The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(43)

“Bringing him back inside,” I said.

“They could hurt him. They should leave him be. What is so terrible about him being in his garden?” said the nurse.

“They are worried he will die out there,” I said. “And that would embarrass them.” Male pride again.

“Or are they worried he will live out there?” said Anna. She stepped forward, and I held her back.

“If you get involved, it will only make it more difficult.” As she had said herself, they were not her sons. And this was their father.

So we watched together as Tomas and Liam struggled with a recalcitrant man. He kept trying to swing his arms at them. Any impact would end up with fragile elderly bones breaking, and Tomas and Liam had to keep ducking, and shouting, and then at last I saw Tobias collapse. It was as sudden as if he were a puppet and the strings had been cut.

Liam caught his upper body and then Tomas gathered up his legs. They carried him through the dirt, into the house, and back upstairs.

“Careful, careful!” warned the nurse.

Tobias was filthy from his feet to his lips. Anna made a face as she saw black mulch falling into the carpet.

“Tobias always made sure he didn’t get the carpet dirty after he worked in the garden,” she said, more wistful than upset about the dirt.

“I’ll clean it,” I promised, and followed her upstairs, looking for any sign of a vacuum.

As soon as Tobias was back on the bed, the hospice nurse began taking his blood pressure and pulse. “He’s very close to the end now,” she said. “He exerted himself too much. I should have seen this coming, but perhaps it is for the best.” She glanced up at Tomas and Liam.

“For the best,” muttered Anna angrily. Not long before, when Liam had come down the stairs, she had believed that Tobias had died without her at his side. Now she was going to make sure that wasn’t possible. She pushed the nurse aside and held Tobias’s hand. “Get out!” she shouted, the veins in her forehead red and protruding. “All of you, get out. I want to be alone with my husband now!”

I retreated first, strangely satisfied at her outburst. Shortly afterward, I heard the other three come down the stairs behind me.

The sons stared at me as we stood facing each other in the front room, but I was used to dealing with grown sons staring. I wasn’t going to say anything contrary to Anna’s request. She deserved this moment alone with her husband, and I was glad she had finally felt able to demand it. It must have been very difficult, having the nurse and her two stepsons in the house, even if she loved those sons as her own.

I asked about a vacuum and Tomas found it for me. I spent twenty minutes doing my best to erase any sign of garden dirt through the house while the sons talked quietly in the kitchen with the nurse. When I was done, I put the vacuum away and wandered to the back door, where Tobias had so recently been brought in.

A part of me was waiting because I didn’t know if Anna would want me to be there when she came back down. But as I stood there looking at the garden, I caught a glimpse of something in the soil where Tobias had been, something that wasn’t mulch, and wasn’t dirt or plants.

I opened the door and stepped outside, thinking about Tobias’s insistence on seeing his wife’s grave. A little wind blew into my face, and I walked down the stepping stones and then up to the second level where Tobias had been.

In the summer, I would never have been able to see it. It would have been covered in plants. In the winter, it would have been covered in snow. And as soon as spring came, Tobias would have been out there, digging around, putting in wood chips or setting out the tomato cages and the climbing frames for the beans. But now, just now, because Tobias had not yet had a chance to go out, I could see the flat off-white stone, glittering with bits of silver like granite did. It was granite, I thought, even if it was uncut. It looked like a stone you might pick out at a stonemason’s for a gravestone. It was flush with the ground here, nearly invisible. But this was where Tobias had come and knelt, his arms stretched out almost as if to cover the stone with his whole body. He had kissed the dirt with his lips. Or was it not the dirt he’d been kissing at all?

My mind whirled. Tobias said he hadn’t scattered his wife’s ashes anywhere, but what if he had been lying? Or if he had forgotten? Could she be here?

It might even make sense that he would lie about it to Anna. Clearly, she was sensitive about the topic of her husband’s first wife. It might bother her to think that all that time her husband spent in the garden was time spent with his first wife, in his heart.

Why wouldn’t he tell his sons? Did he think they might judge him, think him morbid? Or even a little creepy?

I leaned over and saw there was something long and thin half-buried in the dirt near the stone. I dug at it, curious, and when I pulled it out, I realized it was a hammer, ancient enough that the wood was almost rotted through and the metal head was rusted.

Tobias had let other tools get rusted and ruined. I had already seen that in the shed. I suppose it was no stretch that he might leave tools out in the garden, as well. Was it an accident that it was here, left outside since the fall? I didn’t know what he would use a hammer for in his garden, but that didn’t mean anything.

I stood up and carried the hammer back into the shed. I began to wipe at it to get off the dirt, though I knew it made no sense. I should just throw it away. A large chunk of dirt fell off the hammer, and I bent down to pick it up off the floor I had spent so much time cleaning only a week ago. That was when I saw what was underneath the dirt. There was hair, matted together by something brown and flaking.