The Silent Hour

37

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A car?” I stared at her, and I couldn’t speak. A car. What car?

“You don’t know what that means?” she said.

“No. I don’t know, because he cut me out of it, went off alone on whatever theory he had and got himself killed.”

“He cut you out of it because he was waiting for my permission to tell you the truth. To give full disclosure. He thought you could be trusted.”

“Would you have given it to him?”

She was quiet for a while before saying, “I don’t know. I suppose so. I’ve told you the truth now.”

“Only because I found you.” As I said it I realized Ken had told me how to find her. That constant insistence that she would return to the house if it were sold, that she’d have to see it one last time. Let me tell you, he’d said, the way he started so many sentences, if she’s alive, she’ll come back for one more visit before the place is sold.

“You told him you’d come back here,” I said. “When you found out your in-laws were making a claim on the property, you told him you’d come back before it was sold.”

“Yes.”

He’d led me to her. Brought me here.

“He’d known for years,” I said, “and kept the secret. Why?”

“All I told him was what I’ve told you, only with far less composure. It was my first trip back to the house, and I was already a wreck when he found me. Then that sense of being caught . . . he calmed me down, and he listened to me, and I told him the same story, only without some of the information I have now.”

“You told him all of this and then asked him to just go on and pretend he had no idea where you were.”

She nodded. “You disapprove, and I’m not surprised. Most people would share your opinion, I’m sure. Ken Merriman was not one of them. He understood when I told him that everything had been taken from me. There were two great loves in my life—my husband and my mission here. They were destroyed. Do you think the state would have continued to work with me? I’d gotten a man killed rather than rehabilitated. My work was destroyed, my husband dead, my brother responsible. I ran from it. I ran, okay? It was wrong, maybe, and weak, certainly, but it is what I did.”

I didn’t respond.

“I begged Ken Merriman to let me leave, and he did,” she said. “He did.”

This would have been after the newspaper articles and the public complaints of Joshua Cantrell’s parents. After immense damage to Ken’s reputation and to his career. He could have played the ultimate trump card by producing Alexandra, silenced every critic and bought himself some amount of fame. It was a hell of a story, a hell of a mystery, and he could have brought it to light. Instead he chose silence, went back to that career of infidelity cases and insurance work, of financial problems and low respect. I thought of the time he’d told me that his wife was right to leave him, what he’d said about making a decision that seemed absolutely right at the time, then seeing the way it affected your family and wondering if it was a selfish choice.

“Do you appreciate the losses he took for you?” I said. “What he gave up?”

“Of course I do. He damaged his own life to protect mine.”

“It was the epitaph,” I said. “That’s what convinced him you’d come back?”

She nodded.

“Who did the carving?”

“Parker. At my request, and after I was gone. I wanted to leave some sense of a memorial, and I wanted the words to speak to my brother. I wanted him to know that I knew he’d killed my husband. Ken Merriman suspected something close, and he thought that if I viewed the house as a memorial, I might return to it. Probably around the last date, April twelfth. So he waited, and he watched. Every day for three weeks.”

Three weeks. I wouldn’t have lasted that long. I remembered now what Casey Hopper had told me when I called to ask him about Ken—You know I was a sniper in Vietnam. So when I say somebody is patient . . .

“You didn’t come back on the twelfth?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to, but then I was afraid that might be expected. So I came later.”

“He was still waiting.”

“Yes. He said everyone told him how important this place was to me, how much hope and excitement I’d held for it, and between that and the epitaph he became convinced I’d come back.”

“The house was almost new,” I said, “and worth a fortune. You intended to just leave it empty forever?”

“There was nothing left for me here. There was no way I could continue to live here—but sell the house? I could never have done that. Never.”

“It’s gone now,” I said. “I doubt you can reclaim it. It might be too late.”

She nodded. “I won’t try to stop it. Let them have their money. I owe them that much, surely.”

“They did great damage to Ken’s career.”

“I know, and when he left a message telling me that you’d be inquiring about the house, I said I wanted to hire him to find out who you were working for. I was afraid it was them again, and that Parker would be at risk. I didn’t imagine he was the client.”

“When you found out, you asked Ken to hang around and keep an eye on things?”

“No. That was on his own. He’d evidently grown doubtful of my brother’s guilt.”

“You have no contact with your brother?”

“None. As I said, for so many years I believed he killed Joshua. Then Ken left that final message and said he thought I was wrong.”

“And that the police needed to pay attention to a car,” I said.

She nodded again.

“It needs to be finished,” I said. “You have to realize that.”

“Will the police be able to finish it?” she said. “After all this time?”

“I’ll be able to,” I said. “Hell, according to Ken, I already did. Now I just have to figure out how I did.”

We stayed for another hour, sat there as the sun rose higher and our muscles stiffened, and she told me more of her story but nothing that compared to what I’d already heard. Eventually I asked her where she had been for the past twelve years. She gave more of an answer than I expected.

“I live in a small town not in this country but not so far away, either.” She laughed. “How difficult of a riddle is that? Fine, so I live in a small Canadian town. I live under a different name, and I’ve worn a wig for so long that it feels like part of me. I make a modest living in modest ways and it’s all that I need. In my new life, it’s more than I need. I’ve never remarried, and I doubt that I ever will. I have friends whom I treasure, people who mean more to me than I can express, and none of them, not a soul, understands my past. I haven’t lied to them, I’ve just asked for no questions, and they have respected that. Those closest to me have, at least.”

I had so many questions myself, but it became clear that she had fewer answers, and after a time the conversation became stagnant and then disappeared altogether. I didn’t want to let her go. I also knew we couldn’t stay.

“I could hold you here,” I said, “and call the police. There are many of them who would like to talk to you.”

She didn’t answer. Just held my eyes in silence.

“I’m not sure I want to do that,” I said. “Maybe I will, soon, but not yet. I’m equally certain it would be a mistake to let you leave.”

“Give me your phone number,” she said. “I’ll call you in a day. I promise I will do that. Whatever you want from me, I’ll offer it.”

“Including coming forward?”

Again, the silence.

“Ah,” I said. “Whatever I want, except that.”

“Maybe that. I’m not sure. I’ve been gone for many years, and I have a new life that would be sacrificed. Surely you know that’s not a snap decision.”

“No decision that takes twelve years to make is—but I’m not sure it’s your decision to make, Alexandra.”

We sat and looked at each other for a while, and then I got to my feet. My legs felt foreign. We’d been sitting for a long time.

“I can accept all of this as the truth, and a week from now realize it was a lie and feel a fool for believing you,” I said.

“It isn’t a lie.”

“It may be,” I said. “If it is, you can know this—I’ll chase you. For as long as it takes me, and as far as it takes me, I’ll chase you.”

She stood as well, brushed off her jeans, and then stepped forward and offered her hand. I clasped it and held it and looked into her eyes as she said, “I’ll say this one more time—it isn’t a lie.”

She walked away from me then, walked to that short ridge of stone that marked the rear wall of the house and looked down at the pond. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her jeans and her shoulders hunched, looking down. I gave her a few minutes before I followed.

“I wish you could have seen it,” she said when I was beside her.

“I can imagine what it looked like.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t. When Parker was tending the grounds, when everything was at its best, it was beyond what you can imagine. In the spring, when it was all in bloom . . . no, you can’t imagine what that looked like.”

She took her hands from her pockets and turned away. “It was everything I’d dreamed of. We could have done so much here. We could have done so much.”