I’m well into Ken Kimble’s third wife, Dinah, who babysat his children when they were little. What I object to is the too-convenient running into and ending up married to Kimble situations. When Ken left his first wife, Birdie, he ran off with Moira Snell, a student where he taught. Through her, he met his next wife, Joan who was close friends with Moira’s parents. He then became a landscaper and ended up with Joan when he came to take care of the aphid infestation of her oleanders. Birdie’s in Virginia, Joan in Florida. Birdie’s father dies in the last pages of her section, and Joan’s father has just died in the beginning of hers. Next we find Ken Kimble in Washington D.C., having lunch at the same restaurant where Dinah works, then running into her with his car a few days or weeks later. Haigh seeks to diffuse our snort of disbelief:
The next thing should not have happened. It was a Tuesday morning, her first day off in two weeks. Dinah should have been at home in bed, sleeping until noon. Instead, she made a special trip downtown to pick up her paycheck, afraid of bouncing the check she’d written the locksmith. And that morning, crossing the alley next to Emile’s, she was struck by a car.
(…) The man got out of his car and offered his hand.
"Thank you," she said as he helped her to her feet. Then she looked up into the brilliant blue eyes of Reverend Kimble. (p. 262)
I just don’t buy it. There’s a lot of time and space between Virginia and Florida, and it all just seems to tie in too perfectly, too planned out to force it to work.
But, this line that Haigh uses as a grown-up Charlie (Birdie’s son) heads home for Christmas is just wonderful imagery:
He passed frozen fields, barns and houses, chimneys billowing smoke. In summer the fields would green, rise with corn, snow over with cotton. (p. 344)
Now that’s nice.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology