“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
“Old or young?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
Liz looked down. “I didn’t mean to be such a baby.”
“It’s OK.” Sully looked at the window. He looked at Elias.
“Did you ever meet Elwood Jupes?” he asked.
That same night, Katherine sat at her kitchen counter in a terry-cloth bathrobe, drinking a glass of cranberry juice and holding a framed photo. The photo showed a teenage Diane and Katherine, in bathing suits, standing on a sandy shore and holding up a first-place ribbon for Best Tandem Swim in the Lake Michigan One Mile Challenge. Their limbs were tan and lean, their faces bronzed.
“We’re a good team, little sister,” Diane had said.
“You were faster than me,” Katherine said.
“No way! You’re the reason we won.”
Katherine knew it wasn’t true. Diane could swim laps around any girl in Coldwater. But what mattered was boosting her kid sister’s confidence. God, how Katherine longed for that. Sometimes what you miss the most is the way a loved one made you feel about yourself.
“Care for a little company?”
Katherine looked up to see Amy at the bottom of the steps. She wore a Yale sweatshirt and baggy blue sweatpants.
“Sure. Sit down.”
“Thanks.”
Amy slid onto a stool.
“Did you go to Yale?”
“An old boyfriend. This is all that’s left.”
“Well.” Katherine stared at her cranberry juice. “That’s more than my ex left me.” She looked up. “Do you want something to drink?”
“More than you know,” Amy said.
In the past twenty-four hours, Amy Penn had driven three hundred and twenty-six miles. After Phil dismissed her from the Coldwater story, she’d gone home to her rented duplex in Alpena, only to find it half empty. Rick was gone. He’d left some books, some dirty laundry, a wrapped sandwich in the fridge, and a box of Power Bars in the cupboard. Also a note. It read, “We can talk when you get some time. R.”—a message she found ironic, since at that moment she had nothing but time. She picked up her cell to call him. She thought about how to apologize. She stared at the shape of the phone in her hand.
She never dialed.
Instead she got back in her car, drove all the way to Coldwater, parked on Guningham Road, and talked her way past two state troopers to knock on Katherine’s back door.
“I’m going to see this through,” she seethed when Katherine opened it. “I deserve that much. I don’t care if they use me or not.”
“I’ll get the bed made up,” Katherine said.
The truth was, Katherine had never wanted Amy to go. Amy was the only one she’d trusted since this started, and when Amy melted down at Frieda’s—screaming “STOP!” and then shaking and not responding—Katherine had worried for her health and thought she needed some rest. It was only the next day, after Katherine had already agreed to do the program, that she found out Amy had been pulled off the story. The lead anchor in Alpena had been dying to get on the Coldwater thing, and Phil had to keep him happy, seeing as he brought in the ratings. Besides, Amy had served her purpose. Her righteous meltdown gave Phil justification to make the switch.
Now the two women sat in the quiet kitchen, Katherine with a cranberry juice, Amy with a bottle of wine. For once, with no camera in sight, the conversation turned away from heaven and phone calls and settled on relationships. Katherine spoke about her former husband, Dennis, who’d moved to Texas a year after their divorce. He’d managed to make himself look destitute on paper just in time for their settlement hearing. Katherine got almost no money. Later that year, Dennis bought a boat.
“How do men get away with that?” she asked.
Amy shrugged. Rick had been the third casualty of her working life. Her college sweetheart bailed when she took her first job in Beaufort, North Dakota, a station so remote it led with the crop report. Her second serious boyfriend actually liked the TV business—a little too much. While Amy was stuck in the editing booth at nights, he took up with the twenty-two-year-old blonde they’d hired to do sports. The two of them lived in Georgia now, on a golf course.
Rick was different, or so Amy thought. A professional himself, an architect, he understood long hours and office politics. But apparently he didn’t understand following a story to the end. Or at least not this story.
“I’m so sorry,” Katherine said.
“It’s my fault,” Amy said. “I was always weighing my career, getting mad at myself for not being far enough by this age or that age. It was so important to me, I thought it should be important to him. I thought that was love.”
She ran a finger around the bottom of her wineglass. “Maybe that’s what we tell ourselves when we really just want to get our way.”
“Well, it’s his loss,” Katherine said. “I mean, look at you.”
Amy squeezed her eyes shut and almost laughed.
“Thanks.”
“You know what Diane used to say?”
“What?”
“If you find one true friend in life, you’re richer than most. If that one true friend is your husband, you’re blessed.”
She paused. “And if that one true friend is your sister, don’t feel bad. At least she can’t divorce you.”
Amy smiled. “I didn’t have time for friends.”
“No?”
“Always working. You?”
“I had the time. But I turn most people off.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I do. Too pushy. Always want to be right. Diane used to say, ‘Kath, see if your shoes are on fire. I think you just burned another bridge.’”
Amy chuckled.
“I haven’t had anybody talk to me that way since she died,” Katherine said. “I’ve been walking around in a fog, almost waiting to hear her voice again. That’s why, when these calls started, it made sense. She was my big sister. Anytime I needed her, she was there. Why wouldn’t she come back to me?”
