She knew she would never truly love him, not the way she had ultimately loved Cleet. Or Bo, right from the beginning. She didn’t know if she ever wanted to romantically love a man again—and the other kinds of love, the 80 percent that made living together easier than living alone, well, they could be learned and cultivated, like any worthy skill. But on that day, at that moment, she felt needed by David, and she had come to a point where that was enough to carry the rest.
—
After lunch they tramped through the snowy woods for an hour hunting for the perfect tree, settling on one until Jake or David or Raney would catch sight of another, more symmetrical, better filled out, just the right height. They all looked like Charlie Brown trees in the end, too starved for sunlight to be more than wisps on one side no matter how good they looked on the other. Impostors, like all of us, Raney joked.
She couldn’t find the tree stand, so David hammered a square of plywood onto the bottom of the trunk while Jake hovered over the baseboard heat register thawing his hands, but the tree leaned so precariously that David finally tacked three fat dowels against it with picture nails. When that fell over, he stapled kite string into the window frame and tied the tree upright. Jake was duly impressed, obviously comparing David’s carpentry skills to Raney’s, as if he had forgotten Cleet’s. Jake ran to the bathroom and came back with a worn green towel, which he draped around the plywood for a skirt. Then he placed his red package front and center before they even started decorating. She could see it pleased David.
It grew dark outside. They counted down from ten and plugged in the light cord—enchanted that even the scrawniest of trees can muster Christmas if you drown it with enough colored bulbs. Raney suggested creamed chicken soup with green beans and Boston brown bread for dinner, having emptied Grandpa’s bunker of cans after they sold the farm. Even a year later they were still eating mackerel. But David wanted to take them out to Fat Smitty’s, which sent Jake into food ecstasy, anticipating the french-fry-cheeseburger-milkshake stuff he never got at home.
Highway 101 was a ghost road, the familiar landmarks strange—vague white shapes like the covered furnishings of a summer house closed up for the season. David kept the Tahoe straight in the cleared tracks, slow and even across the ice. They drove all the way to Fat Smitty’s and found it dark due to the snow, so they drove all the way home again to eat canned soup and bread, but it did not matter at all. Jake seemed happier than Raney had seen him in weeks. David asked him about his tree fort and his wooden bridges and towers, dropping the questions into a flow of conversation so Jake was never put on the spot. After dinner Jake went to bed, exhausted by the day. David started carrying the dishes to the sink, but Raney told him to sit down.
“No. I should be going.” But he sat down anyway. She began stacking dishes and he said, “Renee, come sit here with me, would you? Is it okay if I call you Renee sometimes?” He was playing with the saltshaker, turning it around and around in his hands, which were solid and square and seemed ill-suited to the keys of a calculator or computer. She liked that his fingernails looked so well kept, clean even after a day cutting and hauling a Christmas tree.
“It’s okay,” she answered.
“Jake seems like a good kid. A loner, isn’t he? Like I was.”
Raney buffered the truth, grateful David’s open-ended question made it easy. “He’s been keeping to himself more this year. He’s still adjusting to Grandpa’s passing.”
“Sports can be a good outlet,” he said brightly, but he must have seen something in Raney’s face, because he quickly backpedaled. “I was never much of an athlete either.”
“He’s been having trouble with his back. Joint pains. The doctor says he’s just growing but I want to get another opinion.” There was a long silence between them after that and Raney found her mind going blank. “Seems like I’m always giving him Tylenol or—”
David broke in, “Tom Fielding’s offered me my job back. Between Oceanic Seafoods and some extra hours at the dairy I have plenty of work here in Quentin. I get good benefits. Health care, pension. Jim, at the dairy, offered me quarters in back of the office. Not as nice as Fielding’s mobile—it’s just one room.” Slowly, deliberately, he touched her wrist with his index finger. He let it rest there for a moment and then stroked the length of her palm out to the end of her thumb, then each of her fingers one by one. “I could make us a life, Renee. With you and Jake.”
