IT HAD BEEN A mistake, this meeting—a grotesque miscalculation. Wishful thinking, feeding on itself. Loneliness and loss, compounded. A woman alone, that terrible phrase—a childless woman, even worse. Yet both described her, defined her. And in her desperation, counting out the hours and the days and the years that were left in her life without Connie, she’d fixed on John, her one last hope. If she had John, the one person left in all the world that connected her to Connie, and therefore to her parents, then she would be whole again. She and John, they would heal each other.
It had seemed so simple.
Once she’d convinced herself of Dennis’s guilt, it had all seemed so simple—so checkbook-simple. She would hire a private detective; expense was no object. She would talk to John, reason with John, get the truth from John. With Bernhardt, she would go to Dennis, dictate terms. If Dennis would leave—just leave—and if he would let John come to her, then she wouldn’t tell the authorities what she’d learned from John, wouldn’t demand that they prosecute Dennis. He could have the money. Give her John, and he could have the inheritance.
That had been the plan.
But they’d been talking for more than an hour, now, she and John. Whenever they talked about times past, the good memories shared, he’d opened up, offered her warmth, and need. But when she mentioned Connie, his face began to cloud.
And when she asked him about Dennis, about the night of June sixteenth, his face closed, the words stopped, the trust turned to wariness.
If only she’d been more careful. If only she’d first gained his confidence, before she’d plunged into the death of his mother. If only she’d been gentler.
Finally, when she’d realized that her questions were causing him pain, she’d broken it off. She’d pretended interest in the old barn, asked him to show her around. Instantly, he’d risen to his feet, asked her if she’d like to see a room he’d discovered, his special secret. Then, gingerly, she’d followed him down the ladder. He’d shown her “the truck,” the rusted-out hulk where they now sat side by side behind a windshield with no glass, she on the passenger side, John at the big wood-rimmed steering wheel. The truck, she calculated, must have been built soon after the turn of the century. Its cracked floorboards were wood, its pedals were of ancient design, the faces of its instruments were beveled glass, large and round, with cursive numerals. Its—
“—dinner with us?” John was asking.
“Wh—” She blinked, focused on him. “What’d you say?”
“I said are you going to have dinner with us tonight?”
Momentarily nonplussed, she could only stare at him. Then, as realization dawned, she could only shake her head. God help him, he didn’t know. He simply didn’t know.
Or maybe God was helping him. Shielding him. Protecting him from the madness of the adult world that would give him no peace.