by Kate Wilhelm
"You're acting like a jealous child," Willa said in a low voice. "I'm an adult, and so is Jud. I believe we can both take care of ourselves."
Abby dropped her hand and watched Willa return to the museum and pass out of sight. Since that day, two years ago, they had been distant, polite, no longer sisters.
She spotted Willa instantly, standing outside the supermarket, her back to the parking lot; she was wearing jeans, a long shapeless jacket, and hiking boots. Abby drove through the lot and stopped, pushed the button to roll down the passenger window, and called her name. When Willa turned, all color drained from her face as she stared at the van. Abby had driven it in order to give Spook a little more room than the small Supra afforded; she had not considered what effect seeing the van and the dog would have on Willa.
"It's me," she called. "Get in."
There was an awkward moment after Willa got in, before Abby started to drive. "I phoned," Willa said, "but then I realized you had relatives around, so I didn't expect you to call back."
"I didn't know you called," Abby said. It was entirely possible that Brice had told her, but she had no memory of it. There had been so many calls, the answering machine had not been able to record them all. "I was going to take Spook out to the Arboretum, let her run. Is that okay with you?"
"You don't have to spend time with me," Willa said quickly. "I mean ... If we could just park somewhere ..."
"Do you want to go for a walk with us?"
"Yes."
"Okay, the Arboretum."
Spook was standing on the floor of the backseat, her fore-paws on the back of the passenger seat, whining softly. Willa turned to pet her, and Spook licked her hand.
The Arboretum, a few miles south, was a sprawling park reverting to a natural state with a minimum of human interference, enough to keep trails cleared, and to control the exuberant growth of brambles and poplars and poison oak. On the lower side was a river and a large pond with nutria burrows on the banks and ducks in the water. The southern edge of the park extended up Mount Pisgah, where trails varied in difficulty from acceptable for strollers to trails so steep and rough that it took experienced climbers to follow them. Abby intended to take one midway between the extremes.
"I'll have to keep you on the leash until we get up the trail,"
Abby said to Spook, snapping on the leash at the parking lot. Half a dozen other cars were in the lot, but it was a large area; not a person was in sight. They walked past the administration building, with its information leaflets and a large anteroom where schoolchildren assembled before starting nature walks. Beyond that building was a big barn used for an annual plant exchange, or to put on demonstrations of various kinds, to display mushrooms, with experts who would identify whatever fungus, mushroom, or toadstool the patrons brought to them, or horticulturists who identified sprigs of plants, flowers.... Behind the barn the trail led up the mountain.
As soon as they had followed a curve or two and were out of sight of the buildings, Abby took the leash off Spook. It was against the rules, but Spook was too well behaved to cause a problem, and watching her bound off between trees, Abby smiled faintly. Creature of the forests and mountains.
Almost as if unleashing the dog had been her cue, Willa began to talk. "A few months ago Jud told me about the fight you two had. All that time, and he never mentioned it until last summer. He told me some of the things you both said, and how ashamed and sorry he was."
Abby watched the trail ahead of them. It was hardly wide enough for two people; now and again their shoulders brushed each other, or their arms did.
Phrases from that fight had taken up dwelling in her head, noisy tenants who would not be hushed. They clamored now.
"If you do it to Willa, I'll never speak to you again. I'll write you off completely!"
"What I do is none of your business. Willa's a big girl, which is more than I can say about you. You didn't learn a damn thing the first time out, did you?"
"This has nothing to do with me. At least I didn't hang in there and hope for better tomorrows for years the way my mother did. With some people there aren't any better tomorrows. All tomorrows are just like all yesterdays."
"This has everything to do with you! You stepped in it with Petrie, and turned around and did it again with Brice, and didn't learn a thing."
"Don't you dare bring Brice into it!"
"I'm watching you turn into your mother, do you realize that? You're becoming more like her every day, crying for a security blanket, and it's not there, kid. Believe me, it's not there. You provide it, or no one does."
"I'm not talking about my mother, or Brice and me. I'm talking about you! Don't you ever consider what you're doing, one woman after another, used, tossed out? How you make them feel? Like trash! And now Willa."
"You ever see a woman tied to a bedpost here? See me force my way in where I wasn't invited?"
"I saw my own mother cry herself to sleep night after night!"
"I was never unfaithful to her, and you know it! So does she. You're mixing apples and oranges."
"Oh, what's the use! I should go now. Take me across so I can go."
"Not yet. Let's finish what you started."
"Take me, or I'll swim across. Now!"
"You're too mad to be allowed to get near a car. You'd kill someone on the road."
She was so angry, she couldn't stop shaking.
Jud came across the cabin to her and put his arm around her shoulders. "Just calm down, and I'll row you over."