Raney didn’t pull her hand away. She felt the one point of contact between his finger and hers and wondered how it would be to lie next to him. It was only skin, a small fraction of all that made a whole person. “Are you asking if you can live here with us?”
“I’m asking you to marry me.” He looked straight into her eyes now, like he was unafraid of any answer she might have for him and willing to stand his ground. He was not a bad-looking man. His hairline was receding, which did not improve his full face, but he was self-confident enough to keep his hair cut short.
“Marry.” She repeated the word, looking at their hands side by side on the checkered tablecloth. His: large, thick-fingered, and soft-skinned. Hers: rough and red as a farmer’s, not even elevated by grace notes of oil-paint colors anymore. His left ring finger was still banded with a pale memory of his wedding ring. Marry—what did that word mean anyway? People used it like it could seal God’s blessing for a guaranteed happy future. Like it could bear the burden of love-struck boys on bent knees and girls pure and trusting in white lace. And then what? Twenty thousand cooked meals and floors to mop and sickness to nurse and three months’ bills to pay out of next month’s paycheck. All the usual cruelty of the world still thrown in your face. But at least you had some hope of not facing it alone.
Raney told David how many months it had been since she’d paid the mortgage. He was quiet for a minute, and then said he’d guessed as much. They would make it through.
And so she nodded her head and knit her fingers into his. “All right. If it’s all right with Jake. Yes.”
• 16 •
charlotte
Raney’s house had been empty for weeks, judging by the blackberry vines snaking through the front steps. It looked more than abandoned—it looked . . . abused. The front door had been kicked in, the glass panes smashed. Eric stepped onto the porch and Charlotte followed, hesitant, felt such a penetrating chill she wanted to sprint back to her car. Looking in the windows, she could tell people had lived here recently, and left very abruptly. The kitchen was visible through the broken front door—pots still on the stove, a box of cereal on the table. Jackets still hung on pegs in the hallway. No one had disturbed these things, and yet someone had overturned a cabinet in the living room; books and a few childlike wooden carvings lay scattered among shards of broken vases. She waited for Eric only a moment before walking quickly back down the driveway, but he was a long time returning to the car. He looked somber, his face too still. “You okay?” she asked. He nodded. “Do you think it was her house?”
“I know it was. I found my copy of Ender’s Game on the floor, in the glass. I gave it to her . . . well . . . more than twenty years ago.”
She took his hand, but he barely seemed aware. “Do we go back home, then? Give up after all this?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. The police must have an address for her—they found her husband. Can you call the deputy?” he asked.
She’d thought about calling Blake Simpson any number of times, but had the feeling there was a reason he hadn’t yet contacted her. She looked up his phone number, but as soon as it rang she hung up. “Are we breaking any laws? Coming out here on our own like this?”
“No,” Eric scoffed, as if the idea were ridiculous, but then he added less confidently, “Probably no. How should I know?”
Charlotte dialed again, this time holding until a woman answered—Simpson’s assistant. He was out of town that week, but she could put Charlotte on with another officer or take a message. “No. No message,” and she hung up without
leaving her name.
“Chicken,” Eric said. She tilted her head in partial acquiescence. Then she checked her watch and punched in another phone number. “Who are you calling now?”
“Helen Seras.”
“You’re going to tell her you’re here?”
“No way! She’s in the weekly utilization meeting—I’m calling her assistant.”
All the compliments Charlotte had given to Helen’s secretary about her ever-changing hair colors paid off. She was happy to help out after Charlotte explained that she’d stupidly misplaced the address Helen had given her. The secretary located Simpson’s file in less than ten minutes and called Charlotte back, completely understanding about how embarrassed Charlotte was to have lost the address in the first place, so of course she wouldn’t mention it to Helen.
“She lives in Queets. Queets?” Charlotte said, reading the address to Eric.
“Quinault tribal town, I think.”
“I got the name of the husband too. David Boughton.”
