Best Kept Secrets Page 5

  Now she wondered if the recession in the 1980s and the more recent one had dealt the sort of body blow to her mother’s finances that so many other people had suffered. She calculated the cost of the most basic repairs to Quail House – the trim scraped and painted, the windows caulked, the brickwork repointed, the floors sanded and varnished to their original shine – and shuddered. She didn’t even want to think what it might cost to replace the slate roof.

  The mice, though. At least they were easily and inexpensively dealt with, if the creature in her arms lived up to its promise.

  ‘When was Em here? I saw him in town not an hour ago. How’d he find a cat so fast?’

  ‘I guess one of his neighbors has a cat with a new litter. It was either us or the pound. He was in and out of here in a flash; said he was on his way to a showing.’

  She glared her disapproval at the kitten in Nora’s arms, as though investing it with the same lack of manners as its benefactor. ‘Whatever was Emerson thinking? What are we supposed to do with a cat?’

  Nora gently lowered the kitten to the floor. She retrieved a saucer from the cupboard, sat it on the floor next to the kitten, and poured in a few teaspoons of milk.

  Penelope gestured urgently from the table. ‘Stop! Don’t feed it.’

  ‘Too late.’ The kitten polished the saucer with its pink tongue and looked to her for more. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Emerson said if we feed it, it’ll never catch mice. Of course, given that there are no mice to catch, maybe you should pick up some cat food the next time you’re in town.’

  Nora put the milk away. The kitten’s eyes followed her every move.

  ‘Does it have a name?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  The kitten patted the refrigerator with a tiny paw and meowed.

  ‘It wants more. What a mooch. There. That’s its name. I’ll call it Mooch.’

  Penelope made a face. ‘It’s dreadfully undignified.’

  ‘No more undignified than having mice. It was nice of Em.’

  ‘Em should be nice to us.’ Penelope’s tone was arch. She lifted a packet from the chair beside her and pushed it across the table.

  ‘Read it.’

  Nora eyed it warily. The envelope was large, manila, pedestrian, not the cream-colored stock of her mother’s stationery, with the embossed return address in roundhand font. The only thing that gave away Penelope’s provenance was Nora’s name in the slanting even script she’d perfected during her time at boarding school.

  Nora unfastened the envelope’s metal prongs and withdrew a sheaf of papers, a legal document of some sort.

  Declaration of Trust, it read across the top, and then: Witnesseth.

  ‘Witnesseth?’ Nora smiled at the formality of the word.

  She skimmed the document. Phrases jumped out at her – ‘the property known as Quail House.’ Her own name. A lot of wherefores and thereases. She flipped pages. Came to the end, no more enlightened than when she began.

  She looked up. Penelope beamed at her from across the table. ‘Well?’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘What’s mine?’

  Penelope gave her most regal wave. ‘All of it.’

  ‘All of what?’

  ‘The house, the outbuildings, the one hundred and fifty acres, the three-quarters of a mile of riverfront. I lease the fields to the Hudsons and the Kinseys. They bring in a little income – not a lot, but you’ll never starve. Of course, you have to wait until I’m dead. But as soon as I’ve drawn my last breath, all of this is yours, and without any significant tax penalty. Emerson helped me figure it out, and, of course, Mr Hathaway.’ That would be George Hathaway of Hathaway & Valentine, who’d represented the Smythes from both families’ earliest days in Chateau.

  ‘Quail House is yours.’

  That night, instead of returning to Electra as planned, Nora slept in the room that for the first time, despite all the years she’d spent in it, was really, truly her own. She didn’t have to go anywhere. The impulse that had propelled her the last several weeks – to move, keep moving, get ahead of the desperation dragging her down – drained away.

  She didn’t have to think about any of it anymore.

  EIGHT

  Nights were noisy on the Eastern Shore.

  The tall windows, whose panes of thick wavy glass distorted the view, stood open to the night breeze. Moths, drawn to the nightlight, bumped softly against the screens, leaving powdery blotches in a futile attempt to reach it.

