She shrugged. ‘I can’t help that. We all have to adjust to life without him.’
Lena spoke with the kind of attitude that came from time and distance from a traumatic event. Months, maybe years. George had been dead a few days.
‘Your son came to see you yesterday too.’
‘If he did, I didn’t hear him. I must have had the vacuum on.’
‘You won’t even allow him to comfort you?’ Kim asked.
‘Are you deaf? I didn’t hear him.’
Kim wasn’t sure whether she believed that or not. ‘I don’t understand your anger, Lena,’ she said honestly.
‘He knows how we feel about the scum that lives next door.’
‘It’s not just Eric,’ Kim said, although that was a puzzle on its own. ‘You married into this family. George was the Hubbard. He’s the descendant from the original warring families. Why do you hate them so much?’
‘You’ve met them. They are foul, despicable human beings. You’re right I’m not a blood Hubbard, but I am in every other sense of the word. My mother-in-law was one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever met. I loved her like she was my own mother, and on her deathbed she made me swear to never let the Stouts have peace.’
Kim felt an overwhelming sadness that a dying woman had used any portion of her last moments to reinforce hatred. It also proved there was little these two families weren’t prepared to do to keep the feud going.
‘Do you even believe in the curse?’ Kim asked.
Lena smiled but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. ‘Doesn’t seem to be doing too badly. No Stout man has seen the other side of fifty.’
‘For a variety of reasons,’ Kim countered.
‘Reasons don’t matter. Still hasn’t happened.’
‘So, a curse you’re not sure you believe in, and an old woman’s hatred, is more important to you than your own son?’ Kim asked.
‘He knows how much we hate that family. He could have stopped it before it got too serious. It could have been any other girl – or boy for that matter. Even that would have been less painful. He knew the hurt it would cause me and his dad, but he did it anyway.’
‘The heart wants what the heart wants,’ Kim said, appealing on behalf of the young couple.
‘The heart is an organ that recovers quickly. There are other girls, but he only had one mother. Now, is there anything else, or have you wasted enough of my time?’ Lena asked.
Kim wondered if Lena Hubbard was the most emotionless woman she’d ever met. She didn’t present as someone who had lost her husband within the last few days. For both families, it looked as though the feud trumped everything.
She stood, accepting defeat.
Her gaze was drawn across the field to the boundary line and the infamous oak tree.
She turned to Lena with one last question. ‘Why did your husband walk that line, knowing exactly what it would do to the Stouts?’
‘I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter now, does it?’
Like everything else, the words were delivered with a matter-of-fact tone devoid of emotion.
Kim thanked her for her time and headed for the front door.
‘Are we done with this now?’ Bryant asked once they were back in the car.
‘You don’t find it at all intriguing that not one Stout male has made it past fifty since 1910?’
‘You can’t seriously believe the curse worked?’ Bryant scoffed. ‘And the fact you’re even asking that question tells me you don’t know when you’re done.’
Kim said nothing as she looked out of the window.
