Lee had promised his mother he would stop by briefly, and it was a short drive up the hill to her house. When Lee and Butts stepped out of the car, they were greeted by a chorus of giggles. But when they looked around, they couldn't see the source of all the merriment. The woods lay lush around them, in shameless summer fullness, with the deep green decadence of late August. The leaves clung to the trees as if they knew that in just a few weeks they would be parting forever, in the eternal seasonal cycle of death and renewal.
The giggles sounded again, and Lee heard rustling in the bushes next to the toolshed. There was no garage on the property, only an old wooden toolshed at the foot of the driveway. Fiona always claimed to like it that way, saying that she didn't see any reason cars had to be "put to bed at night, as though they were children." Lee suspected she just didn't want to spend the money. Cars meant nothing to her-she drove a battered old blue Pontiac. She preferred to lavish her time and money on antiques and expensive home furnishings. Her house looked like something out of an upscale decorating magazine, with English hunting prints, medieval armoires, and handwoven Persian carpets.
Lee peered into the thicket surrounding the shed and saw a flash of yellow hair, then red. "I see two little birds hiding in the bushes," he said, coming closer.
The giggles resumed again, growing more hysterical, as two small figures tumbled out of the bushes onto the lawn-his niece Kylie and her friend Meredith. The girls rolled around on their backs, laughing and clutching at each other, until Kylie got to her knees, panting.
"Did we scare you, Uncle Lee?"
"Well, I was certainly surprised," he said.
Meredith got to her feet and brushed the grass from her clothes. She wore green pedal pushers and a yellow T-shirt, while Kylie had on a white cotton dress with purple flowers. Meredith's bright red hair was in a thick braid down her back, and if not exactly pretty, at least she looked less odd than she had on Kylie's birthday.
"Who's that?" Meredith said, squinting up at Detective Butts, who was fishing a cigar out of his jacket pocket.
"That's Detective Butts," Lee replied.
"No way!" Meredith said. "That is so cool!"
"Uncle Lee works with detectives all the time," Kylie said airily, pulling twigs and leaves from her hair. Her bare knees had grass stains, and her fingertips were stained purple.
"You're a real detective?" Meredith said, walking over to Butts. She was only a few inches shorter than he was.
"Yup," he said, placing the cigar between his teeth. "For instance, I know you've been berry picking."
"Hey," said Kylie. "How can you know that?"
Meredith laughed and grabbed Kylie's hand, holding up her stained fingertips.
"Duh," she snorted. "That's an easy one."
"You want me to do something harder?" Butts asked, regarding her through half-closed eyes.
"Uh-sure," Meredith answered, and Kylie nodded.
"Then stick around," Butts said. "I'll come up with something when you least expect it."
"Okay," Meredith said. "Can I be your assistant?"
"I don't see why not," Butts replied.
"Me too!" Kylie chimed in. "Can I be your second assistant?"
"Okay. You can both be my assistants."
Lee was pleased to see how sweet the burly detective was with the girls. He would not have guessed Butts had a soft spot for kids, but he had learned that people are often surprising.
"Okay," Lee said. "Shall we go find Fiona?" "Oh, she's with Stan," Meredith said, poking Kylie in the ribs.
Stan Paloggia was Fiona's boyfriend, or, as she called him, "my ha-ha boyfriend," insisting she was too old to be dating anyone. Stan didn't share her view-he was doggedly faithful, following her around like a trained seal. Fiona took frequent breaks from his devoted companionship, and refused to marry him, though he had had asked her half a dozen times. For instance, she hadn't invited him to Kylie's birthday dinner, which was typical of how she treated him.
"Is he your grandmother's boyfriend?" Butts asked.
Meredith lopped off the top of a honeysuckle bush and waved the plucked sprig under her nose, inhaling deeply. "Stan loves her."
Kylie grabbed a honeysuckle branch of her own and yanked, but it was too thick and wouldn't come off. Lee leaned down and broke it off for her. The honeysuckle this year was wild, rampant, growing everywhere with heedless promiscuity. He loved the smell, but Fiona hated it-she waged a continuous war against "those cheeky weeds," as she called them. Fiona wasn't enamored of flowers of any kind. As far as she was concerned, if you couldn't eat it, it wasn't worth growing.
When they arrived at the house, Fiona insisted they stay for iced tea and lemon cake. Lee was about to protest, but when he saw Butts's eyes light up at the mention of lemon cake, he acquiesced. They went out to the front porch, where the girls volunteered to set the table.
Fiona pointed to a round wrought-iron table with a glass cover.
"My latest estate sale acquisition. How do you like it?" "Very nice," Butts remarked, settling his bulk into the nearest chair.
"It's late nineteenth century," she said, flicking away a few stray twigs from its polished surface. "I don't want to scratch it… Let's see, what can I use? Oh, yes!" She turned to Lee. "Last week I came across straw place mats I'd completely forgotten about… Where did I see them?" she said. "Oh, I remember-they're in the closet where I keep the Christmas ornaments."
"I'll get them," he said.
He went inside and climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing, where there was a built-in closet in the hallway. He opened it and began to look among the boxes of ornaments, wrapped in crumpled bits of tissue paper, faded and brittle with age. Fiona never could stand to throw anything away if it could be at all useful. That included old tissue paper, so the ornaments were carefully wrapped in the same ragged, yellowed bits of paper year after year.
At the back of the closet, he saw the edge of what looked like a green leather book of some kind. He pulled it out carefully-he had never seen it before. On the front, in gold script, the word SCRAPBOOK was embossed. He opened the cover and carefully leafed through the yellowing pages. There were many photos of himself and Laura as children-playing with cousins, opening Christmas presents, dressing their fat yellow tabby cat in baby clothes, squinting into the sun in front of their aunt's swimming pool. There were even a few photos of Fiona herself, though none of his father. Lee didn't know what she had done with all the pictures of him after he left-perhaps she had burned them.
As he reached the middle of the album, a piece of paper fell out. He bent down to pick it up and saw that it was a birth certificate. It was dated two years after Laura was born.
State of New Jersey
BORN TO: Duncan and Fiona Campbell Adrian Campbell, baby boy
And underneath it, one word: Stillborn.
He stared at it. This was the first time he had any inkling that he and Laura had very nearly had a baby brother. His mother had never spoken of it. And yet, in a flash, it explained everything.
"So that's what happened," he murmured.
He slipped the document back where he had found it and replaced the book. He didn't know why his mother had kept this secret from them all these years. Maybe she didn't want their pity, maybe she didn't want to relive that horrible day, or maybe it was too linked with their father's desertion. Whatever her reason, the subject was clearly taboo. And yet she had saved his birth certificate-which, sadly, was also his death certificate. He wondered if she was even aware she still had it. But knowing how obsessively organized Fiona was, he thought it more likely that she had sent him to find the place mats because, on some unconscious level, she wanted him to find it.
But at last Lee understood his mother's need to suppress her emotions. If she ever fully unleashed her grief and rage, he thought, she must imagine the resulting torrent would drown her. He found the place mats, closed the closet door, and went back downstairs. The irony didn't escape him-now he and his mother each had a secret to keep from each other.