OVER THE NEXT THREE DAYS we got to know a lot about Blaine Branch. His life and, of course, the circumstances of his death were examined at length in every form of media. Attendees at his funeral overfilled the church and spilled out onto the sidewalk. He was lauded for his charitable works, his service to the community, and his success as a businessman. He was eulogized in glowing terms by his fraternity brothers, friends, and members of the various boards on which he served.
I noticed that Peyton seemed to be keeping himself somewhat apart from his family. Several times I saw him staring at Beth, his eyes narrowed. I couldn’t read anything into his expression, but it was unsettling.
Madison Branch seemed on the verge of a breakdown. Marydale sat beside her at the funeral, holding her hand. Marydale’s daughter and Madison had been best friends growing up and Madison still regarded Marydale as she would a beloved aunt. Marydale had spent a lot of time with her since she’d come back. I knew Madison was in a fragile state and it was the worst-kept secret in Morningside that her return had caused a rift in the family. She’d been a wild child in her teen years, and at the age of twenty-six, when she should have outgrown her wild-oats stage, she ran off with a sandlot volleyball player, flipping her entire family the proverbial bird on her way out of town. Six months later he crept out of their hotel room somewhere in Portugal, leaving her with ten dollars in her purse and two thousand dollars in hotel bills. Sterling and Madeline had rescued her, brought her back home, and built her a little studio-sized house on their property. They’d been supporting her financially and in other ways for the past year while she tried to figure out how to get her life together. Blaine had been incensed. He believed in the bad karma/tough love school of relationships. He’d barely spoken to Madison during the past year and had continued to pressure his parents to cut her off.
At the funeral, in contrast to Madison’s emotional unspooling, Beth was stoic. Either Olivia or Madeline was by her side every minute making sure she didn’t overtax. She appeared shell-shocked, registering little as people approached with condolences. True to Marydale’s prediction, the Branch family had taken over all the arrangements for the funeral, consulting Beth only when necessary. Which was a good thing. Blaine’s sudden death and her own injury left Beth barely functioning.
Some of the mourners probably came out of obligation to Sterling and Madeline Branch, while others were drawn by more prurient impulses, but many were there to support Beth. True details were slowly leaking out: that Blaine had been killed by a blow to the head, that the death was ruled a homicide, that Beth, too, had been injured on the day of Blaine’s murder. In addition the rumor mill was grinding away. Blaine and Beth had been a prominent couple in Morningside and his murder was the stuff of TV crime docudrama. Even as his life was being lauded inside the church, it was being torn apart in shops and cafés. There was gossip that he was having an affair, that he was caught up in shady business dealings, that he was a secret gambler or drug addict. That neighbors had heard gunfire at his home on the day he died. None of it was supported by anything as cumbersome as facts. It seems that when the murder of an ordinary citizen occurs, people will search for any motive to assure themselves that if they simply stay away from whatever misstep or vice got that person killed, they can stay safe from harm.
Esme and I had continued to work on sorting and organizing Olivia’s family artifacts so they could all be stored away in good order; we were expecting to continue with the project after the first of the year, when things had settled down. So I was surprised when, two days after the funeral, Olivia called.
“Are you and Esme still available to work on my family history?” she asked.
“Well, yes, we’re here for another week. But we weren’t sure you’d be up for it right now after all that’s happened. It’s okay if you’d rather wait.”
“No, I want to keep going, if that’s okay,” Olivia said, then let out a whooshing breath that came through the phone line so clearly I could almost feel its warmth on my ear. “The thing is,” she said, “we’re desperate for something to distract us right now. Beth especially. I’m worried about her. If I’d known she’d take this so hard . . .” She went silent and I thought for a moment that we’d lost our connection.
“Olivia, you still there?”
“Yes, sorry. The thing is, Beth needs to keep her mind and her hands busy. Things are such a mess. This is not how she intended her life to go and she’s just sort of checked out right now. I need to get her involved with something.”
“If you think working on this will help, we’ll be glad to do it, Olivia,” I said, though I doubted there was much that could distract Beth right now. “When would you like us to come?”
“How about tomorrow morning? Beth is staying with me for now. Do you know she can’t even stay at her own house? They’re saying it’s a potential crime scene. Which is ridiculous; Blaine wasn’t even home that day. He always left the house early on Saturday mornings to check in at the store then go off to play golf or tennis or shoot at the range or whatever.”
“I’m sorry, Olivia,” I said. “I hadn’t heard they’d taped off her house. I know it must be distressing, but they’re just being thorough.”
“I suppose,” Olivia said. “But I have to tell you, though I’ve always been fond of Denton Carlson, I resent some of his questions and I don’t like the way he’s treating Beth.”
“I know he’s pushing her hard, but, Olivia, you know he just wants to find out who did this so Beth can begin to put it behind her,” I said.
“I do know that,” Olivia said with another big sigh. “But I don’t have to like it. No matter that she’s a grown woman, Beth is still my baby and I wish I could protect her from every hurt in life. There’s nothing as fierce as a mother’s love.”
“Just hang in there, Olivia,” I said. “It’ll all be okay.”
I said it, but I wasn’t totally convinced.
“We going back on the job?” Esme said after I hung up the phone. “So soon?”
“Yes, looks like it,” I said.
“Celestine will be happy,” Esme said. “She is mighty eager for us to get cooking on this family history.”
“When did she make contact?”
