by North, Will
“Dammit, Adam, why didn’t you tell me where you were going this morning,” she shouted. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Old Adam wants to talk to us.”
“I woke up real early but you were asleep. On the porch. I went home, and then I went to Colin’s.”
“Why?”
“He’s my friend. Plus, Mom’s gone.”
“What?”
“Gone.”
“I’m not getting this.”
Adam shrugged.
“She’s not with Dad?”
“Uh-uh. I checked. He was asleep. She wasn’t there. They had a fight, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah, so what else is new?”
“New is, this time she disappeared. I thought maybe she was at Colin’s.”
“Why?”
“Colin’s her friend.”
Justine thought about this for a moment. Colin had always been in their lives. And she’d always sensed a kind of current running between Colin and her mom but she’d never thought it was about sex. There was something each of them gained from the other, some kind of sustenance. What was it? Friendship? Companionship? Peace? Shelter? An hour with Colin was almost like a day at a spa for her mother; she returned refreshed. Justine had never known a relationship like that, and she realized she envied it.
“She wasn’t there?” she asked the boy.
“Uh-uh. Colin wasn’t either. I looked around, then waited. He came home a little while later. I forgot he does this early morning bike ride thing.”
“You broke into Colin’s house?!”
“No. I sat on the back deck. I go there to look for whales.”
Justine shook off this line of discussion. “Whatever. Look, you. Old Adam’s waiting. Maybe he can help.”
Adam shrugged again, and Justine realized it was a shrug of hopelessness, not disinterest. She turned the pickup, and her brother pumped his bike ahead of her down the long hill toward the beach.
When they got to the old Strong house, Adam was dressed and drinking coffee on the porch, his walking stick at his side.
By way of “Good morning,” Young Adam announced, “Mom’s missing.”
Old Adam nodded and continued to stare out across the harbor, as if he expected to see Pete walking back across the water.
“I know. Your father called a little while ago. Barely made sense. Said he’d called the police, too, the idiot. Man hasn’t a lick of common sense.”
“Uncle Adam…” Justine scolded.
He waved his hand over his shoulder. “Yes, yes. I know.”
Before they’d arrived, Old Adam had been communing with his dead brother: Richie, Richie, I could use some guidance here, okay? That kid you left me to look after is crazy Amanda’s son, not yours, I swear. Erratic, fucks anything that blips on his radar, none too bright. Sound familiar? Amanda all over. Acts like a goddamn adolescent, no matter he’s a father and a husband. Times I want to strangle the bastard, I tell you. Wonderful wife, a saint by God; great kids, too. But I swear he’s off his rocker, and the hell of it is, I don’t know what I can do to change any of it. So, if you’re up there and not too busy flyin’ around with the fuckin’ angels, gimme a sign, okay?
“Have you eaten?” Justine asked.
“What? No.”
“Adam! You’re a diabetic! You know better! Do we need to send you to the nursing home?”
“Young woman, I will not permit profanity in this house!” But the old man turned toward her smiling. It was a game they played, the nursing home threat: he acted up and she picked up the phone to dial the home.
When Justine went to get Old Adam something to eat, he turned to Young Adam.
“Counselor, explain to the court in your own words what you heard last night.”
“About what?”
“Don’t be obtuse, young man. About the…ah…disagreement between your mother and father.”
“Jeez, Uncle Adam.”
“That’s great uncle, counselor.”
“Okay, okay. They were arguing. It was like sometime this morning. Sounded like they were drunk. Mom said Dad had been with Mrs. March.”
Old Adam wasn’t surprised when Justine had told him about Peggy March; he’d seen the flirtations. One of the benefits of being old is that you see everyone; no one sees you seeing them. It’s like being a ghost before your time. Mostly, it was amusing. Now it wasn’t. He’d thought the principal object of Tyler’s interest this summer had been Alex, who was younger and prettier than the March girl. Maybe that was just a diversionary tactic. Hard to tell.
