Gypsy Sins by John Lawrence Reynolds Page B

world threw in her path. He had loved her then, far more than he could ever love his own taciturn and defeated mother. But as an adult, sheathed in his chain of crises, his two failed marriages and his stormy career as a detective, he neglected her except for sending greeting cards and phone calls when he made promises to visit.
    He would miss her. He dropped his bag to the floor and leaned against the alcove wall for a moment.
    He would miss her.
    Much of what he saw in Cora’s house remained unchanged from his memory. He noted the same wide-planked pine floors, the wallpaper with its white fleurs-de-lys on a cranberry background, the impractical red velvet sitting chair, its back against the stairs leading to the upstairs bedroom and the seat too low to sit comfortably upon.
    McGuire breathed deeply and flicked a wall switch. The glow cast by two wall-mounted brass lamps and a small overhead chandelier bathed the alcove and living room in light.
    Cora Godwin had thrived on honesty in every measure of her being, including the manner in which she furnished her house. There was room for neither pretension nor imitation in her life. Especially in her home. “Ersatz!” she would bark when encountering reproductions of furniture, paintings or artifacts. McGuire learned to love the word. “Ersatz!” he and Terry would shout at each other when they heard a playmate lying or exaggerating, and burst into laughter.
    â€œAuthenticity is honesty, and honesty is truth,” Cora would remind them.
    She budged not an inch in her fight against cheap imitation, which was why her home had been so sparsely furnished, much to the consternation of her husband and son. If it was not authentic, she rejected it. And if her family could not afford the real thing, it would settle for nothing less.
    Surprisingly, this didn’t extend to gadgets, as Cora called them, such as televisions and stereo music systems. Gadgets, she claimed, were true to their time. Besides, stereo systems produced the music of Puccini and Verdi and Rossini, music that would always be true, music that could never be dishonest, could never be ersatz.
    McGuire smiled at the sight of Cora’s old TV set resting comfortably on a battered pine blanket box finished, Cora had explained to him once, in milk-based paint applied almost a hundred and fifty years ago.
    To his left, against the wall separating the living room from the dining room, or Keeping Room as Cora called it, was the fireplace, its white enameled mantel scarred and dusty.
    McGuire wandered through the house, touching the wood of the furniture and the wainscoting and carved door frames with his fingertips, as though greeting old friends or bestowing blessings on the abandoned.
    He entered the den with its crowded bookshelves, the contents of every volume read at least once by Cora. He admired the beamed ceiling of the dining room and its long elegant pine table rescued from a Catholic retreat house in Sandwich. Finally, he explored the kitchen and its glass-fronted cupboards, heavy with generations of white paint applied layer upon layer over the years, like poultices.
    The refrigerator held a jar of instant coffee, containers of Cora’s homemade jam—peach, raspberry, currant—a few pats of butter and assorted condiments, and little else. He closed the appliance door, feeling like an intruder, a voyeur.
    Walking to the kitchen window he stared out at the garden, the beds thick with the brown husks of frost-killed peonies, day lilies, zinnias, Canterbury bells and clematis.
    On the journey north from Green Turtle Cay, McGuire knew he would shed no tears for his aunt. Not because he had not loved her. Nor because he felt no guilt about avoiding her. But because there was no reason to.
    â€œNever cry over the inevitable,” Cora told him when he visited her after the announcement of Terry’s death. “You cry only for the avoidable, for the unnecessary, for massive