by Kate Wilhelm
She returned to her room, where she regarded three piles of papers: one held ten or more short stories, or the starts of stories; one held private papers that she had read; one was still unread, unknown. No safety-deposit box, she knew; they could subpoena the contents. If Brice confided in the police, she added. Nowhere in the house; they might search, or Brice might, looking for a clue to the priest, the school he didn't believe in. Felicia's place, she decided. At least for now, until she found a better solution.
Hurriedly, as if Caldwell might appear any moment, she searched for her old backpack, the one she had used daily when she rode her bike to high school, and later to her university classes. There were some broken pencils in it, scraps of paper, tattered and shredded Kleenex. She stuffed it full of Jud's papers and closed the fasteners, and then, abruptly, she sat down on the side of the bed.
What was happening to her, to her marriage? She was simply assuming that Brice would tell Caldwell everything he knew, everything he suspected, in spite of her asking him not to. She had never kept secrets from him, not really; if there were things in her past they never had talked about—her life with Jud, her first marriage, even the fight with Jud—it had been more because she had known he wasn't interested in her past than for any other reason. She nodded; he lived for now, right now, not yesterday or last year. Every day a new start, she thought again, every day a renewal of tomorrow's dreams, never a replay of yesterday's problems. That helped explain why they had never fought before the way they seemed to fight these days. There had never been anything left over from the day before to fight about. She had watched her parents' battles, listened to them, feared them, and swore it would never happen to her. But it had happened with Matthew. After the first excitement of love, or lust, was spent, there had been nothing but infighting, and always about what had already happened, yesterday, last week, two hours earlier. Once out of that marriage, she had sworn never again, never, never. . .. For years following her divorce she had avoided the suggestion of entanglement, of commitment; at the first argument, regardless of how trivial, how meaningless, she was out of there. Gone. No more, never, never. And that's how it had been with Brice, both of them at once calm and passionate, with no arguments, no fights, no real disagreements.
No talk about the past, hers or his, or theirs. Yesterday's mistakes, misjudgments, bad decisions, gone, dismissed and forgotten. Every day, every hour a new beginning. She remembered that she had meant to suggest that whatever had happened between him and his parents should be settled, put to rest, forgiven, and thinking of it now, she knew there was no point. He had no regrets, no second-guessing, nothing to forgive or be forgiven for. Whatever happened was over and done with. Today a new day.
Even as she thought this, her gaze was roaming about restlessly, and she realized that with the manuscript gone now, the cards boxed and in the closet and her notes gone, with the other papers stowed out of sight, the room looked barren. Brice might suspect she had taken away more than just the manuscript and notes; she jumped up to scatter the short stories around a bit, to give the room a more disordered appearance, the way it had been yesterday.
Her gaze rested on the mahogany box, and she said to herself, "Not my secrets. His."
She left the room and went back downstairs, this time to call Felicia, make sure she would be home. Maybe they could take all the dogs for a walk, Felicia suggested; she would wait for Abby.
Then, reluctantly, Abby called the Halburtsons. She felt guilty about not calling sooner, for avoiding them when she had been at the cabin before. Florence answered the phone, her voice hesitant and her words vague, the way they always had been, as if in mid-sentence she lost track of where she had intended to go, or lost interest in whatever she was saying.
"Dear, I'm so glad you called. It's earlier than we usually leave, but... Coop's been so ... He's out doing something in the boat shed, I think... . Maybe a change would be good. Saturday morning seems a good time."
Abby closed her eyes, listening. "I'm sorry I haven't gotten in touch," she said, and was interrupted.
"Dear, we understand. But we'd hate not to see you before ... Coop even thought we might drive in to Eugene, but..."
"No. Don't do that," Abby said. "I'm coming out there this week. On Friday. I'll come see you on Friday."
The first time Abby had asked Felicia if it was all right to bring Spook with her, Felicia had snorted. "Don't be silly. Bring her, bring an alligator if you want to. That's why I bought this jail cell instead of just renting an apartment, so I could do what I want in it. If I decide to drive nails in the wall, or paint my floors red, no one's about to tell me to stop or kick me out."
Abby took Spook after that. Now she carried her backpack into the condominium and set it down; the dogs all greeted one another with suspicious sniffing, front to tail, and they all passed muster. Spook looked like a roughneck country cousin next to the elegant white poodles; both of them could have passed for windup toys in her presence.
"I have some papers in there," Abby said. "Private things." Wrong beginning, she thought, and stopped, started over. "Yesterday I went to San Francisco and met someone who used to know Dad. There's no blackmailer, no extortionist, nothing like that. Dad was financing a school, it's that simple, but Brice even Monday. And they would all three get together and have a real talk. But she wanted her own car, wanted to come and go when she felt the need, not be a captive rider. She had no intention of begging at the door and waiting for someone to open it for her.
