A Fool and His Honey

Chapter Six

We started out in the dark early the next morning. We didn’t want anyone to see Rory in the car with us. He was sitting in back with the baby for now, though I planned on switching seats with him later, at least for a little while. Martin would do the driving: He much preferred to be in the driver’s seat. What a shock, right?

We didn’t even go through a drive-through to get coffee until we’d been on the road an hour. Rory was asleep, and after a sip or two I woke up enough to want to talk to Martin.

“What did you do about Shelby and Angel?” he asked.

“I left a message on the answering machine at Buds ‘N Blooms,” I said. I inhaled the coffee vapor. “They’ll take her a huge pink bouquet today.” Shelby had called at midnight to tell us that Angel had had a baby girl, a seven-pounder. He had been exhausted and elated; I could never have imagined hearing Shelby sound so grateful.

“Gift?” Martin asked tentatively, aware he was on shaky ground here.

“I gave her a baby shower,” I reminded him, noticing a warning edge in my voice. “Mother and I gave her a playpen.”

“And how is John?”

“Mother called at ten last night to tell me John would be in the hospital for a day or two more. The doctors are sure he had a heart attack, and they’re still talking about treatment options.”

“How’s he feeling?”

“Scared.”

“And Aida?”

“She’s scared, too, but you would find it hard to tell.”

Martin was closer to my mother’s age than mine, but it still felt strange to hear him call her by her first name.

“I know how hard this is on you.” In the lightening gloom, I could tell Martin had turned briefly to look at me, before refocusing on the highway. “I expected you to tell me any minute to take Hayden back up to Ohio myself, that you were staying with your mother.”

“Martin,” I said, “it never occurred to me to do that.”

We rode in silence for at least half an hour after that.

A long car trip in the winter with a baby… when you’ve never had a baby… the formula for disaster, right?

The best I can say is, it could’ve been worse. For example, someone could have pulled out my eyelashes one by one.

We stopped to feed and change the baby… well, we stopped so I could feed and change the baby. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the physical work of caring for Hayden that was so exhausting, though that was tough, too. What was most difficult was an unexpected aspect of traveling with a child: the observations of strangers. I hadn’t realized every mother learns to discuss her child with every waitress, restroom customer, and Tom, Dick, and Harry that walks by. The restaurant where we stopped for lunch gave me my first sampling. I carried Hayden in his infant seat, found it was impossible to fit it anywhere on the table or on one chair, and finally discovered that if Martin and Rory sat on one side of a booth, I could put the infant seat and myself on the other side. This did not make Martin happy, but at that point, making Martin happy was low on my priority list.

The waitress, a plump black woman with gorgeous up-slanted eyes, gave me my first taste of what was to come. “Oh, he so cute!” she said, with apparent sincerity. “How old is he?”

“A month,” I said, as Rory said, “Two and a half weeks.”

She laughed as Rory and I glared at each other. “He a big baby,” she said admiringly. “How much was he?”

I stared at her blankly. Cost-wise?

“He weighed eight pounds, five ounces,” Rory said firmly.

So the correct answer was his birth weight. I’d try to remember that. I smiled at Rory.

“Oh, that’s sweet,” the woman (“Candra” her name tag read) commented, handing us menus. “The daddy knows the birth weight!”

“Oh, he’s a great father,” I assured her, suddenly feeling quite giddy. “He was there the whole time.”

As Candra absorbed the age difference between me and Rory, her eyes widened. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked in a subdued voice.

When we’d all ordered, I fished a bottle out of the cooler and asked Candra if she’d heat it up for us. That was another thing I learned on that trip: how to ask favors, some of them outrageous, of complete strangers. When you’re functioning as a mom you have to. Would you heat this bottle? Bring extra napkins? Throw away this dirty diaper? Pretend not to hear my child screaming his head off?

My most humiliating moment came in Kentucky at a rest stop, when I carried Hayden into the ladies’ room to change his diaper. I had the baby, the diaper bag, and my purse. I changed him somehow-at least that particular freezing rest room had a foldout tray to do the job on-but then I found I had to use the facilities myself quite urgently, and I had nowhere to put him and no time to carry him out to Martin. I don’t think I’ve done anything as complicated in my life as try to pull down my slacks and underwear in a cubicle the size of a phone booth, while holding a baby, a bulky diaper bag, and a purse, and wearing a coat.

It was humiliating. And though it probably would’ve made America’s Funniest Home Videos, at the time it wasn’t at all amusing to me. As a matter of fact, as I began wearily to reverse the process, I decided I’d never think it was funny.

And I knew for a fact that Martin would never get over being called “Grandpa” by one well-meaning cashier. It was lucky for Rory that Martin hadn’t noticed his suppressed smile, and lucky for me that my own face was too tired to form the grin I felt rising to my lips.

Most of our conversation on this trip consisted of Martin trying to get Rory to give us more specifics about Craig and the baby, Regina and the baby, the baby’s birth, why Regina had driven down to Lawrenceton without Craig.

“Oh, well, she didn’t expect us to get out of jail when we did,” Rory explained, when he saw he couldn’t get away with waffling anymore. “I expect she just wanted to show off the baby to you, since her mom is out of the country.”

“Does my sister know she’s a grandmother?”

“Huh?”

“Does Regina’s mother know Regina has had a baby?”

“Well, not to say so. Not really.”

Rory was sitting in front with Martin now, and I was buckled in the back with Hayden, whom I was amusing by dangling a toy for him to focus on. I considered flattening the receiving blanket that lay in my lap, twirling the ends until it formed a long rope, then looping it around Rory’s narrow neck. He’d spit out the truth then! I told myself truculently, realizing I was somewhere beyond tired.

“Is this baby really Regina’s?” I asked sharply. “Or did she steal Hayden from someone?”

Martin closed his eyes briefly, then refocused on the road.

“Of course this baby is Regina’s!” our companion said, as indignant as he could manage to be.

“How do you know?”

“Craig drove her to the midwife’s!”

“And you watched the baby being born?”

“Hell, no!”

“But you were at the midwife’s?”

“Well…” Rory seemed to be thinking deeply, and that seemed to be difficult for him. “Not exactly, not me. So much as Craig. I think I was in jail.”

I looped the ends of the receiving blanket around each hand so I’d have a good grip, just waiting for a nod from Martin to choke this goofball.

Martin glanced back to see what I was doing, then looked forward hastily, his face convulsing with suppressed laughter.

“Say the word,” I told him.

“Rory,” Martin tried again. “Which one of you took Regina to the midwife’s office?”

“Maybe I went part of the way,” Rory improvised. “They dropped me off at the house on their way.”

“And this baby, Hayden, the one in the backseat, is the child of Regina and Craig?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. They all look alike, don’t they?” Martin turned a little and directed his next words at me. “You know, I’m actually tempted,” he said. “Keep it handy.”

