Tribute (37 page)

Janet wore black, the frame within the dress shrunk from grief. A willow stem gone brittle. A wide black hat and dark glasses shaded her face, but that grief poured through the shields.

“They can’t put the stone up yet. The ground settles first. But you can see it, can’t you? His name carved into white marble, the short years I had him. I tried to think of a poem, a few lines to have carved, but how could I think? How could I? So I had them carve ‘Angels Wept.’ Just that. They must have, I think. They must have wept for my Johnnie. Do you see the angels that look down on him, weeping?”

“Yes. I’ve come here before.”

“So you know how it will look. How it will always look. He was the love of my life. All the men, husbands, lovers, they came and went. But he? Johnnie. He came
from
me.” Every word she spoke was saturated with grief. “I should have . . . so many things. Can you imagine what it is for a mother to stand over the grave of her child and think, ‘I should have’?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“So many are. They pour out their sorry to me, and it touches nothing. Later, it helps a little. But these first days, first weeks, nothing touches it. I’ll be there.” She gestured to the ground beside the grave. “I know that even now because I’ve arranged it. Me and Johnnie.”

“And your daughter. My mother.”

“On the other side of me, if she wants it. But she’s young, and she’ll go her own way. She wants . . . everything. You know that, and I have nothing for her now, not in these first days, first weeks. Nothing to give. But I’ll be there soon enough, in the ground with Johnnie. I don’t know when yet, I don’t know how soon it comes. But I think of making it now. I think of it every day. How can I live when my baby can’t? I think about how. Pills? A razor? Walking into the sea? I can never decide. Grief blurs the mind.”

“What about love?”

“It opens, when it’s real. That’s why it can hurt so much. You wonder if I could have stopped this. If I hadn’t let him run wild. People said I did.”

“I don’t know. Another boy died that night, and the third was paralyzed.”

“Was that my fault?” Janet demanded as bitterness coated the grief. “Was it Johnnie’s? They all got into the car that night, didn’t they? Drunk, stoned. Any one of them could’ve gotten behind the wheel, and it wouldn’t have changed. Yes, yes, I indulged him, and I thank God for it now. Thank God I gave him all I could in the short time he lived. I would do it all again.” She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. “All again.”

“I don’t blame you. How can I? I don’t know. Hennessy blames you.”

“What more does he
want
? Blood?” She dropped her hands, threw out her arms. And the tears slid down the pale cheeks. “At least he has his son. I have a name carved into white marble.” She dropped to her knees on the ground.

“I think he does want blood. I think he wants mine.”

“He can’t have any more. Tell him that.” Janet lay down beside the grave, ran her hands over it. “There’s been enough blood.”

TWENTY

C
illa told no one. As far as anyone knew, she’d taken the loaner her insurance company arranged to do a supply run.

She pulled up in front of the Hennessy house, on a shady street in Front Royal. The white van sat in the drive, beside a ramp that ran to the front door of the single-story ranch house.

Her heart knocked. She didn’t question if it was nerves or anger. It didn’t matter. She’d do what she needed to do, say what she needed to say.

The door opened before Cilla reached it, and the woman she’d seen the night before came out. Cilla saw her hand tremble on the knob she clutched at her back. “What do you want here?”

“I want to speak to your husband.”

“He’s not home.”

Cilla turned her head to stare deliberately at the van, then looked back into Mrs. Hennessy’s eyes.

“He took my car into the shop. It needed work. Do you think I’m a liar?”

“I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I don’t know your husband any more than he knows me.”

“But you keep sending the police here, to our home. Again this morning, with their questions and suspicions, with
your
accusations.” Mrs. Hennessy drew in a ragged breath. “I want you to go away. Go away and leave us alone.”

“I’d be happy to. I’d be thrilled to. You tell me what it’s going to take to make him stop.”

“Stop
what?
He’s got nothing to do with your troubles. Don’t we have enough of our own? Don’t we have enough without you pointing your finger at us?”

