“You ever bring girls here?” she asked him.
He shook his head, scrolling through his playlist. She noticed he had all kinds of music on there. Mozart. Opera. Country western. “I live like a monk,” he said.
“Fat chance,” she scoffed. She was still wearing what she’d been in all day, and she was sure her lipstick had worn off by now, and her under-eye concealer. She must look like hell on wheels.
As if he were reading her mind Flick said, patting her leg, “You’re still a fine-looking woman. You won’t have any problems. I always liked you best.”
“I bet,” she said, her heart leaping up. She looked down at her hands. There was her wedding ring, circling the fourth finger of her left hand. Yellow gold, with scrollwork along the edges. She remembered buying it at Sharfmans with Art all those years ago. He refused to buy one, said he thought rings looked silly on a man. She sighed.
“You scared of the celibate life?” Flick asked, nudging her.
“No,” she said.
He laughed. “You should’ve thought of that before. Not going to be so easy. Right?”
“Right,” she said. “So. What else you got?” she asked, pointing at the ridiculously long playlist on his computer screen.
“This is so nice,” he said. “I forgot how nice it is, just lying close to another human being.”
“Me too,” she said.
His long narrow face turned toward her. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, separate bedrooms . . . Art snores,” she said. “He claims I snore. Probably true.”
“Well if you both do—” he said.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” She rubbed her hand up and down the fitted sheet. She’d have to take a peek later on and find out what brand it was. She never even knew cotton could feel that silky.
“Yeah, the Georgia Peach claimed I snored,” he said. “Said it was because I’d put on some weight. So I lost ten pounds, thinking that would make a difference. She just wanted me out of the room.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I hear you.” After a minute she added, “We’ve been living like that for a while.”
“You?” He took a moment to absorb this, shaking his head. “Damn,” he said.
“Don’t repeat that,” she said. “Not even to Paco, Okay? —Maybe especially not to Paco,” she added.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You don’t want to talk about that either.”
“Just promise you’ll keep your trap shut.” Her voice sounded harsher than she meant. That was always the way between them. She was so gruff with him because she could hardly stand how she felt about him, still, after all this time. Her Flick.
“Scout’s honor,” he said. He reached over and rubbed his hand up and down her bare arm, under the sleeve of her loose-fitting T-shirt, just up to the elbow, sliding back down to her wrist.
A thrill ran through her whole body. That one touch told her everything she’d ever wanted to know about him. Lucky Georgia Peach, she thought. “You getting sleepy?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s get some shut-eye.”
Before he fell asleep, they talked awhile aimlessly about this and that, into the dark. Mostly remembering the old neighborhood, Tommy the Chicken, the corner candy store, some of the crazy stuff they had done as kids. They could always make each other laugh. Her father used to say he could tell when Louisa was on the phone with Flick; no one else made her laugh so hard.
One hour rolled into the next. Flick’s profile in the dark looked like a stranger’s face, a statue; like a face she was dreaming about, not a real person’s. She had to keep reminding herself it was Flick. Flick, there beside her, his voice rumbling into the dark. She told him a few things she’d never told anyone about the night of the fire. Not all of them. He told a few of his own secrets. Not all of them, no doubt. He’d gone crazy after he got out of the hospital. Turned out after all those months, he’d gotten addicted to the pain pills. He’d once tried to hijack a bus. Luckily, the local cops knew him, so they took him to the loony bin instead of to jail.
Then he went back to talking about their childhoods, their favorite first-grade teacher, Mrs. Brown with the soft small hands, playing the piano. Louisa settled deeper into the pillows. A high white moon shone like a man’s pale forehead through the bedroom window, behind a stand of pines. Louisa put her palms on either side of her, to feel the silkiness of his sheets. A few small clouds sailed overhead. She was sure she would remember these peaceful, happy minutes into the halls of eternity, surely she would take his secrets with her into the grave, not because they were so important, but just because they had come from him to her.
After he finally stopped talking, after his breathing slowed and grew long and even with the breath of sleep, Louisa sat awake in bed, still, propped against his pillows in the dark bedroom after one o’clock, after two in the morning, almost three, just listening to Flick breathe. She didn’t want to fall asleep and miss a single minute of this night. She could tell herself it was the last time but it wasn’t just the last time—it was the only time. She was pretty sure of that. They would each live alone. He needed her as much as she needed him, but none of that was any use. None of it mattered. If they both hadn’t been such blind stubborn messed-up fools as kids they could have had this happiness together, this contentedness, the ebb and flow of silence and conversation, every day and night of their lives. The moon rose even higher through the pines, three-quarters full and white as frosting.
After a while Louisa could make out the jagged shapes of the dark woods behind his slice of Brattle Street—Bovenzi Park, part of the county’s conservation property—sharply outlined by the moonlight. Moonlight poured over half of Flick’s face, his skin puckered by scarring. She was tempted to run her fingers over the long jagged scar, but that just wouldn’t have been right—and what if he woke up, and she was sitting there running her hands all over his face. Instead her hand hovered over him, like she was blessing him, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath on her palm. Flick did snore, that was the truth. It was a light sound, uneven and raspy, like his speaking voice. It was soothing, Louisa thought, like a white-noise machine; the Georgia Peach must have been out of her ever-loving, flipping mind. Flick slept on his back. Moonlight dripped its liquid silver over the tips of the pine trees in back of his property, and the red and white oaks. Beyond lay darker, deeper woods.