Like most horrible things-roller coaster rides, committee meetings, vaginal exams-the trip eventually came to an end. After thirteen hours on the road (during two and a half of which Hayden screamed) we got to Corinth. By that time I didn’t like anyone in the Mercedes, myself included. Rory directed Martin to his family’s home, in a section of Corinth as derelict as any I’d seen in Lawrenceton. When we pulled up in front of a tiny brick house set up on a hill, the steps up to it steep and crooked, Rory ejected himself from the car with unflattering speed. “I’ll give you a call,” he promised. “Thanks for not turning me in. Take care of old Hayden, now.” He went up the steps two at a time, his extra clothes clutched to him in a paper bag, his hair sticking out all around from a knit watch cap he’d had stuck in his pocket. The streetlight gave the blond hair a tinge of green and his progress a definite touch of the surreptitious.

We watched him go with relief.

“If he had two thoughts at one time, they’d throw a surprise party,” Martin said mysteriously, and I nodded.

“The question is, is he bad or good underneath the stupidity?” I said.

“I don’t think he’s smart enough to be bad,” Martin said.

The same streetlight made my husband look hard and angry. Really, he was just tired and grumpy. Maybe.

“You don’t have to be smart to be bad,” I reminded him.

It was too late, and we were too tired, to cope with any surprises the farmhouse might have to offer. We checked into the Holiday Inn, staggered to our room with all the paraphernalia the baby required. Martin set up the portable crib while I changed Hayden, who rejected another bottle. There was a little refrigerator in the room, so I stuck the bottle in there, laid Hayden in the crib, and patted him on the back until he fell asleep. By that time, Martin was in bed. I felt like an elephant had rolled over on me and lain there for hours. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and crawled in beside him.

Two hours later Hayden woke up.

I was standing beside the crib when I attained consciousness.

Hayden was hungry.

The formula was cold, and there was no way to heat it.

Finally, I tucked it in my nightgown next to my body-you can imagine how good that felt-and held Hayden and jiggled him in the room’s straight chair, trying Binkys and bouncing and humming with no effect. When the formula was slightly less chilly, I stuck the nipple in Hayden’s mouth, and after a brief protest, the baby began to suckle.

Martin slept all the way through this.

In the morning, when he shook me by the shoulder-very gently-I buried my face in the pillow.

“Roe,” he said, kissing me on the cheek, “it’s nine o’clock, and the baby’s awake.”

“Take care of him.”

“I changed his diaper,” Martin observed, trying not to sound proud and failing. “I think he’s hungry, and there aren’t any bottles.”

“Go to the store, and see if they sell formula already made up,” I advised. “Or take him to Craig’s aunt and uncle and let them worry about it.”

Martin heartlessly laid Hayden on the bed by me, and I raised my head enough to see his tiny finger waving. He made his little “eh” sound. His cheek was close enough to kiss, so I did, inhaling the now-familiar baby smell. I could hear the diaper rustle, and knew Martin hadn’t put it on snugly enough. Oh, hell.

I sat up, groggy as it is possible to be. “I was up with him last night,” I said, fixing Martin with as baleful a stare as I could scrape together. “While you slept,” I emphasized, in case he hadn’t gotten the point. I could not find any trace of sympathy for Martin in my heart. It didn’t make any difference that his niece was missing and her husband dead. He’d had what I hadn’t-undisturbed sleep.

“I’ll go look,” he said hastily. “What kind should I get?”

I made him write it down. Hayden was beginning to escalate in his demands. “And hurry,” I added, in case he hadn’t gotten that point.

There was no going back to sleep. I found a Binky, stuck it in Hayden’s mouth, rejoiced to find that pacified him at least for the moment. I dashed into the bathroom, took a hot and sketchy shower, scrubbed my teeth again, and was appalled at the amount of makeup I needed to make myself look healthy this morning. I pulled on tobacco-brown slacks and a sweater of a deep yellow that I believed was called goldenrod. I took a moment to sit down on the bed and do some research with the local phone book. Then I finished rigging myself out with my rings, a chain, some earings, my gold-rimmed glasses, and socks and loafers… By the time I’d finally put myself together, Martin was coming back in the room with a bag. It contained clean bottles and a few cans of ready-made formula.

“You wouldn’t believe what I had to pay for this,” he said with some indignation.

“I don’t care. Did you get a can opener?” I asked tensely.

He produced one from the bag with an air of triumph, and I gave him a heartfelt kiss on the cheek. He was about to go for something more meaningful when I heard the warning tune-up behind me.

“He’s getting serious,” I said, panicking. “We’ve got to get the bottle ready now!”

Working together we had a brand-new bottle full of brand-new formula ready in record time, and Hayden was gumming away on the nipple in blessed near-silence. While I aided and abetted, Martin checked the skinny Corinth telephone book for the address of Craig’s family, the Harbors, who’d taken him in when his parents died.

“Maybe they’re on their way to Lawrenceton,” I said, with a wave of horror. “Maybe they’re on their way there to collect Craig’s body!”

“Nope,” Martin said, his eyes never leaving the columns of phone numbers. “Padgett Lanier told me Craig’s brother had asked him how to ship the body back to Corinth when the autopsy was over.”

I felt a tide of relief sweep over me. The people who had raised Craig for the past five years were here in Corinth. I was not thinking of the Harbors as bereaved; I was thinking of them as baby repositories. And I’d lost any shame I had about it, too.

“Here they are,” Martin said absently. “Eighteen-fifty-six Gettysburg Street.” He closed the phone book and returned it to the drawer with a much more cheerful air.

“Who’d want to name a street after Gettysburg?” Obviously, I was talking right off the top of my head.

Martin looked up at me, his eyebrows raised and a patient look on his face.

“Oh,” I said, abashed. I’m not one of those unreconstructed southerners who refers to the War of Northern Aggression, but it seemed I’d been indoctrinated to some extent. I made a face at my Yankee husband. These people probably had an Appomattox Avenue, too.

We packed all the baby’s things in his diaper bag, folded up the crib for the last time, and went carefully down the stairs to our car. We hadn’t had coffee yet, or breakfast, and yet that seemed secondary to getting Hayden to qualified caregivers.

Since Corinth is only a little bigger than Lawrenceton, we found the Harbors’ house quickly. To my silent dismay, it seemed like a darker shadow of the place where we’d dropped off Rory the night before. This house’s once-white siding was peeling, and the front yard had not a blade of grass.