She would not back down, Cilla told herself. She would not feel guilty for pushing at this small, frightened woman. “He drives by
my
home almost every day. And almost every day he parks on the shoulder, sometimes for as long as an hour.”

Mrs. Hennessy gnawed her lips, twisted her fingers together. “It’s not against the law.”

“Trespassing is against the law, cracking a man’s skull open is against the law. Breaking in and destroying private property is against the law.”

“He did none of those things.” The fear remained, but a whip of anger lashed through it. “And you’re a liar if you say different.”

“I’m not a liar, Mrs. Hennessy, and I’m not a whore.”

“I don’t know what you are.”

“You know, unless you’re as crazy as he is, that I’m not responsible for what happened to your son.”

“Don’t talk about my boy. You don’t know my boy. You don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s absolutely right. I don’t. Why would you blame me?”

“I don’t blame you.” Weariness simply covered her. “Why would I blame you for what happened all those terrible years ago? There’s nobody to blame for that. I blame you for bringing the police down on my husband when we did nothing to you.”

“When I went over to his van to introduce myself, to express my sympathy, he called me a bitch and a whore, and he spat at me.”

A flush of shame stained Mrs. Hennessy’s cheeks. Her lips trembled as her eyes shifted away. “That’s what you say.”

“My half sister was right there. Is she a liar, too?”

“Even if it is so, it’s a far cry from everything you’re laying at our door.”

“You saw the way he looked at me last night, in the park. You know how much he hates me. I’m appealing to you, Mrs. Hennessy. Keep him away from me and my home.”

Cilla turned away. She’d only gotten halfway down the ramp when she heard the door shut, and the lock shoot home.

Oddly, the conversation, however tense and difficult, made her feel better. She’d done something besides calling the police and sitting back, waiting for the next assault.

Pushing forward, as that was the direction she was determined to go, she swung by the real estate office to make an offer on the first house she’d selected. She went in low, a fair chunk lower than she felt the house was worth in the current market. To Cilla, the negotiations, the offers, the counters, were all part of the fun.

Back in the loaner, she contacted the agent in charge of the second listing to make an appointment for a viewing. No point, she decided, in letting the moss grow. She drove back to Morrow Village, completed another handful of errands, including a quick grocery run, before heading back toward home.

She spotted the white van before Hennessy spotted her. Since he came from the direction of the Little Farm, she assumed he’d had time to go home, talk to his wife and drive out while she’d been running around Front Royal and the Village.

He caught sight of her as their vehicles passed, and the flare of recognition burned over his face.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she muttered as she rounded a curve, “not my truck, since you beat the hell out of it last night.” She shook off the annoyance, took the next turn. Her gaze flicked up to the rearview mirror to see the van coming up behind her.

So you want to have this out? she wondered. Have what Ford called a face-to-face? That’s fine. Great. He could just follow her home where they’d have a—

The wheel jerked in her hands when the van rammed her from behind. The sheer shock didn’t allow room for anger, even for fear, as she tightened her grip.

He rammed her again—a smash of metal, a squeal of tires. The truck seemed to leap under her and buck to the right. She wrenched the wheel, fighting it back. Before she could punch the gas, he rammed her a third time. Her tires skidded off the asphalt and onto the shoulder while her body jerked forward, slammed back. Her fender kissed the guardrail, and her temple slapped smartly against the side window.

Small bright dots danced in front of her eyes as she gritted her teeth, prayed and steered into the skid. The truck swerved, and for one hideous moment she feared it would flip. She landed with a bone-jarring thud, nose-down, in the runoff gully on the opposite shoulder as her air bag burst open.

Later, she would think it was sheer adrenaline, sheer piss in-your-face mad that had her leaping out of the truck, slamming the door. A woman ran across the lawn of a house set back across the road. “I saw what he did! I saw it! I called the police!”

Neither Cilla nor Hennessy paid any attention. He shoved out of the van, fists balled at his sides as they came at each other.

“You don’t come to my house! You don’t talk to my wife!”

“Fuck you!
Fuck
you! You’re crazy. You could’ve killed me.”

