She remembered the pretermitted heir discussion in class. Let’s see, if a will made no specific mention of a child—meant to protect after-born children—
Wait. Maybe Bob was a pretermitted heir, if Richard had a will and had left him out! She really had to talk to Perry Tompkins, take him out to lunch or something.
A desk-sized appointment book, left over from busier times, lay open on the desk. Marks here and there noted times for doctors, dentists, and lately the lawyers. A note taped to the front indicated that the police had copied this book and had taken last year’s.
Nina checked the days right before her mother died, finding only that her mother had refilled a prescription, called several repair places about her car, met with Remy, and noted names of several lawyers she planned to call on Monday, the day she died. Nina flipped back to the page for Matt’s birthday, where Ginny had noted the birthday party and drawn a happy face. Nina slammed the book shut.
She located empty boxes in the shed and filled several with papers from the desk, all the old letters and mementos of her and Matt as children. Her mother had never packed them away. She must have taken them out to look at once in a while. Piling picture albums into a box, Nina knew she would not be able to look at them for a long time. Clothes, shoes, and personal items she packed quickly in plastic bags for donation. She kept the pearl earrings for herself and a few rings with real stones.
Matt might like something. An auction agency would be hosting an “estate sale” this weekend to clear out the antique furniture. “All my junk,” her mother had called it.
Nina carried the boxes out to the front lawn, walked to her car, drove it to the house, and stuffed it full. With the top down it held rather more than she had expected. She locked the house behind her and took a long look at the rattan chair and flowered cushion dusted with dead leaves and blossoms on the front porch. She would remember the smell of the house for the next half of her life, drifts of baked ham, old papers, sachet, and all the rest.
CHAPTER 44
JACK STOPPED BY THAT EVENING LOADED DOWN WITH FOOD. A disheveled, surprised Nina answered the door. Bob stood silently in the middle of a pile of rough, dirt-encrusted wooden stakes on the living-room rug, his face splotched with anger and distress. Nina had just come upon this scene after putting the vacuum away and just opened her mouth to give Bob some harsh words.
“Hey, little rascal,” said Jack. “I’ve got a bag of stuff in the car I could use some help with.” He offered Nina a warm smile, walked the little boy out to the car, and handed him a small plastic bag.
When they got to the kitchen, Jack turned on some music and helped Bob unload and name the items as they came out of the bag. Nina disappeared into the back of the house, but she could still hear the talking in the kitchen. “Mom’s pretty mad, huh?” Jack was suggesting mildly.
Bob said in his tiny voice, “I can fix it.” It broke her heart and the irritation went out of her.
Nina returned, composed now. She knelt by Bob and touched his shoulder. “I told you to leave those stakes where the builder put them. Remember?” He nodded. “He measured everything very carefully, and now he will have to do it all over again. That takes up his time and costs me money. So you behaved badly, didn’t you?” He moved his head, yes, again chewing on the inside of his cheek. Nina stood up and touched his hair. “You are a good boy, Bob, and that’s why it surprises me when you misbehave. Will you try harder to listen to what I say?”
Her son released a sigh. “I’ll put them back.” He grabbed the wood and ran out the front door, slamming the screen with a bang.
Nina winced.
“You have the one-minute scold routine down,” remarked Jack, handing Nina a can of beer. “I heard there was a party here and decided to crash.”
“I’m so glad to see you.” She smiled slightly at him. “I do believe the party just started.”
“Bearing up all right? I can’t stop worrying about you. No sign of Peeping Toms? No bumps in the night?”
Nina had put on a long, purple sweater that stopped above her thighs, which were covered in black tights. Her brown hair lay in waves on her shoulders, fluffed with a brush and otherwise left to fend for itself.
She shook her head, saw him looking at her, and looked down. “I’m influenced by teenaged babysitters. I love the way they dress.”
“You look great,” he said. “Always. Wearing whatever.”
