Nightshade

  He was pushing against the lid now, trying to raise it, but already there was too much earth on top, and even as he struggled, more and more was piling onto the top of the coffin, until he could almost feel its weight. He tried to scream, but there was no way his voice could penetrate the coffin and the earth above. How long could he survive? How long before he suffocated?

  Would it hurt?

  Would he tear his fingernails off scratching at the walls as he tried to free himself?

  Or could he force the panic back, make himself lie still and await the death that now would surely come?

  But even in his imagination the darkness bore down on him, and the walls of the coffin closed around him, and an ineffable terror rose within him. The scream that no one would hear rose in his throat, but as he opened his mouth to give it vent, he felt something.

  A hand, squeezing his elbow.

  “Matt? Matt!” Though his mother’s voice was low, there was an urgency to it that jerked him out of the daydream. “It will be all right,” he heard her say. “Just do what I do.”

  Numbly, he stepped forward to the edge of the grave and stood beside his mother as she stooped, picked up a clod of earth with her gloved hand, then dropped it onto his stepfather’s coffin.

  Matt crouched, reached down, touched the pile of crumbling loam beside the grave.

  And the terrible image of being trapped inside the box, knowing what was happening even as you were being buried alive, leaped again to the forefront of his mind.

  He couldn’t do it!

  Standing up, he turned away. His eyes glazing with tears, he threaded his way through the crowd around the grave, barely aware of the murmur that was passing through the throng of mourners, the eyes that watched his every move. Finally he was away from the crowd, and a moment later his mother was beside him.

  “Matt? Darling, what happened?”

  Matt shook his head. How could he explain the terrible, irrational fear that had suddenly taken hold of him? “Nothing,” he blurted. “I just . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes moved back to the grave, where one by one the mourners were stooping to pick up a clod to add to the earth that was on the coffin. “I — I just couldn’t do it, that’s all,” he finally finished, his voice trembling.

  His mother put her arms around him. “Just a little while longer,” she said. “Just a little while, then we can go home.”

  But the little while seemed to stretch into a terrible eternity as he stood beside his mother just inside the door to the parish hall. As the mourners filed by, he heard them whisper words of sympathy to his mother, the women leaning forward to kiss her cheek, the men holding her hand in theirs.

  But as they came to him, they fell silent.

  Their eyes refused to meet his, instead darting first one way, then another, as if seeking some means of escape.

  They think I did it on purpose. The first time the dark thought rose in his mind, he tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself that they just didn’t know what to say to him. But the thought kept coming back, jabbing at him over and over again. They think I did it on purpose. They all think I meant to kill my own dad!

  Finally, though, the last of the throng who had come to bid their final respects to his stepfather had spoken to his mother, and one or two even nodded to him. His friends had gathered in the far corner of the room, whispering among themselves just out of earshot of their parents.

  Both Eric Holmes and Pete Arneson were in the group, and so was Kelly Conroe. By force of habit, Matt made his way over to them, but instead of widening their circle to include him as they always had before, today they moved closer together, falling silent as he approached. A memory flashed into his mind. He was four years old, and he’d just come out the front door of his grandmother’s house, only a block away from where he was right now. A group of other children were playing in Eric Holmes’s yard across the street. He wanted to play with them, but when he started to cross the street, Eric and his friends had abruptly stopped talking. And he knew, without any of them saying anything, that they didn’t want to let him play with them. Doing his best not to cry, he’d turned around and gone back into his grandmother’s house.

  Today, though, in the parish house next to the church, they didn’t stay silent. When Matthew was still a few feet away, Eric Holmes spoke. He kept his voice low enough so it wouldn’t fill the room, but loud enough so Matt would hear his words clearly.

  “How did it feel?” he asked. “How did it feel to shoot your dad?”

  Matt stopped short, the words slashing through him like a razor. For a moment he couldn’t speak — couldn’t even think. Then his mind slowly began to function again, yet still he didn’t speak, for he knew there was nothing he could say.