  Nora sat on the edge of the bed, listening, remembering. Her home in Denver had been insulated against the city’s increasingly invasive traffic cacophony; in her brief time in the Wyoming mountains, the wind soughing through the pines had soothed her to sleep. Denver was, of course, famous for its mile-high altitude; the Wyoming campground had been higher still, something that discouraged insects and limited the more fragile birds and wildlife.

  But Chateau was at sea level, with bountiful rainfall throughout the year and moist breezes off the river even on sunny days, and every living thing – flora, fauna and creeping, stinging insect – thrived. Especially insect. The night thrummed with their racket, the needling whine of mosquitoes, the rhythmic rattle of cicadas. Somehow she’d arrived on a seventeenth year, when the cicadas emerged from their years-long underground sojourn, and their vibrating call rose and fell in an echo of the sirens she’d heard the previous night.

  From the river came the drowsy gabble of Canada geese settling in for the night, tucking their heads beneath their wings. They still arrived by the tens of thousands in the fall, but a certain number – Nora had always thought of them as the most Darwinian of their species – had abandoned the arduous spring flights to their nesting grounds in Newfoundland and elected to stay year-round in Chateau, whose surrounding fields of corn and soybeans provided a plentiful food supply. From one of the cedars, an owl hooted, perhaps frustrated by some small scurrying creature that had managed to elude it.

  As though in echo of her thoughts, a skritch-skritch sounded close at hand, maybe even within the room. A mouse, Nora thought with a start, drawing her feet up from a thick new rug that had replaced the one she remembered. Possibly the same mouse that had sent Penelope toppling. Mooch, who’d followed her up the stairs and on to the bed, leapt into action, bounding across the floor in search of unseen prey, despite the fact that Nora had slipped him a bit of her chicken during dinner.

  ‘Maybe you’ll earn your keep, after all. Better luck next time,’ she said when he returned unsuccessful, tail twitching in frustration.

  She drifted toward sleep, lulled by the kitten’s purring and, barely audible, the thunk of rowboat bumping against dock where it had been tied as long as Nora could remember. Something splashed in the river – a fish, maybe, or even a muskrat, leaving its home of reeds and mud and setting out for a swim. A puff of breeze, the barest exhale, stirred the sheer curtains. Despite the darkness, the temperature had barely dropped at all, another difference from the crisp air of the West, where the sunset heralded an automatic reach for a sweater, even in midsummer.

  She vowed to sleep the following night in the Airstream, which she’d parked under the spreading elms to one side of the house. At least it had air conditioning. She dozed off, soothed by the thought of cool relief.

  The demons crept back in sometime around three in the morning, when night burrowed deepest and darkest into an underworld impenetrable by a merciful sun. They jabbed her awake, these memories of staggering naked beside a mountain stream with a knife wound in her side, of the skepticism on the part of the law enforcement she’d assumed would protect her, of Joe’s death, unmourned but undeserved. And now, her mother’s infirmity, the accusations against Alden, the ugly word in the diner, all of it vanquishing sleep with ruthless efficiency. She put her hand to her side, fingering the ridge of scar tissue, the tiny bumps that marked the recently removed stitches, counting them over and over in a futile attempt
to dull her racing thoughts.

  She gave up after an hour and dressed quickly, forsaking shoes in the interest of silence, and left the house. The kitten slumbered on, but loyal Michael Murphy groaned to his feet and padded along beside her as she made her way across the lawn, her bare feet leaving a darkened trail across the dew-drenched grass. Mist twined above the river. A few mallards paddled away as Nora walked out on to the dock. She sat down at the end and swished her toes across the water’s surface, not yet warmed to a near-simmer by the sun. Michael Murphy lowered himself to warped boards with a sigh and laid his graying muzzle on her thigh. It was light, just, the reeds in the marshes across the river standing in black relief against a sky shading to deepest azure. A lingering star blinked sleepily overhead. The air was damp but cool, and Nora luxuriated in the sensation of actually enjoying the outdoors, instead of seeking an air-conditioned refuge.

