In the Blink of an Eye (14 page)

“Well, Katherine will see for herself when she comes back—only I don't know when that will be. You know she doesn't like to be here in the summer. She doesn't like the crowds.”

Pilar does recall Nan having mentioned something about that. “If she isn't planning to come back for a few months, she's going to be too late. Nan doesn't have long. You wouldn't happen to know how I can get in touch with Katherine, Myra, would you?”

“All I know is that she lives near New York City. She's been there ever since Rupert and Nan sent her away to boarding school there when she was a teenager. I've never even met her.”

“Boarding school?” This is the first Pilar has heard of that. “Why? Weren't they satisfied with the local school system?”

“I heard it was more that they wanted to get Katherine away from the boy she was seeing at the time.”

“Was he a troublemaker?”

“I guess so.”

Pilar thinks about her own children.

She thinks about the time Peter, usually an excellent student, started receiving Cs and Ds. Pilar and Raul suspected that he was smoking pot, but he kept lying about it until he was caught doing it at school. He was threatened with expulsion—which scared him straight, thank God.

She thinks about the time Christina fell in with a bad crowd in high school, and started dating a tattooed high-school dropout with a drunk-driving conviction on his record. Raul threatened to send her away to a Catholic boarding school just to get her away from him. Luckily, Christina came to her senses before they reached that point and broke up with the boy on her own.

Apparently, Katherine Biddle didn't.

“Are you thinking of calling Katherine and telling her what's going on?” Myra asks.

“I don't know,” Pilar says slowly. “I just think Rupert is in denial. He needs support. His daughter should be here—for his sake, and for her own.”

She finishes rinsing her breakfast dishes and sets them in the drain board to dry.

“I might be able to find out how to reach her if I ask around,” Myra offers.

“Do that. But please be subtle about it, Myra.” Pilar runs more water into the sink, intently watching the last of the suds swirl and disappear down the drain. “I don't want it getting back to Rupert. He won't understand that I'm only trying to help.”

She carries the cordless phone back to the living room and places it back in its cradle on the end table beneath the picture window, right beside a framed photograph of Raul. The lump she held back moments earlier rises again in her throat, threatening to escape in a sob.

She forces herself to look away from his smiling face, out the window, where a movement catches her eye. Somebody is walking up the front steps of Iris's house next door.

It's Julia, Pilar realizes, recognizing the petite figure. She watches her friend knock on the front door. It opens almost immediately. Handsome Paine Landry stands on the threshold, looking uncertain. Yet it's clear from the way he immediately holds the door open that he was expecting her.

A smile curves Pilar's lips.

She watches until Julia steps inside and Paine closes the door after her.

“
W
HERE'S
D
ULCIE?”
J
ULIA
asks Paine, stepping into the entry hall.

“She's upstairs in her room sorting beads. Her baby-sitter back home taught her how to string them to make jewelry. I'll get her in a minute. She isn't expecting you.”

“She isn't? But I thought that was why you called and asked me to—”

“Yes, that's partly why. I mean, that Dulcie wants to see you,” Paine says in a low voice. “But that's not the only reason I asked you to come over. Something she said this morning bothered me and I thought maybe you'd know what—”

“Daddy? Who are you talking to?” Dulcie calls from overhead.

“Geez. She hears everything. It's like she has bionic ears. I'll talk to you about this later,” Paine whispers. Aloud, he says, “It's Julia, Dulcie. She's stopped by to visit.”

“Julia!” A floorboard creaks upstairs, followed by an explosive clattering, rolling sound and a wail.

“Oh, no, I dropped my beads.”

“Don't move, Dulcie. I'm coming.” Paine is already halfway up the steps.

Julia frowns, looking after him.

When he called her just as she was finishing her readings for the two walk-ins, he simply asked if she could come over for a half hour because Dulcie was asking about her. Naturally, she said yes for Dulcie's sake.

Apparently, there's more to his request. What could Dulcie possibly have said to him this morning that would make it necessary for him to summon Julia?

She hears them upstairs, talking, moving around, picking up the beads. Should she go up and help?

