“Well, if we’re going to be honest,” Evan says as he places napkins on the table, “I’m a little uncomfortable with people wandering into my house uninvited.” He stands facing Julian. “No offense.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Julian says. “I’m sleeping in the car. I just came in to take a shower.”
“I have the feeling something’s going on here,” Evan says.
“Do you have any Special K or anything like that?” Julian asks as he eyes the Chinese food. “No offense.”
By the time Lucy comes downstairs, both Julian and the dog are eating cold cereal with milk and Evan has started his second beer. Lucy feels almost weightless. Nothing she’s wearing belongs to her: the white blouse was taken from her neighbor’s closet; the short yellow skirt, obviously Melissa’s, she found in Evan’s bedroom. Seeing Evan and Julian Cash in the same room, let alone the same universe, doesn’t do her stomach any good.
“You’ve met,” Lucy says flatly.
“I’m starting to feel like I’m running a bed and breakfast,” Evan says. “No offense,” he tells Julian.
“He’s been sleeping in the car,” Lucy says. She sits down at the table, although she won’t be able to eat. Before she came downstairs she went into Keith’s room, and placed the plush dragon in the center of his pillow, even though she knows that when he comes home he’ll toss it somewhere out of sight, the top shelf of his closet or behind the comic books on his bookshelf.
“So I hear.” Evan nods.
Lucy looks down at the plate of Chinese food Evan’s set out for her. Julian’s watching her, she can feel it, just the way she feels the pulse at the base of her throat.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?” Evan says.
Lucy looks up and blinks her large gray eyes. “Nothing’s going on.”
Julian concentrates on his cereal so he won’t laugh out loud.
“Did you say something?” Lucy asks Julian. She could have sworn that he did.
Julian carefully places his spoon on the tabletop. “Did you want me to say something?”
“No,” Lucy says. “Since this is none of your business.”
“What’s none of his business?” Evan leans toward Lucy. “If this has anything to do with Keith, I need to know.”
Julian watches as Lucy begins to tie knots in the truth.
“There is nothing going on,” Lucy says.
If she’s not careful, she’s going to get caught in those knots, so Julian sits back in his chair and reaches for his beer. “You know the amazing thing?” he says. Lucy and Evan both turn toward him, startled. “I’ve never seen snow.”
“Does that mean you’re staying until November?” Evan says. “I’m joking,” he adds. “That’s a joke.”
“It seems to me that people must view the world entirely differently depending on whether or not they’ve ever seen snow. Think of what it’s like for dogs.” Julian puts his empty beer bottle on the table. He has no idea if he’ll ever shut up. “What do they think? Do they think the sky is falling?”
By now he knows that he’s not going to let Lucy walk into Randy Lee’s house alone. She’s staring at him as he babbles on about snow; he’s talking so much his mouth hurts. He still thinks she’s wrong about Randy; he knows nothing about his wife’s death. Maybe he wanted to impress Lucy with an exotic past, maybe he just likes to lie, or maybe Lucy’s so desperate to get her boy off the hook that she’s ready to believe anything. But Julian still has the feeling that someone’s about to snap, it might even be him. He’s not going to sit in the parked car tonight. He’ll wait until she’s gone inside the house, and then he’ll follow her. His boots will leave imprints in the grass; he’ll be so close to the window his breath will fog up the glass. There’s not a chance on earth that he’s going to come close to losing her tonight.
The Angel is perched on the end of a branch. Since he’s fallen in love, the birds have been able to make out his shape; they’ve begun to avoid the gumbo-limbo tree. He misses the song of the oriole and the chattering of wild parakeets. If he stays in love much longer he’ll grow heavier, he’ll start to leave footprints in the ground. Once that happens he’ll be nineteen forever. Time and space have already become so real that it’s now possible for him to get a sunburn if he doesn’t stay in the shade.