Flick had claimed he could see all kinds of wildlife there in Bovenzi Park, including otters, beaver, wild turkeys, and bear. “A moose moved in not too long ago,” he had told her. But she never knew when to believe his crazy stories.
Louisa finally drifted off, despite her best efforts to stay awake. She woke up to the sound of coyotes—she was sure that was real, because her mother had told her about hearing the same howling on Ararat, and about a neighbor’s small dog ending up as coyote dinner a few years back. The howl sounded unearthly.
Flick had thrown one long leg across hers. It was surprisingly heavy. His head tilted against hers. His soft hair was against her cheek, soft, like the down on a baby chick. The coyote sounded like a dog, yipping and barking in the distance, but then its howl rose almost to a shriek, and sure didn’t sound like any dog she’d ever heard. She shivered in the air-conditioning—Flick had cranked it up—and eased herself out from under Flick’s bony leg so she could peek out the window. The sky was indigo blue. Sure enough, there was something trotting across the lawn just then, but the something was too small and quick to be a coyote.
She might have thought it was a neighborhood dog, but the fur was a bright reddish auburn, the shade of autumn leaves. Fox, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. The red fox or whatever it was, turned its head and seemed to stare directly up at her. It held as still as someone posing for a photograph, chest high, bright eyes gleaming spookily. Then, with a flash of its tail, it was gone, and morning had come with a searing grayish-white light through the blinds and Flick was poking her in the side saying, “Hey slee
pyhead. You want breakfast or not?”
She threw one arm over her eyes. “Don’t look at me,” she commanded. She crawled out of bed and locked herself in his bathroom, wondering desperately why she wasn’t the kind of woman who hauled a makeup kit around. She was lucky if she remembered to toss a lipstick into her purse, and anyway, her purse was downstairs, along with her keys and her cell phone, which had probably run out of battery overnight.
“You want scrambled eggs?” Flick called from the hall.
“Yes,” she said, not because she was hungry, just to extend this time between the two of them, which, she was pretty sure in her heart of hearts, would never come again in this or any other life. Your Flick. I always liked you best. She already had those two phrases memorized.
Night and morning were two different animals. By day there was no sharing of secrets, no lying close under his arm—hadn’t he thrown his arm across her at some point during the night? Had she imagined it? Or was it just his heavy leg? She could no longer remember for sure. They talked about ordinary things. Flick complained about how much the banks charged the independent stores like his a fortune just for running a customer’s credit card. The big chains got all kinds of breaks, but not the little guys. She complained about Brandi at her office, but half-heartedly. It felt like she barely remembered who Brandi even was anymore or why the office manager had ever bothered her. Her old life felt a thousand miles away and a million years ago. Even her twenty years of married life with Art was receding fast, like scenery glimpsed in the rearview mirror.
Okay, she told herself at the end of the meal. Now stand up, say thank you and walk out that door.
She stood slowly, reaching for her pocketbook, which was still hanging over the back of a kitchen chair. “Well,” she said. “Thanks.”
“One night down, ten or fifteen thousand more to go,” he said. He opened his arms for a hug. Flick was a great hugger, even when he was a little kid. He used to hug his mother goodbye every morning when she dropped him off, and then he’d hug their kindergarten teacher goodbye when the last bell rang. Jeez. No wonder everybody always loved him. She rested her face against his thin chest, breathing in, wishing she could bottle the clean clear smell of him and keep it with her forever. His bony chin dug into the top of her skull while he squeezed his arms around her shoulders.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine, Louey Lou. We got your back.”
If she didn’t let go right now, she thought, she might hang on to him like a child clinging, wailing if he tried to dislodge her. Nope. Better to be the first to leave. She wriggled free of his arms.
“Thanks for everything,” she said.
“Oh, you know,” he said, rubbing one hand through his downy hair. “People who love each other should get to spend at least one night together.”
They looked at each other for a minute. His lips quirked up in a sort of half smile. He still hadn’t kissed her. He might never kiss her. Probably almost certainly not. But she couldn’t be greedy, not at a moment like this. “You’re right,” she said, and sailed out the door, into her new, free, terrifying life.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“So the thing is,” Michelle said awkwardly, “we all agreed I should talk to you about it first.”
It sounded to Tom like another stalling tactic. These Americans. They weren’t about to let him go home to England, back to Cornwall, the only corner of the earth where he still partway belonged. Michelle was making all the classic moves—digging the toe of her sneaker into the floor, crossing her arms over her chest, avoiding his eyes. Tom however had booked his ticket home, two days forward, and he was determined to be on that flight, come hell or high water.
Actually, Michelle was lying to him and she knew it. They had not “all agreed” to this. Louisa was adamantly opposed to her plan.
“Finders keepers,” she’d said flatly, and when Michelle disagreed Louisa finally flung up her hands in a hissy fit and said “Fine! —But I’m not telling Art about this one!” before flouncing away.
