As she edged toward the ladder on the far side of the raft, Joanna suddenly put out a hand. “I hate to tell you, Kate, but I may even be leaving tomorrow sometime. Something’s come up.” She frowned and glanced away for a second as if she didn’t want Kate to see her face. “But I just had a great idea,” she enthused, turning back to Kate with a big smile.
Kate’s insides churned. “What?”
“Well, since it’s unrealistic for us to expect to get together on a regular basis, how about if we promise to meet someplace—we can decide where later—exactly nineteen years from today, July 14. You’ll be thirty—just about my age now. You can fill me in on how your life has turned out and I’ll…well, I don’t even want to think about it, but I’ll be looking at the big five-oh coming up. We’ll both be dealing with an age milestone. Sound like a good idea?”
“Yeah! But…what if one of us forgets?”
Joanna pursed her lips thoughtfully for what seemed a long time. Then she said, “We won’t because I’ll send you a reminder card every year—like a countdown.”
“Do you think you can remember to do that?”
“I promise you, Kate Reilly, that if I get one thing in my life together, it will be that. Okay?”
“How will you find me?”
“Jeez, you’re brimming with good questions. I knew from the start you were a smart kid.”
Kate beamed.
“Let me see…you give me your address before I leave and as soon as I get to New York in September, I’ll set up a postal box number for you. I’ll pay for it until you reach the age of…what? Twenty? Then you can pay on your own.”
“Nineteen,” Kate said. “Because I’m going to make it on my own before I’m twenty.”
“That’s what I want to hear! Okay, then. Deal? Shake?” Kate stuck out her hand.
YOU PROMISED, JOANNA, and since you’ve been keeping that promise for the last nineteen years, I know you wouldn’t have let anything stop you from meeting me last week.
The organist swelled into the next hymn as everyone stood. Kate now had an opportunity to scan the congregation in front and to the left of her. She thought she recognized a few people in amazing outfits. Perhaps she’d seen them in some of the many news clippings she’d saved over the years—articles and pictures featuring Joanna and various fashion-world celebrities.
She’d acquired quite a collection. It was one of the things she’d considered taking to their reunion, to show Joanna how she’d tracked her life through the years. But then she realized how pathetic that might look—as if she hadn’t achieved a life of her own. And she had. A very satisfying, rewarding life, though teaching elementary school was probably a bit tame by Joanna’s standards. But not bad, Kate thought, for a kid who’d been shuffled from one foster home to another.
After the hymn ended, the minister rose to introduce the eulogist—Joanna Barnes’s husband, Lance Marchant. Kate straightened. So, Joanna had remarried. Was this man number three or four? she wondered. A tall man in a navy pinstriped suit stood from a front pew and headed up onto the dais, pausing to place the palm of his hand on the end of the casket. Someone behind Kate blew a nose.
Joanna’s husband was a handsome, white-haired man who looked very familiar. Lance Marchant. The name rolled around in her mind, teasing her memory. Where had she seen him and why hadn’t she known about the marriage? Especially given her habit of snipping any mention of Joanna in the papers. She might have missed the announcement, or perhaps, for some reason, Joanna had kept the marriage under wraps. Another piece to add to the puzzle that was growing around Joanna Barnes.
Lance Marchant cleared his throat, cast a quick glance at the casket and began to speak. As eulogies went, Kate assumed his speech was the standard fare. Not that she was any expert, since this was only the second funeral she’d ever attended. He did refer to their brief marriage of less than a year, but claimed to have known Joanna Barnes almost twenty. Kate’s antenna rose at this. If she herself had first met Joanna nineteen years ago, then he must have known her earlier.
He continued extolling the talents and—with humor—the foibles of Joanna Barnes. It was an eloquent speech, Kate had to acknowledge. But that was the problem. Instead of a tribute delivered by a grieving husband, it had come across as a piece put together by some clever speechwriter.
When he finished, Lance Marchant stepped down from the dais and suddenly stumbled. Kate’s heart leapt; she wondered if he was going to topple onto the casket. But he caught himself, placing his hand on the gleaming oak surface and staring down silently for a moment, as if communing with his wife one last time. Kate squirmed. She couldn’t think why, but the scene embarrassed her.
Lance raised his head and walked down the aisle out of the church. As he passed Kate’s pew, she caught a closeup of his face—flushed now, jaw set in a tight, steadfast line. The other mourners followed in hushed respect. Kate sat until the last person passed. Then she stood and, on rubbery legs, made her way to Joanna’s casket.
There was so much she wanted to say, but finding the starting point was difficult. The whole purpose of their getting together again on the nineteenth anniversary of Kate’s stay at Camp Limberlost had been to compare the courses of their lives. Joanna Barnes had certainly not been a substitute for the family Kate never had, but she’d represented a kind of continuity in her life. No matter how many foster homes or bad times Kate had gone through, she’d always had that annual card to look forward to. And true to her word, Joanna had never forgotten, although once she’d been late.
Kate touched the casket, then flashed to the eulogy scene. She quickly withdrew her hand. It was too late to talk to Joanna now, and here wasn’t the place. She started to turn away when four undertakers from the funeral home filed through a side door.
“Are you finished, ma’am?” one of them asked quietly.
Kate could only nod. The tears she’d tried to hold back welled up. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. The men bent to release the wheel brakes of the stand the casket rested on and lifted up the cloth that skirted it.
“Where…where will she be buried?” Kate asked.
“Mrs. Marchant is going to be cremated. We’ll be taking her back to the funeral home from here.”
“I see. Thank you,” Kate murmured, and averted her face, unable to watch Joanna Barnes wheeled out of her life forever. She closed her eyes, listening to the muted rumble of the casket as it rolled along the carpeted aisle. There was the sound of a door opening and, seconds later, thudding shut. Silence roared through the empty church.
Kate clutched the back of a pew to steady herself.
“Can I get you something?” a voice asked from behind.
She turned and looked up, making eye contact with a man who seemed to tower over her. He wasn’t smiling and his eyes were serious.
“Something?” she echoed. “Like what?”
A single eyebrow on his pale face rose at her question. “Uh, well, since this is a church…say, a glass of water?”
“Thanks, but I’m not sure you could even get a glass of water here. Everyone’s gone.”
He shook his head. “They’re all outside, being social the way people have to behave at a funeral. Maybe even talking to reporters.”
“Reporters? Here?”
“A couple, anyway. Too bad Joanna can’t talk to them herself—she’d be in her element, wouldn’t she?”
Kate stiffened at the edge in his remark. “I wouldn’t really know,” she said, and began to walk down the aisle toward the open front doors of the church. She heard him follow.