21
Jeremy points through a high doorway. “There he is.” Behind them, huge cardboard figures of Cosmos, Roger, and Archipelago tower over the museum patrons. They’re together; EE’s isolated in his own room, the walls painted black with spinning stars, a booming cackle cleverly audible in this space, although you couldn’t hear it back among the Good Guys.
“Doesn’t that violate the premise?” asks Anna Clark. “I mean, the whole idea is that he shows up whenever you think of him. He’s always in the room. So why did they put him in a different room?”
“Yeah,” says Amy. “And why’s Archipelago in the Good Guy room instead of the Bad Guy room? And where’s Erasmus?”
“She doesn’t belong in the Bad Guy room either,” Anna says. “She keeps saying she’s not a Minion. Remember Bumfuck, and the pizza in the alley?”
Jeremy shakes his head. Anna’s perfectly groomed from the top of her blond head to the tips of her Gucci pumps. She may be wearing tastefully faded blue jeans, but she has a Coach bag slung over her shoulder and flawlessly lacquered fingernails. Even hearing her say the word “Bumfuck” is some heavy cognitive dissonance.
She just doesn’t look like a CC fan, even as broad-based as the fandom is. She looks like somebody’s mom. She is somebody’s mom.
Was.
“She joined forces with EE last month,” Jeremy says. “Remember? So he’d help her get to Cosmos? But now she’s helped Cosmos, so I guess she’s on his side after all.”
“The museum installation went in months ago,” Amy says. “Do you think they knew what would happen? Got inside info from the CC Four somehow?”
“Maybe they moved her, Aim. Anyway, I’m hungry. Anybody else want lunch?”
“I do!” VB’s been trailing grumpily behind them. Amy and Anna invited her to come to the SF museum so maybe she’d start understanding CC better, but Jeremy doesn’t think she’s been trying very hard. She seems oppressed by Seattle, overwhelmed, like a plant ripped out of its natural ground. She’s clearly desperate to get back home to Reno. He wonders how much of that is her breakdown, and how much she’s always been like that. Limited. Needing what she knows.
He still doesn’t like her, but he feels a lot sorrier for her than he did before Mom died.
On the other hand, he really likes Seattle: all the coffee shops and buses that will actually take you places—Reno has a bus system, but it’s crappy—and the energy of the streets, and the fact that he doesn’t feel like a sore thumb here. There are a lot more non-whites here than in Reno. Reno’s better now than when he was little, but it’s still not as no-big-deal mixed as Seattle. Or San Francisco, yeah. He went there with Mom a few times, but he didn’t know anyone. He was just there with Mom, which always made him feel a little self-conscious no matter what the population around him was like.
He feels guilty even thinking this way.
He loves Mom. He’s grateful to Mom. He wishes more than anything that she were alive. But he’d also, more than ever, really like to get out of Reno for a while, and he’s starting to feel like maybe he’s actually ready to think about a move.
If Mom were still here, he thinks she’d approve.
He’s fallen behind the others—VB’s in the lead now, heading to the snack bar—and Amy turns to check on him. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just thinking.”
But he stops thinking about cities to think about lunch. The snack bar’s pretty crappy, the usual hot dogs and chips, and VB groans. “I had a hot dog yesterday. I don’t know if I can handle another so soon.”
Anna laughs. “There’s a little restaurant not far from here. Excellent chef. Let’s go there. My treat.”
The three Reno-ites, Gore-Tex-clad ducklings, follow her outside. It’s still raining, but there’s intermittent sun. Anna leads them a few blocks to a French bistro, a fashionably distressed hole-in-the-wall, all heavy wooden farm tables and butcher-block paper placemats, where the staff clearly knows her. They’re the only people there. Amy sits down and looks around, blinking. VB picks up a menu as if it might bite her, and peers at it. When she speaks, she sounds strangled. “This is—a bit much. There must be something between this and hot dogs.”
“We’re here,” Anna says, “and I love this place. Let me be generous. I’m not trying to atone for anything. I’m just buying lunch. Sometimes lunch is only lunch.”
Jeremy picks up his menu. Anna, deftly, covers the price column with her napkin. “Don’t look at that. Just look at the food.”
“Okay.” He does. It looks delicious: consommés and pâtés and reductions and truffle oil and artisanal cheeses. His mouth waters. “This reminds me of Fourth Street Bistro. In Reno. Mom took me there for my birthday.”
