A Stillness of Chimes (12 page)

Sean fought the impulse to reach for her hand. “I hope that’s not just wishful thinking.”

“Consider the big picture, though.” She looked up. “If the timing of the sightings is related to my mom’s death, it points to my dad because nobody else would be more affected by it. Think about his background too. His survival skills. And his problems. Disappearing for years isn’t rational behavior, but he wasn’t always completely rational.” She motioned toward a book lying on the floor beside the recliner. “PTSD, maybe. Doc Marsh let me borrow a book, and I’ve been reading up on it.”

“A little research can’t hurt, I guess.”

She reached into the chest again. She brought out a pile of newspaper clippings, more photos, and a chain that held Elliott’s dog tag and a silver cross.

“He wasn’t wearing those, that day on the lake?” Sean asked. “I thought he wore them all the time.”

“Sometimes he would leave them hanging up somewhere for days. I never knew why. Never asked. I didn’t want to set him off.” She leaned back against the couch beside him and fingered the cross and dog tag. “I’d love to give them back to him,” she said. “To welcome him home.”

Sean kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to burst her bubble.

She lowered the lid on the empty chest and handed him the key. “I want you to take it.”

“Excuse me?”

“I want you to have the chest. It was the first project you ever did with my dad. I thought it might mean something to you, and I have all these other things.” She made a sweeping motion that took in the whole room, filled with furniture and instruments that Elliott had crafted.

Sean would have preferred one of the instruments, but Laura hadn’t offered that option. He studied the key for a moment, then put it in his pocket and met her eyes. “Thanks, Laura. I’d like that very much.”

She scrambled to her feet, leaving the mementos on the floor. “I’ll help you carry it outside,” she said briskly, bending to lift one end of the chest.

He took the other end, and they hauled the empty chest out to his truck. He padded it with an old tarp, shut the tailgate, and sighed. Laura would use him as her free locksmith, and she’d even give him a piece of furniture she treasured, but she wouldn’t breathe a word about that silly birthday party. Apparently she’d rather go alone.

“Thank you,” he said. “The chest does mean a lot to me.”

She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked up at him. “Did my dad mean a lot to you?”

“What kind of question is that? He rescued me from Dale. Saved my life, probably, or at least my sanity. He meant the world to me.”

“Then will you stop assuming he’s dead? I don’t understand why you refuse to see it any other way.”

He shook his head, unwilling to admit to himself, let alone to Laura, why Elliott’s return might be disastrous. “Let’s not argue. Listen, I need to get home. I have a customer coming at eight.”

“Okay,” she said in a tight, locked-up voice.

He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her to cry on his shoulder, but she might have slugged him for it. So he settled for telling her good night and driving away.

He didn’t let himself look in the rearview mirror for the quick, on-off-on flicker of the porch light that had once been her way of saying “Good night. I love you.” It wouldn’t happen. She’d dropped that habit on his eighteenth birthday.

Still in her pajamas at half past eight the next morning, Laura backed out of her mom’s crowded closet and shut the door. No journals there. Just too many reminders of her missing parents. Both of them.

She headed down the hall to try the deep but narrow closet in the guest room. The low-wattage bulb didn’t do a lot of good. Wishing she’d brought a flashlight, she pushed her way past electric fans, space heaters, and cardboard file boxes. Spotting a small carton labeled “For Laura,” she opened it and found the old photos from the Flynn side of the family. It would have been a more exciting find if she’d had family to share it with. Her only Flynn relatives were distant cousins in distant places.

Setting the box of photos aside for later, she pushed farther into the closet. At the very back sat three large boxes. Someone had helpfully labeled them with a thick black marker: “Journals.” But that wasn’t her mother’s graceful penmanship.

“Ardelle,” Laura whispered. “Of all the nerve.”

She tugged the first box into the light and went back for the other two. None of them were taped shut. Each one held an assortment of journals, ranging from cheap spiral-bound notebooks to expensive hardcovers. A quick check of their dates showed that Ardelle had packed them in chronological order. Had she read them too?

In no time, Laura found the journals that covered the year she turned eighteen. Cross-legged on the floor, she opened a thick hardcover notebook that started about a month before her dad’s disappearance. Skimming carefully but quickly through the July entries, she found no mention of his worsening moods or even a hint of marital discord.

Her mouth dry, Laura flipped the pages to August and the very day he’d disappeared:
If E. has any luck, we’ll have fish for supper—with veggies, of course. The usual overabundance of tomatoes, cukes, and zukes. Why did I plant so much zucchini??

She turned the page slowly, delaying the moment, then made herself read the entry for the following morning:
E. is gone. L. walks around like a ghost. I can’t bear to write. I can’t bear it
.

The facing page held only a short entry written weeks later:
Seems strange that L. is so far away. College should have been an adventure. Not like this. Now S. is the one who walks around like a ghost
.

The remaining pages of the book were blank.

Not wanting to revisit her abrupt departure from Sean’s life, Laura opened the next volume. It started near the end of September.
The morning glories are at their finest. I hope we won’t have an early frost this year. I always hate to lose them before their time
.

More slowly now, Laura reviewed the months preceding and following her dad’s disappearance. She saw no clue that her mom believed he’d staged it.

