The Collective(32)
We might have been over-suspicious, but I do recall one incident, years after we moved to Mount Shady. Matt and I were having dinner in Havenkill when a couple of burly young cops rousted a drunk from outside a neighboring bar in the middle of a rainstorm, one of them using so much force that I thought he might dislocate the guy’s arm. It was around the same time as the town made headlines over a high school hit-and-run case, in which the rich people involved behaved just as disturbingly as those cops. I don’t recall the details, but I do know that Matt and I spoke then about having made the right decision in putting the river between us. And I still feel that way as I stop at a red light on Havenkill’s main drag, allowing a picture-perfect family to pass in their matching Canada Goose coats.
The library is located at the end of a side street, in one of the more modest areas of town. It’s a boxy brick building with ionic columns out front that seem a little too important for such an unassuming-looking place, and when I see it, I remember that I’ve been here before, with nine-year-old Emily, when she was researching a paper about the Hudson Valley and the Revolutionary War. Violet Langford could have easily been there that day, but if she was, we didn’t speak to her. Emily didn’t like to ask for help, even back then. She preferred to discover things on her own.
I park my car and walk into the building. As mentioned on its website, the Havenkill Library is open seven days a week, but it isn’t a large library at all—just two small wings, the adult one to the left, children’s to the right, and a small bank of computers at the center, in the area in front of the checkout desk. I start toward the adult area, but then I hear a young voice saying, “Thank you, Mrs. Langford,” and I spot her in the children’s section, replacing a picture book on one of the higher shelves and then turning. “Of course, Charlie.” She smiles at the boy, and I’m surprised at how strong she looks, how healthy. She’s wearing a fuzzy red sweater and pressed jeans, and when she dusts her hands off on them and says goodbye to Charlie and his two friends, I’m aware of how much taller she is than I thought. Her posture is perfect.
She goes back to the shelves, and I head over to her, aware of my surroundings, my steps light and unobtrusive. When I speak to her, it’s in a voice that’s barely above a whisper. Libraries intimidate me. They always have. “Excuse me, Mrs. Langford? Can I speak to you for a few minutes?”
Violet turns. Looks me up and down. She wears her reddish hair in the same short, curly style as she had at the courthouse thirty years ago, and she doesn’t seem to have aged much since then. Of course, that’s hardly saying anything, frail and spent as she’d looked in the black-and-white photo. Violet Langford in the flesh is quite vibrant, her eyes a striking pale green, like sea glass. Her smile is tentative, but still warm and inviting. She smells faintly of vanilla cookies. I imagine she must be a hit at story hour. “Are you looking for a book?” she says.
“No, ma’am. I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.”
Her smile fades a little. “About what?” she says.
I force the name out of my mouth. “Ashley Shawger.”
“I see.” The smile disappears. “Are you a reporter?”
“No. I swear.”
“Who are you, then?”
I take a step closer. She’s easily five inches taller than I am, and her ramrod posture gives her something of a military look. I think of her son Thomas. There is a strong resemblance. “I’m a mother,” I tell her. “Like you.”
She stares at me, pink circles forming high on her cheekbones. “You look familiar.”
“I’m Camille Gardener. We’re both in the Niobe group.”
She narrows her gaze on me, then lets out a long sigh. “Oh yes.” She smiles again and puts a hand on my shoulder, as though I’m an old friend she hasn’t seen in years. “I remember you now.”
THE LIBRARY COURTYARD is small and probably charming in the spring. But right now it feels like something in mid-hibernation, the fruit trees skeletal, the rosebushes as gray and threatening as balled-up barbed wire. Violet says, though, once we’re out here, that it’s the perfect place for a private conversation. “It may not be comfortable,” she explains, “but it’s a small price to pay for no surveillance cameras.”
Violet has brought out two hot coffees, and she hands one to me. “To thaw you out a little,” she says, and the heat of it through the paper cup and the warm steam in my face couldn’t be more welcome. She gestures to one of the stone benches and I sit down, Violet sitting beside me, the cold of the concrete biting through my jeans, the back of my puffy coat. My nose is starting to go numb. “What do you want to know?” she asks.
Between the cold and the subject I want to discuss, there’s no point in taking time for formalities. I jump right in. “How did you feel when Ashley Shawger died?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again. “Richard Shawger,” she says. “The night he died, I was at an all-night bingo game at a church in Pleasantville. Proceeds went to a children’s literacy organization, and I’m proud to say, I won. Just ask anybody who was there. I was elated.”
“Did it . . . did it take away your pain?”
“Winning at bingo?”
I just look at her.
Violet blows on her coffee, takes a tentative sip. “It’s interesting,” she says. “After Nathan was killed, our pastor told us we could find comfort in our suffering. He pointed out how, after you’ve wept really long and hard, you’re flooded by this sense of calm and peace. Do you know what I’m talking about?”