Anna winces. “And that’s a good memory, I hope? Jeremy, I’m not trying to be your mother—”
“Of course not. You didn’t know. And even if you had. Like you said. It’s just lunch. And yeah. It’s a good memory.”
The waiter arrives with water and warm, aromatic bread, and soft herbed butter, and cunning little bowls of yuppie olives. The four of them smooth over the social awkwardness by eating. Jeremy wishes Aunt Rosie was here, because he feels more comfortable with her than with any of the others, even Amy, but she had no interest in the museum. She went to church with Hen and Tom and Greg instead. Yesterday, when the plans were being made, Anna offered to pick up the others and bring them here.
He wonders how Mom and Anna would have gotten along, if they’d ever met. But he thinks he knows. He can just see Anna walking into the library, being polite enough but clearly viewing Mom and the other staff as The Help. He can just see Mom, afterward, rolling her eyes, hear her complaining about the Rich-Lady types. She got them in her book groups often enough. “They’re not stupid, but too many of them are wearing blinders made of money, and they don’t even know it. And listen to me, with all this ‘they’ stuff, as if those women aren’t just people like the rest of us.” She’d laugh and say, “Do as I say, Jer, not as I do.”
But Anna is different. Nice enough. Generous, certainly. Really pretty smart when she talks about CC. But also from another planet, in ways Jeremy can’t quite pin down, and maybe it’s just the money, but maybe it’s something else. He doesn’t know.
He still hasn’t told her about the Mom-Percy CC connection. He will tell her, he wants to tell her, but not with the others here. She’s working so hard at being nice to them, and he doesn’t want to drop any bombs today. They all need a break. The information will keep, like so much else.
They busy themselves with the bread and olives, and then with appetizers. Amy’s ordered a chilled fruit soup that clearly delights her, and Jeremy’s pretty happy with his crab cakes, although he’d have done the sauce differently. It’s a ginger tomato sauce, and he isn’t sure those work together. He thinks something else would be better with the ginger. Something tart and sweet. Orange zest, just a hint, maybe, so it wouldn’t overpower the crab.
VB’s picking at her house salad, looking miserable. Jeremy still feels sorry for her. “Hey, Prof Bellamy, you want some of my crab cake?”
She glares at him. “Would you please call me Veronique? Or Vera? It’s what your mother called me, and you’re not my student anymore.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure. Would you like some crab cake?”
“No. Thank you. I’m crabby enough, wouldn’t you say?” Amy giggles, and Jeremy blinks. VB tried to make a joke. Oh, Lord. And he knows he should laugh, but her delivery was so flat that he can’t. “I’m sorry I’m grouchy,” she says. “I want to get home, that’s all.”
“You all leave tomorrow?” Anna asks.
“Yes. I need to get back to my cats. Amy, have you registered for fall semester?”
She has. She reels off a string of courses which immediately makes Jeremy’s ears glaze. He feels Anna’s eyes on him. “And what about you, Jeremy? Are you looking forward to getting home?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess. Not really. I have to figure things out. Things I don’t really want to think about yet, because they’re too much work.” They’re all looking at him. He sighs and says, “I think maybe, in a few years, or sooner if I can swing it, I want to try living in a real city. Here, or San Francisco.” He looks down at the crab cake. “Maybe go to culinary school.” He blinks. Actually, he thinks maybe he does want to do that, and it’s the closest thing he’s had to a plan of his own for years. Maybe forever. “But, you know, none of that right away. I have to figure out what to do with the house first. What to do with Mom’s ashes. It’s stupid to be hung up on that, but I am. Have been.”
“Culinary school’s a lot pricier than UNR,” VB says, frowning.
“Yeah. I know.” She thinks he’s a shitty student. Well, he has been a shitty student.
Anna clears her throat. “When the time comes, talk to me.”
VB jerks back and turns bright red. “Oh God, that wasn’t what I meant. I wasn’t suggesting that you—I wouldn’t—I—”
“I know you weren’t.” Anna’s voice is mild, completely matter-of-fact. “Jeremy, you know I have resources. Talk to me if I might be able to help. That’s all. I’m not promising anything right now. We’ll see what it looks like when we get there.”
