Free All Fall Down by Carlene Thompson Page B

through the library windows, she noticed with a start the small wrinkles around Joan’s eyes and lips. She’d always thought of Joan Peyton as ageless, like a beautiful portrait. “Joan, you have to stop this. Rosie was seventeen, and this isn’t the nineteenth century. Girls that age need some freedom. Believe me, I’ve learned that from Robin. I’m only thirteen years older than she, but customs have changed even in that short a time. Besides, Rosie had never given you any trouble, any reason to doubt her. She was the model child.”
    Joan’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, yes, she was. So easy to love, to trust. I just don’t know—” Her voice broke. “I just don’t know what could have happened. Do you know? Do you know anything about what could have caused Rosalind to do such a thing?”
    “No, Joan,” Blaine said carefully. “And neither does Robin.”
    “I thought she was happy.” Joan’s knees sagged and Blaine led her to a chair, where she sank down and looked beseechingly up at Blaine. “What am I going to do? How am I going to get through every day of the rest of my life after this…this thing that’s happened to my baby? Because she was like my own, you know. Like my very own.”
    Blaine hesitated. Should she tell Joan that she didn’t believe Rosie had killed herself? No, certainly not. Now was not the time for her to offer theories that were probably wrong. Instead she put her arm around Joan’s shoulders. “I guess now I’m supposed to say that time heals all wounds.”
    “And does it?”
    “No.”
    Joan managed a weak smile. “You’ve always been brutally honest, even when you were a child. Why, I remember one day when your father was here doing some yard work. He brought you along.” Joan’s voice had taken on a tone of rambling, which she never did. Blaine listened patiently, knowing Joan’s reminiscences were the result of grief and shock. “I was twenty and absolutely full of myself. I came outside dressed in my best bikini and began lounging seductively around the pool. I thought I looked just like Elizabeth Taylor. But you, young lady, marched your six-year-old self right over to me and said, ‘You’re real, real beautiful, Miss Peyton, but all that black stuff around your eyes makes you look like you got in a fight.’”
    Blaine’s face reddened at the memory. “What a brat.”
    But Joan shook her head in amusement. “I stormed upstairs, looked at myself in the mirror, and decided you were right. I’ve never worn heavy eyeliner and false eyelashes again. They made me look like a clown. And the very next year I became Miss West Virginia.” Abruptly her smile faded. “But I understand what you mean about time not healing all wounds. You were speaking of losing Martin, weren’t you?”
    “Yes,” Blaine said hesitantly, thinking that she wasn’t referring so much to his literal death as to the death of his spirit, which had occurred the night of the car wreck.
    “Martin was terribly unhappy, Blaine. I know what people in town said—that such a vigorous, outgoing man would never take his own life, but it was because he had been so vigorous, athletic, commanding, that he couldn’t adjust to being trapped in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. All his sense of achievement and self-esteem vanished. He couldn’t have people telling him he could have been a professional tennis player anymore. He couldn’t stride around Avery Manufacturing giving orders in that Orson Welles voice. After all, I visited Martin several times after the accident. I know how he felt. I told the police that.”
    “Yes, you did. In fact, you’re the only person besides me who said he was suicidal.”
    “Well, Bernice and Robin certainly knew it. But Bernice, of course, thought Martin Avery walked on water, and since she believes suicide is a sin, she wouldn’t admit she knew how he felt. And poor little Robin.” She shook her head. “I just don’t think she could acknowledge