“Sophia?” she breathed.
“My daughter,” he explained. “Guess not. She’s at college over in Grand Rapids. I thought maybe you two chummed around. You seem about her age.”
Jude realized Grimmel had named his daughter after his sister. She felt off balance standing in the store staring at him. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket and shook one out.
“Mind?” she asked, though by the way his eyes lit up, he didn’t mind.
“Not at all. Can I bum one? Wife never lets me buy em’ anymore.” He grinned sheepishly and again she was staring at her twin brother. The only thing missing was Peter’s chipped incisor and the scar over his right eyebrow from an accident on his bike.
“Why are you looking for me then?” He asked releasing a long satisfying exhalation of smoke.
Jude pulled her notebook from her bag and held it up as if in explanation.
“I’m a reporter checking into an old case.” The moment he heard the words, Grimmel’s demeanor changed. He stiffened and took an unconscious step back.
“It’s about-”
“I know what it’s about,” he said, glancing around the store as if he feared people might overhear.
“I just wanted to ask…”
But he stepped close to her and held up his hand. His eyes looked troubled, and Jude couldn’t tell if he was angry or merely sad.
“I can’t talk about this here. Meet me in twenty minutes at the cemetery out by Barnes Road.”
“The cemetery?” she grimaced, shaking her head.
“It’s private,” he told her, rolling his eyes as if exasperated at her immaturity - another signature Peter move.
“Okay,” she sighed, reluctant, but afraid he wouldn’t talk to her otherwise. “How do I get there?”
Chapter 21
September 1965
Hattie
“You can talk to me. I am training to be a psychotherapist, you know. I’ll soon have a degree in a frame and everything,” Damien told her, sitting on a park bench and patting the seat beside him.
Hattie sat, clasping her hands together. She looked at the light as it danced off the gold bracelet Gram Ruth had given her for her sixteenth birthday. A tiny gold heart seemed to shimmer and almost melt as she tilted it from side to side. She thought of Lucy’s revelations about their mama. Jude had insisted she was looking into it and in the meantime, Hattie keep her mouth shut.
“Do they mean anything?” Damien asked touching Hattie’s wrist. “The charms?”
She stared at his fingers trying to discern where her skin ended and his began. A cloud moved into the path of the sun and her momentary reverie slipped away.
She touched the heart.
“My Gram gave me the bracelet with this charm - a symbol of her love, she told me,” Hattie responded, tugging at the gold heart and having a terrible impulse to rip it off the delicate gold chain. She fought the urge and pointed at a paintbrush. “Jude gave me this because I paint, and Peter bought me this one.” She held up a little cat.
“Did you have a cat?” he asked.
Hattie smiled, remembering Felix, and shook her head.
“I did, but this one symbolized a dead cat.”
Damien made a face and cocked an eyebrow.
“Care to tell me more?”
Hattie looked at him realizing she was hearing the same words his patient’s heard when they sat in his office, perhaps reclining on a stiff sofa while he sat behind them taking notes, or scribbling pictures of the back of their heads.
“It’s a long story,” she said, and pointed at the last charm. It was a gold maple leaf. “My parents loved trees. We used to tap maple trees on our property though I only vaguely remember it. Jude and Peter have helped me fill in the blanks. This one’s for them.”
Damien had taken his hand away, but now he reached for her again, touching his finger to the leaf. Hattie looked at the knobby protrusions on his knuckles. His hands were so much larger than her own. Fine blonde hairs stood along the backs of his fingers. The sun had re-emerged, and she watched the light playing off those delicate hairs.
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” he asked.
She watched, mesmerized as his hand moved from the bracelet and took her own. It was soft, and warm, and strong, nearly swallowing her hand whole. She allowed her eyes to drift from their hands to his face. His gray eyes searched her.
“Do you want to?” she asked. Hattie had been told many times throughout her life she was beautiful, but it was always spoken by people who loved her: Gram, Camille, Jude and Peter. She had never kissed a boy, never even had a strong urge, but now she sat with a man and he looked at her in a way that felt good and terrifying.
He grinned and nodded.
“Okay, yes. I think I would like that,” she murmured, a rush of warmth flooding her face. She took a deep breath and looked back toward the canopy of trees.
Jude
The cemetery sat on the edge of town, tucked behind an eight-foot stone wall crawling with ivy. Iron gates opened to the country road beyond. It seemed out of place with its towering oak trees and lush green grass.
Jude parked and walked among the headstones reading the names. After twenty-five minutes a red pickup pulled into the cemetery. Grimmel parked behind a towering row of evergreen trees.
He walked to Jude, looking over his shoulder.
“Why so skittish?” she asked.
He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and squinted at her in the sunlight.
“If you’re here why I think you’re here, then you already know.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Can you tell me about Sophia and Rosemary?”
He closed his eyes for a lingering moment as if the mere sound of their names physically hurt.
“Why are you looking into this, Jude? It’s been thirty years for Christ’s sake.”
Jude nodded, contemplating her answer. A part of her wanted to spill the truth, tell Grimmel everything, and enlist him in the search for their mother. But at Jude’s core she lacked the trust instinct. Grimmel was a stranger, her history was a web of lies, and she felt safer when she worked alone. That was why she hadn’t told Hattie she was going to Mason - her mother’s home town. Hattie opened up to people, she let things slip without thought of how that information might be used against her.
Jude shrugged playing only mildly interested.
“My editor heard about it from a friend of a friend - that kind of thing. He sent me down here to see what I could find out.”
“So, there may be no story?” Grimmel asked, scanning the stone wall like someone might climb over it at any moment.
“If there’s no story, there’s no story,” she said flipping open her notebook to a blank page.
Grimmel nodded.
“Sophia didn’t do it. Let me just start with that. She was thirteen years old. How Rosemary’s mother could have blamed her-” He threw up his hands, his face growing red. “They gathered at our house like it was a witch hunt. I swear they would have dragged her through the streets. When the Sheriff found the knife, well…”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Jude stopped him. “Start at the beginning.”
Grimmel pushed his hands through his reddish hair leaving it sticking up.
“Sophia was playing in the woods. It was August. The sheriff had stopped by that morning looking for Rosemary Bell, a little girl who lived a few miles away. She and Sophia weren’t real close, but they chummed around now and then. Rosemary hadn’t come home the night before. Anyway, Sophia was out playin’ in the woods and saw Rosemary.” He stopped abruptly, and Jude spun around thinking someone had entered the cemetery, but they were alone.