When Iris was here, Julia wandered the house freely. Now she quickly dismisses the idea of going upstairs as too presumptuous.

Instead, she goes into the living room and idly glances at the photos on the mantel, waiting.

Restless.

Wondering—

And then it happens.

The temperature seems to drop instantaneously, sending goose bumps over her bare arms.

A rush of energy saturates the room, not seeping in but swooping, and with it comes an eruption of sound. It evaporates so swiftly that Julia isn't certain what she heard—perhaps a scream, a blast of music, possibly both.

Tense, she holds her breath, willing further contact even as she feels the energy pulling rapidly away, like a train speeding off around a bend.

Then it's gone entirely, and Paine and Dulcie are chatting on the stairway.

“Julia! Thanks for coming to see me,” Dulcie calls. “I have lots of good knock, knock jokes for you.”

Unwilling to share with them what just happened, Julia forces her body into action. She moves toward their voices, smiling, reaching out to give Dulcie a quick hug as she feels her way from the bottom step to the floor, with Paine gripping her arm.

“Dulcie has quite a project for later, too,” Paine says, holding up a large plastic bag filled with beads. “She has to sort these all over again.”

“Maybe I can help you, Dulcie,” Julia offers, her voice far steadier than she feels. “How do you do it?”

“Each color has a different shape. Like, the blue ones have little raised ridges in the middle, and the red ones are smooth. That's how I know which is which. I can make you a bracelet, Julia, if you want.”

Pushing aside the troubling incident in the living room, Julia says, “That would be wonderful.”

Dulcie grins. “Are you going to come with us to the store?”

“To the store?” Julia looks at Paine.

“We have a few errands to run. I thought we could go a little bit later, but if you feel like taking a ride with us now, maybe you can come along and show us where to shop.”

“Shop? Around here? There aren't many places,” Julia says. “The nearest mall is down in Jamestown.”

“I don't need a mall. I just have to get some stuff for the house. And Dulcie needs some clothes.”

Julia looks down at the little girl, who's wearing ill-fitting pink shorts and an orange T-shirt that doesn't match. Knowing what Kristin would have thought of the outfit, Julia says, “I'm sure we can find a few things that would look nice on you at T.J. Maxx, Dulcie. There's one over in Dunkirk.”

“Is there a bookstore there, too?”

“Sure. The Book Nook is right down the road from T.J. Maxx.”

“Good. Because I lost
Where the Wild Things Are
last night”

“But I just read it to you,” Julia says. “Didn't you take it with you up to bed?”

“She sleeps with it under her pillow,” Paine says. “I'm sure it must have slipped behind her bed. It'll turn up later.”

Julia glances at Dulcie, who doesn't look so certain. She seems troubled.

“You don't think it's somewhere in your room, Dulcie?” Julia asks.

The answer is prompt accompanied by a stubborn chin-lift. “No.”

“Then where can it be, Dulcie?” Paine's tone makes it clear they've been through this before, yet he sounds more concerned than exasperated.

“I don't know. Unless whoever was in my room took it. But why would they do that?”

Paine's head snaps around, and Julia is caught off guard by the intensity in his gaze when it meets hers. It takes a moment for her to connect the stark worry in his eyes to Dulcie's words.

“Whoever was in your room?” Julia echoes slowly, looking from Dulcie to Paine. “What do you mean, Dulcie?”

“I think somebody came in last night and sat on my bed while I was sleeping. Daddy says it wasn't you or him. I don't know who it was,” she adds with an almost casual shrug.

Alarmed, Julia stares at Paine. He raises his eyebrows at her in return. This, clearly, is the reason he called her.

“Did you hear anything, Dulcie?” Julia asks. “Footsteps, or somebody's voice, or . . .”

A scream.

A burst of music.

“No. I didn't hear anything like that. Why?”

“I just . . . wondered.”

“Why did you wonder that?”

“Because sometimes—” Julia breaks off as Paine shoots her a warning look that clearly says,
Drop it. Don't scare her.

There's a pause.