—
It took them four hours to drive across the Olympic Peninsula to Queets, skirting the national park. They stopped in Sequim for lunch at a small Mexican restaurant, and after that the land began to flatten out so the light came hurtling unimpeded across the strait and the sky was enormous and hopeful. They passed through Port Angeles and Elwha and Fairholm, turning south at Sappho and followed the GPS through Forks on their way to Queets. There were no street signs. They drove past the town in a blink and turned around again. “Are you sure you have the right address?” Eric asked. “Even your GPS is lost.”
“Maybe they have a lot of Wolf Ridges.” Charlotte looked out the window at a landscape sparse in population or homes of any description. “When did any wolves live around here anyway?” They finally stopped at Queets’s only gas station and asked the clerk, who studied the address in consultation with the only other customer, and after some debate, they directed Charlotte and Eric to a road four miles away. There was no name to mark the turn, but they took it anyway, driving more than half a mile along the rutted gravel without seeing any house or intersecting driveway. The road ended at a large brown mobile home, upgraded with a bump-out and a columned porch. Two fat adobe pots flanked the front door, each planted with fading snapdragons and yellowing bolts of dill. Charlotte began to regret her impulsive decision to track Raney down. The trailer had an air of ruined hope about it, as if whoever had tried to turn it into a home had given up. It bore a sad resemblance to the shell of Raney’s body, too uncertain of sustainable inhabitance. The GPS voice pinged to life after having led them astray for the last half hour: “You have reached your destination!”
“Pity,” Charlotte answered. “There’s no car here; maybe we should come back later.”
“It could be parked in back. You’re not even going to knock?”
“Maybe her husband doesn’t live here anymore. We should have called first,” Charlotte said.
Eric stared at the house for another minute and then unlocked his door. “I’m going up.”
Charlotte put her hand on his arm. “Eric? Remember. We don’t know what happened to her. If it was really an accident.”
“Right. Well, he didn’t shoot her. He’s unlikely to drive a car onto his porch and run me over.”
“I’m not making a joke.”
“I know you aren’t. But she did marry him. She wouldn’t have married an out-and-out criminal.”
They finally decided to go together. The entry was recessed under the added front porch, so it fell in shadow. They reached for the doorbell at the same time and each hesitated, then Charlotte nudged Eric’s hand aside—this had been her idea first; if they were criminally trespassing let it be her fault. She pushed the button but heard no sound. She pressed it again, longer, to be sure.
“Knock,” Eric said, and then did it himself. The door sounded hollow, insubstantial. Eric put his face to one of the sidelights; Charlotte resisted an urge to pull him back. “Somebody’s living here,” he said. “Coatrack’s full.” He rapped on the glass—a thin, rattling sound that reverberated louder than the veneered door. He moved to the other sidelight and cupped his hands around his face.
“I think we should go,” Charlotte said, tugging on his sleeve. Suddenly the trip here felt like a dangerous clash between her life as a doctor and her life with Eric, a threat she couldn’t name.
Eric rapped the window once more; the sound of it crept under Charlotte’s skin and she hurried back to the car. Eric came after her. “You’re here for the right reasons, Charlotte.”
“Am I? Really? I’m forgetting—am I here for Raney or for you?”
“Charlotte—” and then the front door opened. They turned around almost simultaneously, both of them struck silent.
The man standing in the doorway was nothing like Charlotte had expected, either from her images of the type of man Raney would have married, or from this heartsick trailer at the end of a deserted road on a nearly deserted highway. Even so, she knew it was him. He wore a pressed white shirt and belted trousers over a modestly spreading waistline. His dark hair was barely long enough to comb back with no attempt to conceal his advancing baldness. His arms hung loose at his sides, and through the shirt Charlotte could tell he was not a man who depended on physical strength to earn his living. What does he do out here? she wondered. “Why are you here?” the man asked Charlotte, clearly having overheard their argument.