Martin and I avoided looking at each other. We slowly got out of the car, and I opened the back door to extract Hayden. He was sound asleep, and I pulled out Ellen Lowry’s blue-and-white-striped blanket to drape over his head. A chill rain had begun to fall. Martin covered us with an umbrella. We picked our way across the yard to the door. My heart sank at the sight of the ripped shades at the two front windows. Who could have guessed, seeing the Harbors at the wedding, that this was how they lived?

Then I chided myself for my snobbery, reminded myself that children grew up healthy and cherished in the poorest of homes. But I knew it wasn’t the poverty that bothered me. It was the air that the people who lived under this roof had given up. They no longer cared-about peeling paint, or the lack of bushes to soften the mean lines of the old house, or the absence of stepping stones to keep visitors’ feet dry on messy days. There was not even a two-dollar doormat outside the front door to wipe my feet on.

But someone had put a big black bow on the door knocker, to show this was a house of mourning.

Martin leaned forward to rap on the wood and slid his arm around me. I leaned into its warmth, my hand absently patting Hayden’s round little bottom.

I hardly recognized the woman who answered the door as the same Lenore Harbor I’d met at the wedding. She’d put out a great effort then, I realized, seeing her now. Her hair had been done, her dress and shoes new. And she hadn’t been smoking. A cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth now, jiggling when she spoke to us out of the other corner.

“I halfway expected you, Martin. Come on in, I guess. I haven’t had a chance to clean up, I’m sure you know we’ve just been knocked on our butts by this news about Craig.”

Her voice was raspy, but she didn’t sound exactly as I’d expected. Sad, yes… but not agonized. She wasn’t Craig’s blood mother, of course. My heart began to sink.

I tried my hardest not to look around the room, but it was impossible not to absorb the depression that hung over the ancient furniture and loose linoleum, the plethora of overflowing ashtrays and discarded magazines. The Harbors had received a couple of plants and some sympathy cards, and they were arranged on the shelf of a nasty maple hutch. The ribbons on the arrangements stood out in brilliant contrast to the rest of the material in the dingy living room. But it wasn’t the age of the furnishings, or even the presence of the ashtrays; it was the lack of maintenance, or care, of these things that bothered me.

This wasn’t what I had pictured as a temporary home for Hayden.

“And this is your wife?”

Lenore Harbor had met me at the wedding, but didn’t seem to recall that. Martin reintroduced me, and Lenore waved her hand at the couch. We perched there uneasily after piling all Hayden’s gear near the door.

Lenore turned her head toward the back of the house and called, “Hugh! Martin and his little wife are here!”

There was a curious sound from the next room, a kind of long wheeze, and then Hugh Harbor made his way into the living room. He was preceded by the thump! shuffle, thump! shuffle of a person using a walker. Hugh was about Lenore’s age, somewhere in his midfifties I estimated, and he was gaunt, with neutral coloring and light brown hair outlining a tonsure.

He greeted us in a wheezy voice. I noticed an oxygen tank sitting in the corner. Surely it was dangerous to smoke in a house with oxygen tanks? I remembered Rory saying that Hugh Harbor had been ill. I wished now I’d paid more attention, asked more questions. But in the rush to find someone to take Hayden off my hands, I hadn’t thought enough… about anything.

“I’m so glad you made the drive to come back to Corinth,” Hugh Harbor said. I wondered how he knew we’d driven. He eased back into a green vinyl armchair with stuffing protruding from one arm. There was a towel spread over the seat. I suspected the towel covered worse depredations. “We don’t think that Gina could’ve hurt poor Craig.” Hugh wheezed. “Musta been some thief, don’t you think? Or some guy who just saw Gina, thought she looked good? Craig wouldn’t a let anyone mess with Gina.”

“We’re sure Regina didn’t have anything to do with it,” Martin agreed firmly. I could tell he was mighty relieved. It would have been horrible if they’d believed Regina had killed Craig.

“I know Hayden will be a consolation to you,” I said, but I couldn’t hear any excitement in my voice. I sort of extended the baby, who’d been lying in my arms.

They gave me a very peculiar look, and I could tell they’d been married many years. Their faces held almost identical degrees of puzzlement and surprise.

“Of course, babies are wonderful things to have,” Lenore said, with a distressing lack of enthusiasm. “Hugh and I raised a houseful of them. We didn’t know you and Martin was even expecting, young lady.”

Martin and I turned to look at each other. We probably had twin expressions too; and they were of sheer bafflement.

I didn’t think I could talk, even if I could think of what to say. Martin looked down at Hayden, back at Lenore, who was taking advantage of the break in the conversation to light another cigarette.

“This isn’t our baby,” Martin said, not sounding very sure about it. “This is Craig and Regina’s boy, Hayden.”

You would have thought we’d announced we were going to strip and have sex on the floor. The Harbors once again had twin expressions-this time, shock and fascination. After they’d absorbed what Martin had said, emotions scudded across their faces like clouds on a windy day.

“This is the first we’ve heard of it,” Lenore said finally. I could have sworn it wasn’t the first thing she thought to say. Hugh nodded agreement, the top of his bald dome glinting in the overhead light as his head bobbed back and forth.

“You didn’t know Craig and Regina were expecting a child?” Even knowing the answer, I had to ask. My heart couldn’t have sunk further. It was at the level of my big toe.

“No,” Hugh said. “They never said nothing about having a baby. Are you sure this boy is theirs?”

We did the Tweedledum and Tweedledee thing again, searching each other’s faces. I gave a tiny shrug.

“That’s what Regina told us,” Martin said carefully. I had expected Martin to be visibly upset again, but to my relief, he had returned to his more familiar persona of cagey businessman. His face was unreadable; his hands loosely clasped each other in a relaxed way.

I gathered Hayden closer to my chest. I understood that I would be taking him out of this house with me. I looked at his little pile of paraphernalia and gave a silent sigh. All to be hauled back up the motel stairs again.

“How much did you see of Regina and Craig?” I asked, my voice as soft and simple as I could make it. Didn’t want to put them on the defensive.

“Well, I ain’t been well,” Hugh said apologetically. “I have good spells. I was having one about the time they got married. But I ain’t been so good since about late July, and I’m afraid I take up most of Lenore’s time.”

We had been fools to bring Hayden up here. I saw clearly that these people had not the resources, the legal obligation, or the slightest inclination to take care of Hayden even temporarily. How could we have been so blind? I had followed an anxious Martin’s lead without a thought, consumed by my own conflicts. I should have listened to Angel; might have, if her baby hadn’t decided that afternoon was the time to arrive. Angel had figured we should stay in Lawrenceton, and she’d been right.

I barely listened while the Harbors explained to Martin over and over again why they really hadn’t had a chance to go visit the newlyweds since the wedding. The farm was far out in the country, they emphasized, and it was so hard for Hugh to get around. And, Lenore Harbor pointed out righteously, they hadn’t been invited.

“Did Craig come to see you here?” Martin asked.

