He sat back on his heels, waiting to hear who it was.
“Jack, it’s Kate. Are you there, honey?”
With a humiliating jolt of relief, he lunged for the phone. He raked his thigh painfully on the corner of the file drawer as he picked up the handset. “Kate,” he said. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Hi.” She waited a moment in sensitive silence, and he thought she must hear the stress in his voice. “Are you all right?” she asked at last.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
She gave a small laugh. “Jack, you sound just like your mom. She would never admit to being upset.”
That gave him another twinge, and he sagged against the desk, rubbing his smarting thigh with his palm. “Well,” he said. “I finally got around to her—to Mom’s—the files.”
“I’ll come get you, then, and we can go to the lawyer’s.”
“Kate—the clients keep calling. What do I tell them?”
“The police have all of Tory’s client files for now—but you can refer them to the lawyer. She’ll know what to say.”
“There was a notice in the paper.”
“I know. And Tory left specific instructions for her clients to be notified should anything happen to—to disrupt her practice. I’m pretty sure they should all have received the lawyer’s letter by now. I’m told not all therapists are that careful. She seems to have thought of everything.”
“Instructions? You’re talking about her will.”
There was a little pause, and he sensed Kate trying to find the right words. She gave a click of her tongue, and he thought, wryly, that she had given up the search. “Jack, I’m so sorry. There’s just no easy way to talk about this stuff. Do you need to see someone, maybe? Father Wilburton, or a counselor?”
“No. I’m good.”
She was silent again, and he knew she was feeling helpless and worried. Just as he was. He said, “Don’t worry, Kate. I can manage here, I really can. Everything’s in perfect order.”
“No surprise there, right?” she said. “I always told Tory she should leave at least one mess, somewhere. Something to make her human.”
“Yeah. Well. She had my bedroom,” Jack said, and managed a little chuckle.
“I heard about that! My kids were just the same, believe me.” Another laugh, just light enough, just short enough so he knew she had not forgotten, that she understood he was struggling. Kate Bingham was an awfully nice woman. He wondered why he hadn’t appreciated that before. He’d always just thought of her as Tory’s friend, older, fatter, duller. Another mistake to add to a growing list.
“So, did you—did you want something?” he asked. He stared down into the open file drawer, and saw a fat, neat file with his name on it. He looked away.
“Honey, the police called here, and they spoke to Chet. I guess they—well, it was the sheriff’s office, and I suppose they thought someone older should talk to you first. They’re done with your mother’s car.”
“Oh.” Jack straightened, and walked to the window of the office to look past the oak tree into the woods beyond. A pretty hummingbird feeder, empty now, twirled on its chain just beyond the sliding glass door. November sunlight, cool and faintly yellow, sifted through the stand of cedars. The sugar maples had shed most of their leaves, and the ground was thick and bright with them. Tory had loved this time of year, gathered huge armfuls of leaves to fill baskets here and there around the house, filling the place with the scent of the woods. He wondered what she put in the hummingbird feeder, and if he should refill it.
“Chet can help you decide what to do with it,” Kate went on. “It’s a good car, and it’s only two years old. You probably want to have it repaired.”
“Will the insurance cover it?”
“It should. There will be some paperwork.”
Jack chewed on his lower lip, watching a gray squirrel dash through loose red leaves. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I think I’ll get it fixed. Do I have to go get it?” The idea of seeing the car, with its crumpled hood and broken door—the door, presumably, his mother had fallen through—made his belly go cold.
“Chet can do it,” Kate said. “Okay if we handle that for you, then? I’ll call the sheriff back. Chet will make the arrangements.”
“Thanks, Kate. And thank Chet for me. I really appreciate you guys helping me out.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, with firmness now, and a touch of briskness. “Now, listen, honey. You’ve been staying alone over there for too long. Won’t you come and have dinner with us? And Chet was asking when you’re going back to school. He offered to drive you to the train when you’re ready.”
