by Belva Plain
“Are you feeling okay?” Questions shot across the kitchen table. “What happened in Boston? What changed your mind?”
“Oh, a mix-up, a last-minute thing. The head man, the speaker, couldn't come. And since he was the person I wanted to hear, it didn't seem worthwhile to make the trip, so I rented this car at the airport. This is pretty good soup to come out of a can.”
Vaguely irritated by such a careless attitude toward what had been a mission with a purpose, Jim contradicted Richard.
“I'm sorry, but you're not making any sense. The entire three-day conference on land preservation doesn't depend upon one man, no matter who he is.”
“Well, maybe I made a mistake in judgment. If I did, I'm sorry. Down, Prince. Go eat your own food that your doctor ordered for you. That's the good boy.”
Kate, speaking even more softly than usual, had a question. “There's something else. What really brought you home, Rick? Come out with it.”
“Well, there are a couple of things, but let me finish my soup and sandwich first.”
“It's got to be something about Laura, and you can't bring yourself to tell us,” Jim said.
“No. No, Jim, I swear it isn't. Laura is absolutely fine. Healthy and happy as ever.”
Yet the alarm bell in Jim's head was still ringing. A few minutes passed during which the only sounds in the kitchen were small familiar ones: dogs crunched their hard kibble; the teakettle whistled until Kate got up to turn it off; Rick's spoon struck the side of the soup bowl.
But the hand that held the soup spoon was shaking, dribbling the soup over the table. Finally, at the sight of this unmistakable agitation, Jim could wait no longer.
“Out with it,” he commanded. “Don't spare us. Don't tease us. What's wrong?”
Rick pushed his chair back and raised eyes so troubled that they seemed to be making a plea for understanding and mercy.
“Perhaps we should go where the chairs are more comfortable,” he said. “I have a long story. Then again, maybe I'll make it short.”
In the room called the “den” and sometimes the “library,” where Kate's books and his own had long been commingled, Jim glanced up to where, in the third row from the top, stood his leather-bound Jefferson. He would remember later how he had had a totally irrational premonition that this simple object would in some way have a connection with what Rick was about to say.
“After dinner the three of us went for a walk and stopped in at one of those art auctions, museum arts, tycoon stuff you know, worth millions. Of course, neither Laura nor I had ever seen anything like it, but Gil had, and he told us a great deal about it.
“Walking home, we met another man, a lawyer who works in the same building as Gil does, but not in the same firm. It was late, so we dropped Laura off at her place first. This man then told Gil and me that one of the paintings had just been withdrawn from the sale by court order, and he had simply stopped by to check whether the order had been carried out this afternoon. The piece is in litigation between a divorced couple, both of whom claim it.”
Rick stopped and sighed, as if speech was exhausting him. He shifted his chair, and there was a long pause.
“Go on,” Jim said.
“The woman, a client of this man's firm, has an interesting history. There was no real reason for him to mention it, so it turned out, except that he found it interesting. One of her ex-husbands had kidnapped their two-year-old daughter some twenty years ago or more, and there has been no trace of her, or of him, ever since. No trace, none at all, he said. It was long before his time, of course, but he also had heard plenty of talk about it at the office. The man's name began with a ‘D,' Douglas or Donald something, he wasn't sure. And the last name began with a ‘V' or maybe a ‘W,' he thought.”
Once more, Jim stopped to draw his breath, and again said, “Go on.”
Kate's hand, reaching over the arm of the chair, was laid upon Jim's. And Richard's eyes, now meeting Jim's, were suddenly as compassionate as was that hand.
“The odd thing is that the man is—was—well-known, a top-drawer lawyer, a big shot. You could write a book about something like that, couldn't you?” he said.
What is silence other than the absence of sound? It is an awful hush. It stuns. It is like death.
After a minute or two, Jim broke the silence. “What else?”
“That's all,” Richard answered.
“How long have you known about me before last night?”
