A Stillness of Chimes (3 page)

Eighteen years later

The preacher was stretching out the altar call as long and thin as he could manage. If, as he’d ordered, every eye was closed and every head was bowed, Laura could sneak out from her back-row seat before she got trapped in small talk with the old ladies in the pew ahead of hers. Their stale perfumes smelled as dusty as the hymnals.

She sneaked a peek at the red book in the wooden rack in front of her knees. A month ago, mid-April, she’d stood in the front row with a hymnal shaking in her hands as she tried to ignore the flower-covered casket a few feet away. Two days later she’d flown back to Denver, unable to come to grips with her loss. Instead, she’d worried about the cat shut up alone in the empty house. For a month, poor old Mikey had no company but Ardelle Bright, who’d offered to stop by every day to feed him. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d survived.

The elderly women were busy murmuring to God and wouldn’t even notice if she left. Laura dug behind her for her raincoat and pulled it on, then rose from the hard wooden pew and ducked into the aisle. Pausing
beside the rain-sprinkled window, she faced the graveyard. The finality of it hit her harder now than it had when Gary Bright had called with the bad news, his voice hushed and strange. Instantly, she’d known someone had died—but her mother? Impossible.

Laura’s eyes heated with tears. She turned away from the window and tiptoed toward the swinging door that opened on the tiny foyer. She pushed the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak.

And there stood Sean Halloran, looking cramped among the coat racks and the lost-and-found box and a jumble of umbrellas along the wall. His straight, shaggy hair looked windblown even in the motionless air. Although he was only hiding in the back, he’d dignified his faded jeans with a white dress shirt and a necktie. His mouth still had the sarcastic little tilt that she’d loved since third grade or so.

She hadn’t seen him since the graveyard service. Even then, at her own mother’s funeral, he’d made those old longings flutter inside her like angels’ wings. He was a charmer, after all, and the first boy she’d ever kissed.

She shut the door as quietly as she’d opened it. “What a nice surprise,” she said, just above a whisper.

“Blame it on my weakness for older women.”

The old joke about their three-day age difference made her smile but also brought a pang of regret. “This old woman is still on Colorado time and tired from the drive, so be nice.”

“I’ll think about it,” he answered just as softly. His smile brought out pleasant crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. “What time did you get in?”

“About two in the morning.”

“I called the house awhile ago and you didn’t answer, so I figured you were here. Have you talked to anybody yet?”

“No, I walked in late and sat in the last row.”

She waited for him to tease her about being late for church when she only had to cross the road. But Sean looked away, one hand fidgeting with his necktie.

The preacher had worked his way up to a thunderous finish. The organist pounded out the first notes of a hymn. The service was officially over.

“I’d like to walk you home,” Sean said, not smiling anymore. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“You’ll find out.”

The door swung open. One of the elderly women exited in a cloying cloud of cheap scent. Recognition flashed in her eyes, and her red-lipsticked mouth moved in a babble of sympathy that Laura had heard all too often back in April.

Everybody started by saying they were so sorry and ended with something like “It must have been her time” or “I’ll be praying for you.” Nobody ever said anything original or entirely honest. Because Jess Gantt had drifted into some unorthodox beliefs, half the town thought she was new fuel on the fires of hell, but they were afraid to say it.

“Are you back to stay, sugar?” the woman asked at the end of her sermonette.

“No, I’m here to sort out my mom’s things.”

“And you’re still teaching history in … where is it?”

“Colorado.”

“That’s nice, being a teacher. You’ll have your whole summer free.” The woman’s claw-like fingers clutched the sleeve of Laura’s raincoat. “It’s a mercy the heart trouble took your mama quick before somethin’ terrible
like cancer could take her slow. Your poor daddy too, gone so sudden. Who knows what the good Lord spared him, unless it’s like they say and—”

“Thank you, Mrs. Moore,” Sean said, breaking the woman’s grip. “May the good Lord spare you a slow death, too.” He took Laura’s hand and pulled her toward the exit. “Soon,” he added under his breath.