  They had made up their minds: he was guilty.

  His eyes moved from face to face. For ten years they had been his friends, the people he’d gone to school with! They’d known him! They’d liked him!

  Or had they? Was it possible they’d never been his friends? That they’d only pretended to be because of who his stepfather was? Suddenly Matt felt as if he were four years old again.

  Then, as his eyes fell on Kelly Conroe, he felt a flicker of hope. There was something in her expression that told him she wasn’t as certain about what had happened as the rest of them. He took a step toward her, but as if reading his thoughts, she shook her head in a quick movement and she edged toward Eric Holmes.

  Another stab of pain shot through Matt, and as he felt his eyes sting with tears, he turned quickly away.

  At least he didn’t have to let them see the pain he was feeling.

  Out!

  He had to get out!

  His head down so no one could see his glistening eyes, Matt hurried toward the door, brushing past his mother and pushing his way out onto the loggia that connected the parish hall to the church. Breathing deeply, he tried to swallow the lump that had blocked his throat, and to conquer the tears that streamed from his eyes.

  How can they know? he silently demanded. If I don’t even know what happened, how can they?

  But it didn’t matter — nothing mattered now.

  Everything was gone.

  His stepfather.

  His friends.

  Even Kelly.

  When he heard the door open behind him, he held very still, refusing even to turn around.

  “I’m really sorry about your dad, Matt.”

  When he failed to face her, Becky Adams moved around in front of Matt and looked directly into his face. Her mousy brown hair was cut in bangs that made her face look even rounder than it was, and she seemed almost lost in the bulky brown sweater she was wearing. Her brow was furrowed with worry, and her eyes looked enormous behind the thick lenses she’d been wearing since they were little. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” she said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it.”

  Matt’s first impulse was to turn away, knowing what his friends would say if they caught him actually talking to Becky Adams. But then he remembered that it didn’t matter anymore what his friends might say.

  He no longer had any friends.

  “Thanks,” he said. “And thanks for at least talking to me.”

  Thirty minutes later, as the limousine pulled away from the front of the church, Matt looked back to see Becky Adams still standing on the loggia. She raised a hand to wave to him, and he waved back, though he wasn’t sure she could see him through the car’s dark windows.

  CHAPTER 10

  TRIP WAINWRIGHT — whose full name was Wallace Fisher Wainwright III — had been involved in the affairs of Bill Hapgood since the day he graduated from law school twenty-six years ago. Five months later, when he’d passed the bar and received his license to practice, his father added his name to the shingle that hung outside the old stone building at the corner of Main and Chestnut, which had originally been a post house. It had been Bill Hapgood’s suggestion that at such time as Trip’s own son, currently in his
second year at his father’s alma mater, took over Senior Wainwright’s desk in the old post house, the name of the firm should be modernized to WW, an appellation that Trip suspected might very well prove prophetic if and when he broached the idea to his father. “Don’t worry about that,” Bill had assured him. “I can handle your dad. He’s always liked me better than you anyway.”

  Though Bill had said it half jokingly, it was more than half true, and as Trip sat through the funeral that morning, he’d realized just how much he was going to miss the man who had been not only his first client, but one of his best friends as well. Now, as he went through his briefcase one last time to make certain he had all the files that might be relevant to whatever questions Joan Hapgood might have, he reflected that he was far from the only person in Granite Falls who had thought of Bill Hapgood as their best friend. Besides himself and Gerry Conroe, Trip suspected that Paul Arneson and Marty Holmes would have placed Bill at the top of their list of friends, and even beyond those three, nearly everyone in town had liked and respected Bill.

  Granite Falls wasn’t going to be the same without him.

