The Probable Future

  Naturally he would choose them, two young, attractive women in their thirties, clearly enjoying a night out. One of the women had honey-colored hair, pulled back from her pale face; her companion was wearing a black dress, not unlike the one Juliet had given Stella, and a dozen silver bracelets on her arms.

  Stella looked over at the corner, then quickly turned back to her father. Her face was drained of all color. One instant was all it took. One look and she knew. She could smell her father’s whisky and the faint odor of tobacco that clung to him. Dishes were clattering as the table beside them was cleared.

  “The one in black will die in bed when she’s an old woman. Her heart will stop.”

  “Okay. That’s good.” Will was relieved and more than a little drunk. “That’s a fine way to die, Stella, if you really want to know. Hell, I hope I kick off the same way. There’s nothing wrong in seeing that.”

  Will was cheerful again. Talk to your teenagers, the book he’d half-read had advised. Treat them as though their ideas mattered.

  “Anyway, I’ll bet this vision thing is like the flu. Twenty-four hours of seeing death. Take two aspirin and get a good night’s sleep, Stella, my star, and you’ll be fine in the A.M. Completely clearheaded.”

  Stella certainly hoped so because these visions were nothing she wanted. They were nothing any thirteen-year-old girl could take comfort in. She forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly; she hadn’t yet told her father all of it. She paid no attention when the waitress delivered the check, along with her scribbled phone number for Will to fold into his wallet. She kept her eyes averted from the second woman at the table in the corner, the one with the honey-blond hair whose throat had been slit.

  When the waitress had gone, Stella surprised Will by going to sit in his lap, something she hadn’t done for ages. “Hey,” Will said, pleased. Maybe he did have a chance to be a better father, a better person all around. “That’s my little girl.”

  It took a while before he realized that Stella was crying, her face hidden against him. He could feel her tears through the fabric of his shirt. He could feel his love for her as well, worthless as it might be.

  “It’s your birthday, Stell. Don’t cry.”

  “Then promise you’ll believe me.” Stella’s voice was surprisingly fierce. “I mean it. Cross your heart.”

  She moved back into her own chair so that she could watch as Will solemnly crossed his heart, or at least he traced an X in the place where his heart should have been. He listened as his daughter told him about the awful death of the woman in the corner, how she’d be murdered in her bed, how she’d open her eyes and know the darkness was about to close in, how she wouldn’t have a chance if she wasn’t warned.

  “You have to do something,” Stella urged. “You just have to.”

  Her bright confidence burned through Will and, for a moment, it made him a better man. He had no choice but to try to rise to the occasion of being Stella’s father.

  “Fine. I’ll tell her to lock her windows and beware of strangers, but if they drag me off to the loony bin, you’ll have to tell them it was all your idea.”

  Will Avery went over to the women’s table to introduce himself. He pointed out his daughter, the charming girl who was staring at them from across the room. Both women laughed when Will sheepishly brought up Stella’s premonition. They’d remembered having overactive imaginations when they were thirteen, they’d believed in ghosts and in love at first sight and look at them now—all grown up and dubious about nearly everything, although not so much so that the blonde didn’t give him her phone number, which he slipped into his wallet, alongside the waitress’s crumpled note.

  “I don’t think they believed me,” he told Stella as they left the restaurant.

  “Then we still have to tell someone else. It’s our duty, isn’t it? It’s our responsibility.”

  Responsibility, that notion was assuredly Jenny’s influence. Always looking forward to the next balanced meal, the next homework assignment, the next chore to be completed. And what of Will’s influence? What had he taught his daughter? To let your appetites rule your life? To do as you pleased, no matter who might be hurt?

  They had turned onto Marlborough Street and were headed toward home. The air was soft and damp, fishy the way March air can be, clinging to clothes, urging the buds of the magnolias to open. Will never went up to the apartment anymore. He merely dropped Stella off and went on his way, but what way was that, really? The way of three drinks in order to get to sleep? The way of not bothering to speak to another human being most days, let alone think about anyone other than himself?

