by Meg Wolfe
disappear into the shadows around the door at the end of the foyer. There was a soft slapping sound, then nothing.
Charlotte moved cautiously into the shadows, closer to the door, and tried the knob. Locked. Good. Then her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she saw a small flapped pet door at the bottom. Maybe not so good. She considered calling Larry or going around to his apartment, but decided it wasn’t an emergency. It was a rather nice cat, after all, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have the occasional visit.
Instead, she went back upstairs and switched on the TV to catch the local news, still amazed at having the luxury to do so, and the luxury of her own Internet connection again. She listened to the news and weather reports (rain was moving in overnight) while writing Ellis an email to thank her for the music video. Then she heard the name “Seamus O’Dair,” and looked up to see a picture of Donovan on the screen. Only it wasn’t Donovan, she quickly realized, but O’Dair, and wondered at the uncanny resemblance. Could it be—?
The program was a university-sponsored talk show called Courtney at Corton, that covered the arts and current events. Tonight’s installment was an overview of Seamus O’Dair’s life and work, in light of his book recently being in the news. The expert being interviewed was a professor at Corton University, one that Charlotte assumed came in after she and Jack divorced, as she had no recollection of meeting him. Most of what was discussed was commonly known, but Charlotte listened patiently on the off chance that something would be relevant to Olivia’s notebooks. Or to Donovan. The picture of O’Dair was not the usual old man of letters on book jackets, but a candid one of when he was younger, wearing glasses and holding a cigarette between his long, bony fingers. The program host commented on this, and the professor explained that it was a photo taken around the time O’Dair wrote Least Objects, in 1959, when he was forty-eight years old and coming into his writing prime.
Donovan was in his early fifties. When was he born? And just how well did Olivia know O’Dair?
The professor went on to describe O’Dair’s involvement in the French Resistance during World War II, and how he and fellow artists and writers in the Resistance gathered in Paris and worked to restore a theater which they themselves had sabotaged and set on fire while it was being used by the Nazis. O’Dair was Irish by birth, but lived in France, and wrote nearly all of his early and middle-period books in French; the author said on more than one occasion that English was too full of words and phrases that were beside the point. He never translated his French work into English, nor the English into French, claiming “it was not philosophically possible.”
Courtney (who was a youngish professor of communications, and knew the camera was making the most of her mixed ancestry) asked if the story in Least Objects only confirmed that the French hated Americans. The professor chuckled, and said the hatred was a myth—for the most part. He explained that the French distinguished between a people and their government, and have looked askance at American power and foreign policy for a long time, especially after World War II. O’Dair wrote Least Objects when the Resistance hero de Gaulle came back into power. During this time, the Resistance was glorified, romanticized, and those who were not enthusiastic were looked at as if they were Nazi collaborators. The Americans may have helped to liberate France, but they took their time and made little secret of their reluctance to work with General de Gaulle during the war. The professor found it interesting that O’Dair used the phrase “military-industrial complex” almost two years before Eisenhower used it in his farewell speech, but there was never any attribution given by the White House.
The time allotted for the interview was running out, and the hostess concluded the segment with more commonly-known facts about O’Dair, including his other works and his Nobel Prize for Literature.
Charlotte got up from the chair and stretched. Her legs and back were still aching from all the lifting and moving, but on the whole, she thought, looking around at her brand-new apartment, it was worth it. She was normally a shower person, but for tonight she ran a bath in the big claw-foot tub, and enjoyed being able to stretch out and recline in it as she soaked. It wasn’t the Jacuzzi she had at Lake Parkerton, but it was still good, and certainly quieter. She made a mental note to bring a couple of pillar candles from the house, and perhaps a low table for setting a glass of wine next to the tub.