  Sighing, Trip snapped the latches of his briefcase closed, started out of his office, then turned back to pick up the telephone and call Dan Pullman, whose office was just down the block in the town hall. “I’m on my way out to talk to Joan,” he said. “Is there anything I can tell her?” He listened, grunted noncommittally, then hung up. Finally leaving his office, he got into the little Miata that his father never failed to remind him was too flashy for a lawyer — which was the primary reason he’d bought it — and headed out to the Hapgood house. But he found himself driving slowly, turning the two-minute drive into a ten-minute run for no other reason than to put off the inevitable. That was another thing his father never failed to needle him about: “Never put things off, Trip. You never know when a client might drop dead, and you don’t want to have papers still waiting to be signed.” Sometimes, when he wasn’t feeling particularly charitable, Trip wondered if that was all the clients were to his father: nothing more than sheaves of paper, neatly filed away in manila folders, to be shuffled about and eventually disposed of.

  But Bill Hapgood had been his friend, and he was not looking forward to the next couple of hours. Yet as he turned through the gates and started up the long driveway to the house, he knew his father was right — the sooner he got it over with, the better.

  Joan answered the door as he was about to press the bell a second time. She was still wearing the same black dress she’d worn to the funeral, and the single strand of pearls still hung around her neck. She’d taken off the pearl earrings, though, and removed her makeup.

  As had happened every time Trip Wainwright had seen Joan since she’d first come back to Granite Falls fifteen years ago, his heart had skipped a beat and he felt a hollowness in his stomach. It wasn’t that Joan had turned beautiful while she was away, for her features hadn’t so much changed as simply matured. It was that she didn’t seem to have any idea how beautiful she was. Of course, Trip — already married and with a son of his own — had been careful never to reveal the crush he’d developed on Joan Moore, and even when she married Bill Hapgood, he carefully betrayed none of the sense of loss he felt. Then, after Adrienne died three years ago, he’d been even more vigilant in guarding the secret of his feelings toward Joan Hapgood. Now, even without her makeup, and with her eyes still red from the tears she’d shed at the funeral, he still thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  And she still seemed utterly unaware of it.

  “Come in, Trip,” she said, pulling the door wide. She managed a weak smile. “I’d intended to change and be all ready for you, but — ” Her voice cracked, but then, with a visible effort, she pulled herself back together. “It hasn’t been the easiest day for any of us, has it?”

  “If you’d like to do this another day — ” Trip began, but Joan shook her head.

  “I don’t think there’s any point in putting it off, is there?” she sighed. “Matt and my mother are in the den.” Suddenly, she looked uncertain. “Should they be part of this?”

  “Actually, I’d like Matt to be there,” Wainwright replied. “As for your mother,” he went on, shrugging, “that’s really up to you.” He hesitated, then: “How is she today?”

  Joan’s hands spread helplessly. “Right now she seems almost like herself. But this morning — ” She shook her head, shuddering. “You don’t want to know. I keep thinking that Bill was right, that I should have found someplace for her.”

  The lawyer shook his head. “She’s your mother. If it had been Eloise Hapgood, Bill never would have heard of her being put anywhere. He would have hired whatever staff she needed, and she would have stayed right here, where she belonged.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell myself,” Joan said as they moved into the den. Emily Moore, a shawl wrapped around her knees, was almost lost in a corner of the sofa in front of the fireplace. Matt, his face pale and his eyes anxious, stood next to the big globe that was suspended in a mahogany stand. He seemed unaware that he was nervously spinning it.

  “Are you here to see Cynthia?” Emily Moore asked, peering up at Wainwright. “Call your sister, Joan.”

  Before Joan could speak, Wainwright took Emily Moore’s hand. “I’m here to see you,” he said. “And Joan and Matt too.”

  The words seemed to mollify the old woman, and she relaxed back onto the sofa. For the next fifteen minutes the lawyer went over the terms of the will. “Basically, it’s a trust,” he explained to Joan. “In the short term, you’re in charge. You’re the sole trustee, with very broad powers. You can liquidate anything you want, including the business, but in the end, Matt inherits.”