“When I started packing up these boxes. I think she’s enjoying having us read her diaries. She fancies herself an author now and she doesn’t want us to stop.”
“Well, I don’t think fans will be lining up at midnight to snatch the latest release, but her diaries are interesting and I think Olivia and Beth will be enthralled. Maybe they will distract Beth, at least for a time. I wonder if she’s remembered any more about that day,” I mused as I looked out the window into our backyard. The leaves that had made charming, colorful wind devils last week were now amassed in a sodden, knee-deep pile. We’d definitely need to rake or they’d be so heavy they’d be nearly impossible to move. I thought of Beth babbling on about dealing with the leaves in her yard the night Denny came to tell her Blaine was dead.
“According to Denny,” Esme said, “Beth remembers even less now than she did that night. The doctors predicted that might happen. She can’t remember being at her mother’s that morning, nor anything she did that afternoon, including doing yard work. She can’t even remember coming to dinner at Olivia’s that night or how she got there. The morning after, when Denny went to the hospital, she couldn’t even remember that she’d seen him the night before and he had to break the news about Blaine to her all over again. Talk about the devil in the déjà vu!”
“I hear the department is getting pressure from Sterling Branch,” I said.
“Yep, as if they needed more pressure. Every available officer in the Morningside Police Department is working the case. Jennifer Jeffers is lead detective on this one, and, much as it pains me to say it, since we’re not exactly bosom buddies, I wish her great success.”
“Does that take some of the pressure off Denny?”
“Not a jot or a tittle. The pressure on Denny all comes from that big heart of his, not from outside. Anyhow, you can’t blame the Branches. They want to know what happened to their son.”
“As any parent would,” I said.
“Maybe not any parent,” Esme said, holding up a letter she’d taken from an envelope a few minutes earlier. “This is to Renny from her daddy. I want to know did he forgive her, so I’m not waitin’. I’m gonna read it now. Do you want to hear or not?”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “We’ve really fallen off the organizational system wagon, but I want to know, too. And anyway, we only have one more box to index so we’d be reading it soon anyway.
Esme unfolded the pages and smoothed them with her cotton-gloved hands. I could see Thomas Lockwood’s straight-up-and-down handwriting marching across the page, uniform and precise.
“It’s dated November 4, 1941, so he got back to her pretty quick. He says,”
Daughter,
We are glad to learn you are well and that you have good people to depend on there in Crawford. However, do not interpret those sentiments to mean that we in any way condone or approve of the disobedient path you have chosen. We remain sorely injured that you have willfully ignored our counsel and our expressed command that you disassociate yourself from that boy. You have dashed all our hopes and dreams that you would become an educated and accomplished woman in this world and one pleasing to God to achieve the world hereafter. We are fearful of what the future holds for you.
As for a visit, that most assuredly will not be possible. Not now, and perhaps not ever. You must give us time to mend and to prayerfully consider the proper course. And aside from our own feelings, there is the issue of timing. For we will soon meet with the mission board to find out what shall be our next posting.
We had hoped to have you safely settled at Women’s College under the tutelage of Mrs. Babcock before accepting another foreign mission, but you have scuttled that plan with your impetuous and unwise decision to run away and make a secular partnership with that boy. I surely do not recognize it as a marriage as you made no promises to God in a proper church.
I have made inquiries about Riley and Celestine Hargett. People who know them assure me they are good, simple people. I hope they will look after you.
Alas, I cannot send you false reassurances about the state of affairs in the world. The war clouds are gathering and we’d all best prepare ourselves. There is evil afoot, daughter, and we will be called upon to stand, stalwart and unflinching, for what is good and right.
And now I must close. Please know that what I have expressed in this missive comes from both your mother and me. Do not depend on your mother’s soft heart to win you absolution for what you have done. We love you with an abiding love, but we cannot pretend that we are not gravely disappointed in you. But there is no turning back now so we can only hope and pray for the best for you and turn our efforts to our call to service.
Your father,
Thomas Lockwood
“Wow, crusty old coot, wasn’t he?” I said.
“No wonder Renny didn’t choose to share much with Olivia about her parents. There are only seven letters here from the parents to Renny. Five written by her father and two by her mother. They were all in the boxes from her aunt Celestine’s house. So Renny kept them, but I doubt she shared them. I’m betting Olivia never even knew they existed.”
“Could be,” I allowed. “I can understand why Olivia’s mother didn’t want to talk about Johnny. But why wouldn’t Celestine and Riley? He may have been a draft dodger, but he was still Riley’s brother.”
“Your idea of a draft dodger is different, Sophreena. Your parents were Vietnam era. Lots of guys tried to avoid going to ’Nam. Young people saw that as an unjust war. It was an accepted decision to become a conscientious objector or to run off to Canada, at least among the young. In World War Two it wasn’t like that. That was my mother’s generation and she told me a lot of stories about how it was back then. People were behind the war effort. Victory gardens, Rosie the Riveter, paper and scrap metal drives, doing without and making do. And everybody, right down to the schoolkids, was expected to play a part. Refusing to go fight would have been a disgraceful, unforgivable thing to most people.”
“Still,” I said, “you’d think that would have faded a little with the passage of time. Olivia said she asked her aunt Celestine about her father just before she died. She was in her nineties, for heaven’s sake. That stuff was all so far in the past what could it possibly matter now?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Esme said, shaking her head. “People will take so much baggage with them into the hereafter they need a pack mule for a spirit guide.”