Thornwood House (24 page)

Beneath my feet the floor was gritty. I noticed that the sheets covering the pews were splattered in paint, as though a renovation was in progress. I’d assumed correctly: further along I spied paint tins and a dusty old ladder, boxes of cleaning gear.

At the far end of the central aisle was a tall rose-glass window, its details obscured by a shadow that seemed out of place. I studied the shadow for several heartbeats before I realised what it was.

A man.

‘Hello?’ I called. ‘The door was open, I hope you don’t mind me coming in . . . ?’

No answer. He must be praying, I decided. I would wait.

My feet rasped on the dusty floor. Looking around, I wondered where I should sit. Close to the front, to facilitate an effortless introduction; or tucked in at the back to appear more respectful? In my indecisiveness I bumped into a pew corner, my knee banged sharply and I muttered a profanity.

The man shifted, half-turned as if listening. The light from the rose window struck his profile.

For one heart-stopping moment I thought I was seeing a ghost. The features silhouetted in the pink-lit window might have been chiselled from solid shadow. The swooping brow and straight nose, the strong jaw and sensual mouth . . . I found my thoughts flying to the photo of Samuel in the rose arbour, but then instantly dismissed it. While Samuel’s hair was close-cropped and sleek, this man’s shock of unruly curls appeared on the brink of mutiny.

He shifted again and came more fully into the window’s ruby light. The illusion broke apart. He was no longer otherworldly, just a man of flesh and blood in faded Levi’s and a brown T-shirt. He looked around and saw me. Not surprised, just curious. Silently poised, as though waiting for me to speak first.

Which of course, we both knew was inevitable. Danny Weingarten customarily refused to utter a word.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s you.’

He walked towards me, slowly, as though this dusty capsule of a church with its kaleidoscopic light and eerie stillness was
immune to the passing of time. He had the sort of build that was both brawny and fleshy, which could go either way: with neglect, it could turn to fat . . . or with concentration of effort, be converted to ironman muscle. The face, however, was a different story. No matter how his body fared, his features would remain about as close to perfect as those of any face – any living face, I amended – that I’d ever seen.

He moved his hands. I got as far as ‘you thought’, then had to guess the rest.

‘I . . . uh, no. Well actually, yes – ’

I slumped with the realisation that if I’d been talking to anyone else I might have gotten away with it. The tilt of Danny’s head and his narrowed eyes told me that I’d failed the lip-reading test and already lost him.

‘What are you doing here?’

His lips moved as he watched mine, then he made a gesture with his hands that I missed. When I stared in speechless confusion, he took out his notepad and pencil.

Enjoying the silence. You?

I shrugged. ‘Being a tourist.’

It was disconcerting to have a man pay such close attention to my mouth, especially when I was talking.

He scribbled again and passed me the leaf.

Lutheran church big attraction?

‘Not bad, though I prefer the Presbyterian. Don’t you have enough silence?’ I added, then cringed the moment the words were out. Wasn’t that a tactless thing to say to a deaf man?

Danny lifted a brow and scribbled.
Not all silence is created equal
.

I blinked. ‘I thought all silence was . . . well, silent?’

Depends on state of mind. Absence of sound is not necessarily silent.

I smiled. Twisted as his logic was, it made an skewed sort of sense. ‘Do you always speak in poetry?

He scratched out another note.
Give me more time, a bigger page, I might write novel.

‘Don’t you get tired of writing all these notes?’

He tucked the notebook under his arm and made a lazy motion with his hands.

‘Signing is . . . easier,’ I interpreted painstakingly, and that made him smile. Slowly, knowingly. Then into high beam. He wasn’t watching my lips now; his gaze was direct, straight into my eyes.

It had been such a long time since anyone had flirted with me – openly or otherwise – that at first I missed the obvious: the prolonged eye contact, the big warm smile. Anyone would think I’d have been flattered, glad for the boost to my self-esteem. After all, Danny was a fine-looking man. And yet when the penny finally dropped, all I felt was panic.

