Chapter Nineteen

Oh, Eddy, I wish I’d told you what I found under our bed when I came home from the hospital. How would our lives have changed? Would Lily have left Fall Creek? And if she hadn’t, would the FBI have found her? She was pregnant with Chrys? If Lily had been imprisoned, what would have happened to Chrys? Royce shuddered to think. Chrys born in prison. Adopted probably, God knows where. Would Tim Conroy still have killed you, Eddy?

Questions swirled around and around, with no answers to be found. Since her first sight of the FBI agent and the wretched Clupper on Sunday morning, the safe, tidy life she had fashioned had spiraled out of control. The boy she had watched grow up next door was accused of murdering the mother who’d deserted him. And his father, Eddy, her own husband, had essentially abandoned him, too. Against her will, Royce had accepted that Palm was indeed Eddy’s son. And had begun to cherish him even more because he was part of her lost husband. Now Palm wanted nothing to do with her. She had to change that.

She herself was a suspect in connection with Lily’s murder. The secret of Palm’s parentage now seemed certain to come out. When it did, the weight of suspicion against her would be even greater. The revelation of her husband’s betrayal would not only destroy the façade of her model marriage but could lead to a charge of murder against her.

Whoever she was, the woman who kept calling about the money Eddy had left for Palm obviously knew of his affair with Lily. Who else knew? What part did Thelma Morrell and Clupper play in it all? What part did the woman play whose initials were on Eddy’s will? Did those initials even have bearing on anything? Was the shooting of Lucianne Sibley, once Granite, a coincidence? A random crime of violence, even in quiet Fall Creek? Was she grasping at straws, as Jared Granite said, to try to free Palm? Or was it for her own defense?

Tired of going over and over the same questions, she grabbed the desktop to rise from her knees. Her hand dislodged some of the mail she had piled on it. She picked up the envelopes and cards and threw them back on the desk.

“Goodnight, Devon.” The dog opened one eye, flicked the floor once with his tail, and closed the eye again. She switched off the desk lamp.

As she crossed the living room, light coming through the open drapes moved across the wall, reflected by the large mirror over the sofa. At the same time, a small car engine putt-putted past. She glimpsed a little car, a light color, maybe yellow, moving down the street through sheer ribbons of fog and the pale illumination shed by a street light. Was it Brenda? Irrational anger rushed through her. Was the affair between Hal and Brenda still ongoing, even after he proposed to Royce? If she had, God forbid, accepted, would it still have continued?

She drew the drapes over the two windows and started toward the hall. Beyond the freestanding fireplace, the kitchen was still dimly lit by bars of light coming through the panes in the door and the miniblind over the sink. An envelope lay partially under the desk chair. It must have fallen when she knocked the mail to the floor, and she’d missed it when she replaced the rest.

When she reached to pick it up, she saw that it was the hand-addressed envelope. Might as well open it, verify it was junk mail, and toss it.

She slid her finger under the flap and pulled out several sheets of pale green paper, covered with handwritten lines. Odd, the stuff was usually typed or computer generated. Prickles skittered down her back when she saw the white daisy on the top left corner of each page. Separating the sheets, she looked at the last one to see the signature. A buzzing sounded in her ears, and for a second she thought she must be hallucinating. The name in flowing though somewhat shaky script was Lily Woodstone.

She must have made a sound, for Devon woke again and this time left his basket to pad to her side. Grasping the pages, she sank to the floor once more as her other arm went around Devon’s strong neck and she laid her face against his sleek hair. Long minutes passed before she could bring herself to reach and turn on the desk lamp again and start to read the message from a dead woman’s hand.

“Royce,

I’ve written this letter many times. But always tore it up before I mailed it. I can’t blame you for hating me. I’m not writing to excuse my actions, only to try to explain them. The only defense I can give for my cruelty is that I was a young and foolish woman. I have paid a heavy price, if that gives you any comfort. I’d like you to know the full story. My legal name is Heather Forrest. I took part in protest demonstrations in California when I was still in my teens. A policeman was killed, and to escape arrest, I came to the Farm in Middle Tennessee with a group who planned to live there. I was supposed to be visiting my cousin. Soon we learned that an informer had told the FBI where I was, and I needed to move on.”

So Royce had been right in her guess that Hal had already brought Lily to Fall Creek by the time the FBI learned of her presence at the Farm. More what-ifs. What if Hal’s trip to the Farm had been delayed? And the FBI had arrested Lily those years ago. So many things would be different. Eddy would not have had an affair with Lily. Their lives would still have been childless, probably, but at least peaceful and serene, as much as a policeman’s family life could be, just as they’d dreamed. That was fruitless, wishful thinking. She looked down at the letter. What bombshell did it hold? Could she bear to know it?

