Ah. Stephen Carter’s parents and brother, I assumed. All three dead on the same day, the anniversary of which was coming up soon. They must have all died in the house fire that Stephen Carter had talked about.
There was a fourth gravestone, flat on the ground, and no bigger than a piece of printer paper.
jane carter,
born june 4, 2014, died june 4, 2014.
From the dates, it sounded like she was stillborn. Rebecca had said “babies,” but there was only one stone. Were there others who had been buried without stones for some reason? Maybe if they were preterm?
“I wonder which of the wives was her mother,” I said. I could ask that woman in private about what had happened.
“That’s the problem with the way we name children,” Kenneth said. “Always with the father’s last name, like only his legacy counts.”
I’d never heard him say anything so feminist before. Was this Naomi’s influence? I wanted to cheer. “Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked.
He shrugged and I saw sweat trickling down his face already, before we’d even started digging. “Naomi and I are going to hyphenate our names. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”
“Carter-Wallheim,” I said, trying the sound together.
“Wallheim-Carter,” Kenneth corrected me. “After all, there’s no reason that the man’s name should always go last. That’s just a sexist tradition.”
I wondered how Kurt would feel about this. But we had four other sons who would keep our name.
“Do you mind, Mom?” Kenneth asked.
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. He had his fingers on the top two buttons of his shirt.
“Go ahead,” I said.
After only a few minutes, sweat was running down his back and chest and I thought fleetingly of how much he looked like his father, at least Kurt from twenty years ago.
Couldn’t we just go back to then? It had been so much easier to believe, to love. Kurt had been younger and less saggy. I’d loved to look at his body whenever I had the chance. He’d sometimes tease me by flexing a muscle in his chest just to prove how good his control was over every little part.
It wasn’t that I thought Kurt was less handsome now. We’d both grown older and frankly, I found him just as physically attractive as ever. But it was different. It wasn’t his body alone that turned me on. It was who he was to me, our whole history together, all those little moments when he had been there for me. It was the wisdom that his graying hair and his sagging chest represented. They were scars of time, proof of him letting go of impatience and selfishness and so many traits that the years had smoothed away.
I should call Kurt, I thought sadly. I wanted to talk to him more than anything in the world. I wanted to ask his perspective on the possible motives of each of the wives. But if I called him, he’d lecture me on how we should have called the police. He’d tell me how wrong I had been. He’d play the part of the bishop instead of the husband. He’d use his authority to correct me. I couldn’t bear that again.
“I need to go,” I said aloud. Not home, though. I needed to get to work on figuring this out so that I could go home after that, and prove I’d been right.
“All right. Good luck, Mom. Or good hunting, whatever they say to detectives in books.” He waved at me, and then went back to digging.
Did they say something to detectives in books? Maybe—run away? Save yourselves! If they were smart, they’d say that, anyway.
Chapter 17
It occurred to me once I walked away from Kenneth that it would be useful for me to check on the fence perimeter, to see if it was as difficult to penetrate as it seemed. So I turned south of the graveyard and began to do a quick search by sight. There were a couple of spots where I couldn’t get to the fence, but I could see it was intact.
And then I saw a small house in the distance, which must have been the neighbors, the Perezes. I didn’t immediately see a break in the fence. It wasn’t until I got close enough to touch it that I saw that a section had been cut, then replaced. There were flakes of rust on the cut pieces that showed the edges.