“Um,” he says, but fortunately the main course comes, and they all busy themselves with their food again. Thank God for food. They share little bites of what they’re eating, and Amy, teasing, asks Jeremy to critique it, and he does—cautiously, because Anna likes this place and he does, too, and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but he does have opinions—and the chef comes over and they chat about local markets and spices and preparations, and, Jeremy has to admit, it’s a hell of a lot more fun than talking about Cranford.
After the chef’s left, Anna claps her hands. “Dessert. I want chocolate, and I’m not going to let the rest of you sit there and watch me eat it. You have to have dessert, too.”
Amy nudges Jeremy with her elbow. “You could open your own restaurant. With a CC theme.”
“Or Guatemalan,” says VB. “If you ever decide to research the culture. That would give you a fun reason to travel there.”
“Or only desserts,” says Anna. “I’m definitely going for the chocolate decadence. What are the rest of you having?”
* * *
Veronique’s working her way through a deliciously tangy lemon ice—the least expensive of the dessert options, because she’s still appalled that Anna’s showering them with charity like this—when Amy asks the question she’s been dreading. “What about you, Professor Bellamy? You’re going back in the fall, right?”
“Veronique,” Vera says. “In this context. Unless you think you won’t be able to revert to formality if you ever take one of my classes again.” Why is the child even asking about this, in front of Percy Clark’s mother?
Raised by wolves.
“Yes, I’m going back in the fall. I’m teaching 101 and a British lit survey.” Not Women & Lit. She doubts she’ll ever be asked to teach that again.
“I thought you wanted to retire?” Jeremy says. “Mom says you did.”
Dammit, Melinda! Why did you share that with him?
“I’m working through my retirement options,” Veronique says crisply, because she doesn’t want to admit to money problems and then have this creepy rich woman throw money at her. Let Anna Clark find other ways to salve her conscience.
Anna frowns. “Were you hit by the downturn?”
Everyone was hit by the downturn, you nosy bitch, not that it’s any of your business. Just because I offered you chocolate yesterday, when I didn’t even know yet how addicted you are to it, doesn’t make you my friend. “Somewhat,” Veronique says, trying to sound unconcerned, “and there are also property considerations.”
Jeremy, who’s been working his way through a massive chunk of bread pudding, stops with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Hey.”
“Hey?” Amy laughs.
“Hey yourself,” Veronique says, and she’s about to start talking about Elizabeth Gaskell to change the subject, but Jeremy cuts her off.
“I should’ve thought of this before, except I couldn’t have, because I hadn’t thought seriously about leaving Reno. Okay.” He puts down his fork, puts one hand on Amy’s shoulder and the other on Veronique’s. “You two are friends. Amy and I are friends. Veronique and Mom were friends.”
He doesn’t consider himself my friend, Veronique thinks. Well, no, of course not. “Yes?”
“Okay. So. I have this house that’s paid for, but I don’t want to sell it, partly because I grew up there and partly because I want to put Mom’s ashes in the garden, which means I don’t want it—you know, out of the family. But I don’t want to live there right now, either, and I don’t want to rent it to anybody who might trash the place.” He taps Veronique’s shoulder. “You want to retire, but you’re still paying for your house and you don’t think you can sell it right now.” He taps Amy’s shoulder. “You’ve talked about finding a house to share with friends. So”—grinning and expansive, he gestures at both of them —“Amy and her quiet, responsible friends, who are a whole lot like nuns, honest, can move into Veronique’s house and pay the mortgage. Veronique can move into Mom’s house and not have to pay anything. And I can move out of Mom’s house and go to San Francisco or wherever without worrying about strangers living in the house, and that way I’ll feel comfortable putting Mom in the garden, too.”
He sits back, clearly pleased with himself. “Musical houses! What do you think?”
Veronique feels dizzy. “I don’t know if I want to live in your house. I love your house, Jeremy, but it’s not mine, and it would just remind me of your mother—”
“Tell me about it.”
“—and I don’t want to move. I hate moving.”
He waves this away. He’s flushed now, excited. “We’ll help you. People my age are really good at moving. It’s a free house!”
Anna raises a finger. “Not quite free, no. Property taxes. Utilities. Insurance.”
