Chapter 4
The traveling case lay open on top of Malcolm’s bed.
He stood beside his bureau, staring at the open drawers.
What would he wear to bury his mother? In the next room, Maggie’s heart continued to beat, and he fought the urge to go in there and try to wake her—she would have an opinion about proper mourning clothes.
If there was one thing Maggie never lacked, it was opinions.
Those days are over, he thought. Gone would be the pressure of being Maggie Wise’s son, the expectations she had placed upon all her children.
The army had given Malcolm a temporary respite, but of the three of them, he was the one still here.
The one who could live up to Maggie’s standards, or so he told himself.
He laughed softly at the idea that going to war in Korea had been easier than being home in Elkhart. The smile remained on his face as he slid a pair of folded shirts from a drawer.
Muffled music came through the wall from Maggie’s bedroom.
Malcolm hadn’t wanted to leave her alone, but she’d waved him wordlessly away—she wanted him to get ready to travel.
Maggie had often said music was the only company she ever needed, and the velvety voice drifting from the next room belonged to Billie Holiday.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” was a haunting tune, full of longing and regret.
A number of crooners had recorded it, including Sinatra and Bing Crosby, but the Billie Holiday version was Maggie’s favorite.
His mother lay dying, listening to her favorite song, and just across the road, a stranger wanted Malcolm to abandon her.
Not a chance in hell.
The curtains billowed. When the gust deflated, he lay the folded shirts on top of other clothes he’d placed in his traveling case and went to the window. He had no view of the street from here, but he suspected the man he thought of as the raven remained there, watching.
He surprised himself by not caring. His mother had set him a task and he meant to fulfill it. Whatever this guy wanted, he wasn’t going to get it. Maggie Wise would be dead and unable to pay her debts.
Debts. Shit.
They’d discussed the idea that the raven might be a bill collector, but those guys weren’t out knocking on doors in the predawn hours unless they were leg breakers for some loan shark, and nobody in this house would have gotten involved with people like that.
Distracted by grief, he hadn’t considered that there were other members of the family.
Goddamn Elias. Malcolm sniffed derisively. That must be it.
The guy out under the willow tree had said some strange things, even maybe threatened Maggie, but as Malcolm played the conversation back in his head, he thought maybe it hadn’t really been about her at all. Except as a target.
Elias probably owed somebody a lot of money, a gambling debt that had grown so large that the person he owed had sent the raven to collect in any way possible.
There wasn’t much of value in the house, but the raven didn’t know that, so he was threatening Maggie because her son had skipped out on some gambling debts.
It made so much sense, viewed in that light.
“Elias,” he whispered to himself. “You dumb son of a bitch.”
How much money did his brother owe, and to whom?
Had Elias told them he would inherit the house after Maggie died, used that as collateral?
Malcolm didn’t know what Maggie had written into her will, but he figured Elias would receive at least a one-third share.
Maybe he would own the whole thing, and whoever he owed planned to take it once she’d breathed her last. Either way, his debts would prove a problem for Violet in the days to come.
Malcolm resolved to help her as best he could, but whatever trouble Elias had brought to their doorstep would have to wait.
A black suit hung in his closet. He touched the sleeve, rubbed the fabric between thumb and forefinger, and wondered at the necessity of bringing it along.
He didn’t know anyone in Maine, and if they had family up that way, Maggie had never mentioned them, so her funeral was likely to consist of a graveside blessing followed by the rhythm of shovels in soil.
Travel light whenever possible, Maggie had always said, and he meant to follow that advice.
No black suit. He could mourn his mother’s death without wearing a necktie. Though in this weather, he’d need his overcoat, which was gray tweed.
As he wondered what he might have forgotten to pack, he ran a hand over his jaw. If he meant to commit himself to Maggie’s instructions—and he did—he’d have precious little time to waste from the moment she passed. He ought to have a bath and a shave right now.
“This is absurd,” he whispered.
A quiet knock came at the door.
“Come in, Violet.”
The hinges squeaked as she stepped into his room.
There had been many nights when he’d lain awake thinking of the way Violet sometimes looked at him, and how often they shared a contemplative pause after an unintended touch.