She smiled a little inside. He’d always had a gift for soft-spoken, thinly veiled jabs.

“You’re a blessing to have home, baby,” the woman called. “I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thanks,” Laura said, but Prospect wasn’t home anymore, and she couldn’t bear one more person spouting the only things that were left to say when death blew holes in sweet beliefs about a God who answered prayer.

It wasn’t heart trouble anyway. It was a cerebral aneurysm, out of the blue. God hadn’t given her mom any last-minute chances.

Sean’s hand released hers and settled on the small of her back. He ushered her outside, under the overhang and then down the steps and into the rain. He produced a black umbrella from somewhere and swung it over her. A gust of wind batted it off center, but he fought back and conquered.

“Let’s get a move on,” he said, glancing behind them.

“What’s the rush? Scared of little old ladies?”

She’d given him a perfect setup for another wisecrack, but he didn’t answer. Unnerved by his strange urgency, she walked faster.

On the hillside across the parking lot lay the graveyard where flowers had blanketed a white casket in April. If there was no life after death, her mother was only a dead body in a box. Her father was only bones that had rested at the bottom of Hamlin Lake for years now. End of story. No heaven, no hell. No Judgment Day.

Gram and Poppa Flynn, buried a few feet from their daughter’s new grave, would have called that heresy.

The wet wind slapped Laura’s face like a rebuke. Running out of walkway, she stepped onto the grass and turned toward home with Sean by her side. Her heels sank into the saturated ground, its wetness seeping through the seams of the shoe leather. If her dad were alive, he would have told her to wear sensible shoes.

Sunday mornings when she was a child, he’d always buffed her patent-leather shoes and polished his black wingtips. Then he’d walked her across the road to Sunday school, holding her hand. Back then, she’d thought her parents would be around forever.

Maybe that was why she’d dragged herself out of bed for church. She’d unconsciously hoped the familiar setting would let her pretend for a while that her parents were with her. That they hadn’t vanished into the sweet by-and-by, wherever it was.

She picked up her pace. Just walk. Don’t think. Just walk. Don’t think. The mindless words beat in tandem with her footsteps and wrapped her in a stillness that nearly could have passed for peace. Deep inside, though, she was raw. The shock that had acted as anesthesia had worn off.

Sean slid his hand to her shoulder, slowed her down, reined her in. “Get back under the umbrella.”

“You know I don’t like umbrellas.”

“I don’t like you catching pneumonia. I was going to bring my truck over—”

“But the house is closer than the parking lot. I know. I’m fine, Sean.”

She didn’t want to be moved by his blunt kindness. And she certainly
didn’t want to be moved by his touch, but she was grateful for the warmth of his hand. She was cold. Colder than she’d ever felt in Colorado’s snowy winters. Even in the mountains, Georgia shouldn’t have been so cold in the middle of May. But maybe the chill came from the inside.

They reached the grassy bank above the road and stopped where crumbling cement steps led down to the pavement. A chain of vehicles threaded through the sharp curve, held back by a slow-moving dump truck with a blue tarp billowing over its load. The truck lumbered past, splashing the bank with muddy rainwater, then disappeared around the bend with its impatient entourage of smaller vehicles.

Laura glanced behind her. Umbrellas sprouted like flowers in the parking lot as people ran for their vehicles beside the little brick church. She was glad she’d escaped the small talk, but whatever Sean had to say might prove harder to handle.

She looked up at him against the black backdrop of his umbrella. Lines of weariness had joined the laugh lines around his eyes. She hardly knew this grown-up Sean, this somber stranger. Seeing him in a necktie took her all the way back to her dad’s memorial service. That was the first time she’d ever seen Sean wear a tie. It was the first time she’d seen him cry, too. Raised hard by a hard man, he’d usually managed to hide his sorrows behind his blue-eyed devilment.

