cook or I worked on schoolwork with you. Not that either of you needed much help. Other than getting you started.”
I smile and listen to her weave her memories into words. Mom doesn’t usually wax nostalgic when I’m here. I guess the prospect that she may finally be facing life without her partner, whatever his flaws, has her looking backward rather than forward. As she goes on, I recall Max’s terrible tale of murder on Cemetery Road. After Mom falls silent and sips her coffee again, I take the opening.
“Mom, this afternoon, Jack Kirby told me about some things the Poker Club was involved with—violent things.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. They’re all about the dollar. And men like that quickly lose sight of right and wrong.”
At the last moment I hesitate, but I’ve got to know. “Max Matheson suggested that what happened to Dad’s first family wasn’t an accident. That some Klansmen from Ferriday might have been behind that wreck. Did Dad ever express any suspicion to you?”
My mother’s coffee cup has frozen in midair. Her eyes are wide and locked on my face.
“Mom?”
She sets down her cup and licks her lips. “I’ve never heard anybody suggest that before. I certainly never heard Duncan suggest it. And I don’t want you to ask him about it, either. No good could possibly come of that. Not after all these years. My Lord.”
“That’s why I’m asking you, not him.”
She looks at me for a long time without speaking. In this moment I feel I’m living up to the idea that children are a burden.
“Do you believe there’s anything to the story?” she asks.
“Max told me that it was a case of mistaken identity. That Dad was the intended target. The killers were waiting near that hairpin turn to run him off the road, and in the rain they couldn’t tell it wasn’t him.”
Mom closes her eyes, and her lips move as though she’s praying in silence. “Dear God, I hope that didn’t happen.”
“I do, too. But I fear that it did.”
She takes a quick sip of coffee the way a prisoner might, as though protecting it from a thief. The gesture makes me strangely anxious.
“When I met your father,” she says, “he was a wounded man. Losing Eloise and Emily is what started this whole nightmare of alcoholism.”
Eloise and Emily. To me these are but names. To my mother they were real people.
“Oh, he drank before that, but in moderation. I talked to a lot of his colleagues at that time, even to his mother. I started at the Watchman as a reporter, you know. I was twenty-two, fresh out of the W. Didn’t know a thing.”
She means the Mississippi State College for Women. “How many years did you work there?”
“Six. I was working the night of the accident. And nobody ever suggested it was murder. Because of the storm, I suppose. But I know this: losing his wife and daughter changed Duncan forever.” Her eyes are fixed on the table with unsettling concentration. “Once we started seeing each other, I threw my whole self into healing him. And he came a long way back to the world. After you and Adam came along—while you were both here—Duncan was whole again, or just about. Then . . .”
“You don’t have to talk about Adam. I’ve been thinking about him a lot over the last two days.”
She pushes her cup away and looks into my eyes. “I want you to understand one thing. Losing Adam the way we did sent me into depression, but eventually I was able to work through it. You never get over losing a child—you know that better than most—but you can live with it. If you’re lucky. But for Duncan . . . it was different. He’d come so far after that first tragedy, but the wound was still raw underneath. When Adam drowned and was never found, it was like somebody took a knife and drove it into that old wound, then twisted until it severed something.”
Mom’s face becomes distorted by the pain of recollection. “No matter how much time passed or what I tried, I couldn’t reach that part of him. He couldn’t heal. It seems incredible to think that thirty-one years wouldn’t be enough to get over something, but I’ve learned that time means nothing in some cases. And the greatest tragedy is that he let it destroy his relationship with you.”
“Mom, I understand where he is. It’s all right.”
“No, you don’t,” she counters, sounding angry.