CHAPTER 143

I WATCHED AS Tom followed Glaze into their room. I heard the gentle click as one of them turned the lock. I bet they’ll be glad to get to their own place tomorrow, I thought. Of course, I’d be glad to have everybody leave, too. There’d been enough ... enough ... what should I call it? Drama? Angst? Stupidity? Anyway, enough to last me for a lifetime. Please let this be the last ice storm I ever had to live through.

Most everybody had already trailed into their rooms, but Clara stood outside the one I’d assigned to her, almost as if she were afraid to go in. Clara? Afraid? How ridiculous.

She cocked her head, so I knew she’d heard me, but she didn’t turn around or anything. Just stood there.

"Is there anything you need? Oh, phooey, Clara. I forgot to bring you a set of towels. Now that the electricity’s back on, everybody’s going to want to take showers."

That was when I remembered that we’d filled all the bathtubs with water, just in case we needed it for flushing the toilets. Stupid move. No, not stupid. We were planning ahead just in case. But now we’d have to waste all that water, and it would take forever for it to drain out of the tubs.

This was ridiculous. Nobody was going to take a bath tonight. Everybody would want to get packed so they could get back to their own houses, their own routines, their own showers or tubs. Including me. Once everybody was out of here tomorrow, I was going to take the longest, hottest shower imaginable.

In the few seconds it took me to plow through all that convoluted thinking, Clara hardly moved, except to shake her head.

This woman just lost her husband. It finally dawned on me. Her whole life had changed. She’d been blackmailed. She’d been accused—at least in my mind—of murdering Hubbard. She’d been attacked by Dave Pontiac. Thank goodness her nose had finally stopped bleeding. And here I was worrying about baths.

I moved closer and pushed the door farther open. "Let me turn on some lights for you. I’m sorry this room is so cramped, but at least it’s only for one night."

My gosh. She’d go home alone to that dreary house of hers. I motioned for her to sit on the chair, and I perched on the edge of the unmade bed. "I know you haven’t been up in the attic very much, Clara, but we sort of agreed up there that we’d help each other out after the storm. You know, getting fridges cleaned out and such. It’s no fun tackling those chores alone. The first item on the agenda will be to help the Petersons. Ralph and Ida have to get their store back up and running, so we’re all going to gather there. We’ll let them decide when, and we’ll call everybody to set a time."

"There’ll be lots of other people though, so they won’t need me. I know you’ll have a funeral to plan, so you don’t need to be worrying about all that other stuff. Would you let me come up to your house and do some of the cleanup for you? I’d be happy to help."

Happy? That wasn’t exactly true, but the poor woman looked absolutely lost. What else could I do?

"That way," I said, "you can concentrate on organizing the wake and the funeral, and you won’t have to bother with getting your house back in order. You’re so good at organizing things." As soon as I said it, I realized she truly was a master at organizing. Why hadn’t I ever seen that? I’d spent so much time resenting how she always took over everything, without seeing that she had a real talent for that sort of thing.

On impulse, I leaned forward and put my hand on top of hers where it rested on her knee.

"I never liked you, right from the start. You reminded me too much of my sister. You sound like her. You even look like her."

Well, I supposed that explained all these years of tension between the two of us.

I helped her put the sheets on her bed. It was the last clean set I had. I tried not to think of all the laundry that would be piled up by tomorrow. Once she was settled, I said goodnight, closed her door, and leaned against it. Would wonders never cease?

Marmalade must have waited right outside the room for me. Usually she goes everywhere with me. I wondered why she hadn’t followed me into Clara’s room.

CAROL MELLINGER UNBRAIDED her hair slowly, somewhat surprised by how different it had looked by candlelight when she’d gone through this same routine for the past four nights. Maybe she’d have to get some tapers for her dresser at home. She picked up her brush, but paused before pulling it through the long stands that curled down over her shoulders. She could see Melissa’s reflection staring at her. "Penny for your thoughts, Melissa."

Melissa ran her hands through her curly black mop. "That would be a dollar and a half, considering inflation." But she didn’t smile at her poor attempt at humor.

"I bet when you booked this trip three months ago you never thought you’d get yourself embroiled in such a mess."

Carol answered the pain rather than the spoken words. "You must have known Dave and Nick for a long time."

Melissa tightened her fists on each side of her head, pulling the hair taut. Carol had heard of that. It was a way of relaxing all the muscles of the scalp. Maybe she should start doing it for herself.

"All my life," Melissa said. "As long as I can remember, they were around. We weren’t friends or anything, maybe because I was a lot younger than the two of them. Still, they were just sort of there." She dropped her hands and shook her head. The curls bounced a bit before settling into place. "They were boys, so they were always goofing off. But I never saw ... I never saw a monster in either of them."

