In the Blink of an Eye (19 page)

Paine isn't about to tell him.

“Listen—how long are you staying in the area, Paine?” Stan asks, discarding the subject of Kristin's tragic death as casually as someone shedding one shirt and trying on another.

“I'm not sure, Stan.”

“Because I'd love it if you'd sit in on a group session tomorrow or Tuesday. You might find it interesting. And one of our faculty members has been delayed in Europe on a movie set, so we're a bit short-handed.”

“You want me to help you teach?”

“Not per se. But you're welcome to poke your head in if you like.”

“That might be fun,” Paine says slowly. It would get him away from Lily Dale for a few hours. Maybe Julia will stay with Dulcie.

“Terrific.” Stan tells him when and where to find the session, then heads off down the street, sashaying a bit.

Paine watches him absently.

Once again, he's seeing Kristin.

Hearing Stan's words.

You did know that she drowned, didn't you?

It was a tragic accident.

Was it?

He and Julia haven't discussed the topic since Friday night.

But she, like Paine, thinks there might have been more to Kristin's death.

Oh, Christ. Maybe I should just turn the damned house over to Rupert Biddle, get the hell out of here tomorrow with Dulcie, and forget all about it.

But if he does that, will it really be over? Will he be able to sever all ties with Lily Dale—with Kristin's death? Will he ever be able to forget? To stop wondering?

He knows the answer.

So.

Is that the real reason he turned down Rupert Biddle's offer?

Not just because the old man rubbed him the wrong way, or reminds him of his domineering father . . .

But because Iris's house is Paine's last remaining tangible tie to Kristin. His last chance to find out what really happened to her.

And he's not going to leave Lily Dale until he knows the truth.

P
ILAR PRESSES THE
brake, drawing to a stop in front of the listing roadside mailbox that bears the name
REYNOLDS.

Sinclairville is small enough that there are only two listings under that fairly common name in the phone book, both with full first names.

This is it,
Pilar thinks, looking ahead down a long, open gravel lane toward the beige farmhouse with brown shutters. Even from here, across a broad expanse of field, she can see that the place sorely needs a paint job, and the straggly flower beds beneath the porch could stand to be weeded. The air of shabby desolation seems suited to the gray landscape.

Why am I doing this?

This isn't the first time since she left home that the thought has crossed Pilar's mind. Each time, she has answered it with less conviction.

She's here because of Nan. She owes it to her friend to track down her daughter and make sure they are able to see each other one last time, before it's too late. Rupert doesn't realize how little time Nan has left. But he—and Katherine, too—will be grateful to Pilar later.

What if Lincoln Reynolds has no idea how to reach Katherine?

That's fairly likely, Pilar supposes: All she knows is that Rupert sent his daughter away to boarding school to get her away from this man. But Katherine has been back to the area since. Surely she looked up her first love, now that so many years have passed. Myra said Lincoln married someone else.

Yet the place doesn't seem to have a woman's touch about it, Pilar notices as she drives down the lane toward the house. There are window boxes beneath the windows, but they're bare of flowers. Despite the lack of a breeze, the clothesline in the side yard is strung with a man's white sleeveless undershirts and boxers and socks, and a few large pairs of jeans and denim work shirts.

Pilar pulls to a stop behind a dusty blue pickup truck. It occurs to her that she should probably have phoned first—or instead. But her instinct, upon finding Lincoln Reynolds listed in the white pages, was to see him face-to-face. Maybe in part it's her own curiosity. She wants to see the man Rupert Biddle despised so much that he sent his only child to live somewhere else just to keep her away from him.

“Can I help you with something?”

Pilar looks up with a start. A large man is standing beside her open window, clutching an empty plastic laundry basket. He's well over six feet tall and barrel-chested, with a stomach that protrudes beneath a plain gray T-shirt and sticks out above the waistband of his worn Levi's.

She finds her voice. “Are you Lincoln Reynolds?”

“That's me.”