  “We have to do more,” Stella insisted. “You have to.”

  “More,” Will repeated.

  It was as though the thought had never before occurred to him. Standing in front of the apartment building where he’d lived for so many years, Will found himself thinking of someone other than himself. He wondered if this was the way selfless people felt, this lightness inside, a sensation of weightlessness.

  “Promise me you’ll do something, Daddy.”

  Stella looked fragile, like a piece of glass, and yet she was also intractable, absolutely sure of what he must do. How lucky he was to have her. How fortunate to be seen through her eyes.

  Will Avery held his hand over his heart and vowed to accomplish what he’d never before attempted or promised. He would, indeed, do more. He kissed his daughter good-night and watched her run up the steps, and then he walked through the dark. He felt as though he were floating up Marlborough Street, as though the damp air had turned to water. He was a fish, swimming upstream. He was an arrow, aimed with trust and devotion. The sky was filled with what Jenny always referred to as dreamlight, a sprinkling of those constellations which she felt brought on more dreams for most sleepers. That was one thing he especially missed about his marriage: he used to love to hear Jenny tell him other people’s dreams. He himself had never been much of a dreamer. More and more, sleep was of little comfort to him; it had become flat, the country of regret, the empty inner landscape of a man who has lied for so long he can no longer recognize the truth.

  Will wished it had been his dream all those years ago, on that morning when Jenny ran after him. He wished he was capable of imagining dark angels, fearless women, bees that would never sting. Still, there was one angel on earth who believed in him, and he’d made her a promise he fully intended to keep. This was a first for him, something he wouldn’t have imagined was in his nature. Astounding what love could do to a person. Amazing the changes it could bring. It could alter history, it could stop and start wars; it could even make an honest man out of Will Avery. By the time he reached the police station, Will was whistling, the sign of a man with a clear conscience. It was true he was a liar through and through, but even a liar could have a heart, despite what some people might think. Even a liar could convince himself he was about to do the right thing.

  IV.

  THE MESSAGE CAME while Jenny was out picking up lunch, round the corner at the market on Charles Street, having telephoned in her order for a Caesar-salad-to-go and a strong, black tea. That Will Avery would list her as his next of kin seemed ridiculous, considering the fact that they’d barely spoken in the past six months, but apparently he had, for there was a message on her desk informing her that he was being held on suspicion of murder. Evidently, whoever had taken the message hadn’t kept it to herself, but had spread it far and wide, from Mortgages to Securities, so that all eyes were already on Jenny as she walked to her desk; people knew she would be shocked when she read the note, which had been taped to her weekly calendar.

  Jenny tossed her salad in the trash; she’d never get to eat lunch now. Her stomach had dropped into some bottomless pit and she had a tingly feeling in her fingers and toes, the way she always did before disaster struck. Why, on the day of her wedding, right on the steps of City Hall in Cambridge, her toes were so afflicted she could barely put one foot in front of the other. Anyone els
e would have known herself to be headed for unhappiness; that should have been apparent simply from the way she’d hesitated on the way to see the town clerk as though it were a tar pit that was waiting for her, rather than wedded bliss. Anyone else would have turned and run, whether or not she had to limp all the way. But not Jenny, she had to go forward no matter what; she couldn’t admit when she had made a mistake, a flaw her mother had always accused her of having. You will never back down, Elinor had said. Not for love or money. Not if you’re the wrongest person on earth.

  Jenny would be lucky to manage a few gulps of hot tea for lunch as she waited for the police switchboard to connect her with a detective. She was soon informed that her husband was being questioned in connection with a murder that had taken place the week following Stella’s birthday. Someone had climbed in through an open window or managed to get through the door in Brighton and slit a woman’s throat. There had been no witnesses and no apparent motive. Jenny recalled being frightened by the story on the six o’clock news, a teacher, well thought of and respected, a pretty woman of thirty-three, had met this horrendous fate. Jenny had made a mental note to have a locksmith come round to check if their deadbolt needed updating.

