Susie eats from a container of yogurt while sitting in her parked truck; then she heads over to Main Street, where, to her surprise, Dr. Henderson agrees to see her, although he has a waiting room filled with patients.
“Are you writing an article about Belinda?” he asks when she brings up the name.
“I’m just interested.”
“In?”
“The circumstances of her death, for one.”
Susie would have guessed that Dr. Henderson, who’s known to be cool and businesslike. would insist that the circumstances of a patient’s death were privileged information, but he seems relieved to be talking about this subject. He takes off his glasses and leans back in his chair.
“Acute pneumonia,” he tells Susie. “Which, of course, is absolute bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” Susie says.
“She died because he let her die. I could have done something if someone had called me. By the time she was brought into the hospital-and then only because Judith Dale had happened to stop by and Judith had understood how desperate the circumstances were-Belinda’s fever was raging and she couldn’t breathe. She died of neglect.”
“But she’d been your patient for years, surely you must have sensed something was wrong with her situation at home before that?”
“My dear, something’s wrong in every situation if you look hard enough.”
“Well, let me ask you this. Did you feel that some of her physical ailments, not the pneumonia of course, but the broken bones, the bruises, were caused by her husband?”
“It doesn’t matter what I feel,” Dr. Henderson says in his coolest tone. “Did I see him hit her? No. Did she ever confide in me that she was abused in any way? No. She did not.”
Susie Justice can feel a pulse in the side of her throat.
“But she’s dead,” Susie says.
“That,” Dr. Henderson allows, “is the sad truth.”
That night, after Susie has told Ed Milton everything, he simply shakes his head. They’re at his place, an apartment on the High Road, and he’s cooking fettucini Alfredo, which smells even better because Susie is starving, in spite of the yogurt and the box of cookies she ate earlier in the day.
“All you have on him,” Ed says, “is that he was guilty of ignoring her.”
“Come on,” Susie says. “It’s like some secret that everybody knew, including that damned Dr. Henderson who always acts as if he was higher than God.”
“Everybody thinks. If you ask me, she killed herself.”
“How can you say that?” Susie can’t wait for dinner and has gotten a jar of olives from the fridge. She stopped at home to get her mail and bring the dogs along with her, who seem oddly comfortable here at Ed’s place. Best of all, Ed doesn’t complain when two extremely smelly and slobbery canine specimens stretch out on his couch.
“She could have phoned Dr. Henderson herself. It sounds like she wanted to die.”
“That’s horrible,” Susie says, but she is not entirely sure he’s wrong. “So what do I do now?” she asks.
Ed Milton smiles. He used to hate it when cases didn’t get solved; now he figures that some situations are simply beyond human control. “Belinda died twelve years ago, and it seems that legally Hollis had nothing to do with it. He probably smacked her around, but there are no comprehensive hospital records to back that up and no eyewitnesses. Basically, you have nothing.”
“I don’t accept that,” Susie says, which may be the moment when Ed finishes falling head over heels for her.
“You don’t have the makings for a criminal case,” Ed says. “What you have, Susie, is a moral issue, and it’s one which can’t be tried in front of your dad.”
Susie doesn’t ask Ed’s opinion about whether or not she should pass this new information on to March, who, it’s quite clear, doesn’t want to hear anything negative. This is not a new dilemma for Susanna Justice. Since that summer when she saw her father walk past the roses and knew he was in love, she has been wrestling with this puzzle: How do you tell an awful truth to someone you care for and wish to protect? She thinks about the nights when her father phoned home to say he had to work late, and the sinking feeling she had in her stomach whenever she took that message and had to report back to her mother, as if she and not the Judge were the liar.
Once, and only once, she tried to tell her mother. She was a freshman at Oberlin and home for the holidays. She was full of herself, and how much she had learned in a single semester. She was certain of everything a woman could be, all of which, of course, her mother was not. They had been wrapping presents at the dining room table, bickering over why Susie would not be allowed to move out of the dorm and into an apartment with her then boyfriend, when the argument had become heated.
“End of conversation,” Louise had finally said. “Your father will not allow it.”
“My father!” Susie had shouted. Why, he was probably with his mistress at the very moment they were wrapping his Christmas presents in gold paper. “Why should I listen to anything he has to say about morality? If you knew what he was really like, you’d walk out of here and divorce him!”
Louise Justice had gotten up and slapped Susie across the face. Louise had never hit anyone before, but she hit Susie so hard she left a mark on her cheek, making certain to silence her daughter before she could divulge anything more.
“You don’t know the first thing about love,” Louise Justice had told Susie that night. “And you certainly don’t know anything about marriage.”
This assessment is probably still true, Susie thinks as she takes off her clothes and gets into bed with Ed Milton later that night. She circles her arms around Ed and kisses him. Does she love him or not? How will she ever know? She loves the way he is in bed, she trusts his opinions, values what he thinks, yearns to see him at odd hours of the day. So what does all that add up to?
Look at the trouble love brings. Look at the mess it makes. Who knows what caused Belinda to marry Hollis-bad judgment or compassion or desire, maybe even loneliness. Who can tell why March would throw everything away for a worthless man, or why Bill Justice, the most honest man in town, would tell bold-faced lies every day of his life. There, in Ed Milton’s bed. Susanna Justice suddenly needs to know if she’s the only one so completely in the dark about such matters. Ed is honest; he’ll tell the truth. His back is to her, and the hour is late, but she asks Ed anyway. Have you ever been in love? She’s certain that he laughs when he turns to her, but in the morning she can’t quite remember if he actually said, Not before, or if, perhaps, that was only what she wanted to hear.
17
On Saturday morning, Gwen hurries to meet Hank at the coffee shop, so rushed for time that she forgets to touch the Founder’s knee for luck as she runs past the statue. Hank left a note taped to Tarot’s stall for her to find when she went to feed and groom the horse earlier, inviting her to meet him for breakfast.
He’s at a rear booth, and Gwen tosses herself into the seat across from him. “What’s the occasion?” She grins. “Is it your treat?”
“For once.” Hank hands her a menu. “He’s actually paying me to do some work, so I figured I’d take you out.”