To the Hills
Roger is back in our room, sitting at his desk doodling a pencil around in his ledger. He swivels around to face me.
“Dee, do you think I had something to do with Scott’s murder?”
“No!” I go to him and sit down in his lap. I wrap my arms around his neck and whisper in his ear, no, and in this moment I believe it. His shoulders relax and he slips his arms around my waist and hugs me as if I were a lost child he has found.
“I’ve watched you disappear.” He releases his grasp on me.
“I know. It’s an old habit, a legacy from Leora. She always shut her door against trouble.” I slip off his lap and we both move to the chairs where we’ve shared so many conversations.
Roger raises his chin and stares off at the ceiling as if trying to decide whether to tell me something or not. After what feels like a full minute he faces me and levels his voice.
“Mike and I were playing golf last week and he suggested that I read the Psalms.”
The amount of information packed in that sentence fights in my brain for a proper response, but my tongue is on the job first. I can’t believe the words that come out of my mouth.
“Father Mike plays golf?”
Roger cocks his head and looks at me like I’m some exotic bird who has opened its beak and delivered a soliloquy in a foreign language. He bats the distraction away with his hand.
“And so, I’ve been reading the Psalms and I found a verse that makes a lot of sense to me in our situation. This is probably not word for word, but the Psalmist said, ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my hope.’“
“How does that apply to our situation?”
“Instead of drawing into ourselves and worrying about what the neighbors might be thinking and saying, we need to go on with business as usual.” Roger stands up and takes my hand. He pulls me up and leads me out to our patio. Putting his arm around my shoulder, he points up toward the Santa Cruz Mountain Range that hugs our valley.
“When I look up, I know that with God’s help we will get through this.” He pulls me in front of him, puts his hands on my shoulders, and directs my attention westward.
“We need to look past this awful thing that has happened and know that we have hope and a future.”
All this time I’ve spent worrying about what Roger is thinking, he has spent searching the Scriptures for answers. I interpreted his silence as anger and fear. I forgot that Roger is a man who always looks for a solution. I turn to face him.
“Roger, we don’t know that Scott was murdered.”
“You are worried Sophie might have done it.”
Roger does not say this as a question or an accusation, but more like lifting a rock and letting naked worms twist in confusion under bright light.
“She acted so strange. She was so calm, and then she was gone.”
“Calm, yes, that’s her nature. And I think it makes perfect sense that she would move in with Laura.”
“Why do you think that?” Why would Sophie choose to go to Laura for solace instead of me?
“Dee, you were the one who suggested to Sophie that she spend time with Laura when this whole mess with Scott started.”
I’d forgotten that.
“Besides, things are a little hot for her here right now. She’s in love with David.”
That I did not know.