Joe waited for what she really wanted to tell him.
After a pause, she said, “We’ve been slow to have children. I’m thirty, Bob’s thirty-two. There seemed to be so much time, so much to do first. But now our kids will grow up without ever knowing Bob’s dad or mom, and they were such good people.”
“It’s not your fault,” Joe said. “It’s all out of our hands. We’re just passengers on this train, we don’t drive it, no matter how much we like to think we do.”
“Have you really reached that level of acceptance?”
“Trying.”
“Are you even close?”
“Shit, no.”
She laughed softly.
Joe hadn’t made anyone laugh in a year—except Rose’s friend on the phone earlier. Although pain and irony coloured Clarise’s brief laughter, there was also relief in it. Having affected her this way, Joe felt a connection with life that had eluded him for so long.
After a silence, Clarise said, “Joe, could this Rose be an evil person?”
“No. Just the opposite.”
Her freckled face, so open and trusting by nature, now clouded with doubt. “You sound so sure.”
“You would be too, if you met her.”
Bob Vadance returned with three glasses, a bowl of cracked ice, a litre of 7-Up, and a bottle of Seagram’s 7 Crown. “I’m afraid there’s no real choice to offer,” he apologized. “Nobody in this family’s much of a drinker—but when we do take a touch, we like it simple.”
“This is fine,” Joe said, and accepted his 7-and-7 when it was ready.
They tasted their drinks—Bob had mixed them strong—and for a moment the only sound was the clinking of ice.
Clarise said, “We know it was suicide, because she taped it.”
Certain that he had misunderstood, Joe said, “Who taped it?”
“Nora, Bob’s mother,” Clarise said. “She videotaped her own suicide.”
Twilight evaporated in a steam of crimson and purple light, and out of that neon vapour, night coalesced against the windows of the yellow and white living room.
Quickly and succinctly, with commendable self-control, Clarise revealed what she knew of her mother-in-law’s horrible death. She spoke in a low voice, yet every word was bell-note clear and seemed to reverberate through Joe until he gradually began to tremble with the cumulative vibrations.
Rob Vadance finished none of his wife’s sentences. He remained silent throughout looking at neither Clarise nor Joe. He stared at his drink, to which he resorted frequently.
The compact Sanyo 8mm camcorder that had captured the death was Tom Vadance’s toy. It had been stored in the closet in his study since before his death aboard Flight 353.
The camera was easy to use. Fuzzy-logic technology automatically adjusted the shutter speed and white balance. Though Nora had never had much experience with it, she could have learned the essentials of its operation in a few minutes.
The NiCad battery had not contained much juice after a year in the closet. Therefore, Nora Vadance had taken time to recharge it, indicating a chilling degree of premeditation. The police found the AC adaptor and the battery charger plugged into an outlet on the kitchen counter.
Tuesday morning of this week, Nora went outside to the back of the house and set the camcorder on a patio table. She used two paperback books as shims to tilt the camera to the desired angle, and then she switched it on.
With the videotape rolling, she positioned a vinyl-strap patio chair ten feet from the lens. She revisited the camcorder to peer through the viewfinder, to be sure that the chair was in the centre of the frame.
After returning to the chair and slightly repositioning it, she completely disrobed in view of the camcorder, neither in the manner of a performer nor with any hesitancy but simply as though she were getting ready for a bath. She neatly folded her blouse, her slacks, and her underwear, and she put them aside on the flagstone floor of the patio.
Naked, she walked out of camera range, apparently going into the house, to the kitchen. In forty seconds, when she returned, she was carrying a butcher knife. She sat in the chair, facing the camcorder.
According to the medical examiner’s preliminary report, at approximately ten minutes past eight o’clock, Tuesday morning, Nora Vadance, in good health and previously thought to be of sound mind, having recently rebounded from depression over her husband’s death, took her own life. Gripping the handle of the butcher knife in both hands, with savage force, she drove the blade deep into her abdomen. She extracted it and stabbed herself again. The third time, she pulled the blade left to right, eviscerating herself. Dropping the knife, she slumped in the chair, where she bled to death in less than one minute.