Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_03 by Death in Lovers' Lane

March loved Maggie.
    He might have loved her enough to kill her.

seven
    T HIS room had a smell, too. Of sweat and never-washed trash cans and the embedded smoke from a thousand cigarettes. The bleak brown walls needed a paint job. A water leak had left an irregular, grainy stain on the north wall. The gray cement floors had been sloppily mopped, and there was a long sticky streak where some drink had spilled. Pebbled glass covered the windows, so the light had a milky hue like tears on porcelain cheeks. There might be a world out there, but you’d never know it from here.
    Rita Duffy looked dumpy in the jail-issued orange coverall. Her thick blond hair still sprigged in an untidy mass. Her splotchy face still bore no makeup. But her pale blue eyes were no longer dazed. Instead, they glittered with fear.
    â€œI’m scared. I’m scared to death.” Her high voice trembled. “They think I killed that girl. I didn’t do it. For God’s sake, I didn’t do it. And nobody will listen to me.”
    â€œI’ll listen, Rita. Tell me about Wednesday. Tell me what happened.” I scooted forward a little in my blue plastic chair.
    Rita sat on the other side of a plain wooden table,its oak veneer scarred by cigarette burns and rings from sweaty pop cans.
    â€œWednesday…” One hand fingered the big metal zipper of her coverall. “I went out to the cemetery. I took a pumpkin, a great big one with a toothy grin.”
    A jack-o’-lantern?
    â€œCarla would be fourteen now. Maybe she wouldn’t even care that much about Halloween. But she loved it so much and we always had to keep our pumpkin on the porch all the way to Thanksgiving.” A sweet smile curved Rita’s pudgy lips, made them look lovely and loving. “November was her favorite month. I took leaves, pretty red and gold ones like she used to bring inside to me, running so fast to show me.” Rita lifted her hands, cupped them, stretched them out toward me; then, reluctantly, as the memory in her mind dissolved, her hands fell apart, sank to the scarred table. “She was only eight that last summer. She got sick July fifth. She woke up with a sore throat. I thought maybe we’d let her stay up too late, that she’d gotten too excited over the fireworks.”
    She shook her head. Suddenly, she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the tears.
    â€œI’m sorry, Rita. I know.”
    Her eyes opened. Tears brimmed. She made no effort to wipe them away. It was as if she’d cried so much for so long that tears were as natural as breathing.
    â€œYou know.” Her gaze was as open and direct as a child’s. “You do know, don’t you?”
    I knew. I told her about Bobby.
    For a moment, we were two mothers sharing grief, sharing joy.
    â€œâ€¦she giggled a lot. You know how little girls…”
    â€œâ€¦he and his dad would order snails for hors d’oeuvres and they’d split them, Bobby taking the head and Richard…”
    â€œâ€¦loved to play Monopoly. She always picked the little iron for her…”
    â€œâ€¦even when he was really little, he’d pretend to write stories, carrying his paper and pencil…”
    The dingy room receded and each of us flowered for a magical moment in a world that would never exist again.
    That excursion made the real world both better and worse when we returned to it.
    Better because love remembered is a balm for pain.
    Worse because both Rita and I knew how much Wednesday meant to her.
    The light seeped out of her face, leaving it heavy and sullen.
    â€œI could have killed him.” Now Rita’s voice was heavy, too. “This time, this time, I think I would have. I had a gun with me this time.”
    My hands rested on my slacks. I could feel the thick ridges of the corduroy. That was real, but so was the anger pulsing in this room.
    â€œA gun?”
    â€œHis gun.” Rita’s smile was sour.