Facing forward he put the SUV in drive and drove us home with only the cold blast of the air conditioner to cushion the weight of his words.
chapter 16
EDITH
APRIL 1972
Edith sat on the garden bench and pulled in a long drag on her cigarette. With her other hand she rubbed her lower back and watched Debbie Fuller—now Deborah, since she was a mature twenty-five—yank out another clump of weeds. It had been a rainy spring, the dampness bringing with it a bumper crop of mosquitoes and weeds.
Deborah caught Edith watching her and sat back on her heels and smiled. “Cigarettes are really bad for you, you know. They can even kill you.”
Edith took a long last drag, then dropped the cigarette in the dirt before smashing it with the toe of her shoe. “Don’t be so dramatic, Deborah. I figure if life hasn’t killed me by now, I’ve still got a long road ahead of me. Besides, according to Lord Byron, ‘Whom the gods love dies young.’” Edith found the need every once in a while to remind Deborah that she wasn’t the only one with a good education whose life’s plans had been thwarted by circumstance. It was why she requested Deborah’s help in the garden: They both needed the mental stimulation.
Deborah frowned, and Edith forced her face to remain serious. Deborah’s mother, Martha, had once said that her daughter had been born a forty-year-old nun, with a sober outlook on life and a seriousness of purpose. Her being the eldest of all those children was most likely to blame, but Edith wondered, too, if it had been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Deborah had graduated with honors from the University of South Carolina and was in her first year of law school when her mother became ill. As the eldest child and only girl, she’d taken the responsibility of moving back home and tending her mother. Almost two years later, nothing had changed, and, knowing Martha, it didn’t appear that things would.
Edith picked up the trimmers on the bench next to her and moved to her azalea bushes. The blooms had been weak and paltry, their edges already turning brown by the time they’d opened. Which was fine with her, really. It matched her own lack of anticipation over the coming summer, when C.J. would be back from his second year at Carolina.
She missed him—she did. He was her son. But she didn’t miss his moods, or the way she had to creep around her own house, afraid she’d upset the precarious peace she’d worked so hard to maintain. Or the way it sometimes made her feel as if Calhoun were still alive, her skin prickling with the knowledge that he would open the door at any moment.
It would be good to have C.J. back, to have the house full of his friends again, to hear their footsteps clattering on the porch at night and their car tires rolling over gravel on their way out to one of the islands for a midnight bonfire. Her biggest hope would be that he’d meet a nice girl, a strong girl. Someone who could soothe away the hurts he’d been born with, the hurts that emerged every time thunder cracked the night sky, a fissure of light illuminating their memories of a night long ago.
Deborah sat back on her heels, then wiped the sleeve of her blouse across her forehead, dislodging her glasses. She picked them up from the dirt and cleaned the lenses on her dungarees. “When C.J. gets home, I think you should have him pull out a few of your crape myrtles and plant orange trees instead. I’ve heard they keep the mosquitoes away.”
Edith thought of telling her that the days of C.J. helping her in the garden had long passed, packed up and folded away like outgrown pants, toy army men, and his need to apologize and be comforted. She missed that part of her son the most and prayed each day that it would return as he became a man.
She nodded, murmuring evasively, then returned to attacking the azaleas with the trimmer.
“How’s your big secret project, Mrs. Heyward?”
Edith had told her many times to call her by her first name, but apparently the rule follower in Deborah couldn’t be overruled. She could imagine Deborah as an old lady, still living at home with her mother, and calling Edith “Mrs. Heyward.”
“I’m afraid I’ve hit the doldrums with it. There’s too much missing information, and I don’t want to mess up everything I’ve already done with just guessing.”
“Is it another crime scene?”
Edith opened the trimmer as wide as it would go and stabbed at a drooping branch, its dying blooms bowed in the heat. “I don’t know why you keep asking me that, Deborah, because my answer never changes. It’s a personal matter, and there’s really only one person I believe I’ll ever show it to.” Edith smiled to herself. And I’ve never even met her.
“I’m just curious is all. Daddy said that the police department wanted to give you an award to thank you for all your help with advancing crime-scene investigations, but that you refused. I told him before he even asked that you’d say no.”