With one finger, he pushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “You need some sleep.”

She shook her head. “I have too much to do. I can’t sleep.”

“Me either.” His gaze darted beyond her and sharpened, wary and watchful. But there was nothing to watch in that direction. Nothing but a stand of pine trees that the kudzu would swallow before summer’s end.

A chill hit her. The ghosts she didn’t believe in were breathing down her neck again.

The latest rumor had Sean seeing things. Hearing things. The snap of a branch in the woods, a flash of brown in the green. It must have been a deer, foraging.

But Laura hadn’t heard anything yet. He could break it to her gently.

She pulled away and shivered, her red hair frizzy from the damp. He tightened his arm around her shoulders.

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

Her big tomboy feet in fancy shoes started moving down the steps, avoiding the rough spots. Her black raincoat flapped in the wind. Like all the tongues that were flapping. God help her if she heard the old biddies’ tall tales with no warning.

Sean eased her to the left to avoid a long, green drape of kudzu at the roadside. Hanging from a sycamore and swinging in the wind, the vines were trying to grab a nearby dogwood and start devouring it, too.

Years ago, Laura’s father had shown Sean how a dogwood leaf broken in two would still have thin, stretchy filaments connecting the halves. Like strands of memory and fact that held past and present together, Elliott had said. They would hold for a while, but not forever. He’d been a bit of a philosopher, Laura’s dad, but he hadn’t always made sense.

The man’s lean figure drifted into Sean’s imagination, slipped across the road in the rain, and vanished among the trees. He missed the man and his music and his stories. Wanted him back—alive—but wishful thinking couldn’t raise the dead.

A fresh gust of rain pecked at the umbrella. Sean hurried Laura across the pavement, onto the circle drive, and up to the little brown bungalow that sat on a small peninsula of land created by the sharp curve of the road. They clomped up the steps to the wraparound porch where the wooden swing had hung until Elliott busted it up. A couple of his Adirondack chairs sat there now, but nobody ever used them.

Rain danced a jig on the tin roof of the porch as they walked around to the back door. Laura dug through her handbag, giving Sean a closeup view of those long fingers. The delicate bones of her wrists.

He didn’t like this business of keeping his distance. Respecting her wishes. Being the ex-boyfriend instead of the love of her life. He’d had enough of it.

She drew a shaky breath that made him want to tuck her into a comfy chair with a hot toddy and a quilt. “Please don’t tell me I’ve locked myself out,” she said, still digging. “Sorry, I can’t find the key.”

He reached into his pocket. “I’ve got it.”

She looked up. Her skin was pale, with shadows under the deep-set, dark brown eyes that were so much like her mother’s. “You still have a key?”

“Sure I do. Half the county has a key.”

Laura nearly smiled. “My mom was funny about that, wasn’t she?”

“She was.” Jess had been in the habit of locking herself out, so she’d had extra keys made and handed them out to her friends like candy. Her personal lockout-assistance service.

Sean unlocked the door, pushed it open. Leaving the umbrella dripping on the weathered planks of the porch, he followed Laura in. The kitchen smelled like a florist’s shop, the counters and table still crowded with potted plants from the funeral.

“You have enough plants to stock a nursery,” he said.

“Tell me about it.” Laura slung her raincoat over the back of a chair and bent to slip off her shoes. “I’ll let you keep the key, in case I lock myself out again.”

Just like her mom. “Good idea.” Hiding a smile, he nodded toward a massive, foil-covered dish almost hidden by the greenery on the counter. “At least you won’t starve. I’ll bet Ardelle left that.”

“She did. It’s enough coffeecake to feed the whole neighborhood. Why don’t you take some home?”

“Thanks, maybe I will. Lord knows I’m not much of a cook myself.”

Laura smoothed the skirt of her dress although it clearly didn’t need smoothing. “How’s everything going for you?”