Those nights, the knowledge that Maggie would hear the squeak of his hinges was sometimes all that kept him from rising from bed and going to Violet.
Decency and the law demanded he not dare, but honor couldn’t change how he felt.
“Maggie’s sleeping,” Violet said, unasked questions in her eyes. “I thought I should look in on you.”
“I’m nearly done.”
“Good. When you’re finished, I’ll throw a bag together for myself.”
He straightened up. “I’m sorry? Where are you going?”
The noise that came from her lips was too sad to be called a laugh. “What do you think, I’m going to stay here? Your mother is dying, her mind is failing, and she’s given you this lunatic errand. If you go and don’t come back, what’s to become of me?”
Malcolm knew the words he ought to say. Some reassurance that Elias would return to her, that as her husband, he would never let her fend for herself. But Violet wouldn’t believe that any more than Malcolm did.
“I’ll be back,” he said, glancing away, wondering if he should have kept his mother’s final request to himself. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Fate doesn’t always give us a choice,” Violet said. “No telling what kind of trouble you could get into that might keep you from coming back. You need someone to look out for you.”
Her lips twitched into something like a smile. So much remained unspoken.
Elias and Violet had met in a Chicago nightclub.
Beautiful, flinty-eyed, she was a singer who always kept her chin up, not afraid of anything or anyone.
She rarely talked about her childhood, but what Malcolm knew grieved him.
Her drunken mother had died in a fire. Three-year-old Violet had been saved by her father, who’d been broken by the loss, leaving her to be raised by a cold-eyed aunt who’d taught her how to dance, how to make up her face, and how to scratch the eyes of the lecherous upstairs neighbor.
The aunt had gotten a new boyfriend and thrown her out at fifteen.
Nightclubs and late nights had been her life, but to hear her tell it, Violet had always longed for the kind of quiet family life that Elias promised her.
Had she known at the time that they were polar opposites?
That Elias came from the quiet life and craved noise and danger and risk?
That he’d never love anything as much as he loved himself, gambling, and scotch, in that order?
Maybe she had known it, and maybe she hadn’t minded. Not at first.
Elias had brought her home to Elkhart, Indiana, like a souvenir instead of a wife. Every time he went back to Chicago in search of the risk he loved, he left Violet behind in the house with his mother. She might as well have been on a shelf, collecting dust.
When Malcolm had come back from Korea, he had seen enough of risk and danger to last a lifetime.
All he’d wanted was hard work during the day and a soft place to lay his head.
What he’d found, instead, was the company of a gentle woman who’d learned enough of life’s hard lessons that his moods didn’t trouble her.
It could’ve been a perfect match, except that they were off-limits to one another.
The upside of that was it meant they could skip the flirtations and become friends and confidants.
If only it had been that simple.
Malcolm’s heart ached every time he looked at her. Elias hadn’t been home to his wife in more than a year, but even before that, he’d barely taken the time to get to know her. The fool.
He wished she were free, and Violet had always known it. This had been a house full of unspoken truths for years, and that wouldn’t change tonight.
She crossed to the window, opening the curtains as if about to step onto a stage.
“No light on the horizon just yet,” she said.
“We’ll find some,” he replied.
“Do you think he’s on his own?”
Malcolm didn’t have to ask who she meant.
He had already checked every window, peering around as far as he could crane his neck to make sure the raven remained the only man out there spying on the house.
He wondered if she’d come to the same conclusion he had—that her husband’s gambling had gotten him, and them, into trouble at last.
“I think he’s waiting, just like us,” he said.
Violet turned to him, long and elegant in her dressing gown. “Not like us. He’s no more than a vulture, waiting for some lost soul to collapse out in the desert.”
“Agreed. But we’re all waiting, aren’t we? The three of us. The four of us, if we include Maggie.”
“I don’t know how you can stay so calm. Maggie behaves as if she’s sure trouble will follow her passing, and that fellow out there looks like trouble to me.”
“I don’t think that spooky bastard’s got anything to do with Maggie’s delusions.”
Violet cocked her head. “What, then?”
He didn’t want to go down that road. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever the guy wants, we won’t be here to give it to him. If it’s something in the house, I don’t suppose we can stop him from just taking it after we’re gone.”