“Now, Ralph,” said Marie, patting his arm, “you want to do things right, don’t you? For Corinne’s sake.”
“Corinne,” said Ralph, his eyes filling with tears. “I saw her last night, you know. Standing right by my bed. She was beckoning to me.”
Liz saw Nora shiver; she touched Nora’s foot with her own under the table.
“Maybe she was waving, Ralph,” said Charles calmly. “To tell you she’s all right. She’s with God now, Ralph. No more pain or suffering for her.”
“But plenty for me.” Ralph stared at Liz, as if pretending he’d just noticed her. “Why is she here? This is just for family, Nora.” His voice was rising dangerously. “She shouldn’t be here. She should be in jail, she…”
“She’s my close friend, Father,” Nora said, keeping Liz, who had started to get up, from standing. “I want her here. I need her here.”
“But she killed my Corinne!” he shouted, shaking off Charles’s hand. “She’s a murderer! Murderer!” he shouted, his eyes snapping.
“I’ll go outside,” Liz said quickly to Nora. “There’s no point in upsetting him. I’ll be out by the garden.”
It was another hour or more before Nora joined her. Clouds had covered the moon, and Liz had moved to the stoop, half dozing, half listening to the drone of voices from the kitchen. Thomas had rubbed against her legs when she’d first sat and she’d picked him up, rubbing her face against his soft hair. “We’re exiles, Tom,” she’d said to him. “Exiles.”
When Nora came out, Thomas jumped off Liz’s lap and mewed; Nora gave him an absent-minded pat and then sat next to Liz. “Hi,” she said, leaning her head on Liz’s shoulder.
Liz willed herself not to move. “Hi. How are you?”
“Okay, I think.” Nora put her hand up to Liz’s cheek. “You’ve been so wonderful. I don’t think I could’ve gotten through any of this without you.”
“Yes, you could have. You’re stronger than you think, Nora.”
Nora sighed. “I don’t know. I never had to do anything like this before. I just wish you hadn’t been involved.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Father’s stupid accusation.”
“Oh, that,” Liz said, deliberately casual. “It’s annoying, but I guess the autopsy will clear it up.”
“Yes. But that’ll take a while.”
“Will it? But all they have to do is… Nora, you can’t want to talk about this!”
“It’s okay. I thought that, too, that all they’d have to do would be look in her stomach. But they have to take tissue samples, the medical examiner told me. And blood, I think. All that has to go to a lab to be examined. It could be as late as next week, he said. Or later, but he said they’d try to hurry it up.”
“Next week,” Liz said. “My brother’s coming then. At the end of the week. The weekend.”
Nora lifted her head, then kissed Liz lightly on the cheek. “I’m glad,” she said. “He’ll distract you from all this.”
Liz allowed herself to take Nora’s hand. “Maybe I don’t want to be distracted.”
“Surely you do!”
“From all the fuss, yes. But from you, no. In fact,” she said, marveling at her own certainty, “the way I feel right now, I don’t want to be distracted from you ever again.”
Nora was silent, but Liz could see her smiling in the little light that came from the cloudy moon. “Last night,” Nora said finally, “or really this morning, when you were holding me? I didn’t want to ever leave your arms. And sometimes when we’ve been talking, I’ve wondered how I used to manage just talking to Thomas or the Hastingses, or Mrs. Brice and Patty and Sarah.”
“You’ve been more lonely than you know.” Liz kissed her swiftly and then stood up. “But don’t jump to conclusions, please. You’ve been having such an awful time with all this. You can’t…”
“Think clearly?” Nora stood also, facing Liz. “I think I can, Liz. I think I can think clearly enough to know that I don’t want to stop being with you, that I don’t want this to end when you go back to New York.”
“Neither do I,” Liz admitted. “But…”
“Let’s just see where it goes, where we go. Meanwhile…” Nora put her arms around Liz’s neck and drew her close.
Chapter Thirty-Two
They slept in each other’s arms again that night, still chastely, or Nora slept; Liz alternated between staring wakefully into the darkness and gazing at Nora, noticing the moonlight playing on the curve of her cheek, the way the short ends of her hair curled damply at her temples.
