“How come you can’t take it?”
“You’re smarter. Besides, me and Carlita are going to hang out under the bridge. Do a little fishing.” He smiled. “One day I might teach you how to use a pole, when you’re big enough.”
“What if I don’t want to take your damned test?”
“Come on, now. The cane, remember?”
Jacob burped and the acid sluiced up his throat. He swore to himself he would never try liquor again. And he was going to quit letting Joshua threaten him, because Joshua was as much to blame for Mother’s death as he was. He was done letting Joshua push him around. But, first, he was going to find a way to finish that test early so he could find himself a good hiding place in the weeds beside the bridge.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dust.
Which of the tiny specks were Mattie, and which were bits of dead skin, moth wings, dandelion fluff, or lost sea sand?
Jacob looked down into his palm, then at the urn on the faux mantel of Renee’s living room. The urn was cold in its solitude, cast in black porcelain with dark gold piping around the rim. Overwrought solemnity, the best money could buy.
Jacob let the dust sift through his palm to the floor, knowing Renee would twitch with the urge to get out the vacuum cleaner. “I need the rest of it.”
“I gave it to you already.”
“I can make him go away.”
“By buying your father’s place? I thought you hated that house. You always said it brought back bad memories.”
“I’m not buying the place. I’m giving it to my brother.”
“Joshua? The man whose name you could barely stand to say? The one you kept secret from me because you were so ashamed?”
“I owe him. I took everything my father left. I tricked Joshua out of his birthright because I thought I could put it to better use.”
“You said he refused to take any inheritance. ‘I don’t want nothing the old man ever touched.’”
“I got the money and the real estate, Joshua got the home place. But he can’t sell or rent it because of the covenants Dad put on it. Since he doesn’t want to live there, he basically got nothing. While I got to finish building the Wells empire.”
“Since when did you start feeling guilty about that? If you’re going to feel guilty for something, maybe you should show some emotion over the death of your daughter.”
Renee stood with the sleeves of her tan sweater tucked into her fists. Her eyes held enough fire and light to drive the chill out of Jacob’s heart, but the combustible places inside him had long since been walled off. He felt like a trespasser in her apartment, in this new life she was trying to make. One where the kids were nothing but photographs on the wall, pieces of slick paper in polished picture frames. A life where Jacob was nothing more than temporary clutter.
“I’ve dealt with Mattie’s death in my own way,” he said.
“Great. Thanks a lot for leaving me behind while you did it.”
Jacob looked at her, wondering if he’d ever really known her. Or maybe he had never known himself. “You’ve been talking to that damned Rheinsfeldt again, ain’t you?”
“Yes, and I’m starting to figure out some things. She said you had some traumatic experience–or probably several–that caused your adolescent disorder.”
“‘Disorder.’ As if everything has to be in order.”
“And now this brother thing. Like maybe if you make amends with Joshua, pay him off, you can buy his love and maybe get your father back that way. But maybe you can’t fit all the pieces together again.”
“Money makes a good glue.”
“They won’t release the settlement, Jacob. Not until the investigation’s complete. You know that.”
“I didn’t start the fire. Even if you hate me now, you know I’d never do anything that stupid.”
“I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t know which Jacob you are.”
That’s what they always say.
Jacob fought the urge to rush across the room and slap her. He forced his fist open and stretched his fingers. Some of the dust from the urn still clung to his moist palm.
Jacob took his gaze from Renee’s tear-streaked face and looked at the urn. How could such a small jar hold those millions of memories, the hopscotch chalk on the sidewalk, Big Bird’s Firehouse, the sticky trip to Disneyland, the juice boxes of midget league soccer? How could his precious little girl be reduced to such a finite space when she had once contained multitudes of possibilities?
“Fine, then.”
“What the hell do you expect?” Renee said. “You’ve gone off the deep end again and you won’t let me help. You run away from the hospital, hide from Donald and me, start drinking, then you stand in the woods and try to freak me out, pretending you’re somebody else. What the hell am I supposed to do? Lock you in the nuthouse again?”
“That was a long time ago and I’m much better now. I’m a grown-up. I know how to deal with my problems.”
“You didn’t handle your mother’s death very well. You go crazy when you lose a child. And we’re both twice as crazy now. Don’t you see that helping each other is the only hope?”
“Rheinsfeldt and her touchy-feely ‘dialoging to wellness.’ That doesn’t sound like much hope to me. Because when it was over, if it was ever over, then all we’d have would be each other.”
“Maybe that’s enough.” Renee said.
“Two million would be enough.”
“I told you. The twenty-seven hundred was the last of it.”
“Give it here.”
Renee’s jaw was twisted and tight. “I already gave it to you. At the cemetery.”
“Quit bullshitting me, Renee. If you want to trick me into thinking I’m cracking up, you got to do better than that.”
She shook her head, the tears no longer flowing but lying on her cheeks in thin, bright tracks. Jacob almost felt sorry for her, this woman he had loved for nearly a decade. She had lost as much as he had. Perhaps her suffering was even worse, because she believed in a merciful God, and God had proven the worthlessness of her faith.
“I don’t have it,” she said. “Talk to Donald. He’ll tell you. You’re ruined, Jacob. There’s no money left, the banks are foreclosing on your property, and even if you get your insurance money, it’s going to be too late to bail you out this time.”
“No. I’m a Wells, damn it. This is my town. They can’t take it away from me.”
“Sorry, Jake. You shouldn’t have dropped out of your own life.”
“Give me your keys,” he said.
“No. It’s my car.”
“Our car. Don’t forget whose name’s on the title. Wells.”
“Just like the house, huh? And there’s nothing left of it but ashes. Everything we owned together is ashes now. Everything a Wells ever touched.”
They both looked at the urn. It had the power of a sacred relic, an icon that marked not the abiding mystery of faith and life but the absolute consuming nadir of despair and failure.
“I’ll drive you back to the Wells farm,” she said.
“I can’t stay there.”
“You can’t sleep in the bushes.”
Jacob looked at the couch, then down the hall at the starched covers of her bed. When you turn your back on your life, you leave everything behind, even those things that once seemed valuable. “Take me by the ruins, then. Show me where the person called to you from the woods.”
“That was you, Jake.”
“It wasn’t. I swear.”
But he couldn’t be sure. Maybe visiting the scene of the nightmare would rob it of its power. He had nothing left to lose. Except two million dollars, his wife, and the Wells homestead.
They drove to Buffalo Trace Lane in silence, Renee keeping her purse in her lap, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. The town seemed like a movie set to Jacob, a false-front stage for the Wells illusion. He hadn’t owned Kingsboro. All he had was a name heavier than blocks, girders, and bricks.
As they pulled into the driveway, Jacob was struck by the harsh emptiness of the lot, as if the blank space in the sky required the satisfying geometry of walls and roof in order to be complete. The rectangular bed of ashes lay like a black, sunken grave. The yellow crime scene tape had drooped, and in places it was broken and fluttering in the breeze like the tails of crippled kites. The trees around the ruin were scorched, the branches stunted and bare. New blackberry vines had thrust from the dead embers scattered beyond the block foundation, as if sharp and painful edges were the next natural evolutionary step here.
Renee stopped the engine and sat with her hands in her lap. “We’re home.”
Jacob looked up to where the second floor would have been, to the haunted air of Mattie’s vanished window. “I tried to save her. You believe that, don’t you?”
“I was there, Jake. I remember.”
“But you couldn’t see. All that smoke.”
“Like I told the fire chief.”
“We were cut off from each other. You had to go downstairs. It was the only way out.”
“I thought you and Mattie were already safe, or I never would have left.” Renee adjusted her glasses on her nose, as if using a memory trick to recall her half of the story. “But I had to get my glasses out of the car.”
