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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I pulled into the driveway at the address Clara had looked up amid our situating the dogs — Murphy and Gracie at my house, LuLu at hers — and changed out of our dog park clothes.

With the snow lessening and mostly confining itself to grassy areas, we also swapped to my sedan.

Parking in the driveway wouldn’t have been my first choice, but there were stern signs about not parking on the street.

The snow looked fake. Like someone had cut the edges of foam with scissors and pasted it down. The holiday décor didn’t make it any more cheery.

I’m all for evergreens used in decorations, but these were packed so thickly on the railings that they made the curved steps feel not only narrow and unwelcoming, but like this carnivorous vegetation spent the rest of the year as props for productions of Little Shop of Horrors .

Being punctuated by massive golden bows every foot didn’t help the feeling of claustrophobia.

At the front door, a massive fruit fan, gilded to match the bows, loomed over our heads.

A lecture from my great-aunt echoed in my head about how those who associate fruit fans with colonial times are far off the mark.

Whatever decorating they did was inside. Not to mention fresh fruit was far too expensive and rare in December to waste tacking it up over the front door.

I could imagine what she’d add about it being gilded.

I was suppressing a grin when the massive door opened.

The woman who held it gave me a sharp look, so either I didn’t suppress the grin as well as I’d hoped or the effort twisted my face.

Alternatively, she was prone to sharp looks.

“Hello, I’m Clara Woodrow and this is Sheila Mackey. We are so deeply sorry for your loss with your son’s death.”

“I don’t know you.”

“No, not personally. But your grandson does and we are here on his behalf.” How did Clara sound so entirely believable? “You might have heard of other situations in which we helped people who have lost a loved one find the truth that lets them grieve without battling unanswerable questions.”

I stood beside her and tried to look a tenth as trustworthy and open as she was. Try it sometime — it’s darned hard.

In this case it probably didn’t matter.

The woman — presumably Derrick Dorrio’s mother, Beverly Dorrio — paid no attention to me at all, as she stared at Clara.

Her tailored beige sweater and pale sage blouse were silk and expensive. So was her haircut — expensive, I mean. Waves framed her face in a way that made me think of a long-ago TV star. Mary Tyler Moore maybe. But I doubted this woman’s face could form a sunny smile on her best day.

By the furrows between her brows, across her forehead, under her eyes, and around her mouth and nose, she hadn’t had many good, much less best , days since way, way before the recent death of her son.

Looking at the line of her mouth as she started to speak, I extended that to way before her son’s arrest, too.

The words were “Come in,” so maybe Clara connected with a speck of Mary Tyler Moore deep inside her.

But only a speck.

She turned her back on us, and walked away, leaving us to deal with the door, wipe our feet on a rug I hoped was meant for that purpose, and follow the best we could.

The impression of the house’s size was reinforced inside. Vaulted ceilings made me think of Disney versions of Medieval cathedrals.

Except cathedrals — Medieval or otherwise — seldom had profusions of pink cabbage roses. At least not that I’d seen.

Yet, when the woman led the way across the cold hall and down a corridor to the back, there we were — in an all-encompassing cabbage rose patch at odds with the tailored attire of the woman.

Cabbage roses covering a large, U-shaped sectional couch with a cabbage rose rug in the center. Cabbage roses on wallpaper on various angles of walls and as a border in the open kitchen. Cabbage roses framed for large-scale artwork collages.

“Yale, these people say Robbie sent them,” Beverly Dorrio said.

Deciding whether to correct her inaccurate summation of what Clara said took a back seat to trying to figure out who the heck she was talking to.

Yale, I knew, was the name of her husband — Derrick’s father. But I didn’t see him anywhere in this profusion of flowers.

And then I realized that what I’d thought was a break in the cabbage rose-ness of a couch was, instead, the slouching form of a gray-haired man in a wrinkled canvas jacket over a similarly colored shirt and pants.

It was like an alternative version of that beautiful young woman in the big hat vs.

the old lady in profile, shifting from seeing a human form instead of what I initially perceived as stems among the roses.

Now that I saw him, I also noted he shared the same deep facial lines as his wife, though his mouth turned down, rather than maintaining a rigidly neutral line.

“Sent them for what?” he asked.

“I have no idea.” Beverly moved around a coffee table toward the couch, adding an abbreviated gesture that could have been inviting us to take seats on a love seat covered in — you guessed it — cabbage roses at right angles to the couch or swatting at a fly.

Clara clearly interpreted the gesture as an invitation, taking a seat as she renewed what she’d said at the door with even more warmth and empathy and kindness, spreading them equally between Beverly and Yale Dorrio.

I sat beside her, on the front edge of the cushion.

There’s a move in yin yoga called a supported bridge, where you lift your hips and slide a bolster or rectangular block under your derriere.

It’s supposed to improve posture and stretch lots of stuff from head to toes.

It’s also good practice for perching on the edge of a cabbage rose love seat without sliding off.

The Dorrios watched Clara as she continued on, neither face giving away a thing.

“...and after we’ve talked with you, we’ll talk to Robbie’s relatives on the other side of the family.”

I was pretty sure that was deliberate provocation on Clara’s part, but I know her well. No way did the Dorrios recognize it as such.

But they did respond, like a knee hit with a hammer.