Jeremy looks taken aback, but then says, “Taxes are low in Reno. Mom always said so. You’d have to pay all those on your own house, too. Or maybe I can pay the property taxes, or the estate can. We’ll talk to Tom. Amy? What do you think? V, her friends really are very quiet. They hardly party at all. They’ve never destroyed anything.”
Terrific, Veronique thinks. This is worse than any scheme Anna could have suggested, because it’s halfway plausible. “I have to think about it.”
“Sure. Sure you do.” He smiles. “But think about being there and not having to teach. Or grade. And you’ll have some money, right? I mean, for property taxes and all that other stuff, on whichever house? And food?”
Veronique ignores this. When did her financial profile become an appropriate topic of conversation? “And where would you be living, sir? And how would you be paying for it?”
“Dunno. Haven’t figured that part out yet.” He picks up the fork again and dives back into the bread pudding. “It needs work, obviously.”
“It’s cosmic,” Amy says, beaming. “Very Comradely of you, Jeremy.”
Jeremy puts his fork down again. “And Aunt Rosie’s house is paid for, I know that much, and I don’t know if she could sell it, but maybe the two of you could live in Mom’s house. Then she’d be less lonely without Uncle Walter.”
Oh, joy. Living with Rosemary would be Veronique’s idea of hell. “Jeremy, this isn’t a comic book, and we’re not chess pieces. I appreciate your concern, but I don’t think this is the right time to have this discussion.” She glares at Anna, who raises an eyebrow.
“I believe that’s my cue to use the powder room. I’ll pay the check on my way back. Think about places you might want to go this afternoon.”
Home, Veronique thinks. My home. But she shivers. Fall’s coming: change, change, and she has to go back to teaching again and has to hold it together, and she suddenly realizes, with an ache of longing, that yes, she’d infinitely rather move into Melinda’s house than have to grade one more stack of undergraduate essays.
It can’t happen that soon, of course. She has to teach for at least another year. Jeremy has to figure out his culinary school scheme, if indeed he still wants to do it in another six months or even two minutes. It can’t happen soon, and probably it can’t happen at all. It’s too easy, too neat, and it can’t be that easy or neat. Life doesn’t work that way. She knows that. She has to stay realistic about this. But she’s moved that Jeremy even offered. Melinda would be proud of him; this is something Melinda herself would have done. Something of Melinda has survived. And for that reason, if no other, Veronique feels a slight easing in her chest, and allows herself to name it hope.
* * *
After the sterile propriety of the Unitarian service, Rosemary’s immensely relieved to be back in an Episcopal church. It’s a pretty little place, dark wood and stained glass, with a much more diverse congregation than any in Reno. There are blacks here, Asians, a few same-sex couples of both genders—even not knowing them, you can tell they’re together by how they touch each other’s shoulders, how they pass the Peace to each other with kisses and long hugs—someone in a wheelchair with something that looks like cerebral palsy, lots of kids. It’s a lively, happy place, clearly a healthy congregation.
Rosemary has always loved this set of readings. Abraham bargaining with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah: “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” Paul urging the Colossians to faithfulness: “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” And Jesus, in the Gospel, proclaiming the power of persistence: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
Greg preaches well, talking about how sometimes it takes a lot of work to perceive God’s generosity. Sometimes it feels like you have to haggle, to accept some hard bargains. Sometimes it feels like you’re banging at 3 A.M. on the door of a stranger who doesn’t want to get up and help you. And it especially feels that way when you’re in pain: grieving, struggling with loss, trying to make sense of tragedy.
He looks directly at Hen and Rosemary and Tom as he says that. He tells a funny, bittersweet story about having to propose to his wife three times before she accepted, and notes that as much as he adores his wife, he believes that God’s even kinder and more loving. And then he looks at Hen and Rosemary again. “Sometimes we just have to keep trying. The important thing is not to go away, not to lose faith, not to take another offer or try a different doorway, some other place where it costs you less but you’ll never get what you need.”
It’s a good homily. Afterward—after the controlled chaos of coffee hour, with kids darting around adults to grab the best cookies first—Hen and Tom and Rosemary drive to Pike Place Market. Veronique’s chocolate is gone. They all want more.
“I needed that sermon today,” Rosemary says. “I wish Greg had preached at Percy’s funeral.”
Tom grunts. “The Clarks wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I don’t think the Sodom and Gomorrah passage would have been a pastoral inclusion. Anyway, you know funeral texts usually aren’t that week’s lectionary.”
