Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

‘I lost my cell phone in the crash. I suspect that Nick did, too. And if he’s still in the hospital…’

‘I love my son, Hannah, but he’s never been a very likable boy. He’s willful. Selfish. It ate him up inside that he didn’t have a dad like the other boys.’ She folded her hands on the table in front of her and leaned forward. ‘How will I find Nick if he doesn’t want to be found?’

‘Now that I know Nick’s real name, I think I can help you with that. My brother-in-law is a policeman. They have their ways!’

Lilith’s face brightened. ‘Thank you! You’ll let me know?’

‘Of course.’ Since I seemed to be in Lilith’s good graces, I decided to risk pushing my luck. ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You told me Zan was married. Does Zan’s wife know about your relationship?’

Lilith stared deep into her cup, swirling the liquid around as if reading her answer in the tea leaves. Without looking up, she said, ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’

‘Whose idea was it to break off the affair?’

‘Believe it or not, it was mine. “I looked for no marriage bond, no marriage portion. The name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word friend.”’

It was obvious that she was quoting, but I didn’t recognize the source. ‘Sorry?’

Lilith sighed wistfully. ‘Heloise to Abelard. Zan was fond of quoting Barrett-Browning. I think it rather annoyed him that the poetry I borrowed was far more Catholic and philosophical in nature.’ She swept her arm in a theatrical arc. ‘“She is all States, and all Princes, I. Nothing else is. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.” John Donne,’ she quickly added, in case I didn’t recognize the poet.

I hadn’t.

Lilith looked so somber that I burst out laughing. ‘Give me a moment and I might be able to recite Part One of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , but I think I’ll spare you.’

‘Zan could have confessed to his wife after we separated, of course,’ Lilith continued after a moment. ‘As I said, he was a devout Roman Catholic – we both were – but repentant wasn’t the word I’d use to describe us. There’s only so many times you can go into a confessional and ask forgiveness for the sin of adultery before the Good Lord sees fit to slap you down.’

‘Ten years,’ I muttered softly.

‘Exactly. And Zan and I embraced that particular sin every chance we got, as you probably surmised from reading Zan’s letters.’

My face grew hot. A voyeur, I’d been caught in the act.

Lilith’s smiled sympathetically. ‘You know how I signed my letters to Zan? No, of course you don’t. “My only love.” I still love him. Always will.’

The lyrics of a hauntingly beautiful duet sung by Placido Domingo and Maureen McGovern began running through my head, a song that never fails to make me cry when it pops up on my iPod shuffle, and was doing its best to unhinge me now: a love that comes but once and never comes again, a love until the end of time.

Lilith began chewing on her thumbnail again, worrying it so hard that I feared it might bleed. ‘Heloise dealt with her separation from Abelard by becoming a nun, you know, but the cloistered life simply wasn’t my style.’

It seemed to me that Lilith’s life of virtual seclusion in Woolford-Freakin’-Nowhere on Maryland’s eastern shore had a lot more in common with convent life than, say, a high-rise condo in Ocean City, but didn’t say so. Instead, I asked about something that had been puzzling me. ‘If Nick was brought up in Switzerland, Lilith, how come he doesn’t speak with an accent?’

Nick’s mother grinned. ‘Four years at Phillips Andover can knock an accent out of any kid, especially one struggling to fit in.’

‘And you?’ I asked.

‘Me? I’m a Noo Yawka. That’s how I tawk.’

I laughed. ‘No you don’t.’

‘A bit surprising I don’t, actually, since I studied art at NYU.’ Lilith set her teacup down on the table. ‘My mother was American. They tell me I sound like her.’ She grimaced. ‘It troubles me sometimes that I can’t remember her voice.’

‘I understand completely. Like you, I lost my mother way too soon.’ I swallowed the lump in my throat, then quickly changed the subject. I shared news of my visit with the Simon sisters and their irrepressible dog, Bruno, with Lilith and by the time we finished our tea, she was smiling again. It seemed like a good time to go, so I stood up. ‘I’ll contact my brother-in-law and get back to you as soon as I know something.’

‘Thank you, Hannah.’ Lilith accompanied me back to my car. ‘I’ll keep trying to reach Nick, too. Perhaps the lab knows where he is. I think it’s time for a little mother-to-son chat.’

I climbed into my car and closed the door behind me. As I turned the key in the ignition, Lilith tapped on my window, so I powered it down. ‘Thank you for returning my letters,’ she said, blinking rapidly, fighting back tears.

I patted her hand where it rested on the window frame. ‘Back home where they belong.’

It’s a hundred times easier to find a missing accident victim when you know the fellow’s name, even if you work for the Chesapeake County police department. Armed with the name Nicholas Ryan Aupry, we’d invited ourselves to dinner at the Ives family farm where Dennis (according to Connie) was enjoying a rare Tuesday afternoon off.

‘Paul, my man!’ Dennis greeted us warmly as we hiked up the drive. ‘Come to meet the cows?’

‘Cows? What cows?’ I wanted to know.

‘Dexters. Smaller than your average cow. Dual-purpose animals, really. Good for milk or beef.’

‘The cows and I vote for milk!’ I called after the boys as they wandered out to the back forty to converse with the livestock.

Carrying the lasagne I’d brought as an offering, I followed Connie into the kitchen. ‘Three-hundred-fifty degrees for about an hour,’ I instructed as she slid the casserole dish into the oven. ‘How go the gourds?’

For some time, Connie had been earning a modest income constructing figures out of ornamental gourds she grew in her garden. ‘Come see for yourself,’ she said, and led me down the narrow hallway to her workshop where pots of paints and brushes waited, lined up in orderly rows on her workbench. The smell of oil paint and shellac permeated the air, warring with the aroma of cinnamon and cloves from several dozen pomander balls dangling from a clothesline strung across one end of the room. This season’s batch of gourds had a Christmas theme – Santa Claus, the elves, his reindeer, and Mrs Santa, too.

I fingered the price tag on Rudolph’s ear – $65 – and thought, damn, I’m in the wrong business. Dasher and Dancer were similarly priced. Add Prancer and Vixen and the rest of the team, plus Santa and his sleigh and an assortment of elves, and you’d have a major investment in folk art. ‘I can afford Comet,’ I said, fingering the fifty-dollar price tag on the whimsical reindeer, ‘but it’d be a shame to break up the set.’

Connie selected an elf and dabbed a spot of pink on each of his cheeks. ‘Sorry, Han, the whole family’s spoken for. They’re going to Homestead Gardens for the holidays,’ she said, naming an upscale garden center south of Annapolis whose Christmas light display rivaled that of Rockefeller Center. ‘We’re part of the decorations.’

Mrs Santa had been assembled from more than a dozen gourds. I moved in to examine her more closely. ‘How do you do it, Connie?’ I asked, admiring the way a sleeve had been constructed out of a slice of dried squash.