She really did want to go home, she realized, and she wanted to stay there. Bend was not that far from her cottage; she had friends in Bend, more than in Eugene, actually. And if her children wanted to see her, have her watch her grandchildren grow up, let them do the traveling. More and more often the prospect of giving up the town house altogether and settling down in the cottage was floating up in her consciousness, calling her. She missed the lake, the mountains, the solitude, the freedom. ...
But first she had to see this thing through with Abby and Willa. First things first, she told herself.
That night Abby grilled salmon and baked potatoes, made a salad, did a quick stir-fry with broccoli and green onions, and had it all ready by the time Brice came downstairs after changing his clothes. He always did that immediately, took off his suit, hung it up neatly, and put on a sweater and jeans, loafers, his at-home bum clothes, he called them. Cashmere sweater, designer jeans, Italian loafers, she had scoffed the first time he said that.
"There's something I have to tell you," he said, seating himself at the table without a glance at the food.
"After we eat," she said firmly. She did not want to hear about his talk with the police yet, and there were things she had to tell him, but after they ate, not before.
The dinner was not at fault, she thought a few minutes later, when it appeared that neither of them had much appetite. She was braced for what she knew would be another ugly scene, and she suspected that he was annoyed that she had put him off as she had. They both drank the wine.
Finally Brice said, "Good dinner, but I had a late lunch. Now can I talk?"
"Me first," she said. "I decided to go out to the cabin on Friday to see Coop and Florence before they take off for California. They're probably leaving early Saturday morning."
"I thought we were going together on Saturday."
"You said that, I didn't. I want to see them, get the key to the boat shed, and then spend a few days at the cabin working on the papers there. And I want to make certain they understand that the deal they had with Dad is still good. He planned to buy their house someday; they counted on that. I'll tell them I'll buy it myself, if they can hold off for six months. They may not want to sell out for years, but they should know the offer is still good."
He was staring at her in disbelief. "Buy their house! What for?"
"The same reasons Dad had, to be sure of easy access to the cabin, and to keep the electricity operating without having to move everything." The el
ectrical service box was on the back of Coop's house; Jud had said he had no idea where they would put it if Coop sold to someone else, and no meter reader would swim across the finger in order to read the meter.
Brice shook his head. "You're out of your mind! You don't intend to keep the cabin now, not after what happened. You can't intend that."
"I do intend to keep it. And access to it."
"Every time you go there, you'll see his dead body, blood, and this nightmare will never end."
"No, that's not how it is," she said slowly. "The happiest memories of my childhood, of growing up are connected with the cabin and the lake. That's what I'll see and remember."
He rubbed his eyes, then pushed his chair back and stood up, walked stiffly to the sink, where it appeared he was trying to hold it in place. "You know how I feel about the cabin," he said. "It's never been a place where I felt comfortable. You'd do this without talking it over, without even mentioning it first, knowing how I feel about it."
"Did you talk to the police today?"
He nodded. "I had to. There's a murderer out there. You have information they need, and they need all the help they can get. Caldwell's coming to town tomorrow afternoon, to the office."
"And you know how I feel about that," she said. Then, quickly, before he could respond, she said, "You'll never have to set foot in the cabin again if you don't want to. I don't even want you to come up this weekend. I'm going to bury my father, and I want to do it alone. You were right, it's time."
She had expected a yelling match, a storming rage from him; now she could feel some of her tension drain away as he continued to stand without moving, without speaking. She began to feel that she had hurt him deeply, that she had been unreasonable in presenting her plan as done, something she had already decided alone. Even taking his case to Caldwell was a rational act on his part, she thought without conviction, since she had not told him enough to dispel his belief in an extortionist scheme. Unhappily she drank her wine and wished she could get more without having to cross the kitchen to get it; she didn't want to break into his silence with any motion of her own, not until he had finished whatever he was going through in his mind.
At last he turned to face her, his expression strained and bleak. "Abby, let's put that aside for a minute. Let's consider an alternative. I know you love the mountains and the lake, the cabin, all of it. But it doesn't have to be that cabin in that place. Let's try something else. I had a call this morning, you even heard part of it, from a guy who's in deep trouble. He has to raise a hundred thousand dollars within the next two weeks, or he's dead in the water, and he knows it. He's really desperate. He owns a house on the coast, a beautiful place, worth at least two hundred thousand, and he'll sell it for half that in cash now, tomorrow, first thing next week. But it's got to be cash. He offered it to me, and I nearly laughed in his face. Where would I dig up money like that? But he'll make a deal with someone who will hold on to it for a few months, long enough to duck the capital-gains tax, and then make his money back, doubled. Let's buy it, Abby, and for six months try it. You can have your retreat, it's in the forest, with a stream, the ocean nearby, everything you love. After six months if you still want the cabin instead, then we'll sell it."