"I lived in the same town with two murderers, went to the same school as they did, and never had a clue."

Carol set the brush aside. "I can’t pretend to know what anyone here is going through. I didn’t know these people. But I can feel the tension and the pain and the bewilderment." She chose her words carefully. "For what it’s worth, I think you’re not the only one who’s feeling blindsided."

Melissa stretched her shoulders as far back as they’d go. "We’ll get over it." In a different tone of voice, she said, "So, would you say your sabbatical’s been successful?"

"Let’s see." Carol lightened her tone to match Melissa. "I came here hoping to find some trace of the Martin clan. Instead of a trace, though, I found the whole history of the place, as well as finding out what they went through on the way here. I met my great-great-and-so-on grandfather. I made a group of new friends. I met Marmalade the Magnificent." She swiped the brush one more time through her hair. "I would say this has been the best sabbatical imaginable."

ANITA STILL FELT STUNNED. It was one thing to know your husband had been cheating. To have all those tests and all that medication to kill something in her that should never have been there. Would never have been there if it hadn’t been for Nick. She’d thought maybe they could just go on the way they were, sleeping in separate rooms, being polite to each other. At least he’d still have his reputation. He was retiring, he’d sold his practice. Everything was fine, wasn’t it?

But the way Matthew Olsen had looked at Nick when Bob arrested Nick for the murder of Cornelius Martin. The way Nick wouldn’t even look at her—his own wife—while he was being handcuffed.

She’d lived with a murderer all these years and never even had a clue. Would anybody in town believe her?

Now, she needed to choose whether or not to tell Nick that she was the one who’d turned him in to the dental association. She’d used a fake name, of course. And asked to remain anonymous. H. Martin. That was all she could think of when they asked her what her name was. She should have thought it out better before she made the phone call.

But he needed to be stopped. She knew he’d always been meticulous about using the face shield and double-gloving and all those precautions. He took them more to protect himself than to protect anybody else, but it did the job. She would have reported him a long time before this if she’d thought he was putting anybody at risk.

He had to pay some sort of price. And taking away his life work was the only thing she’d thought she could do. The only thing that would make him pay enough.

As she eased onto the couch, it occurred to her that the association would probably inform all the patients. They’d bail out faster than fleas off a drowning dog, and that nice Dr. Lange would be left without any practice at all. It wouldn’t be fair to her.

Bob Sheffield would know what to do. She hated having to admit that she’d used Hubbard’s name on the complaint. Well, his initial. But Bob was level-headed, and he’d understand. She’d tell him first thing in the morning. There was no way she was going to let Dr. Lange suffer just because of what Nick had done.

With that decision made, she closed her eyes, but she felt certain sleep would be a long time coming.

PAT PONTIAC SANK ONTO the side of their bed—her bed—and wondered how she could have lived all these years with a man who held that much venom inside. This was going to kill Norm and Maggie. And what would the grandchildren think, having a grandpa in prison for attempted murder?

For that matter, what was Pat herself going to think about it? And do? What would she do? For the rest of her life. Would she keep second-guessing herself? Would she keep running the what-if scenarios? What if she hadn’t been swept off her feet by that enormous ring he gave her all those years ago? She twisted it off her finger and took a good long look at it. It was almost larger than life. Sort of like Dave had always been.

She ignored her designer bathrobe, snatched up her pillow, and pulled one of the blankets off the bed. Wrapping it around her, she headed downstairs. On the way she ran into Easton coming out of the bathroom, but didn’t say a word. What could she say, after all?

She paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Anita? Is there ... do you ... could I ..."

"Of course you can." Anita sat up against one end of the couch and indicated the other end. "It looks like we’re in the same boat here."

They talked for a couple of hours, keeping their voices low enough not to disturb anyone upstairs. When Anita admitted that she wouldn’t have a home after the first of the year, Pat invited her to head to Florida with her. "My folks have a place there. It’s not fancy, but there’s a guest room where you can stay long enough to figure out where you want to go, what you want to do." Pat breathed out sharply through her nose. "I’ll be doing the same thing, I guess."

IDA WONDERED IF RALPH would want to move the twin beds apart now that the electricity was on. After all, the only reason they’d moved them together was so they wouldn’t freeze.

She watched in some confusion as he moved her pillow off to one side of the doubled bed, and then shifted his own toward the middle. Where the uncomfortable bump was.

HENRY PURSEY RUBBED the back of his neck and then ran both hands through the beard he’d accumulated over the past five days. "Sure will feel good to shave tomorrow morning."

John Ames turned from his duffle bag with his pajamas in his hand. "I was thinking I might let mine grow for another week or two and see how I like it."

