One Summer (33 page)

More flowers were carried in, to be placed with the banks of chrysanthemums and lilies and carnations that surrounded the coffin. There were no roses. If any had been sent, Sam Munson had tastefully hidden them from sight.

By the time the minister arrived to begin the service, the funeral had taken on more the atmosphere of a macabre circus than a religious ritual.

Seated between Kay Nelson on her left and Becky on her right, watching the minister walk up the aisle, Rachel suddenly realized that the whispering had increased and changed in character, taking on an ugly overtone. Looking around for the cause—had the family entered?—she spied Johnny, clad in the same style jeans and T-shirt that he always wore, propping a shoulder against the wall at the rear. Exactly when he had entered she didn’t know,
though probably, judging from the volume of talk, only a few seconds earlier.

Rachel’s face paled, but before she could rise to go to him, there was another surge of whispering. The four Watkins children, accompanied by a gaunt-faced, fortyish man whom Rachel assumed was their father, a young woman (the “whore” Jeremy had mentioned?), and an older couple, walked up the aisle and sat in the front row. Then the minister, who in his black robes had been impatiently waiting, advanced to the podium and began.

“Dear friends, we are gathered together today to mourn the passing of our loved one, Glenda Denice Wright Watkins.…”

There was no way Rachel could reach Johnny now, seated in the middle of a row as she was, without drawing more attention to herself and him than she cared to. Becky and Kay, alerted by her obvious agitation, glanced around and saw him, too. So did Chief Wheatley, who was present with several of his men. Though the chief didn’t look any too happy about the necessity, he unobtrusively rose from his seat at the back and went to stand beside Johnny. The two exchanged measuring glances, but more than that Rachel could not see. She was forced to turn her face to the front as the minister exhorted them all to pray.

The service was short and, to Rachel at least, extremely moving. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she listened to the eulogy, the hymns, and the prayers and thought of Jeremy and his brother and sisters. The loss of a mother was perhaps the worst thing that could happen to a child, and Rachel grieved for the children as well as for Glenda.

Afterward, when everyone was standing and getting ready to file out, Rachel, trapped in a sea of people, watched Johnny skirt the crowd by moving around the perimeter of the room. He headed toward the front, where the coffin sat amid the massive display of flowers. Chief Wheatley trailed him doggedly, as did Kerry Yates and Greg Skaggs. The two younger officers’ expressions were
carefully wooden, as if they were doing their job but didn’t particularly like it.

“I thought you said he wasn’t coming,” Becky whispered to Rachel as she caught sight of Johnny and his police contingent. Becky had only been two grades ahead of Johnny in school, and so she had known him—or rather, known of him—fairly well for most of her life. Rachel watched her sister study the man Rachel loved but could read nothing in Becky’s face.

“Look, there’s Johnny Harris,” said Kay in a rather louder whisper from behind Rachel. “I can’t believe he had the gall to come! Oh, look, he’s actually going to talk to the family!”

Rachel—distracted from her intention to assert very firmly that Johnny had come because he was innocent, because he had cared for Glenda and grieved for her—watched as he reached Jeremy, whose back was turned, and laid a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. Jeremy glanced around, gave a glad cry, and suddenly all four kids came swarming, huddling around Johnny. Their arms circled his thighs and hips and wherever else they could reach. Johnny, visibly moved, dropped down on one knee to envelop them in a hug.

“Can you believe that?” Kay asked as if she couldn’t, while all around them similar sentiments were being aired. Rachel finally reached the end of the aisle and hurried toward Johnny. Though he was intent on the kids and Chief Wheatley and his officers formed a wary guard behind him, there was no one to protect him from the vicious murmurs and hate-filled stares that suddenly electrified the atmosphere.

The smell of the flowers was so strong it was sickening, Rachel thought as she reached the little group so near the casket. Then she noticed that something, perhaps a fluke in the air-conditioning, made this section of the room icy cold. With a nod to Chief Wheatley, Rachel knelt beside Johnny. She said nothing to him, though the look she shot
him spoke of her reproach. Still, at the sight of his set face and the obvious affection the clinging children felt for him—Jeremy whispered in his ear, while the smaller boy hugged his bent knee and the two girls, one about six and the other maybe Katie’s age, rested their heads on his chest—she forgave him for risking a snub or worse. The children clearly took comfort from his presence, and she understood that that was why he had come.

