“Tremonti helped you with that letter, didn’t he?”
I stopped short, then turned.
“What?”
He hadn’t moved, except to shove his hands into his pockets.
“The Beaumont letter. He helped you forge it, didn’t he?”
I opened my mouth, but when no sound came out, he turned and the light from the house lit his face clearly. He was grinning, but it was an awful, cynical expression that cut me like a dagger.
I managed to gasp, “What are you talking about?”
He looked at his feet. “You’re smart, Madeleine. Quick, strong, beautiful - but all along, I knew you didn’t have the technical knowledge to do that on your own, let alone convince a man like Professor Maddox to authenticate it. You needed help. You needed connections. Tremonti has both and he helped you. Then, when he learned that I was snooping around, he came here to see if I had put two and two together yet. Isn’t that right?”
The pounding in my ears was so loud I could hardly hear my own whisper.
“How did you know that?”
“I saw the picture of the two of you in the office,” he said. “It wasn’t hard to realize what that could imply. Tremonti helped you with the Beaumont letter and now he’s panicking. He came here to see if you’d destroyed it, right? That’s the usual procedure in these affairs.”
He almost spat the last words out, and my pride returned with a rush. I took an angry step toward the insufferable man.
“He did ask me about the letter.” And when he started to grin again, I snapped, “But that wasn’t the only reason why came here tonight. He wanted to warn me. To warn me about you.”
“Me? I’m surprised he’d take the time.”
“He told me that you have this cute habit of swiping material and stealing research that wasn’t yours.”
“That I…”
“Yes, you. Joe wanted me to throw you off the farm tonight. Had I asked, he would have stayed here to do it himself. Frankly, the only reason you’re still standing here is because I’ve decided I’d rather put up with you than lose a chance at the treasure. Is that the truth you were looking for, Professor?”
Dead silence fell upon us. Gregory didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. He just stood there in the dark, an outline against a royal blue sky, absorbing the blow I so easily gave.
I stood watching him, waiting – hoping - but the only reaction I got was when his head dropped for a moment.
I found the silence worse than the argument.
Randall shifted and looked up at the road again.
“He said that?” he asked. There was no jest, just the same flat, dull, lifeless tone.
“He said Gregory Randall was a thief,” I said simply.
He straightened, his stance becoming rigid. Softly, he said, “Well, now. Isn’t that just like Joe?” There was a long, shuddering sigh, then, “I suppose you believed him. We do tend to believe the ones we’re in love with.”
I staggered, but recovered quickly.
“Can you give me any reason I shouldn’t?” I demanded.
I waited for that denial, my stomach churning. Inwardly I was pleading with him, Say something, Gregory. Tell me Joe is mistaken. Please, tell me he was wrong.
But he didn't say anything. He stood there with his head down. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to stand out in the warm darkness, not with him so close.
I turned and went towards the house, feeling his somber gaze on my back as I left. But he let me go. He didn’t say anything to make me stay.
It wasn’t until I was in my room, with my door safely shut and laying on top of my old comforter that I was able to identify what exactly I was feeling: a keen sense of disappointment.
And loss.
Chapter 28:
My alarm clock jerked me out of a restless sleep and into a gray, rainy day that perfectly suited my mood. I took two pills for my headache and laced up my sneakers for my morning run. I went out the front door to avoid the kitchen and forced myself to start jogging.
Of all my bad runs, this was the worst. I slipped on slick earth, splashing in puddles, and ran into branches bent low with water-logged leaves. What was worse than all of these was the awful, sickly weight that seemed to pulled at my shoulders and upset my stomach. Try as I might, no conjured memories of Joe Tremonti’s kiss could quite erase the picture of the expression on Randall’s face last night nor the odd feeling of loss. When I came upon Randall, sitting on his bike in his slicker, waiting at our usual meeting place, the encounter was so startling as to nearly cause me to slip again. I reminded myself that I had done nothing wrong, and jogged passed him with as courteous a nod as I could manage.
I remember being glad that the glasses and hood obscured his face.
The noise of the rain aided in my determination to stay silent and not a word was said until we came to the back porch. While Randall parked his bike, I bolted up the stairs and was through the kitchen door when he called my name. I pretended not to hear it.
I raced up to my room to shower and change. I didn’t want to eat, but habit took me down the back kitchen stairs anyway. I caught myself just before I entered the room, but not before I heard Aunt Susanna say, “…always had a crush on him. I just assumed that it was a teenage thing – not lasting. I’m sorry I was wrong.”
A rush of heat flushed my face. As I crept silently back up the stairs, I heard Gregory say, “She deserves better,” with a ferocity that seemed foreign to him.
It made me stop and listen.
Aunt Susanna spoke in a tone too soft for me to hear, then Randall said, “She’s a fool. A silly little fool. She can do so much better than him.”
“I know,” Aunt Susanna said. “I know.”
That made my fists clench tight and the blood pound angrily through my forehead. It was only with an effort that I tore myself away from the rest of the conversation. I couldn’t listen to anymore of it.
