‘Rachael?’ Mr. Gault stood before her like a bashful bachelor with hat in hand. ‘We have company.’
She dipped her needle in and out. ‘Oh, how nice.’ She smiled and put down her work.
Rachael Gault once had been a fair beauty with light skin, eyes and hair. I was fascinated that Temple and Jayne had gotten their looks from their mother and their uncle, and I chose not to speculate but to attribute this to Mendel’s law of dominance or his statistics of genetic chance.
Mr. Gault sat on the sofa and offered me the high-back chair.
‘What’s the weather doing out there?’ Mrs. Gault asked with her son’s thin smile and the hypnotic cadences of a Deep South drawl. ‘I wonder if there are any shrimp left.’ She looked directly at me. ‘You know, I don’t know your name. Now, Peyton, let’s not be rude. Introduce me to this new friend you’ve made.’
‘Rachael,’ Mr. Gault tried again. Hands on his knees, he hung his head. ‘She’s a doctor from Virginia.’
‘Oh?’ Her delicate hands plucked at the canvas in her lap.
‘I guess you’d call her a coroner.’ He looked over at his wife. ‘Honey, Jayne’s dead.’
Mrs. Gault resumed her needlework with nimble fingers. ‘You know, we had a magnolia out there that lasted nearly a hundred years before lightning struck it in the spring. Can you imagine?’ She sewed on. ‘We do get storms here. What’s it like where you’re from?’
‘I live in Richmond,’ I replied.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, the needle dipping faster. ‘Now see, we were lucky we didn’t get all burned up in the war. I bet you had a great-granddaddy who fought in it?’
‘I’m Italian,’ I said. ‘I’m from Miami, originally.’
‘Well, it certainly gets hot down there.’
Mr. Gault sat helpless on the couch. He gave up looking at anyone.
‘Mrs. Gault,’ I said, ‘I saw Jayne in New York.’
‘You did?’ She seemed genuinely pleased. ‘Why, tell me all about it.’ Her hands were like hummingbirds.
‘When I saw her she was awfully thin and she’d cut her hair.’
‘She never is satisfied with her hair. When she wore it short she looked like Temple. They’re twins and people used to confuse them and think she was a boy. So she’s always worn it long, which is why I’m surprised you would say she’s cut it short.’
‘Do you talk to your son?’ I asked.
‘He doesn’t call as often as he should, that bad boy. But he knows he can.’
‘Jayne called here a couple weeks before Christmas,’ I said.
She said nothing as she sewed.
‘Did she say anything to you about seeing her brother?’
She was silent.
‘I’m wondering because he was in New York, too.’
‘Certainly, I told him he ought to look up his sister and wish her a Merry Christmas,’ Mrs. Gault said as her husband winced.
‘You sent her money?’ I went on.
She looked up at me. ‘Now I believe you’re getting a bit personal.’
‘Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid I have to get personal.’
She threaded a needle with bright blue yarn.
‘Doctors get personal.’ I tried a different tack. ‘That’s part of our job.’
She laughed a little. ‘Well now, they do. I suppose that’s why I hate going to them. They think they can cure everything with milk of magnesia. It’s like drinking white paint. Peyton? Would you mind getting me a glass of water with a little ice? And see what our guest would like.’
‘Nothing,’ I told him quietly as he reluctantly got up and left the room.
‘That was very thoughtful of you to send your daughter money,’ I said. ‘Please tell me how you did it in a city as big and busy as New York.’
‘I had Western Union wire it, same as I always do.’
‘Where exactly did you wire it?’
‘New York, where Jayne is.’
‘Where in New York, Mrs. Gault? And have you done this more than once?’
‘A drugstore up there. Because she has to get her medicine.’
‘For her seizures. Her diphenylhydantoin.’
‘Jayne said it wasn’t a very good part of town.’ She sewed some more. ‘It was called Houston. Only it’s not pronounced like the city in Texas.’