They spent the next few days making funeral arrangements and sorting Corinne’s clothes and other belongings; Liz had been afraid that would be too painful for Nora to do so soon, but Nora had insisted. “I’m numb now,” she kept saying. “It’s really not hard. I’m surprised that it isn’t, but it isn’t.”
But after another sleepless night in Nora’s narrow bed, Liz reluctantly told Nora she thought she should go back to Piney Haven to sleep.
“Oh, no,” Nora protested. “Please don’t. Please stay.”
“I want to stay,” Liz said, taking her hands. “But if I don’t get some sleep, Nora, I won’t be any use to you.”
“Well—maybe you could sleep in the parlor? On the sofa? I don’t think it’s terribly lumpy. I’ll miss feeling you next to me,” she added shyly. “But it is a bit crowded, I know.”
“I’ll miss feeling you next to me, too,” Liz said stiffly, wanting to say more, but telling herself she shouldn’t, that this was not the time.
Nora slid her hands up Liz’s arms to her shoulders, then wrapped her own arms around Liz’s body. “I do want to be with you, Liz,” she whispered. “It’s just—I’m so…”
“Shh.” Liz moved back enough to put two fingers against Nora’s lips. “Shh. I know. It’s all right, Nora. It really is.”
***
Is it, she wondered later, alone in the parlor, staring out the window at the thick darkness. Did she really understand what we were talking about, what I was talking about, anyway?
Am I going to lose her?
Don’t be an idiot, she admonished herself, turning briskly to the sofa and snapping a sheet over it. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
And you’re being a selfish bitch to think the way you’ve been thinking when she’s so upset and sad.
***
Saturday morning before Ralph was awake, they took their coffee outside and sat in the rapidly warming sunlight, sipping slowly, silently, until Ralph’s voice boomed out from the house. It is going to be an impossible day, Liz thought, wishing it over, and Nora thought, This is the day of my mother’s funeral, thought it carefully, deliberately, as if testing her reaction.
But she couldn’t measure that, couldn’t imagine how she was going to react.
Louise Brice, in a neat dark gray suit with a silver and amethyst pin on the left lapel, settled next to her husband in a pew in the exact center of the church. “Look, Henry,” she said, poking him, “there she is. That Hardy woman.” She pointed to Liz, who was walking with Nora to the front pew in which Ralph had just been deposited by Sarah Cassidy and Patty Monahan, both rather weepy-looking; together, after settling Ralph, they moved to several pews back from the front. “Disgraceful,” Louise murmured. “That Hardy woman sitting with family. And I certainly don’t think a woman should wear pants to a funeral. And who’s that, I wonder? I didn’t know the Tillots had any relatives left. Oh, wait, maybe it’s one of those cousins who moved away all those years ago. My goodness, look, Henry, there are at least five of them!”
Two dark-suited men, one with a great shock of blond hair and the other, older, with a neatly trimmed goatee, took their places in the pew behind Nora and Liz. With them were two women, presumably their wives, the older one large and matronly, wearing a dark green dress in which she looked uncomfortably hot. The other, arm-in-arm with the blond man, tossed her head as she approached the pew, sending her mane of n
o-color straight hair cascading over her back; she leaned over and squeezed Nora’s shoulder and then Ralph’s. Behind the foursome came an elderly man, very solemn and stout, in a dark blue three-piece suit. He leaned over the back of the front pew to say something to Ralph, who, as Louise later said, “seemed too lost in grief or thought to respond.”
“How he can stand having that woman in the same pew is beyond me,” Louise whispered to Henry “The gall of her even coming!”
“Louise, let me get this straight,” Henry whispered back; he was already feeling hot and out of sorts and he wished, as he leaned toward his wife, that he hadn’t let her talk him into wearing a vest. “What you’ve actually heard is that Ralph accused Miss Hardy of poisoning Corinne. Right?”
“Exactly.” Louise snapped open her black leather handbag and removed a delicately scented handkerchief.
“Not,” Henry continued, surreptitiously loosening his tie a little, “that she’s actually been formally charged?”
