As I scroll restlessly through the newspaper headlines from Thunder Bluff thirty years ago, I think about Augustus and Meadow and the affairs he had, over and over and over. Am I trying to make sense of Meadow’s life, or my own?
Maybe it’s both. Maybe if I can figure out her story, I can make sense of my completely out-of-character passion for him. I fell so completely, so entirely in love with him, a man more than thirty years my senior. Why?
The good things surface. His beautiful forearms and hands that first day. The way he looked at me, as if there were never a woman on the planet he’d rather look at more.
He probably looked at all of us that way. It’s humiliating to realize, but if I’m honest with myself, I know it’s true. And however much I might miss him, Meadow is suffering a thousand times more.
A headline catches my attention.
Local Man Dead, Girl Missing
Monday afternoon, police found Gary Sullivan, 47, dead in his home at 72 Oleander Street after a neighbor reported a bad odor. Sullivan appeared to have been dead for more than a week, and while there is no evidence of violence, an autopsy will be performed. Police are searching for the deceased’s stepdaughter, Tina Sullivan, 17, and her 1-year-old daughter, who have not been seen. The young woman lost her mother two years ago in a car accident and had been despondent since. She was employed as a waitress at Pie of the Day, and her boss said she’s been worried since the girl failed to show up for a shift last Monday. Anyone with information about the death or disappearance is urged to contact police immediately.
No evidence of violence.
As I sit at the table of the library with my laptop, a sense of cold moves through me. In the stacks are two girls whispering and giggling, and a man has fallen asleep in the corner, his coat thrown over his head. My cursor blinks at me.
No evidence of violence.
Carefully, I scan every page of the paper for several weeks, but there’s nothing until almost three weeks later, a small article, that says only that Gary Sullivan, forty-seven, had been buried at Law Cemetery. He was found dead in his home, but no foul play was discovered. He appeared to have died of a heart attack.
My skin goes cold. A heart attack.
The detectives asked me if I thought Meadow could have poisoned him, and I said no, emphatically, but now I search for “poisons that mimic heart attacks.” A list of several show up, including thallium, the classic Agatha Christie poison, as well as monkshood and oleander.
My heart is pounding as if it is afraid it will be next, but my phone alarm rings, reminding me that it’s time to get to work. Reluctantly, I close everything down.
Wondering, wondering, wondering. Could Meadow have poisoned her stepfather, and then Augustus?
How in the world can I find out . . . and what am I going to do with the information even if it’s true? I don’t want Meadow to go to prison. Maybe I don’t even want her daughters to have this information. It would be too painful for them.
So what, then?
I have no idea.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Meadow
The coroner released the body to the crematorium. Before anyone else gets involved, I want some time alone with him. In the hot July afternoon, I drive through the streets of the city, my nerves on the outside of my body. The world looks impossibly beautiful, a girl on skates being pulled by her dog, the ocean sparkling blue in the sunshine, the sky a hot, dry blue. In the distance, a plume of smoke rises over the mountains.
The facility is pink stucco, and as I get out of the car, a pair of parakeets flash green through the trees. They’ve become part of the landscape here, escaped pets that found each other and bred in the mild climate. They make me think of Australia and all the bright birds that live there. Augustus and I always said we would go see them, go on a long vacation there and see kangaroos and lorikeets and Uluru.
We never made the time. Instead, I did it on my own. That was when he took up with Christy. Maybe as a punishment to me. Maybe just bad timing. I will never know.
A skinny man in jeans and a white shirt greets me. He warns me that Augustus has not been made up or dressed, and I might find that difficult. I brush his concerns away. I don’t want the pretty version. I’ve seen that.
In a cold room, he leaves me with the open drawer holding the body of the man I have loved most of my life, for thirty years now. His lips are a grayish blue, and his skin is bled to a dull yellow, but it’s still his face. His thick hair, his beard. I touch his hair, running my fingers through the curls, and they feel the same. My walls crumble, and I am flooded with a hundred memories, a thousand. Waking up to find him sleeping beside me, that beautiful hair scattered over the pillow; watching him toss a Frisbee to the girls, over and over, until they learned it; offering me a taste of whatever he was cooking; wiggling his eyebrows at me across the table over an inside joke.