It was a whole damned week before they found him, and I was half outta my mind before they did. Selena came back on Wednesday. I called her late Tuesday afternoon to say her father had gone missin and it was startin to look serious. I asked her if she wanted to come home n she said she did. Melissa Caron-Tanya's mother, you know-went n fetched her. I left the boys right where they were-just dealin with Selena was enough for a start. She caught me out in my little vegetable garden on Thursday, still two days before they finally found Joe, and she says, “Mamma, tell me somethin.”
“All right, dear,” I says. I think I sounded calm enough, but I had a pretty good idear of what was comm-oh yes indeed.
“Did you do anything to him?” she asks.
All of a sudden my dream came back to me-Selena at four in her pretty pink dress, raisin up my sewin scissors and cuttin off her own nose. And I thought-prayed-'God, please help me lie to my daughter. Please, God. I'll never ask You for nothing again if You'll just help me lie to my daughter so she'll believe me n never doubt.”
“No,” I says. I was wearin my gardenin gloves, but I took em off so I could put my bare hands on her shoulders. I looked her dead in the eye. “No, Selena,” I told her. “He was drunk n ugly n he choked me hard enough to leave these bruises on my neck, but I didn't do nothing to him. All I did was leave, n I did that because I was scairt to stay. You can understand that, can't you? Understand and not blame me? You know what it's like, to be scairt of him. Don't you?”
She nodded, but her eyes never left mine. They were a darker blue than I've ever seen em-the color of the ocean just ahead of a squall-line. In my mind's eye I saw the blades of the scissors flashin, and her little button of a nose fallin plop into the dust. And I'll tell you what I think-I think God granted half my prayer that day. It's how He usually answers em, I've noticed. No lie I told about Joe later was any better'n the one I told Selena that hot July afternoon amongst the beans n cukes… but did she believe me? Believe me n never doubt? As much as I'd like to think the answer to that is yes, I can't. It was doubt that made her eyes so dark, then n ever after.
“The worst I'm guilty of,” I says, “is buyin him a bottle of booze-of tryin to bribe him to be nice-when I shoulda known better.”
She looked at me a minute longer, then bent down n took hold of the bag of cucumbers I'd picked. “All right,” she said. “I'll take these in the house for you.”
And that was all. We never spoke of it again, not before they found him n not after. She must have heard plenty of talk about me, both on the island and at school, but we never spoke of it again. That was when the coldness started to come in, though, that afternoon in the garden. And when the first crack in the wall families put between themselves n the rest of the world showed up between us. Since then it's only gotten wider n wider. She calls and writes me just as regular as clockwork, she's good about that, but we're apart just the same. We're estranged. What I did was mostly done for Selena, not for the boys or because of the money her Dad tried to steal. It was mostly for Selena that I led him on to his death, and all it cost me to protect her from him was the deepest part of her love for me. I once heard my own Dad say God pitched a bitch on the day He made the world, and over the years I've come to understand what he meant. And do you know the worst of it? Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's so funny you can't help from laughin even while it's all fallin apart around you.
Meantime, Garrett Thibodeau and his barbershop cronies kep busy not findin Joe. It'd gotten to the point where I thought I'd just have to stumble on him myself, as little as I liked the idear. If it hadn't been for the dough, I'd've been happy to leave him down there until the Last Trump blew. But the money was over there in Jonesport, sittin in a bank account with his name on it, and I didn't fancy waitin seven years to have him declared legally dead so I could get it back. Selena was gonna be startin college in just a little over two years, and she'd want some of that money to get herself goin.
The idear that Joe mighta taken his bottle into the woods behind the house n either stepped in a trap or taken a fall walkin home tipsy in the dark finally started to go the rounds. Garrett claimed it was his idear, but that's awful hard for me to believe, havin gone to school with him like I did. No matter. He put a sign-up sheet on the door of the town hall Thursday afternoon, and on Sat'dy mornin-a week after the eclipse, this was-he fielded a search-party of forty or fifty men.