“Well, no, not yet. But”—Louise mopped her damp forehead, releasing a faint trace of lilac cologne from her handkerchief—“I don’t think they’ve finished the autopsy report on poor Corinne. I imagine they’re waiting till after the funeral.” Louise nodded to Helen Whipple and her husband, who had just arrived, and then craned her head around to smile at the Davises, coming in with Roy Stark and Georgia Foley. The Davises sat humbly toward the back, but Roy and Georgia marched confidently down the aisle and sat in the third pew from the front.
“Who on earth is that?” Louise whispered, watching Roy. “He seems to be with Georgia Foley. But why?”
Her husband looked amused. “Someone you don’t know, dear? But how can that be?” Discretely, he opened his vest.
“I wonder what Georgia’s doing here; I don’t think she had anything to do with the Tillots. I hope she’s not going to pester poor Nora about selling the place, although I daresay it would be a good idea. Look how fussily Georgia’s dressed; who would wear a blouse with a fichu to a funeral?”
“Why, I don’t know, dear,” Henry said mildly, stifling a laugh; what in hell was a fichu? Sounded like a sneeze.
“Look how that man with Georgia is talking to the Hardy woman. I wonder if he’s a friend of hers. She doesn’t look very pleased to see him, I must say!”
Henry sighed and patted his wife’s hand. “Perhaps he’s just a nice sympathetic fellow or some young relative of the Davises. He and Georgia came in with them, didn’t they? The Hardys probably used to get their produce from the Davises, since the farm’s so close to the lake. Don’t speculate so, Louise, for heavens’ sake!”
***
The church was, in the end, only about a quarter full. The group at the cemetery (for even though the report on the blood and tissue samples had yet to be released, the body itself had been released for burial) was even smaller: Nora and Liz and Ralph; Sarah and Patty, both of whom were still teary; the cousins and the elderly man, who was a brother of Corinne’s; the Brices; the Cantors; Charles Hastings, who’d led the service, and his wife. The two Neds, who had come to the church out of mingled curiosity and politeness, lingered for a while on the church lawn, but did not go to the cemetery. The Whipples, the Lorens, Roy and Georgia, and a few others did, but they stayed in the background during the short burial service.
Once the casket had been put into the ground, and the closest relatives and friends had left, a little cluster of people remained around Helen Whipple.
“I feel so sorry,” Helen said, tugging at the hem of her black suit jacket and smoothing it over her ample hips, “for poor Liz Hardy, dragged into this whole sad business.”
“Well, I don’t know about being dragged in,” said Maryann Loren. “She certainly has gone on spending a lot of time at the farm. You’d think since she’s a suspect, or was, that she’d want to steer clear.”
“Honestly, Maryann,” Helen snapped, “I really do think that was a ridiculous accusation. Probably something Ralph made up in his demented state.”
“That’s possible I suppose,” Maryann admitted. “But one does still wonder.”
“What’s possible?” asked Roy, coming up to the group hand-in-hand with Georgia Foley.
“Oh,” said Helen, while Louise Brice studied Roy with mingled hostility and curiosity, “we were just guessing”—she looked sternly at Maryann—“about poor Mr. Tillot’s role in that silly accusation against Liz Hardy. Hello, Georgia!”
Georgia nodded, dropping Roy’s hand.
Roy looked very serious. “Maybe it’s not so silly,” he said slowly. “She does seem a bit odd, don’t you think? And I saw her at the Tillots’ the very morning after Mrs. Tillot died. You’d think she’d have wanted to stay away, given what people were saying.”
“Oh, come on!” Helen said angrily. “You can’t be serious. Why, I’ve known that girl since she was a child, far better than you, if you don’t mind my saying, and she’s not a bit odd.”
Roy bowed slightly. “You may be right,” he said. “I don’t know, of course. I like Liz Hardy, actually. I certainly hope you are right.” He inclined his head politely, saying, “Ladies…” and he walked away smiling cryptically, his arm linked in Georgia’s.
“Who is that unpleasant man?” Louise asked. “Some new flame of Georgia Foley’s?”
“I hope not,” Helen answered, looking after him with undisguised distaste. “He’s been around for a few months, filled in part time at the high school after that math teacher left, and lives out at the old Kincaid place. He’s too slick for me; I never did like him, even back when he first came into the post office. It’s him I’d keep an eye on, not Liz Hardy. I certainly don’t put any stock in what he said.”