He must have once been handsome, she thinks, studying his weathered, sunburnt face. He has nice brown eyes and thick gray hair with the kind of sideburns that keep coming in and out of fashion. Pilar suspects his have been there since his youth, rather than a conscious effort to be hip. Everything about the man says hick farmer.

Is that why Rupert didn't like him?

“My name is Pilar Velazquez. I live over in Lily Dale.”

“Lily Dale?”

She watches him carefully, expecting to see recognition, but not the stark emotion that flits into his eyes. Is he thinking of Katherine?

She removes the keys from the ignition and makes a move to open her door. He does it for her, setting the plastic laundry basket on the ground and muttering something.

“Pardon?” Pilar says, getting out of the car.

“Said I might as well leave the laundry awhile longer. It's been there two days already. Got soaked yesterday morning and I had to let it dry all over again.”

She smiles faintly. “It's supposed to rain tonight, too. And it's not going to stop until later in the day tomorrow. Don't leave it too long.”

He shrugs. “It'll dry again.”

Curious about his marital status, she looks down at his hand. There's no wedding band on his ring finger, but a circular pale mark on his tanned knuckle shows that there was one there recently.

He catches her looking. “My wife died about a year ago,” he says simply. “I just took off the ring a few weeks back. Thought it was time.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I didn't ever like wearing it anyway. But she thought I should. So I did.”

Pilar nods. She opens her mouth to tell him what she's doing here, but he beats her to it, posing that very question in his straightforward way.

“I wondered if you could spare a few minutes to talk to me, Mr. Reynolds. I thought you might have some information that I need.”

“If it's about farming, I can probably help you. Otherwise, you've probably come to the wrong place. I don't know much about anything else.”

She smiles. He's likeably charming. Again, she wonders why Rupert loathed him so much. Maybe there's more to Lincoln Reynolds than meets the eye—or maybe he was a different person way back when he was dating the Biddles' daughter.

“I actually wanted to ask you about someone you used to know in Lily Dale, Mr. Reynolds,” Pilar says.

A shadow crosses his face.

He knows, she thinks.
He knows I'm going to ask about Katherine.

Still, his tone is light when he says, “Is that so? Then you must be going back quite a few years, ma'am. I haven't known anyone over in that area for a long, long time. Haven't even been there in years.”

“It was a long time ago,” she agrees, wishing she had never come. Here's a widower who hasn't even shed his wedding ring long enough to erase its mark on his finger, and a total stranger comes poking around, dredging up his romantic past, asking him about an old flame he'd probably rather forget.

Unless he's still in touch with her.

That hope—and the thought of Nan Biddle wasting away in that dim back bedroom—allows Pilar to push forward with her query. “I heard you used to date a girl named Katherine Biddle, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Yup.” He smiles, but there's no mirth in it. “How did I know you were going to say that? Maybe I'm psychic, like Kathy's old man said he was.”

Lincoln's phrasing and his tone indicate to Pilar that he's skeptical about Rupert's mediumship. Okay, well, perhaps that's how he alienated Rupert.

“How did you hear about me and Kathy, if you don't mind my asking?”

“One of the Lily Dale old-timers mentioned it.”

“Then it sure as hell wasn't Rupert or Nan. I wouldn't be surprised if they've never mentioned my name again.”

“No, it wasn't them.” Pilar hesitates. “I take it you didn't get along with Katherine's parents?”

Lincoln Reynolds doesn't mince words. “They hated me. Especially her old man. They're the reason I lost Kathy.”

“Why?”

“Because I was dirt poor. Always was, and pretty likely always would be. But Kathy didn't care. There I was, getting shipped off to Vietnam, with her promising to wait for me so we could get married the second I get back. I even gave her an engagement ring. I was too broke to buy one, but my mom had an antique platinum and diamond ring she had inherited from her aunt. It was the one nice piece of jewelry she ever had. I never even saw her wear it—she was afraid she'd lose it, she said. But she offered it to me to give to Kathy. She said we could have it reset, and that's what I told Kathy when I gave it to her. But she was thrilled with the ring just the way it was. Told me she'd never take it off. Next thing I know, I'm sitting in some stinking jungle reading a Dear John letter from her.”