“I know. I didn’t say it was a realistic wish. I’m glad we got communion today, though, even if it was fish food.” Hen laughs, and Rosemary says, “Hen, how would you have handled that funeral yesterday? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Do you even do funerals for people outside the parish?” Tom asks. “I mean, I know you do them for former members nobody’s seen for ten years, but total strangers?”
“Nobody’s a stranger to God. That’s the Episcopal take on it. If the Clarks had come to St. Phil’s and asked for a funeral, I’d probably have agreed. I’d have to run it past the vestry first—”
“No,” Rosemary says. “This funeral. You told me Anna wrote asking your prayers on the day of the service. What if she’d asked you to officiate?”
“I’d have helped her find someone in Seattle.”
“What if she lived in Reno, or you lived in Seattle? What if she said she didn’t want someone in Seattle? What if she really wanted you to do it?”
Hen scrunches up her nose. “Is that a parking space?”
“Hen! Stop changing the subject!”
It is a parking space. Hen backs in with a small crow of triumph, and they all get out and dodge raindrops until they’re in the market. Tom peels away to go buy salmon for dinner, leaving Rosemary and Hen to find the chocolate. First, though, they find the craft booths: gleaming silver, skeins of woolen yarn glowing in the dim light, hand-turned wooden bowls. “I think,” Hen says, peering at a display of earrings, “that I might have tried to include today’s Gospel. I’d have suggested it, anyway. Because that reading doesn’t just talk about God keeping promises, the opening doors and so forth. It compares divine love to human parental love. Jesus asks the parents in the crowd, ‘If your daughter asks for a fish, would you give her a snake instead? If your son asks for an egg, would you give him a scorpion?’ If imperfect human parents work so hard to give good gifts to their children, he says, how much more will God give us? And I’d have talked, I think, about how hard parents—most parents, anyway, and certainly the Clarks—try to love their kids, and how sometimes the kids do hideous things despite the parents’ best efforts. And it’s not because they did anything wrong. It’s because we have free will, and sometimes we misuse it. But God loves and forgives us even when we’ve done hideous things, and we have to try to forgive our children, and ourselves, when they do hideous things.”
Rosemary shakes her head. “So you forgive Percy?”
Hen sighs and picks up a pair of earrings, articulated silver fish with garnet eyes. “I said ‘try,’ Rosemary. I’m answering your question: I think that’s something like what I’d have said. And then I’d have talked about how frustrating it is to knock on doors when no one’s answering, and you just have to keep trying until someone does. Anna went through a lot of rejection, planning that service.” She holds the fish up to her ears. “You like these?”
“I do. They’re lovely.”
“You think they’re too flashy for church?”
“They’re fish. They’re fine for church. Anyway, you can wear them when you’re not in church.”
Hen grins. “Good. I’m buying them. Then we can look for the chocolate.” While the merchant’s running her credit card, she says, “I’m glad Anna didn’t ask me to do the service, though. I felt for that Unitarian minister.”
“You’d have done a better job than she did.”
Hen shrugs. “She’s younger than I am. She’s probably been ordained all of ten minutes. And, you know, I’m not sure I could have even thought about doing Percy’s service before I’d done Melinda’s, and you can’t wish having to do a service like Melinda’s on anybody.”
“True.”
Hen decides to wear her new earrings. They find the chocolate, and spend entirely too much money on an assortment of small, heavy bags: truffles and caramels and chocolate-covered pretzels and chocolate-covered orange peel. “For the ride home tomorrow,” Hen says happily, and Rosemary snorts.
“You expect there to be any left?”
Hen laughs, the silver fish swinging. They go back outside to wait in the van for Tom, passing the bag of chocolate-covered orange peel back and forth. “So,” Hen says, “how did it speak to you? Greg’s sermon? What resonated for you?”
Rosemary looks out the window. “What he said. Persistence through grief. Which for me is also persistence in dealing with Walter. I guess, you know, I just have to keep knocking on that door as long as it’s still there, and pray that I can catch anyone home, even for five minutes.” She rides a long, slow swell of sorrow, and wipes her eyes. “God, I miss Melinda. I’ll be a complete mess when Walter dies, because then I’ll be missing everybody at the same time. Although I did that when she died, too. But I’d counted on her to get me through losing Walter, and now she can’t. Is that selfish of me?”