He’d dropped by once or twice, the Harbors admitted, usually with that friend of his, that Rory.

It took a few more questions from Martin to establish that the couple hadn’t seen Regina-except across a store-since a week after the wedding. But they’d seen Craig quite often.

“You know,” Hugh said with an effort, his breathing increasingly difficult, “we thought, when Craig got married-and we stood in as his folks at the wedding-we thought Craig’s old ways were over. Gina being a little older than him, we thought she’d hold him down, make him toe the line. We were-well, I guess Lenore and I are maybe a little ashamed to say it-kind of relieved. Craig turned out to be a bigger responsibility than we ever dreamed, him getting into trouble so often. We was glad to take him in, Lenore being his aunt and so on, and we took care of him through high school, but I won’t say it was all peaches and cream. We’d raised girls before, but that boy was a whole different kit and caboodle.” He shook his shiny head sadly. “Nope, he and that Rory was always into trouble. We thought for a while that it was Rory who would marry Gina, when they began hanging around together.”

Martin began our closing remarks, so to speak, and after a little more strained conversation, we rose to leave. We began tucking Hayden’s bits and pieces wherever we could, with Martin once again holding the umbrella.

I nuzzled Hayden’s fuzzy head, and wondered what we should do next.

As we pulled away from the broken curb, the silence in the Mercedes might well be described as thick. And tense.

I looked out at the passing streets of this depressing little farming town. I had no idea what Martin was thinking, but I knew if he asked me if I liked having a baby now that I had one, I would pinch him where it hurt, because I was so bitterly amazed at myself. I’d wanted a baby. Now I had one. And I was trying with all my might to get rid of him.

Partly, I thought, this was because the care of him had been dumped on me. Partly, it was because I hadn’t had the hormonal buildup that natural mothers get.

But mostly, it was because I knew-I just knew-that his mother would turn up sooner or later, and Hayden would be gone. If the claimant wasn’t Regina, it would be someone else with a better title to this child than mine, which was almost nonexistent. What point was there in lining up more pain for myself?

I felt better once I’d admitted all this in my secret heart. While we waited on a red light, I looked over at Martin, who was staring out the window at the bare trees. The sky had that leaden gray look that often presages snow, at least in my very limited experience.

“I guess we should talk to Cindy, and then Craig’s brother,” I said. I didn’t sound excited about it.

“Yes, we need to,” my husband agreed, turning to look across the seat at me. “And we need to track down Rory and see if we can get any more out of him. And we probably need to move our stuff out to the farmhouse. It’ll be a lot easier with a stove and refrigerator. And more than one room.” “It” being the care of Hayden, I gathered. I noticed we weren’t saying one word about walking out of the Harbors’ house with him, when we’d gone in with the resolve of leaving the baby with Craig’s family.

“I wonder if the police have been out there, to the farm,” I said, the idea sort of slipping into my head sideways.

Martin looked surprised, then thoughtful. “You’d think they’d want to see if anything Craig and Regina left out there could explain what happened,” he said. “If the Lawrenceton sheriffs department called them. And I’m assuming they did.” Martin mulled it over a little. “I know who to call. An old friend of mine named Karl Bagosian has a key to the house, and if anyone knows, he will.”

We parked in front of the florist’s shop owned by Cindy Bartell. I’d been there once before. Then, there had been Easter decorations in the big window facing the sidewalk. Now it was filled with fall decorations. Through that window, over the top of a miniature corn sheaf, I could see Cindy’s head of smooth black hair bent over a gift basket on the large worktable behind the counter.

Martin was opening my car door, which he’d somewhat fallen out of the habit of doing. I had never seen door opening as an issue, but I used his choice as a clue to his feelings. As Martin held out his hand to help me out of the Mercedes, he looked down as if he was trying to refresh his memory of my face. I was all too aware that my hair had been excited by the rain into separating into streamers with waves and curls interrupting their wild flow. My London Fog was not exactly a sexy garment, and I was sure my nose was shiny. I couldn’t remember what glasses I’d put on this morning, so I reached up to touch the frames. The gold-tone wire rims.

“I was right,” he said unexpectedly. Without further explanation, he unbuckled Hayden from the car seat in the back. He lifted the baby out, handed him to me, and in we went to interrupt his ex-wife’s workday. The bell attached to the door ting-a-linged when we entered, and Cindy looked up.

“Martin, Aurora, how good to see you,” Cindy said with a minimum of enthusiasm. “I see you survived the drive.” She laid down the dried flowers she’d been working with, dusted her hands on her apron, and came around the counter. She actually shook hands with us, which I thought was a bit much. After all, she’d been married to Martin. She could’ve given him a little hug or something.

Then I noticed the large man just rising from a desk behind the counter. He got up, and up, stopping finally at about six-foot-five. He had a full mustache and dark hair peppered with gray, clipped even shorter than Cindy’s. He also possessed a notable set of shoulders, and hands as big as my face. I found myself hoping he’d turn around so I could have a peek at the rear view.

“This is Dennis Stinson, Aurora,” Cindy said, smiling. I’d never seen her smile. It made her look like a million dollars. I propped the baby over my shoulder so I could spare a hand for the hunk, and my fingers vanished in Dennis Stinson’s. “Martin, I know you remember Dennis from high school.”

“Of course. It’s been a long time,” Martin said, and I had to fight not to grin at the coolness in his voice.

“I guess this is the baby you were telling me about?” Cindy held out her arms, and I gently eased Hayden into them. She looked down at his flushed face, her discreetly made-up eyes scanning him.

“Cute kid,” she said, and I exhaled silently. “You sure he’s Regina’s? I’d have put money on her telling me if she was expecting, Martin. It just seems incredible that someone as- well, dependent, as Regina would do something as monumental as having a baby without telling the people who care about her.”

I noticed Cindy didn’t say it was unthinkable that Regina would stoop to such a deception.

“But we haven’t seen her for the past few months, darling,” Dennis rumbled. He had a voice that matched his size. “To tell you the truth, Martin, I didn’t encourage Regina to come by here. She was always hitting Cindy up for money, or asking us to give Craig a job… you get the picture. And since Cindy wasn’t exactly a family member any more…”

“Just the mother of Regina’s cousin,” Martin interjected quietly.

“Well, that, but not really Regina’s aunt…”

“How long had it been since you saw Craig or Regina?” I asked hastily, and Cindy looked a little surprised, as if she’d assumed I couldn’t speak without permission.

“Oh… what? Three months or so?” Cindy looked up at Dennis. “Regina came by the house,” she continued.

“That was about the Fourth of July, so it was at least four months ago,” Dennis said. “We were getting ready for our pool party.”

