All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming Page B

you’d think. Of course, in his case, he’s trying to keep it all bottled up. I wish he’d sit down and have a good cry like you just did.” She spooned sugar into her coffee. “He’s at work now. Can you believe it? He thinks finding whoever’s responsible is going to make him feel better. My poor boy.”
    “Is there anything I can do?”
    Margy looked at her shrewdly. “I dunno. Is there?”
    Clare examined the surface of her coffee. “I mean, any way I can help you out.”
    “I guess I’ve got things well enough in hand. We can’t make any arrangements until her sister gets here—poor woman, if she didn’t take it some hard when I broke the news. She and Linda’s all that’s left of their family.”
    “Who are you going to have do the service?”
    “Well, Linda was a Catholic when she was young, but she never attended any church as long as I knew her. I figured I’d ask Dr. Tobin. He’s my pastor over to Center Street Methodist in Fort Henry. Of course”—and she suddenly sounded every one of her seventy-five years—“everything’s on hold until the medical examiner finishes up whatever he has to do. I told that to her sister, but she would fly up here. Janet’s husband’s gone to Albany to pick her up.”
    Clare smiled a little. “Sounds like you have things well in hand.” She examined the kitchen. Hand-hooked hot pads shared space with flyers exhorting citizens to STOP THE DREDGING. On the round-shouldered refrigerator, magnets held up grandchildren’s drawings and clippings about acid rain. It was nothing like her grandmother Fergusson’s kitchen in North Carolina, but it had the same feeling. Like you had rounded all the bases and come home safe.
    “I should go,” she said, making no effort to rise.
    Margy dropped her hand over Clare’s. Her knuckles were swollen. Arthritic. Clare had never noticed before. “There is something I need to talk to someone about.”
    Clare looked at her.
    “You prob’ly know Russell moved in with me about ten days ago. He seemed to be doing okay. He went to this marriage-counseling thing they were doing and came back and was on a pretty even keel.”
    Clare nodded.
    “But then Sunday, he took off. Didn’t say where he was going. Didn’t say he wa’nt spending the night here, but I didn’t see him again till Monday noontime. He was… it put me in mind of when he came home from Vietnam. Like his body was here, but all the rest of him was gone. And wherever he was gone to was no good place. He just went upstairs and took a nap, right in the middle of the afternoon. That’s not like him.”
    Margy pressed her lips together tightly. “The thing is, this was before we all heard about Linda. I’m… it seems a terrible thing to say, but I’m so worried about him. I’m worried that something might have—”
    Clare opened her mouth to cut off whatever Margy was going to say, to stop her before she said something neither of them wanted to hear, but she didn’t get the chance. The kitchen door swung in, and with a snow-shedding stomp, Russ was inside.
    Margy’s hand clutched hers. “Sweetie,” she said.
    Russ froze, the door still open, his tartan scarf half unwound from his neck.
    “Reverend Clare called on me to offer her condolences.”
    Russ’s glasses steamed opaque in the moist, warm air. He took them off and tucked them into his shirt pocket. Nothing else moved.
    Margy sighed. “Shut the door, Russell.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said. His mother’s command seemed to break the spell, and he turned away from them, closing the door and shrugging out of his parka, which he hung from a hook on the back of the door.
    He tossed his scarf on top of the washing machine and bent to take off his boots. When he stood, he stared straight at Clare, and she felt his regard as an actual pain down her breastbone. With his sandy brown hair and the sun and smile lines around his eyes, he had always reminded her of summer, but his face now was