Pilar doesn't know what to say, other than to repeat her earlier murmured apology.

“I'm sorry, too,” Lincoln tells her, sending a small chunk of rock skittering across the dirt driveway with the toe of his work boot.

“Did she send the ring back to you?”

“No. She didn't mention it at all, in the letter. When I got home, years later, I asked my mother if she wanted me to try and get the ring back from Kathy. It was worth a lot of money—and we never had any. But she said to forget about it. She knew I would never give it to anyone else, and that it would only bring back bad memories.”

“I'm surprised Katherine didn't return the ring to your family.”

“So am I. I loved her. She said she loved me. I believed her when she said she'd wait for me. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I still think she really did love me. A girl can't fake that. When we were together, she acted the same way Corinne did, later, when I met her—Corinne is my wife.
Was,”
he amends, looking down at his boots.

Pilar's heart aches for this man. But she can't lose sight of why she's here. She needs to get to the point and get out of here, leaving him to his laundry and his losses:

“Mr. Reynolds, do you know where I can find Katherine Biddle?”

He looks up, clearly surprised. “Do I know where you can find her? Hell, no. You think she ever got in touch with me again?”

“She never did?”

He shakes his head. “I wrote to her a bunch of times. The letters always came back, stamped
Refused.
One of my buddies who stayed around here told me he heard Kathy's parents sent her off to some big fancy boarding school in New York City. When I got back from 'Nam, I went over there to Lily Dale, to talk to them. Figured maybe I could get them to at least tell me where she was, so I could talk to her. I guess by that time I knew it was a lost cause, me and her. But I needed—what do they call it? Closure.” He snorts. “Closure. Her old man gave me closure, all right. He closed the door in my face.”

“And the only reason he didn't like you was that you were poor?” Pilar finds that hard to believe. Rupert isn't the warmest man in the world, but his standoffishness never struck her as snobbery.

“Yup. He thought I wasn't good enough for her. My family was dirt poor. He thought his daughter deserved better than a local yokel farmer. Told me that to my face more than once. Kathy told me not to let it bother me. Said she'd do what she pleased. But once I was gone, they got to her.”

“So she's never tried to see you, when she comes back from New York to visit Nan and Rupert? Not even after all these years?”

“Nah.” He shakes his head. “Would you? Look around you. This is all I ever had to offer her. It wasn't enough. Not for her.”

Again, Pilar finds herself at a loss for words in the face of his stark pain.

“It was different with Corinne. Her parents were farmers, too, over in Cherry Creek. She never expected anything more than I could give her. Lost her in an accident last July. We were driving on a back road late at night. We never went out at night. I told her I was too tired, but she wanted to go visit her sister. I fell asleep at the wheel and rammed the car into a tree. I walked away without a scratch.”

“My God,” Pilar murmurs, suddenly struck by an image. Looking at Lincoln Reynolds, she sees the figure of a woman standing beside him. She has tired eyes, and blond hair with dark roots, pulled back in a ponytail. She's holding something toward him. It's a white box with writing on it. Pilar strains to see what it is.

“What's the matter?” Lincoln asks, watching Pilar. He turns to look where she's looking. There's nothing there but the empty laundry basket.

“I'm just wondering . . . do you like those chocolate Hostess cupcakes, Mr. Reynolds? The kind with the squiggly white lines in the frosting?”

“How'd you know that?” He frowns. “I was just thinking about those last night. My wife used to buy them for me.”

“I thought so.” Pilar closes her eyes, tuned in to the energy of Corinne Reynolds.

“What are you doing? Are you okay?”

Puzzled, Pilar looks at him again. “I'm a medium, Mr. Reynolds.” Catching the expression on his face, she quickly says, “Before you interrupt, can I just pass something along to you? It doesn't make sense to me, but . . . anyway, your wife says you shouldn't have thrown away the cinnamon. The other stuff was okay to toss, but not the cinnamon. Do you understand that?”