by Deborah Reed
“I’m sorry. But I’m not stupid, you know.” Tess finally looks up.
“What?”
“You were thinking about her, weren’t you?”
“What?”
“Come on, Owen.”
A pathetic laugh bursts from his mouth. “I was just thinking about the first time I saw you, the way the sun came through those long windows—”
Her head drops to the side. “Please.”
“What?” He throws his hands in the air. “Please don’t start that again. I’m here aren’t I? My God, we’re having a baby together. We’re married.”
“And all of that is proof that you weren’t thinking about her?” She pitches several pages before looking down.
The smell of burnt coffee seeps from the coffeemaker. He looks at the red button she forgot to switch off. He turns to her with his best incredulous look. “Listen. I was just sitting here minding my own business, enjoying the view outside—”
Tess raises her head. “What the hell.”
“No, let me finish,” he says, but her eyes have the rounded look of deep, penetrating shock.
She gapes at the paper with the same twisted expression and he realizes this is no longer about him. She holds her finger up to say, Just a sec and I’ll tell you.
His raised voice lingers in the air, and he thinks of his big-eyed daughter smacking her chubby hands on her highchair to cut through her parent’s squabbling. Guilt fills his lungs like smog.
“There couldn’t be more than one Calder Walsh in the Orlando area, could there?” Tess asks.
Blood rushes to his skin. His cheeks burn. His legs feel full. How is it possible that she’s saying Calder’s name, here, now, in their kitchen, four hundred miles and six months away from his past? He jumps up to grab the Cheerios as if seized by hunger. He slows, reaches for the box, and then holds it to his chest. “I wouldn’t think so. Why? What is it?”
“It says here that a man named Calder Walsh has been arrested for murder.”
There isn’t enough time to put this right in his mind before Tess adds, “It is him! It says, ‘brother of singer/songwriter Annie Walsh.’” She’s gaping now, her lower jaw sliding to the side, just enough to betray the satisfaction she’s trying to hide. Look at your old life, her jaw says. Thank God you’re here with me.
Owen has stopped midway to the table. She’s saying her name now. He opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it, tightly, so nothing can escape.
Tess reads from the middle of the article. “…a brutal murder a week ago today at a roadside bar…Clues that led homicide detectives to Walsh, brother of singer/songwriter Annie Walsh…Wait,” she says. “Let me read the whole thing from the start.”
He sets the box of Cheerios onto the highchair tray and reaches for his earlobe then lets go, watching through the glass doors as a squall of gulls fly in a mess of angles, swooping at a man alone on a Sunday morning, eating his pastry on the beach.
Owen’s going to be sick. He lowers himself into his chair. His skin feels warm and prickly. He tries to think of the right words. Words that won’t give away too much. A line from one of Annie’s songs runs through his head. This feels like falling. Falling off the edge of the world. His arms begin to itch. Now his scalp. Someone is dead. Calder is to blame.
“Who the hell are they saying he killed?” he yells.
“Just a second,” she says, softer now, in a tone that stops him from ripping the paper from her warm hands.
“Someone named Magnus Jørgenson. A man from Denmark. Where have I heard that name?”
Owen pops up and hits the red button on the coffee maker with the side of his fist. He reaches for his ear and accidentally knocks the Cheerios from the tray. A river of round oats spills across the floor.
Tess watches him without comment. “I think I wrote about that guy’s house last year,” she finally says. She leans back in her chair and clutches her arms across her belly as if it’s a kickball she is daring someone, anyone, to try and take. “I’m pretty sure it’s him. Was him,” she corrects.
Owen releases his ear and snatches the paper from the table.
“It says he was beaten beyond recognition,” she says, before Owen has a chance to read it for himself.
THREE
Annie starts a fire so the warmth will greet her when she returns from the grove. She bundles in layers of wool and steps out onto the porch. What a relief to look out this time of year and find the haze of mosquitoes finally hidden away in logs and burrows, menacing snakes and gophers instead of Annie. The days are altered in a way that make her feel as if she’s made other choices, as if she lives somewhere other than Central Florida.
Lake Winsor ripples and slaps its soggy banks. A blue heron strolls along the water’s edge and spears a frog in its bill. He swallows it whole then leaps into the air, disappearing behind a wall of white, in the direction of the bowed stick nest across the lake.
Annie holds her throat, imagining a frog in there, legs thrashing, the panicked thumping of a racing, miniature heart. Does the frog know what’s happening? Does he just give in? Or go on thinking there’s still a chance to claw his way out?
For some reason this has her tracing, once again, Owen’s steps in their last days together. He’d bought a new belt to fit his shrinking waist. He mentioned how the crooked crown molding in the kitchen needed straightening. He pointed his finger, asked her to gaze upward as if it were important for her to see exactly where it bothered him to look. And then he came down with a fever. “I love you,” he mumbled through chills in the night. Who? Who did he love while she covered him with blankets? While she wiped his forehead with a cold cloth and pressed ice water into his red, burning lips?
