Mourning Gloria Read Free Page A

story. If anybody came looking for her, they’d start with her Facebook page, which would lead them to South Padre. Which would prove to be a dead end.
    If anything happened to her, nobody would know where to look.

Chapter One
    A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
    Walt Whitman
     
    Flowers really do intoxicate me.
    Vita Sackville-West

    Friday night’s thunderstorm rumbled off to the west and the Saturday sun rose on one of those stunningly lovely June mornings that seem to happen only in your dreams or in the half-forgotten country of childhood, when you spent summers with your favorite grandmother—the one who never made you help with the dishes. Sunlight slanted through green leaves tender and innocent as spring, not yet baked brittle by summer’s heat. Grasses glittered with dew, birds danced light as a song on the cool morning breeze, morning glories bloomed heavenly blue over the arbor—a lovely day to spend in the garden, once the dew had dried.
    Caitie and I had been out there for an hour already, picking and tying up bunches of fresh dill, rosemary, sage, parsley, cilantro, thyme, and basil and stowing them in the big picnic cooler. As a general rule, it’s best to pick herbs after the dew has dried, but I was making an exception this morning. Today was Saturday, Market Day, and these dew-fresh green bundles would be snatched up by eager customers before the morning was half over.
    On an ordinary Saturday, Brian would have been in the garden with us. But on Monday, he’d left for a two-week session as camp counselor at Hill Country Kids’ Camp. He’d hoisted his duffle over one shoulder, tucked his laptop under his arm, and pecked my cheek with his familiar good-bye kiss before he sauntered out to the van that had come to pick him up, a self-confident young man on his way to his first job. I’d made him promise to email us while he was gone, but I wasn’t worried that he’d get homesick. His longtime girlfriend Jake was working as a girls’ counselor at the same camp.
    Howard Cosell and I (Howard is Brian’s elderly basset hound) had watched the van drive off. I don’t know about Howard, but I had a largish lump in my throat and a film of tears in my eyes. Brian isn’t my biological child. He’s Mike McQuaid’s son by an earlier marriage, but he’s been an important part of my life since he was a little boy. It’s hard to believe that he’s on his way to a life of his own, separate from ours—a separation made even more emphatic by the fact that he now holds his learner’s permit. He’s a responsible kid, but kids in cars are always a worry.
    Since this was Saturday, McQuaid might also have been in the garden, except that he was away, as well. My husband (whom I have called by his last name ever since we met in the courtroom where he was testifying against a woman I was defending) is a helpful sort of guy and has been known to lend a hand when he’s nicely invited. But in addition to a part-time appointment as an associate professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Central Texas State University, McQuaid is a private investigator. He left for Memphis on Thursday to do some work for Charlie Lipman, a local lawyer. He wouldn’t be back until Monday or Tuesday.
    So it was just the two of us this Saturday, picking and packing in the early-morning sunshine. Caitlin, eleven, is my niece, my half brother Miles’ daughter. She’s been with us for less than a year, but it already feels like a lifetime. And there’s an irony here. For decades I cherished an independent and solitary life, putting off marriage to a man I loved while I stubbornly hung on to my freedom. Now, improbable as it often seems to me, I am married. I am raising two children. Life is full of surprises.
    After a quick breakfast, Caitie and I loaded the cooler into the car and headed for town. Along Limekiln Road, we could see banks of cheerful daisies, drifts of gaudy yellow and red