She looked at Eric, then walked back up to the porch and offered her hand. “I’m sorry to bother you like this, Mr. Boughton. I’m Charlotte Reese . . . Dr. Reese. I’m Renee’s doctor in Seattle.”
He didn’t offer his own hand, but stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him. “Yes. I figured as much.”
Charlotte and Eric exchanged a glance. “I wanted to talk to you about Renee’s condition . . . what we’re doing for her.” She had practiced so many conversations with him in her head since she’d learned of his existence. They seemed pointless now—circling the truth with all the usual, open-ended medical caution. “To be blunt, I’m wondering why you haven’t been to see your wife yet. Why you haven’t returned the hospital’s phone calls.”
“That’s blunt enough. Your lady vice president, Mrs. Seras, has made it clear that Renee is not going to know if I come or if I don’t come. So did the deputy, Simpson.” He looked from Charlotte to Eric and back, the set of his mouth turning defensive. “They’re investigating me, you know. Think maybe I’m the one who ran Renee over with a car and left her to die on the side of the highway . . .” His voice broke and Charlotte saw his back stiffen. “Maybe I shouldn’t blame them—a man’s wife disappears and he doesn’t report her missing. But in case the deputy doesn’t share the details with you, Renee packed her bag and walked out on our marriage that night. It is not my habit to go looking for people who don’t care to be found.”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t know,” Eric said.
“And you are?”
“Eric Bryson. I’m a friend of Renee’s—from a long time ago.”
David Boughton put his hands into his pockets with a deliberate calmness and took out a set of keys. “A friend of Renee’s. Well, I’m late for work and will ask you to leave now.” He locked the door and stepped off the porch, following the path that led to the rear of the house. Eric started after him and for a moment disappeared from Charlotte’s sight, sending her into near panic before he came back to her car. Boughton pulled around in an old black Tahoe and blocked their way. “And you may give a message to Mrs. Helen Seras. My wife might not have loved me anymore, but I loved her. It’s not up to me to decide when she dies. That is up to God.”
He drove fifty feet down the driveway and slowed, one arm hanging from the window of the Tahoe, clearly waiting for Eric and Charlotte to get back into their car and leave. Once both cars reached the highway, Charlotte deliberately turned the opposite way, clenching the steering wheel so hard her hands hurt. After a few miles she pulled over,
shifted into park, and let her head fall against the seat. Eric watched her quietly for a moment. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay.”
She put her hand on the gearshift, but Eric stopped her. “Charlotte? There’s someone else inside the house. I saw someone’s shadow through the window. Not Boughton’s. It was someone smaller. Did Helen or Simpson, anyone, ever say if Raney has a child?”
“No. Never.” But then how many details had Helen shared with her? A quick comment that Simpson had found a husband and a warning to drop it. “Why do you think it’s a child? Maybe Boughton has a girlfriend already.”
“Because when I followed Boughton around the side of the house, I saw a kid’s skateboard.”
—
They drove far enough up the driveway to see the trailer without being heard. “He wouldn’t have had time to go and come back, do you think?” Charlotte asked.
Eric shrugged. “Drive on up. You might as well, even if he’s there. You know you aren’t going to go back to Seattle without finding out.”
By now it was late enough that the eastern side of the house was in shadow, and a light shone through the sidelights next to the front door. Eric got out and walked around the house, came back, and told Charlotte the Tahoe was still gone. She climbed the front steps and knocked, watching as shadows moved across the sidelight glass. Two minutes later a brown-skinned, black-haired boy opened the door. He looked from Charlotte to Eric and back again, solemn and darkly composed. Charlotte started to say hello but he cut her off. “I heard you say my mother’s name, Renee.” He stared, waiting for some sign. Charlotte nodded. “Is my mom going to die?” he asked.
He was not much shorter than Charlotte, but his demeanor seemed younger than his height might suggest, making it hard to guess his age. She held her hand out to him and he observed it without offering his own. “I’m your mother’s doctor, Charlotte Reese. I’m taking care of her at a hospital in Seattle,” Charlotte said.
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