The Canterbury Sisters by Kim Wright Page B

him right there on the bridge.”
    Her voice is dim and cold. It has the slap of finality. The cold dim slap of a wallet hitting the water beneath a Guatemalan bridge, ten years ago, very late at night.
    “Yes, he threw the wallet and they rolled him off after it,” Jean says, her own voice as dreamy as her daughter’s is clear. It’s like she’s watching a movie in her mind. A movie she has seen many times, with dialogue she knows by heart. “It wasn’t until the next day they recovered the body. But by then . . .”
    We have stopped at the crest of a hill and she looks around, as if surprised to find herself surrounded by so much beauty, safe and secure in the middle of an English meadow. “We went back to the States as soon as we could. The insurance money was astounding. Much more than I would ever have dreamed. I remember that when they told me the amount, my head began to buzz. I was looking at the lawyer, who was saying that the payout would be double his normal policy because he’d been killed while on foreign assignment, but the buzzing drowned everything else out. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear him. And the money from that insurance policy has kept us beautifully ever since. Even my father had to admit this. That Allen did a superb job of providing for his family, even from beyond the grave.”
    And there we have it. A tale of the perfect man. Rich and dead and utterly self-sacrificial. Jean’s face is splotched with tears, but it strikes me that she’s told us no more than the story of a redshirt in a Star Wars movie. A minor character who must die early so the plot can advance. I glance at the others, but it’s hard to read their faces beyond the sort of polite respect that such sudden and violent widowhood would seem to demand. Becca’s hood is pulled low, obscuring her eyes. The moment is awkward. We’ve come to the end of the first story, told by a woman eager to share it. Should we clap? As stories go, it seems like a bit of a failure, since I don’t believe any of us is feeling the degree of emotion we expected to feel. That teenage girl who can’t be spoken of , I think. The one who was kidnapped, likely raped, and maybe murdered. She’s the real story here.
    “Well, okay then,” says Valerie, bringing her hands together in a loud, ringing clap. “One down, seven to go.”
    It’s an extraordinarily glib remark under the circumstances and Silvia recoils as if she’s heard a gunshot. I catch her eye. This fat fool , we both seem to be thinking. What’s she doing here? What could Canterbury possibly hold for the likes of her? She will be the pilgrim among us who tells the story with all the farts and belches, that’s for sure.
    “I’m sorry,” Angelique says to Jean, but it’s hard to say whether she’s sorry that Allen is dead or is just trying to cover up for Valerie’s rudeness. The rest of us murmur things. Make cooing sounds, the sort of monosyllabic noises of sympathy that are expected after this sort of confession. We must sound like a chorus of birds.
    The only one who seems utterly nonreactive to Valerie’s crudity is Jean herself. “What are those?” she asks, pointing in the distance. “Those vine things all stacked to look like wigwams?”
    “That’s the remnants of the hops harvest,” Tess says. “We’ll see any number of them along the route. Hops and apples are the primary crops of the region. When we stop at the inn for lunch you will find plenty of beers on the menu that are brewed locally, if you’d like to try them.”
    “They’re lovely, aren’t they?” Jean says vaguely, staring down at the meadow before us, her tears still unwiped. “They don’t quite seem real.”

Five
    D espite the fact that the main street of the next town seems deserted, the pub parking lot is nearly full. We make our way single file through what Tess calls “the smoking garden.” A dozen men and a couple of women are huddled around picnic tables and