She laid the table with her Costco silverware and plates, and brought out the vintage wineglasses and napkins. The broiler, it turned out, worked just fine. Hank showed up with a marrow bone for Johnson and another bottle of wine, and they drank a glass while she sautéed onions. Hank, it turned out, was handy in the kitchen, and by the time they settled at the scarred Formica table, she had forgotten her anxiety. They ate in silence for a few moments, and Tory thought how food always tasted better in company. Even the sullen company of her son had made her dinners better.
The storm began while they ate, torrents of rain beating on the roof. Tory went to build up the fire a bit. Hank opened the Barolo, and they drank some of it with the steaks. When the food was gone—every bit of it—they took their glasses into the living room and sat by the fire. “I could close the curtain,” Tory said.
“No, don’t. I like watching the storm.”
“I do, too.”
For a time there was only the sound of the rain and of Johnson energetically gnawing at his bone. Hank set down his glass, stretched his long legs out in front of the tiny sofa, and put his hands behind his head. He said, “I’ve just realized you don’t have a computer.”
“I’ve never used one.”
“Ah. A Luddite.”
She smiled. “If you like. I prefer to think of myself as a classicist—I like fountain pens and nice stationery, too. The engraved kind, with thick paper and matching envelopes.” He smiled his understanding of this, gazing out into the rainstorm. Tory, taking in his clear-cut profile, suddenly understood why Shirley resented her. “You’re not married,” Tory said.
“No. Never.”
“Shirley’s hoping—” She stopped. It seemed a terrible invasion of poor Shirley’s privacy, especially when she wasn’t here to speak for herself.
Hank laughed. “I know,” he said. “But I can’t think what to do about it.” He looked across at her, where she was curled up in the old easy chair. “You’re not married, either.”
“No. I was once, though.”
“Divorced?”
“Yes.” She felt on safe ground here. “Well, he’s dead now. I divorced him when he went to prison, and then he crashed his car right after he got out. He was killed instantly.”
His eyes glowed with sympathy. “That’s awful, Paulette. I’m very sorry.”
“It was awful at the time,” she said. “But I was young. I got over it.” She tilted her glass, watching the dark wine swirl this way and that. “I really did,” she added. “I got completely over it. My son, though—”
“Tough on him.”
“He never knew his father, and for a long time he blamed me for that.”
“Not now, though?”
Tory hesitated. It was here, she thought, at this point, that danger lurked. She didn’t trust herself to be able to judge what was safe and what wasn’t. She’d made too many mistakes.
“It’s okay,” Hank said. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s hard to talk about.”
“I can see that.” He put his feet up on the table and folded his arms. “So I’ll tell you a bit about me, if you’re interested.”
“Please,” she said softly.
“The reason I’ve never married,” he said, watching for her reaction, “is because I was a priest. And before you ask, yes, a Catholic priest. For ten years, not counting seminary.”
Tory blinked, and said, “Wow.”
“Not what you were expecting.”
“Not even close.”
“I don’t suppose you’re Catholic,” he said.
“As it happens, I am. My grandmother was an Italian Catholic, and she took me to Mass with her every week until she died.”
“Do you still practice?”
Tory looked away. “I did,” she said softly. “Until I came here.”
He waited a moment, and when she didn’t go on, he uncurled himself from the too-small sofa and walked to the window. He stood looking out into the storm, the rain coming in fat drops that shimmered with reflected firelight as they slid down the glass. “Faith is a strange thing,” he said, half to himself.
Fé, she thought. A thrill of recognition made her shiver.
“I didn’t lose my faith,” he went on. “But I did lose my calling.”
Tory wished he would turn to face her as he talked, so she could look into his eyes as she had her clients’, let her intuition help her to understand. She stood up, and went to stand opposite him beside the window. “That must have been very hard for you,” she said.
Still looking out into the rain, he nodded. His face was still, his mouth set in a straight line. “It felt like a tragedy. As if—as if I had lost myself.”
“And medicine?”
He lifted one shoulder, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “My new calling.”
“It makes you happy.”
His gaze came back to hers then, and held it. “Happy enough,” he said.
She looked up into his face, and although it only shone with firelight, not the revealing sunlight of her home office, her intuition told her the rest of his story. He hadn’t spoken of the resentment and rejection and loneliness that had been part of all of it, but she could feel it. She had the strangest impulse to put her arms around him, to comfort him.
It was a strong impulse, and she might have done it, but he turned again to gaze out into the rain-soaked night, and she resisted. She said instead, safely, “Thank you for telling me, Hank. I think you’re going to love your new calling.”
“I think so, too,” he said. He turned, putting his back to the window, and smiled down at Johnson. “Off to a good start, right, Johnson?”
The dog beat the braided rug with his plume of tail.
21
Piangerà tanto tanto!
She will weep so much!
—Suzuki, Madama Butterfly, Act Three
Chet knocked on the front door, and Jack, a broom and dustpan in his hands, went to open it. “Hey, Chet. Thanks for coming.”
“Of course, Jack. I’m glad you called, but I didn’t—” Chet took one step into the hall, and stopped, staring at the mess of the living room. “Oh, Christ.”