“We were,” Cindy confirmed with a reminiscent grin, and I could feel my smile get broader. Cindy was apparently partnered with this hunk not only in a business sense, but also in a personal sense, and it certainly sounded like they were living together.

“She came by?” Martin prompted. “To the house on Archibald Street?”

“No, I moved. We moved. Dennis and I live on Grant.”

I rolled my eyes. Gettysburg Street. Grant Street. “You people,” I muttered into the fuzz on Hayden’s head.

“Did you say something, Aurora?” Dennis asked, bending down to me.

“No,” I said, smiling with all the sugar in my system. “We’re just having us a time, taking care of this little baby.”

“Oh my gosh, Aurora, this must be awful for you!” I felt every muscle in my body tighten as her pitying tone alerted me to what she was about to say. “Is it true that you can’t have your own? Martin, I think Barby told me you’d said that?” Cindy asked, and right then and there I decided I would kill my husband slowly, painfully, maybe publicly.

“Of course, with us never seeing Barrett, Martin was thinking of having more children,” I said, as slowly and deliberately as I could manage. “But I said, ‘No, Martin, that wouldn’t hardly be fair to poor of Barrett. I know it doesn’t look good, him never visiting you even though you’ve been sending him money for years, him never showing me the courtesy of shaking my hand-much less hugging my neck. But us having another child would just make Barrett feel so bad. So displaced.” I stopped then, afraid I was over the line into parody.

Cindy turned an uneven kind of red.

Martin was looking at me with a kind of horrified fascination. I hoped he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.

“So, where are you staying while you’re in Corinth?” Dennis asked hastily.

“Ah-out at the old farm,” Martin said, not taking his eyes off me. Evidently, he had enough sense. “We’ve been at the Holiday Inn, but with the baby… I think we would be better off out at the farm.”

“It was nice of you to let Craig and Regina live there,” Dennis said, since I was elaborately fussing with the baby and I had the strong feeling that Cindy was still staring at me.

“Yes,” Martin said senselessly. “Well, we better be on our way. You wouldn’t happen to know where Craig’s brother Dylan lives, would you?”

Dennis said, “Let’s step outside, Martin; I can give you better directions that way.” They were out the door with suspicious alacrity. As Dennis pointed down the street, apparently counting stoplights, Cindy and I gave each other quick glances.

“Barrett really hasn’t come to see you at all?” she asked in a subdued way.

“No. He doesn’t acknowledge that I’m alive.” To my pride, my voice was calm and dispassionate. “Now, I can see that is loyalty to you, which of course you’d expect from a son. But it does make Martin feel bad that Barrett never visits him and seldom calls.”

His mother sighed heavily. “Barrett has never been able to see the divorce as anything but Martin walking out on us, though Barrett was in high school when we separated. He never saw that if Martin needed to be away from me, I needed just as much to be away from him.”

I tried to look interested and understanding. I was, to some extent, but I was also thinking my arms would fall off at the shoulders from the burden of holding this baby. I sort of half laid Hayden on the glass-topped counter.

“Just before and after her marriage, Regina used to come talk to me,” Cindy went on in a low voice, while through the front window I observed Dennis and Martin continue their pantomime of checking the weather and kicking the tires, or whatever guys do when women have embarrassed them. “Aurora, there’s something wrong with that girl. She’s got some moral blind spots. Craig’s brushes with law seemed to make no difference to her whatsoever, and the fact that Rory went everywhere with Craig-and I mean everywhere-didn’t seem to give her any pause.”

Hayden’s Binky rolled from his mouth. Even as he made some fussy protest, Cindy caught it in her hand before it hit the floor and popped it back into the little mouth. Hayden lapsed back into semiconsciousness.

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously. “Good catch, by the way.”

“Thanks. I guess I mean Regina never seemed to make a moral judgment about the trouble Craig got into, he and Rory. She never said, ‘Oh, no, my husband has done a bad thing, writing those worthless checks.’ Or ‘My God, my husband uses illegal drugs!’ And she never tried to defend him either… pretend he was set up, or he was simply innocent. It was like it was just a lark, you know? Just fun. And ah-oh, Craig got caught!”

I’d always just thought Regina was intellectually stupid. According to Cindy, she was morally stupid as well.

“Thanks for warning me, Cindy,” I said. I took a deep breath and tried a social smile. “Dennis seems very nice.”

“Oh…” she paused, eyed me sideways in a significant way. “He is.”

We both started laughing, and Cindy opened the door for me. At the sound of the bell, the men both turned with relief apparent on their faces. Martin unlocked the Mercedes.

“You might want to call Margaret and Luke Granberry when you get out to the farm,” Dennis suggested. “They’ve owned the one next door for a few months. Luke pretends to farm, and Margaret pretends to farm right along with him. They’re really living on income from a trust, but they’re trying to put a back-to-nature spin on it.”

“They’re very nice,” Cindy agreed. “She’s the kind of woman who loves to help out.”

Martin and I nodded our thanks for the information, went through the interminable process of buckling Hayden in his seat, and finally were back on the street.

I took a deep breath. “Martin,” I began.

“Roe,” he forestalled me. “Listen, I know, I’m sorry. I had no right to tell Barby your problems. I was just-unhappy that you were unhappy, and she asked me over the phone one night how you were. I just… overstepped my bounds.”

“Yes.”

“You and Cindy were having your difficulties, weren’t you?”

“We’re okay now, Martin. I don’t want to go relate our whole conversation.”

“You and Cindy are at peace?”

“Yes.”

“What about you and me?”

“Unless you ask me first, never tell anyone about my female problems. Never.”

“I promise.”

“Okay. We’re all right.”

“You don’t sound altogether all right.”

“Don’t push it.”

We stopped at Dylan Graham’s house next. After the squalor of the Harbors’ place, Craig’s brother’s home was almost painfully respectable. It was small, and on a street of small houses. But every yard was neat, and Dylan’s house in particular was freshly painted and shiny. The only disorder, if you could call it that, was the scattering of toys visible in the little backyard. I remembered Rory telling us that Dylan and his wife had a little girl.

Rory, come to think of it, had been full of information, of the less-than-valuable-and-pertinent kind.

Martin went to the front door and knocked. After a long pause, the door opened, and a young woman began talking to Martin. At first her face looked suspicious and tight, but gradually she seemed to relax. She was plump and plain and friendly, with a small mouth, pale freckled skin, and crinkled light brown hair that was cut in bangs in the front and bushed out behind her shoulders.

Martin turned and gestured to me to come on, and I slipped out of the car and started to walk toward the little house.

And then I remembered the baby. I heaved a sigh, the theatrical kind, and turned around to go through the process of retrieving Hayden.

“Oh, isn’t he beautiful!” the young woman said. “Won’t you come in?”