Amy bit her lip.
“Katherine, these people don’t really care about you.”
“Which people?”
“The TV people.” She sighed. “Us.”
A pause.
“I know,” Katherine said softly.
“They just want a story.”
“I know.”
“Rick was right. We milk things until there’s nothing left, then we go. Scorched earth.”
“I know.”
Amy turned her body. She looked Katherine in the eye.
“I’m a part of that.”
“Not anymore.” Katherine smiled. “You said ‘Stop.’”
“Because I felt weird. I felt like we’d gone from reporting news to creating it.” Amy exhaled. “But I wanted your story.”
“Yeah.”
“It was good for my career.”
“I know.”
“It’s good for all these people here now. That’s the only reason they’re bothering with you. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Amy seemed confused. “If you know all this, why go through with it?”
Katherine leaned back, as if to get a better view of what she was about to say.
“The day we buried Diane, I came home and stared at the walls. I asked God to send me a sign that she was all right. That if she couldn’t be with me, at least she was with Him. I asked it every single day for two years straight. And then my phone rang. Diane’s old pink phone with the high-heel sticker. The one I only kept to have another memory of her.”
Amy stared blankly.
“Don’t you see? God answered me. He gave me the greatest gift I could ask for—the voice of my sister. And if all He wants in return is to let people know that He is real, should I say no? Should I keep it to myself? In the old days, people stood on mountains and spoke to the people. But now—”
“Now we have TV?”
“Yea
h, I guess.”
“But what if,” Amy said slowly, “she doesn’t call?”
Katherine crossed her hands on the counter. “She will.”
For a moment, both women just stared at their glasses, saying nothing.
“I lied to you,” Amy mumbled.
“When?”
“When I said I was a believer. I’m not. Not really.”
Katherine rocked slowly back and forth.
“Maybe Friday you will be.”
The next day, Sully again timed a visit to Davidson & Sons with the lunch hour. He waited until Horace drove away. Then he hurried through the door and down the quiet hallway to Maria Nicolini’s office.
“Hi, again,” Sully said, poking his head in. “Is Horace here?”
“Oh, no, he’s gone to lunch,” she answered. “Boy. You must be wired in to his eating cycle.”
“I can wait.”
“Are you sure? He just left.”
“We have a big issue coming up. He might want to be a part of it.”
“Oh, I can imagine.”
“Crazy, huh? What’s going on in town?”
“It sure is. It took me twenty minutes to get to work this morning. I only live a mile awa—”
They were interrupted by the soft ring of chimes. Maria looked at a small security TV. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up. “I don’t know these people. They could let themselves in. The door is never locked.”
A second later, Sully was alone.
He looked at her file cabinet. His breathing accelerated. He had come here to try and find out if anyone else—particularly Elwood Jupes—had access to Maria’s transcripts, but suddenly that access was within his reach. He had never been a thief. He had never had a reason. But he thought about the broadcast on Friday and whoever was lurking at the library window and Elwood’s odd line of questions and the fact that he simply didn’t have enough information.
And Maria did.
He inhaled deeply. Either he was doing this or he wasn’t. He pushed the faces of his father and mother and Giselle and Jules out of his mind, removing any wagging fingers of conscience.
He pulled open the drawer.
Moving quickly, he managed to find most of the original transcribed files—“Joseph, Nick,” “Sellers, Robert,” “Rafferty, Ruth,” “Barua, Simone,” and “Yellin, Diane”—and pluck them out before he heard Maria and the visitors approaching. He closed the drawer silently and clicked his briefcase shut. Then he jumped up and grabbed his coat.
“You know what?” he said, meeting them halfway down the hall. “I’ll hit two more places and come back in a couple of hours.”
“All right,” Maria said. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m really busy.”
“This is Mr. and Mrs. Albergo. This is Mr. Harding.”
They nodded.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Mrs. Albergo said.
“Oh, no,” Sully said, “I’m here on business, I’m not . . .”
The couple looked at each other.
“Mr. Harding did lose his wife,” Maria said, “but earlier in the year.”
Sully glanced at her. “Yeah. Yes, sorry, I did.”
“We’re here for my father,” Mrs. Albergo said, quietly. “He’s very sick. Bone marrow cancer.”
“That’s tough,” Sully said.
“Very tough,” echoed Maria.
“He doesn’t have much time left. We’re hoping when he passes, if he’s buried here in Coldwater, we’ll have a better chance of, you know, hearing from him again.”
Sully gave a tight nod, resisting the urge to say something cynical. Then Mr. Albergo spoke.
“If you don’t mind, can I ask you something?”
“OK,” Sully said.
“Your wife. Has she ever . . .” He pointed to the sky. “You know . . . to you?”
“No.” Sully swallowed. He looked at Maria. “It apparently doesn’t happen to everybody.”
Mr. Albergo lowered his finger. Nobody said anything. Sully felt his body tighten.
“I have to go,” he mumbled.