“Yeah. And I’ve cleaned up the worst of it.”
“Hell, Jack. When you called, I really didn’t understand what—I mean, this is more than just a break-in. This was—this was deliberate.”
Jack managed a sour laugh. “Yeah. Someone meant to do as much damage as possible.”
“This happened yesterday?”
“Yeah. I was downtown doing a few errands, and when I came back—this.” He gestured at the mess of glass and pottery and smashed wood in the living room. “It’s even worse in the kitchen. Someone pulled down Mom’s pot rack, broke up all her china and glass—it’s a real mess.” It’s going to break her heart. But he couldn’t say that.
He had thought it through as carefully as he could. He had made lists of possibilities. He had tracked down the location where the cell phone had been sold. He had tried to call the phone back, when he judged it to be a decent hour, but got a message saying the number was no good anymore.
Still, he was going there. He didn’t care that Christmas was coming. He had to find Tory, and this destruction—this attack—was the push he needed. He just had to do something about the house first. And think of something to tell Kate and Chet.
He led the way into the kitchen, and listened to Chet’s horrified exclamations. Jack had made a start on cleaning up the glass and china, but there was no way to fix the real damage, the hole in the ceiling where the rack had hung, the banged-up appliances, the broken plaster and drywall.
“Son, we’re going to have to rebuild the whole kitchen,” Chet said heavily. He stood in the middle of the ruin, his hands on his hips, his pudgy cheeks flushed with anger. “Have you called the cops?”
“I called them last night. That deputy showed up—Gordon, her name is.”
“I don’t think I know her
.”
“She was at the memorial. One of Mom’s clients, I guess. She gave me an incident number for the insurance company.”
“Good. We’ll need that.”
The inclusive pronoun touched Jack, and he felt a wave of misgiving. He wished he could tell Chet what he was planning, but he didn’t dare. He was sure Chet and Kate would try to stop him, and he didn’t want to be stopped. No one else was going to do anything, that was obvious. Certainly not the police, not if every time something happened they sent that woman to the house.
No. It was going to be up to him, and he’d put it off long enough.
“Look, Chet,” he said. He hated to lie, but he couldn’t see any other way. “The thing is—I’m supposed to go to a friend’s house for—for the holidays. I was hoping you could help me at least fix the door to Mom’s office. That way I can close up, make the house secure while I’m away. When the insurance money comes, I’ll get started on repairs.”
Chet gave him a worried glance. “A friend’s house, Jack?”
Jack tried to make his eyes round and innocent. “Yeah. Friend of mine in Oregon. He heard about . . . well, he heard the news. He’s a buddy from college.”
Chet nodded, seeming to accept this. He turned in a slow circle, examining the mess, then stepped to the connecting door and opened it to look into Tory’s office. “Jesus,” he said softly. “This guy meant business.”
“Yeah.” Or she did. At the thought, Jack felt that tingle in his head, that weird sensation that was beginning to feel normal.
Chet pursed his lips, and scanned the room. “You’ll need new drywall, paint, and so forth, but that can wait, you’re right. What we need to do right away is get a new sliding glass door. I’ll get the tape measure out of my car.”
“I have one here, Chet.” Jack reached into the drawer under the wall phone, and pulled out a big tape measure. As his hands closed on it, he had a sudden, sharp memory of Tory, a carpenter’s pencil in her teeth and the tape measure in her hands, her eyes intent as she measured for shelves in the garage. It made his eyes sting, and Chet saw.
He stepped toward him, and Jack was afraid for a moment he might embrace him, but he only put one hand on his shoulder. “Hey, son,” he said heavily. “This is a hell of a thing, after what you’ve been through. I’m really sorry.”
Jack handed him the tape measure, and when he could trust his voice, he said, “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”
“It’s a good thing you’re going to spend the holiday with a friend,” Chet said. “Hanging around this empty house is no good. And then this—” He shook his head as he took the tape measure from Jack’s hand and started into Tory’s office. Jack snagged a pad of paper and a pen as he followed. “Just let us know where you’re going to be. I know Kate will worry otherwise.”
“I’ll give you my cell phone number. You can call me anytime.”
“Well . . .” Chet hesitated, and Jack thought he might have to invent a friend, a phone number, some other way for them to reach him. The problem of the door distracted Chet before he could ask another question. The frame was screwed to the siding of the house, and he began fussing with how it would come out. They measured, and Jack wrote down the figures.
Before they left the house, Chet said, “I know a company in town that does security systems. You should put one in.”
“Okay.” At least Chet and Kate would feel better if he did that. “If you think so.”
“When are you going?”
“Well, they—uh—invited me for the whole week of Christmas. I thought I’d head out there a couple days before. Not until I can close the house up, though.”
“We’ll get that taken care of by tomorrow. You could go anytime, really. Kate will want to drive you to the airport, though.”
“No need for that, Chet. I’ll catch a ride with a friend.”
Chet frowned at this, and Jack supposed Kate would have something to say, too, but that would be okay. He might have taken a chance and told them the truth, but that persistent feeling in his head, the tingling that had so surprised him on the train and which troubled him more and more every day, persuaded him that the fewer people who knew his plans the better.
