NINE

When I got there the Cantwell place had lost its magic. The roses looked tired and the house too large and gloomy. It was like revisiting a place you hadn’t seen in years but remembered better than it was.

The thin woman who answered had coiffed and lacquered gray-blonde hair, thick glasses, and a bony face whose tension showed in the unnatural tightness of her mouth as she spoke. She was Mr. Cantwell’s sister, she said tersely. What did I want?

“I’m Adam Shaw. Henry’s lawyer.”

Her mouth relaxed slightly, showing age lines on her upper lip. “I thought you were another reporter.” Her tone was softer. “Your Kris Ann called just a while ago. She’s been very kind—both her and Roland.”

“We’re all concerned about Henry. How is he?”

She didn’t move from the doorway. Her glasses magnified eyes that even without them would have seemed large and nervous. “He’s as you would expect.”

“I didn’t know how bad that might be. Things got rough with the police yesterday.”

Her shoulders drooped. “He just watches, and you don’t know what he’s thinking.”

I nodded. She realized that I was still on the doorstep and motioned me inside. “I’m sorry,” she said distractedly. “The last day has been very hard. I’ve been worried over Henry and afraid that whoever killed Lydia might come back. If it weren’t for Roland …” She shook her head. “Even when I was small this house frightened me and now there’s this business with the police.”

“What business?”

“You haven’t talked to Roland? I thought that’s why you’d come. The police were here an hour ago.”

I tensed. “Without telling us? Did they talk to Henry?”

“No, it was me they wanted. They called my home in Virginia and traced me here.”

“What did they want?”

Her mouth tightened again. “What this Lieutenant Rayfield said he wanted was to ask about Lydia. But it all seemed to work around Henry, and finally I asked them to leave.”

“What did he ask, exactly?”

She looked quickly behind her. Henry didn’t seem to be downstairs. Our only company was the end table and an empty vase. “It was more what he implied. The lieutenant wanted to know how Lydia and Henry got on. I think what he meant was whether they were still intimate.”

The old-fashioned word made it somehow more disturbing. “Did you tell them anything?”

“Nothing. I didn’t like the man. There was something cold about him.”

“Did he let on what was behind all that?”

She was unbending now, and the anger showed. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. But I think perhaps Jason. He has a very strange perspective.”

“On what?”

She crossed her arms, hugging herself in a protective, virginal gesture. “They weren’t demonstrative, that’s all. There’s such a thing as taste.”

I nodded. “I always thought there was a nice courtliness between them.”

“Explain that to this Lieutenant Rayfield. Or to someone like Jason. We—the family—were all surprised when they had that boy and now I wish they hadn’t.”

“Surprised? In what sense?”

“It was just, oh, I don’t know exactly, perhaps a little after they were married, Henry told me they’d decided not to have children. Something about Lydia. He wasn’t specific.”

“But you don’t know what it was?”

“Not really, but Lydia was a tenser person than she seemed. You weren’t born here, were you, and of course you wouldn’t remember anyway.”

“Remember what, exactly?”

She frowned. “The Grangeville business. It turned sour on Lydia’s father. Some of the Birmingham papers even attacked him. Then he lost for governor and not too long after died of a heart attack when Lydia was only twelve or thirteen.

“We didn’t know her then, of course, but when I met her mother after she and Henry were engaged, she told me it was hard on Lydia, that before the executions she’d been quite a happy little girl, very imaginative and a little spoiled by her father—not at all like Henry, whose father terrified him and asked too much. Apparently, she changed. I know there was some unhappy involvement with an older man in Grangeville before she married Henry. But the woman I knew always tried to be perfect. I suppose she thought she wouldn’t be perfect as a parent.” Her jaw worked. “Perhaps Jason proved she was right.”

The last sentence lingered there. Her eyes froze as if shocked by its sound. “I’m sorry,” she said in a chastened voice. “That was a terrible thing to say.”

The apology wasn’t for me. She held herself tighter, as if afraid of what was inside. I let it drop. “Henry—would it be possible to see him?”

Interrupted from guilt, she looked pensive. “I’d just like him to know I was here,” I said.

She nodded slowly. “He’s on the patio.”

Henry Cantwell sat on a bench wearing a thin sweater, staring across the rear grounds at a secluded stand of pines. He was utterly still. His stillness bothered me; it mimed too well the sad, endless patience of those very old who have nothing more to expect. He looked like an old man on a park bench, who shuffled to his mailbox at the same time every day and combed the paper for coupons to clip, painstakingly, and take to cheap groceries to save a quarter on tea. I crossed the patio and stood next to him.

I couldn’t tell if he had heard me. His face was ravaged, his eyes bleary and unspeakably tired.

“’Lo, Henry,” I said casually.

He moved over on the bench without answering. I sat down. We watched the grounds in silence. A squirrel rooted at the base of a pine tree, found something, and disappeared up the other side of the tree.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “She’s here, then … no chance even to talk …”

I lit a cigarette. I took one deep drag and watched it burn in my hand. “It was Aeschylus who said, ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’”

He turned to me. “Do you believe that, Adam?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was something to say.”

He seemed to ponder that. Then he shook his head, wonderingly. “Jason should be here, and instead it’s you.”

“I don’t mind. I’m thirsty, though.”

He marshaled himself with effort and stood to get me something. I let him.

He returned with a Bushmills on ice.

“Thanks.”

He sat down again. “It’s still peaceful back here,” I said.

He nodded. “Twenty-eight years—my family’s had it for seventy. Not many people last that long in one place.”

“Maybe in the South.”

He thought. “Maybe here. But it’s changing.”

I held the cool, icy glass in my hand. Sun fell through the pines on dark swatches of lawn.

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” he said.

“I know.”

We watched together. The squirrel reappeared, scrambling down the tree onto the lawn. Henry’s gaze seemed to follow it. “I’ve always wondered, Adam, why Roland never taught you to hunt.”

I smoked the cigarette. “I suppose I was afraid I’d like it too much.”

He nodded silently, seeming to lapse into thought. I didn’t mention the green Cadillac or his last talk with Lydia. Finally I stood. “You know where to find me. If you need to talk, anything at all.”

“Thank you.” He still stared ahead. I started across the patio.

“Adam.”

I glanced back. He had turned. “I’m pleased you read Aeschylus,” he said.

I smiled. “You lent me that, remember?”

Henry gave a faint answering smile. “I remember.” He turned back to the grounds.

I went home. Two reporters with a camera were filming Henry’s drive.