Dulcie asks, “Can we go shopping now?”

“In a few minutes, Dulcie,” Paine says. “Why don't you sit at the kitchen table and start sorting your beads again while Julia shows me where the basement is? I need to check the boiler.”

“Can I come with you guys?”

“The stairs are so steep, Dulcie, almost like a ladder,” Julia says hastily.

“We'll be right back,” Paine adds, guiding her to the kitchen and pulling out a chair for her. “Sit right here and work on your beads.”

“I can't wait till you start working on my new bracelet.” Julia pats Dulcie's hair, noticing that it needs to be combed. She wonders if it would be out of place to offer to help her with it. She finds herself longing to straighten the silky blond tangles, to smooth them beneath her fingertips as she did in that fleeting interlude when she knew Dulcie as a toddler. The little girl would snuggle into her lap and lean her cheek against Julia's heart, seeming to take comfort in having her hair brushed and braided.

“Okay, Julia, come on. Where's the basement stairway?” Paine asks, turning to her with an expectant expression.

She leads the way to the back door, asking, “Have you decided what to do about a memorial service for Iris yet?”

“Actually, I just made some calls to set that up. It's going to be next week. Thurday morning, at Assembly Hall. Afterward, I'm going to have somebody scatter her ashes over the lake. That's what she specified in her will.”

“You're not going to do it yourself?”

Paine gives her a look. “I have no desire to go out on that lake in a boat, Julia.”

Because of Kristin.

She can understand that. But . . .

“Who's going to scatter the ashes, Paine?”

“Do you want to do it, Julia?”

She nods slowly. “Yes. I think it should be someone who . . .” She clears her throat, choked up.

“Someone who cared about her,” he says quietly, nodding. “You should do it. Thursday, after the service. I can make arrangements for a boat to—”

“No, it's okay. I'll find somebody to take me out on the lake.”

“That would be good.”

They're in the yard now. Julia notices that the sun has finally made an appearance. The air is thick with heat and moisture, tinged with the scent of wet earth and long grass and flowers. A fat bee buzzes lazily at the blooming magnolia tree beside the door, hovering above a dewy pink bloom.

“It's humid,” Paine comments. “I should change.”

She nods, glancing at his jeans and rumpled long-sleeved light blue chambray shirt that exactly matches the shade of his eyes. He has yet to shave, and his glossy dark hair is as tousled as Dulcie's.

Both father and daughter clearly need looking after.

Well, Paine will certainly find someone to fill the emptiness in their lives when he's ready. Men who look like him don't stay single longer than they want to.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, running a careless hand through his hair, shoving it back from his face. “You're thinking I need a haircut, right?”

“No! No, I just . . .” Realizing she's been staring, she turns away. Her face grows hot. “The basement stairs are over here.”

She leads him around the corner of the house, just behind the front porch. There, in the shade of the lilac's leafy branches, a pair of sloping horizontal wooden doors jut out from the stone foundation.

Julia reaches down to pull them open.

Paine brushes past her. “Get back, I'll do that.”

Thrown off by his nearness—the faint masculine smell of him—she steps aside. How did Kristin resist marrying this beautiful man who was so crazy about her?

Paine tugs on the doors, first one and then the other, opening them to reveal a steep, narrow stairway leading downward into cobweb-shrouded blackness.

“Is there a light down there?” he asks, looking dubious.

“I think so.”

He wrinkles his nose and starts down the steps, looking up at her. “You coming?”

She nods.

“Good. I need to talk to you,” he says softly. “Where Dulcie can't overhear us.”

Julia gingerly climbs down the ancient steps into the cellar. The air is clammy here; chilly, almost, and it smells like mud and mildew. She's only been down here a few times, with Iris, who never liked to venture below ground alone.

In a far corner of the windowless room, beneath the bare overhead bulb, is an old dresser she recognizes.

“Iris was going to refinish that for me,” she says, walking across the dirt floor and running her fingers across the dusty wood. “It's so dark, and I told her I would like it if it were a lighter stain. She said she could strip it.”