“A long time, Jim.”
“And how long is that?”
“Since I was seventeen. Does it matter?”
“Yes. I want to know.”
So Richard, staring down at the floor, out the window, and at the cat asleep on the rag rug, in any direction except toward Jim or his mother, began.
“It was the day after Thanksgiving. There was an extra pumpkin pie, supposed to be saved for the freezer. And I had such an appetite for it . . . you remember. So I went down the back stairs on bare feet and sneaked into the kitchen. And you two were talking. Hushed, but still loud enough for me to hear through the kitchen door that was ajar. I could tell by your voices that you were very frightened about something, and I couldn't help listening, simply because you were so frightened, and it scared me, too. You were talking about something in the newspaper, about people looking for Jim because he had stolen Laura. Before I went downstairs, I remember, I had been thinking that our lives were going to end in some awful way.
“But they didn't, so I went to school and tried all day not to think any more about it. After a few days, I stopped being terrified. I only knew that I must never let you know I had overheard you, because then you would be afraid that I might tell somebody, even let it slip out by accident, and it would be terrible for you to live with that fear for the rest of your life. I knew I could trust myself not to speak. But how could you know that I would never speak? So I buried it. I had to pretend I had never heard it. I had to.”
Kate began to cry, and Jim said, “Come here. The chair is big enough for us both.”
Through their two thin sweaters, he felt her heartbeat. What had he done to her? For his disaster would now be hers, as he had always known it would be, as he had warned her once that it would be.
Steady. Steady. This is it. This time it really is.
He looked toward Richard. Poor boy. Seventeen, he had been, no longer a child, but not an adult, either. Poor boy.
When he could speak, he spoke to Richard. “What can you have thought about me?”
“That it couldn't have been your fault.” Richard's eyes were filled with tears. “That you must have had a good reason. I remembered how you had treated my dad, how kind you are to Mom, to all of us, and to everybody. But I was—I am—so afraid for you.”
Afraid for me? Ah no, for Laura, who has never known and should never need to know. Laura, his little girl. What of her? And the silence flowed back. It was as though everything had been said.
The springtime sun, now low in the sky, cast its last gleam where the bare floor met the rug. In the middle distance beyond the windowpane where Jim was sitting, the old, old pony, Laura's first mount, grazed in his fenced yard. The sweetness, the simple, unchanging innocence of it all . . .
“I'm thinking that maybe you and Mom should go away, leave the country before anything happens.”
“No. Running away is never an answer.”
“I'm not saying that something is bound to happen, but it could.”
“You haven't given me the whole story, have you? Tell me every word that was spoken, if you can recall. Every word is important. I need the whole story.”
“Gilbert said he had a feeling he had heard something someplace. Names and incidents leave impressions in his head that often bother him, he said, because while he knows they are there, he can't place them. The funny thing is that days, even months later they can come back to him while he's brushing his teeth, maybe, or listening to the news. Then suddenly everything is there again. The other fellow laughed and
warned him not to call up at one A.M. if that should ever happen because he didn't need the information, anyway. He called Gil a typical nitpicker.”
“Gil will remember it. Mark my words.”
“What makes you so sure, Jim?”
“Because Gil has a very, very sharp mind. He's orderly, he's ambitious, and he is a nitpicker.”
Now Kate, recovering her courage, gave a caution. “Jim, darling, you're a super-worrier, you know you are. You worry when one of us has a cold. You're afraid it's pneumonia. You worry when the dog's paw is infected. The only thing you don't worry about is yourself. Am I right, Rick?” She was trying to soothe him, and soothe herself, too. “Isn't he a super-worrier, Rick?” she persisted.
“I can't say, Mom. That name may pop into Gil's head, or it may not. If it doesn't pop, then nothing will happen. How will we find out?”
“We'll find out,” Jim said.
“Tell me,” Kate begged, clasping his hand. “You think you're sparing me. Tell me what you really think.”