“Look, Kate, it’s really nice of you. Both of you. I’m just—I’m okay here, for now.”
The squirrel reached the trunk of a sugar maple, and scrambled up, its fluff of tail swinging behind. Jack turned back to face Tory’s desk, with its photos and its big calendar blotter, dotted with notes in her cramped, precise handwriting. The chill crept up from his belly and into his heart. He felt as if he had a rock in his chest. A cold, unforgiving rock.
Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to get off the phone, to go to his mother’s collection of CDs, and play something, anything. He wanted to hear her music.
Kate released him in a few moments, saying she would let him know about the car, making him promise he would call her in the morning. He promised, as much to get off the phone as because he would have anything to say by morning. He went into the living room, leaving the file drawer open in the desk. He walked to the cabinet holding his mother’s collection, and pulled down a CD at random.
Mahler, Symphony no. 5. He popped open the jewel case and lifted out the CD. Mahler was as close as his mother would allow herself to get to Wagner. She had said so often. He put the CD into the Bose, and wandered into the kitchen as the attenuated melodies and ponderous harmonic progressions began to fill the house. He felt a bit better with the music playing. He felt connected to Tory.
Was his hunch right, or was it wishful thinking, guilt over having been a bad son, a difficult teenager, a distant young adult? He found a picture of the two of them behind a row of cookbooks, and took it down to hold in his hand. Kate had snapped it at his graduation, and he remembered the moment. His mother had put her arm around him, pulled him close to her. It had been a long time since they had been that close physically. He remembered often feeling as if there was a fence between them, a barrier of some kind, not of their own making, but holding them apart. He gazed at the picture, wishing he could call back that moment, turn and hold his mother in both arms, let her hug him as tightly as she wished.
She looked nice in the picture, her hair clipped up, a simple short dress showing her trim legs. It was only two years ago, and he looked with fresh eyes at her fair hair, her clear, smooth skin, the faint lines around her eyes, the deeper ones around her mouth. He couldn’t remember ever looking at her as a person. As a woman.
But maybe young men didn’t do that. Maybe if he sat down with a therapist—like Tory—that’s what he would hear, that young men were that way, that their mothers weren’t women, they were . . . mothers.
His had done the best she could. He wished he could tell her he understood that.
He put the photo back on its shelf behind the cookbooks. No, it wasn’t wishful thinking. She wasn’t gone. He could—he could feel her. Wills, police, the wrecked car, the lawyer—none of it changed anything. Jack wandered into the living room and gazed out at the mountains of the park, their wooded peaks going blue with early dusk. He listened to the swell and crash of the Mahler symphony, and wondered what he should do.
By the time full darkness settled over the house, Jack began to wish he had accepted Kate’s invitation after all. He didn’t want company, exactly, but the house seemed to echo with emptiness. Tory disliked drapes that might block her view of the woods, so the big picture window in the living room and the sliding glass door to her office were uncurtained. With the lights o
n, the glass was black and reflective. He saw his every movement, his mussed-up hair, his ragged Red Sox sweatshirt. He felt exposed to the night.
He went around the house, checking that the front and back doors and the office entrance were locked. He peeked in the utility room, where the washer and dryer were now clean and empty. There had been a few things in the washer, a pair of jeans, sneakers, a shirt. He had dried them and put them away. The ironing board—as always—was folded up into its frame. He had never seen it out, and he didn’t know why they even had one. If there was an iron in the house, he didn’t know where. Tory had a thing about ironing.
He turned out the lights in the living room and in her office, and confined himself to the kitchen, where he could draw the curtains over the sink and close out the darkness. He could watch the small television Tory kept under the cabinet while he made himself dinner.