“Then you’d be in hell with the rest of them.” Eyes wheeling, teeth bared, he knocked her back with a vicious shove.

“Don’t you put your hands on me again, old man.”

He shoved her again, sending her feet skidding until she slammed into the back of the truck. “I see you in there. I see you in there, you bitch.”

This time he raised his fist. Cilla kicked him in the groin, and dropped him.

“Oh God. Oh my God!”

Dazed, adrenaline seeping out like water through cracks in a dam, Cilla saw the Good Samaritan racing down the road toward her. The woman had a phone in one hand, a garden stake in the other.

“Are you all right? Honey, are you all right?”

“Yes, I think. I . . . I feel a little sick. I need to—” Cilla sat, dropped her head between her updrawn knees. She couldn’t get her breath, couldn’t feel her fingers. “Can you call someone for me?”

“Of course I can. Don’t you think about getting up, mister. I’ll hit you upside the head with this, I swear I will. Who do you want me to call, honey?”

Cilla kept her head down, waiting for the dizziness to pass, and gave her new best friend Ford’s number.

He got there before the police, all but flew out of his car. She’d yet to try to stand, and would forever be grateful that Lori Miller stood like a prison guard over Hennessy.

Hennessy sat, sweat drying on his bone-white face.

“Where are you hurt? You’re bleeding.”

“It’s okay. I just hit my head. I think I’m okay.”

“I wanted to call for an ambulance, but she said no. I’m Lori.” The woman gestured in the direction of her house.

“Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Cilla—”

“I’m just a little shaky. I thought I was going to be sick, but it passed. Help me up, will you?”

“Look at me first.” He cupped her chin, studied her eyes. Apparently what he saw satisfied him enough for him to lift her to her feet.

“Knees are wobbly,” she told him. “This hurts.” She laid her fingers under the knot on her temple. “But I think that’s the worst of it. I don’t know how to thank you,” she said to Lori.

“I didn’t do anything, really. You sure know how to take care of yourself. Here they come.” Lori pointed to the police car. “Now
my
knees are wobbly,” she said with a breathless laugh. “I guess that’s what happens after the worst is over.”

 

 

SHE TOLD the story to one of the county deputies as, she imagined, Lori gave her witness statement to the other across the road. She imagined the skid marks told their own tale. Hennessy, as far as she could tell, refused to speak at all. She watched the deputy load him into the back of the cruiser.

“I’ve got stuff in the truck. I need to get it out before they tow it.”

“I’ll send someone back for it. Come on.”

“I was nearly home,” she said as Ford helped her into his car. “Another half mile, I’d have been home.”

“We need to put some ice on that bump, and you need to tell me the truth if you hurt anywhere. You need to tell me, Cilla.”

“I can’t tell yet. I feel sort of numb, and exhausted.” She let out a long sigh when he stopped in front of his house. “I think if I could just sit down for a while, in the cool, until I, I guess the phrase is collect myself. You’ll call over, ask a couple of the guys to get the stuff out of the truck?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

He put his arm around her waist to lead her into the house. “Bed or sofa?”

“I was thinking chair.”

“Bed or sofa,” he repeated.

“Sofa.”

He walked her into the lounge so he could keep an eye on her while he got a bag of frozen peas for her temple. Spock tiptoed to her to rub his head up and down her arm. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m okay.” So he planted his front paws on the side of the couch, sniffed at her face, licked her cheek.

“Down,” Ford ordered when he came in.

“No, he’s fine. In fact . . . maybe I could have him up here for a while.”

Ford patted the couch. On cue, Spock jumped up, bellied in beside Cilla and laid his heavy, comforting head below her breasts.

Ford eased pillows behind her head. He brought her a cold drink, brushed his lips lightly over her forehead, then laid the cold bag at her temple.

“I’ll make the calls. You need anything else?”

“No, I’ve got it all. Better already.”

He smiled. “It’s the magic peas.”

When he turned away, stepped out onto the back veranda to make the calls, the smile had turned to a look of smolder ing fury. His fist pounded rhythmically against the post as he punched numbers.