her, pretending instead to study the few incoming guests. “I’m glad you came, like me, for your mother’s sake.”
A small frown pinched her brow. “Luke was a useless, self-pitying drunk, but what I thought of him isn’t important. Mum is one of those ‘for better or for worse’ types, and she would never hear a word against him.”
“She and Luke have been through a lot. You all have. She’ll need your support.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry.” She looked away, her tone hardening. “She’ll just erect another shrine, dust off her British stoicism, and carry on.”
Still the same old changeable Julia, he thought, as he searched for a safe topic of conversation. When he was a young detective, barely older than her, she seemed to enjoy confounding him. Playful and passionate, but as unpredictable as a summer storm.
But just as abruptly as the storm clouds blew in, they abated. She sighed and leaned in toward him. “I’m sorry. Being back here after all this time has brought out the bitch in me. I thought I’d conquered her but sometimes she storms the barricades. All this gives me the willies.…” She gestured to the crucifix and the stained-glass windows. “Churches, funerals, meaningless religious babble. I guess I’m just worrying about Mum. I have no idea what she’s going to do now that she has no …”
She looked up as a hush settled on the church. At the front, the minister had entered and was speaking to Marilyn with head bent and hands clasped piously over hers. “No one to fuss over but herself,” she finished.
Green eyed her thoughtfully. Perhaps she’d matured in the last twenty years after all. “Will you be staying? At least for a while?”
“I can’t be away from my job that long. I just started a new one as a hostess at a resort, and this is the busy season. But I’ve invited Mum to come visit me in Costa Rica when she’s up to it.” She cast him a playful smile. “You should come down too. Bring your wife and family.”
The organ pounded out some final chords and silence descended on the small crowd that barely filled the first three rows. The minister took his place at the pulpit and Green steeled himself for clichés of death and resurrection.
“Here we go,” Julia muttered, putting words to his thoughts. Her brusque manner returned and she shifted down the bench, but made no move to return to her mother’s side.
The minister, and the service, were mercifully brief. After the second hymn, played with gusto by the organ but sung by only a few straggling voices in the group, Marilyn rose to speak. She was dressed as Green had always remembered her, in the tailored navy suit that she’d worn every day at the trial. It hung around her frame now, faded and threadbare at the cuffs, and the chancel seemed to swallow her up as she stood on tiptoe to reach the mic.
She looked out over the scattering of upturned faces, squared her shoulders, and cast her voice out over the room as if it were filled with a thousand friends. “Thirty-five years ago last month,” she began, “a stranger came by my house to pick up a load of laundry for his aunt. It was snowing like the Dickens and I offered him a cup of tea. I was fairly new to Canada back then and too naive to realize that a glass of whisky would have gone down better, but in any case, I had none on offer. He accepted with delight. I don’t know what he thought. I must have been a sight, a single mum raising three small children in a basement flat you could barely swing a cat in, and I hadn’t entertained a man in my house in years. My only common room was given over to laundry. Piles and piles of it, some wanting washing, some ironing, some mending. He had to move the ironing board just so he could sit down, and the whole place was as hot as a Turkish bath.
“But he stayed for three hours to help me fold sheets and feed the children. Porridge, if I recall. The next time he brought us all pizza and stayed for dinner; and when the spring came, he borrowed his aunt’s car and took us all to a sugar bush in Quebec. That night, when he asked me to marry him, I never hesitated. I still wouldn’t. He wasn’t perfect — what man is? He had his moods and he wasn’t much for talking, but I wish you could have known the man he used to be. Always ready with a hand to help out, a joke to make you smile, and a heart big enough to take in me and my children without a moment’s pause. When my Jackie died — no, when our Jackie died — it ripped that heart right out of him.”
Her voice quavered and she reached out to grip the edge of the podium. Even from the back of the hall, Green could see her limbs trembling. She wet her lips and plunged on. “We were all the family Luke had. His parents died when he was a teenager, so he came from Cape Breton to stay with his aunt. She was a spinster who did the right thing by him, but truth be told, she viewed him as unpaid help at best and a nuisance at worst.
“God must have seen the need we had for each other when he brought us together. Those joyful memories are all that sustained us during our more recent trials, and I draw some comfort from the fact that his passing was quick and painless for him, and that now, wherever their souls reside, he and Jackie are together.”
Beside Green, Julia muttered. He shot her a quick glance, but her gaze was fixed on the ground. She did not look up when Marilyn walked over to the photo of Lucas, kissed her fingertips and brushed them over the glass.
“Good night, sweet Luke, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
After the service, Green was hoping to pass on his condolences and slip away before the reception, pleading the demands of work. He waited dutifully as Marilyn made her way up the church aisle, stopping to smile her gratitude to people along the way. As soon as she spotted him, her smile vanished. She clutched at his hands like a survivor lost at sea.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Why don’t I phone you tomorrow?”
She shook her head and glanced at Julia, who was still standing beside him. Uncharacteristically, she raised her arms to hug him and pressed her lips to his ear. “Please, stay for the reception.”
Reflexively, he held her for an instant, feeling her bird-like frame in his arms and her heart hammering against her chest. Catching Julia’s raised eyebrow, he extricated himself gently and searched Marilyn’s face. But it was a smiling mask again as she turned her attention to the next guest. Soon Green found himself alone in the church, watching as Julia and her mother filed out through the wooden doors.
Frustration battled curiosity as he walked outside. Fat, lazy snowflakes floated down, melting on the slick tarmac but already gathering in soggy piles along the verges where a scattering of cars was parked. At the station, he had a calendar packed with dreaded committee meetings, but the prospect of spending an hour making small talk with strangers in the church hall had even less allure. Resolutely, he turned to track down Marilyn, hoping she could find a moment for him now.
In the plain white hall behind the church, the small gathering hovered around a banquet table spread with sandwiches and squares. Urns of coffee and tea sat on a side table. Green’s stomach contracted, for in his trek out to the country he had neglected to have lunch, but one glance at the small, crustless egg sandwiches dissuaded him.
He found Marilyn in the corner, talking intently with her children. Gordon was slouched against the wall, his fedora tilted and his eyebrow cocked with boredom, but Julia’s arms were crossed in annoyance. Green strode up, catching Julia’s impatient tone as he drew close.
“You should just bulldoze the whole place.”
“But there are memories —”
“There are memories everywhere,
