A Stillness of Chimes (34 page)

Outside, chain saws buzzed like hornets as Cassie walked toward the kitchen to rustle up some breakfast. Her dad had hired a crew to take down some sickly pines before they died and fell on the house. The men had been hard at work since eight in the morning. That was only five, California time. She was not in an especially good mood.

Hearing voices—or at least one voice—she peeked around the corner. Her mom stood at the counter beside the sink, dumping a handful of sliced potatoes into her slow cooker. She seemed to be moving in slow motion, and she was talking to herself.

Cassie crept closer, her bare feet noiseless on the smooth ceramic tiles, and listened.

“I can’t do anything right,” her mom said. “Can’t measure up.” She lifted one hand to her face as if to wipe away tears. “I can’t even spell,” she added in a stronger voice.

“Whoa,” Cassie mouthed silently. She backed up a few steps and moved to one side for a better view.

“I can’t be anybody else. I can’t be anybody but me.” Her mom picked up a potato and the peeler.

Cassie’s phone rang in her pocket. Her mom whirled to face her.

“Darn, I wanted to talk to you and now somebody’s calling me.” Cassie pulled out her phone and decided not to mention it was Laura.

“Who is it?” Her mom set down the peeler and the potato. She wiped her wet hands on her black sweatpants, the potato starch making pale smudges on the fabric.

“It’s, um, an old friend of mine.” Cassie made a hasty exit through the sunroom to the pool deck and took a deep breath of fresh air filled with the sweet scent of the butchered pines. The chain saws were annoyingly loud, but they’d be a good cover for the phone call.

She opened the phone. “Hey, Laura.”

“Hey, Cass. How’s your mom doing?”

“Pretty much the same,” Cassie said softly. “What’s new with you?”

“Well … I need to tell you what your mom has been up to lately. Or at least I
think
she’s the one who’s responsible.”

“Oh boy. What did she do now?” Cassie sat in one of the poolside chairs and waited for the bad news.

“It wasn’t necessarily your mom who did this, but somebody went into my mom’s room and took a little bottle of Jean Naté. Her favorite fragrance.”

“You’re sure it’s missing?”

“Yes. I looked and looked, but it’s really gone.”

“What does it smell like?”

“Sort of fruity. Lemony. Spicy.”

“I’ll see what I can find out and let you know. Hey, I’m going to try to talk her into hitting the festival tomorrow. Will you be there?”

“Probably not. The live music won’t start until tomorrow night, and Sean won’t open his booth until Saturday morning. That’s where I’ll be, if only to make sure he’s there instead of here.”

“Okey-doke. I’ll look for you at his booth on Saturday. See ya.”

Cassie returned to the kitchen. Now her mom was chopping onions.

“Mom, you want to hit the music shindig sometime? We can check out the bands. Eat a funnel cake or two.”

“Mm-hmm,” her mom said in a vague tone.

Moving closer, Cassie inhaled deeply. She didn’t smell anything lemony or fruity. Just onions, and they made her eyes water.

“Wow, those are strong onions.”

“Mm-hmm. That’s nice, honey.”

Cassie blinked hard and fast. Now she was crying real tears, not onion tears. She couldn’t deny it any longer. Something was wrong with her mother.

Sean climbed out of his truck at the QuikTrip, swiped his card, and started pumping gas. He should have showered and shaved first, to wake up his weary brain, but it would have made as much sense as a shower and a shave before a hunting trip.

Bad analogy. Elliott wasn’t prey.

Just down the street, one of the banners for the festival snapped in the wind, its bold blue-and-green design the same one the town had used for years. It was finally getting some recognition.

By tomorrow night, the town would be packed with musicians and fans. Rowdy drunks and noisy bikers. Affluent tourists and penny-pinching locals. The crowds were bigger every year, threatening to make it one of the biggest music events in the Southeast.

Of all the crazy times for Elliott to come back.

Sean was starting to hate that word—
crazy
—but as much as he wanted to believe Elliott would never hurt anybody, there was no telling what frame of mind he’d be in. Or what he might be charged with someday.

Sean rubbed the tight muscles in the back of his neck. He was glad Laura had agreed to spend the night at his house. She wasn’t happy about it, obviously, but she hadn’t argued much.

He bought a bag of ice and poured it over a six-pack of Coke in his cooler. Between him and Keith, they would have Coke, coffee, flashlights, plenty of bug spray, and at least one snake-bite kit. No guns. He’d given his word.

He put the lid on the cooler and checked the sky. He’d make it to the cabin before dark, and Keith would show up as soon as he got off work. Sean was still amazed that Annie had put her stamp of approval on the expedition.

Before he could get away, a white car pulled up next to him. Doc Marsh rolled down the window, his kind face burdened with worry. “How goes it, Sean?”

“Oh, it’s interesting.”

“It sure is.” Doc kneaded his steering wheel with his pink hands. “Half an hour ago, I saw Dale’s truck at the Gantts’ old cabin outside of town. I thought I should let you know.”

