by Robert Elmer
“Where did you get this?” Merit unfolded it carefully, and her daughter cowered as if she’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Merit recognized the printout of the real estate listing, the little photos of the lakeside resort, the note Will had scribbled to her in the margin: Let’s make an offer!
“I’m sorry,” Abby whispered. “It was in the trash, so I…I mean…but are we moving to a lake? ‘Cause if we are, I want to have a pet raccoon, just like in the book. And a pet skunk, and a woodchuck, and a crow. Only in the book, the crow and the raccoon fight, sometimes so maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”
“A skunk?” Olivia exclaimed, wading right in. “Are you crazy? Skunks are horrible and they stink. Who would ever have a skunk for a pet?”
“The boy in the book.” Abby had obviously thought this through. “They’re kind of like a cat, and they’re pretty, and he had lots of cats too, and a big Saint Bernard dog, and he built a canoe in his living room.”
Olivia the girlie-girl knew that building something in the living room was almost worse than having a pet skunk, since it would make a mess on the carpet. That, however, didn’t seem to bother Abby at all. And while the girls continued their pet discussion, Merit held up the bookmark for her oblivious husband to see.
“Look familiar?” She made a face at him, silently asking, What are we going to do about this?
Will squinted as he fingered the wrinkled paper, then looked over at Abby as the light finally came to his eyes. “You mean she…?”
Merit nodded, and a grin spread slowly across his face. Had he even been listening? Was he going to say “I told you so”?
“Abby told me last night we’re going to move to a lake in the wildness and have a pet skunk, Mom.” Olivia crossed her arms and stuck out her lip, the way she did when her older sister tried to convince her that Nancy Drew was a real person or that the back of their closet really did open up into another world. “I didn’t believe her, as usual.”
Merit couldn’t blame Olivia for being skeptical.
“But are we?” Olivia tried once more.
“No!” Merit finally snagged Abby’s book and stuffed it into her purse. “I mean, no one is getting a pet skunk, or a raccoon, or a crow! And no one.
She wasn’t sure how to finish her declaration, but she wanted her husband to hear this, loud and clear.
“And no one,” she went on, “no one has decided anything about moving yet. So you don’t need to worry about a thing.”
Will raised his eyebrows at her and tipped his head slightly, which was sign language for “Are you sure you want to say it that way?”
“So what’s all this about the place at the lake?” Abby pointed at the real estate ad still dangling from her father’s hand. “I think it would be cool to live there.”
“I don’t,” Olivia said firmly. “I would miss all my friends. And besides, I hate skunks!”
Merit couldn’t help giggling at her night-and-day daughters: Abigail, who would grow up to become a forest ranger in Montana or maybe a long-haul truck driver, and Olivia, who would probably star in a Broadway musical between appearances in makeup and shampoo television commercials.
“See?” Will looked at his wife. “They really ought to be in on this.”
She looked from one face to another, sighed, and finally conceded defeat. So much for girls sticking together.
“All right.” She wagged a warning finger at them. “But I have to tell you, girls, that this is not a done deal. In fact, its not even close to being a done deal.”
Again the eyebrows from her husband.
“Well…,” Merit backtracked. “Let me explain what your daddy and I have been talking about.”
But she didn’t get a chance, as someone from the crowd pointed out the approaching gray military jet, and several of the youngest children squealed at the sight. That was the cue for the band to begin playing once more, and everyone craned their necks to see.
“Is that him?” Abby asked. After all, she hadn’t seen her big brother for over a year. None of them had. Merit couldn’t help bobbing with excitement, just like all the other mothers in the crowd.
Will checked his watch, looked at the crowd, and nodded. “I think it is.”
four
Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or
waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their
Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls
or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone
is just waiting.
DR. SEUSS
No, I can’t forget about it just for tonight. I’m not the type to just roll over and play dead when something’s not right.”
Will didn’t mean to raise his voice. The words just came out that way. He knit his fingers around the steering wheel of their Land Rover—the one with four-wheel drive and the navigation system they’d never used and the car alarm that never seemed to work, except when they didn’t want it to—and tried to think of a way to back out of the tension he’d detonated all over their date.
“I’m sorry you’ve had another hard week.” Merit reached over to pat his knee. Ordinarily, he would have purred like a kitten at her touch. “All I meant was there’s nothing we can do about it now. It’s Friday evening, and all you need to do is enjoy a nice dinner with your wife.”
She was right. And he did want to enjoy dinner with his wife. But that went with forgetting the crazy office politics at East Bay Health Supply. Forgetting Bruce, his control-freak boss. Forgetting the offer on the Idaho resort that they hadn’t heard anything about in two weeks. Forgetting everything.
For now.
“Besides,” she went on, “when have you ever turned down your favorite fish? Do you want the view of the bridge or a booth this time?”
They slowed as the traffic on 1–80 condensed.
“What can we do in a booth that we can’t do with a view?” Will asked.
She smacked him on the knee. “The fish is fresh. You don’t need to be.”
