The Final Victim(25)

She supposes she could ask for vanilla pudding instead, or even chocolate, but that would mean striking up a conversation, and potentially inviting other topics.

It's much easier, much safer, to just eat the tapioca, and whatever else the nurse brings to her.

Today it was sloppy joes, overcooked carrots, and pudding; yesterday, creamed beef, limp string beans the color of jarred olives, and stewed peaches.

Institutional food. If you're hungry enough-and Jeanne invariably is-you'll eat it.

Jeanne eats it, and she remembers…

Remembers beans freshly picked off the vine: stem ends snapping easily beneath her fingers; their vibrant, grassy shade of green retained even after they were slightly steamed; delicious buttered and salted-the crisp burst of flavor on her tongue…

Remembers peaches plucked from the orchard out back, so ripe your fingertips could rub the skin from the flesh at the slightest touch, revealing luscious, pink-tinged, orange-yellow fruit that always reminded Jeanne of a Low Country sunset…

"Jeanne?" Melanie persists. "More tapioca?"

She shakes her head vehemently.

Now her peaches and her beans come from cans, plopped in compartments of thick beige paper trays and delivered by young women who speak to her with the measured simplicity of a preschool teacher and merely bide their time here, their thoughts on their otherwise fascinating lives.

Petite blond Melanie is Jeanne's favorite by far of all the nurses who have come through here over the years; she, at least, doesn't seem particularly eager to leave when her shift is over. She doesn't seem to have much of a life away from Oakgate. Often, she arrives early or stays longer than she needs to, bustling around reassuringly, often humming.

She's always, always cheerful. Too cheerful, almost. Never before has Jeanne ever encountered another human being who doesn't seem to have a bad day-or even a so-so day-ever.

But she doesn't only sing and hum and, on occasion, whistle jauntily. She talks, too, ostensibly to Jeanne, but sometimes, it seems, to herself, often about herself. She reveals in disarming detail a childhood spent in one foster home after another, abusive parents who willingly signed away their rights. She spent years praying she'd be adopted, and realized in her teens that the prayer would never be answered.

You'd think a person like that would grow up to be a glum, pessimistic adult. But not Melanie.

She even wound up on the streets for a few years, and has alluded to doing whatever was necessary to stay alive. Then, she said, along came a wealthy older gentleman who took her under his wing, got her an apartment, put her through nursing school.

"If it weren't for him, Jeanne, who knows where I'd be?" she likes to ask. She also likes to answer. "I know where I'd be. Dead."

Jeanne would be very interested to know more about the mysterious benefactor who saved her. Whenever Melanie mentions him, Jeanne notices that she fails to reveal even his first name-and senses that the oversight is deliberate. Jeanne can't help but sense an uncharacteristic reticence that hints there might be pertinent details Melanie isn't sharing. But asking about the man would open the door to reciprocal interaction-and perhaps, emotional complications-that Jeanne just doesn't need.

Certainly not now, when she has a difficult decision weighing on her mind.

Decision?

What decision?

You know what you have to do, Jeanne. You always knew what you 'd do if it came down to this…

But not yet.

Not when there's still a chance.

"Would you like to get back into bed now, and take a nap?"

She shakes her head at Melanie's query, preferring to remain here in the window, where she can watch the driveway below.

They all left a short time ago, separately, in pairs. First Charlotte and her daughter, then Phyllida and Gib, followed shortly by Phyllida's husband whose name Jeanne can't recall, toting their young son and a beach umbrella.

Charlotte's husband, Royce, left hours earlier in his silver Audi, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase as he does most mornings-probably going to his office if it's a weekday.

Is it a weekday?

Where is Royce's office?

What does he even do?

If Jeanne ever knew, she can't remember.

Nor is it important.

"What day is it?" she asks the nurse, bustling somewhere behind her.

"Did you say something, Jeanne?" Melanie is instantly at her side, eager to be engaged in conversation.

"What day is it?"Jeanne is careful to maintain a monotone this time.

"The date? Let's see, it must be July-"

"No, the day. What day? Saturday, or…?"

"Oh, it's Tuesday."

Tuesday.

A weekday.

Her grandnephew and both grandnieces were dressed in dark-colored, professional-looking suits.

They're going to the lawyer's office, Jeanne concludes, momentarily pleased with her detective work.

Then, as she acknowledges what that means-Gilbert's will is about to be read-the tapioca pudding goes into a spin cycle in her stomach.

In all his years as an attorney, Tyler Hawthorne has never faced the reading of a will with as much trepidation as he does now, as he paces his Drayton Street office.

It isn't just because he and Gilbert Xavier Remington II had been friends since childhood. When they lost Silas Neville-the third member of the close-knit group formed in a boarding school dormitory almost eighty Septembers ago-Tyler was mostly just sorrowful.