Only the older girl, a pretty blond sylph in a tucked and ruffled white dress that had obviously been purchased new for her mother’s funeral, was crying. The rest of the children were pale but dry-eyed.

“Guys,” Johnny said in a tone much nearer normal than anything Rachel could have managed at the moment, “this is Miss Grant. She and your mother were pretty good friends. Rachel, this fellow here is Jake—this is Lindsay, this is Ashley, and you know Jeremy.”

“My mom’s dead,” three-year-old Lindsay offered, sticking her thumb in her mouth and regarding Rachel out of huge blue eyes.

Rachel felt a lump rise to her throat that choked all utterance. The only thing she could do was pat the child’s soft cheek.

“She knows that, dumbo. It’s why she’s here.” Jake, the sturdy little boy whose arm was hooked around Johnny’s leg, scowled at his sister.

“Would you just stop talking about it?” Ashley whirled away from Johnny with a sob and ran across the room. She cast herself against the older woman who had entered with them and who now stood chatting with a crowd of well-wishers. The woman, who Rachel assumed was the children’s grandmother, put her arms around the weeping little girl and looked over her head to find the others, who still surrounded Johnny. She turned her head and said something to the children’s father beside her.

Mr. Watkins’s face turned lobster red as he looked around.

35

J
ake tugged on Rachel’s hand. She smiled at him, taking his chubby baby fingers and rubbing them gently between hers, and he smiled guilelessly back.

“How are you doing, Jeremy?” Rachel asked, still holding Jake’s hand as she looked up at the older boy with compassion. Jeremy had stopped whispering in Johnny’s ear to stare after his sister.

Jeremy glanced at Rachel. The strain and sadness of the last few days showed in his wan face. The look in his eyes was the saddest thing Rachel had ever seen in her life.

“I’m okay. And so’s Jake.” He paused, and his lower lip trembled before he pressed both lips firmly together. “But with my mom gone there’s nobody to read to the girls, or fix their hair. My dad doesn’t know how to braid.”

“Oh, Jeremy, I’m so sorry about your mom.” The very fact that he wasn’t bawling made Rachel want to.

“Miss Grant, I—” Jeremy began in a quick undertone, only to break off abruptly as Becky, standing behind her, touched Rachel on the shoulder.

“Rache, look out,” Becky murmured, but before she could say more, Jeremy’s father stormed across the room. Unaware or uncaring that he was suddenly the cynosure of all eyes, he snatched Jake away from Johnny’s knee with one hand and shoved Johnny backward with the other.

“Damn you, you stay away from my kids!” Mr. Watkins roared. He grabbed Lindsay by her arm and jerked his head at Jeremy in a silent order to him to move away. Rachel shot upright in instinctive defense of Johnny, took one look at him as he scrambled to his feet, and held her breath in anticipation of the brawl she expected to follow. Chief Wheatley, obviously laboring under the same assumption, grabbed one of Johnny’s arms, and Greg Skaggs latched on to the other. Johnny, to his credit, didn’t struggle at being thus restrained but stood motionless, regarding the bellicose Mr. Watkins with a smoldering anger that was nonetheless potent for being held carefully in check.

“That’s enough, Watkins!” Chief Wheatley’s voice was sharp.

“Why don’t you arrest him instead of protecting him? My kids have lost their ma, and you take the side of the man who did it!”

“From the way it looks right now, Harris isn’t any more guilty than you are, Mr. Watkins. I told you that.”

“He killed her! He had to have done it! First that other one, and now Glenda!”

“Dad, Johnny wouldn’t ever hurt Mom! They—they kissed and stuff! Besides, I saw—I saw—” Jeremy rushed to Johnny’s defense, only to break off abruptly, clamping his mouth shut. His eyes were wide as he glanced at the ring of people assembled around him.