In my mind, I argued with them the entire way to work. How dare they judge me! Aunt Susanna I could excuse somewhat – she didn’t know the risk Joe ran for me in forging that letter. Its discovery could have cost him his career. But Randall? There was no excuse I could think of for his dismissive judgement except for jealousy, professional and otherwise.
How dare he? I fumed. How dare he butt into my personal life!
I decided I was glad that he saw the kiss. With difficulty, I dismissed the picture of his hollow face silhouetted in the porch light last night.
I was glad to get to work. Trusty was feeling better and Leah told me she would be ready to go home tomorrow. Despite distraction of the work, and Che Che’s cheerful presence, the phrases, We do tend to believe the ones we’re in love with and She’s a little fool, chased each other around in my mind, like a manic dog chases its own tail.
We do tend to believe the ones we’re in love with.
That one bothered me the most. It was said like a condemnation rather than a simple statement of fact. It was unjust and wrong, yet I could not or would not put my finger on just why this was so.
The morning stretched on forever, the lunch break was much too long, and it seemed the afternoon would never end. I was distracted and irritable, oblivious to the ringing phone, absent-minded when dealing with clients, and careless while typing emails and invoices. It was so noticeable that even Che Che commented on it.
“Good heavens, Maddie!” she asked in the mid-afternoon, when the waiting room was empty. “What happened to you? Did you have a fight with your boyfriend last night?”
I answered “Yes,” then realized that she was talking about Joe Tremonti.
“No,” I hastily amended. “Just some personal issues, that’s all.”
She nodded, unsatisfied, but was too good a friend to ask further questions. And it was a good thing, too, because it was about then that I realized that I never told Gregory about my discovery about the Dew-Drops clue.
I spent the rest of the afternoon agonizing over how to tell h
im. I didn’t want to talk to him, wanted less to see him, unless it was to rip him apart for talking about me and Joe behind my back to my already overly protective aunt. At the same time, I wanted nothing more than to do just that, to get him so excited about the clue that he would forget about last night and we could go back to where we were: easy, teasing, free – and distant.
It never was about friendship, I reminded myself. It was always about business.
As long as I viewed him as a business associate, I could keep my temper in check. I could do that. I had, after all, had years of practice dealing with difficult people – one more shouldn’t make a difference.
The sooner this is over, the sooner I’ll have the farm to myself again.
For some reason, this was not nearly as reassuring as I had expected.
The long day finally ended and I set off for home, gritting my teeth and mentally preparing myself for the battle ahead.
The house was quiet when I got back. Aunt Susanna, Lindsay, and Jacob were in the barn with the students and I only remembered when I saw Aunt Susanna’s note, that this was Friday, the last night of the riding camp. She and Lindsay had decided to throw a little party at the end of it for the students and the moms and nannies who came to pick them up. Naturally, as head of the stables, I would be required to attend, a duty that was a mixed bag: While I appreciated the excuse to stay away from Gregory tonight, it also meant that I wouldn’t be able to work on the code with him.
I changed out of my work clothes into soft jeans and a short-sleeved flannel shirt over a tank top with my riding boots. The students expected me to dress the rustic part. Then I gathered my courage and went to knock on the office door. When I got no answer, I opened it.
Randall wasn’t in. The room was in its usual chaotic state of work-in-progress, with my desk the island of almost sterile calm. It was quiet, too, the melancholy atmosphere disturbed only by the presence of a vase of bright flowers left on my desk, Aunt Susanna’s touch no doubt. As I stood in the doorway, hesitating to enter and wondering what had become of the tiny book that I had in my hand only yesterday - I caught the scent of his cologne, hanging in the air as though marking his territory. I suddenly felt a breathless sense of loss.
Brushing the feeling aside, I went to my desk, unlocked it, and pulled out the little Dew-Drops book. Holding the tiny thing in my hands gingerly, I flipped through the pages, wondering how on earth we were going to find the key word in the midst of all of these pages.
Maybe there’s another clue in the letter…
I went over to Gregory’s desk and looked at the pile of pages, hesitating. Some of the piles had to do with his book, some of the others about the Chase farm, but it wasn’t immediately apparent which of the many would contain a copy of the Chase letter. I began to gingerly poke through the piles, trying not to disturb them too much.
Greg’s leather bound journal was under some discarded graphs. I was surprised to see it there – he normally kept it close at hand, jotting notes, careful to close it before anyone got a look at it. I tugged it out and placed it on top of the pile, then ran my hand along the edge, wondering what was inside. Dry notes about the McInnis affair? Snatches of his next book? Daily observations about life on the farm, maybe.
“Lose something?”
Gregory’s voice came from behind me, making me gasp as I turned. He was standing in the doorway, watching me with a carefully blank expression on his face. The walking stick in his hand told me he’d gone for one of his rambling walks around the property. The exercise had brightened his face and the wind had played with his thick locks until some of them drifted across his forehead boyishly - and I suddenly found myself wondering why I’d never before noticed that he was so handsome.
I checked myself: Silly little fool, Maddie, silly little fool.
“You’re back,” I said at last.