A long time ago, when he and his cousin spent whole afternoons in the marshes, he’d come home with red patches on his back and shoulders that would ache all night long. His mother would put white vinegar on him, to cool the burn, and he’d lie on clean sheets and listen to the mockingbirds outside his window. His mother worried about him constantly; she could never look when he climbed trees. He’d scramble into a live oak, and when he peered down he’d see her with one hand over her eyes and the other clutching her breast. Sometimes he’d pretend not to hear her when she called him down. Crouched among the leaves, he’d watch carefully as each bird took flight. It seemed to him terribly unfair that he should be trapped by his heavy limbs when even the silliest birds, the bob-whites and the flickers, could do so easily what he could not.
At night, after he’d thrown stones at his cousin’s window to wake him, they’d go deep into the woods, where they should not have gone, not caring about scorpions and ticks. His cousin would plant himself on the ground and watch as Bobby climbed the tallest tree he could find. Once his cousin had urged Bobby to flap his arms and take a running start off the highest branch. Bobby beat his arms against the air and he ran: for one moment he was higher than he ever thought possible, up where the hawks flew, weightless, moving through blue sky until he began to drop, so suddenly he didn’t feel it happening to him until he landed in the dirt with a thud.
The wind was knocked out of him, all at once. His cousin ran to him and shook him hard and told him he couldn’t just lie there, he had to get up. His cousin was only seven, but his voice was so stern and commanding that Bobby had no choice but to rise to his feet. He stood, doubled over, until the air came back to him and he could breathe. Bobby’s cousin was crying by then, and it was the oddest thing: instead of tears, little rocks fell from his eyes, and they kept on falling until there was a pile of stones at his feet.
No matter what Bobby said, his cousin wouldn’t let go of the idea that he was to blame for the fall.
“I made you do that,” the little cousin cried, but of course he hadn’t, not any more than the birds had forced Bobby to make that dangerous leap. He had wanted to know what would happen when he was in the air. He’d wanted to feel what it was like to have the air push him upward, toward the stars.
Now he wants to know what would happen if he could kiss Shannon. Would he have that falling feeling all over again? Would he be enveloped in the same endless blue space? Would the flesh reappear on his bones, or would he evaporate into nothingness? He starts to shiver when he sees her walking through the parking lot. She’s wearing blue jeans and a red blouse, and there’s a vinyl purse hooked over her shoulder. All the black tint has been washed out of her hair, and the real color, a rich chestnut brown, is beautiful; it nearly brings Bobby to tears.
She stops before she reaches the tree and shades her eyes with her hand. It’s almost as if she can see him, so Bobby shrinks back. He scrambles into a low branch and when Shannon narrows her eyes all she can make out is a faint outline of a dove. She walks right up to the tree, and as she begins to cry, Bobby drops down and sits beside her in the grass, his chest throbbing in the place where his heart used to be.
Shannon has to go away and she knows it. No matter how much she might want to change her mind, she won’t. It’s too late for that. Bobby can see all the years she’ll have, he can see the orange moons and the cold winters. When she’s an old woman, her chestnut-colored hair will turn white and she’ll cover her shoulders with thick woolen sweaters. He can feel her entire life, from start to end, uninterrupted; it’s already flowing right past him. As Shannon wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, Bobby leans his head against the
tree and studies the arc of her neck. No matter what, she will always be the same for him.
Shannon has heard that when a gumbo-limbo tree is cut down, the sap that rushes out is the color of blood. If it’s allowed to soak into the earth, a dozen saplings will rise in the place of the fallen tree. Shannon leans close and puts her mouth against the bark. Bobby Cash is right there, and that is why he is, for those few instants, blessed with the ability to be human. He kisses her back for as long as he dares.
He knows she won’t miss this place the way she thinks she will. She’ll fall in love, she’ll live in a house on the edge of a lake that begins to freeze early in October. For years to come, she’ll avoid returning to Verity during the month of May. And tonight, when she finally tells her mother and grandmother about her acceptance to Mount Holyoke and they take her out to celebrate at the Post Café, she’ll hold her breath when they come to the intersection of Long Boat and West Main, right where the Burger King stands, the way some people do when they drive past graveyards.