While we exchanged condolences on the death of her brother-in-law, she waved us into the tiny house, which reminded me of an apartment I’d had while I was in college. The complex had just been finished when I signed the lease, and everything in the small space had gleamed: kitchen cabinets, walls, countertops. Craig’s older brother Dylan and his wife Shondra were obviously house-proud, and after a few days of taking care of an infant, I was impressed that Shondra, herself a new mother, was still keeping her standards high.

Shondra was just as spotless as her house; her face was scrubbed, making me feel like a made-up tramp, her rose-tinted sweats were pristine, and even her sneakers were spanky white.

“Such a nice home,” I said quietly, after she’d talked about Craig a little, without much sorrow. Shondra beamed, her conventional expression of grief shucked in a second.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to sound offhand. “Dylan did most of the work on it himself, in the evenings and on weekends.”

“That must have been hard,” Martin commented. He had taken off his coat and was holding the baby while I tugged mine at the sleeves.

“Well, I didn’t get to see a lot of him. So I’d come over with his supper or a snack and just sit and watch, while I was expecting,” Shondra said, a little smile letting us know she’d enjoyed that.

“Where’s your little girl?” I asked politely.

“Kelly. She’s taking a nap,” Shondra said. “Can I hold this little guy? My brother was just here, and I wanted to thank you for bringing him home.”

Martin and I glanced at each other. We were sure slow on the uptake.

Martin, who’d had more sleep, heard the shoe drop first. “Rory? Rory Brown is your brother?”

Shondra looked down at the baby, rocking him gently in her round arms. “Yes,” she admitted, less happily. “Rory is my big brother. He’s, ah, he’s… a good-natured guy, and Dylan and I have been praying hard that he’ll see the Lord’s ways.”

I looked at the little table sitting in the exact middle of the kitchen. There were two mugs on it, one with a spoon beside it with a little circle of brown in the center. The coffee wasn’t dry yet.

“We must have just missed him?” I held out my hands, offering to take Hayden back. Shondra noted my gesture but she stared down at his face for several more long seconds, as if she’d just noticed something that gave her pause.

“Oh, that’s right. You just missed him,” she said absently. “In fact, when we heard your car pull up, he went right out the back door.” Shondra glanced over at some pictures and a vase of dried flowers on top of the composite oak-colored TV cabinet, then back to the baby’s face. She slowly returned Hayden to me. “He’s a beautiful baby,” she said soberly. Her small mouth pursed, as if she was thinking over a problem.

A little wail from the back of the house pulled at her attention like a tractor beam. “My goodness, Kelly is up. Let me go see to her.”

While Shondra was out of the room, I strolled over to the TV cabinet as casually as I could manage. The framed baby pictures were old enough to be from Shondra’s family album, or Dylan’s, and in one grouping was a baby girl about a year old, a baby girl embedded in a ruffled dress with a little bow stuck in her wispy hair, and a baby boy in a tiny suit. “Barf,” I muttered, and then the face of the baby caught my eye.

“Hmmm and double hmmm,” I muttered, turning away right before Shondra came back in carrying a much larger bundle than Hayden.

While we were doing the obligatory admiring of the child, I was nasty enough to be sorry this young couple already had a baby, so perfect would they be to leave Hayden with. And they were blood relations to the baby, one way or the other. Martin and I had not discussed the possibility of finding a temporary home for Hayden with Dylan and Shondra, and after the shock of the Harbors’ house I would’ve been scared to even mention it before I’d met them.

As it was, I hadn’t met Dylan. After a few minutes’ conversation with Shondra, I could see the steel beneath the sweetness and lack of worldliness that were undoubtedly genuine. So it was my impression that Shondra would not marry a charming ne’er-do-well like her brother, or a true rascal like her brother-in-law. But we’d have to check Dylan out, and we could hardly be sure that they’d agree to something as difficult as taking care of another baby.

Martin and I exchanged glances. He’d read my mind. He asked a few questions about Dylan’s job at the John Deere dealership that I knew would give him an idea about Dylan’s income and hours, and he got more information out of Shondra about her brother than I would have thought possible.

“Shondra, excuse me, I was just wondering,” I interjected when Martin showed signs of flagging and Shondra was asking us for the third time if she could get us a drink. “Did you know your sister-in-law was pregnant?”

Shondra’s face flooded with guilty color. “Yes, ma’am,” she blurted, as though she’d been caught in a shameful position. “She called me on the phone and told me, about a month before the baby was due.”

“Did you see her while she was pregnant?”

“No, ma’am.”

I felt as old as the hills because of that ma’am, and I had to nip at the inside of my mouth to keep from protesting.

“Did you know when she had the baby?”

“My brother said she had,” Shondra said, fussing unnecessarily with the baby’s plastic keys. Her baby grabbed the ring and stuffed it in her mouth, gumming the toy enthusiastically-

“Oh, honey, that ain’t real clean,” Shondra muttered to the baby, but let the child keep it.

I noted that Shondra had not said that she’d seen Regina when Regina was obviously pregnant. So far, no one reliable had admitted to that. “Do you know where Regina had this baby?” I asked.

“You sure you couldn’t drink some hot chocolate?”

“No, thank you,” Martin said quite firmly. He was getting impatient, because he was accustomed to people telling him what he needed to know, telling him promptly and in detail. I sent him one of those looks that say back off.

“Did she have Hayden at the local hospital?” I asked, to get us back on the track.

“No, ma’am. Rory said she went to the midwife in Brook County.”

That was what he’d told us.

“And her name is?” I smiled at Shondra as coaxingly as I can smile.

“Her name is Bobbye Sunday,” Shondra said, looking down at the baby fixedly. She spoke so unwillingly that I knew she was telling us the truth.

“Thank you,” Martin said, letting out a pent-up breath and practically jumping up from his chair. He swept the diaper bag up with one hand and held out his other hand to me. I accepted a little yank, to get me up off the couch with Hayden. We said our goodbyes and thanks in a flurry of goodwill and relief that this visit was over, and at Martin’s request Shondra promised to send Dylan out to see us that afternoon when he got off work. Martin strongly suggested that Dylan bring Rory with him.

We returned to the Holiday Inn, gathered our belongings, and checked out, each separately reviewing our little visit mentally. Rory was avoiding us, which meant he had information he didn’t want to give us. That wasn’t exactly news, but it was interesting. Martin hadn’t agreed to bring the young man back to Corinth, in direct violation of the law and common sense, just to have him skip out on us and avoid us at every turn, and I had to promise myself a new pair of glasses if I didn’t let the phrase “I told you so” cross my lips.

