rubbed off.”
She smiled.
“But she’s lucky she had you. Friends are invaluable.” Lance jutted his chin. “You’re steaming.”
“Huh?” Rese turned. “Oh.” She lifted the pot off the burner. “I always scorch it.” She pulled off the lid.
“I doubt it’s too bad. We caught it in time.” “
You caught it, you mean.” She dragged the spoon through the wad.
“You’re right. It only burned a little.”
The seared smell wafted from the pot, and he could see the brown film on the bottom of the pan as she plopped two servings into bowls. “Using a lower heat would help.”
“I guess they teach that at chef school.”
He took the bowl she handed him. “Something like that.”
They sat down and he asked, “Were you going to get Star?”
Rese shook her head. “She needs to come out of it herself.”
What exactly she was coming out of, he didn’t ask. He took her hand, and before she could pull away he said grace, then added a blessing for Star and let go.
“You always say the same thing.”
He lifted his spoon. “Well, it covers it all. Offer thanks, ask for His blessing, and give the glory to God.”
Rese studied him pointedly again. “Why do you believe in something invisible?”
“You don’t grow up Italian in New York without a healthy fear of the Lord.”
“But you’re talking to something that isn’t there.”
Lance hadn’t expected a theological discussion, but the oatmeal would be no worse for the delay. “He’s there. And my part is to honor and serve Him.”
She tensed, like Baxter hearing something human ears could not detect.
“You do whatever God wants?” Definite strain in her voice.
He dug out a chunk of oatmeal. “I try.”
“So this …
being
says go here and do that, and you up and go?” Her eyes pierced him.
“It’s not quite that clear, unfortunately.”
“You don’t actually hear or see him?”
He considered her a moment, trying to catch the thrust of her question. “You mean an apparition?”
She looked away. “I don’t know what you call it. But Mom had a … friend too.”
He paused with the spoon half way to his mouth. “Friend?”
“Walter. He usually came when Dad wasn’t home, when it was just Mom and me.” She stood her spoon in the oatmeal. “It took me a while to realize I was the only one who couldn’t see him.”
Lance took his bite, uncertain what to say. “What happened to her?”
Rese looked out the window. “Our furnace malfunctioned; she died of carbon monoxide poisoning.” Her fist closed on the napkin. “Now if I could just get that through to the insurance company.”
He frowned. “They thought it was suicide?”
She blinked and turned to him. “I mean Dad’s life insurance. He forgot to change the beneficiary. His will gave me his other assets, but the insurance supposedly goes to my mother. They can’t find a death certificate to transfer it to me—or so they claim.”
Not good. “Do you have one?”
Rese shook her head. “Why would I have it? I was nine years old.”
“In your Dad’s papers?”
She huffed. “It’s a stall tactic. I’ve been round and round with them. They just don’t want to pay me the money.” She scraped the last of her oatmeal onto her spoon. “I bought this place with what I got selling the business and our Sausalito property, but there’s no cushion if things are slow or my cook spends more than I planned.”
Lance smiled, then sobered. “It would have to be on file in the county where she died. Get a copy and send it.”
She glanced up. “I tried.”
“And?”
“They gave me the same runaround.”
Lance did not want to state the obvious. If there was no death certificate … “Did you go to her funeral?”
Rese shook her head. “I stayed with Dad’s sister for a while. A few weeks, I think.”
“And then?”
“Then I went home.”
“Do you remember the night she died?”
Rese stayed quiet so long he guessed he had pushed too far. Then she said, “I … don’t know.”
He wiped his mouth and set the napkin aside. “I’m hanging drywall today. Want to help?” He’d already rocked the bathroom with its waterresistant wallboard. But the ceilings would go better with two of them.
“Okay.” She carried their bowls to the sink.
“Thanks for the oatmeal.”
She looked into the scorched pot. “I guess it’s better when you cook.”
“I appreciate your effort.”
Rese raised her eyes like a fawn having a first look at the world. Praise must have been scarce indeed. He did appreciate her effort, even if the result weighted his stomach like rubber cement. But what really weighed him down was concern for what she’d shared. And he’d thought his was the mystery.
The swing carries me high and back.
A pretend sister pushing from behind.
An older sister helping me swing.
A younger sister who waits her turn,
and another too little to swing.
Maybe more.
I pretend there is a momma still,
to call us in for cakes and tea.
R
ese struggled against the images in her mind; her mother’s arms embracing a vision, dancing and twirling until she staggered and dropped to the floor. Then the tears and the begging.
‘Please don’t go. Don’t leave me alone.”
Sobbing and dragging herself across the floor.
“I don’t love them more than you. How? How can I prove it?”
Rese pressed a hand to her face. As if she could ever forget that night.
“Why do I have to go to bed now? I can’t sleep.”
“You’ll sleep or the banshees will get you.”
“The banshees aren’t real. And neither is Walter.”
The slap. “Go to bed, Theresa. In the morning everything will be different.”
Rese swallowed the pain in her throat. Why was she digging those memories up now? Because of Star’s reappearance and all their history together? Or was it Lance, who drew words out of her like liquid through a sieve?
Rese stared into the sink, remembering. She had been so afraid to fall asleep. She didn’t want everything to be different. She fought it, but the next thing she knew Dad was carrying her out of the house as paramedics strapped an oxygen mask to her face and the ambulance siren filled her ears. Why couldn’t they save her mother too?
She pushed the thoughts away as she crossed the garden to the carriage house. Baxter bounded out and circled, herding her inside with playful leaps and licks. She returned the love with strokes to his head and ears, then joined Lance inside.
They worked together making a ceiling and the dividing wall that really changed the appearance of the old place from an outbuilding to a home, enhanced by the stone of the perimeter walls. If Lance wasn’t going to live there, it would be an awesome unit to rent. But he was. And she’d rather have that than income—a thought that caused mild panic.
Her heart rolled over every time his hand brushed hers or his eyes turned her way, but that was gratitude. He’d accepted the things she told him without probing or mocking. And most of all he hadn’t looked at her as though she might be crazy too.
They stopped to eat some fruit and crackers and Sonoma Jack cheese, then went back to work. When they’d finished the drywall, she eyed the seams between the boards. “Can you tape and texture?”
Lance wiped his hands on his jeans. “Probably not to your satisfaction.”
“Then I’ll do it.” The moment it was out she knew how superior that had sounded.
But he smiled. “Knock yourself out. I need to run into town anyway.”