Cry for the Strangers Page 0,119

there again.

Quietly, Glen Palmer began to cry.

27

There was a quality in the air the following morning, a numbing chill that lay over Clark’s Harbor like an invisible fog, shrouding the town.

The people of the village went about their business, tending their shops and boats, greeting each other as they always had. When they spoke of Rebecca Palmer, and of Jeff Horton, it was not with the worried clucking of tongues and expressions of concern that might have been expected, but rather with the knowing looks, the almost lewdly arched eyebrows of people who have finally witnessed that which they had known would come to pass.

When Glen Palmer arrived at the police station in midmorning, he was not stared at, not subjected to the hostile glares he had been expecting. Nor were there any expressions of sympathy at the loss of his wife. Rather—and to Glen even more frightening—it was as if nothing had changed, as if what had happened to him was not a part of Clark’s Harbor at all, not an event that touched the lives of the Harborites.

Only when he was inside the police station, inside Harney Whalen’s office, did reality intrude on the sense of surrealism that surrounded him.

Harney Whalen sat impassively at his desk, staring at Glen.

“Are you ready to talk about it now?” The words were more a challenge than a question. Glen braced himself. He knew what was coming.

In the old house on Sod Beach Elaine Randall did her best to keep Missy and Robby occupied, to keep them from dwelling on the loss of their mother. After Glen left the house, insisting on going alone to see Whalen, the children had wanted to go out on the beach.

Elaine had refused, not so much out of fear that anything would happen to them, but out of her own inability to face the beach that day.

She was not sure she would ever again be able to enjoy the beauty of the crescent of sand. For her it was permanently soiled.

Around noon she set the children to work on a jig-saw puzzle, then went to the kitchen to fix lunch.

“Keep an eye on them, will you, honey?” she asked Brad as she passed through the dining room. Brad glanced up from the charts he was poring over.

“Hmm?”

“The kids,” Elaine replied. “Keep an eye on them for me while I put lunch together.”

“Sure,” Brad muttered, and went back to work. Elaine smiled softly to herself and continued into the kitchen. The house could fall down around him without his noticing. She poked halfheartedly at the fire in the ancient stove and decided a cold lunch would do just fine.

Fifteen minutes went by, then Robby appeared in the kitchen.

“When are we having lunch?”

“In about two minutes. Are your hands clean?”

Robby solemnly inspected his hands, then held them up to Elaine for approval. She looked them over carefully and nodded.

“Okay. Take these into the dining room and see if you can get Brad to make room for us.” She handed the little boy a tray of sandwiches, then followed him a few minutes later with napkins, silver, and a jar of pickles. The table, she noted, had miraculously been cleared, and Missy and Robby sat flanking Brad, all of them patiently awaiting her arrival.

“Isn’t Daddy coming?” Missy asked as Elaine sat down.

“He’ll be back as soon as he can get here,” Elaine explained.

“Can I save my sandwich for him?”

“What’ll you eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” Missy said softly. “I’ll just drink some milk.”

“I’m sure your—” Elaine began, then stopped short. She had been about to say “mother,” but quickly changed it. “—father would want you to eat your lunch,” she finished.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Missy assured her.

“He would too,” Robby said. “He’d say the same thing Mother would say—‘you eat what’s put in front of you!’ Even if it is liverwurst,” he added almost under his breath. He determinedly bit into his sandwich, and a moment later Missy did the same. The children munched in silence for a moment, then Robby put the remains of his sandwich down and looked quizzically at Elaine.

“Are we going to have to go away?”

“Go away? What do you mean?”

“Are we going to have to move away, after what happened to Mommy?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Elaine replied carefully. “That depends on your father, I suppose.”

“Do you want to move away?” Brad asked. Robby shook his head emphatically but it was Missy who spoke.

“Yes! I hate it here! Mr. Riley told us a long time ago that there