The Light Through the Leaves(5)

Mary Carol put on a wounded countenance. “I was only trying to help. I know it’s difficult for you—to keep up—under the circumstances.” As proof, she said, “The boys said they were hungry. I’m making grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Would you like one?”

Ellis looked into the frying pan. “Ham? You know this house is vegetarian!”

“Jonah isn’t.”

“He is when I cook. And River and Jasper are.”

“But you aren’t cooking, are you?”

The little thread that had been keeping Ellis attached to civility broke. She grabbed the grilling sandwich out of the pan and threw it in the trash can. She burned her hand, but the pain hardly registered. She opened the refrigerator and found the deli ham.

“That’s expensive meat,” Mary Carol said.

“I don’t care,” Ellis said, thumping the wad of flesh into the can.

“Boys, I’m sorry to say your lunch is gone,” Mary Carol said.

The boys had stopped playing their video games. They looked almost as if they were frightened of their own mother.

“I’ll make grilled cheese, okay?”

“Okay,” Jasper piped up.

River said nothing. He had that new look in his eyes, the resentful stare that made Ellis want to weep. He was angry that everything had changed. All the crying. Police. Detectives. Everyone in the house on edge—especially since Mary Carol had arrived. Almost daily, friends and neighbors came over with food or just to lament with them. River hated it. He hated her. He hated her for losing Viola and ruining his perfect life.

Ellis turned away from the three piercing gazes. She was dizzy from lack of sleep and near vomiting, but she got to work on the sandwiches. “Where is Jonah?” she asked.

“He had to run to the office,” Mary Carol said.

On a Saturday. He was probably with Irene. Being consoled by her. Because he got no comfort from the increasingly deranged wife who’d left his baby daughter in the woods.

Mary Carol took a seat at the table with a cup of black coffee. She drank coffee all day to keep her appetite low. Attendance to her figure, to anything related to her appearance, had been Mary Carol’s main occupation most of her life. Ellis could imagine how her mother-in-law viewed her current state. Ellis didn’t even look in the mirror anymore.

She added apple slices to the boys’ lunches, set the plates down, and sat across from them. “Put the games away and eat,” she said. When they continued playing, she said, “Now.”

River shot her another look. Ellis wondered what poison Mary Carol fed them when she wasn’t around. And Ellis often wasn’t around lately, she had to admit. She tried to keep herself, her increasing instability, away from the boys. She knew how it felt to see a parent lose her mind.

“Tomorrow the boys and I are going to church to pray for Viola,” Mary Carol said. “You’re welcome to come with us. If you get up in time. Service is at eight.”

Talk about kicking someone when they were down. Mary Carol was unloading all her ammo on her this afternoon.

Ellis set down her coffee, looked into the steely-blue gaze of the woman who had accused her of deliberately “trapping” her son with pregnancy. She and her husband had bitterly opposed Jonah marrying a plant biology student who’d grown up in a trailer. With an addict mother and unknown father, no less. Ellis assumed his mother often used the words trailer trash to describe her, though Jonah would never have told her. Mary Carol even warned Jonah that his marriage to a woman who’d taken part in Pride marches might bring negative attention from the media and cause trouble for his father, a renowned conservative senator.

Ellis held The Hammer’s challenging gaze. She saw it clearly. The woman who’d waged battle against Ellis since the day Jonah told her of their engagement would now do everything in her power to win that war. Ellis’s shield wall was down, and Bauhammer was charging at her in full armor.

Ellis rose, pushing off the table with shaking arms. “Will you please come talk to me in the office?”

“Jonah’s office?” Mary Carol said. “He prefers that room to be private.”

“It’s my goddamn house, my office!”

Mary Carol raised her eyebrows at her language, or perhaps to remind Ellis that she and her husband had given Jonah the down payment for the house as a wedding gift.

The boys had stopped eating, distressed by the conflict.

“Will you talk to me in private or not?”

Mary Carol saw that she was shaking, and Ellis thought she looked pleased. “If you insist,” she said, rising from her chair. “Don’t worry, boys. Everything is fine.”

Ellis closed the door behind them in the downstairs study and faced her adversary. “You aren’t going to do this,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Erase me.”

She looked amused. “I think you’ve taken a few too many of those pills, Ellis.”

“Have I? Why did you give the boys video games when it’s against our rules? Why are you feeding them meat when you know I don’t want that? Why would you take them to your church when you know they already have one?”

She made a skeptical face. “What’s it called, the Unitarian Universe . . . ?”

“The Unitarian Universalist Church.”