Bob came back in, his hands and knees black from his digging. Nina pulled him to her and smoothed his wild dark hair, then took him off for a wash. When she came back, while they were fixing dinner, she told Jack about the insurance policy. “That was a major surprise.”
“I’m glad for you and Matt. Glad to hear it.” Nina saw him bite his lip, deciding not to say any more. She knew he was thinking about Ginny and a motive for murder. If he had said anything further at all, she might have gotten angry. He didn’t. Instead he grew a little in her estimation.
Jack wore a black T-shirt with a LED ZEP logo. His arms were as solid as pistons from bench-pressing and freckled all the way down. Nina thought he had wanted to hug her as she let him in, but he was her boss. She was also afraid she might respond too warmly. She experienced a little thrill as he brushed by her.
He had dropped by as if they had a date, or as if he were her brother who came by all the time, or as if—why had he come? To be supportive? Collegiality, friendship, love even, all lay on a spectrum. He probably couldn’t explain what he felt right now either. Maybe he had come because he was the lonely one.
They ate garlicky scampi that Jack sautéed, buttered French bread, red lettuce and avocado with homemade salad dressing. They also scarfed down bakery chocolate cake, then she bathed and put the protesting Bob to bed. Nina and Jack finished the beer.
They sat on the rotten porch steps and listened to the white noise of the surf a few blocks away.
Nina picked up a hammer lying on the porch and whacked hard at an invisible nail. The moon rose over the gables of the house next door, and they heard the honking of geese the neighbors kept behind a fence. In the midst of the upheaval and worry, she felt very aware of his comforting physical presence.
Jack had put his arm around her waist as they sat. His fingers now stroked her hip. Nina edged away.
“Jack?”
He looked at her and took a deep breath, smiling as if he were drinking her in.
“Still going to quit law?” she said.
“Why are you going into it?”
“Oh, I figured out that the world runs on law. I still believe that. Law is slow, and sometimes biased, but it’s a check on wrongdoing from the White House on down to credit ratings and improper late fees and bad tickets and all the other indignities of daily life. I mean, well, I always felt a little unsafe on this earth, Jack. I knew I’d be on my own a lot from an early age. I wanted to understand the machine and be able to manipulate it to protect myself and my family. This kind of knowledge really is power.”
“Ah, all this female empowerment. A few years ago, I might have said, what about a husband? Historically, they have performed some of those—”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get married, Jack. My parents’ breakup was so bitter it destroyed all the good memories from earlier, everything they built.”
“What about Klaus and Elise? They’ve been together for forty-some years, I believe.”
Nina waved a hand. “We don’t even know if they’re married.”
“Were you in love with Filsen?”
“God knows why I picked him. Because he was the brightly colored bird in the next tree? Noisy. Convenient. Attractive.”
“What was he like?”
She sighed. “A hypocrite, but I didn’t see that. I never heard anyone talk more about honesty who could tell more lies. But, at least in the beginning, I had no idea he was lying. He told me bald-faced stinkers: he wanted everything I wanted, it seemed. I think he lied to himself all day long; that made him believable.
I was gullible.”
“At what? Twenty-three? You’re not supposed to be a hardened cynic at that age. In fact, it’s probably better to go through life believing what people tell you.”
“I was a hick.”
“How’d you get over him?”
Aha, Nina thought, this is definitely about Remy. She thought for a second, then said, “I ran away and stayed up at Tahoe for a few weeks. That’s another bad experience I’ll spare you from hearing about, but I thought for a short period that I was in love with another man.”
“Where’s he?”
“Long, long gone.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, after my fling with Richard was over, I found out I was pregnant. I never considered not keeping the baby, and I never considered getting back with Richard, who was seeing other women.”
“Isn’t it strange,” Jack ruminated, “how when you feel close to somebody, you have this pigheaded perception that they feel close to you?”