“Yes, but as I said before,” Maryann reminded them pointedly, “if the Tillots do have money…”
“Oh, honestly, Maryann,” Helen retorted, “just what are you suggesting?”
“Motive, of course,” Louise Brice said, nodding at Maryann.
“It’s a horrible thought, I know.” Maryann appeared to shudder. “But Liz Hardy has been very friendly to poor Nora, who’s bound to inherit.”
Helen Whipple tossed her head. “I will not,” she said, turning sharply toward the cemetery gate where her husband had been waiting patiently along with Louise’s and Maryann’s, “honor that idea with any kind of reply."
Chapter Thirty-Three
“All right?” Liz whispered to Nora later, arranging plates of sandwiches to take from the kitchen to the carefully cleaned and aired parlor and adjoining dining room. Ralph was enthroned in a large wing chair in the parlor amid the relatives who’d been at the graveside service.
“I think so,” Nora said, her face flushed from bending over the stove, heating more water for coffee and tea.
“Shouldn’t you go in and socialize? I’ve got the knack of how things work. I can take over.”
“No, it’s okay. I think I’d rather be in here.”
“Nora, there you are!” came a loud male voice, and the blond cousin burst in, waving a wine glass. Ignoring Liz, he put an arm around Nora and led her to the table.
“Andrew!” Nora protested, squirming in his grip. “Please! I’ve got to get the coffee.”
“People can live for a few more minutes without coffee,” Andrew said as Liz poured hot water into the pot. “And see? They won’t even have to, thanks to your friend Miss Hardy.”
“Liz, please,” said Liz, though she wasn’t sure what to make of this rather blustery take-charge man out of Nora’s past; she wasn’t sure if he could be trusted. But trusted with what, she wondered, watching him covertly as she poured.
“Now Nora,” Andrew said, “Gail and I insist that you and Ralph come and live with us. Sell this old dump—it really must be awful living here with no electricity or anything—and come share our space. We have got,” he said, his face breaking into a jovial smile, “a house with five bedrooms, can you imagine? And almost as many bathrooms, and extra rooms like a family room and a c
ouple of studies.”
“Why?” Nora asked.
“Why?”
“Why such a big house?”
“Well, partly for the kids, who in any case are gone most of the time now, but also as an investment, except we’ve decided not to sell it for a while. If we hold onto it and wait till we’re doddering, we’ll get a better tax break. It’s our first home, you see; we had an apartment till Kevin was born.”
“Oh,” said Nora. But Liz could tell she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Anyway,” said Andrew, “we want you and Ralph to come and stay for as long as you like. Permanently would be fine.”
Nora shook her head. “No, I—we don’t want to move. And Father is…”
“But you must move, Nora dear,” interrupted the woman with the long hair who had sat next to Andrew in church; she had just come in and was standing near the table. She must be Gail, Andrew’s wife, Liz reasoned, when she glanced up from separating sandwiches into neat piles.
“You can’t possibly stay here,” Gail went on. “Why, it would be downright criminal! How you’ve managed to take care of two old people in these terrible primitive conditions…”
“People lived this way not so long ago,” Nora said sweetly and wearily, as Liz knew she would. “It’s not hard when you’re used to it.”
“But,” said Gail, “there’s simply no need for you to be used to it any more, is there, Andy?”
“Absolutely none. So that’s settled then. As soon as things die down here, we’ll put this old place on the market and move you and Ralph out to…”
Nora stood up, shaking off Andrew’s hand. For a moment she glanced wildly at Liz, and Liz stepped forward; Nora’s eyes looked trapped. But then they blazed and she said calmly, “Thank you very much. I know you’re being kind. But Father would never leave, and I don’t want to either. This is my home. This is where I grew up and where my mother lived, and I won’t leave it.”
You go, girl, Liz said to herself, feeling an admiring smile creep over her features. But admiration gave way to alarm as she picked up the sandwich plates and after nodding supportively to Nora as she passed, she wondered, Does she truly mean she’ll never leave?