Hearts of Sand(85)

It was just after five thirty in the morning when Caroline’s alarm went off. Caroline got the children up and dressed. Then she got Dan up and dressed. She saw Dan pick up his cell phone and realize it was off.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she told him. “There were people calling all night, on your phone as well as mine, on the landlines, everywhere. So I turned everything off.”

Dan got his phone up and running again. “Well,” he said, “there’s nothing on here that looks at all important. I do have about forty missed calls, but they all seem to be from people we know socially.”

“Socially,” Caroline said. “They’ll all be about Kyle.”

“Why do people think we’ll know what happened to Kyle Westervan?”

“It’s the Waring case,” Caroline said. “He was in the car the night Martin Veer died. He was part of Chapin’s clique at school. I suppose they think we live in each other’s pockets.”

“You weren’t part of Chapin’s clique at school,” Dan pointed out. “You were eight. People are very, very odd sometimes.”

Caroline agreed that people were very, very odd sometimes, and then went back to getting packed up for the day.

Then she turned on her own cell phone and found a total of 114 missed calls. She was staring at the phone when it vibrated to let her know another call was coming in. The number belonged to Reverend Harper at the church.

She answered the call, on the off chance that it had something to do with the picnic. She stood in the open front door of her house and looked at the Cross Country packed with children and gear. As soon as Chapin’s body had been found, she should have packed up the entire family and taken them to California.

“Yes,” she said into the phone. It was rude. She didn’t care.

Reverend Harper cleared his throat.

“Good morning, Caroline,” he said. “I do know that you’re very busy right now. I hope you’re not taking this call while driving.”

“I haven’t even gotten into the car yet.”

“Ah, yes, good, I suppose, although I suppose it means you’re running behind. Let me be quick about this, then, and we can talk it through at the picnic, when the rush is over and we have some time. Your sister Cordelia called me yesterday.”

“Did she,” Caroline said.

“Oh, yes,” the Reverend Harper said. “She made a point of telling me how concerned she was about you, and how concerned your other sister was about you. I know you don’t like people to fuss over you. And I think it’s admirable. But I do think you may not realize just how deeply you’ve been affected by your sister’s dying. So deeply that you may not realize that you are having a difficult time thinking clearly. And now, of course, with this other murder. I believe he was a friend of the family—”

“He was somebody I barely knew,” Caroline said. “He was a friend of my sister’s, the one who recently died. Who was recently murdered. Who was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife.”

“Yes,” the Reverend Harper said. “Yes, of course. I do know the circumstances. It’s difficult to know how to proceed in cases like this. One doesn’t want to be too forward, of course, but on the other hand—”

“Is there a point to this phone call, Reverend Harper? Or did you just call because Cor decided to make a nuisance of herself?”

“Oh, oh no! Cordelia didn’t make a nuisance of herself at all. Listening to people in their time of darkness is what I’m here for.”

“Cordelia has never had a time of darkness in her life.”

“I do understand how you might think that, Caroline, but I believe you’re wrong. Of course, Cordelia, being an older sister, worked very hard to appear calm and unfrightened in the wake of all that tragedy, but that’s not to say that she was unaffected. I’m sure this whole situation has been very difficult for all of you. And she’s really only concerned, you understand, that your other sister, that your sister Chapin, be given a Christian burial. It would bring closure to you all.”

Dan was standing up next to the driver’s side door of the car, trying not to be too obvious about rushing her. Caroline wished he’d be a lot more obvious.

“Did you know my sister Chapin?” she asked the Reverend Harper.

“Well, no—of course, I didn’t come to Alwych until many years later—”

“If you’d known my sister Chapin, you’d know that she wouldn’t have wanted a Christian anything. She wasn’t a believer. And don’t tell me that a lot could have happened in thirty years. I’ve got nothing to show that she ever changed her mind about religion, or God, or anything else. And if what Cordelia called you about was seeing to Chapin’s funeral, then as far as I’m concerned, we’ve got nothing to talk about. There will be no funeral. There will be no memorial service. There will be nothing that could bring down a hurricane of photographers and reporters to make yet another circus out of all of this. I’ve told Cordelia this several times. If she wants Chapin to have a funeral, then she can come out here herself and give Chapin a funeral. I will not attend.”