  But what had this all to do with them? Plenty, it seemed. Her husband, Jenny was now told, had come to the police before the murder with a great deal of information and was now being held for further questioning. The detectives had been particularly interested when they’d found the dead woman’s phone number in Will Avery’s possession.

  “Ex,” Jenny was quick to correct.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My ex-husband. We were legally separated in the summer, and our divorce should come through anytime. No contest.”

  “Were you afraid for your safety when you split up?”

  “No. Of course not.” For her sanity, perhaps; her self-respect, certainly.

  “How about after the breakup? Did you have a restraining order filed?”

  So that was where this line of questioning was headed.

  “Will Avery is constitutionally incapable of violence. I know him better than anyone, and I can tell you right now he practically faints at the sight of blood. Especially his own. If he cuts himself shaving, he has to breathe into a brown paper bag.”

  Which was exactly what he was doing when Jenny got down to the jail on the far side of Charles Street. Will was in a holding cell, huffing and puffing into a bag that had previously held the detectives’ coffees and pastries. They had taken pity on him when he couldn’t catch his breath, and pity was what Will Avery deserved. He’d been picked up the night before, and the effects of his drinking showed after a single sleepless night. His complexion appeared yellow rather than golden under the glare of the fluorescent lights; he was unshaven, his hands shook. Will, who had always cared so much about his appearance, looked like a common criminal. Had Jenny passed him on the street she might have taken him for one of those sorrowful, lost men who dozed on the benches in the Common, the ones who dreamed of hot showers, and apple pie, and a world in which every man received what he truly deserved.

  When Will wandered into the police station the previous week, cheerfully whistling, ready to tell his outrageous story to anyone willing to listen, they had laughed at him. Having smelled the alcohol on his breath, they made certain he wouldn’t be driving home. No car, he assured them; he would be walking—stumbling, actually. He’d been huffy about that, insulted they had thought he’d do anything so foolish as drive. To appease him, the sergeant on duty had taken down Will’s complaint about the murder that was to be. Everyone at the station house had a hoot afterward, agreeing that they’d truly heard everything now.

  But following the killing in Brighton, one of the officers who’d been on duty that night remembered the report, and he had dug up Will’s file. There he found a description of the victim and the exact cause of death, six days before it had occurred.

  “You idiot,” Jenny said when she was let in to see him. She sat facing Will, their knees grazing.

  “That’s not in dispute.” Will looked at his ex and managed a grin. There was a flicker of what there had once been between them. But it was just that, a flicker, nothing more. They had become more like people who’d been through a war together, comrades with little in common but the battle itself.

  “I called my brother. He’s getting me a lawyer. Remember Henry Elliot who we went to school with? He practices in Boston now. Apparently, he’s one of the best.”

  “You called Matt?”

  It was ridiculous for her to feel wounded that he might not have called her first. But Matt? They hadn’t seen much of Will’s brother over the years. He’d come to visit when they first moved to Cambridge, and of course they’d seen him at Catherine Avery’s funeral. But Will and Jenny had an aversion to their hometown, and once Catherine had passed on, the brothers drifted even farther apart. Matt Avery, after all, had stayed put; he had barely taken a step out of Unity. He had cared for his mother in her last years and worked odd jobs, plowing snow, landscaping, working for the Department of Parks. The brothers had so little in common, and then, of course, there’d been that awful fight. It was the year after Stella was born, when Matt had come to stay for New Year’s. There had been some altercation at the party Jenny and Will were throwing, and the two men had wound up on the street, going at each other as though their lives depended on the outcome. By the time the fight had been broken up and Jenny had soothed their outraged landlady and the neighbors who were already fed up with Will’s antics, Matt had gone. Now, he’d agreed to pay for an expensive criminal lawyer.