“And the back door was open.”
“The door that swings both ways.”
“Huh?” Jacob imagined flames licking at the afternoon sky, a daytime Armageddon, a cleansing wave pushed up from the bowels of hell.
“The door that swings both ways. Like you told me the night you were hiding in the woods.”
“I wasn’t hiding in the woods.”
“Something about the door, Jake. And when you smelled the smoke, you told me to wait in the bedroom. Like you were afraid of what I might see.”
“I didn’t want you to see Mattie. I wanted to protect you. Both of you. Like I couldn’t protect Christine.”
That sounded good. He swallowed.
The charred flecks of Christine’s crib lay somewhere in the burned-out basement, along with a menagerie of stuffed animals, hair brushes, Barbie dolls, and an Easy-bake oven. The Weebles and Lego and Strawberry Shortcake and Pooh pajamas. Tweety Bird sleepers and Dr. Seuss videos. Purple plastic bracelets and silver wigs, sneakers that lit up with red LED’s when a girl danced. The solid things were the only believable reminders of Mattie, because memory clung not to her smile in the sunshine but to her face in the fire.
“Jake, I can’t talk to Chief Davidson anymore. She suspects something.”
“It won’t be much longer. The SBI has run about every test they have. They’ll have to close the case soon, and we’ll get our money.”
“It’s not ours, though. You want to give it to Joshua.”
A car came up the road behind them, slowing as it passed the driveway. Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror. The Nelsons from 217, who lived around the corner. Their house had a thousand square feet less of floor space than the one he’d built here. With the insurance money, he could build an even larger one, an envy-inspiring Wells monument that would be three stories and–
He wouldn’t rebuild here. This wasn’t his home anymore. He belonged in Joshua’s house. And Joshua would get the two million, money from the fire and Mattie. Fair was fair. Jacob opened the door and got out of the car.
The air carried a faint charred aroma in its heavy dampness. If he’d believed in spirits, he could imagine Mattie hovering over the bed of dead embers, picking among the ruins for the ghosts of toys. He touched his face, recalled the searing heat that must have been ten times as intense to her. The fire had robbed her of oxygen, suffocating her in its selfish consumption. The greedy fingers of flames had stroked and groped and seized, had pulled all that lay before it into its arms.
The fire had risen from a muted spark and swelled to a stubborn, hungry thing. The fire refused to recognize its limits. Therefore, it was the fire’s fault, not his.
Never his.
Because a Wells never fails.
Renee came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. He shivered. She had always been colder than Carlita. “Jacob, what are we going to do?”
“Wait.”
“But what happens after that? M & W is wiped out.”
“The partnership can declare bankruptcy. The claimants can’t touch the insurance money. That’s mine.”
“Ours. A joint asset.”
“Ours.” The word had lost most of its meaning. Still, if she wanted to believe in a fantasy future, it would make things that much simpler. Betrayal worked best when it came as a surprise. Enemies were the only people you could trust, because they were predictable. The only trouble was figuring out which ones were enemies.
“Why did your brother come back?”
“He’s a Wells. He’s part of me.” In a way that Renee would never be. Her blood, no matter how hot it ran or how much of it spilled for him, would never have the purity of Joshua’s. Even Mattie and Christine were diluted, only half Wells.
“Somebody knows, Jake.”
“Nobody knows.”
She pulled the Rock Star Barbie out of her purse. “Remember this?”
The fire, laying on the floor, screaming “Wish me” against the crackling chorus of flames. “Mattie’s doll.”
Renee triggered its audio chip and it bleated “Housewarming present.”
“Some kid playing a joke, maybe. Some drunk. Or crazy bum.” Not like him. Not him.
“I found it in the woods.”
“Forget it. Nobody saw nothing.”
“Let me show you something,” she said.