At first he had avoided the TV. The news endlessly replayed the photos of the Escalade at the bottom of the ravine, its doors open like empty arms that had dropped their burden. But now, it seemed, with nothing new to report, everyone had lost interest. There had been blood on the upholstery of the car, but it had been Tory’s, and there hadn’t been much of it. The Escalade appeared to have some damage to its rear bumper, but no one knew how long that might have been there. There was no explanation for why Tory might have driven into the woods instead of down her driveway, but the police seemed to think that wasn’t particularly suspicious.
Father Wilburton had explained all of this to Jack in a gingerly fashion, as if the twenty-year-old young man in front of him might break down or fly into hysterics. Jack listened, his head down, his teeth clenched. There had been so little blood, the priest said. Not enough to prove that—
Jack had thrown up his hand, made him stop talking about blood.
Misunderstanding, Father Wilburton had changed the subject. He went on to speak gently about sorrow, support groups, the comforts of faith. Jack had listened to his little homily in polite silence.
Jack switched on the television, but he kept the volume low, letting the news drone softly while he pulled one of Kate’s casseroles out of the fridge. She had taped instructions to the lid. He pulled those off, set the oven temperature, and slid the dish onto the top rack. While the oven ticked, warming, he looked through the kitchen cupboards for things he should give away or throw out before he went back to school. He found the knife block in a lower cupboard, and gazed at it for a moment. Hadn’t it been full? His mother liked CUTCO knives, and he remembered her saving up for a set, filling every slot in the knife block. One of the slots was empty now. It was a small thing. He doubted anyone who didn’t know Tory would even notice. It probably didn’t mean anything. He’d find the knife somewhere else, or perhaps she had sent it in to be sharpened or something.
In the pantry he gazed at the shelves full of coffee and sugar and pasta and cereal. He carried a bag of steel-cut oatmeal back into the kitchen. He was trying to judge from the label how long it would keep when he heard the sound.
He reached out to flick off the television. He listened, hard.
It came again, a click, as of glass on metal, a subtle sound that might have been the click of the furnace going off, or the house settling, or the oven still preheating.
Jack’s skin prickled with sudden goose bumps. It wasn’t the furnace. It wasn’t the oven, either. Okay, big guy, he told himself silently. You said you’d be okay. Prove it.
With a grimace, he took the marble rolling pin out of its holder, and hefted it in his hand. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He crossed the kitchen, opened the swinging door, and sidled through, letting it shut soundlessly behind him.
He stood for a breathless moment in the darkened hallway. For long seconds he heard nothing. The rolling pin was cold and heavy in his hand, and he thought how foolish he was going to feel when he put it back—
There it was again. It was louder this time, a lot louder. It came from Tory’s office, and it was followed by the unmistakable sound of the glass door sliding open.
Jack drew a quick, shivery breath, and lunged for the door to the office. He banged it open, and palmed the light switch, the rolling pin at the ready and his heart hammering beneath his sweatshirt.
The relief that washed through him left him weak in the knees. He was sure his face was white, and he had drawn a deep breath, prepared to shout at someone. Instead, what came out was scratchy and thin, more breath than sound. “Dammit! You scared the shit out of me!”
It was the woman from the memorial service, the sheriff’s deputy. She was in uniform, her wide-brimmed hat pulled over her forehead, her gun belt drooping around her waist. She carried some sort of tool in her hand. She had one foot inside the sliding glass door, and her hand still rested on the latch. Her eyes widened, the pupils expanding in surprise. “Jack!” she exclaimed. “What the—I thought you were back at school!”
She swiftly tucked the tool, a sort of flat metal thing, into her shirt pocket, then turned her back on him to shut the glass door.
He let the rolling pin hang by his side. It felt huge and embarrassing, evidence of his nervousness. “You—what are you doing here?” he asked. His voice sounded high and childish.
She turned back with deliberation, and it crossed his mind that she was choosing her words. The back of his neck tingled.
“You should be careful about locking this door,” she said.
He made sure his voice dropped to the proper register. “I did lock it.”
She shrugged her wide shoulders. “It was open.”