“I am,” he said.
His eyes were as veiled as I ever saw them, and he didn’t hold my gaze for more than a moment. As he strode into the room to where I was standing, I took a step back, but he didn’t approach me; rather, he went around the desk, and took the journal from me.
“Boring stuff,” he said, and dropped in into the drawer while I stared.
He leaned his walking stick against the bookcase, where he normally left it, then stood studying it for a few seconds with his hands shoved into his pockets while I tried to find something to say. Then, I remembered the book and held it up just as he turned to me.
“Madeleine,” he said quickly, “about last night…”
But I shook my head firmly, waving the book and fighting back a surge of resentment. I couldn’t allow him to speak. If we started talking about last night, any hope we had of returning to the way things were would be hopelessly lost.
The mystery had to be solved. That was the primary concern. Not my feelings, not his. In the end, neither would really matter anyway. The only way forward was to pretend as though nothing had happened last night.
“I didn’t come here because of that,” I said abruptly. “I found the key.”
“The key?”
His arrogant mask was back. He couldn’t have sounded less interested.
I ignored it, pushing aside my discomfort as I nodded and held out the tiny volume.
“The key,” I said, “to the letter.”
As he stared, I bent back over his desk and rummaged until I found one of the copies of the Alexander Chase letter. I found the line and pointed to it triumphantly, holding up the copy of the little book as I read it out loud: “I also wish to thank you for your kind words of blessing – they are dew-drops to my soul…”
I’d scarcely finished when Gregory was at my side, his shoulder brushing mine as he bent down to examine the line through his glasses. Something like an electric jolt went through me at the touch, but I ignored it and handed him the book. His fingers brushed mine in the exchange.
He open it carefully to the title page and stared at it a long moment. He was so still that I began to doubt. When he shook his head, my heart sank.
“He is referring to that book, isn’t he?” I asked weakly.
“It looks like it…” he said, frowning in concentration. “But where is it? Usually they would identify the page number and line or would have prearranged the number, but I don’t see an indication in the letter…”
Gregory looked at the letter again, froze, then grabbed a pen and made some wild strokes on the page. Looking at his handiwork, he smiled - a genuine, disbelieving smile that encompassed both triumph and childish excitement.
“There it is!” he whispered hoarsely. “Right under our noses the whole time. Look, Madeleine, look.”
He shoved the page at me. He’d underlined two words: …I think on the August words in my beloved Psalmery, especially no. 29.
He was whipped through the devotional, flipping pages until he found the devotional reading for August 29th. He read it out loud:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge. Prov. 1:7.”
His eyes met mine, shining brightly, furiously excited.
“We’ve got it, Madeleine,” he whispered. “At last, we’ve got it.”
For a brief moment, we were united and fearless. As I stared into the depths of his dark eyes, it occurred to me then - as it hadn’t before - that once this mystery was solved, there was no reason for Greg to stay. He would return to his university and the next project, and I would go back to teaching lessons and balancing the budgets. The house and land would be free from trespassers, and mine alone once more.
Alone…
I swallowed hard and turned my face away.
“Then what are we wasting time for?” I asked. “Let’s decode this thing.”
Chapter 29:
Having the key phrase and decoding the message were two entirely different things.
I explained to Gregory that I had to attend the work party, but that I could work with him until it started - a resentful offer of assistanc
e. I half expected him to throw me out, but he didn’t; instead, he cleared a chair for me to sit on and we worked in close, somewhat uncomfortable proximity for the next forty-five minutes.
Conversation, oddly enough, was not a problem: we focused on the puzzle at hand and avoided personal comments as much as possible, and only once did I look up to find Gregory gazing at me in the haggard manner of the night before. As soon as he saw me looking, the expression disappeared and he threw himself into the puzzle with renewed vigor.
I tried not to wonder how the process took so long. For all our eagerness, the decoding process went in a slow, methodical manner that was only just efficient enough to exonerate both of us from any suspicion that we were deliberately slowing things down. At least, I told myself that wasn’t what I was doing. I knew that the sooner Gregory left, the sooner my life would settle. In theory, I should have been working as fast as I could to find the treasure and speed his departure.
That was the theory, anyway.
We tried a combination of words first, using the first three words: The fear of, then the fear of the Lord, and then the whole phrase, and then single words: fear, Lord, and beginning. We were still working on beginning when Aunt Susanna and the class came in for the promised Farewell Party. The noise of their chatter and giggles gained in volume until Gregory dropped his pen, exasperated.
“So hard to concentrate with that racket,” he complained.
My phone vibrated then and I absently pulled it out.
Dinner tonight?
Just a glance at Joe’s name was enough to diminish the temporary comfort Gregory and I had discovered in the past forty-five minutes. I could feel my face flush and, when I glanced up, I saw Gregory was looking away with tightened lips.
I felt overwhelmed with the urge to run from the room.
I forced myself to answer the text and to answer it honestly:
Love to, but am working late tonight for last night of camp. Tomorrow night?
He answered immediately: It’s a date. Don’t work too hard.
Necessary Evil Page 27