I took a step back. Groped for something to say, a way to lighten the sudden intensity: an offhand comment, a witty remark, or perhaps a polite enquiry about Jade. A chain reaction had begun in my chest and was travelling downwards, getting warmer on the descent. The shock of it rendered me mute.

Danny’s fingers wound out another sentence, but my gaze was stuck on his face and I missed what his hands were saying.

I cleared my throat. ‘Didn’t quite catch that one.’

Back came the notebook.
Sorry about before, didn’t mean to startle you.

I could see by the enjoyment radiating from his eyes that he wasn’t sorry at all. I shrugged, glancing at the door, wondering how abruptly I could make a getaway without offending him – then decided that maybe he deserved offending. I was a friend of his sister’s, after all; wasn’t there an unspoken law against flirting with family friends?

Something touched my fingers. Another note.

You thought I was someone else. Who?

I tried to appear distracted by glancing at my naked wrist, but was betrayed by the warm glow I could feel creeping up my neck. ‘Actually,’ I told him offhandedly, ‘I thought you were praying.’

A crooked smile, the merest glimmer of a laugh. He made a rapid sign in explanation, most of which I missed, apart from one word right at the end that might have been ‘chocolate’. Seeing my confusion, he motioned for me to follow him and, without giving me the chance to decline, strode off along the narrow aisle towards the rear of the church.

I hesitated, then reminded myself that if Danny had been here for a while – enjoying the silence, as he claimed – then he may have seen the person who’d put flowers on Aylish’s grave.

We entered a tiny office at the back of the church. Sunlight streamed through a large window, making the room pleasantly warm. Shoved against the far wall was a battered old desk. Next to that, a bookshelf of dusty Bibles and atlases, stray hymnbooks. A rickety trestle table was laid out with tea things: electric urn, piles of cups and saucers, canisters of tea and coffee. In the corner, the smallest fridge I’d ever seen.

Danny jogged my elbow, delivered another note to my hand, then went over and opened the fridge. Bottles clinked and tinfoil crackled while I read:

Sat. morning there’s a fete here to raise money for restoration. Mum’s on the committee, come along if you like?

I looked across at him, the excuse ready on my tongue: Sorry, we can’t make it, on Saturday we’ll be visiting Bronwyn’s grandmother –

But when I saw the huge plate he was holding, the words froze before they even reached my lips. With a flourish he removed the sheet of foil and held the plate aloft for me, signing clumsily with one hand:
I made them, have one?

I stared. First at the plate, and then at his face. Then back to the plate. Arranged on a delicate paper doily was an assortment of
truffles encased in tiny baking cups. They looked like something from the pages of a gourmand’s recipe book, the sort of treat that appeared effortless to create but was in fact ridiculously tricky.

‘You made them?’

He nodded, motioning again for me to try one.

‘Oh, I couldn’t . . . Aren’t they for Saturday, for the fete – ?’

Another lopsided sign:
Please
.

‘Well,’ I regarded the chocolates, my brain already skating ahead, assessing my preference, ‘since you insist . . .’

I had meant only to pop it in, chew and quickly swallow, just to be polite. But the moment the chocolate touched my tongue I felt my spine unravel, and if my mouth hadn’t been full I’d have uttered a sigh of sheer joy. The chocolate was fine and creamy, vaguely bitter, smooth and yielding as honey. Then I bit down and nearly lost my head. Inside the chocolate shell was a sweet cherry preserved in liqueur, heady and intoxicating. It was the singular, most bracing pleasure I’d had in . . . well, far longer than I cared to admit.

The soft hint of a laugh, and I opened my eyes – when had I closed them?

Danny gave me the thumbs up sign:
Good
?

I nodded distractedly, then pretended sudden interest in the view through the window. I walked over and found myself gripping the sill, gratified by what I saw, no longer having to feign the diversion.

It was just as I’d hoped: a direct line of sight across the brown grass to the nearby graves. Although I couldn’t see Aylish’s stone from my vantage point inside the church, anyone wandering there would have been in clear view.

