The House On Willow Street (54 page)

“Of course,” said Morris. “Count on me.”

Then Mara was sitting at the table, wondering how to compose a suitable death notice for the newspapers.
Deeply beloved by his dear wife
somehow didn’t quite work.

She rang home again: “Dad,” she said, “you’d be better at this than me. Will you take care of the funeral stuff and I’ll try to mind Danae?”

Two days later, the first part of the funeral of Danae’s husband took place. She wanted to go to the funeral home where his body lay resting before it was brought to the church in the evening. The following day, his funeral Mass would be followed by his burial.

“What should we do, Dad?” said Mara to her father. He, Elsie, Stephen, Rafe and Belle all stood there, dressed in black like soldiers guarding Danae.

“We’ve got to let her say goodbye to him, if that’s what she wants.”

Belle stepped in. “We’ll all go with her for moral support,” she said firmly.

So it was that Danae was being supported by her brother on one side and her niece on the other when she walked into the viewing room in the undertaker’s, where Antonio lay in an open coffin. It was strange, Danae thought, that he looked different now. Peaceful in death and like the man he had once been. The man who knew how to smile and laugh. It was as if the brain injury he’d suffered and the many nights of violent rage that had transformed his face into an ugly mask had been wiped clean after his death.

His hands were folded in prayer, mother-of-pearl rosary beads around them. She knew his mother, Rosa, had given the beads to him when he was in the nursing home. Maybe Rosa would be waiting in heaven, or whatever was out there, for her son. Danae hoped he’d tell her what had really happened that night. Tell her that he’d tried to kill Danae, so Rosa would know the truth, finally.

And those hands—they looked so peaceful, but how often
had they punched her and hit her and been wrapped around her throat, threatening to end her life?

Tears streamed down Danae’s face and Mara’s too. Mara was crying not for the man in the coffin but for her aunt and the pain she’d put herself through for so many years. Living a life of penitence for killing a man who’d tried to kill her.

They drove slowly behind the funeral car to the church and walked behind the coffin. There weren’t many people in the church.

“Brothers, sisters-in-law, an uncle,” whispered Elsie to Mara as they made their way slowly up the church’s center aisle behind Danae and Morris.

“They didn’t visit him when he was in the nursing home,” whispered Mara. “Just let them say one word to Danae and I swear I will kill them.” She meant it, too. If they’d heard the story of how Antonio had tried to murder her beloved aunt, they’d think differently. And she would tell them the whole ugly story, sparing no details, if any of them dared to upset Danae. She’d been through enough.

“Mara, you’re in a church, you can’t speak like that,” hissed her mother.

“Don’t worry, Mara,” said Stephen, who was behind them. “I’ll help you kill them.”

“Count me in on that too,” muttered Rafe darkly.

They sank into a pew at the front and listened as the priest talked about a man he’d never known.

In funerals, all men were equal: the good and the bad. When it was time for the small service to end, Antonio’s family filed out without once looking in Danae’s direction.

Danae spent the night in Furlong Hill. Despite everyone making a fuss over her and trying to bring her out of herself,
it was as if a light had been turned off inside her. She had reverted to the silent, old Danae again. She sat like a ghost, her face drained of color, her eyes hollow.

“Do you think if I got her a Valium or something from Mrs. MacLiammoir across the road, it’d help her?” whispered Elsie to Mara.

“To be honest, Mum,” said Mara, “I don’t think anything’s going to help her.”

“But if she took a drink or something to calm herself?”

“Most of the time when he hit her he was drunk,” Mara explained. “Danae doesn’t drink. Not anymore.”

The following morning, the funeral Mass was at ten. Mara steeled herself for another encounter with Antonio’s family. She knew that Danae could feel the waves of hatred coming off them, and she wished they had brought Lady with them. Her aunt always drew such strength and comfort from Lady’s presence, from running her hands through that beautiful, silvery gray fur.

There were more words about Antonio, prayers from his brothers, and a harpist playing. Then finally, it was over. At the cemetery, the priest said some prayers and it was time for the chief mourner to throw some earth on to the coffin. Danae hesitated; she wasn’t the chief mourner. She turned and looked toward Antonio’s older brother, Tomas. But it wasn’t him who returned her gaze, it was his wife, Adriana.

“You do it, Danae,” she said loudly, and she smiled encouragingly, a flash of warmth amid all the cold.

The entire Danae faction beamed at Adriana. Taking a handful of dirt, Danae threw it. In the silence, the earth was loud upon the hard wood. Nobody spoke. When everyone began to move away, Adriana grabbed Tomas by the hand and led him over to Danae.