“About that time, Hal Woodstone came to the Farm to buy plants and I met him. He seemed nice enough, and he fell hard for me. This was a chance for me to leave before I was found and arrested. I didn’t know about his violent, possessive nature until after I married him. I tried to hide the bruises with makeup. Even though he ignored me except in bed, you and Eddy were the only people he allowed me to have contact with in Fall Creek.

“This next part is very hard to write. A few months after Hal brought me to Fall Creek, as we worked in the greenhouse, I dropped a flat, destroying some plants Hal could not afford to lose. He knocked me down, then walked over me as he left to get more plants. You and Eddy had quarreled all day because he had worked the evening shift the night before when you’d planned dinner and a movie for the two of you. You left in the car, to cool off, Eddy said. He was sitting on your back steps and heard me groaning. He brought me to your house. I clung to him as he put ice on my bruises. I kissed him, kept kissing him, and—it happened. And six weeks later, I knew I was pregnant.”

Royce slammed the papers against the floor. Why had Lily written this letter? Was she taunting the wife of the man she had seduced? The woman who couldn’t bear children. Why? And why had she come back to Fall Creek? Had she had any idea it might be her last time in the town in which she’d lived so briefly? Who killed her? Who knew she was coming? Maybe she said in the letter who she’d told that she was coming. Royce gathered the scattered green sheets.

Hal was happy about the pregnancy, she said. The beatings stopped for a while. But he’d lost control and hit her again when she was just over eight months. She’d gone into labor, and since Palm was born early, Eddy assumed Hal was the father and she had been pregnant when they made love. So Eddy had told the truth. Though he admitted he suspected he was Palm’s father in the letter he left for Royce with his will.

“While you were hospitalized with your third miscarriage, Palm was in the greenhouse with us. He was toddling around and broke a piece of the misting equipment. Hal didn’t hurt him, thank God, but grabbed my arm and twisted it behind me, choked me, stormed to his truck, and drove away. I managed to get Palm in the house and down for a nap. I went over to see Eddy when I heard his car pull in your driveway. Oh, forgive me, Royce. It happened again. Afterward, I despised myself but was also wildly jealous that you didn’t seem to appreciate what you had in Eddy. I knew I must be the vilest person in the world. No wonder Hal hit me. I wasn’t fit to be my precious Palm’s mother.”

Royce couldn’t stop herself. She grabbed the smooth round rock she used as a paperweight and threw it as hard as she could. It struck the carved leg of the coffee table and tore an ugly scar on the polished wood.

“You didn’t say that to me, Lily. You acted as though you hadn’t done anything wrong. Your words sounded as though it was partly my fault. And in this letter, too.” Her shout bounced around the quiet room.

Devon still lay next to her on the floor. He looked into her face but hadn’t flinched when she threw the paperweight. She buried her face in her hands, and he licked the side of her jaw. She dropped a hand on his head and apologized. “I’m sorry, mutt. It all happened long before you were around. I hope I didn’t scare you.” She looked down at the pages again.

Lily had put a few things in a bag and hid it outside, and that night after Hal was asleep, she kissed Palm and left. She’d moved around, not staying anywhere long, waited tables and worked at car washes. And four months after leaving Fall Creek, she’d been unable to deny to herself any longer that she was pregnant again. She’d wandered the streets of Atlanta, not knowing what to do. She couldn’t apply for aid from social services; the FBI was still looking for the members of the California group who escaped.

“A Help Wanted sign in a shop caught my eye and I went in. The old man who owned the shop was kind. He hired me, even in my condition. He shared his apartment over the shop with me and my baby after she was born. He helped me keep her when the social workers insisted that I give her up for adoption. In Atlanta, I’m Daisy Wynter. My daughter, Eddy’s daughter, is Chrys Wynter.”

Though Royce had already half suspected, the final truth sent shock waves through her body. Not half brother and sister. Full brother and sister. She’d had enough facts. What shred of self-deception had she clung to in order to avoid knowing? To convince herself that Herb Morrell might have fathered Chrys?

How would Chrys take this revelation? Who would tell her? Would knowing she had a brother, was not totally bereft of family, comfort her, if only a little bit? And what of Palm? Or did he already know? When he saw and talked to his mother at the motel, did he learn who his actual father was and that he had a sister? Was that part of the answer to the way he acted at the jail?