“Everything will work out,” Scotty said to Beth when they were alone again.
“Are you sure?” Beth asked.
“Honey, you have morning sickness. You can’t think straight when you feel like you might throw up at any moment.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Let’s take a little walk,” Scotty said. “It will clear your head.”
“Thanks, Scotty,” Beth said, giving her a big hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. Life is going to get crazy when people find out.” She touched her belly.
“Well, I’ll be there for you no matter what,” Scotty said.
She held out the cellophane pack, and Beth took another cracker.
“Chew it slowly,” Scotty had said. “Too fast and you’ll get sick. There you go; that’s the way.”
It had touched her, the way Beth had listened to her. Respected what she had had to say. Complied with Scotty’s suggestions, even about eating a saltine.
Sitting on the beach, Scotty reflected on how it had seemed almost as if Beth were a child instead of Scotty’s best friend.
PART III
47
November 16
Lulu counted the months without Beth. Summer ended; fall sped along. The holidays, starting with Beth’s birthday, would be here soon, and no one wanted to face them. A blast of Arctic air, extreme for November, slashed down from Canada. At dusk, when the light was lavender, Lulu bundled up in her red fleece jacket and drove north, past Mathilda’s stone gates, to one of the oldest cemeteries in Connecticut.
She parked on the road, slung a brown leather bag over her shoulder, and climbed to the top of the hill. Heronwood Cemetery was surrounded by a wall built before the Revolutionary War. Colonists were buried here, graves dating back to the seventeenth century. The first time she had visited, on a late May afternoon two decades before, had been with Beth. Although Beth had had her driver’s permit, she hadn’t had her license yet, and Kate had been on a flying trip with Mathilda, so Lulu had driven her here. Beth had wanted to visit her mother’s grave.
They walked past stones and crosses so old, time and the elements had scoured the engravings down to nothing. Other graves still bore ancient etchings of angels, death’s heads, sailing ships. Helen Woodward’s headstone was at the northeast end of the graveyard beneath a Norway spruce. A great horned owl roosted above, fast asleep in the middle of the day. The ground was covered with pellets of hair and bone. Beth knelt on the grass. Lulu sat beside her.
“It feels so weird to be here,” Beth said. “I don’t know what to say.”
At first, Lulu thought Beth was talking to her, but Beth faced the stone. She traced the engraving of her mother’s name and dates with her finger, leaned close, and whispered.
“Well, I do know. What I want to say, anyway,” Beth went on. “I miss you. Do you know how much I miss you? Are you really here? Be here, please, Mom.”
Lulu looked away, embarrassed. Should she leave? But Beth seemed barely aware of her presence. Lulu looked up into the branches of a nearby white oak, watched a downy woodpecker hop up a groove in the bark as if it were a well-worn trail.
“Dad didn’t do it,” Beth whispered, touching the stone. “I mean, I know what they say, but I can’t believe it. Idon’tbelieve it, Mom. He wouldn’t have; he couldn’t have; he loves us. I think it was those people, only those people, the Andersons. Joshua and Sally—they have such normal names. They look like regular people; Kate and I saw them in court. They look normal, but they’re evil. Dad’s not evil, Mom. He’s nothing like them. He wouldn’t have done that to you. They did it on their own. It was their idea, not Dad’s. You know that, right?”
“Beth,” Lulu said softly.
“Kate believes it was Dad, though. She said it was his plan, and that’s even worse than what the Andersons did. She’s glad he’s in prison. But we’re his family; he couldn’t have told them to tie us up. He would never have let us be hurt. Let you die. Mom, you and I know that, even if Kate doesn’t.”
Beth was sobbing. She braced herself against the stone, as if it was keeping her from falling over. Still on her knees, she put her arms around it, embraced the gravestone as if it were actually her mother, not just the marker of where she was buried. Lulu had tried to pull her away, but Beth had wrenched her shoulders from Lulu’s hands and clung more tightly to her mother’s stone.
Lulu walked to the spot now. The massive Norway spruce was gone, probably felled by a storm. Twenty-three years ago, Helen’s grave had stood alone here. Now it was one of four—Mathilda’s, Ruth’s, and Beth’s. Lulu stared at the newly engraved name, letters scored deeply into the granite:
Elizabeth Woodward Lathrop, Beloved by Her Family
“And friends,” Lulu said, kneeling on the ground, just as Beth had done. She stared at the dates. She and Beth had come here one Saturday in late spring; Beth’s father’s and the Andersons’ trials had lasted all through the winter, and by the time Lulu and Beth had visited Helen, the lilacs had already bloomed and leaves were on the trees. It had been a bright, sunny day.
But now, all these years later, Lulu had come to the graveyard alone, and it was evening. The moon closest to the autumn equinox was the harvest moon, and tonight it would be full. Lulu had waited until this moment to visit Beth for the first time since her death; it seemed not only appropriate but necessary.
She sat still. The cold air had silenced the crickets. The night’s first owl called from a pine up the hill. She turned her head to look and saw the moon. Just starting to come up, it was large and orange and filled the eastern sky. It seemed to rise fast, nearly clearing the tree line, just like the moon in the painting.