Somewhere between the crooked molding and the fever, he’d drawn her into him at the kitchen sink and held her there without a word. A gray chest hair she’d never noticed twisted its way above the neckline of his T-shirt and quivered beneath her breath. His holding her that way was nothing he hadn’t done before. Nothing the faithful wouldn’t do. And yet she returns to that quiet embrace, the chest hair, the counter pressing into her hip as if they’re all part of some defining moment. Hints to a larger narrative. Fragments that need only be brought together to make sense.
She heads for the grove. Haze, thick as smoke, engulfs the trees. It isn’t until she gets within fifty yards that the red fruit begin to pop through.
She removes her glove and plucks down a tangelo. Sweet and juicy and surprisingly ripe. The low-hanging ones need to be picked right away. Bitter cold is seeping across the state. There’s even been talk of snow.
She hears the sound of a car approaching her driveway. She can’t see through the fog but can tell by the gentle hum that it isn’t Calder’s truck. She jogs across the field. The fog is just lifting over her house. The red chairs appear at the edge of the porch. Then Detour’s golden face in the window.
Her mother’s creamy sedan pulls in next to the house. It is nine o’clock in the morning. This doesn’t make sense. For decades—ever since Annie’s father died—her mother has rarely begun a day before noon.
She steps out in a butter-colored dress and matching jacket that stops at her waist, making her waist look even smaller than it already is. She darts in thin heels from one clump of grass to the next. Her hair is clasped into a tight arrangement at the back of her head. She doesn’t attend church, but if she did this is how Annie imagines she’d look.
“You’re sure out early this morning!” Annie yells as she lopes across Mrs. Lanie’s yard. “What’s with the church dress?”
Her mother turns and nearly slips down the steps.
Annie sees now that she’s chosen the wrong words to greet her with. Tears have rolled through her mother’s blush and dried.
“What’s wrong?”
“You haven’t heard, have you?”
“Heard what?”
“Dear God,” her mother says. “You ought to answer your phone.”
“W
hat is it?”
“Can we sit down out here on the porch?” She takes a seat. “I need some fresh air.”
Annie pulls the door open and Detour hobbles onto the porch. He sniffs her mother’s bare knees. She gives his head a single pat.
“You painted the place,” her mother says, looking around.
“What happened?” Annie sits next to her.
Her mother gathers her purse beneath her breasts. “It’s brightened up a little.”
“Is it Uncle Calder?” Annie braces for the words—passed away, no longer with us, died in his sleep—
“It’s your brother.”
At first Annie thinks she’s saying that Calder is dead.
“He was arrested last night.”
The tension built in Annie’s throat releases through a squeaky laugh. “What?”
Her mother’s eyes lock onto Annie’s. The whites are splintered red, haunted with the look of terrible news. “They’re saying he killed some man named Magnus.”
Annie turns her ear toward her. She needs to hear these words again to make sure she’s getting them right, only the words used to make such a request are lost on her.
The only problem is, Sidsel has a husband named Magnus.
Her mind switches to the grove. She has to tell Mrs. Lanie that the pickers need to get out there. She has no words for the feeling in her chest. Only an image of a soft rind punctured.
Her mother pulls a tissue from her purse and blows her nose. “I just came from seeing him. His tics are back in full swing. He could barely get a word out.”
“Well, he must have said something.”
“He said he had nothing to do with it. Of course he had nothing to do with it. He just needed to say it, I guess.”
Annie leans forward, rests her elbows on her thighs, and clasps her hands as if she’s about to say grace over a plate of food. She pats her closed lips and thinks she doesn’t know what to think.
“He also said he needs to talk to you,” her mother adds. “He asked if I could get you to come down there.”
The maple logs release a smoky sweetness she can taste. Her living room will be warm and quiet, and she wants nothing more than to go inside and close the door on all of this. Her thoughts feel erratic, beyond her control. She needs to lug another cord of wood in from the shed. She imagines the chipped feel of bark in her hands, and it’s then that a fragment of old memory rushes in from nowhere. Long before Lakeview Road was paved, back when her father was still a living man, Annie had picked up a giant branch and nearly killed Josh and Gabe Pinckney when they wouldn’t leave Calder alone.
Her mother leans forward and lifts the cowbell Calder knocked to the porch. She sets it on the railing. “I’ve never known a single person in my life to get arrested.” She swallows in a clear attempt not to cry.
Annie can’t believe she was ever capable of such a thing. Even more impossible is all that came later when she thinks of how she left those boys in the road with bloody pulps for heads. She thinks of Josh. Then Calder. Her hands shake.
“Are you sure he didn’t do it?” The words are said before she catches them.
Her mother digs her nails into her purse. “Your brother didn’t kill this Magnus—whatever his name is—any more than you or I did.”
Jørgenson, Annie thinks. A slash through the first o.
“How can you even think such a thing?”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re just say-ing? My God, if your father had lived to hear this.”
Detour thumps his tail against the porch.
