Ki looked at me to see if she had permission and I said, “All right, but just one, and I don’t want to see any of it on your dress.” Ki popped it into her mouth and smiled at Rogette as if they’d been friends since forever. “By then Devore had his breath back, but he looked tired—the most tired man I’ve ever seen. He reminded me of something in the Bible, about how in the days of our old age we say we have no pleasure in them.
My heart kind of broke for him. Maybe he saw it, because he reached for my hand. He said, “Don’t shut me out.” And at that moment I could see Lance in his face. I started to cry. I said, “I won’t unless you make me.’” I could see them there in the funeral home’s foyer, him sitting, her standing, the little girl looking on in wide-eyed puzzlement as she sucked the sweet Hershey’s Kiss. Canned organ music in the background.
Poor old Max Devore had been crafty enough on the day of his son’s viewing, I thought. Don’t shut me out, indeed. I tried to buy you off and when that didn’t work I upped the stakes and tried to buy the baby. When that also failed, I told my son that you and he and my grandchild could choke on the dirt of your own decision. In a way, I’m the reason he was where he was when hejll and broke his neck, but don’t shut me out, Mattie, I’m just a poor old geezer, so don’t shut me out. “I was stupid, wasn’t I?”
“You expected him to be better than he was. If that makes you stupid, Mattie, the world could use more of it.”
“I did have my doubts,” she said. “It’s why I wouldn’t take any of his money, and by last October he’d quit asking. But I let him see her. I suppose, yeah, part of it was the idea there might be something in it for Ki later on, but I honestly didn’t think about that so much. Mostly it was him being her only blood link to her father. I wanted her to enjoy that the way any kid enjoys having a grandparent. What I didn’t want was for her to be infected by all the crap that went on before Lance died. “At first it seemed to be working. Then, little by little, things changed. I realized that Ki didn’t like her ’white poppa’ so much; for one thing. Her feelings about Rogette are the same, but Max Devore’s started to make her nervous in some way I don’t understand and she can’t explain. I asked her once if he’d ever touched her anywhere that made her feel funny. I showed her the places I meant, and she said no. I believe her, but… he said something or did something. I’m almost sure of it.”
“Could be no more than the sound of his breathing getting worse,” I said. “That alone might be enough to scare a child. Or maybe he had some kind of spell while she was there. What about you, Mattie?”
“Well. . one day in February Lindy Briggs told me that George Footman had been in to check the fire extinguishers and the smoke detectors in the library. He also asked if Lindy had found any beer cans or liquor bottles in the trash lately. Or cigarette butts that were obviously homemade.”
“Roaches, in other words.”
“Uh-huh. And Dickie Osgood has been visiting my old friends, I hear. Chatting. Panning for gold.
Digging the dirt.”
“Is there any to dig?”
“Not much, thank God.” I hoped she was right, and I hoped that if there was stuff she wasn’t telling me, John Storrow would get it out of her. “But through all this you let Ki go on seeing him.”
“What would pulling the plug on the visits have accomplished? And I thought that allowing them to go on would at least keep him from speeding up any plans he might have.” That, I thought, made a lonely kind of sense. “Then, in the spring, I started to get some extremely creepy, scary feelings.”
“Creepy how? Scary how?”
“I don’t know.” She took out her cigarettes, looked at them, then stuffed the pack back in her pocket. “It wasn’t just that my father-in-law was looking for dirty laundry in my closets, either. It was Ki. I started to worry about ICI all the time she was with him… with them. Rogette would come in the BMW they’d bought or leased, and Ki would be sitting out on the steps waiting for her. With her bag of toys if it was a day-visit, with her little pink Minnie Mouse suitcase if it was an overnight. And she’d always come back with one more thing than she left with. My father-in-law’s a great believer in presents. Before popping her into the car, Rogette would give me that cold little smile of hers and say, “Seven o’clock then, we’ll give her supper’ or “Eight o’clock then, and a nice hot breakfast before she leaves.” I’d say okay, and then Rogette would reach into her bag and hold out a Hershey’s Kiss to Ki just the way you’d hold a biscuit out to a dog to make it shake hands. She’d say a word and Kyra would rhyme it. Rogette would toss her her treat—woof-woof, good dog, I always used to think—and off they’d go. Come seven in the evening or eight in the morning, the BMW would pull in right where your car’s parked now. You could set your clock by the woman. But I got worried.”
“That they might get tired of the legal process and just snatch her?”
This seemed to me a reasonable concern—so reasonable I could hardly believe Mattie had ever let her little girl go to the old man in the first place. In custody cases, as in the rest of life, possession tends to be nine tenths of the law, and ifmattie was telling the truth about her past and present, a custody hearing was apt to turn into a tiresome production even for the rich Mr. Devore. Snatching might, in the end, look like a more efficient solution. “Not exactly,” she said. “I guess it’s the logical thing, but that wasn’t really it. I just got afraid.
There was nothing I could put my finger on. It would get to be quarter past six in the evening and I’d think, “This time that white-haired bitch isn’t going to bring her back. This time she’s going to…’” I waited. When nothing came I said, “Going to what?”
“I told you, I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve been afraid for Ki since spring. By the time June came around, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I put a stop to the visits. Kyra’s been off-and-on pissed at me ever since. I’m pretty sure that’s most of what that Fourth of July escapade was about. She doesn’t talk about her grandfather very much, but she’s always popping out with “What do you think the white nana’s doing now, Mat-tie?’ or “Do you think the white nana would like my new dress?’ Or she’ll run up to me and say “Sing, ring, king, thing,’ and ask for a treat.”
“What was the reaction from Devore?”
“Complete fury. He called again and again, first asking what was wrong, then making threats.”
“Physical threats?”
“Custody threats. He was going to take her away, when he was finished with me I’d stand before the whole world as an unfit mother, I didn’t have a chance, my only hope was to relent and let me see my granddaughter, goddammit.” I nodded.”
“Please don’t shut me out’
doesn’t sound like the guy who called while I was watching the fireworks, but that does.” “I’ve also gotten calls from Dickie Osgood, and a number of other locals,” she said. “Including Lance’s old friend Richie Lattimore.
Richie said I wasn’t being true to Lance’s memory.”
“What about George Footman?”
“He cruises by once in awhile. Lets me know he’s watching. He hasn’t called or stopped in. You asked about physical threats—just seeing Footman’s cruiser on my road feels like a physical threat to me.
He scares me. But these days it seems as if everything does.”
“Even though Kyra’s visits have stopped.”
“Even though. It feels… thundery.
Like something’s going to happen. And every day that feeling seems to get stronger.”
“John Storrow’s number,” I said. “Do you want it?” She sat quietly, looking into her lap. Then she raised her head and nodded.
“Give it to me. And thank you. From the bottom of my heart.” I had the number on a pink memo-slip in my front pocket. She grasped it but did not immediately take it. Our fingers were touching, and she was looking at me with disconcerting steadiness. It was as if she knew more about my motives than I did myself. “What can I do to repay you?” she asked, and there it was. “Tell Storrow everything you’ve told me.” I let go of the pink slip and stood up. “That’ll do just fine. And now I have to get along. Will you call and tell me how you made out with him?”