Jacob looked up the road, half expecting to see Davidson round the corner in her fat-wheeled SUV, all chrome and insignia and fog lights. If she smelled arson, she would hang the crime on somebody. And an arson that caused a child’s death would be a second degree murder charge at a minimum.
Renee tugged his sleeve, dragged him toward the woods. As they passed the wreckage, he wondered what the clutter meant to her, how the skeletal block wall and blackened wood and scorched appliances played against her obsessive-compulsive disorder. She’d wanted to clear the forest, level the oak and maple and birch and install landscaping, to regiment the wilderness and line the shrubs in a God-pleasing order. Jacob had convinced her that they wouldn’t be in the house long enough for the plants to reach maturity, and she had settled for flower beds along the front walk.
He fumbled at his shirt pocket and touched the pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Lights, the same brand as Joshua’s.
“I found this, too.” She pulled the plastic rattle out of her pocket and shook it, though the sound elicited sharp pricks of regret.
“That was in the nursery,” Jacob said.
“Should have been.”
Jacob took the rattle in his left hand and shook it. It bore the face of a generic bear, its painted eyes long since flaked off. The handle was worn, but it felt familiar inside Jacob’s grip. He had rattled the bear himself, as a tiny child whose twin lay in the crib beside him, whose mother leaned over in severe judgment, whose father stayed well away. Years that Jacob had rarely mentioned, no matter how deeply Renee had dug.
It was one of the few relics Jacob had kept when he left home. It had been in his college apartment, and Renee had found it in one of her frantic bouts of cleaning. He’d shrugged it off, but Renee found it sweet and enduring that a rebellious, scatter-brained poet hung on to a childhood toy.
And, by rights, the rattle should have been a melted lump of slag deep in the black bowels of the house.
“Somebody was in the house, Jake.”
“He couldn’t have known.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Who do think?” Jacob gripped the rattle hard enough that the plastic cracked.
“Is that why you’re giving him the money? Is he blackmailing you?”
Jacob stared back at the house, at the black bed of charred ruins that
may as well have been a mirror of their souls. He pulled out the pack of cigarettes and tapped one free, shaking the rattle in the process.
“When did you take up smoking?” she asked.
“I’ve always smoked.”
He flicked the lighter and touched it to the cigarette tip, fighting the impulse to also apply the flame to the rattle.
Better late than never.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“I love you.” As if that were an answer.
She took the cigarette from his fingers. “Then let’s do this together.”
She tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it with her foot. “A Wells never fails, and two Wells are better than one,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Renee drove Jacob to Dr. Rheinsfeldt’s office, she looked over at the passenger seat and admired her handiwork. He’d moved into her apartment, cleaned up, and bought a couple of new suits. It was off-the-rack, Belk’s stuff, but it would have to do until the money began rolling again. And it would. A shave and a splash of cologne, three weeks of sobriety to get the bugs off his skin, and he was ready to climb back onto the throne. Kingsboro was waiting for him to stand up and be a Wells, to take the town’s future in his hands and push it into a prosperous new era.
Attitude was the important thing. They had mourned enough. The SBI had turned in the final incident report, and the fire had been ruled “Cause undetermined.” Not quite as good as a ruling of “accidental,” which would mean that a definitive source of the fire had been found. As it was, the open-ended ruling left a cloud of suspicion lingering, but the insurance company was now compelled to pay. Two million dollars, minus the $20,000 that Renee had received for emergency housing and living expenses.
Now they were bound together, joined for the future, and Jacob wouldn’t be able to shake her. He had accepted the new arrangement with sullen resentment, but she had explained that no other options remained. A husband and wife didn’t keep secrets from each other, and now they had to close ranks. They could deal with the rest of it after they squared the books of M & W Ventures and shut up Donald Meekins. They’d already signed the necessary forms, and Rayburn Jones had treated them like old friends, pleased to see Jacob back in Rotarian form. Jacob seemed to sit a little straighter, his eyes brighter and wider, confidence returning.
Mystery Dance: Three Novels Page 17