“I think we'll know if and when anything happens. And in the meantime, we'll live just as we've been doing all these years.”
So the seasons passed at their accustomed, normal pace. Laura came home for a brief summer stay. The countryside sizzled through a heat wave, and the town held its usual Fourth of July parade, after which the Fullers invited their friends to a grand barbecue; the Scofields, of course, and others like them, were there, all the busy people on the council, in the schools and the hospital, the energetic, good people whom Jim had collected through the years. “Movers and shakers,” Kate called them. The Fullers, the Fuller family, fell back into its old routine of lake swims and six-mile hikes into the coolness of the hills. Richard put down a first payment on a twenty-five-acre piece of land, thus “rounding out the property into a perfect square,” as he liked to say. Orders for early fall planting came in so fast that Kate hired a part-time secretary to keep up with the paperwork. And Jim worked so hard as overseer of Foothills Farm that he had little time to think about anything else.
Surprisingly rare was any mention of the event that Richard had reported. Only once, when Laura came for Thanksgiving with her lively talk of work and play in New York, as well as her store of comical reminiscences, was a real jolt felt.
“Ah, pumpkin pie,” she said with a mock sigh. “I used to think you'd kill yourself with it, Rick. The portions you stole! Two at the dinner table, and a third one you'd sneak afterward while we were cleaning up the kitchen or asleep.”
Three pairs of eyes flickered for an instant, met, and parted. Perhaps, Jim thought, we have all, without admitting it, been succumbing to some kind of superstitious feeling that if you don't think or talk much about a bad thing, it will go away. Or perhaps we are simply behaving like fairly intelligent people who refuse to waste precious today in fear of tomorrow.
Still, at random moments in disjointed fashion, a thought would stab him. Really, there had been no need for Kate to hear what Richard had heard in New York. Since there was nothing that she or anyone could do about this, why should she have to carry this dark thought with her? And then he would marvel at Richard, at his courage and his decency, hiding for so many years what must be his fears for his mother, for Laura, and for them all.
A rain-soaked winter passed, followed by another fragrant spring, and it would soon be a year since the shock. So Gilbert apparently had not associated the name of Donald Wolfe with James Fuller.
Then one day in midspring, Kate brought home a fashion magazine that she had read at the hairdresser's.
“I thought maybe you'd want to see this,” she told him, “or maybe you don't want to?”
“This” was a page full of fashionable people at a fashionable event held in some tropical place. And there was Lillian again, wearing some designer's dress with that vivid smile on her face, standing beside a new man.
“He is a new man, isn't he? The last one looked half her age, if I remember. This one looks twice her age.”
Kate spoke with scorn, while Jim was merely reading rapidly and calculating. The caption described Lillian's new man as her “devoted companion, who rarely visits the United States, but has been staying here for the past two months because she has urgent business to take care of.”
That painting, perhaps? If I ever am rich, I will collect great art.
But then again, it might be something else that was “urgent business,” might it not? On the other hand, it's been two years since that man appeared at Laura's commencement, and nothing had come of it.
“Now I've spoiled your evening,” Kate lamented. “Your expression tells me what you're thinking. I shouldn't have shown you this.”
“I'm fine,” he said lightly, “just amused at the sight of her holding those tiny dogs on a leash. She never liked dogs. She couldn't stand them around, as a matter of fact.”
“These are the current fashion, though.”
“Ah, so that's it. Now I understand,” he replied, as though the whole thing were a joke.
When the magazine went into the wastebasket, the subject was dropped—or only dropped between Jim and Kate. For on the next day, it came to light again between Jim and Richard.
“Mom's worried. She told me about that stuff in the magazine, about—about her being in New York on business. What do you think?”
“I have no idea.”
“But if Gil remembered the name, you surely would have heard from him, wouldn't you?” Richard hesitated. “I'm sure he wouldn't delay if he knew. Or maybe that other guy's law firm would have reported something to the police.”