He has dinner waiting for her, out in the sunroom with its wall of glass, and he’s already dismissed whoever’s so carefully set the table and lit the candles. The sky outside is still light; there are thin pink clouds and the lightning bugs have yet to settle in the bushes. When he comes up behind her, Lucy can feel her palms start to sweat, and she hopes he won’t reach for her hand. She’s used to her work in obituaries, where she’s given all the facts and merely has to list them in chronological order. Now she wants to know the smallest details of Bethany Lee’s life. She wants to run upstairs and open all the doors to see where Bethany slept at night, where she washed her hair, where she sat rocking her baby to sleep.
“This is better than any restaurant,” Randy says. He goes to the table and pulls out a chair for her. There is asparagus and cold trout on white china plates rimmed with gold that Bethany probably spent hours choosing.
When Lucy sits down, he puts one hand on the back of her neck.
“It looks fantastic,” Lucy says, as she shrugs away from his touch. She can barely glance at the fish on her plate.
She’s here to question him, but right away he’s the one asking questions. He wants to know if she came up just for the reunion, and if she already has her return ticket to Florida.
“You sound like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Lucy says.
“Oh, no,” Randy says. “I think we should have done this twenty years ago.”
“Meaning?” Lucy says. She’s eating asparagus like a starving woman, even though it tastes like paper.
“You were such an ice princess,” Randy says, leaning back in his chair to study her. “Those are the girls who are always the hottest.”
“Was your wife an ice princess?” Lucy asks. She actually manages to smile.
Randy tosses his napkin on the table. “We keep coming back to that.”
“Well, was she?” Lucy asks.
“No,” Randy says, as he pours the wine. “She was just a pretty girl.”
“From Holland,” Lucy says.
Randy leans back in his chair. He’s not smiling now. “I think you’re onto me,” he says.
Lucy would like to take a sip of water, but she doesn’t dare move.
“Maybe I should have been more honest with you,” Randy says. “But it’s not easy to admit that your wife just walked out on you, and you have no idea why, and you haven’t seen her since. My life hasn’t exactly turned out the way I thought it would.” He breaks apart a piece of French bread, then places the crusts on his plate. “She was from Ohio, and her name was Bethany, and I still can’t figure out what went wrong.”
“You haven’t seen her since ...”
“October,” Randy says. “That’s the truth.”
Lucy sees now that his eyes are really green. Julian was right: Randy could never kill anyone. He’s not the one who was down in the laundry room, he didn’t find the rings and bury them. That was someone else, someone with a history of bad judgment and thievery. Someone who might have made an earth-shattering mistake if he’d been caught in the act.
“Look, I have something awful to tell you,” Lucy says. “Bethany’s dead.”
Randy looks up at her and frowns. “That’s not funny, Lucy.”
“No,” Lucy says. “It isn’t.”
“You’re serious,” Randy says. He gets up from his chair and goes to the window. “You’re really serious.” He puts his head down, as if he were dizzy.
Lucy pushes her chair back and goes to him. “I’m sorry,” she says. “She was my neighbor. I was looking for the person who killed her, and I thought that might be you. I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Randy stares at Lucy. They are inches away from each other. “I can’t believe it,” he says as he takes her hand and draws her to him.
Lucy remembers how much she hated to be touched after she was told about her parents.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” he whispers, and he pulls Lucy even closer.
As he does, Lucy feels chilled, right down to her bones. He hasn’t once asked about his daughter.
“Maybe we need some fresh air,” Lucy whispers.
It should have been his first question. He should be beside himself with worry. He should be reaching for the telephone, making reservations for a flight down to Florida tonight.
“I just need to hold you,” Randy says.
Out in the backyard it is growing dark; there is a high cedar fence, and in all probability no one could see them if they did go outside for some air, no one could hear her even if she cried out loud.