It was an impasse. He repeated, “What are you doing here, officer?” He hadn’t spoken to a lot of cops, but he was pretty sure that was the right way to address her.
She grinned now, and took off the hat, revealing short, brushy hair. “You can call me Ellice,” she said. “My name’s Ellice Gordon.” She took a look around the office, her glance pausing at the open file drawer, then resolutely continuing its circuit. “I just came up to make sure everything was okay here. I, uh, I saw the light from the road.”
“I didn’t hear your car.”
Ellice shrugged again. “I hiked up. It’s good to get out from behind the wheel sometimes.” She took a step farther into the office. Her hand, with the hat in it, dangled beside her thigh, the same side as her holstered weapon. She had pale eyes, with light, reddish lashes. She gazed at the upholstered chair where the clients sat with something like nostalgia.
“Were you one of Mom’s clients?” Jack asked, and then wished he hadn’t. It was probably violating her privacy or something. He never met his mother’s clients. Client privacy was one of the reasons she had a side entrance to her office.
Ellice Gordon didn’t seem to care. She nodded, without looking at him. “Yes,” she said. “For quite some time. She was—” She gave a shake of her head, and looked up at him again. Her eyes were oddly flat, though their color was so light. “She was great,” she finished. “But you’re her kid. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
The officer’s gaze swept him in what felt like a professional way. She grinned when her eyes fell on the rolling pin. “Weapon?” she said.
“I thought someone was breaking in.”
“I’m sorry about that. I would have rung the bell if I knew you were here.” She tilted her head toward him. “Scared, up here by yourself?”
“No. No, I’m not.” The rolling pin felt like it had grown three sizes in his hand. He wriggled it self-consciously against his thigh. “I’m good.”
“So I see.” Pointedly, she dropped her gaze to the rolling pin again, then returned to his face. “Well, be careful to lock up next time, okay?”
“Sure.” Jack thought he should probably say something else, but he didn’t know what. The officer gave another look around the office, her eyes lingering on the open file drawer, before she took a step back toward the door.
She jerked a thumb back toward the desk, and the drawer. “You need so
me help with your mom’s files?”
“No. Thanks.”
“But the client files, and so forth . . .”
“Those are gone. The lawyer has them.”
Her sandy eyebrows lifted. “Gone?”
“Yeah. First, I guess the cops looked at them—oh, sorry. Do you hate that word?”
She grinned again, freckled cheeks creasing. “We’re used to it.”
“Yeah.” Jack shifted his weight so he could lean against the doorjamb. He would have liked to put down the rolling pin, but he was stuck with it now. He tucked it under his arm in what he hoped was a casual manner. “Yeah, so the cops went through them and then they went to the lawyer’s office. I guess in case someone wants to take over the practice.”
She nodded, and put her hand on the latch. “Okay, then. We’re keeping an eye on the place for you. You’ll be glad about that, I imagine.”
“Thanks, officer.”
“Ellice.”
Jack didn’t answer. Ellice pulled on her hat again, adjusted her belt, and slid the door open. She said, “Bye,” closed the door, and was gone.
He waited where he was for a full minute before he crossed to the sliding door to check the latch. He knew, somehow, that he would find it broken. It was a simple hook latch, the hook bent now into uselessness.
“What the fuck?” he muttered. It could have already been broken, but he didn’t think so. He had locked the door, tested it with his hand. He remembered doing it.
But maybe he was wrong. Maybe, with the police in and out of the house, someone had broken it, and not thought to tell him. Maybe it broke while he was at school. He could have latched the door, tried it with his hand, and just thought it was secure.
He couldn’t convince himself. He wished the officer had stayed away from the place. He didn’t like her. He didn’t like her at all.
He stood there, debating himself. He could call the Binghams. Chet would come and get him, but he’d have to explain this. After his bravado earlier, that was embarrassing.
The Glass Butterfly Page 8