"What in the world are you talking about? We can't raise that kind of money, even if we wanted to. Have you seen this house, had it appraised, anything?"
"No, because I knew I couldn't touch it. But you could. I can arrange for a quick appraisal."
"I can't get that kind of money for months," she said. "Now who's talking crazy?"
"You could," he said. "You don't realize it, but any bank in town would roll over for you now. You could walk in in the morning and have that money in your account by afternoon."
"We couldn't even make payments on that kind of loan. It's hard enough to make payments on this house and your car.
"We'd borrow enough to cover the payments. A hundred twenty-five thousand, keep the twenty-five thousand for payments until we decide. Then we'll either love it and want to keep it, or sell it and double our money."
"No," she said. "No! If he's a crook, let him go to jail. We don't have to get involved, and I'm not interested in doubling money I don't even have."
"He's not a crook," Brice said. "He made a serious mistake, that's all. Let's just apply for the loan, so I have something to tell him, and then go have a look at the property on Monday or Tuesday. But I have to have something to show him, so he won't make that offer to someone else. Someone's going to snap it up. It's an opportunity that doesn't come up often."
He came back to the table. "If we look and don't want it, we don't have to take the money out; we'll simply say we changed our minds and don't need it, but if we do want it, the money will be there."
She didn't remember standing up, but they were nearly eye to eye. She shook her head.
"Is that how it's going to be?" he demanded furiously, his face livid and taut. "You want it spelled out loud and clear? You're the heiress, you decide what you'll do with your money. Have you decided what my role in your life will be? Will I even have a bit part? You know what you're doing to us? Does it matter to you?"
Staring at him, she felt as if an arctic wind had swept over her. "You're involved in some way," she said. "Are you involved in some way?" Her voice rose, became almost shrill.
He sagged, and turned his back. "I'm not, but if he goes down, he intends to take me with him. He'll swear he was acting on my advice. Even a hint like that will kill me. I'll be out of the office within an hour, maybe arrested. It's a lie, but that's what he's ready to swear to if I don't find a way out of his mess for him."
Abby whispered, "Oh, my God."
"I'm going up to my study," Brice said hoarsely. "I told you the truth. You can do it. Your decision." He left the kitchen, headed up the stairs.
She sank down into her chair again, seeing nothing before her, thinking nothing coherent enough to recall from minute to minute. She didn't move until Spook nudged her leg, and she realized the dog had been whining to go out, whining for table scraps on the patio. She looked at the salmon, then mechanically scraped it all together and removed the center bone, took the plate to the patio and let Spook out. She stood with her forehead against the cool glass.
At length she moved and started to clear the table, put dishes in the dishwasher. Could she do it? She had no idea, but if he said it was possible, it probably was. He was the one who knew about money. But he is involved. She heard her own voice in her head, as if in warning, and she stopped moving, forgetting again what she had been doing.
This had not started today, she thought then, remembering all the hours he had spent in his room at the computer, how he blanked the screen if she opened his door, his sudden outbursts of irritation, how worried he had been for weeks, months even, and not just over year-end business. But if he was telling the truth, if he was innocent and would be implicated in something illegal, and if she could get the money for him, didn't she have to do it? She knew she did.
She bit her lip when she realized that she had used both times. if he was innocent, if he was telling the truth. And she didn't know.
She poured coffee and sat at the table waiting for Spook to want back in, and saw with surprise that the table was clean, everything put away. She felt as if an invisible creature had come in and done the work for her. A vivid memory surfaced of sitting here with Christina Maas, looking at numbers without comprehension. Christina had said, "Whatever the figure is, count on half that much by the time the commission comes out and taxes are paid, both state and federal. You'll end up with half of it. And spread over time."
She wished desperately she had someone she could discuss this with, and knew she would never breathe a word of it. Could a person fill to overflowing with secrets? she wondered. Burst with secrets, swell up and die of secrets, which would ooze out like black leeches....
Then, unaccountably, the fight with Jud played once more in her head. "You didn't learn a dam
n thing the first time out, did you ?... You stepped in it with Petrie and turned around and did it again with Brice, and didn't learn a thing."
This was different, she wanted to cry out. Different!
Spook scratched at the door, and dully she got up and opened it, refilled her coffee mug, started to walk upstairs, as tired as if she had been carrying heavy trays of food for hours.
Inside her room, she stood with her back to the door, gazing at the box that contained her father's ashes. "You knew all along," she whispered.
That was nickel-and-dime stuff, she thought then; we've graduated to the big league now. Jud had mortgaged the cabin, bailed out Matthew Petrie, not for him, but for her sake, to get her out of waitressing, get her back in school, but she knew without a doubt that he would not have stirred a muscle, not even a flicker to help Brice now. She remembered his joking refusal to let Brice or his company advise him about finances.
