All Things Cease to Appear Read Online Free PDF Page A

enthusiasm confused her, and she fussed and cried and twisted in their arms.
    Time for a nap, little puppy. When he scooped her into his arms, she giggled and shrieked and kicked her legs.
    No, Daddy, not yet.
    He laid her down in the guest room, on one of the twin beds, and pulled the blankets up under her chin. Are you warm enough?
    Where’s Momma?

    The question alarmed him, and he tried to mask it. She’s up in heaven with God, sweetheart. Remember what Mommy told you?
    God lives in the sky.
    That’s right.
    But I want her, Daddy.
    You can whisper to her. Just whisper and she’ll hear you.
    She looked up at the ceiling. Up there?
    Yes, right up there. He kissed her forehead. She looked at him and he hugged her. She held him very tightly.
    Mommy is with you, Franny. She’s with you every minute. Okay?
    Franny turned away and closed her eyes. He sat there a moment, watching her. He sensed someone in the doorway and turned and met his mother’s eyes. At once he felt supervised, self-conscious. She was his warden now, he thought, joining her in the hall.
    Has she said anything?
    No.
    She looked at him sharply. I just can’t stop wondering. She was all day in that house.
    I know.
    Unsatisfied, she shook her head. She must have seen something.
    We may never know.
    That’s not good enough. What about that boy? I wonder if he had something to do with it.
    He’s just a kid, Mother.
    You never know. Kids these days. It’s a different world.
    He sighed. What could he possibly say? I’m sorry, Mother, he finally said.
    She looked at him strangely, as if trying to determine his meaning. I know you are, son. I know.
    —
    LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Agnes wanted to walk. He took his mother’s cigarettes and went with her, pushing an umbrella over their heads. Briefly, after college, she’d lived with them in the city. He’d gotten to know her, and the one thing he understood about Agnes was that she was prone to compromise. Easily accepted things just as they were, whether in her work or in her relationships. Her husband, he thought, was a drip. He sensed that she’d admired Catherine, but never told her so, which maybe wasn’t so unusual. Perhaps that was how sisters were.

    Winter on the Sound offered a bleak dissolution of color. They stood looking out at the water. He lit a cigarette.
    I want you to know, she said, that you can trust me.
    Okay, he said. That’s good. I appreciate that.
    I mean with anything.
    He nodded.
    I know you had nothing to do with this.
    I don’t know what to say, Agnes.
    I can’t imagine what you must be going through.
    It’s very difficult.
    She put her hand on his arm and kissed him on the cheek and he could smell the perfume she’d put on that morning, Chanel N o 5, the same scent his wife had been wearing since college, and he wondered if it had been deliberate. Agnes seemed, in that moment, a complete and total stranger. It came to him that he hardly knew these people. And they certainly didn’t know him. They’d already come to their own conclusions about his wife’s murder. And, like a good son-in-law, he’d acquiesced, assuming the stoic resignation of the accused.
    —
    ON MONDAY MORNING, hours before the funeral, the police came poking around. His father had seen them in town, blatant outsiders. A couple camera crews parked at the end of their road, waiting to get a shot of him. They were at the cemetery, too; George and the others watched it later that night on the local news, the two families standing over her grave. Their faces. The distortion of grief.
    The next afternoon, two of Lawton’s lackeys knocked on the door. George was up in his room, trying to rest. He could hear his mother letting them in, their voices filling the living room as if they wanted him to hear every word.
    He won’t be interviewed without his lawyer, his mother told them.
    All right, one of them said. We understand that. But tell your son we’ve got an investigation to run. It would be helpful to