“Let’s get on with it, shall we,” he said, as if he was gaveling a business meeting to order rather than going to his daughter’s funeral.
By the time they were seated on the dais, the church was full, and a frenzied buzz of conversation echoed back from the vaulted ceiling. There must be over a thousand people here. Who were they? Strangers and pretenders, mostly, along with Eastman friends and relatives, rubberneckers from the town who’d never met Kate, and a load of Carlisle faculty. The press was cordoned off in the north transept, away from the main action, but constantly threatening to swamp the velvet ropes. As the organist began to play the Chopin funeral march and the sonorous notes rose high into the air, the congregation turned as one toward the door. Kate’s coffin was rich mahogany with polished brass fittings, piled high with white lilies, and borne by eight somber, dark-suited pallbearers. The three Eastman boys, four men whom Jenny didn’t recognize, and at the front right, Griff, with tears shining in his eyes. The flashbulbs sputtered like mad as the photographers went wild trying to get his picture. She could imagine the headlines: “Killer Husband Fakes Tears!”
Once the coffin had been placed before the dais, Griff took his seat beside Keniston as the chief mourner, and the chaplain rose to begin the service. The service lasted a very long time, and when finally it was Jenny’s turn, she walked to the podium feeling drained and emotionally depleted. She clutched her notes, but she couldn’t remember a word of her prepared speech, and the print on the page swam before her eyes. After a long, terrible pause, Jenny cast the notes aside and spoke from her heart. Her love for her friend came pouring out of her. Open on Kate, holding her father’s hand at her dying mother’s bedside. Then Kate with her bright hair on the wide green lawn of the Quad on their first day at Carlisle. Kate, always the belle, whether in jeans and sneakers, or a miniskirt and stilettos. Kate studying but not studying, goofing off, partying yet still getting As because she was so damn smart. (She’d wasted her talents, but Jenny never said that.) Kate holding court at a long table in the Commons, eating that nasty pink yogurt she loved that wasn’t even a real flavor, and talking about Freud so that even the dullest among them finally got it. Kate on her wedding day to Griff, full of hope. Kate, leading a life of glamour and luxury. Kate this past summer, returning to Belle River to start over after misfortune struck, in the bosom of old friends, holding her head up. Kate, taken from her loved ones much too soon. But take comfort, for she was at peace now, resting in the arms of God.
Tears rolled down Jenny’s cheeks, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Jenny believed every word as she said it, even though she was simultaneously conscious of the flip side—the negative, the tragic, the ugly. But you didn’t speak ill of the dead, and after years in politics, Jenny believed in giving the audience what they wanted. A funeral was no place for the bitter truth. They would say a proper good-bye and pray for Kate at the hour of her death. Scandal would have to wait.
But it didn’t wait long. Griff and the other pallbearers got up to carry Kate’s coffin to the hearse outside, leaving Jenny to wheel Keniston down the handicapped-accessible ramp. They were only a minute behind the others. But by the time they got outside, the coffin was in the hearse, and Griff was spread-eagled against a police cruiser while Owen Rizzo slapped the cuffs on in full view of the national press.
31
The cell was cold and grimy. It reminded Griff of that godawful house on Faculty Row. That place was a pigsty and depressing as hell, with old steam radiators that rattled and spit, and drafty windows that leaked frigid air on cold nights. For a while Griff had tried to maintain the place, but it was a losing battle. Every time he did something, Kate undid it. She didn’t understand the basics of taking care of a house, or taking care of herself for that matter. He couldn’t blame her. She’d had help all her life. First in New York with her family, and then with him. Kate’s favorite thing of all was living in hotels, which they did for months on end. She liked her sheets ironed, and changed every day, her crumpled towels whisked away, fresh flowers, a chocolate on the pillow. In the best places, the staff tiptoed in when you were down at the pool, and you never saw them. She didn’t want to have to tell someone what to do; she just wanted it done. Room service at odd hours, breakfast on the terrace in her bathrobe with dark glasses on to block the tropical sun, aspirin from the gift shop for her hangover—that’s the life Kate was used to. Griff could hardly blame her if, when all that disappeared, Kate had difficulty learning to cook or clean or do laundry. Kate was a New Yorker. She didn’t like to drive, so if there was no deli on the corner, if nobody delivered, how could she be expected to buy groceries?
Griff did all the shopping, and when he did, he noticed things. He knew Kate was pregnant, because he knew when she got her period. He knew whether there were tampons in the drawer, because he made the drugstore runs. He noticed the puffiness in her face, and her breasts, and the flush that came to her cheeks. He knew she wanted this baby, because she changed what she ate, and cut back how much she drank. He knew what those special vitamins were for. She didn’t have to say. He also knew that the child wasn’t his, because she’d never agreed to get pregnant even though he’d begged her, and because they hadn’t had sex in a year. He knew that Kate didn’t want his baby, but that she wanted this one. And Griff knew whose it was, because he’d been watching that little romance from the beginning.