“You set me up. I couldn’t help it.” He smiled. Look how fast she’d turned his attention from worrying about their offer to halibut, fish stew, and a side order of Sicilian-style scallops. How did she do that?
“You can too help it,” Merit scolded. “Especially in public.”
“The booths have curtains.” He thought he’d see how far he could push her.
“Hey.” He stepped on the brakes and cast a worried glance in his rearview mirror at the too-fast driver behind them. Traffic, traffic, traffic. Someone laid on their horn. “Must be an accident or something.”
“Good thing we’re not in a hurry.” Merit leaned her head against the neck rest and closed her eyes. After the usual insane day at school with two of the kids sick, and then taking care of her own girls that afternoon, Will supposed she had a right to relax. And he wasn’t going to bore her with any more of his own horror stories from the office, but—
She came to life when her cell phone jingled the obnoxious Celine Dion tune he had never been able to convince her to change. She snatched the phone out of her purse and held it to her ear, smiling at the person on the other end of the line.
“Don’t apologize, Michael. We know it’s only until you get set up.”
We do? Will wondered what Michael was asking this time. Of course he was glad their son was home, living in his own little apartment, but…
“Of course you can. We’re not using it tonight. Your dad and I are headed to Santucci’s for dinner. Keys are hanging on that hook in the kitchen. Just tell the babysitter you’re taking it. And Michael?”
She paused for a moment, and her voice seemed to choke. “We’re just so glad you’re home, after all you went through over there. It’s…I know I’ve said it before, but I’m your mother and I can repeat myself. Okay, dear. I’ll stop now. Love you too.”
She clicked the phone shut and turned to her
husband. “That was—”
“Notice whose phone he called?” Will interrupted. “And I thought he was going to buy a car of his own.”
“He is. In fact, I think he did. A little Japanese…something. He told me his check just has to clear.”
“Hmm…” Will frowned. “I told him he needs to build up his credit. And if I were a twenty-two-year-old, I wouldn’t be caught dead in my parents’ minivan.”
“He’s almost twenty-three, and your parents never owned a minivan, Will. They weren’t invented yet.”
“A station wagon then. I still wouldn’t—”
“And don’t talk about him like that. He’s just getting back on his feet, barely put away his uniform. He’s been through a lot. And you know what will happen if he thinks you’re pushing him too hard.”
“I didn’t think I was pushing.” Will sighed as he felt her frown, knowing he wasn’t winning this argument, either. “Okay, okay. We let him go at his own speed. I just don’t want him to…you know, it’s just good to move ahead. That’s all. I was just thinking that—”
The chirp of his cell phone interrupted, and he snapped it out of the drink holder and looked at the caller ID.
“Hot dog.” He punched the answer button, barely taking time to read “F. Gribbon” on the screen. “I’ve been waiting for this call all day.”
“You have?” Merit asked, acting surprised. “I had no idea.”
He winked at his wife, then cleared his throat. She could be sarcastic if she wanted. This phone call could be the introduction to a brand new chapter in their lives.
“Uncle Fred!” Maybe he sounded too chipper. He toned it down a notch or two. “What’s the good news?”
“Returning your call, Will,” came the tinny voice on the other end of the line. “I got your messages.”
That was it? Uncle Fred the real estate broker sounded more like Uncle Fred the undertaker. Not good. Maybe he was joking. Uncle Fred didn’t joke.
“All five of them?”
Uncle Fred managed a dry chuckle. “I’m sorry. I was in meetings all day. I know you’re anxious to hear something after all this time.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I followed up on your offer, I don’t know, five or six times in the past two weeks. The owners are still in Costa Rica, as far as I’ve been able to find out.”
“And what do they say from Costa Rica?”
“That’s just it. Nothing. Not a yes, not a no, but.
“So we haven’t gotten through to them yet.” Will could hope, couldn’t he? “That’s why we haven’t heard back.”
“No, that’s just it. I’m afraid we have.”
“But you just said—”
“I have all the contact information I need, and as far as I can tell, I’ve been leaving messages in the right places. They just haven’t responded, and their listing agent won’t tell me anything helpful, either.”
“In other words, they’re ignoring us.”
“Right.”
“Because our offer was too low?”
“That’s the way I’m reading it. My take is they’re insulted, and that fits with everything I can glean from the agent. They don’t seem to be in any hurry to sell, and there’s no law that says they have to answer you if they don’t want to.”
“There isn’t?”
Traffic sped up once more. Will glanced down to see that Merit had slipped her hand over to the steering wheel the way she always did when he was getting distracted. And on the other end of the line, he thought he heard his uncle sigh.
“Look, Will, I’m really sorry about the way it’s playing out. I know how you…you and Merit had your hearts set on this. There are two things we can do at this point. One, you can up the offer and resubmit. But—”
“But you know we can’t do that, Uncle Fred. We don’t have anything else to offer.”
“Right. I hear you. The other thing to do is to just take it as a no from the Lord and let it go.”
Will bit his tongue to keep from snapping at his uncle—although the comment didn’t surprise him.
“You’re making it sound like no answer is some kind of…divine revelation or something.”