“Of course not.” Hen squeezes her shoulder, and then holds out a hand for the chocolate. “The rest of us will get you through it. We’ll do the best we can.”
“I know.” Rosemary looks down at her lap. “And I think I’ll be better at the hospital now. We get patients who’ve been staring into the void for so long they don’t remember what sunlight looks like. I always felt for them, but I couldn’t reach them, not even after Walter’s illness. Maybe I’ll be able to reach some of them, now.” She shivers. “Yeah. Not anything you’d wish on anyone. I asked for fish and God gave me scorpions, or gave me both. The scorpions sure don’t taste as good, but they have their own uses.” She makes a face. “Give me that chocolate back, would you?”
* * *
Monday morning, Anna wakes up to a cold, wet nose in her face. She groans, pushes it away, and hears a mournful, muted howl from Bart. What’s he doing in the bedroom, anyway?
She swings her legs out of bed, shoves her feet into slippers, puts on a robe, and heads for the kitchen, snapping her fingers for Bart to follow her. William must have left the bedroom door open, which isn’t like him.
“William?” she calls. No answer. He’s not in the living room or the kitchen. She does a quick tour of the rest of the house and then peers into the garage. His car’s gone, but he left the dog here. Weird.
Not that weird, though, not lately. Shrugging, she goes back into the kitchen to see if he made coffee before he left. He didn’t. The machine’s cold, and there’s an envelope leaning against it. A card.
A card?
She very deliberately turns on the coffeemaker, hands shaking only a little, and then reaches for the card. Percy didn’t leave a note. Why has William left her a note?
She pulls out the card. It features Monet’s water lilies on the front. Inside, William’s written in his usual scrawl, That was a fine and moving speech yesterday. You did a good job on the service. Thank you.
Nothing else. Her stomach tightens. Oh, God. Is this William’s way of telling her that now she’ll have to do good job on his service, too? How long should she wait before calling the police? What—
The phone rings, and she jerks toward it, panic fluttering like wingbeats in her lungs, her veins. It’s eight on a Monday morning. What—
“Anna, it’s Carl. Did I wake you?”
“No,” she says. Hearing from her lawyer at this hour’s hardly an auspicious sign, but at least she’s not hearing from the police. “I’m awake. Are you calling with bad news?”
He sighs. “William just called to let me know he’s retained a divorce attorney, and recommends that you do the same. He wants it to be amicable, he says, but he thinks all the communication should go through the lawyers.”
Anna laughs aloud. “Communication? What communication? He hasn’t talked to me since Percy died.”
“Oh, Jesus, Anna, I’m so sorry.” Carl sounds more upset than she is. Right now, she’s just relieved that William’s alive. “And to hit you with this so soon after the funeral—”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Listen, I need to eat breakfast and take the dog out. I guess I have custody of Bart: William left him here. Can I call you in a few hours, to get some referrals?”
“Of course. Are you all right?”
“I am,” she says. “Don’t worry.” And when she gets off the phone, she discovers, somewhat to her amazement, that she is all right. She’s been expecting this for months, has been living with the dread of it even before she could consciously recognize what she feared. Now it’s happened, and she feels like a boil has been lanced or a fever has broken. She feels better. You aren’t supposed to make major decisions for at least a year after a major loss, but if this has to happen—and she can’t see any way around it—she’d rather begin.
She knows this slightly giddy peace won’t last, knows there will be all kinds of grief to work through, but right now, all she has to do is walk the dog. She gets dressed, gulps down some orange juice, puts a bagel for herself in one pocket and puppy-poop bags in the other, whistles for Bart, and clips him to his lead.
Walking down the driveway, she wonders how they’ll split everything. She’d like to keep the house, and she’s certainly been spending more time here than William has, but maybe that won’t be possible. She’ll have to work. Without the house, she could move away from Seattle, move somewhere sunnier. Arizona. Reno. She laughs again. Wouldn’t Melinda’s crew be surprised?
Jeremy and the others are on the road back home now, she suspects, and she’s on a road, too, one long deferred and long intuited. She loves Seattle. She’ll stay here if she can, if she can afford it, if she can support herself. William wants it amicable. Is alimony amicable? Does she even want it? She’ll need it, for a while, until she can get on her feet, but she doesn’t think she needs a moat anymore. Maybe she’ll move off the island, into the city. If she can’t keep the house.