Now, maybe Pete had just had enough. Maybe she’d walked away. Maybe to someone she trusted. Then it occurred to him that there was no one these days among the beach families Pete would consider “safe.” Not Sylvia, because of her daughter, Alex. Not Rob, because of Peggy. And not him, because he was Tyler’s uncle…not that that meant a damn thing to the old man. It was Pete he loved, and he wished desperately that she had come to him.
Justine returned with cereal and yogurt. He chewed a spoonful and then the light came on.
“Ryan,” he said.
“Un-uh,” Young Adam said. “That’s what I thought, too. She isn’t at Colin’s.”
“Damnation.”
Old Adam had watched Colin Ryan slip into their lives over the years as gently as the tide on the beach. He liked the lad. The chap’s broad New York accent, which never seemed to moderate, made him sound like some thick-necked, knuckle-dragging Mafioso hit man, but there was something quiet and caring about him. Folks on the island said he was a damned good vet and Old Adam had no trouble believing it. He saw how that rangy rescue dog of his, Eileen, doted on him, and it made him laugh. It wasn’t much different from the way the man doted on Pete, come to think of it, except Colin didn’t scratch behind Pete’s ears, or anyplace else as far as he could tell. There was some kind of bond between them; that was obvious. But Colin reminded him of a theatrical understudy waiting in the wings to step into the lead role. Only it never happened, performance after performance, summer after summer. The call never came. Time that vet found himself a better prospect. He’d meant to talk to the boy this summer, but the weeks went by too fast. Everything did these days. Things slipped away.
twenty-five
“I KNOW WHERE SHE IS,” Young Adam said, almost to himself. He’d been staring at the water in the harbor.
“What’s that?” Old Adam said, his cereal spoon suspended in mid air. “What’s that you said?!”
“I know where she is,” he repeated.
This was only partly true. Young Adam’s deepest fear was that his mother was gone, that she was dead or had left them. But he couldn’t accept that, so he had been deducing alternatives.
They’d all missed the obvious, is what he thought.
“She’s with Miss Edwinna,” he said, as calmly as if he were saying the tide was in.
Old Adam put down his spoon.
“Please continue…”
“It’s simple, really; something’s happened. She needed a break. But not with the families.”
“Edwinna’s family,” the old man countered.
“Bullshit,” Justine snorted. “The families never include her.”
The old man flinched. “Point taken, though that’s how she wants it.”
He turned to the boy. “What’s your reasoning, counselor?”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Look, only two people we know Mom’s really close with—you know, more than just for tennis.”
“Go on,” the judge said.
“And that’s Colin and Miss Edwinna. She’s not with Colin. I proved that. So, like Holmes says, when you eliminate what cannot be…”
“…whatever’s left must be,” Justine said. “Jeez Adam, you’d think it was the Bible!”
The boy shrugged. It was an “I don’t care if you believe me or not” sort of shrug. Young Adam had a whole language of shrugs.
“She’s friends with Edwinna?” The old man was stunned.
“Edwinna’s cool,” the boy said. His sister nodded.
“I’ll be damned. And I thought I knew what was going on around here,” Old Adam chuckled. “Don’t know squat. We’ll then, let’s pay her a visit.”
“No way, Uncle Adam,” Justine said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “That’s too far for you. Me and Adam, we’ll walk up there.”
“Adam and I,” the old man corrected.
“Whatever. I have my cell. I’ll call you.”
This was the part Old Adam hated most. His mind was sharp, his body unwilling…or, rather, unable. The arthritis was crippling and the old heart did dickey things—skipping beats, or racing. Not that he ever let on. It was embarrassing enough that he walked like a weaving drunk.
“Where’s my phone?” he demanded.
“In the pocket of your cardigan,” Justine said in a voice as soft as his cashmere sweater.
“I’ll call Edwinna right now,” he said, rummaging in his pockets.
“No, you won’t,” Justine said.
The judge stared at the girl. He wasn’t used to being told what he could or couldn’t do. But he always listened to Justine.
