Apples Never Fall

Joy kept thinking about her grandmother’s first husband, who had died of the Spanish flu a hundred years ago after he made the “silly decision to go meet his friend down at the docks.” It had always sounded like a fairy tale to Joy, and a necessary piece of her history. Of course that first husband had to make the silly decision to meet his friend at the docks, so Joy’s grandmother could go on to marry Joy’s beautiful grandfather and Joy would then come to be Joy.

For the first time ever, it occurred to Joy that her grandmother’s first husband probably would have preferred not to die of the Spanish flu, thank you very much, just like Joy would prefer not to die of this one. She wanted to see what happened next. Her grandparents and mother would have to wait at that arrivals gate for a little longer.

* * *

It took a while for Joy to fully comprehend what her family had been through while she was gone.

Stan told her that all four children initially withheld information from the police that they knew would make Stan appear guilty. He’d seen their doubt and fear increase exponentially as the days passed without their mother’s return. Their questions became increasingly pointed.

“I started to feel guilty,” said Stan. “I started to feel as if I had hurt you. I had dreams that…” He stopped. “The dreams were bad.”

The children referred to their confused loyalties both obliquely and overtly.

In the middle of an impassioned lecture about hand sanitizing and face masks, Brooke suddenly said, apropos of nothing, “I found that criminal lawyer for Dad because I knew he was innocent, Mum. Not because I thought he was guilty. I hope you both know that.”

Oh, my darling, thought Joy. You never could lie.

Once, after Troy dropped off a lavish twenty-four pack of toilet paper he’d naturally managed to procure during the bizarre panic-buying frenzy, and when he and Joy were alone, sitting on the back veranda at a safe social distance, he said, “I thought Dad might have done it, Mum. I actually thought it. And I was angry with Brooke because she was supporting him.”

He sounded just like when he was a little boy, confessing something unspeakable, and Joy said, “It doesn’t matter, darling, just put it out of your mind.” Putting things out of your mind wasn’t the modern way, but where else could he put it?

Troy and Brooke patched up their differences, thank God, in the way that siblings and spouses sometimes did, with actions, rather than words.

Brooke bought Troy a box of chocolates.

Troy bought Brooke a car.

* * *

Joy and Stan didn’t talk at all about Harry Haddad, until one day when they were watching the news and it was announced that Wimbledon would be canceled because of the pandemic, the first time that had happened since World War II.

“I understand why you did what you did,” said Stan quietly.

He didn’t say he forgave her, but she took it as forgiveness.

A younger couple might have spent months in counseling talking it through, but she knew they were done with it. Move on. Once you’ve hit a ball there’s no point watching to see where it’s going. You can’t change its flight path now. You have to think about your next move. Not what you should have done. What you do now.

She had betrayed him. He chose

to still love her.

There was nothing more to say.

* * *

There were awful possibilities that kept her up at night.

For example, what if she and Savannah had been in an accident and their car had disappeared forever beneath the murky depths of some lake, and Stan had then been arrested and charged with her murder? What if he’d languished in jail for the rest of his life and only Brooke had visited him?

In the early days she made a lot of phone calls to that pretty, impatient, and unsmiling Detective Christina Khoury.

Joy was mildly obsessed with her. “Leave the woman alone,” Stan said. He looked traumatized whenever her name came up, which was why Joy felt a strange desire to continue convincing Christina of Stan’s innocence, even though his innocence was undisputed.

She needed the detective to know that her husband was one hundred percent innocent. He absolutely did not murder her.

“We did have a strong circumstantial case, Mrs. Delaney,” said Christina grimly.

But then Christina softened, and reminded her of all the reasons why her various fears would never have eventuated. For one thing, she said dryly, Joy and Savannah had not crossed any lakes on their drive, so it was unlikely they would have ended up at the bottom of one. Furthermore, Savannah’s married lover or boyfriend or fling or whatever you wanted to call him (her mark?), Dr. Henry Edgeworth, would have finally led them to Savannah, and Savannah would have led them to Harry’s Off-Grid Challenge. More importantly, they would also have got that better-late-than-never statement from Caro’s daughter in Copenhagen. The case wasn’t built on truth, so it would have inevitably collapsed like a stack of cards.