It was easy now to imagine—after the bedrock and hemlock compost were poured, and the plum trees were planted, and the dusty red hydrangeas with their giant balls of bloom appeared in the corners of the yard—that this place was about to become someone’s dream. Jameson wondered who that someone would be, and he guessed whoever they were would have no idea how their life was about to change. He already envied them their existence, even as they remained unaware of the good fortune headed their way.
He had kept to himself while the place took on its final shape, walking the rooms, inspecting the fit and shine, doubling back. More than once he stood near a window just to feel the sash cord, or wrap his hand around a glass knob. There was comfort and pleasure in that, an aesthetic that went beyond the eyes. He could feel the harmony that had taken shape, and was grateful to leave behind this work, to put right this particular house in its highest order, for June.
He thought a lot, too, as he worked, of the things beyond this house and grounds: a young girl sent away to endure a punishment that did not fit the crime, a punishment that was itself a crime, and how death in exchange for justice seemed too good for some. But that kind of thinking fueled a burning vengeance. It was good that Hicks’s son was not alive when Jameson’s children were dead. It was good that this Thornton character had died as well. Jameson might have gone looking for him.
But here, this place was like a truce offered up to a world full of heartache and regret. The season was bringing a well-groomed close to these days, and soon he’d be home.
June had stayed off her ankle and sent word by text that it was healing nicely. He didn’t know if she was drinking, but he kept himself from going over to see. He sensed she was doing all right, that she would be OK, though his mind kept going back to those bottles on the counter. He should have poured them out. He shouldn’t have said what he said when he was there that last time, either, even though it was true.
He took the cash from the porch and bought what June wrote on her list—coffee, yogurt, and bread on Tuesday; Dubliner cheese, strawberry jam, and pistachios on Friday—and the weeks went on for them in this way, Jameson delivering the small bag of groceries to her mat, and texting her afterward to make sure she’d taken everything inside, out of the heat. June’s replies were always the same: Thank you, Jameson, this is lovely. He could hear the sound of her voice in those simple words. Once he was at his truck and saw her front door open and her arm reach out to retrieve the bag. A rush of blood kicked his heart and filled his face and he turned away so quickly he had no way of knowing if she had seen him.
Then today she called.
“He never charged me,” she said, referring to Hicks. “Called it gratis and hung up.” She sounded well. She sounded distant, too, as if they’d never shared a personal word between them.
“Would you like to come over here?” Jameson asked. “I could show you the house . . .”
June hesitated. “My foot is still a bit unstable . . .”
“Right. Right. Well, I’ll come to you, then. I wanted to tell you some things about Hicks. Some things I’ve been thinking. I’ll only be a minute.”
Moments later he appeared at her door. “Hey,” she said, so gently.
“Hey,” he replied.
She didn’t invite him in. Instead she stepped out with a small limp, and they sat on the first step, settling in with forearms on knees, their sights directed to the ocean.
“I know for certain that Hicks used to have money,” Jameson started in. “He had a well-run construction business and a wife he cared about, so far as I could tell, and two kids. His daughter grew up and went to college in Seattle and never seemed to come back, but his son . . . he was younger, and troubled.”
“Listen—you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”
“No, no. I can tell you. I want to tell you.”
June smiled with a hint of sadness.
“That boy, early on, it seemed to me, wasn’t quite right. What happened to him, I don’t know. What I do know is that his mother was cooking the books of the business, but I don’t know if Hicks was in on it and let her take the fall. She went to jail.”
“Wow.”
“After that, Hicks’s life pretty much went to hell. He lashed out at everyone who came near. I imagine his boy got the brunt of it. But the thing here is, the thing is, Hicks ran into Sarah Anne one morning, the morning I mean, the day everything . . . He ran into her at the Little Grocer. From the sound of it he’d been drinking. He seemed out of touch with reality, telling her I ripped him off on some job we’d done years before. She told him to go home, and he just sort of snapped, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her against the shelves of crackers and chips by the register. Grahame jumped in and got hold of him by the neck, I guess, and threw him out of the store. When Sarah Anne came home and told me, I got on my bike and took off after him. She begged me to leave it alone. So . . . yeah.”
“That’s when you got into the wreck?”
Jameson wiped his forehead of sweat. There was no need to answer.
“Well,” June said, “that’s simply awful. It’s tragic. There is no other way to say it.”
“I heard—and listen, I don’t know, people talk, but I can easily imagine it’s true—I heard Hicks went home and got into it with his boy. The boy picked up one of Hicks’s guns and drove off. Seventeen years old. I don’t know that he even had a plan so much as a deep hatred for the world, and that day he’d had about all he could take. Just a kid. A goddamn kid.”
They fell into silence, and Jameson imagined June on the sofa where he’d held her, imagined her in the kitchen where he’d last seen her, the windowpanes behind her head, the old teacups on the wall shelf across from her, the apron on the copper hook. But she was right next to him, as lovely, if not more so, than the woman in his imaginings.
“And where is everyone now?” she asked. “I mean, his wife and daughter.”
“His wife got out of jail and married a guy she’d worked with at an accounting office. His daughter, I don’t know. I guess she’s gone somewhere else to start over.”
“If only it were that easy,” June said.
After a moment he said, “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
Jameson rubbed his palms down his thighs. “I’m finished. I finished yesterday, in fact.”
June let out a long breath, propped her elbows on her knees, and cradled her forehead in her hands. “All right.”
“The guy who’ll paint the outside trim will be here in a few days. That’s the last of it.”
“You’ve finished in record time.” She continued to look down at her feet.
“It was a pleasure.”
“Well . . .”
“I mean that. The place came together pretty much in perfect order. I don’t think I could have pictured it any better.”
“Thank you.” She looked up at him now. If he had touched her face just then, if he had kissed her like he wanted to, he believed she would have let him, he believed she was waiting for him to do just that. “For everything,” she said, turning away.
“Thank you, June. For letting me come back like this. For being here again under these conditions. I think it was what I needed. I know it was. It’s been good for me in ways I’d never expected.”
“Then perhaps it’s Van Hicks you need to thank.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“It’s done wonders for me too, you know, having you here, having the place returned to what it was. I’m going to get emotional here, so . . .”
“Yeah, that’s all right then . . .”
“I don’t plan to go over until you’ve gone. If there’s anything . . . I don’t expect there to be, but of course, if I have a question about anything I’ll be in touch.”
“All right.”
“All right.”
“So . . . I’ll see you, or I won’t.”
“Yes. That’s right. And Jameson?”
“Yes?”
“You know, don’t you, that you can always come back.”
“I suppose,” he said. “In theory.” He stood and brushed the seat of his jeans. “June,” he said.
“Take care of yourself,” she said.
He nodded at his feet. “You too.”
“Goodbye, Jameson.”
He looked directly at her, but she did not take her eyes away from the ocean. He thought of the way paint splatter and rust and the raw scent of turpentine struck him as the most beautiful things, and how he’d never said that out loud, but he wanted to say it to June.
“Goodbye, June,” he said, and walked away.