Searching for Caleb

Don't you see why you're doing this? It's merely proximity, the two of you had no one else, no one in this family has anyone else. You were thrown too much together, at an age when naturally . . . and you were afraid to turn to some outsider. Admit it. Isn't that correct?"

Justine thought it over. "Well," she said finally, "it does sound correct, yes."

"Well, then."

"But then, both sides sound correct. I always agree with who I'm listening to."

He waited, expecting more. All she did was smile. "Aah!" he said suddenly, and turned away, throwing up his hands. "You even sound like him. You're a puppet. I've learned something today: set a bad and a good person down together and the bad wins every time. I always wondered."

"Say that again?" said Aunt Lucy. "Is it Duncan you're calling bad?"

"Who else?"

"Duncan's not a bad boy."

Even Duncan looked surprised.

"Justine's the one who kept the rest of us away from him. Justine wouldn't tell his own mother where he was staying! Blame your daughter!"

"Why, Lucy!" Justine's mother said.

Duncan let his chair tip forward. This might turn out to be interesting.

But no, they were distracted by a new development: Sam Mayhew buttoning his suit coat. He worked with his elbows out and his clock-shaped face set impassively toward some point above their heads. They knew at once that something important was going on.

"I won't be attending this wedding," he said finally.

"Oh, Sam!" his wife cried.

"And I won't be living here."

"What?"

"I'm moving out to my parents'. I'm going to look for a house in Guilford."

He finished the buttons. He began pulling his shirt cuffs down, neat bands of white above his chubby red hands. "You may come too, of course, Caroline. And Justine if she decides against this marriage. But I warn you: if you come, we will only be visiting your family once a month."

"Once a month?"

"The first Sunday of every month, for dinner. We'll go home at three."

"But Sam-" his wife said.

"Make your choice, Caroline."

He continued to gaze above her head. Caroline turned to her family. She was still baby-faced, although the years had worked like gravity pulling on her cheeks. Her weight had settled in upon itself. She looked like a cake that had collapsed. To each brother and sister, to her father and her grandmother, she turned a round lost stare while twisting the pearls on her fingers.

"What's your decision, Caroline?"

"I can't just leave them like that."

"All right."

"Sam?" she said.

He walked over to Justine. Duncan rose instantly to his feet. "Justine,"

Sam Mayhew said, "you have been a disappointing daughter in every way, all your life."

Then Justine rocked back as if she had been hit, but Duncan already stood behind her braced to steady her.

The wedding was to be held in a church. All the family insisted on that.

Duncan had not been to church in several years and detested Reverend Didicott, a fat man who came from Aunt Lucy's hometown and had a Southern accent that would surely double the length of the ceremony; but he said he would do whatever Justine wanted. And Justine, half willing anyway, went along with the others, submitting to a long satin dress, Sarah Cantleigh's ivory veil, and a little old lady consultant with an emergency cigar box full of pins, white thread, spirits of ammonia, and a stick of chalk for stains. "Oh, Duncan!" Justine said, as she sped by him on the way to the photographer. "I'm sorry! I know how you must hate this!" But he was surprisingly tolerant. He had agreed to give up his room and move home for the month preceding the wedding; he went without a word to buy a black suit that turned him stern and unfamiliar. During lulls in the excitement, he seemed to be observing Justine very closely.

Did he think she would change her mind? Reading Bride's magazine, she felt his eyes upon her, weighing her, watching for something. "What is it?" she asked him, but he never would say.

Her mother was everywhere. She bustled and darted, giving commands, trilling out fitting schedules in a voice so gay it seemed about to break off and fly. "Really, no one would guess her husband's left her," Justine told Duncan.

"Don't speak too soon."

"Why?"

"Now she's got the wedding to keep her busy. What about later?"

Later Justine would be far away. One thing Duncan would not agree to was living in Roland Park. Nor even in Baltimore, not even long enough for Justine to finish school. And he would not go back to school himself. So they were renting a little house and a plot of land an hour's drive out in the country, where they used to go on their trips. Duncan planned to start a goat farm. It was what he had always wanted, he said. It was?