She walks down the hill, Bart happily lifting his leg to all his usual trees. The sun’s out, for a wonder, and it glints on the water, and she thinks as she always does about Percy, about the last time he saw this view. Will William leave her half of Percy’s ashes? Will William want any of them?
She shudders, just for a moment, and Bart, heeling as obediently as he always has, looks up at her, concerned. “Okay,” she says, and touches his head. “I’m okay.” Percy, helping her along the path. There is no one to help her along this new one, this road to another life.
She will, she supposes, find people. Friends, lovers, business associates. She’ll have to find them. That’s what always happens, after divorces. She’s seen enough of them to have faith in the future, even if she can’t imagine what it will look like.
Bart does his business, and Anna cleans up after him. She’s chilled, now. She needs to go back, drink coffee, shower. She needs to steel herself for the draining business of calling lawyers.
But she stands by the side of the road, looking through the woods at the water. Another minute, here. Just another minute. There’s a faint trail meandering between the trees, made by deer or dogs or kids, and Anna thinks again of that day in the Cascades.
And an image comes to her. She sees herself walking Bart along that trail, sees herself negotiating the difficult places, going carefully, being deliberate. She will go there soon: next weekend, maybe, this week, whenever she can get away from the legal mess. She will drive to that trailhead in the Cascades, and the dog will be with her, and she will bring Percy’s ashes. And she will scatter them along the trail wherever she can, but especially in the difficult places, around tree roots and rocks.
Percy helped her over those patches when he was alive. Maybe that was the only good thing he ever did, but he did it for her, and now he will do something else for her. Because she has survived his death, and Melinda Soto’s death—because she has survived all the doubts and the questions and the tears—she knows she can survive a divorce, too.
It’s a small lesson, the tiniest of gifts, but it’s something. Anna breathes, tugs at Bart’s leash, and turns. She walks back up the hill, back to the house, back to the ruins of her marriage and the remains of her child.
* * *
Melinda lies in her hotel room in a spreading, sticky pool of blood. The blood’s warm, but she’s cold. The boy who just left the room has beaten and brutalized her, has stabbed her. She tried to reason with him and failed; she tried to fight him and failed. She tried to scream and couldn’t, because he’d gagged her with a towel.
It all seems very far away now. As she lies there, she knows she is dying, and she is not afraid. She is only afraid if she remembers what just happened to her: the boy from the pool, the boy who was so polite this morning, grown feral and ferocious, forcing his way into her room, forcing his way into her body with his own flesh and then with bright cold metal. “Don’t scream or I’ll kill you,” and she couldn’t, because of the towel, but he did anyway.
When she remembers that, she is terrified.
So she tries to remember other things: her son, her friends, her job. All of that frightens her again, because she knows she’ll never again see the people she loves, knows they’ll grieve and grasp for meaning. She knows they’ll suffer. She doesn’t want them to. She can’t help them. She knows they will help each other and help Jeremy, but that’s not enough. Her inability to comfort her child clenches her hands into fists. Her helplessness hurts more than anything her murderer did to her, because what he did is already over, and this new pain has just begun, is omnipresent.
To escape it, she remembers people who are already dead, who cannot feel pain anymore. Her father, tying fishing flies. Her mother, baking cookies.
Where Melinda lies on the hotel room carpet, the blood a lukewarm lake now, she can see a piece of the sky through the window above her. She sees a glowing whiteness. Melinda sees the moon. It is not full—it is partial, broken—but it is very bright.
And Melinda, at the end of her life, remembers the beginning, remembers the first time she saw the moon. She must have only been a baby then. She remembers how perfect it was, remembers the wonder it awakened in her.
She remembers the moon before it was broken, before she saw its flaws and holes. She knows she has mended it at last, performed the task she has been joking about her whole life, almost. The moon, in memory, is beautiful.
She still remembers the brutal boy, still remembers her friends, her job, her child, but all of that is receding, along with panic and worry and pain. All of that is very far away now, and the moon is very close, so close that she could touch it if only she could lift her hands.
The white light grows, and spreads, and swallows her. Melinda no longer has hands, or a body, or the memory of loss. She dissolves into the brightness, and then there is only the moon shining in the window, onto emptiness.