  The river flowed past, wide and languid, in no hurry at all to join the salty waters of the bay. Nora closed her eyes and lost herself in the sounds of the awakening day: the ducks chuckling among themselves, the creaking honk of geese overhead, flying so low she heard the whistle of the air through their pinions, the lap of wavelets against the dock. The clunk and splash of oars.

  She sat up straight and opened her eyes. Michael Murphy lifted his head. His hackles rose under her hand and then subsided. His tail thumped on the dock as the boat approached.

  ‘Hey, Nora,’ said Alden Tydings.

  NINE

  Alden pulled the oars into the boat and grabbed one of the pilings. The boat bumped against the dock. Nora looked into the boat for a fishing pole, a tackle box, something that would explain his presence on the river at this hour. Binoculars, even. Maybe Alden had become a birdwatcher in her decades away.

  But the boat was empty. She looked at the hand wrapped around the piling. Imagined it wrapped instead around a service weapon, the forefinger flexing against a trigger. A young man slumping – against the wheel or to the ground? The youth had been sitting in the car when Nora passed them. Had Alden ordered him out of the car? Had there been some sort of scuffle? Had there been – please God, what was the bloodless phrase the cops always trotted out – probable cause?

  Because, while she’d always rolled her eyes at those words when she’d heard them in news accounts of a white cop shooting a black kid, in this case she fervently willed them to be true.

  ‘What are you doing out here, Alden?’

  He mock-flexed an arm, although there was nothing mock about the bicep that leapt into prominence. ‘Keeping in shape. Cops aren’t allowed to get old and fat anymore like the ones we grew up with. Remember Officer Purvis?’

  ‘Purvis the Perv?’ She followed his lead into safe territory. ‘How could I forget?’

  Purvis, small and squat as a fireplug, knew all of the party spots in the woods and marshes surrounding Chateau and delighted in breaking up parties and even more in interrupting couples in or nearly in the act. ‘Pull up those panties! Tuck that thing back in your jeans!’ he’d been known to holler, the glare of his flashlight sweeping befogged car windows, not having the decency to turn away as the unfortunates scrambled back into their clothing.

  ‘Please tell me you’re not like Officer Perv.’

  ‘Ouch, Nora.’ He fell backward, clutching his chest, miming a mortal wound. ‘Not even a little bit.’

  Nora laughed. No, he wasn’t at all like Purvis, who’d limited himself to embarrassing teenagers. Alden had shot one. Her laugh died in her throat. She wondered if he’d tell her.

  He held out his other hand, inviting her in with another reassuring reference to their shared history. ‘How many hours did we spend on this river when we were kids?’

  Don’t, she thought, even as she stepped into the boat and took the seat across from him. She found her balance within its gentle rocking and loosened her grip on the gunwales.

  ‘We’ve got bigger things to worry about these days than kids getting frisky in the woods,’ he said as he dropped the oars into the water and pulled the boat back into the current.

  ‘Like what?’

  Now, she thought. He’s going to tell me now. She fought an urge to close her eyes and inhale. This close, Alden smelled exactly the way she remembered from high school.

  ‘Drugs, for starters. They bring them in from Baltimore, D.C., Philly, New York. And not just weed like when we were kids. We’re talking Oxy, heroin, shit that kills people. These guys, they’re pros. Gangs, cartels. They think we’re a bunch of hick cops who won’t figure out what’s going on. We deal with some really scary characters.’

  Nora thought of her old life, the one with her husband, back when she’d thought part of the secret to a long and reasonably happy marriage was Letting Shit Slide – a tactic that had only sent it sliding right down on to her. She turned to face him squarely.

  ‘Like the guy you shot?’

  He didn’t even blink. Or sling some crap explanation about not being able to talk about it.

  ‘Had to. He came at me with a gun. I tell you what, Nora …’ He shook his head in slow, sad turns. ‘I walked up to the car, the door flew open and there was a gun, right in my face. First thing I thought was, “I knew it.” It’s been so damn hot I didn’t wear my vest, even though we’re supposed to, no matter what. I even thought, when I left the house without it, “Just watch. This’ll be the day you get shot.” And then all of a sudden, there I was with a gun in my face, and I thought, “Alden, you dumb sonofabitch, you deserve this.”’