“It doesn't work like that. It can take a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months, to get a case properly put together. The New York district attorney has to get in touch with the local D.A. here, and show evidence. It probably seems quick and simple to you, and I can understand why. But there are procedures to be gotten through before you can make an arrest. And Laura is not a little child who could be in danger, so there's no risk, no hurry, in this case.”
“Well, I'm no lawyer, that's sure, but still it seems to me that Gil can't have recalled the name. I've been thinking that he wouldn't believe it possible, even if he could recall it. He'd tell himself he was making a mistake.”
Jim gazed out over the placid landscape. The corn was poking through the earth in the vegetable garden, and the dogs were stretched out asleep in the shade.
“I'm not so sure of that,” he murmured, thinking that no lawyer worth his salt wouldn't believe it possible.
“No, Rick, it will come like a thunderclap on a sunny day if it comes.”
Chapter 27
On a happy morning in Laura's pretty room, where the April sun bathed the windowsill, where her smart patent-leather loafers were brand new, her assignments for the week were already finished, and she was ready for her Saturday workout at the gym, there came the startling, shrill sound of the doorbell. Now who on earth could be so impatient at a quarter to eight?
She opened the door. Before her stood two men, one with some sort of elaborate camera that he thrust toward her face.
“Bettina Wolfe?” one shouted.
“No! What do you think you're doing?” For the one with the camera had put his foot past the door.
“What do you want? Get away, or I'll call the police.”
“There's nothing to be afraid of, miss. You're in the news, that's all. It's about your mother.”
“My mother? For God's sake, what's happened? Where is she?”
“Right now? Somewhere in Europe. Nothing's happened to her. She'll be coming back now that she's heard. Listen, we only—”
The elevator door had barely opened when Gil came rushing down the hall. “What are you guys doing here?” he shouted. “You're bothering this woman. Get away, and hurry up!”
“No harm, mister. We're not bothering her. This is news, that's all. We're from the paper.”
“No, no! Get away! Let her alone.”
Gil shoved h
is way into the apartment, closed and locked the door, and put both hands on Laura's shoulders.
“You're scared to death, and I don't blame you. The fools! Fools!”
“But what's this all about? What are you doing here?”
“I have an appointment near your gym, so I thought we might walk over there together.”
“Tell me the truth,” she said, “because I don't believe you. Did you know those men were coming? And who's on the plane flying back from Europe? What's he talking about?”
“I'm not sure . . . I heard . . .”
“Will you please stop stammering?”
“I don't know. There's some mix-up.” Gil made a small, helpless gesture. “I think you should speak to your father.”
“Why? Is anything wrong with Dad?”
“No, no. It's just that he can answer your questions better than I can. Really, darling. It's something to do with him, his affairs. But he's not sick. Don't worry. Just call him.”
“Oh, this is crazy! Haven't people got anything better to do than send able-bodied men around to annoy ordinary citizens with nonsense? What can my father know about it? You don't answer me. . . . What's the matter?”
“I'm still thinking that you ought to talk to your father. He'll explain. I don't know about it.”
“All right, I will. This is ridiculous.”
The telephone rang and rang at every extension, Kate's office, Dad's office, upstairs, and the kitchen. Where could they all be? Yes, something had happened, maybe to Rick. He drove too fast. They were always lecturing him about it. Please let it not be Rick, or anybody. Please not—
“Hello?” said Jennie.
“Jennie? What are you doing over there? Is everybody all right? What's happened?”
“They're—they're all in town. They had business there. Some errands. So I came over to answer phone calls for them.”
The voice was strange, with a sudden, unnatural brightness, as when one speaks to a person who's very ill, or when one is dodging a subject.
“What are you hiding, Jennie?”
“I? Hiding? Why, nothing, dear. But I'm sorry I have to hang up. There's a pot boiling on the stove. I'll tell them you called.”