“Great, maybe it’ll be a family reunion.” Sean didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. “Keith and I are planning to stay there all night tonight to see if Elliott turns up.”

“If he does, he might need some serious help. You know where to find an old doctor who still knows his stuff.”

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“All right, then. Treat him right—if you find him. And God be with you.”

“Thanks.” Sean climbed into his truck, threw it in reverse and glanced behind him, the empty gun rack snagging his attention. All his guns were locked up tight at home. Laura was safe and sound under his roof too. It should have given him a measure of peace.

Driving down the road, Sean remembered Elliott whittling on his porch one night, rambling about every subject under the sun. He’d said there was a difference between justice and revenge. And sometimes, he’d said, eyeing his knife, a sin wasn’t a crime. Sometimes a crime wasn’t a sin.

Obviously, he’d had his own ideas about justice.

Maybe they’d still have a happy ending, though. Sean could imagine finding Elliott lounging against a tree trunk somewhere. Whittling a piece of wood, maybe. He’d be old and grimy and skinny, and maybe he wouldn’t be entirely rational, but he’d still be himself in the ways that mattered. He’d still be a good man with a kind heart.

“Hey, Sean,”
he’d say, setting down his knife.
“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes sir,”
Sean would say.
“Welcome home.”

“Thank you, son. You about ready to start those fiddle lessons?”

“Maybe. You about ready to explain that car in the lake?”

If the cabin and the house were the two most likely places for her dad to show up, she couldn’t spend the night at Sean’s house. And what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Laura knew she’d be fine, home alone behind the new deadbolts, and she had more than enough reading material to last through her vigil.

Sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by dozens of journals, she chose one at random and opened it to an entry from a January day:
The crocuses will be up soon
. In the middle of winter, her mom had longed for flowers. They’d been a recurring theme in her life.

Having recently browsed through the bulk of over thirty years’ worth of journaling, Laura saw other themes too. It was like working on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. She had gradually become familiar with colors and patterns. She’d started to see which pieces might fit together to make recognizable images. But she didn’t have a puzzle box with the complete picture printed on it for reference.

If it were a puzzle, she’d start with the edge pieces that hemmed everything in. Then she’d look for pieces that held distinctive elements, like lettering on a sign or unusual colors.

But she couldn’t distill the years of a family’s life together into a single snapshot. If it could be an image at all, it would have to be a panoramic view that covered both space and time. A cross between a timeline and a map of her family’s journey with their fellow travelers. It would include landscapes and weather too. She couldn’t separate them; they existed in each other. Sunshine beating down on the streets of Prospect. Storms rolling through the mountains.

A sprawling picture began to take shape in her mind. Railroad tracks curved across one corner, bringing a train into town through the bright green of the kudzu. In sharp detail in the foreground, blackberries gleamed in the brambles. Flowers bloomed everywhere in every color, under a sky of a million shades of blue and gray.

On the far left, she saw young lovebirds as they’d been before their baby
girl came along. A gentle musician turned combat-scarred veteran. His flower-child wife who’d never dreamed of being married to a soldier.

Farther along, there’d be a carrot-top mama with a carrot-top baby on her hip. Farther still, there’d be a red-headed toddler playing with blocks on a sunny kitchen floor or falling asleep to her dad’s lullabies.

Then came school days with Cassie and Sean—and tow-headed Tig dogging their steps.

Darker colors came next. The veteran’s moods worsened, but even the darkest days included the bright threads of his wife’s soothing words and the loyalty of his friends. Not just Gary and Ardelle, but the musicians who’d drifted in and out of the house. Especially Doc, Noodle, and Gibby. She wished she could erase Gibby from the picture. Dale too, but he was part of it. His wife hid in the shadows, barely there.

In her mind, Laura moved toward the right side of the panorama. High school. A bright-red truck. Initials carved into an old picnic table. Sean’s blue eyes and wry smile. The childhood scars he hid under his shaggy hair.

The argument she’d overheard as a teenager would be there too, in dark, muddy paints slashed with a violent red and venomous green. Betrayal, jealousy, rage.

Hamlin Lake haunted the background, its bright blue waters beautiful and dangerous. The mountains stood behind everything else, holding their secrets tightly.

Jessamyn Gantt had held her secrets tightly too, all the way to the grave, but her husband might come back from the dead and reveal at least some of them.

It was late, and Cassie wanted to go to bed. The three of them had been sitting together in the living room for a solid hour, and it was beginning to feel like an interrogation room. Her head hurt and her heart ached for her parents. Her mom seemed incapable of cooperating, and her dad’s patience had worn thin.

“Come on, Mom,” Cassie said in her most soothing tone. “Just admit it. It’s not a big deal if you took a partially used bottle of cologne. Laura would have thrown it out anyway.”

Her mom sniffled. “Stop fussing at me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“At least admit that you let yourself in sometimes when she wasn’t home.”