"Sure would be warmer if the weather stays cold." He wasn’t really interested in talking about beards, though. "John? Nick was one of your parishioners wasn’t he?"

Father John sighed. "Sure was, and no, I never saw this coming." He sat on the side of the other twin bed. "What about you with Dave?"

"Never saw it either. I don’t see how somebody like that could have had a kid like Norm. Probably mostly Pat’s doing. As I understand it, Dave was always more concerned with his business than with his family. He’s always been ... brash, I guess you could say. Hail-fellow-well-met, and all that."

"I thought that meant on the inside he wasn’t like what he looked like on the outside."

Henry spread his hands. "Wish I knew." Now, more than ever, he wished Irene was here instead of visiting her sister in Ohio. She’d be back in a couple of days, though. Thank God.

SADIE SAT HEAVILY ON the side of her twin bed and rubbed the back of her hands. Now that the electricity was back on, the room was considerably more comfortable than it had been for the last four nights. She hadn’t realized how tense her body had felt most of this time. Trying to keep warm took more effort than she would have imagined. It hadn’t been that way back when she was a child. Many of the winters were equally cold then, and there hadn’t been electric heat, not for a long time. Just the pot-bellied stove.

Sadie, startled by Easton’s question, smiled ruefully. "Sorry, dear. I was off on a jaunt down memory lane."

"Just thinking about the difference between winters way back when and this winter."

Easton was quiet for a long moment. Then she took a deep breath. "I’d really like to hear your stories, Sadie. All of them."

Sadie studied the younger woman. "Would you consider moving in with me, dear? We’d have lots of time for stories that way."

The flood of delight that washed across Easton’s face would have warmed Sadie’s bones even if the electricity hadn’t come back on.

MADDY KNEW WITHOUT a doubt that she’d write the history of Martinsville. The real history. But history was just a bunch of stories, wasn’t it? And, as someone had said up there in the attic a day or two ago—or maybe three or four days ago?—history was written by the winners, so you always got a story that was somewhat skewed.

That was why she had to write this. Those thrillers of hers that never made it past the reject pile—they hadn’t had enough oomph to them. They’d exercised her imagination, but hadn’t touched her soul. And heaven knows the books she loved to read were the ones where she could immerse herself in the lives of the characters.

That Lucelia, now, the original mother of the Martin clan, the one Edna Russell Hastings had told about in that cross-written letter Easton had read. Her story definitely needed to be told. When did Edna say it had started? The year Lucelia came to town and met Albion.

She had no way of knowing, of course, what month it had been—that didn’t matter for now—or what the weather had been like that day, but surely Lucelia and her father must have encountered heavy rain somewhere along the course of their journey. In all her books, the ones she’d written so far, the heroine first appeared as beautiful and composed, with her hair perfect and every bit of makeup precise. Women didn’t wear makeup in the sixteen-hundreds, though. Wouldn’t it be better if Lucelia—the Lucelia whose story Maddy was going to tell—had been wet or tired or butt-sore from riding in a creaky old wagon? A real person. One everybody who read the story could identify with.

She took a few sheets out of the package of paper she’d borrowed from Biscuit and wrote the first line: The Beginning. Below it, she wrote the year.

It wasn’t Vermont back then, but Carol had said the town had long been called Brandtburg. In the northern colonies. So that’s what she wrote in the heading.

After those first four lines, Madeleine Ames got busy indeed, and the words just flowed.

Lucelia Sabriss, she wrote, looked like a bedraggled owl after a particularly violent rainstorm. Her wet, heavy woolen cloak in dappled shades of gray, brown, and white adhered to her shoulders as she rode into town in the dilapidated wagon. Those eyes of hers, luminous as the owl she resembled, took in everything, missed nothing. ...

Maddy had never before felt a story unfold the way this one did. Maddy finally felt like a real writer.

I LOOKED AT MY JOURNAL, where I kept a running commentary of what I’d done each day. That was where I kept my gratitude list as well. I decided it could wait for one day. After all, there was so much to be grateful for, I didn’t know where to start.

I shut the book in the drawer of my bedside table and turned out the light. How wonderful to have the power back on. I’d put electricity on my gratitude list tomorrow. I snuggled next to Bob. "It’s not just the electricity I’m grateful for," I said, noting with pleasure that there was no puff of frozen air coming out of my mouth.

"Oh? And what else would you have to be thankful for, Woman?" His arms tightened around me, so I knew he was teasing.

"She’s right, you know," Bob said. "It’ll be the three—" His mouth dropped open.

"I heard her, too," I whispered, so overwhelmed by the warmth of that little voice in my head and in my heart that I hardly knew what to do.