“That woman,” Beverly Dorrio growled.

“Which one of them?” Yale Dorrio said under his breath.

“An excellent point, Yale. Either one of them. Both to be entirely accurate.”

“Oh?” Clara asked with widened eyes. “Were there difficulties from the start?”

Subtle wording on her part — avoiding any references such as before your son was convicted of murdering their loved one ?

“I told Derrick before the marriage that those two would be a drag on him, their lives as a couple, and their family throughout their marriage. Indeed, the duration of the impact was for the rest of their lives as it turned out. First, Jaylynn’s, and now, Derrick’s.”

Her words were precise and sour.

Yale grunted agreement.

“Did you get along well with Jaylynn?” Clara could ask such questions and be viewed as genuinely interested, while coming from most people — like me — they sounded rudely nosy. I envied that. Even more, I appreciated it.

“She was the best of them,” Yale murmured.

Considering their views on her mother and sister, that might fall under the heading of damning with faint praise.

“We worked hard at establishing a cordial and mutually respectful relationship with our daughter-in-law,” Beverly said. “That’s not something that happens overnight.”

If anyone wanted to bet me, I’d put my stake on that meaning there’d been conflicts, though perhaps not horrific ones. It would be interesting to know if they had lessened over time or escalated. Beverly wouldn’t tell us and Jaylynn couldn’t. Perhaps her family would have insight.

“And surely Robbie’s arrival brought you closer together,” Clara offered.

“She did seem to be maturing after giving birth to Robbie,” Yale said judiciously.

A micro-expression from Beverly didn’t entirely agree, but she didn’t give voice to it.

“What about Derrick? How did he handle having a baby?”

“Beautifully,” Beverly said with repressive emphasis. “He was a marvelous father. Even after the horror of his being accused and wrongfully convicted and all the years in prison, his first thought, his primary priority was always for Robbie’s welfare.”

“Were they close?” Clara asked with her winning forthrightness. “I mean, I know, of course it must have been difficult with Derrick in prison, but with visits...”

They exchanged a quick look.

Yale spoke, possibly designated as the more diplomatic of the pair, though I couldn’t imagine Beverly conceding that point. Still, she allowed him the floor.

“Derrick was Robbie’s entire world in the years before he was wrested away by that travesty of a trial,” Yale said. “And Robbie was Derrick’s primary concern after.”

The first part didn’t mesh with Mamie saying Dova was Robbie’s primary caretaker from the time of his mother’s death.

“When he was in prison,” Yale continued, “he made the hard decision that what was best for his son was to curtail contact.”

On this, there was agreement. Dova had said something similar about Derrick’s choice to protect his son.

“He thought only of his son’s well-being, as he did of ours, our standing in the community, and to make our final years as peaceful as possible.”

Neither struck me as doddering, but Yale Dorrio played the into-the-sunset card well.

He added, “There is no truer measure of a man’s character than that he places the welfare of those he loves above his own. Derrick did that by limiting contact.”

A voice in my head that sounded a lot like my great-aunt snapped that not murdering people, especially a wife you’d pledged to protect and love, was an even better measure of character.

Unaware of that voice, Yale said, “And his sacrifice has been worthwhile. Robbie is a fine young man.”

Interesting. Mamie gave the impression Robbie’s only true family was Dova. Yet the senior Dorrios made it sound as if they were active in their grandson’s life.

Despite her lips being pressed together, words shot out from Beverly as if from a hose under too much pressure. “Why Dova doesn’t curtail this current relationship with that florist girl—”

“They’re young. He’ll go off to college and it will be over.”

Yale’s interjection didn’t diminish the pressure left in Beverly’s word hose.

“So you say. Dova should be firm with him. He didn’t visit his father at hospice, either.

And that’s not something that he can grow out of .

All that talk from Dova about letting the boy set the tenor when it’s a parent’s duty to guide the child.

And her going on and on about his needing time to come to terms with his father’s death.

When there wasn’t time. And now there never will be.

Disgraceful, I call it. You do your duty. You don’t pule about coming to terms.”

Clearly Beverly didn’t see Dova as the perfect mom. Even more interesting, she indicated Robbie was behind the lack of contact, contrary to what Dova and Yale said about Derrick’s decision.

“What about you?” Clara spread the question between them. “Did you go to hospice?”

“Of course. Every day,” Beverly said.

“Did he seem worried or tell you something he hadn’t shared before or—”

Yale interrupted. “No.”

Not put off by that abruptness, Clara asked, “Had you visited him a lot in prison, so you’d notice a change in his attitude or—?”

“As I said, he hadn’t wanted to expose his mother and me to the degradation of visiting him in prison, especially as we grew older, which does him credit.

There were letters, of course, and electronic communication, telephone calls at times.

We also kept up with him through his cousin, who did visit from time to time.

It was through him that we learned Dova was using her connections with important people to find top lawyers, truly top lawyers, for another appeal. ”

Another micro-expression from Beverly objected to something in that speech, though it was unclear exactly what.

“That, of course, ended with his illness.” Yale wasn’t done. “If any solace can be found in any of this, it is that we were able to spend time with our son in his final days before he died.”

“Before he was murdered ,” Beverly said emphatically. “And ask yourselves who would have done that .”