Not until the words slipped from his mouth did Will realize he’d recycled them from someone else—Merit.
“Look, Will,” said Uncle Fred. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. And you know I’ll keep following this as far as we can. But truth is, it just doesn’t look good right now, and at some point you’re going to have to accept that.”
Will felt the muscles in his neck tighten and tried to ungrit his teeth. “The only thing I’m accepting right now, Uncle Fred, is that we still don’t know for sure, and you still haven’t found out for sure. Okay?”
He bit his tongue as soon as the words were out of his mouth, not so much for what he had said, but for how he’d said it. His uncle didn’t answer right away, and out of the corner of his eye, Will could see Merit waving him down. Down, boy.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Fred,” Will finally managed. “I know you’re doing the best you can. It’s not your fault.”
Uncle Fred’s garbled reply stuttered through the connection.
“Hello?” Will asked as they drove past the shelter of a hill. They were getting close to the water. “I think I’m losing your signal. Hello? Can you hear me?”
His uncle may or may not have heard his apology, but Will listened for a couple seconds more in case the call hadn’t quite dropped.
“Thanks anyway, Uncle Fred.” He snapped the phone shut and tossed it into the cup holder.
“Will,” Merit said.
What could she say to make him feel better about this? It wasn’t her fault, not Fred’s fault, not anybody’s, except—
“They could at least have given us the courtesy of a reply. I can deal with a ‘yes,’ and I can deal with a ‘no.’ But to be ignored like this…it absolutely makes me crazy.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“I mean, come on! You have a place for sale, someone makes you an offer, and you tell them yes or no. You don’t just ignore them.”
“I know, but look—” She leaned a little closer as the freeway finally emerged from the hills and they caught sight of the Carquinez Bridge dead ahead. “Oh, turn here!”
He made the off ramp just in time, grateful they hadn’t been followed by a Highway Patrol car. He followed the road down to the bayside town of Crockett—well, people called it a town, but with San Francisco only a few miles away, it qualified as a suburb that had once been a town—and their favorite little waterfront seafood restaurant.
“Good thing both of us are driving,” he mumbled, knowing it was true.
Five minutes later, Merit looked at him over the top of the car as they stepped out into the breeze. Here at the straits, river water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers mingled freely with salt water from the bay, and Will granted his lungs a full breath of pungent air. A freighter trundled slowly by, displaying green and white lights in the dusk of early evening.
He pointed to the older sedan they had parked next to at the edge of the little lot, as if the car could heed his warning. “You ding my Land Rover, fella, and—”
“Can we just…” Merit began, her eyes big. “Can we just enjoy the dinner? Forget about job stress for a couple of hours, and the offer, and your Uncle Fred? Just be together and have fun?”
Will lowered his wagging finger, looked at her, and considered her invitation, one he could not turn down. “Like always, huh?” He could do that.
He remembered to open the restaurant door for her, and once they had been shown to a booth, he remembered to switch off his cell phone and watched his wife hold the menu up close to read. They tried to remember the last time they had come to Santuccis and what they had ordered then. He couldn’t remember but thought maybe it had been the crab.
She looked up at him and rested her menu back on the table.
“I hate to say this, dear.” She smiled sweetly, and
Will instantly recognized the “would you do something for me?” tone. “But I took out my contacts, and I think I left my glasses in the car. Could you—?”
He slipped outside and was just about to pull the driver-side door open when he noticed something glittered the wrong way, a reflection from a distant streetlight on something in the front seat he didn’t remember leaving there. In the distance, a dark figure ran out of the parking lot and into a dark patch of bushes, causing Will’s heart to leap.
It didn’t take long to discover the broken glass that now covered the passenger seat and the gaping hole that used to be a side window. He groaned. Inside, their nearly new, four-hundred-dollar stereo system had been rudely yanked from its moorings and trundled away—likely by the runner Will had seen a moment earlier.
“I can’t believe it.” For a minute he just stared at the crime scene while a dull ache gripped the pit of his stomach, replacing the fear from just moments before. He squeezed his fists together to fight off the feeling of being violated and yelled into the darkness.
“Hey! You!” He fished a CD out of the glass littering the seat and floor. “You forgot one!”
The artist on the CD cover smiled up at him, a contemporary gospel artist Merit liked to listen to on her way to work. Without thinking, Will flung it into the shadows, Frisbee style. It fluttered like a bat against midnight blue until it finally clattered into the bushes on the far side of the parking lot.
“You need to hear that more than we do!” he hollered, then stubbed his toe as he kicked at the glass that had fallen out onto the asphalt. “Jerk!”
Didn’t anyone around here keep an eye out for this kind ofthing? Whatever happened to security guards? He jammed his hand into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and started to punch 911 before he realized the phone wasn’t on. Then he thought better of it. Is this the sort of thing people were supposed to call 911 for? Here in the Bay Area, breakins happened all the time. With three million plus people, what did he expect, anyway?
For murders, press one. If your home was broken into by a masked gunman, press two. If you locked the keys in your Lexus, have a nice day.