Danae’s people stood around her like sentinels.

“We don’t know each other very well,” Adriana said, while Tomas stared at his shoes, “but I’ve come to say something they should have said to you many years ago. The whole family knew what Antonio was.”

Danae began to shake and Adriana put her arms around her.

“I am so sorry, Danae, for all you’ve suffered. We all knew what he was like. Rosa was the only one who wouldn’t admit it. She wouldn’t let them admit it when she was alive.”

“But she’s dead now,” said Danae. “Dead a long time. They could have come to me . . .” She was too overcome with emotion to finish the sentence. All these years of living in pain, thinking everyone believed it had all been her fault.

“They’re too proud,” Adriana said. “But they are sorry. I don’t think the others will ever be able to say it, but they are truly sorry for what he did to you. You did the right thing, as far as I’m concerned. But Tomas—”

Adriana prodded her husband and finally he looked up at Danae. His eyes, so dark like Antonio’s, were wet with tears.

“I know what he did to you, Danae,” said Tomas. “We heard about the babies you lost. I am so sorry. Mama wouldn’t let any of us speak to you. And after she died—well, what was the point?”

“But I knew there was a point,” Adriana said angrily, glaring at her husband. “The nursing home told me how you came every month, how you paid, how you tried to care for the man who killed your
bambinos.
”

Danae broke down.
Her bambinos.
She’d tried not to think of the babies she’d lost. Thinking of what she’d done to Antonio had kept her mind away from the most painful place of all. Her little babies, two of them.

In the psychiatric hospital, she’d blocked it out. She would
not think about him, her mind couldn’t deal with it. So she’d closed it all up, as if the pain could be locked behind a series of doors in her mind so that it would never reemerge. Until now.

“I am so sorry,
cara
,” whispered Adriana, holding her close. “I would have killed him myself if he had done to me what he did to you. I told Rosa that too, if it’s any comfort to you. She was a stupid woman, so sure her boys were angels. She refused to see the anger in Antonio. You are the one who suffered. For that, all I can say is that we are sorry, me and Tomas. And the others too, although they have not the guts to come and say it themselves.”

They stood there together while the rest of the mourners left, until there was only Danae’s party and Adriana and her husband at the graveside.

The gravediggers began to fill in the grave. This was merely another job for them, another coffin to be hidden beneath the earth, part of their everyday life.

Then the rain began to fall, softly at first, and then a deluge. Held by Adriana, Danae didn’t care about the rain. As she stood there, Danae felt her whole being relax. It was like Benediction and absolution for a terrible sin she’d been carrying around in her heart for so long.

“Thank you,” she said, “you don’t know what this means to me.”

“I am sorry it has taken so long,” Adriana said gently. “I must go now, sorry.”

She pulled away, leaving her gloved hand in Danae’s for as long as possible.

“I am sorry too,” said Tomas awkwardly.

“Come on, love, you’ll catch your death,” said Morris.

He and Mara helped support Danae on her crutches as they made it back to the funeral car.

“She said they knew, they always knew,” Danae kept saying, “and only Rosa wouldn’t believe it because she was his mother and what mother could think that of her son and she said she was sorry for my
bambinos
 . . .”

“Now you know,” said Morris. “You did the only thing you could. The right thing. He stole your babies, he deserved more than he got. You’re the one who’s been serving a life sentence, Danae. But that has to stop.”

Danae leaned against him.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said.

Mara, watching her aunt anxiously, saw a softening in her face the likes of which she’d never seen in Danae before. Perhaps it would be all right.

C
ashel got two surprising phone calls early in January. The first left him entirely astonished but after it, he phoned his lawyers and had a long, serious talk with them.

“Report back to me tomorrow,” he said.

The second call was from Sherry.

“Hello, stranger,” she said.

“Hello, Sherry,” he said, feeling guilty. Damn it, despite his occasional flirty texts to and fro, he hadn’t called her and he’d said he would.

“I’m breaking a lot of rules for you,” said Sherry coolly down the phone.

“Yes,” said Cashel, unable to think of anything else to say. It was so unlike him to be gobsmacked, but he was. He’d meant to phone after the holiday in Courchevel, had planned to and yet somehow, every time he got to Avalon he forgot to do it. He kept driving past Tess’s antique shop, Something Old, wondering if he should go in and talk to her again. It had been such a brief encounter at Avalon House on New Year’s Day. And it had made him think that there was unfinished business and he needed to know what had happened,
he needed to find out. For the first time in nineteen years, he needed to know what the other side of the story was.