She shrugged him off. "I'll get my stuff together. Let's not talk about any of this again. Never. I'll never mention Willa's name to you again. But I mean it, if you hurt her, I'll never see you again."
The scene, two years old now, was in her head as if it had happened yesterday, and there was nothing she could do to get it out. She felt outraged and confused that he had told Willa about it. Abby had never mentioned it to Brice. He knew something had happened, but she had not said a word about it to him.
Spook came running out of the woods, gave Abby and Willa a good-natured lick, and raced off in the other direction.
"I wish I had known a lot sooner," Willa said. "He hated it that a fight like that had come between you, but he didn't know how to fix it."
"We sort of patched it up again," Abby said.
"Not talking about it isn't exactly patching up anything."
Abby knew that and had kept trying over the past two years to pretend that being polite and dutiful was gradually healing the wounds. They had both kept up the pretense. Neither had mentioned Willa's name again.
"He called me after he talked to you last week," Willa said, her voice almost too low to hear. "He told me you couldn't make it out that weekend. We had planned . . . He wanted to talk to you alone; that's why he said Friday, when Brice would be at work, and that evening I was planning to join you. Then he said you couldn't make it. Abby, he wanted to tell you that we were going to get married. He ... we both agreed not to tell a soul until he had talked to you. He wasn't sure how you would take it. He didn't want you to hear it from anyone else before he talked to you."
Abby stopped moving. Married? She clutched Willa's arm and pulled her around to see her face. Willa had tears on her cheeks. "He asked you to marry him?"
Willa nodded. "Last month. We were planning to be married in November. But he had to talk to you before we could announce anything." She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands, then put her hands in her pockets and, hunched as if with a chill, started to walk again.
Abby stood paralyzed, too surprised—even shocked—to move as Willa went up the trail. She looked like an old woman. Then Abby ran to catch up; she grabbed Willa and embraced her and held her as hard as she could. Champagne, a celebration, how happy he had sounded. And she had said no, she couldn't make it. After a moment Willa drew back. Then, hand in hand, they continued to follow the trail upward, not speaking now.
A little later they found a log to sit on, and they talked q
uietly. Now and then Spook checked in, gave them a kiss, and left to explore again.
Basically Jud had finished the book, Willa said, but he had a little cleanup work to do; he had to shuffle the pieces around and get them in order, then make a final printout, and he would be done. About two weeks, he had said. He had planned to move in with her, and they would have spent weekends at the cabin.
"I couldn't get away until April," Willa said, "and then we were going to go to Italy, spend three months.... A delayed honeymoon. He said he wanted me to teach him how to see art."
Willa glanced at Abby. "You remember that day we had an argument over him?"
"God, yes!"
"You really shook me," Willa said. "You were giving voice to all the problems and uncertainties I was wrestling with. I couldn't reconcile the three images of one man. He came to a show at the museum once, long before I met him, and someone pointed him out to me and said who he was, the world-famous writer, hermit, and reincarnation of Don Juan, all in one pretty package. He was handsome, and with a woman, of course. Then there was the father you talked about a lot, loving, warm, funny, capable of anything and everything, a perfect godlike father. And the man I grew to know and to love. I wouldn't say naive exactly, but tentative, shy, sort of hesitant. Afraid of me. That was it, he was afraid of me in a curious way, and so careful with me, as if one wrong word, one wrong act would send me flying away. I was having a lot of trouble trying to sort things out the day you spoke your mind. I knew I loved him, and I had accepted that I might be dumped, as you so elegantly put it, and I had decided I would risk that. I had to risk that. But then I realized that he was just as afraid as I was. In spite of what we had been through, both of us, we were like two kids trying out being in love for the first time."
When she became silent, and the silence stretched out to where it would have been awkward to refer back to that time, Abby told her about the lieutenant and the detective, about going to the cabin with them, everything. "Did he ever mention the cashier's checks to you?"
Willa shook her head. "One hundred forty-five thousand! He told me he had mortgaged the cabin years ago and had given Matthew Petrie fifteen thousand dollars, but that much money! No. Could he have been giving Matthew money all these years?"
"What for?"
"I don't know."
"Friday night, it had to have been someone he knew well," Abby said after a moment. "That's the only way I can see someone being in the cabin in the middle of the night. Someone got stranded there, or planned to stay until dark, something like that." She looked at the ground. "I thought it was a woman," she mumbled.
"I would have thought the same thing a few years ago."
After a moment, Abby asked, "Did he say why he gave Matthew that money, fifteen thousand dollars?"
"To pay off debts. Your ex-husband was going to skip and leave you with a mountain of debts, creditors. Jud said you were so determined not to be a burden, so independent, that he didn't think you would let him pay them off if you knew he had mortgaged the cabin to raise the money. He made your ex go with him and pay people in person, with him watching. He wanted you to be free to go back to school, not feel obligated to work as a waitress and pay Matthew's bills."