“What do you do all day? When was the last time you picked up your guitar?”
Annie glances at her hands.
“Have you put up a Christmas tree yet?” Her mother strains to look through the front window. She catches Annie looking at her hands. “Why are your hands so rough?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Something caused all that chaffing.”
“Sandpaper.”
“What in hell are you doing with sandpaper?”
“Didn’t you come here to talk about Calder?”
At the mention of Calder’s name her mother appears struck with the news all over again. Her mouth falls into a soft o and she dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue. “It’s worse than you think. Calder was seeing the man’s wife.”
Annie blinks slowly, only half deciding to open her eyes again.
“I asked him if he knew the man that was killed and he told me he knew of him,” her mother says. “Then he told me how.”
“When was he killed?”
“A week ago. Your birthday, in fact.”
“Calder was here that morning.”
“I know. I was glad to hear you two were patching up your monkey business.” She shakes her head as if to say, “And now this.”
“What time was the man killed?”
“I don’t know. Evening, I think. Why?”
“Just trying to get the whole story.”
“It was in the parking lot of some roadside bar.”
“Hal’s?”
“Yes, Hal’s. So you did hear about it?”
“No. Just a lucky guess.”
“Well, it’s been all over the papers and in the news this week. Blunt force to the man’s face.” She swipes the air back and forth in front of her face and scowls. “Calling for dental records to see who he even was. Like something out of a movie. Are you still not getting the paper?”
Annie lifts an eyebrow. She’s been told her father used to make the same face, and she regrets not being able to remember.
“What about the Internet?”
“Don’t have it.”
“Why haven’t you replaced the computer he ran off with?”
“He ran off with a woman.”
Her mother doesn’t even crack a smile.
“It was his computer,” Annie says.
Her mother sighs through her nose. “You need to make some connection with the outside world.”
Annie’s face tightens. She thinks of all the years her mother spent in the den with the drapes drawn and her father’s old Marvin Gaye record set on repeat, the static interlude the only quiet for hours as she sluggishly pitched through past issues of Life and Good Housekeeping, baking imaginary pies, decorating imaginary windows, throwing imaginary parties that were certain to include her long-departed husband.
“I’ve got a copy of the paper in the car,” her mother says.
“Fantastic.” Annie pictures a man’s crushed skull on the front page. Wavy chestnut hair plastered to the sides of a bloody face. A brown eye turned out like a dead deer’s. But it isn’t some Dane’s face she imagines. It’s Owen’s.
She rubs her eyes and groans. Her whole body feels heavy, exhausted, unable to sit a moment longer.
“There’s already talk of them going for the death penalty,” her mother says.
A wave of nausea washes over Annie. Her teeth ache. “OK. This is about as much as I can stand to know.”
“This isn’t about you.”
“I need to get inside. I’m sorry.” She rises, feeling light-headed and confused, thinking of a grapefruit on the counter.
“Annie. You could afford to hire him a good lawyer. He’s got a court-appointed one right now, and they won’t even set bail. The judge claims he’s a flight risk because his girlfriend is Danish.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Annie says, but she doesn’t know if she means this or if she’s just trying to get her mother to leave. She wants her to leave.
Annie heads for the door. She rests her hand on the latch and turns. “I don’t really know how to say this, but has it even occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, I mean he is the most likely suspect.”
Her mother comes to her feet. She’s taller than Annie even without those heels. “You’ve known him your whole life. He’s not capable of such a thing.”
“It could have been an accident. Maybe he was drinking. Maybe they got in
to a fight.”
“They needed dental records to figure out who the man was.”
Annie shivers from the cold. “I need to go inside.”
“This is still about Calder not telling you Owen was cheating on you, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You’re still holding it against him.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Calder is in jail, accused of murder, Annie, and if that’s not ridiculous enough, you know what he says to me? He says, ‘Tell Annie I need to see her. I need to tell her that I found Owen.’”
Annie drops her hand from the latch.
Her mother stares in a way that makes it clear she’s thinking one thing while forcing herself to say another. “He lives in Destin.”
Destin. What’s in Destin? She never would have thought of Destin. How many miles north is that? Four hundred? Five hundred?
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Calder wants to tell you himself.”
“What?” Annie can’t hide the urgency in her voice.
Her mother hesitates. “Calder said he got some cousin’s number and got a hold of Owen’s aunt and she said she’d heard from her niece that that was where he lived.”
“And?”
She suddenly knows what’s coming. Knows it like it’s already been said. And yet for some reason she thinks of the gauzy light. Owen has no way of knowing it’s returned. This time of year it filters through low morning clouds and mutes the orangey red of the grove, the rows of young corn, Annie’s muddy driveway, the Dove White columns of the porch. Everything turns into a filtered portrait of a place. It’s no longer just the place itself.
You could have been a painter, babe. You’re a great songwriter, but you could have been a painter the way you notice the world like that.
“He married her, Annie. It’s over now. Listen to me. It’s done.”
FOUR