It was early, but she didn’t care, and got into her favorite plaid pajama bottoms and an extra soft tee shirt. She rummaged around the kitchen and put together a snack from the gift basket. There was a bottle of calvados and a chunk of camembert, plus some savory crackers to work with. Perfect. She brought it over to her bedside table, along with her laptop and Olivia’s notebooks, and turned on the reading lamp. The bed was behind the row of screens she had set up to use as a room divider, creating a snug and cozy place, and helped to diffuse any light from the street below that managed to get past the window blinds. She was glad now that Diane had talked her into bringing a proper bed and extra pillows as she climbed onto the soft duvet and sighed with pleasure. What was it that Simon once said? The older I get, the more I appreciate home comforts.
The brandy went down nicely, warming her joints and relaxing her muscles. The various scenes of the day played through her head, coming back again and again to Simon stretched out on the very spot she was lying on herself. There might be little use in hoping for anything to happen, she thought, but if she enjoyed thinking about him, she would. No one would have to know.
She opened a notebook, planning to scan through each one to get a sense of what they covered, and to see if there was anything to illuminate any of the mysteries of this case: why Olivia stopped writing; why she wrote again, but in secret; why Donovan was the spitting image of Seamus O’Dair; what was it Donovan and Mitchell were looking for; why Olivia and Wesley Warren were killed. But after just a few minutes, she was blissfully sound asleep.
Eighteen
Wednesday, September 25th
It was the concrete truck roaring by that startled her awake, but there was also white noise that tempted her back to sleep. For the first few seconds, she didn’t know where she was, and then, seeing her favorite duvet cover, the familiar folding screens, and her robe hanging from a hook on the closet door, reality fleshed out. It was the apartment in Elm Grove, on the busiest street in town. Her new home. The white noise was rain.
Charlotte yawned and checked her cell phone on the side table. Six a.m. She’d been in bed for at least nine hours. Olivia’s notebooks were still spread on the other side of the bed, along with a patch of dark soft stuff that looked like cat hair. Right. The cat must have come up to sleep on the bed at some point during the night. She smiled.
The usual morning routine felt a little awkward. She was used to having ample counter and cabinet space in the bathroom, but there was almost no place to set anything down here. It made her aware of every movement: hold toothbrush, remove cap from toothpaste tube and set it on small area next to the cold tap, put toothpaste on toothbrush, hold toothbrush in mouth while replacing cap on toothbrush tube and putting tube back in small medicine cabinet, then brush teeth. She did pack her electric toothbrush, but would have to find a place to set the charger. Mental note: bring some kind of bathroom storage or shelf thingy from home. Correction: from house in Lake Parkerton.
Making coffee was a little easier. While it brewed, she opened the window blinds and surveyed the rainy townscape. At this hour, there was light commuter traffic broken by the occasional truck or semi, but almost no pedestrians. She moved the screens away from the bed and climbed back in, this time with coffee in the big red mug and her laptop. From this vantage point, she could see the entire apartment, save for the door to the bathroom.
She recalled Diane’s loose quote of Virginia Woolf over lunch at Cole’s Pub, “money and a room of your own.” Here’s the room, Charlotte thought. In a few days, with any luck, there will be some money. She opened her laptop to write a journal entry.
/> My new home feels like a cross between a waiting room and a room at the Lotus Spa. It is small, well-lit, airy, and there are very few things in it, but they are good things. It is serene, but it isn’t home. At least not yet. I feel self-conscious in it. I miss having books on the shelves, art on the walls, and yet I suppose the blank walls are soothing in their own way. My closet looks like I’m on a two-week vacation somewhere, but if I’m honest those are the things I usually end up wearing, anyway. I feel like I’m meeting myself as I really am for the first time, yet that can’t be write. Oops, right.
She wrote for another twenty minutes, stopping when the rain stopped and the sunlight broke through the clouds. She dressed for a bike ride, and found just enough money in the bottom of her purse for a bagel and egg sandwich at The Coffee Grove.
Elm Grove was the same as ten years before, yet it wasn’t. Enough time had passed that Charlotte felt herself on a weird cusp between the familiar and the new as she rode her bike around the neighborhood. A familiar figure in a trench coat and fedora was walking with a distinctive lope along the sidewalk on Cortland Street. Was it her old neighbor, Frank? She