Which meant no one.
Chet was as good as his word. By the end of the following day, a new sliding glass door sparkled at the entrance to Tory’s office, and the security company had come out to install a straightforward alarm system, the kind that alerted a monitoring company if it was triggered. While they worked on wiring and sensors and installing a keypad, Chet helped Jack cart the ruined pot rack and splintered cupboard doors out to a spot behind the house, where it could all rest until the snow was gone and a truck could come up the hill to cart it away. Jack had already cleared up the glass and pottery and china shards and filled two large garbage cans with them.
He wrote down his cell phone number for Chet, and handed it to him at the end of the long day. “Thanks for your help,” he said. “I’ll come and help out around your place sometime.”
Chet clapped his shoulder. “No need for that, son,” he said. “Now that I’m retired, I need stuff to do anyway.” He glanced back at the kitchen, which looked wounded, with its gouged ceiling and missing cabinet doors. “When you get back,” he said, “after Christmas, we’ll put everything right again. A few months from now, you won’t know anything happened here.”
Jack shook Chet’s hand and said good-bye. He made a circuit of the house, checking that every door and every window was locked. It was as neat as he could make it, considering the damage. Chet was wrong about one thing, though. He would always know something had happened here, and so would Tory.
There was no peace in the house now, no feeling of welcome or comfort. It was a fanciful notion, he supposed, but the house seemed to have lost its heart. It reminded him of a wrecked car he had seen once, a beautiful Jaguar that had been smashed up in an accident. The cat on the hood was the only thing that appeared to be intact, while all the grace and power of the car was ruined. The house felt that way to him now. Ruined.
He went into his bedroom and shut down his computer. He couldn’t find the sticky note with the cell phone number on it, but it didn’t matter. The number was firmly set in his memory.
His duffel bag, already packed with a couple of shirts, an extra pair of jeans, some shorts, and his shaving kit, waited in the Escalade. When he was sure everything was locked, he went out to the garage, set the alarm on the keypad, and shut that door, too.
He stood for a moment, listening, before he got into the car, pushed the button for the garage door opener, and started the engine. He backed out, but he watched the garage door close all the way before he turned the Escalade and started down the long, snow-covered driveway. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he looked carefully to see that there was no patrol car parked among the trees or on the shoulder before he turned out into the road. He didn’t turn toward town. He turned farther uphill, toward the park, and he kept an eye on the rearview mirror until he was safely away from the neighborhood.
He wasn’t going to fly, though he felt bad about deceiving Chet and Kate. He didn’t want to go to the airport, put his name on a flight manifest, use an easily traced credit card. In any case, he was pretty sure he was going to need wheels when he got near the Costco store on the coast of Oregon that had sold the cell phone. He was going to drive all the way across country. It was a long trip, and he could hear Tory’s voice, in memory, reminding him to be careful.
He would. He would drive with great care, because he had to get there. There was plenty of room for him to sleep in the Escalade when he got tired. He had cashed a check so he could pay for gas without using his credit card. It would have been nice to have company, but he had Tory’s CDs in the console and a good radio.
He plugged his cell phone into the car charger, but he turned it off. He didn’t want to take a chance on anyone calling him when he was supposed to be in the air, flying to spend Christmas with a friend a
nd a family.
At another time, in different circumstances, he would have liked to spend Christmas that way. He remembered, though it had been five years since he’d seen any of them, what the Garveys’ Christmas was like, all noise and mounds of wrapping paper and the kinds of cookies and candy Tory wouldn’t have in her house. He had, brat that he had been, flatly refused to eat the fruitcake Tory made each year. Instead, he went to the Garveys’ to play with all the toys and gadgets they got at Christmas, and made himself sick on luridly frosted Santa Claus cookies bought at Walmart or some such place.
He wished, right now, he had a slice of that fruitcake. Once, when Tory wasn’t around, he had tasted it. It was buttery, full of nuts and dried fruit, steeped for weeks in advance in brandy. Thinking of it now made his mouth water.
“Okay, Mom,” he said aloud in the dark car. “You win. Next Christmas, fruitcake.”
It made him feel a bit better to envision another Christmas, a return to their own traditions, Midnight Mass, Christmas breakfast, modest but thoughtful gifts. He took one of the CDs out of the console without looking at it, and popped it into the player as he crested the hill that led into the state park. The strains of one of Tory’s favorite operas, Madama Butterfly, began.
Jack had come into the living room once, and found his mother staring out the front window as she listened to Un bel dì, an aria so beautiful and heartrending that even a kid who liked heavy metal had to be touched by it. She hadn’t heard him come in, the sound of the front door covered by the soprano’s soaring voice and the swell of the orchestra.
He had seen her reflection in the window, hand pressed to her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. He wished now, driving away from their home in the darkness, that he could go back to that time, break through his own resistance, put his arms around her. How alone she must have felt! Did she ever weep with her friend Kate? He doubted it. Her control, as far back as he could remember, had been absolute.
The Glass Butterfly Page 24
