Daughter of Ashes

THIRTY-TWO

‘At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased, Her thirsting Curiosity appeased, She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep, Puts out her light, and turns away to sleep.’

Charles Sprague, ‘Curiosity: A Poem,’ 1829

Baby Ella came home the way she left, in Wicks’ long, black limousine, except this time her body was resting in a tiny wicker coffin, woven from seagrass and decorated with pink ribbons and sprigs of fresh spring flowers.

Before she was buried beside her mother, Cap had been reassured by the undertaker that Ella was still swaddled in the rosebud blanket that had belonged to his sister, Nancy.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.

I was distracted from Father Ryan’s comforting words by a black Acura pulling onto the shoulder of the main road. A familiar figure climbed out and strode alone through the tall corn, its silk shimmering in the late morning sun. Jack Ames eased through the open cemetery gate and silently joined the tiny clot of mourners huddled around the open grave.

Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground.

Cap scooped up a handful of earth, pressed it tightly into his fist then dribbled it slowly over his niece’s coffin. A single tear rolled down his cheek and dripped, unchecked, onto his khaki blazer. I stooped, gathered a fistful of rich Maryland earth and sprinkled it over the casket, too. As I watched Paul do the same, I gulped air and swallowed hard, mourning two lives cut cruelly short.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.

Paul reached for my hand, laced his fingers with mine and squeezed three times: I. Love. You. I leaned into him, drawing strength.

One by one – Kimberly, Fran, Caitlyn, the Nightingales and finally Jack added fistfuls of soil to the growing pile on Baby Ella’s coffin.

When the short service was over, I invited everyone to the house for coffee and sandwiches. As we walked back with me leading the pack, Jack Ames fell into step beside me. After several minutes, I broke the awkward silence between us. ‘How is your father doing?’

‘Still in the hospital under police guard. It’s surreal.’

‘Prognosis?’

Jack snorted. ‘Oh, he’ll recover in time for the trial. His attorneys are already fluttering around his bedside like guardian angels.’

We’d reached our gate and he held it open for me. ‘Sheriff Hubbard told me your father confessed to everything,’ I said. ‘Strangling Kendall with her own scarf. Coercing his grandson into scaring Rusty by running his motorcycle off the road.’

‘All true, I’m afraid. Although Dad is backtracking a bit now that his lawyers have gotten their hooks into him.’

While the others trooped into the house behind Paul, I invited Jack to join me for a minute in the garden. After we sat down on the stone bench I asked, ‘Did he say anything more about Nancy?’

‘It’s such a tragic, star-crossed lovers kind of story, I almost feel sorry for the old guy. Almost,’ he emphasized. ‘There is no excuse for what my father did. None.’

‘At the hospital, your father told Cap that when your grandfather found out about the marriage he tried to buy Nancy off, but she refused the money.’

Jack nodded. ‘That’s true. What he didn’t say is that Dad was there. He saw the whole thing.’

I sucked in air. ‘Good Lord!’

‘Dad and Nancy were getting ready to go on a boat ride, down at the end of your pier there.’ Jack waved in that direction. ‘Apparently, Grandfather came charging down the dock like a mad bull, screaming about how their marriage was null and void, threatening to send the pair of them to prison.’

‘Prison? They could do that?’

‘In 1952? You bet. As late as 1958 a mixed-race couple named Mildred and Richard Loving were sentenced by a Virginia court to a year in jail for the crime – a felony I should point out – of marrying each other.’

I stared at him, slack-jawed.

‘Not only that, but when building the case against the Lovings, the police raided their home at night, hoping to catch them having sex, which was also a crime under Virginia law.’

I felt queasy. ‘Tell me you’re making this up.’

‘I wish, but it’s true. Mixed-race marriages weren’t legal in all states until 1967 when the Supreme Court overturned the Lovings’ conviction.’

‘I had no idea,’ I said, thinking that the Civics class I’d taken in high school must have been sanitized.