She smiled. “I came home from work one day and found green leaves on the front path. He had gotten mad because I was late and hacked up all my houseplants. Little green corpses everywhere, I suppose that was the symbology. I wasn’t frightened. I’d say I felt liberated. That was it, that and the obligatory dinner date where I officially told him it was time to go our separate ways.”
“Did you see him after that?”
“No. Not until he came around that one day. And you know the rest.” Jack didn’t know the rest, he didn’t know that her mother had spent her inheritance on ensuring Richard would stay away. That was none of Jack’s business, that was family business.
“What about the custody case?” he was saying.
“I’m taking Perry Tompkins out to the Firehouse Restaurant and getting all that cleared up tomorrow. But—I suppose we’ll have some confirmation in the next few days, since the paternity testing has already been done.” Again, she didn’t mention the possibility that Richard’s estate might go to Bob and—it’s all too complicated! she cried to herself.
Her face must have looked blasted with misery at that moment. Jack reached over to hug her. She hugged him back. Then, sniffing her neck, he moved toward her mouth for a kiss.
She stood up, pulling away before they connected. “You’re still with Remy.”
“Not with her. I still have feelings for her, yes. But you are such a sweet sight, Nina, with that porch light behind you, and all that hair shining like a halo.” He also stood. “I guess I should go. I told Paul I might stop by on my way down the coast to my place.”
She watched him drive away, wiping her wet lips with her hand. Such a good man, Jack. Loyal, honorable, no hypocrite.
Jeez, she really, really liked him.
Paul had moved to a condo in Carmel. The units, most with picturewindow views of the Pacific, were two-story town houses with small lawns and flower boxes around the doorways. Paul’s held roses of an indeterminate color in the gloom. His outdoor light was out. Jack could hear the distant barking of seals through a cool fog. He knocked, but no one answered. He tried the door, and to his utter surprise, it opened. How unlike Paul.
A familiar smell he couldn’t place filled the air. He walked through the dimly lit living room, intending to tap on the bedroom door and let Paul know he was there. Maybe Paul would get up and talk, because Jack felt like talking. He thought he could talk all night—and do some drinking, too—and plan another climb.
At the door of Paul’s room he heard a low female moan. Transfixed, all he could think was, if he tiptoed, could he get out without being noticed? The last thing he wanted was to spend the evening chatting up one of Paul’s new friends. He tiptoed back toward the door.
Paul must have heard him as he made his way back into the living room, because he was on Jack Doberman-style. “Don’t move,” he snapped, pointing a police-issue revolver from the hallway before Jack could fade out. It was disconcerting, the way Paul moved so rapidly, held the gun with two hands. Jack wasn’t about to move, wasn’t about to permit his heart to make a single loud beat.
But then Jack’s attention sprang from Paul’s palm-tree designer shorts and Paul, who now stood there quietly, gun at his side. The woman who had moaned had run to the door of the bedroom.
Jack looked behind Paul at the pale face and golden hair of Remy, wearing a tan sheet that sure as hell didn’t look like her usual streetwear. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Paul’s face had turned sheepish and he was trying to work up a speech, too, but Jack didn’t feel like hearing it.
That’s right, yeah, he thought as he stumbled back toward the door without a word. That was what he had smelled. Her perfume. Joy, by Jean Patou. His last gift to her.
CHAPTER 45
“COULD I TALK TO YOU ALONE FOR JUST A COUPLE OF minutes, Dad?” Nina had planned to stop by Harlan’s office at lunchtime on Thursday, but they told her he would not be in until two. When she arrived at the house, Harlan and Angie were in the middle of a tiff. She heard everything through the front door. Her father bellowed once, Angie replied reasonably, then quiet resumed. Nina gave them a moment and knocked. They came to the door together. Angie, now serene and looking happy, had linked her arm into Harlan’s.
They talked for a few minutes, and Angie excused herself.
“You’ve met your match, Dad,” Nina said, entering the house. She located a place on the couch not too thick with pillows and sat down.