I ran into the grocery briefly, and while I shopped Martin bravely took Hayden with him into K-Mart. Then we were on our way to the farm where Martin had grown up, where he’d lived until he’d gone to Vietnam. His father had died when Martin was a boy, and by the time Martin left Corinth, his mother had been married for years another farmer, Joseph Flocken. It was the widowed Joseph I’d had to see in order to purchase the farm I’d given back to Martin as a wedding present.

The Bartell farm was south of town on Route 8, further out than I remembered. You could just see a bit of the roof from the road. “Secluded” was the word for this property, if you were feeling charitable. Actually, the farm seemed forlorn and bleak, out here in the winter countryside. As we reached the end of the long gravel driveway, I saw that Martin had indeed had the house restored. It was trim and painted now, and the barn had been leveled so there was no longer a blight on the landscape. The driveway had been regraveled, too, and we pulled up to the side of the house under a new carport. It was just a roof on four posts, but it would keep the worst of the snow and rain off the car.

As best I remembered, there were three ground-floor doors: the front, covered by a tiny roof, the kitchen door to the side, and the back door, which led onto a small porch-cum laundry room that was now glassed in. Martin had the door keys on his key ring-another surprise. I found it interesting and strange that the keys to the old farmhouse were always by his hand.

“Is there a phone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I should’ve called Karl before we left town. He’d know. I’ve always got the cell phone if we have to use it.”

I waited at the bottom of the kitchen steps, Hayden a bundle of blankets in my arms, while Martin fumbled with the key. Finally the door yielded, and we stepped into the house.

“How long has it been since you were here?” I asked cautiously, looking around at the room. The kitchen had been scrubbed and repainted and the counters had new surfaces since I’d toured it so briefly years before. The overhead light was on, and there was a plate on the table. It still held food. It had been there for days. The glass beside it was half full of Coke, or one of the other dark cola drinks.

“Not since it was finished. I came to look at it once, when I had to be in Pittsburgh for business. And I got the cleaners and contractors out here to tell them what to do, though it was Karl who checked on their work for me. I haven’t been in here since then, and I think that was at least a year and a half ago. I told Regina when she married Craig that the house was sitting empty and since they were going to be in Corinth for a while, they might as well use it. Barby had been hinting how hard up they were going to be.”

I wandered slowly through the downstairs, deciding the house was even older than ours in Georgia. The old window coverings-I remembered them as ragged blinds-had been thrown away, and Regina hadn’t replaced them. The gray sky outside seemed to fill the rooms with gloom. While Martin brought in the rest of our things, I walked around with Hayden.

I had very little memory of the house, but today I discovered that in that memory I had minimized the size of the rooms and maximized the height of the ceiling. Martin’s childhood home was an old two-story farmhouse, with three large rooms downstairs and three up; a decent bathroom on each floor that had obviously been created from a small bedroom or large closet; a large original pantry off the kitchen; and a washer and dryer crammed on the added glassed-in back porch. I was betting that had first been called a mudroom.

If Joseph Flocken had left anything in the house, Martin had had it cleaned out.

The plaid couch and matching armchair in the family room were surely out of someone’s attic, probably Barby’s, and the lone bed upstairs with its matching night tables and chest of drawers had been Barby’s wedding gift to the couple, I recalled. I opened the closet door. Clothes, not many. Mostly flannel shirts and blue jeans, for both Craig and Regina.

I wondered where Regina was now. It made me shiver, seeing those clothes hanging there.

But I shoved them over to one side of the closet, making room for our hanging bag. Awkwardly, one-handed due to Hayden, I stripped the sheets off the bed. I tossed them down the stairs, so I could pick them up and wash them later.

I heard Martin rumbling around on the ground floor, doing God knows what. I thought of calling to him, but instead I wandered into the second bedroom upstairs, across the little landing.

There was a sleeping bag on the floor, with a pile of clothes beside it. More blue jeans and flannel shirts, and T-shirts, socks, underwear. A pair of heavy boots. There was a door between this bedroom and the next.

“Hmmm,” I said. “Whose are those, Hayden?” Hayden made one of his favorite “eh!” sounds in response, and waved his hands. Martin was standing beside me suddenly, but I was used to his quiet approaches and wasn’t too startled. He had a box under his arm.

“Rory stayed here, I’ll bet,” he said, and we exchanged looks. Hugh Harbor’s remark about not knowing whether Regina would marry Craig or Rory had stuck with both of us. And while she and I were alone, Cindy had hinted pretty heavily that Craig and Rory did everything together. I saw no need to pass that little tidbit along to my husband.

“It probably wouldn’t have done any good, but we should have asked him more questions when we had him,” I commented, and then bit my lip. I was getting mighty close to losing my new glasses.

“Yes,” said Martin heavily. “We should. I’m going to try to track him down tomorrow, if Dylan doesn’t bring him out this afternoon.”

When we moved on to the next room, which also opened onto the common landing as well as connecting with this bedroom, we found it contained a battered, aged crib (cadged from the Salvation Army or some garage sale, I was willing to bet) and an equally dilapidated rocking chair. There were none of the accouterments I’d seen in my friends’ nurseries: no bumper pads, no mobile, no changing table, no diaper pail. There was an old plastic garbage can, cracked and dirty, still with rolled-up dirty diapers inside. The sheet in the crib appeared to be a regular twin flat, sloppily folded and tucked to fit the small mattress.

“She didn’t really plan on keeping a baby here.” I turned to face Martin. With reluctance, he met my eyes.

“There aren’t any presents,” I said mercilessly. “You always get presents when you have a baby. Even kids living on the poverty edge get presents when they have a baby-maybe just a crib sheet or a receiving blanket from the dollar store, but they get something pretty. This, this is nothing. There’s no way on earth she planned on keeping this baby. I’ll bet she wasn’t ever really pregnant.”

“What about the things she brought to our house?”

“The diaper bag and the portable crib?” I took a deep breath. “The tags were still on. I think on her way to our house, she stopped at the first discount store she came to and charged them or wrote a bad check for them,” I said. “Or maybe she took those things from whoever she took this baby from.”

Martin flinched.

“We have to talk about it, Martin. No one knew she was pregnant. She didn’t go the hospital. Rory just says Craig took her to a midwife. Did you notice how reluctant Shondra was to tell us what the midwife’s name was? I’ll bet if we ask this Bobbye Sunday, she’ll tell us that Regina was never a patient. How do we know this baby is even Regina’s? What if-well, what if the money in the diaper bag was ransom money?”

“Rory knew the birth weight,” Martin said. “You remember, in the restaurant, when the waitress asked?”

I nodded. “I also know Rory’s a liar.” Hayden raised his head off my shoulder and goggled at the room. I turned my head slightly, and kissed his cheek. His face wobbled around to mine. He banged his skull against my shoulder, and then came up again to look at me. We rubbed noses. His eyelids fluttered, and he laid his head down on my shoulder again.