“Edwinna wouldn’t tell you, for one thing. Plus, we’d lose the element of surprise.”
The old man lifted a bushy white eyebrow. “Maybe the two of you ought to go into the detective business,” he said. “All right, you win, Watson. Take Sherlock here and pay her a visit. But call me!”
“Let’s take the beach,” the boy said, “it’s faster.”
“No, she’ll see us coming. We’ll go through the woods.”
The judge laughed. “If not detectives, then maybe spies!” he shouted after them.
And he prayed the boy was right.
***
COLIN EASED THE clinic’s van down the rutted gravel drive that led to Edwinna’s cottage. Eileen sat beside him in the passenger seat, concentrating on the road ahead like an anxious driving instructor.
The house was a simple two-story shingled bungalow perched on a bluff looking south over Outer Quartermaster Harbor and had broad porches front and back. He came to a stop on the gravel forecourt and opened the door. Eileen trampled him in her eagerness to get out, whereupon she leaped around, splay-legged, barking idiotically. Normally, he loved this, but not this morning.
“Hush! Heel!”
The dog responded immediately; she ignored him.
Edwinna met him on her front porch, which, like its owner, had a slight list to the west.
“Wake the dead, you would,” she snapped.
“You ought to fix this porch before it slides into the sea. Is the dead awake?”
“She’s asleep. Or was. Threw up again, no thanks to you.”
He ignored this. “What have you learned?”
“Damn all. Last thing she remembers, she was arguing with Tyler on the patio of their place. Nothing after that. No question she was drunk, Colin, but I can’t work out how she got so drunk we almost lost her. That’s a mystery.”
“Not if it was intentional.”
“I can understand wanting to drink yourself to death because your husband’s a serial adulterer, but...”
“He’s what?”
Edwinna squinted at him. “You’re joking right?”
“No! Look, I get it that you don’t think much of him but, I mean, where does this come from?”
“Christ, Colin, you must be blind as well as dumb; the only woman on this beach he hasn’t had is me!”
Colin couldn’t help but laugh, but at the same time he was floored. He shook his head and looked around Edwinna’s yard distractedly, as if searching for evidence in the trees. He remembered those months in London and all of Tyler’s women. But that was years ago. He’d always assumed Tyler adored Pete, just as he did. He’d thought once Tyler married Pete, that was that…
“She never said anything to you?” Edwinna demanded.
“No. We don’t, um, have that kind of…friendship.”
“What the hell kind of friendship do you have?”
Like the fog dissipating earlier in the morning, when he found Pete in the road, Colin had begun to understand that he knew almost nothing about Pete and Tyler—nothing, that is, but what they revealed to him two months of the year. Nothing but what he had imagined. Pete never talked about her marriage. He’d always assumed she was happy. Wasn’t that what the summer gathering was all about; the annual confirmation that, whatever other shocks or tragedies occurred, the Madrona Beach families persevered, the bonds between and among them immutable, their fidelity unwavering? He felt betrayed—not by Tyler, his strange and increasingly erratic friend, nor by Pete. No, he felt betrayed by the fantasy he himself had woven around them, around all these families, over all these years.
“Edwinna…I guess I don’t know.”
“Here’s what doesn’t make sense,” he heard Edwinna saying. She’d already moved on. “She’s drinking herself to death and then she up and decides she’ll walk, what, a mile up the beach? Clamber over the rocks up to the Highway, then walk another mile to the foot of that hill, lie down, and hope someone will hit her?”
“I don’t think suicide’s sensible, Miss Edwinna,” he said, yanking himself out of his dismay, “especially drunken suicide. But it’s just as likely that she was running away and just passed out. Exhaustion and alcohol.”
“Shit!”
Colin thought this was a comment on his reasoning but Edwinna was looking over his shoulder. He turned and saw Justine and her little brother emerging from the dark thicket of salal bushes beneath the second growth Douglas firs at the edge of Edwinna’s overgrown yard. Eileen was off like a shot and ran gleeful circles around the boy.
