Edith often found herself during the day timing how long exactly two hours seemed to be. She’d make a note of the hour, and then get busy with a task, looking up periodically to see how long it was. She supposed that sitting in a plane during the boring hours in flight must have seemed interminable to Henry and his fellow passengers. But she found herself often wondering whether, had they known that those two hours would be some of their last minutes, the time would have passed by so much more quickly.
Two hours. It haunted her. And oftentimes she wondered whether those two hours haunted Mrs. Holden, too. Wondered when she’d realized her horrible mistake, her flaw in reasoning that had killed so many innocent people. The simple fact remained that if the plane had not been delayed, they would have reached Miami on time. And Henry would have been driving away from the airport—alone?—with his suitcase and dopp kit in the trunk of the rental car at the time the bomb was supposed to detonate. Or perhaps he would have opened the dopp kit midflight and discovered the little extra item his loving wife had packed there. Yes, it haunted Edith. Almost as much as she imagined it haunting Mrs. Holden.
The mistake in judgment was the only justification that Edith had as to why she hadn’t told the police when she’d finally figured everything out. The death of all those passengers had been an accident. The death of Henry P. Holden had not been; albeit, in her opinion, it had been justified. Cecelia’s death had simply firmed her conviction.
“Edith!” Cal shouted from somewhere in the house, followed by a loud slamming of a door that Edith felt all the way up in the attic. He’d started calling her by her first name shortly after his father’s death, when he’d assumed the role of man of the house. She didn’t like it, but didn’t make the mistake of letting him know.
Edith turned off the lights in the attic and hurried down the steps to the upper level. Ten-year-old Gibbes stood in the hallway holding his book bag, still wearing his school uniform, having just returned home, his eyes wide.
“Edith!” Cal shouted again, something dangerous in his voice. He’d been working in the garden, digging holes for her new rosebushes. It was his day off from the firehouse, and he’d wanted to do physical labor to work on his muscles. She’d planned on hiring somebody, but the roses were already there, waiting inside burlap bundles to be planted.
“I’ll be right there,” she called, then froze as she listened to his heavy steps in the hallway below, and the sound of something solid being dragged against wood floors. Dear God, no. He wasn’t supposed to be digging near the bench. But maybe he’d decided that that was where the roses should be, despite what she’d told him. No, no, no. Panicking, she turned to Gibbes. “I need you to go to your room and shut the door and lock it. Don’t come out until I tell you to. Do you understand?”
Gibbes nodded and ran toward his room, but turned back. “What if you need me?”
“Don’t come out.” She kissed his forehead, then headed down the stairs, pausing only a moment until she heard the lock turn in Gibbes’s door.
She thought she could smell the moist earth and the acrid odor of rot before she reached the bottom of the stairs, then nearly gagged on the stench and her own fear when she saw Cal in the foyer holding the suitcase, a trail of dirt leading from the kitchen.
When he saw her, he slid the suitcase toward her, the metal hinges scraping the wood floor. “This is from that plane, isn’t it?”
His voice was low, and to an innocent bystander it wouldn’t have been threatening. But it made Edith’s skin feel as if ants had dug a hole and begun to march beneath it.
There was no point in lying. Edith had found that agreeing with Cal regardless of whether he was right or wrong was the best way to go. “Yes. It fell in my garden the night the plane exploded.”
“Then why is it here? Why didn’t you give it to the police?” He had a way of emphasizing his words to make sure you understood that you had done something wrong and he was about to call you on it. And that he expected retribution for your wrongdoing.
For all the years she’d carried her secret, she’d never once imagined she’d be having that conversation. After she had mailed the handkerchief and letter, she’d kept nothing of the suitcase’s contents, nothing to give her away. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten about it; it was more like knowing that the family silver was in the dining room breakfront without actually looking at it.
She cleared her throat, trying to figure what half-truths she could tell him. Because his sense of justice and rightness, of punishment and retribution, were still tangled up in his childhood belief that everything was black-and-white, good or evil, right or wrong. There were no shades of the truth. Unless she could somehow manage to make him believe that justice had actually prevailed. She looked down at where the suitcase lay on the ground, smelling the tart scent of fresh soil, and saw the name tag. Her eyes met Cal’s and she knew he’d seen it, too. Had probably already memorized the name and address just as she had. She still knew it. Could recite it without having to think very hard.