  He passed a hand across his face.

  ‘Everything happened so fast. I even didn’t realize I’d shot him at first.’ Another shake of the head. ‘So fast, and so slow at the same time. All that stuff about things happening in slow motion, your life flashing before your eyes? It’s true. In the time it took between that door opening and him stepping out of it, I grew up, got my heart broken, became a cop, ended up with teenage kids, all in the blink of an eye. Then – bang!’ He slapped his hand against the side of the boat. Nora jumped.

  ‘Once I realized I’d actually pulled the trigger, I was afraid I’d missed. That he’d come at me again. But I hadn’t. He threw his gun away and went down.’

  Nora blew a long breath. It was OK. Alden wasn’t an asshole cop, pumped up on testosterone and adrenaline, throwing his weight around, assuming the worst of anyone with skin a shade darker than his.

  ‘Thank God,’ she breathed.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  She returned his smile with a shaky one of her own. Let him think her thanks were solely because she was glad he’d survived. Which she was, and gladder by the minute as they sat across from one another in the boat exactly as they had when they were sixteen, in the carefree years before he’d killed someone and she herself had nearly been killed.

  She wondered if he’d noted the Airstream that night as she steered truck and trailer around him as he stood beside the Kia? Now the trailer sat beside Quail House, clearly visible from the dock, its airplane decal making it impossible to confuse with any other Airstream.

  The boat rounded a bend and approached a narrow bridge. This close to the bay, the tides affected the river, and Nora and Alden both slid into the bottom of the boat as they approached the bridge, its dripping underside just inches above the gunwales. Later in the day, the water surface would drop considerably as saltier waters of the bay retreated during low tide. The rising sun silhouetted a solitary woman fishing off one end of the bridge, two buckets by her feet, a small one for bait and a bigger one to hold her catch.

  Her gaze passed over Nora and fastened on Alden, and Nora saw him stiffen at her recognition. He scrambled back on to his seat and dug the oars hard in the water, swinging the boat in a wide turn, rowing back the way they’d come, his jaw rigid, knuckles white on the tanned hands clutching the oars, patches of sweat mapping continents across his shirt. Nora looked back and saw the woman lowering her hand, as though she’d started to hail them, then changed her m
ind.

  The polite thing to do would have been to ignore the moment, to pretend that with his explanation of the shooting, the subject was closed, sealed in a box, no need to reopen it and risk the escape of further unpleasantness. But she’d been polite with the biddies, resulting in a lingering remorse. She reminded herself of the vow she’d made as she’d driven into Chateau: that she was done running away, even from something as minor as her own momentary involvement.

  ‘I saw it, you know.’

  He jerked. The boat veered. ‘Saw what?’

  ‘Not it. But I saw you stopping that guy. I didn’t know it was you. The car – I recognized it. He almost cut me off a few miles earlier. You try slamming on the brakes when you’re towing a few tons of trailer. He’s lucky I didn’t roll right over him.’

  He kept at the oars, the dip-pull rhythm unchanging. But she sensed a quivering sort of attentiveness, one that made her think of Murph’s predecessor in the duck blind on gray fall mornings when the first faraway honks of approaching geese sounded, the dog on full alert even before her father rose with his shotgun.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Had he really not seen her? She watched him closely as she spoke.

  ‘Just what I said. He cut me off. Just a few miles before I saw you stopping him. I just didn’t know it was you.’

  ‘Nora.’ He dropped one of the oars. It clanked in its lock as his hand shot out, grasping her forearm with the sort of intensity she remembered from far different situations. ‘Think. Tell me exactly what happened.’

  She thought back, but what she remembered more than anything was how tired she’d been. She said as much. ‘I was probably driving slower than I should have been. Then out of nowhere, this kid in a car came around me and almost sideswiped me going by.’