“Now what, smartass?” Edwinna said to him under her breath.
“I thought you just said I was blind and dumb…?”
“You’re trespassing!” Edwinna warned the approaching children, mustering her most belligerent voice.
Eileen barked and bounced vertically, landing splay-legged, a move so inelegant it turned her from queen to clown in the blink of an eye.
“Hey! We’re family!” Young Adam shouted, chasing around after the antic animal.
“And not invited, you rude child,” Edwinna countered, grabbing Eileen by her collar and hauling her in.
“Give it a rest, Edwinna; we know she’s here,” Justine said, her voice calm and even. She marched toward Edwinna’s porch.
“Stop, Justine. Now!”
It was Colin’s voice, and it was so authoritative, so unexpected, so out-of-character, the girl stopped in her tracks like a Border collie responding to a shepherd’s whistle.
“What?!”
Colin sat on Edwinna’s slanting stairs.
“Come here. Let’s talk.”
Justine approached like a truculent child. Adam played with Eileen. Edwinna, with a groan, settled next to Justine and put her arm around the girl.
“She’s in there,” Justine said, jerking her head backwards.
“Yes, she is,” Colin answered. “And she’s safe. But pretty sick. We need to let her rest.”
Colin was about to elaborate, but Edwinna sensed this, lifted her hand from Justine’s shoulder momentarily and rapped a bony knuckle on the back of his head to silence him.
“This is not a good time for you and Young Adam to be here, sweetie,” Edwinna said.
Justine squared her shoulders. “With respect, ma’am, I don’t think that’s your call.”
“Call me ‘ma’am’ again, girl, and I’m gonna fire your ass right out of here,” Edwinna snapped.
Justine started laughing, then stood. “You’re a kick in the pants, you are, Miss Edwinna. Look, you’re old, okay? That means you’re to be revered and respected. That’s how I was brought up, anyway; or did you have some other system?”
Edwinna relented. “No, that system’s fine with me.”
“Okay, then, stop being a pain in the ass and let’s start from the top, remembering our manners. You�
��ve got our mother in there, yes?”
“Right. So what?”
“Edwinna, stop.”
It was Colin again. “What you’re trying to do is noble and good,” he said to the old woman, “but Justine’s an adult, and Pete’s her mother. For that matter, I think Young Adam’s totally capable, too.”
“Right, and we need to see our mother.”
“Yes, you do,” Colin said. “Let’s go inside and see how she is. But if I sense a crisis, it’s over, okay?”
Justine relented. “Deal.”
Edwinna fulminated, but let it go, shoulders sagging. Colin was the one who could see clearly, now, she realized, and it occurred to her that love was what was clouding her vision; it drove her to her protective animal state, fangs bared. But these were not her enemies. Nor were they Pete’s. These were Pete’s allies, her children, her troops. She and Colin were just security, there to screen visitors. And these visitors were safe.
Justine was on her cell phone to Old Adam.
“She’s here, with Edwinna and Colin. We’re going in.”
She snapped the phone shut.
Colin was smiling. “You make it sound like an ATF bust.”
twenty-six
ROB MARCH AWOKE aware only that he hurt everywhere. His neck felt as if it had been wrung like a dishtowel, his head as if pounded by a pile driver. His ribs ached. His belly was sore. The index finger of his right hand was swollen. He turned slightly, groaned at the pain, and felt sand against his face. The sand yielded memory. The beach. The fight. Tyler Strong raging like a madman.
He turned the other way. He wanted to cushion his throbbing head on the pillow of his wife’s breasts. That primitive comfort, that magical balm of her flesh. He would nestle there and she would stroke his head and he would feel better.
But she wasn’t there.
He levered himself up on one elbow, groaned, and found his wife, fully dressed, slumped in an easy chair beside the window, the rising sun frosting her hair. Her eyes were open.
“Peg. What are you doing there?”
He expected her to smile at his condition, for he, too, was fully clothed, and a mess. But she did not.