‘My grandfather’s solution was simple, Hannah. Take the money and go away. But when Nancy refused, he was furious. According to my father, he picked up an oar and smashed it over her head.’

I gasped.

‘Then the SOB threatened Dad with the oar, too. Forced him to roll Nancy’s unconscious body into the creek.’

I closed my eyes and took deep, steadying breaths. ‘According to the newspaper reports,’ I reminded him once my breathing had returned to a semblance of normal, ‘Nancy drowned.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So if anyone had bothered to call for help…’

Jack Ames completed the sentence for me. ‘Nancy might have survived.’

Inside the house, I knew, funeral guests were awaiting my appearance. Paul would be plying them with wine, of course, but if I didn’t lay out the ham and egg salad sandwiches soon everyone was going to go home tipsy.

‘How is all the negative publicity going to affect your campaign, Jack?’ I asked as I led him into the house from the garden.

He waved a hand as if shooing a fly. ‘I can’t worry about that. My campaign manager is running around with his hair on fire, but it is what it is, you know. If it’s not meant to be this year, then maybe two years down the road.’

As the two of us straggled into the living room, Jack melted into the group of mourners, flashing a white-toothed politician’s grin. I was thinking sourly, Once a politician, always a politician when Jack singled out Cap Hazlett and drew him aside.

‘What Granddaddy did…’ Jack’s voice broke. ‘I’m sorry.’

Incredibly, Cap Hazlett smiled. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Ames.’

‘Call me Jack,’ he said. ‘Please.’ Jack grabbed Cap’s hand and pulled him into a bear hug. ‘I had to be here,’ he said. ‘Baby Ella was my sister.’

I was standing at the kitchen sink, buried up to my elbows in suds, when Paul walked up quietly behind me.

‘Is everyone gone?’ I asked without turning around.

‘Just waved the Nightingales down the drive,’ he said. ‘Nice people.’

I slotted another flowered dessert plate into the dish drainer. ‘Grab a towel and start drying,’ I said.

‘Towel, schmowel,’ Paul replied. He wrapped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on top of my head. ‘You were amazing today, Hannah. Keeping it all together for everyone.’

I bowed my head so he couldn’t see the tears that were coursing down my cheeks and into the dishwater. Beneath his hands, my shoulders shook.

‘Hannah?’ Gently, he turned me around to face him. He lifted my chin and used a thumb to swipe away the tears. ‘Leave the dishes,’ he said, ‘and come with me.’

Paul took my wet hand in his, led me out the back door and down the lawn to a pair of pink-painted Adirondack chairs we’d installed at the head of the dock. We sat there silently, side by side, staring out over the creek. ‘I know who put Baby Ella in the chimney,’ I said at last.

‘I figured it had to be Nancy,’ Paul said, swiveling in his chair to face me. ‘I saw you having a heart-to-heart with Bernadette Nightingale today. Did she shed any light on the situation?’

I nodded. ‘Bernadette told me that they used to have a pet cat, a calico named Snickers. Nancy was quite young, maybe eight years old, when Snickers wandered out to the concrete slab that covered their cistern, lay down in the sun and quietly died. Nancy dressed the cat up in her doll’s clothes, swaddled it in a blanket and laid it to rest in a box that a pair of roller skates had come in.’

‘Ah. I see. And?’

‘Well, after Nancy’s mother took her home, Ronald buried the cat in the vegetable garden. Bernadette remembers that Nancy was hysterical when she found out about it. She cried for hours and hours, mourning that cat, worried that the animal would be wet and cold.’

As we watched, a Canada goose stirred among the cattails, stood, stretched and fanned her feathers. I counted eight downy yellow-and-brown-tipped heads sheltered beneath her magnificent wings. The mother bird stepped out. One by one the goslings waddled after her, unsteady on their webbed, too-big feet. Gracefully, she eased into the water, turned her head, black neck stretched tall and proud, watching, waiting until the last gosling, a runty little fellow, was floating in the water behind her. Only then did she turn and paddle off.

‘A mother always watches over her children,’ I said.

Paul squeezed my hand. There was nothing more to say.