Michelle knew things were tougher financially for Louisa now that she and Art had separated. (“Finally!” Sierra remarked. “That guy is gay as a daffodil.”) She’d already told Louisa she wouldn’t accept a penny for her mother’s house, but Michelle knew that still wouldn’t make a dent in Louisa’s day-to-day expenses. And Louisa had too much foolish pride to take a gift or even a loan of money from her younger sister, which she’d have gladly given.
“I’ll be okay,” Louisa said stubbornly. They’d had this talk at her mother’s kitchen table. On one hand, that made it feel like old times. On the other hand, there was that deep-down sadness. Where was her mother? It felt like she should have been there.
Michelle had poured them both glasses of white wine. She ran one finger around and around the rim of her glass, listening for music that never came.
“I’m sorry about everything. I . . . I want you to know—” Michelle stuttered to a halt. It had never been easy for her to speak from the heart with her big sister. She’d always felt shy, stuck forever in the role of the kid sister. But she forced herself to go on. It was like standing at one end of a rickety log bridge and taking those first wobbly steps into the unknown. “I want you to know that there will be a future,” she said.
“Oh I know that,” said Louisa. “Whether I like it or not.”
“No—” said Michelle, still forcing herself to speak. She waited till Louisa had looked up, met her eyes. She was remembering that moment in the doctor’s office when the sisters held hands. “I mean . . . a happy one, Lou. A better time. Ahead for you.”
Her sister had looked surprised. “Yeah?” she said. A little pleased, a little dubious.
“Yes,” Michelle had said—a trifle more emphatically than she felt. She lifted her wineglass. “So here’s to the future.” They clinked glasses.
You couldn’t start any kind of future on a lie, not even a lie of omission, so Michelle had determined to talk to Tom.
“Whatcha?” said Tom now, tapping his foot. “I’ve loads to do.” This was not strictly true either. They were close to finished clearing out the old woman’s house. While he and Louisa managed to stay out of each other’s way, he still felt strangely displaced with another woman sleeping under the same roof. Awkward, is what it was. As for the rest of the mess, it was on them now. He could clean up the evidence of the past, but he couldn’t change it. Time to budge on.
“Well, here’s the thing,” said Michelle, still staring down. “So. —Here it is. You gave Sierra a few painted plates . . .”
“Right,” said Tom. “She’s welcome to them.” But his senses had suddenly become alert, as if they had all sharpened at once.
“I thought the style looked familiar,” said Michelle. “Something about it. And then I turned the plates over and saw the signature. —But I still thought they must only be copies,” she went on hurriedly. “Joe thought I’d better bring them to Skinner’s for appraisal, in Boston, just to be sure.”
“Sure of what,” said Tom, with an uneasy feeling starting up in his gut.
“Those turned out to be signed Picasso plates,” she said. “Authentic ones. Originals. Apparently a full set is quite rare. And these particular plates were made in a limited edition of one hundred. We think they probably first belonged to my aunt Gritta.”
“I see,” said Tom. His head was still feeling blank.
“They’re worth about $150,000,” Michelle said. She was smiling but her eyes looked worried. “That’s a lot of money. And they were part of the household—things.”
Tom didn’t know exactly what that came to in pounds, but he knew it was a lot of money. Enough to wipe out any of Claudia’s remaining medical bills, more than enough to buy a new car, since his old Vauxhall Astra was a piece of crap. His mum could finally have a decent vacation somewhere. Lord knew, she deserved one.
“I know you said she could have the plates—” said Michelle, wringing her hands. “But I wouldn’t fee
l comfortable, not telling you what they were worth.”
“Well they’re mine then, aren’t they,” said Tom flatly. “I’ll take them.” His own voice startled him. His own words. He hadn’t expected them. Like a stranger was speaking in that cold flat voice.
Michelle’s blue eyes widened in surprise, but she hid her shock as best she could. “Of course,” she said.
“That’s settled then,” said Tom, turning away.
Tom made arrangements to move back into the chain motel as quickly as possible. He couldn’t stay on now at the house on Ararat. He considered changing his plane ticket too, to take himself entirely out of sight, but that smacked of running away and Tom Birch was not a coward. He came down to the lobby and took the box of Picasso plates from Michelle’s own hands. Sierra, he noted, did not come along for the delivery. He didn’t ask how the young girl had taken the news of her loss, nor did he apologize or make excuses for himself. His rights in the matter were written down in black and white, in contractual legal language. They all knew it. He’d been more than fair, more than generous—but there was after all a limit. And almost £100,000 was considerably beyond his limit.
“Thanks,” he said briefly, taking the box from her. It felt surprisingly light.
“You’re very welcome,” Michelle said, her gaze blue and even. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” she added. “It was a big help.” She made a move as if to give him a final farewell hug, but he shrugged, gesturing with the box, to show that his arms were already full, and so she turned instead and walked away. Her summer skirt swayed like a bluebell as she went. The automatic doors of the bland motel lobby hissed open and glided shut behind her.
Indigo Hill: A Novel Page 14
