“I didn’t kill him! He was dead on his bed when I found him. It’s not like I committed much of a crime.”
Melanie shot to her feet. “The hell it’s not.” She turned for the house and stormed through the kitchen, June trailing behind her.
“Where are you going?” June asked.
“Where do you think?” Melanie called over her shoulder as she made a beeline for the front door. “I can’t be a part of this. You know I can’t. I’m sorry for your loss, June, I am. But this is crazy. I’m going to call the police.”
“Wait!” June called after her. “Melanie! You don’t understand. I have a plan!”
“A plan? Aplan? I can’t believe you let Eva be involved in this. Honestly, I can’t. And by God you’re not going to involve me.” Melanie was in the entry, her hand reaching for the doorknob.
She’d started to open it and June was suddenly there with the palm of one hand slamming it shut.
Melanie swung around to face her.
“Wait! If you call the police…you’ll wish you hadn’t,” June said, as if improvising. Pulling words out of the troubled air.
Melanie stared at her, incredulous. “Are you threatening me?”
“No.” June shook her head, her tone and countenance earnest. “No, I swear to you I’m not. I’m just…just telling you what’s true.”
Despite the gratitude for June she’d felt just a few short hours ago, this was nuts. June had buried a dead man in her backyard! Melanie had to get out of that house, out of this mess. Nothing good could come from becoming an accessory to June’s actions. There were laws regarding what a person could do and not do with someone’s remains. She spoke gently but authoritatively. “You will let me leave, June. What you have done has nothing to do with me.”
“I know it doesn’t,” June said. “But you’re already on the blacklist for reasons that have nothing to do with you. If you call the police and you tell them Eva has known for a week, we’ll both be in trouble. They will look into her. And if they do that, they will find out about her past.”
“So what if they do!”
“Listen to me. If they discover who Eva really is, everything will fall apart! I already know I’ll go to jail. But Eva will probably get deported. And if that happens, I guarantee you, you won’t ever get off that list.”
20
Eva had just started to rinse Nicky’s ice-cream bowl when she heard the Gilberts’ front door fly open, and then June’s voice.
“Melanie, please! Don’t do anything rash! Let’s talk about this.”
She turned from the sink as both Melanie and June rounded the corner and entered the kitchen. Melanie looked livid. Eva glanced quickly to Nicky, who, beyond the kitchen in the open living room, was building a tower with wooden blocks. He’d paused in his play, though, and was looking in the direction where the three women stood framed in the kitchen doorway.
Melanie grabbed Eva’s arm and pulled her attention back to her. “How could you do this to me?” she said through her teeth, fiercely angry but controlling her volume. “How could you keep working for me day in and day out all these months, knowing what I am up against? How could you do that? You’re a Russian!”
Melanie’s words were nothing near to what Eva had expected her to say. “What?” She looked to June.
“I’m sorry, Eva,” June said. “I just…it slipped out. She was going to call the police. I figured she’d tell them you had known fordays that Elwood wasn’t in the house. I was afraid they might arrest you, too, and they’d look into how you came to the States and discover who you really are. So I told Melanie why calling the police could be bad for her. I just wanted her to stop and think. That’s all. I just wanted her to stop.”
“But what about Elwood?” Eva said, dazed.
“He’s dead!” Melanie yelled. “And this woman you’re protecting buried him in her backyard. The backyard!” Melanie had let go of Eva’s arm but her body was still heaving in fury. “Andyou! You’ve been with me all this time when you knew the backlash I’d get if it came out you’re from the Soviet Union. How could you do that?”
But Eva had barely heard Melanie’s angry question. Her mind was spinning around the sudden image of Elwood’s body below the earth, resting among his roses. She’d known all along, hadn’t she? Starting with the day Melanie asked her to speak to June from across the fence—that morning June had been digging up rosebushes in the dark. That scene had called to her mind a memory she’d had to forcibly sweep away so that she could ask the question Melanie had told her to ask.
A memory of a body. The dead of night. A rose garden.
Eva shook it away again as she pictured June burying Elwood in his own rose garden, a man June loved but who had not loved her—a man who’d left June’s only home to the sons of the woman hehadloved.
“June?” Eva said.
“I’m talking to you!” Melanie shouted.
But Eva sought June’s gaze. “June, what happened?”