There was no mention of handsome and flirtatious Gibby Sprague, either. No indication that her mom had been unfaithful in thought or deed. That wasn’t surprising, given the way she’d so carelessly left her journals lying around, but it reinforced Laura’s belief that her dad’s accusation had no basis in reality.

She sampled older journals too. An entry on a February day:
E. built a bluebird house for me
. On another page:
E. took me to that new Italian place for my birthday. Nice atmosphere, decent marinara
.

In one of the other boxes, Laura found the journal from the summer before she entered seventh grade. The summer her dad’s problems intensified. There wasn’t a word about his growing depression, though. Not a word about the blowups, always sparked by some trivial thing and followed by heartfelt apologies. Not a word about a father-daughter clash over nail polish, either. Looking back now, from an adult’s perspective, Laura knew the nail polish was only a trigger.

She browsed through more of the journals. In beautiful penmanship, using a variety of colored inks, her mother had written about gardening, weather, birds. Books and movies. She’d written about a retirement party for a cousin in North Carolina and a fender bender in downtown Prospect. She’d even described the three cats curled up on the bed like furry throw pillows. Except for an occasional mention of Laura, almost everything was about
her
. Jessamyn Gantt. Her plans, her hobbies, and her superficial pet peeves. In more recent years, she’d even tried her hand at analyzing her dreams.

No wonder she’d never bothered to hide the chronicles of her life. She’d portrayed a lovely, unreal world, all sweetness and light. Maybe she’d used her daily scribblings, as she’d called them, to create the life she wished she’d had.

If Ardelle had snooped, she couldn’t have found anything interesting, Laura thought with some satisfaction.

She toyed with the idea of confronting Ardelle about her prying ways,
but they probably stemmed from her OCD tendencies. Better let it go. Anyway, after a month of feeding the cat, watering the plants, and bringing in the mail, she deserved sincere thanks, not a rebuke.

Standing up to stretch, Laura decided to put together a gift basket. She had to go out anyway to pick up the signs to post at the cabin. It would be fun to shop in downtown Prospect again, especially if she called Cassie to ask for some ideas first.

Sudden tears took Laura by surprise. She didn’t have a mom to shop for anymore.

Gift basket in hand, Laura stood on the Brights’ driveway and lifted her eyes to the distant peaks and ridges fading into the late-morning haze. Now that she’d grown accustomed to the Rockies, the southern Appalachians looked like mere foothills. And now that she’d become familiar with Colorado’s mountain chickadees, the Carolina chickadees of the South looked and sounded different. Not wrong, just different, like the southern accents that had become alien to her ears. Even the common endearments of the South—
honey, sugar, darlin’
—sounded strange now.

And they never came from Sean anymore. She swallowed hard and turned toward the house.

The dirt was too orange. The sweet tea was too sweet. The pines were too skinny.

She rapped the shiny brass door knocker on the elegant door and waited.

“Coming,” Gary hollered from somewhere inside. He opened the door a minute later and grinned. “Well, if it ain’t my favorite schoolteacher.
Come on in, sweetie, but Cassie’s not here. She’s having lunch with her mother-in-law.”

“I know. We just talked this morning. I’m actually here to see Ardelle. Is she home?”

“She sure is. Ardie, come out of your cave! Laura’s here.”

“There’s no rush,” Laura said, stepping inside. “I could stand here all day and enjoy the view.”

He smiled toward the back of the house and the windows that looked over an in-ground pool and miles and miles of hazy mountains. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Breathtaking.”

“Enjoy it for me.” He opened a briefcase on a table by the door and chucked some papers into it. “I’m off to work. Glad I didn’t miss seeing you, though.”

Tall, big-boned Ardelle came around the corner wearing a hideous red-and-black running suit sprinkled with white cat hair. The source of the cat hair, fat and fluffy Arabella, trotted along behind her. “Why, Laura! What a nice surprise.”

“This is to thank you for taking care of Mikey and everything.” Laura handed her the basket. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Oh, it was a pleasure, Laura. He’s the funniest old thing. But look at all this loot!” She rummaged in the basket. “Coffee and tea and chocolates. Special scrapbook papers. Stickers and ribbons and stamps.” She looked up, smiling. “How did you know I’ve taken up scrapping?”

“Cassie told me you’re really into your scrapbooks. She thought you might like to adopt my houseplants too. Would you?”

Ardelle’s eyes widened. “The plants from the funeral? Oh, honey, you should keep them. They were given in memory of your sweet mother.”

“But I can’t haul them back to Colorado. I’d love to give you as many as you’d like. After all, you’re the one who took care of them for me.”

“I don’t have a green thumb like your mother did, but … well, I could sure enough try.” Ardelle seemed to be trying for a solemn expression but couldn’t quite keep the eagerness out of her voice. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind. They’re already in the car. Every last one of them.”

“All of them? Oh, how nice! Gary, would you help Laura bring them in? And I’ll clear a space for them somewhere. Maybe by the fireplace? It’s already empty and swept for the summer …”

Gary followed Laura out to her car, and they began hauling plants inside: ferns, lilies, philodendrons, a small weeping fig, and others that Laura couldn’t identify. As she and Gary brought in more plants, Ardelle arranged and rearranged them in front of the empty fireplace.

“There’s nothing left but a couple of African violets,” Laura said. “I’ll get those last two, Gary. I know you need to get to work.”