In the parking lot, Sully unleashed his anger by banging on his car hood five straight times. It never goes away! There’s a reminder every damn hour, another little rip in your heart. He threw the briefcase with the stolen information in the backseat. As he yanked open the driver’s-side door, he caught a glimpse of a blue Ford Fiesta in the rear of the funeral home parking lot.
Someone was in it, watching him.
Pastor Warren, lying in the hospital bed, heard the tinny sound of cable TV news coming through the remote control. He pressed several buttons until it silenced. No more. He’d heard enough news to last him a year.
A mild heart incident. That’s what the doctors said. He should be fine. Still, at his age, a few days of observation were needed. Just to be on the safe side.
Warren looked around the bland, antiseptic room—a rolling metal table, a maroon leather chair. He thought of how scared he had made everyone, collapsing on the pulpit, the emergency medical people rushing in. He recalled a line from Scripture: Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will grant you rest. He had given his life to the Lord; he expected—in some ways hoped—the Lord would take it soon.
Earlier in the day, Father Carroll had come by. They’d spoken in generalities, about old age, health. Finally they addressed the upcoming broadcast.
“The network asked me to be available,” Father Carroll said. “I think it will be good for the church.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you think she can make it happen?”
“Who?’
“Katherine Yellin. Can she really summon her sister?”
Pastor Warren scanned the priest’s face, hoping to see something he did not see.
“Wouldn’t God do the summoning?”
Father Carroll looked away. “Of course.”
He left a few minutes later. Warren felt worn out by the conversation.
“Pastor, you have more visitors,” a nurse announced, entering with a new bag of fluid for his intravenous drip.
“More what?”
“Visitors. On the way up.”
Warren pulled the sheet higher. Who now? Perhaps Mrs. Pulte? Or one of the other clergymen? The nurse left the room, and his eyes followed her out the door and to the hallway.
His mouth fell slightly open.
Elias Rowe was coming toward him.
History celebrates Alexander Bell, but his partner, Thomas Watson, the recipient of the world’s first phone call, is much less known. Watson, who was indispensable to Bell, only worked with him five more years. Then, in 1881, he took the considerable money the telephone had earned him and pursued other interests. He took a long honeymoon in Europe. He invested in a ship-making business. He tried his hand at Shakespearean acting.
But thirty-eight years after their first phone conversation, Watson and Bell spoke again, this time over not twenty feet of wire but three thousand miles of it, with Bell in New York and Watson in San Francisco. It was the nation’s first transcontinental call, and Bell began with the phrase he had uttered all those years ago: “Mr. Watson. Come here.”
To which Watson responded, “It would take me a week to get to you now.”
It’s a quiet theft, how time lures people away. Pastor Warren studied the face of Elias Rowe, whom he hadn’t seen in months. He remembered Elias as a teenager, always around, always humble, always good with tools. He’d helped rebuild the church kitchen. Put new carpet in the sanctuary. For years he was a regular attendee at Sunday services—right up to the day Katherine Yellin made her announcement. I have witnessed a miracle! And Elias confirmed it.
Warren hadn’t seen him since.
“I want to ask your forgiveness, Pastor,” Elias said now, sitting alongside the hospital bed.
“You’ve done nothing that needs forgiving.”
“I disrupted your service.”
“Katherine beat you to it.”
“Maybe so. But I want you to know I’ve been praying on my own a lot.”
“God hears you, wherever you are. We do miss you in the sanctuary.”
“Pastor?”
“Mmm?”
“Can I bring someone else in to see you?”
“Here? Now?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
He motioned, and Sully entered from the hallway. Elias made the introductions.
“You see, Pastor, there may be something else I want to ask forgiveness for.”
Warren raised his eyebrows. “What is it?”
Earlier that afternoon, Elias and Sully had sat in Sully’s walk-up apartment, reviewing pages of Nick Joseph’s file from the funeral home. In it, they found transcribed conversations of the relatives who had spoken to Maria—Nick’s younger brother, Joe, and his older sister, Patty. (Both Nick’s parents were deceased.) Along with the normal biographical details, his sister spoke about a “little Nick”: The thing that would make Nick saddest about dying is not knowing who’s gonna take care of little Nick. The mother is a mess. . . . I’m sure she won’t even come to the funeral. . . . When he stopped sending her money, she went crazy. She moved and didn’t give him an address. . . . But you can’t write anything about little Nick, OK, Maria? That’s between us.
Elias had never known about Nick having a child—or an ex—and neither had anyone on his crew. The way Nick drank and partied, they’d presumed he lived alone.
“Pastor, I know Nick used to belong to Harvest of Hope,” Elias said. “I figured if anyone knew about this, you would. But when I went by the church, they told me what happened—you collapsing during Bible study.”
“An unexpected adventure,” Warren said.
“I’m real sorry.”
“Don’t be. The Lord has His plan. But about this son?”
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid I never knew he existed. And Nick used to come see me regularly. Patty, too.”
“Wait. Nick visited with you?”
“He had terrible financial problems. The church would lend him what little it had.”
Elias rubbed his forehead. “Pastor, I was the reason for those problems. I fired him. I took away his benefits.”
“I know.”