  “Blood is thicker than water,” Will said hopefully. He was dying for a cigarette, but of course they’d taken everything away from him, including the silver lighter Stella had given him last Father’s Day. TO THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD, she’d inscribed. Poor thing, Will had thought, even then. Bound to be disappointed. “Maybe good old Matt feels guilty that my mother left him the house. Do you think he was the favorite?” There was that grin again, but only for an instant.

  “Of course he was. You barely went to visit her. I’m just glad Matt can afford a top lawyer, because I can’t.”

  “Well, evidently he can. He must have plowed a lot of snow.”

  They both laughed at the notion of Matt driving through their snowbound hometown, then fell silent. Jenny felt their real worry settle down between them. “We can keep this from Stella. There’s no reason for her to know.”

  “Uh uh. That won’t work. It will be in the newspapers. Hell, it’s probably already in the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. There’s no hiding it from her, Jen.”

  “Then you tell me right now. Tell me the truth for once in your life.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire. What velvet tale can you tell? What foolish heart can you break? What shameful alibi can you concoct?

  “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t.”

  Jenny studied him carefully because he really was good at deceit. He could tell her it was raining as they stood béneath a blue sky and she would be convinced she would soon be drenched, through and through. After all these years, she hadn’t a clue as to whether or not she could trust him.

  “I did make the report. That much is true,” Will admitted. “But I did it because I promised Stella I would.”

  “Oh, so now it’s Stella’s fault.”

  He told Jenny what had happened that night, how Stella had confided in him on her birthday, how she’d begged him to report the murder she imagined would soon take place. Now Jenny understood, this was the aptitude that had been visited on Stella when she turned thirteen. This was her talent. An eye for death, an ability to read the human timetable; a nightmare of a gift. And she’d turned to Will, that was the thing; she’d confided in her father, not in Jenny. She had trusted him.

  Jenny couldn’t help but think of Rebecca Sparrow and all her sorrows. She had found a portrait of Rebecca once, a miniature, perhaps a study for the larger painting that hung in
the library. The miniature had been wrapped in water-stained silk and forgotten. Jenny would have never seen it if she hadn’t happened upon it as she searched through a cluttered cabinet for a gravy boat. She brought the treasure out to the shed, untied the silk, and found a girl with long black hair who looked as though she’d been crying. A girl who resembled Jenny enough to make her start. It was as though some of her own traits had been captured in paint three hundred years before she’d been born.

  Rebecca Sparrow had been taken in by the washerwoman who lived by the lake, taught how to cut up frozen potatoes for starch with which to set collars and cuffs, worked hard, until her hands bled. She’d been instructed that a frog in the wash water brought luck, and had quickly learned that a washerwoman’s hands looked ten years older than her natural age. Every blister was a token of the life she’d led. Every burn, a document to her courage.

  When Rebecca was barely thirteen, the old woman who had taken her in died suddenly. Rebecca herself then became the washerwoman. It was her fate and her duty; it was all she knew. She built a second shed in the woods, for making soap out of ashes and grease was a nasty, smoky business; there needed to be some distance between the laundry house and the place where Rebecca slept. Rebecca’s feet would turn green as she took the path where nothing grew these days, but where there once had been wild ginger and bloodroot and masses of wood violets. Jenny had always wondered if the portrait she’d found—which she guessed must have been given in exchange for laundry done—had been painted before or after Rebecca’s thirteenth birthday. Rebecca was too beautiful to be bound in silk and left in a drawer, trapped in a frame carved from ash. This was a tree that no longer grew in Unity; it had been cut down so extensively by the first settlers that it disappeared from the county completely. Jenny decided to keep the portrait in the soap shed, where she felt it belonged, where she imagined it must have hung on a nail so many years earlier. Jenny, who’d had something of a talent for painting, then began to create her own miniatures on tiny bits of canvas or wood, using a brush that contained a single horse’s hair and a magnifying glass she found in her father’s desk drawer.