Behind me, the fridge door sucked open, whispered shut. I could still taste the cherry, and the smooth dark aroma of chocolate had apparently entered my bloodstream. I found myself hastily re-calculating Saturday morning, wondering if I could squeeze a detour to the Lutheran fete between our
scheduled visit to Luella’s and our necessary trip to the shops. Perhaps several of Danny’s chocolates would provide a remedy for Bronwyn’s inevitable disappointment when Luella failed to answer her door?

A slip of paper feathered along my wrist.

I turned from the window, grasping the note. Danny had sidled up beside me. It was a perfect opportunity to ask him about Aylish’s grave, to find out whether – by some wild coincidence – he’d happened to see anyone lingering in the cemetery that morning. He was watching me hopefully, waiting, I realised, for me to read what he’d written.

Corey said you photograph. Were you shooting graves?

I had to re-read the note a couple of times. At first I thought he was referring to the imposing Celtic headstone pitted with bullet holes. The feeling of vertigo flashed back; suddenly I was out over that precipice again, falling into thin air –

Then I twigged. ‘No. No photos today. Just looking.’

Danny tore off another leaf.
See anything you liked
?

A tickle of pleasure. That smile. Was he flirting again? I decided to ignore it and get down to business.

‘There was one grave that caught my attention.’ I paused. Despite my need for answers, I was strangely reluctant to drag Aylish’s name into the bright light of actuality. To me she was a creature of dreams, fragile as a moonbeam, insubstantial as a wisp of cloud – yet so real that I felt as though I’d – not known her, exactly . . . but understood what it was like to
be
her. It was a seductive feeling, one I felt compelled to protect.

Danny jotted another note.
Tony’s grandmother
.

I nodded, disconcerted that he’d second-guessed me. ‘Someone’s been tending it,’ I told him. ‘Weeding, clearing rubbish. They put fresh flowers on it.’

Danny pressed nearer the window and looked out.

In the light streaming in from outside, I saw that his features were not as impossibly perfect as I’d first thought. His eyes
were more grey than green, and freckles scattered his nose and cheeks. Stubble on his jaw, and a tiny nick of pink skin the shape of a crescent moon near his top lip, like a fingernail print – a scar.

Who
? he spelled slowly, keeping his eyes on the graveyard.

I had to touch his arm to draw his attention back to my lips.

‘Luella?’

He looked baffled, so I repeated the name. Again, he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, then passed me his notebook and pencil. While I wrote, he leaned over my shoulder. Though there was no contact, I was aware of his heat against my arm.

No
, he signed sharply when he read the name.
Not her
.

He must have seen the question in my face, because he took the pencil and scribbled beneath what I’d written:
Luella avoids town. If she came here regularly then Mum or Corey would’ve seen her.

I wasn’t convinced. ‘Are you sure?’

A swift sign.
Yes
. Then another note.
Besides, she won’t set foot in a graveyard. Tony once told me she thinks they’re bad luck
.

That I understood. Luella had lost her mother, then her daughter and husband, and now her son. From her perspective, graveyards were very bad luck indeed.

‘Then who?’

Danny shrugged and shook his head, his eyes on mine.

Maybe it was the chocolate, or the oppressive morning heat – perhaps a combination of both – but I was no longer panicked by his attention, by his nearness. I even found myself hoping he might attempt to flirt again.

Another scrawled note. This one took me by surprise.

I saw you at Tony’s funeral.

I looked at him, doing a mental backtrack, trying to remember. ‘You were there?’

Me and Corey
, he wrote.

‘Tony would’ve been pleased.’

Danny shrugged. He made a noncommittal sign whose meaning eluded me, then turned his attention back to the window.

I touched his arm again. ‘You and Tony were friends . . . when you were kids, I mean?’

A nod.

‘What was he like as a boy?’

A distracted thumbs up.
Good
.

I had the feeling he’d lost interest in the conversation – meanwhile my curiosity was ablaze, and I couldn’t help wondering aloud.

‘Why do you think he ran away from home all those years ago?’

Danny barely glanced at my lips, but looked hard into my eyes. Then sliced the air with his little finger.

Bad.

I didn’t need a handwritten note to further explain what he meant. Something bad had happened, and though Danny Weingarten might – or might not – know what that something bad had been, it was clear he had no intention of saying any more about it.