about. Of course, nobody knew about you and me and our little, you know, criminal activity.”
“Michael, for chrissakes, if there is a crime of statutory rape in this state, you’d have to get a lawyer to look it up to be sure. The age of consent between cousins is probably ten, and there may even be a special law on the books lowering the age to eight for Mayfairs.”
“Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head in obvious disapproval. “But what I was saying is, she heard the things you and I said to each other when we sat by the bed. We’re talking about witches, Mona.” He fell into his thoughts, staring off, brooding almost, looking intensely handsome, beefcake and sensitive.
“You know, Mona, it’s nothing anybody said.” He looked up at her. He was sad now, and it was very real, the way it is when a man of his age gets sad, and she found herself just a little frightened. “Mona, it was everything that happened to her. It was … perhaps the last thing that happened….”
Mona nodded. She tried to picture it again, the way he’d so briefly described it. The gun, the shot, the body falling. The terrible secret of the milk.
“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” he said in a serious whisper. God help her if she had, she thought, she would have died at this moment, the way he was looking at her.
“No, and I never will,” she said. “I know when to tell and when not to tell, but …”
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t let me touch the body. She insisted on carrying it down herself, and she could hardly walk. Long as I live, I’m not going to get that sight out of my mind, ever. All the rest of it—I don’t know. I can take it in stride, but something about the mother dragging the body of the daughter …”
“Did you think of it that way, like it was her daughter?”
He didn’t answer. He just continued to look off, and gradually the hurt and trouble slipped away from his face, and he chewed his lip for a second, and then almost smiled.
“Never tell anyone that part,” he whispered. “Never, never, never. No one needs to know. But someday, perhaps, she’ll want to talk about it. Perhaps it’s that, more than anything else, that’s made her silent.”
“Don’t ever worry that I’ll tell,” she said. “I’m not a child, Michael.”
“I know, honey, believe me, I know,” he said with just the warmest little spark of good humor.
Then he was really gone again, forgetting her, forgetting them, and the huge glass of gunk, as he stared off. And for one second he looked as if he was giving up all hope, as if he was in a total despair beyond the reach of anyone, even maybe Rowan.
“Michael, for the love of God, she will be all right. If that’s what it is, she’ll get better.”
He didn’t answer right away, then he sort of murmured the words:
“She sits in that very place, not over the grave, but right beside it,” he said. His voice had gotten thick.
He was going to cry, and Mona wouldn’t be able to stand it. She wanted with all her heart to go to him and put her arms around him. But this would have been for her, not him.
She realized suddenly that he was smiling—for her sake, of course—and now he gave her a little philosophical shrug. “Your life will be filled with good things, for the demons are slain,” he said, “and you will inherit Eden.” His smile grew broader and so genuinely kind. “And she and I, we will take that guilt to our graves of whatever we did and didn’t do, or had to do, or failed to do for each other.”
He sighed, and he leaned on his folded arms over the counter. He looked out into the sunshine, into the gently moving yard, full of rattling green leaves and spring.
It seemed he had come to a natural finish.
And he was his old self again, philosophical but undefeated.
Finally he stood upright and picked up the glass and wiped it with an old white napkin.
“Ah, that’s one thing,” he said, “that is really nice about being rich.”
“What?”
“Having a linen napkin,” he said, “anytime you want it. And having linen handkerchiefs. Celia and Bea always have their linen handkerchiefs. My dad would never use a paper handkerchief. Hmmm. I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”