“I can do a lot more than wave it at him. I’m a crack shot. Best of anyone around here.”
“I know that,” she said soothingly. “But it will hardly be necessary. Everyone knows you could do it. The sight of the gun alone will cause a stir.”
Frank gazed down at her as if seeing her for the first time. He sighed. “If you think it’s best, Pearl, we’ll do it your way.”
“I think it’s best to wait until the Barn Dance. Do you promise to wait?”
“I promise,” he said. “But it’s not going to be easy.”
“I know,” Pearl said. “But do it for me, Frank.” She ran a hand over his shirtsleeve and felt the muscles of his arm loosen under her touch. He would wait. They always did.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
1983
That night, lying in bed on the second floor of his grandmother’s house, Joe had a lot to think about. Sleep wasn’t going to come anytime soon, not with the way the wind whipped outside, howling like some kind of beastly ghost. This was the kind of weather that had spooked Linda when she was little, but it had never scared Joe, not even when he was a kid. Tonight, his biggest concern was the noise level keeping him awake and the fear that he’d lose power. It was bad enough without air-conditioning, but not having the fan would make it even worse.
He and Kathleen had stayed at their table at the Pine Cone and talked long after Pearl and Howard had bolted from the restaurant. Kathleen felt terrible for having asked about Alice. “I should have known that talking about her sister’s death would be upsetting,” she said. “It’s been so long that I thought it would be okay, but from her reaction . . .” She sighed. “I guess you never really get over losing someone so close to you.”
“You didn’t mean to upset her,” Joe reassured her. “And who knows? Maybe her stomach was just upset. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Easy for you to say,” she said. “I just hate knowing when I’ve caused someone else pain. I’ll probably lie in bed all night replaying the conversation and wishing I hadn’t brought it up at all.”
“And I’ll be thinking about it, glad you brought it up,” Joe added. “Because now we have a name for my mystery man. John Lawrence. And the woman at the piano bench had to be Alice Bennett. Weird that my dreams are of someone I’m related to.”
Doris came and delivered their pies, setting a fork next to each plate. Kathleen broke from the conversation to look up. “Thanks, Doris. This looks delicious.”
As usual, Doris had walked away from the table before the compliment was complete. The woman was nothing if not efficient.
She dug her fork into her slice of pie. “There has to be an explanation. You probably heard family stories about Alice at some point in time. Even though you don’t remember, maybe you overheard a relative talk about her when you were a small child? People internalize things without even realizing it.” She gave him a look up and down. “I took psychology in college and remember a thing or two.”
“Maybe,” Joe said dubiously. “But the dreams are so vivid. It’s like I’m there, experiencing it. Where would that much detail come from?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
They continued eating their pie in silence, while all around them conversations abounded. From the kitchen, they heard a bell ring and a man’s voice call out, “Food’s up for table six.”
“It’s not just my imagination,” Joe said after a moment.
“Clearly not just your imagination. You dreamed things that actually happened, kind of like being psychic in reverse. Maybe . . .” Here, she looked thoughtful. “Maybe it’s true what some say about all the experiences of our ancestors being wired into us. Our predisposition toward certain foods, our temperaments, our metabolisms—some people believe that all that stuff is inherited. It’s not that far-fetched that our psyches would be stamped with the experiences of the ones who came before us, is it?”
“I guess not,” he said. That idea, along with the realization that the events in his dreams were real, made him feel better. The dreams didn’t come from his mother’s death or a mental illness. There was nothing wrong with him. He was just replaying events from the past over and over again at night in his dreams. But why? That was the real question. Alice’s death was terrible, but it had happened long ago. It’s not like he could prevent it, and he couldn’t heal his grandmother’s pain.