Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [9]
“Hello?”
“Hello, dear.” It was his mother, brisk and cheerful as usual. Her voice was a shield, with a veneer of warmth and optimism, but he could sense the fear and sadness underneath.
“So how are things?” His mother’s cheeriness was resolute, implacable—an immovable object.
“Fine, Mom.” There was only one answer to this question in the Campbell family. Nothing else was acceptable. Fine, Mom. Everything’s just fine. Laura’s murderer is still out there, and there’s a college girl in the city morgue with her chest carved up, but everything’s fine.
“Isn’t this weather just awful? It’s hard to believe there are only six weeks until spring.”
Weather—a safe topic. Weather, food, home improvement, gardening—all safe topics for Fiona Campbell.
“I just can hardly wait to get my roses in. I’ve got three different colors of tea roses this year.” She was always planting things: roses, begonias, petunias.
“Oh, good.”
“Stan thinks it’s too early. He says we’ll have another frost, but I don’t believe him.”
Stan Paloggia was her next-door neighbor who hovered around her like an eager beagle. Actually, he was a lot like beagles Lee had known: short and stocky, with a voracious appetite, thick around the middle. His voice, too, was a kind of a bray, like the hoarse baying of a hound on the hunt. He followed Fiona Campbell around like a one-man posse, being helpful in any way he could, whether it was gardening advice or plumbing repairs. Lee had often wished he could tell the man he was wasting his time—his mother was only attracted to remote, elegant men like his father. Tall, glamorous, and handsome, Duncan Campbell was Stan’s opposite in every way—but Stan seemed to enjoy the quest, and panted happily along whenever he could. His mother tolerated his attention, and treated him about as well as she treated anyone.
“Well, if Stan says so, maybe you’d better listen,” Lee said, pouring coffee beans into the white Krups grinder.
“I don’t know; I just hate waiting,” his mother replied.
Lee turned the grinder on and took the phone into the living room as the machine whirred into action, screeching harshly as the beans tumbled over each other.
“How’s Kylie?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s just fine—growing like a weed, you know. It’s hard to believe she’s almost seven!”
Lee looked at one of the snapshots of Laura on the door of his refrigerator. It was taken in front of his mother’s house, and she was squinting into the sun, her hand raised to push back a few stray strands of long brown hair. He remembered the day well—he had taken the picture shortly before her graduation from college.
But his niece would have no memories of her—she would know her mother only through photographs like this one, or in the stories people told about her. Kylie lived with her father, but she spent Saturdays and Sundays with her grandmother, as he worked the ER shift at the local hospital most weekends. George Callahan was a big, bluff man without an evil thought in his head. Lee always wished Laura had married him, but he wasn’t her type. Steady, unexciting, and kind to a fault, George was nothing like the vain, high-strung father Laura had never stopped searching for in the men she dated. Even after Kylie was born, Laura refused to marry George, even though he had begged her.
“You’re still planning on spending Saturday with her, aren’t you?” His mother sounded wary—lately Lee had been less than reliable.
“Uh, sure.”
“Do you want to say hello to her? She’s right here.”
“Sure.”
In the background, Lee could hear his niece talking to his mother’s cat, Groucho. He pictured the scene: Fiona in the kitchen, cooking breakfast,