“Good Lord!” Marion said. “Look at all the new houses!”
Many of the houses were not all that “new,” but Eddie couldn’t imagine how many so-called new houses had been built on Parsonage Lane since 1958. And when Eddie slowed his car at the driveway of Ruth’s house, Marion was shocked by the towering privet; the hedges loomed behind the house and surrounded the swimming pool, which she couldn’t see from the driveway but which she assumed was there.
“The bastard put in a pool, didn’t he?” she asked Eddie.
“Actually, it’s sort of a nice pool—no diving board.”
“And of course there’s an outdoor shower, too,” Marion guessed. Her hand trembled against Eddie’s thigh.
“It’s going to be okay,” he assured her. “I love you, Marion.”
Marion sat in the passenger seat and waited for Eddie to open the car door for her; because she’d read all his books, she knew it was the kind of thing that Eddie liked to do.
A handsome but rough-looking man was splitting wood outside the kitchen door. “Goodness, he looks strong!” Marion said, as she got out of the car and took Eddie’s arm. “Is that Ruth’s policeman? What’s his name?”
“Harry,” Eddie reminded her.
“Oh, yes— Harry . It doesn’t sound very Dutch, but I’ll try to remember it. And the little boy’s name? My own grandson, and I can’t even remember his name!” Marion exclaimed.
“It’s Graham,” Eddie told her.
“Yes, Graham —of course.” On Marion’s still-exquisite face, which was as monumentally chiseled as the face of a Greco-Roman statue, there was a look of inestimable grief. Eddie knew the photograph that Marion must have been remembering. Timothy at four, at the wasted Thanksgiving dinner table, holding an uneaten turkey drumstick, which he viewed with a distrust comparable to that suspicion with which Graham had regarded Harry’s presentation of the roast turkey only four days before.
In Timothy’s innocent expression, there was nothing that even remotely forecast how the boy would be killed in a mere eleven years— not to mention that, in dying, Timothy would be separated from his leg, which his mother would discover only when she tried to retrieve her dead son’s shoe.
“Come on, Marion,” Eddie whispered. “It’s cold outside. Let’s go in and meet everybody.”
Eddie waved to the Dutchman, who instantly waved back. Harry then hesitated. The ex-cop didn’t recognize Marion, of course, but he’d heard all about Eddie’s reputation with older women—Ruth had told him. And Harry had read all of Eddie’s books. Therefore, Harry gave a tentative wave to the older woman on Eddie’s arm.
“I’ve brought a buyer for the house!” Eddie called to him. “An actual buyer!”
That got the former Sergeant Hoekstra’s attention. He sunk his ax into the chopping block—that way Graham couldn’t cut himself on it. He picked up the splitting wedge, which was also sharp; Harry didn’t want Graham to cut himself on the wedge, either. He lef
t the maul lying on the ground. The four-year-old could barely have lifted the maul.
But Eddie and Marion were already entering the house—they hadn’t waited for Harry.
“Hello? It’s me!” Eddie called from the front hall.
Marion was staring at Ted’s workroom with a renewed enthusiasm— more accurately, with an enthusiasm she’d never known she had. But the bare walls in the front hall had also caught her attention; Eddie knew that Marion must have been remembering every photograph that used to hang there. Now there were no photos, no picture hooks, no anything . Marion also saw the cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another—not entirely unlike the way the house must have looked when she’d last seen it, in the company of her movers.
“Hello!” they heard Ruth call, from the kitchen.
Then Graham ran into the hall to greet them. It must have been hard for Marion to meet Graham, but Eddie thought she managed it well. “You must be Graham,” Marion said. The child was shy around strangers; he stood beside and a little behind Eddie—at least he knew Eddie.
“This is your grandmother, Graham,” Eddie told the boy.
Marion held out her hand. Graham shook it with an exaggerated formality. Eddie kept looking at Marion; she seemed to be holding herself together.
Graham, unfortunately, had never known any grandparents. What he knew about grandmothers, he knew from books, and in books the grandmothers were always very old. “Are you very old?” the boy asked his grandmother.
“Oh, yes—I certainly am!” Marion told him. “I’m seventy-six!”
“Do you know what?” Graham asked her. “I’m only four, but I already weigh thirty-five pounds.”
“Goodness!” Marion said. “Once I used to weigh a hundred and thirty-five pounds, but that was quite a while ago. I’ve lost a little weight. . . .”
The front door opened behind them, and Harry stood sweating in the doorway, holding his beloved splitting wedge. Eddie would have introduced Marion to Harry, but suddenly—at the kitchen-end of the front hall—there was Ruth. She’d just washed her hair. “Hi!” Ruth said to Eddie. Then she saw her mother.