“Randy,” Lucy says.
“I just need to think,” he says.
When the window breaks he pulls her close beneath the shower of glass that bursts above them like stars. Lucy kicks him hard, and when he lets go of her, she’s propelled backward, across the shards of glass. Julian has already reached in through the broken pane of glass and unlatched the French door. At his signal, Loretta follows him inside. Her hair stands on end, making her look twice her size, and Randy scrambles up on a chair.
“Oh, Christ,” he says. His hair is dusted with bits of glass. “Jesus.”
Julian holds Loretta’s lead loosely, he gives her enough slack so that when she snaps her jaws open and shut Randy can get a good look at her teeth.
“Call the dog off,” Randy shouts.
Julian reels in the lead, but he lets Loretta go on barking. He can smell how afraid Randy is, and he knows that Loretta can smell it, too.
“Who the hell are you?” Randy says.
“I’m the guy who doesn’t believe a fucking word you say,” Julian tells him. Turning to Lucy, Julian says, “It looks like you’re right.” What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette. “Let’s talk about the way you killed your wife,” he says to Randy.
“Lucy?” Randy says, panicked.
Julian steps forward. He takes up a lot of space. “Why are you talking to her?” he asks. “I’m the one asking you the fucking question.”
“Lucy,” Randy says. “You know I would never do anything like that.”
Lucy is standing with her back against the table. The tablecloth probably belonged to Bethany’s mother; it’s white linen with pink dogwood blossoms carefully stitched along the border. Julian comes up next to Lucy. He takes out his gun and lays it on the tablecloth.
“All right,” Randy says, terrified when he sees the gun. “I saw that she had Bethany’s photograph. I figured I’d get some information out of her, that’s not a crime. My wife’s been missing since October. I think I have a right to know what happened to her.”
He still has not asked about the child. Lucy stares out at the yard. If you set up a swing set out there you could easily watch your child at play from every window. You could close the cedar gates and know she was safe.
“He did it,” Lucy says flatly.
Julian lurches forward. He grabs Randy and drags him off the chair and onto the floor. r />
“I didn’t do it!” Randy says.
“Then you know who did,” Julian says.
“It wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen,” Randy cries.
Julian’s got Randy by the throat now. If he didn’t know how to stop himself, he could snap his neck in two right now.
“He wasn’t supposed to kill her?” Julian asks.
Behind Julian, Loretta is growling, though she doesn’t break the stay command.
“No,” Randy says. He struggles to get up, but Julian tightens his grip. “He was just supposed to take Rachel, but she walked in on him.”
Julian realizes that the sound he hears is his own pulse; he’s gasping for air, but so is the boy who had everything.
“And he killed her,” Julian says.
“He killed her,” Randy says.
When Julian lets go, Randy’s head hits hard against the floor. He stays where he is, still gasping, as Julian stands and backs away.
“Are you all right?” Julian asks Lucy.
“I’m fine,” Lucy says. A lie, and they both know it.
“Did you pay him up front?” Julian asks Randy.
Randy is sitting up now, his eye on Loretta. “Half.”
“That’s good,” Julian tells Lucy. “He might come back for what he’s owed. Even if he did botch the job.”
Julian sits down and tilts his chair back, so that it scrapes against the highly polished floor. “What’d you do?” he asks Randy. “Put an ad in The New York Times for a kidnapper, or meet the sleazebag in a bar?”
“In a bar,” Randy says.
“That’s original,” Julian says. “That’s the place to find someone you can trust.”
He notices that Lucy hasn’t moved. She should be relieved that her son has been cleared, but instead she has a fevered look.
“He’s not telling us everything,” Lucy says.
From the look on Randy’s face, Julian knows that she’s right, but he keeps his mouth shut. Lucy picks up the gun. Julian watches her do it, and he doesn’t stop her. He wants to see how far she’ll go.
“There’s something you’re not telling us,” Lucy says.