Part 28 (1/2)

Dora's voice was very soft. ”I never meant to hurt him, Cal. And I couldn't let you hurt him either.”

The door swung open, and he was there, sprawled on his back, a swath of blood across his white s.h.i.+rt, one hand rising toward me, weak and trembling, his eyes beseeching me as he labored to speak.

”Leaving was the only thing I could do,” Dora said.

I saw a wink of gold in the light, the ring lying at the edge of a scarlet pool, a b.l.o.o.d.y knife flung a few inches away. His voice sounded in the stillness, faint and deathly, but loud enough for me to hear the faith it carried, the sure and certain knowledge that I had come to save him: Cal.

”I loved William,” Dora said. ”I hope he knows that.”

He lifted his arms toward me, expecting me to rush to his aid, but I stood, frozen, staring down at him, listening to the rattle of his breath, the single word that managed to rise above it: Cal.

”But I couldn't love him in that way.”

He stared at me wonderingly, baffled that I remained in place, towering above him, putting all that agonized confusion into a question carried on my name: Cal?

I looked at him with cold, dead eyes, no longer my brother Billy, but only a sack of breath whose breathing blocked my way to Dora. In a single shuddering instant, I felt all my pa.s.sion surge in a mute and blackened prayer: Die, William. Die!

It was an instant, nothing more, a single, explosive second, followed by a terrible seizure of recognition and self-loathing. ”Dear G.o.d,” I cried, dropped to my knees, gathered my brother into my arms, rushed him to the car, and raced to Doc Bradshaw's office, calling to him again and again, my voice like a lifeline flung to him across the engulfing waters, Billy, hold on, please, hold on, watching helplessly as he sank, Billy, please, Billy, deeper and deeper, drowning in his own lungs, Billy, Billy, until a final bubble of blood burst on his lips, carrying the name of the one he'd dreamed of all his life, Dora.

”You have to tell William that I loved him,” she said.

Billy...

I looked at her softly. ”I will.”

”But, Cal, never tell him...”

... please...

”... about you.”

”No,” I said. ”No, I never will.”

... forgive me.

She rose, a curious relief lifting her, pleased that we'd come through this final meeting with what she took for grace. ”Come,” she said. ”Come with me. I want to show you something.”

She led me to the garden, then along its quiet lanes, pointing out the desert plants that grew there, how little they required, sunlight, a taste of rain. She would remain with the Sisters for another few weeks, she said, then move to some other place, where she hoped to serve in some way, ”be of use at last,” as she phrased it.

Finally, at the end of the day, as we stood beside my car, she drew the small porcelain figure she'd taken from Ed Dillard's house from her pocket, a young girl with long, blond hair, placed it in my hand, and folded my fingers around it. ”For you,” she said. ”Good-bye, Cal.”

”Good-bye, Dora.”

She stood in the drive as I pulled away. In the mirror, I saw her lift her hand in a last farewell, then grow small, a point of light, and finally disappear.

Had my soul been made of bone, I would have heard it crack.

Chapter Twenty-six.

Henry Mason's long illness had overwhelmed him by the time I got back to Port Alma. He'd died in Portland Hospital, though not before penning a full confession of what he'd done, Dora's letter to Billy folded inside it.

”Henry wanted you to see these,” Hap said when he showed both to me.

In his letter, Henry described in an oddly formal language how he'd carefully copied Dora's script, writing fraudulent entries in the ledgers, never expecting the books to be checked. ”I was, of course, aware,” he wrote, ”that even should William review the books, he would never accuse Miss March of stealing from him. For it was common knowledge, often spoken of by the staff, that he was in love with her.”

The money had been for his r.e.t.a.r.ded daughter Lois, Henry added. He'd stolen it because he was dying and needed to provide for her. ”It remains my hope,” he wrote, ”that some provision can be made for Lois, as she cannot, in my absence, provide for herself.”

As to Billy's death, it had occurred somewhat differently than I'd imagined it on the afternoon I'd sat with Dora in the convent garden. I'd been right that Henry had accused Dora of embezzlement, and right that Billy had seen through the ruse. But I'd been wrong about my brother's reaction. For rather than flying into a rage, he'd simply demanded to know where Dora was, what Henry had said or done to send her fleeing from Port Alma. Henry had attempted to leave, rushed through the kitchen, Billy in pursuit. It was there, according to Henry, that Billy tripped suddenly, a shattered leg giving way, and tumbled forward, knocking the kitchen knife from the table, then falling upon it with all his weight. ”On my soul, I swear that I did not murder William Chase,” Mason wrote. ”My crime was that I left him, knowing that without my a.s.sistance his wound would prove fatal.”

”So now we know what happened,” Hap said. He waited for my response. When I offered none, he said, ”Cal, what would you think about coming back to work for me?”

I shook my head.

”What do you plan to do?”

”I don't know,” I said.

He gave me one of his cautionary looks. ”Well, you know it's not good for a man to ... h.e.l.l, I guess you know what's good for you.”

I knew only what was no longer good for me, prosecuting men and women whose suffering I knew nothing of, spending Sat.u.r.day nights in Royston. Needing love too much.

”I'd better be going,” I said.

Hap looked at me sadly. ”How are your parents, Cal?”

”Dying,” I answered.

For the next three months I did all that was required to sustain them both.

Often, when I sat in the evening with my father, a silence would fall between us, but there were other times when we went over things, remembering what we could bear to remember, holding the rest inside. He remained stoical to the last, refusing all pity or self-pity. ”Better to die like Socrates,” he said, the last of his cla.s.sical references. ”Remembering that you owe someone a chicken.”

He died the following spring.

I moved in with my mother a few days later.

During that long, sweltering summer, I fed and dressed her, kept her clean and as comfortable as I could.

In the evenings I would read to her as Billy had, though she made it clear that she could no longer bear the romantic poetry that had, until then, served as her guide through life.

As the airless summer days pa.s.sed, she grew steadily weaker. She lost interest in the play of nature outside her window, the flight of birds in the overhanging sky, her eyes often fixed instead upon the copy of the Sentinel she kept on the table beside her bed, the one that carried Billy's obituary.

Then, one evening, as I was about to put out the light, she groaned, and I saw something dark gather in her eyes, as if, after a long meditation, she had reached a grim conclusion.