Weddings Collection. Кэрол Мортимер
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got a point.” He turned the key in the ignition. Lily’s wedding was a little more than a week away. His ticket home was for the day after that.
Time was growing shorter.
The thought filled him with a melancholy that he ordinarily associated with moving through life without his siblings. Which only proved to him that at bottom he viewed June in the same light as he did Alison, Lily and Jimmy. Just another sibling.
And then he shook his head as he turned the Jeep toward Hades. Funny the lies people told themselves just to continue.
There were times when she liked to come to the grave site by herself and just talk things out with her mother. That there was no audible response never troubled her too much. If she was very quiet, she could feel the response in her heart.
This was one of those times.
She bit her lip, debating. She really did have work to do. Hay didn’t take care of itself.
The debate was short-lived.
On impulse, June abandoned her work and stopped to pick a handful of wildflowers that seemed to have grown expressly for the purpose of decorating her mother’s grave. They were wild roses. Her mother had always loved wild roses.
It was what her father had called her. Wild Rose.
June placed the freshly plucked bouquet on the seat beside her and drove toward the town’s small cemetery. She needed to be near her mother. To share a moment in time the way she hadn’t been able to in life.
The cemetery contained the remains of all the past citizens of Hades who had come here in search of something, or to flee something. The former had been the case for the two oldest bodies buried on the hill, that of two miners. They had been the original founders of the small town, one of whom had given the town its name in a fit of despair and desperation. He’d thought of it as hell, but society being what it had been in those days, he’d called it by the only acceptable label that could have been given then: Hades. It had stuck and aroused a kind of dry humor when referred to in the dead of bone-chilling winter.
She’d always been amused by that story, June thought as she approached the small wrought-iron-gated area.
Her smile faded a little as she saw that she wasn’t going to be alone here, the way she’d hoped. There was someone else there at the cemetery already. His back to her, he stood over a grave.
She didn’t recognize the coat.
The town’s population was still small enough for her to be able to recognize not only all the inhabitants of Hades, but also the clothing they wore.
Maybe Mr. Kellogg was carrying a new line of winter apparel at the emporium. The coat looked too warm for this time of year.
She stopped the car and took measure of the person she deemed a stranger.
The man was tall, with flowing iron-gray hair. Though he was broad shouldered, his shoulders seemed to be slumped, as if life had beaten him down year by year, inch by inch.
A relative? A curious stranger absorbing the names of past citizens for some unknown reason of his own? They had a few tourists here in the summer, but this wasn’t exactly a tourist draw.
Taking her key from the ignition, June got out of the vehicle.
Strangers were supposed to invite caution, but she had never been the cautious type. Especially since, she realized, the man stood over the very grave she wanted to put her flowers on.
What was he doing here?
There were flowers on the grave already. Fresh ones. The wilt of even a day’s separation from the soil hadn’t begun to penetrate the blooms. Had Max or April had the same inclination today? Neither one had mentioned intending to come here.
Maybe her grandmother had passed by. She tried to remember if today had some sort of significance. And then she remembered.
It was her mother’s wedding anniversary.
She stared at the stranger’s back. Had he put the flowers there?
Why?
The word echoed in her head as her stomach tightened instinctively in anticipation. A strange numbness descended over her.
She strode forward. “That’s my mother’s grave,” she announced crisply. The man’s head jerked up in response, as if he hadn’t heard her approach. “What are you doing here?”
His hands were working the rim of a shapeless tan hat, a fedora that had seen better decades. “Saying I’m sorry,” he replied quietly, addressing his words to the body beneath the soil.
June could feel her spine stiffening. “Why would you be sorry? You didn’t know her.” There was a stillness in the air, not even the sound of an insect whizzing by. Nothing. Only the words hung there between them. “Did you?”
“Yes. For a little while.” Each word was slowly measured out, like precious drops of water in the desert. “She was my wife.”
June raised her chin, anger and defiance warring within her for control even as her voice remained steely. “That’s not possible. She was only married once. And he’s dead.”
Eyes that had seen too much now looked at her. “April?”
She glared at him, stubborn, hostile. Damning him. “No.”
Recognition flooded him. She’d grown so much. How many years had gone by? He’d lost them all and lost count. “June.”
“Process of elimination?” Sarcasm wrapped itself around each word. “Simple enough, I suppose.” This was her father. Her father had returned. Why the hell had he done that now, when it no longer meant anything? When her mother could no longer fling herself into his arms and dampen his shirt with her joy? “You couldn’t very well say Max, now could you?”
His eyes swept over her, drinking in the sight. Tears stood still, shimmering against an intense field of blue. She had his eyes, but everything else belonged to Rose. “My God, June, you look just like her. Just like your mother.” His voice almost broke. “She was such a beautiful woman.”
“Not after all the life had been drained out of her,” June retorted coldly. She wanted to scream things at him, to tell him how horrible he was for leaving them all, for leaving her mother and condemning her to a life of sorrow until she completely wasted away. “What are you doing here, now? Run out of places to see?”
He tried to draw himself up but couldn’t. It was as if the weight of his transgressions had permanently bent him. “I came back to say I’m sorry.”
“Won’t do you any good.” June deliberately stooped down and picked up the flowers he had placed there, then tossed them aside. She replaced them with her own. “She can’t hear you.”
He knew it was too late for that. But not too late for everything. Not yet. “But you can. You and April and Max.”
“Just because you have ears doesn’t mean you can hear.” Her eyes narrowed accusingly as she looked at him. He hardly looked like the man in the photograph her grandmother kept. The man there had been laughing. It was his wedding day, his and her mother’s. She didn’t remember ever seeing her mother smile that way. Her expression had been one of hope. “You didn’t. She begged you to stay and you didn’t hear her.”
He rubbed his hand over his face, searching for explanations to things he could no longer even explain to himself. “You were too young to understand.”
“But April wasn’t.” Her sister had been eleven when their father had left them. And, in her own way, just as shattered as their mother had been by the event. But only April had rallied, because she needed to take care of them as their mother drifted away from reality. “Grandmother wasn’t. And they told me that my mother begged you not to leave. Begged you. And you left anyway. Said you felt as if this town was strangling you. And that we didn’t matter.”