Matt, perhaps she’d had more interaction with Hunter than she’d claimed. And perhaps her anger was more show than reality.
But why hide the truth? Why make her feelings out to be different than they were?
Avery shook her head. Always looking for the story, she thought. Always looking for the angle, the hidden motive, the elusive piece of the puzzle, the one that broke the story wide open.
Geez, Avery. Give it a rest. Stop worrying about other people’s issues and get busy on your own.
She certainly had enough of them, she acknowledged, shifting her gaze to the stairs. After all, if she got herself wrapped up in others’ lives and problems, she didn’t have to face her own. If she was busy analyzing other people’s lives, she wouldn’t have time to analyze her own.
She wouldn’t have to face her father’s suicide. Or her part in it.
Avery glanced up the stairway to the second floor. She visualized climbing it. Reaching the top. Turning right. Walking to the end of the hall. Her parents’ bedroom door was closed. She had noticed that the night before. Growing up, it had always been open. It being shut felt wrong, final.
Do it, Avery. Face it.
Squaring her shoulders, she started toward the stairs, climbed them slowly, resolutely. She propelled herself forward with sheer determination.
She reached her parents’ bedroom door and stopped. Taking a deep breath, she reached out, grasped the knob and twisted. The door eased open. The bed, she saw, was unmade. The top of her mother’s dressing table was bare. Avery remembered it adorned with an assortment of bottles, jars and tubes, with her mother’s hairbrush and comb, with a small velveteen box where she had kept her favorite pieces of jewelry.
It looked so naked. So empty.
She moved her gaze. Her father had removed all traces of his wife. With them had gone the feeling of warmth, of being a family.
Avery pressed her lips together, realizing how it must have hurt, removing her things. Facing this empty room night after night. She’d asked him if he needed help. She had offered to come and help him clean out her mother’s things. Looking back, she wondered if he had sensed how halfhearted that offer had been. If he had sensed how much she hadn’t wanted to come home.
“I’ve got it taken care of, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
So, she hadn’t. That hurt. It made her feel small and selfish. She should have been here. Avery shifted her gaze to the double dresser. Would her mother’s side be empty? Had he been able to do what she was attempting to do now?
She hung back a moment more, then forced herself through the doorway, into the bedroom. There she stopped, took a deep breath. The room smelled like him, she thought. Like the spicy aftershave he had always favored. She remembered being a little girl, snuggled on his lap, and pressing her face into his sweater. And being inundated with that smell—and the knowledge that she was loved.
The womb from her nightmare. Warm, content and protected.
Sometimes, while snuggled there, he had rubbed his stubbly cheek against hers. She would squeal and squirm—then beg for more when he stopped.
Whisker kisses, Daddy. More whisker kisses.
She shook her head, working to dispel the memory. To clear her mind. Remembering would make this more difficult than it already was. She crossed to the closet, opened it. Few garments hung there. Two suits, three sports coats. A half-dozen dress shirts. Knit golf shirts. A tie and belt rack graced the back of the door; a shoe rack the floor. She stood on tiptoe to take inventory of the shelf above. Two hats—summer and winter. A cardboard storage box, taped shut.
Her mom’s clothes were gone.
Avery removed the box, set it on the floor, then turned and crossed to the dresser. On the dresser top sat her dad’s coin tray. On it rested his wedding ring. And her mother’s. Side by side.
The implications of that swept over her in a breath-stealing wave. He had wanted them to be together. He had placed his band beside hers before he—
Blinded by tears, Avery swung away from the image of those two gold bands. She scooped up the cardboard box and hurried from the room. She made the stairs, ran down them. She reached the foyer, dropped the box and darted to the front door. She yanked it open and stepped out into the fresh air.
Avery breathed deeply through her nose, using the pull of oxygen to steady herself. She had known this wouldn’t be easy.
But she hadn’t realized it would be so hard. Or hurt so much.
The toot of a horn interrupted her thoughts. She glanced toward the road. Mary Dupre, she saw. Another longtime neighbor. The woman waved, pulled her car over and climbed out. She hurried up the driveway, short gray curls bouncing.
She reached Avery and hugged her. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
Avery hugged her back. “Thank you, Mary.”
“I wish I’d gone to Buddy or Pastor Dastugue, but I … didn’t. And then it was too late.”
“Go to Buddy or Pastor about what?”
“How odd your daddy was acting. Not leaving the house, letting his yard go. I tried to pay a visit, bring him some of my chicken and andouille gumbo, but he wouldn’t come to the door. I knew he was home, too. I thought maybe he was sleeping, but I glanced back on my way down the driveway and saw him peeking out the window.”
Avery swallowed hard at the bizarre image. It didn’t fit the father she had known. “I don’t know what to say, Mary. I had no … idea. We spoke often, but he didn’t … he never said … anything.”
“Poor baby.” The woman hugged her again. “I’m bringing some food by later.”
“There’s no need—”
“There is,” she said firmly. “You’ll need to eat and I’ll not have you worrying about preparing anything.”
Avery acquiesced, grateful. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
“I see I’m not the first.”
“Pardon?”
The woman pointed. Avery glanced in that direction. A basket sat on the stoop by the door.
Avery retrieved it. It contained homemade raisin bread and a note of condolence. She read the brief, warmly worded note, tears stinging her eyes.
“Laura Jenkins, I’ll bet,” Mary Dupre said, referring to the woman who lived next door. “She makes the best raisin bread in the parish.”
Avery nodded and returned the note to its envelope.
“You’re planning a service?”
“I’m meeting with Danny Gallagher this afternoon.”
“He does good work. You need help with anything, anything at all, you call me.”
Avery promised she would, knowing that the woman meant it. Finding comfort in her generosity. And the kindness she seemed to encounter at every turn.
She watched the woman scurry down the driveway, a bright bird in her purple and orange warm-up suit, waved goodbye, then collected Laura Jenkins’s basket and carried it to the kitchen.
The last thing she needed was more food, but she sliced off a piece of the bread anyway, set it on a napkin and placed it on the kitchen table. While she reheated the last of the coffee, she retrieved the cardboard box from the foyer.
She had figured the box would contain photos, cards or other family mementos. Instead, she found it filled with newspaper clippings.
Curious, Avery began sifting through them. They all concerned the same event, one that had occurred the summer of 1988, her fifteenth summer.