"He never told me," Abby whispered. The money for the divorce lawyer must have come from the mortgage, too, she realized. As recently as eight years ago, Jud had still been poverty-stricken, just as she had been.
Spook ran back to them, and this time lay at their feet panting, her tongue hanging out, sides heaving. She looked very happy.
Clouds had moved in and the air was degrees colder and smelled of approaching rain. Above them the fir trees rustled in a rising wind, as if in anticipation.
"We should start back," Abby said.
They began to retrace their way down the mountain, this time with the dog staying close by, as if she had had enough exploring for one outing.
Close to the valley floor, Abby put the leash back on Spook, and during the brief stop, Willa said, "You know no one's going to believe he actually proposed, that we were going to be married."
Abby looked at her, startled, then slowly nodded. It was true. Who would believe it? They hadn't told anyone.
"It's made me feel awkward," Willa said quietly. "That's why I didn't want to come around when your relatives were there. They would have looked on me as the new conquest, something like that, not as his fiancee." She ducked her head and started to walk.
"How did you find out?" Abby asked. "Who told you?"
"The police called me, looking for you. Jud said you were going to the coast with Jonelle and a couple of other friends, and that's what I told them. Then ... I just got in my car and began to drive, and I ended up in Bandon and checked into a motel. There didn't seem to be anyone I could talk to. Or maybe I had to be alone. I came back for the service, then took off again. Now they'll have to question me, I guess. I'll tell them why Jud called you, about our engagement, but I had to tell you first."
"I'm glad you did." He had sounded so happy, and she had said no, she couldn't make it.
Silently they walked past the barn, past the administration building. Other people were leaving now before the rain moved in, the first people they had seen. Their silence continued as they drove back into town.
At the Safeway lot Willa motioned toward the side. "I left my car over there. I imagine the police will want to talk to me first thing in the morning. Will you come back to work yet?"
"Yes. I'll be there tomorrow. After... after they ask you questions, let's go out for coffee or something." She reached for Willa's hand, and for another moment they sat there holding hands. Abby was thinking that of all the people Jud had known, loved, and left, they were probably the only two people who had really loved him; knowing exactly what he was like, they had loved him.
8
It was no use, Abby thought on Monday at the museum. She and two other graduate students were supposed to be packing up statues that had been on loan, but she kept forgetting what she was doing and became as immobile as one of the figures being crated. When Willa finally appeared at the door of the workroom, Abby fled with her. Willa had been in her office for hours with the lieutenant and his detective assistant.
Abby didn't ask a thing, and Willa didn't volunteer anything as they left the museum, threaded their way through a vast parking lot crammed full, crossed the street, and entered a cafe. At the table, with coffee before them, Willa finally spoke.
"There must be a hundred different ways to ask the same question, and they used them all." She was wan and listless, withdrawn. "Didn't we tell anyone at all we planned to be married? Not even my mother?" She grimaced. "That would be like hiring a television spot or a float to go up and down every street in town broadcasting the news." She took a deep breath and looked out the window. "How can you prove you were home by yourself if you didn't see anyone, or if no one saw you? I don't know." When she lifted her coffee cup, her hand was shaking.
"It doesn't mean anything," Abby said quickly. "They're asking everyone questions like that, not just you."
Willa looked at her sadly and didn't respond. After a moment she said, "You might as well go back home. You must have a lot of things to attend to."
"The condolence notes," Abby said. "Walk the dog. Wait for the agent to call. Then I'll have to go to the cabin for a few days." But it was true, she was useless at work; she might as well be home.
She found she could read only a few of the condolences before she had to stop, get up, and walk away, and she kept listening for the doorbell, for the telephone, for a call to say they had found him, they had the killer, it was over. The day and night seemed without end.
Christina Maas called on Tuesday; she would take a late flight to Eugene, and could they go to the cabin the following day, Wednesday? Maybe Abby, she suggested, could buy a few things for them to eat, breakfast stuff, snacks, lunch, and they could eat dinner out. Her suggestion sounded like an order, but Abby was grateful for anything that
forced her to act.
"The movie contract is a done deal," Christina said before she hung up. "I'll tell you about it when I see you."
Abby picked her up at her motel on Wednesday morning. Christina was wearing fawn-colored wool slacks, a long fur-lined raincoat, fancy boots—her "roughing it" clothes, no doubt, Abby thought derisively.
Christina eyed Spook. "He won't come leaping over the seat or anything, will he?"
"That's Spook, and she's well mannered," Abby said curtly, then she started the long drive to the lake.
On the way, Christina filled her in with more details about the movie contract than she could grasp, and she stopped listening after a while. But she was awed; Christina had been negotiating this one contract for five months. Abby couldn't imagine how one agreement could take such a long time.