“You got that right.” Harlan sat down in the well-worn La-Z-Boy she remembered from the house she had grown up in. He had noted her somber manner and seemed a little nervous.
“I need to talk to you about that time Mom got hit and had to go to the hospital.”
“Okay, then. All the family secrets coming out I guess.”
Nina hated how nice he looked sitting there, how caring. She steeled herself. “Matt says you never touched Mom. He hit her.”
Her father frowned. “Matt’s a junkie.” His big, handsome face wrinkled. He looked too old to be Angie’s husband, too old to be Nina’s vigorous, fun-loving father.
Nina chose her words carefully, examining his broad face. “You say he lied. Why would he?”
Harlan shifted. His shoulders fell. “Honey, you have a right to the truth.”
“I do.”
“I came into the kitchen just as Matt hit her. She fell against the stove and got hurt. He hit her, slapped her really. What bad luck it all turned out so bad.”
“Why lie to me? Why?”
Her father sighed. “We saw you as the tough one, Nina, the one that would survive all the mistakes we made and come out smelling sweet.” He smiled. “And you have, doll. But Matt was born with a chip on his shoulder. He held the opinion that the world owed him everything just for being his handsome, charming self. Your mother encouraged that. Maybe I sabotaged him, too. I don’t know.
“Truth is, he was fragile, young when your mother and I started having problems, still at home. So, when this happened, your mother and I felt he needed our protection. We wanted him in treatment, not in jail. Give him a chance to redeem his life, somehow.” He brushed dust off the coffee table with his hand. “Do you understand how many regrets parents have? You’re a mother now.”
Nina got up and stood beside her father. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he put his hand over hers. “I hated you.”
“Yeah.”
Their eyes met. Hers lowered. “So, I went to see him. He looks better than he has in years. He seems to have come back to us, Dad. He was tearful, too, but it was normal crying—you know? He has been prescribed a medication for a mood disorder, a drug to stabilize his moods. He says at first he was groggy, but his body is adjusting. He also claims they have a great cook there, can you believe it?”
“He hates anything gooey.”
“He’s so picky. I think they must go heavy on the desserts or the boxed mac and cheese.”
“He loves chocolate.” Harlan sighed.
“Yep.�
� They sat surrounded by old ghosts.
“Did you ask him—” Harlan tried to form the words to finish his thought, but he couldn’t do it.
“He swears he never touched Mom. He would never have hurt her again.”
“Do you believe him?”
Nina struggled. “Yes and no. Sometimes, late at night, I suspect he’s been so nuts he might believe her death would be a mercy.”
“For that reason only.” Harlan nodded sadly.
“Then I wonder, if not Matt, who?”
Harlan was apparently following his own train of thought. He wandered into the kitchen and talked to her over the bar, putting dishes into the dishwasher. “When I left your mother, it wasn’t so obvious to me how hard it was going to be on you and Matt. I never cheated on her, never wanted to hurt her. Yes, money made us fight, but that was just a kind of last gasp for our marriage. We would have worked that out eventually. When I left, I was thinking about my own life, how to salvage it. I wasn’t in love with her anymore. And then I fell in love with Angie. Life’s complicated. I never expected that.”
“Well, don’t worry about Matt. He’s in good hands. They pay attention to him and disregard his mind games.”
For a quiet minute, they both thought their separate thoughts.
“Dad? I have to ask.”
“I didn’t kill anybody, sweetheart,” he said, looking right at her.
Angie arrived and planted a hand on Harlan’s shoulder. “Am I interrupting?”
“No, I’ve got to go.” Kissing both the women, Harlan grabbed a briefcase and headed out the door.
Angie and Nina looked after him.
“He’s impossible,” Nina said.
“Oh, no.” Angie picked up fingernail polish from the kitchen table. “He’s a fusser. He worries about you, your brother, me, and our baby too much.”
“He’s happy in this new life. You must be a good influence.”
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