Winter in Paradise (Paradise #1)(78)

“… I trusted him! Bad back… clients in Pensacola! I never checked! Never questioned! Never suspected a thing… greed… the money… the house! I was married to the house! Secrets are lies! They’re lies! I never suspected… why would I suspect? Your father was so… effusive… so loving… it was too much, sometimes, I used to tell him it was too much… I told him to tone it down, it was embarrassing…” She stops. “Can you imagine? I was embarrassed because your father loved me too much. Because I wasn’t raised like that. My parents told me they loved me… once a year, maybe, and I never heard them say it to each other. Never once! But they did love each other… they just showed the love in their actions, the way they treated each other… honor, respect. They didn’t keep secrets like this one!”

“Mom,” Baker says, but he doesn’t know what to add. She’s right. Their father was demonstrative, verging on sappy. He exuded so much I love you, please love me back that Baker at least, and probably Irene and Cash as well, saw it as a weakness.

Had it all been an act, then? Baker wonders. Or had the three of them done such a pitiful job of returning Russ’s love that he’d sought affection elsewhere?

Irene holds up the plastic bag. “This is all that’s left. All! That’s! Left!” She flings the ashes across the kitchen. The bag hits the cabinets and slaps the floor. Thank goodness the seal held, Baker thinks. Otherwise they would be sweeping Russ up with a broom and dustpan.

Cash gets Irene to a chair at the kitchen table while Baker picks up the ashes. Across the label of the bag it says: STEELE, RUSSELL DOD: 1/1/19.

Baker sits down beside his mother. Cash has brought a pile of paper napkins to the table. He’s trying to put his arm around Irene, but she’s resisting—possibly because he smells like a Mexican whorehouse.

“Just let me… just let me…,” Irene says.

Baker studies the contents of the plastic bag. The pieces are chalky and porous; the “remains” look like a few handfuls of coral on the beach in Salt Pond. It’s a sobering, nearly ghastly, thought: You live a whole life, filled with routines, traditions, and brand-new experiences, and then you end up like this. Baker can’t let his mind wander to the mechanics of cremation—your body, which you have fed and exercised and washed and dressed with such care, is pushed into a fiery inferno. Baker shudders. And yet there is no escaping death. No escaping it! Every single one of us will die, as surely as every single one of us has been born. Baker is here today, but one day he will be like Russ. Gone.

He, for one, is glad the ashes have finally arrived. They all needed closure.

Baker checks the cardboard box for the name or address of the funeral home but finds neither. It’s just a plain box, sealed with clear packing tape. The bag is just a bag, labeled with Russ’s name and date of death.

How do they know this is even Russ? he wonders. It could be John Q. Public. It could be coral from Salt Pond. Baker had asked Douglas point-blank, Did you see my father, was he dead? And Douglas had stared. Now, maybe he’d stared at Baker like that because he thought the question was rhetorical. Maybe he thought the question was coming from a man half-crazed with grief, ready to grasp at any straw. But maybe, maybe, the stare meant something else.

Irene blots her nose and under her eyes with a paper napkin. “I need you boys to promise me something,” she says.

“Anything,” Cash says. But Baker refrains. Cash can be his mother’s acolyte, but Baker is going to hear what Irene is asking before he commits.

“What is it, Mom?” Baker says.

“Don’t be like him,” Irene says. “Don’t lead secret lives.”

Cash laughs, which Baker thinks is in poor taste.

“No one intends to lie,” Irene says. “But it happens. Sometimes the truth is difficult and it’s easier to create an alternate reality or not to say anything at all. I can’t imagine how soul-shredding it must have been for Russ to… to go back and forth. Rosie here, me in Iowa City.”

Baker looks at his brother. Irene knows about Rosie. Did Cash tell her?

“Mom…,” Baker says.

Irene barks out a laugh. “I found the photograph. Winnie helped me. And then I did some sleuthing. It must have destroyed your father deep inside to know he was betraying me and betraying both of you…” She stops. “Just promise me.”

“Promise,” Cash says.

“Promise,” Baker says.

“And yet, you’ve both spent the better part of a week with me. Baker, you didn’t tell me that you and Anna had split. Cash, you didn’t tell me you’d lost the stores.”

The kitchen is very, very quiet for a moment.

Baker says, “I didn’t want to make you even more upset…”

“I thought it was irrelevant,” Cash says. “Petty, even, to bring it up when you had so much else going on…”

“So you said nothing, time passed, and I had no idea about either thing. Which is why I’m asking you now to please not keep any secrets. Secrets become lies, and lies end up destroying you and everyone you care about.”

“Okay,” Baker says.

“Okay,” Cash says. He rises to fetch Irene some ice water. He is such a kiss-ass, Baker thinks, but really Baker is just jealous because he’s better at anticipating Irene’s needs.