  Matt’s eyes widened. “Me?”

  Trip Wainwright had been deliberately watching Matt as he uttered the last two words, and he was sure the surprise in the boy’s face — and his voice — was genuine.

  “Why would Dad have done that?” he asked. “Why didn’t he leave everything to Mom?”

  “He said he wanted to make certain you knew he didn’t think of you as a stepchild,” Wainwright replied. “When he had me draw up the papers, he told me it was his way of letting you know he truly thought of you as his son.” Matt’s eyes glistened, and Wainwright could see him struggling to control his emotions.

  When Matt finally spoke, his voice was barely audible. “Everybody thinks — ” he began, then fell silent, unable to finish.

  “What everybody thinks doesn’t matter,” Wainwright said. His eyes shifted to Joan, and his voice dropped. “I’ve been talking to Dan Pullman,” he said. “They think they’ve found the casings of the bullets Matt fired. There are three of them, and they’re the right caliber. It’ll take a lab to match them to Matt’s rifle, but I suspect that will happen.”

  Joan’s eyes widened, and the color drained from Matt’s face. “Are they going to arrest — ” Joan began, but Wainwright quickly shook his head.

  “Of course not. They haven’t found the bullet that killed Bill, and I suspect that if they haven’t found it yet, they’re not going to. But even if they find it, it doesn’t mean anything. Matt was shooting at the deer, not at Bill. There was no way Matt even could have seen him — not through that thicket.”

  “But everyone thinks I did it on purpose,” Matt whispered.

  Wainwright’s voice hardened. “It doesn’t matter a whit what people think, Matt. The only thing that matters is what they can prove. And at this point, there’s no way they can prove you even shot him, let alone shot him on purpose. Dan Pullman says that even if he finds the bullet and can prove it came from your gun, he doesn’t think anyone would charge you. Not unless they want to go back and charge everyone who’s accidentally shot someone during hunting season.”

  Suddenly, Emily Moore spoke again. “It wasn’t an accident,” she said, her voice crackling as she peered at Trip Wainwright.

  The lawyer frowned, his eyes fixing on
the old woman. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Moore?”

  “I said it wasn’t an accident,” Emily piped. Her flinty eyes darted toward her grandson. “He did it on purpose.”

  “Mother, how can you say that?” Joan protested.

  “Because it’s true,” the old woman insisted. “Cynthia told me. She told me exactly what happened.”

  Trip Wainwright felt the tension drain out of his body as quickly as the old woman’s accusation had brought it, and his gaze shifted sympathetically to Joan. “If there’s anything I can do . . .” he said, and deliberately let his voice trail off.

  Reading his meaning perfectly, Joan shook her head. But as she walked him to the front door a few moments later, she sighed. “I wish I knew what to do,” she admitted. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep her here.”

  “If you need help . . .” Wainwright offered again, and this time Joan smiled at him.

  “If I need help, I’ll call you,” she promised him.

  As she started to close the door behind the lawyer, they both heard Emily’s voice rising. “He never loved you,” the old woman raved. “The only person he ever loved was your aunt! Don’t you understand? It was Cynthia he loved! Not you, and certainly not your mother!”

  Taking a deep breath, Joan quickly closed the door behind Trip Wainwright and hurried back to the den.

  Her mother still sat in the corner of the sofa.

  Matt was gone.

  * * *

  “MAMA? MAMA?”

  The voice was barely a whisper, no more than a breeze that might be drifting through the open window, but still Emily Moore stirred restlessly in her bed and her clawlike fingers tugged at the sheet as if to shield herself from a draft.

  “Can you hear me?”

  The voice was louder now, as if the breeze had strengthened.

  “It’s me, Mama. Can’t you hear me?”

  Emily’s lips worked, and an unintelligible sound escaped her lips. Once again she stirred, turning from her side onto her back. Her right arm rose up, as if to fend off a mosquito.