“I don’t know who bore this baby,” Martin said, his fingers brushing Hayden’s wisp of hair. “But I think Rory was around when it happened.”

“So, we need to talk to the midwife. And we need to find out if Craig’s big brother knew more about it than his wife did.” I was swaying gently from side to side, assisting Hayden’s slide into sleep. I eased over to the crib, glared down at the sheet, certain it was dirty. In a whisper, I asked Martin to lay one of our receiving blankets over it. When he’d done that I eased the baby into the crib, propping him on his side with a small firm pillow at his back, and covering him with one of the blankets Ellen had given me.

I’d been aware Martin was still in the room, and I stepped quietly over to see what he was doing squatting on the floor.

Martin was plugging in a brand-new nursery monitor he’d extracted from the box he’d had under his arm. He untwisted the tie around the cord and moved the transmitter close to the crib. Wordlessly, he handed me the receiver. He’d already put batteries inside. I looked up at him, and his face told me clearly I better not comment on his acquisition. He must have bought it on his trip to K-Mart this morning.

Martin and I left the room on tiptoe, and half closed the door behind us. The house had been cold when we entered. Since Craig and Regina had been paying their own gas bill, they’d kept the heat turned down, or maybe his friend Karl had lowered the thermostat, but Martin had gone straight to it and moved it up. He stood in the nearly bare living room, looking around him at the gleaming wood of the floors and the soft white of the walls. I knew the memories must be flooding in. As I watched him, I saw him change, the years erase. There were traces in his face of things I never saw on the man I’d married: uncertainty, unhappiness, doubt.

In three quick steps I’d reached him and put my arms around him. I wished I were taller so he could rest his head against my chest and feel protected, just for a moment. It was an awful thing, being a man, I thought; and I pitied Martin for the first time since I’d known him.

With Hayden asleep, we were able to explore the house a little more thoroughly. I opened cabinets and drawers, feeling like the worst kind of snoop, since Regina had arranged all these things in her own system. But I couldn’t see a way around it. We’d be here for at least a few days, and we might as well use what was there; it was Martin’s house, after all, and Regina’s child was with us. Well, a child, maybe Regina’s.

Craig and Regina’s belongings fell into two categories, like most young married couples‘. They had old things given them by relatives and friends who no longer wanted them, like the couch and chair in the living room and some rather battered pots and pans; and they had brand spanking new things they’d gotten for wedding presents. Regina’s engraved thank you notes were still sitting underneath an address book in the kitchen drawer that held the phone book and quick-phone list.

While Martin wandered around checking out the renovation job, and probably reminiscing, I located kitchen things I might need, figured out the stove, and started lunch. Corinth didn’t have much in the way of restaurants, and I didn’t feel like coping with Hayden in a public place again. Besides, I like to cook, especially when no one else is in the kitchen. I planned a large meal since we’d missed breakfast. When Martin saw me deboning chicken breasts, he pulled on his coat and scarf and went outside to take a walk. He returned with the welcome news that in case we needed it, there was a rack of firewood that looked dry.

I thought about Darius Quattermain when Martin mentioned the firewood. I wondered if he was all right, if he would ever feel like delivering wood to my house again. Maybe no one had told him he’d stripped in front of me, but he might remember all on his own. I didn’t know what drug he’d taken, or what its aftereffects would be. As I waited for the cooking oil to heat in the electric skillet, I wondered what kind of person would drug another; it was a kind of poisoning, wasn’t it? Poisoners were supposed to be sly and patient, I recalled. Anyone could pick up a baseball bat and swing it out of frustration. Well, maybe not anyone, but many people. I was sure the number of potential poisoners in the population must be much lower.

“What are you thinking of?” Martin asked, and I jumped, dropping the chicken breast into the hot oil, which popped me. When he’d apologized and I’d taken my hand out from under the cold running water, I said, “I was just thinking about Darius.”

“You were shaking your head, raising your eyebrows in this kind of amazed look, and got this ew expression on your face.”

I shook my head, feeling silly. I didn’t want to explain my train of thought to Martin. A knock at the front door made me jump again. Martin went to answer it, and a second later a tall young man came with him into the kitchen. I had only to look at his face for a moment to know this was Craig’s brother.

I wiped my hands on a dish towel, and took Dylan’s hand, telling him how sorry I was.

Dylan, who was wearing a John Deere green shirt and some khakis, was dark like his brother, but his build wasn’t reedy like Craig’s had been. Dylan was more bull-like, solid and stolid, a man who saw his way from Point A to Point B and took the most direct route.

“I would sure like to see the baby,” he told me, and seemed surprised when Martin volunteered to take him upstairs to the makeshift nursery.

When they came back, Dylan looked like a man with a puzzle in front of him.

He accepted a seat at the old kitchen table, folded his hands on it, and began to say what he’d come to say.

“I couldn’t set my hands on Rory to bring him with me. Shondra told me you wanted to talk to him.”

Since he said this primarily to Martin, Martin nodded. I kept on pottering around the kitchen, feeling this would make the younger man relax a little more. I opened a can of green beans, put them in a very nice saucepan, and began to cook the rice in the microwave (chipped Corningware casserole, aged small microwave).

“My brother Craig,” Dylan began, and came to a difficult silence. We both kept our eyes down, waiting patiently. “My brother Craig was not always a good man.”

Martin made a gesture that could be interpreted as “Who is?” and I made a little noise that was meant to be commiserating. This seemed to encourage Dylan.

“Craig likes-liked-things to be easy. But being married and earning a living-being an adult-those aren’t easy things.”

I nodded to myself. That was the absolute truth.

“I’m the last person Craig would have told, if he’d had plans to somehow make money off that poor little baby. But I can’t help fearing somehow that.was the case. Whatever Craig’s plans were, Rory knows them. I hate to speak bad about my wife’s brother, just like she didn’t like to speak bad about Craig, but the fact is, Rory and Craig are two of a kind, and they deserved each other, just the way I hope Shondra and I deserve each other. If you had Rory in the car with you all the way here, I guess that was your best chance to find out what he knew. I don’t pretend to understand why you let him go. Why didn’t you turn him over to the police?”

Oooh, good question. I raised my eyebrows inquiringly and transferred my attention to Martin.

“At the time,” Martin answered, thinking as he spoke, “I was sure that bringing him here would make things go easier on Regina if the police picked her up. I think-I know-I was sure Regina had killed Craig, and I didn’t want to see her in jail, see her stand trial. Particularly since I couldn’t understand why. Why she would do that, how she would do that. Regina is the most important thing in my sister’s life, she’s…” My husband seemed to run out of words.

“But letting her get away with murder ain’t doing her a favor,” Dylan said.

Martin and I blinked and looked at him.

There was not a thing to say.

He was absolutely right.