Maddie was talking fast. And crying. Her face streaked with makeup. Veronica rubbed her stiffened fingers up and down the girl’s naked arms. She was begging to stay with Veronica. Take her into White Eagle and lock the doors. It was a dream come true. Like the grandfather clock in the entryway had wound back and her daughter was home with her. A second chance.
She took Maddie inside and sat her at the dining table. Veronica was still wearing the sodden silk dress and it weighed heavily but there wasn’t time to change. She poured a nip of brandy into a Baccarat cup and sat with Maddie, patting her shaking hand. The girl’s words were a jumble. Her father. Brooks. The broom. Veronica saw her bandaged arm—sloppy like she’d done it herself. Blood bloomed through the white gauze. She unwrapped the bandage. Tried not to flinch when she saw the skin hanging loose.
“Let’s play our game,” she said, and when Maddie looked up, her eyes bloodshot, confused, Veronica said, “Our affirmations, silly girl,” and what a joy it was to hear Maddie laugh. “What would dear Oprah say if she were here with us?”
Maddie smiled weakly and the proof she’d been able to comfort her granddaughter, even just a bit, revived Veronica.
“I’ll start,” Veronica said as she led Maddie up the stairs, toward the guest bedroom. “Remember that one about integrity?”
Maddie’s voice was quiet when she spoke: “Real integrity is doing the right thing … Um. I can’t remember the rest.”
Veronica finished, “Knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”
She tucked Maddie in, pulling the covers up so the satin border tickled the girl’s chin. Just like Ginny liked it.
“Your turn now. Just one. And then you can rest.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Maddie said. “Can’t I stay here? Please?”
“Of course you can!” Veronica reminded herself to tamp down her excitement. “I mean, we’ll have to ask your,” she paused, “mother.”
“Not my dad.” Veronica heard the fear, reminding her how she’d felt toward more than one man in her long life. First, her father. Later, Bob.
“No, of course not.” Veronica smiled. “In fact, while you rest, I’ll go over to the cottage and pick up a few of your things.”
“Now?” Maddie sat up. “But it’s late.”
“Don’t you worry your sweet little head over it. Your only job is to have pleasant dreams.”
“But,” she said, gripping Veronica’s arm. “He’s there now.” She paused. “He’s angry.” She whispered the last part, “He might hurt you.” She looked to the window that faced the cottage.
“I promise,” she said as she kissed her granddaughter’s forehead, “he will never hurt anyone again. Yes?”
There was a tapping against the window screen and Maddie flinched. A pair of moths, their speckled wings quivering. A frantic dance.
“Yes?” Veronica repeated.
The girl’s voice was a whisper. “Yes.”
*
The metal lockbox in Bob’s closet was unlocked. The gun was heavier than she’d imagined. The metal cold. In the faint light of the bulb overhead she could read the inscription, the Navy SEAL motto she’d heard Grudder men, navy men, recite again and again over the years. The only easy day was yesterday.
She kicked off her sandals halfway across the lawn leading from the big house to the cottage. The train of her green gown was soaked, pulling her off-balance. She lifted the hem and let it hang over her arm. The cool sea breeze tickled her bare legs.
He was in the kitchen. Sitting at the table, his head cradled in his arms, his shoulders slumped.
Her feet made a wet sound on the tiled floor and he looked up. First, surprise. Then, guilt. There was a long red scratch across his cheek. Atta girl, she thought.
“She got you good, did she?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, ducking his head. In shame or anger, she couldn’t tell.
She wondered how many times he had asked her daughter, her granddaughter, and who knows how many mistresses, for their forgiveness.
“Tony,” she said.
“Yes, Mommy?”
She let the heavy black gun slap against her side, knowing it would say more than mere words. His eyes followed the movement to her crooked hip, widened when he spotted the gun.
“Don’t you ever—ever—call me that again.”
He nodded.
“You’re forgiven,” she said. “But only this one last time.”
He nodded again, more vigorously. As if, she thought, he was a naughty little boy trying to weasel his way out of a whipping.
What would Oprah say? Then it came to her.
“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different.”
Tony looked up at her, his eyes swollen with tears. God, he was so infuriatingly dumb.
“You understand?” she asked sweetly. “You capisce? Now, stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s pathetic.”
*
She opened the door to her daughter’s bedroom, and the smell of decay—sweet like rotten strawberries—hit her so she had to hold her breath.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark and she found the bed.
“Mommy? Is that you?”
Ginny propped herself on her elbows and her sheer bathrobe opened. Veronica saw her daughter’s fleshy breasts fall to each side, the stretch of pale freckled skin between. She reminded herself to tell Ginny about the cancer, soon, so she could get herself checked.
“Yes, Cookie. It’s me.”
“I was having the strangest dream. Set in a fancy hotel. You were there. And Daddy. And Mary and Sue from college.”
“Was it a good dream?”
“It was,” Ginny said as if surprised. “I’m going to go to sleep now and see if I can go back. But…” She paused. “I need my pills. They’re on the dresser. Would you mind?”
“Not at all, dear.”
Veronica laid two pills in her daughter’s open palm. Listened to Ginny swallow them dry.
“Finish your dream.”
She shut the door, locking her daughter in like a sleeping princess. And was she, Veronica wondered, the evil queen?
She typically lays about 500 eggs. The eggs are covered with a peachy fuzz that can cause rashes if touched by bare skin or fur, especially on humans and mammals. Then the female leaves to eat, while her eggs are protected.
She does not live to see her offspring.
—The Gypsy Moth: Research Toward Integrated Pest Management, United States Department of Agriculture, 1981
37.
Leslie
The female moths were dying. She knelt on the patio in the faint glow of the black light leaking through the ballroom windows and watched the white moths twitch on the slate floor.
These are the mothers, she thought as the pulsing bass of her son’s music made her legs tingle.
Her beautiful son, her angry boy-man son, had locked himself in the ballroom as soon as they’d returned from the fireworks at the club. Had refused to speak to her when she’d asked him what was up. Jules had been worse. He wouldn’t look at her. It had been a relief when Eva had fallen fast asleep in her car seat, her face swollen from crying through the fireworks. They’d driven home through the fog in silence, their clothes stinking of gunpowder and smoke.