“What did you see, son?” The chief’s voice was gentle.

“I saw something in the dark. Something
—
I don’t know,” he muttered, looking at the gray-carpeted floor. Then his eyes flashed up, and he said with a resumption of spirit, “But it wasn’t Johnny! I know it wasn’t Johnny!”

“You go on to your grandma, Jeremy, and take Jake with you,” Mr. Watkins ordered. Jeremy threw his father a partly scared, partly resentful glance, then took the softly blubbering Jake by the hand and led the little boy away.

Mr. Watkins, holding a thumb-sucking Lindsay in his arms, said to Johnny after Jeremy was out of earshot, “I see you near my kids again, I’ll kill you. I swear to God I will.”

Then he spat at Johnny’s feet and walked away. The shiny globule of saliva trembled on the carpet. Rachel glanced at it, then looked quickly up as her stomach churned.

“Are you going to let him get away with that? And he threatened Johnny—that was a threat if I ever heard one!” Rachel turned on the chief with trembling outrage before anybody else could say a word.

“Let him be. He’s the kids’ father, for God’s sake. They don’t need any more to worry about right now.” Johnny sounded tired. He shrugged free of the men holding him. First the chief, and then, more slowly, Greg Skaggs stepped away from him. Rachel, offering silent comfort without thinking about how it might look, took Johnny’s hand, entwining her fingers with his. His hand linked with hers felt warm and strong and right.

Becky, Kay Nelson, who had followed the sisters when they moved toward the front, and Susan Henley, who had just joined the group, presumably to speak to Rachel, stood mute, having watched the unfolding drama wide-eyed. Rachel looked beyond Susan to Rob, who had just walked up with Dave Henley, and inwardly winced. But she did not release Johnny’s hand.

Rob said nothing, but his eyes were angry and shocked as they traveled from the linked hands to Rachel’s face.

“Rachel,” Susan said, “we’re going to lunch, and we thought you and Becky—and Kay if she wants—might like to join us. And—and …” Susan’s voice trailed off as she, too, noticed the whereabouts of Rachel’s hand.

Johnny looked sardonic. Rachel, clinging tightly to his hand when he would have withdrawn it, shook her head.

“Thank you, Susan, but Johnny and I have other plans. You do know Johnny Harris?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.” Susan looked unhappy.

“Rachel, could I see you a minute?” Rob’s voice was as cold as his face. Rachel glanced at Johnny, uncertain how he would react to this, only to find his hand freeing itself from hers. His body had stiffened at Rob’s words, and his eyes gleamed at Rob in a way that was a good deal less than friendly. But he said nothing to deter Rachel.

Feeling that another unpleasant scene might well be imminent if she allowed the two men to remain in close proximity for very many more seconds, Rachel cast Becky a pleading look. She allowed Rob to take her arm and pull her away into a corner where a large silk ficus provided a measure of privacy. Before the foliage blocked her view, she was relieved to see her sister move closer to Johnny. Becky, fiercely loyal in a crisis, would spread the mantle of her good name and sterling reputation over Johnny while Rachel was otherwise occupied.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Rob began in a furious undertone, turning to face her. “You were actually holding hands with that murderer in front of all these people! At the funeral of the woman he probably stabbed to death! Have you lost your mind?” He took a deep breath and held up a hand for silence when she would have replied. When he continued, his tone was more conciliatory. “Rachel, I’ve ignored the gossip, and I’ve marked down your interest in Harris to a kind heart and your instincts as a teacher. But this is taking things too far! Either you agree right now to stop having anything to do with him, or we’re history.”

“Then I guess we’re history.” To Rachel’s surprise, she almost enjoyed saying it.

“What?” Rob sounded stunned. Clearly that was far from the response he had expected. “Rachel, you have to be nuts! You told me he couldn’t possibly have killed Glenda Watkins because you were with him, but I think
that’s horse crap! Somehow he found a way! It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise! Even if I didn’t care about you, I’d point out to you what is just as plain as the nose on your face: you’re putting your life in danger every time you’re with him! Who knows what it takes to make him go off?”