Baby. The mere word might have caused the dream and led to Daisy’s recollection of the day she’d forced herself to forget, the day Jim had told her about Juanita’s baby. So it was Fielding who had started it, that unpredictable man whose friendship could be more disastrous than his enmity. Questions without answers dangled in Jim’s mind like kites without strings. What had brought Fielding to San Félice in the first place? What were his intentions? Where was he now? Was the girl still with him? Mrs. Rosario hadn’t been able to answer any of these questions, but she’d answered another before it was asked: Fielding had seen the boy, Paul.
Jim watched the raindrops zigzagging across the windshield, and he thought of Daisy walking in the rain on Laurel Street trying to find her lost day as if it were something that was still there in the old house. Tears came into his eyes, of love, of pity, of helplessness. He could no longer keep her safe and protect her from knowledge about her father that would cause her pain for the rest of her life. Yet he knew he must keep on trying, right to the end. “We can’t let her find out now, Jim,” Ada Fielding had said, and he had replied, “It’s inevitable.” “No, Jim, don’t talk like that.” “You shouldn’t have lied to her in the first place.” “I did it for her own good, Jim. If she’d had children, they might have been like him. It would have killed her.” “People don’t die so easily.”
He realized now how true this was. He’d died a little more each day, each hour, of the past week, and there was still a long way to go.
He blinked away his tears and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles as if he were punishing them for having seen too much, or too little, or too late. When he looked up again, Daisy was coming down the street, half running, her dark hair uncovered and her raincoat blowing open. She appeared excited and happy, like a child walking along the edge of a steep precipice, confident that there would be no landslide, no loose stones under her feet.
Carrying the landslide and the loose stones in his pockets, he got out of the car and crossed the road, head bowed against the wind.
“Daisy?”
She gave a little jump of fright, as if she were being accosted by a strange man. When she recognized him, she didn’t say anything, but he could see the happiness and excitement drain out of her face. It was like watching someone bleed.
“Have you been following me, Jim?”
“No.”
“You’re here.”
“Ada told me you had an appointment at — at his office.” He didn’t want to say the name Pinata. It would have made the shadow moving behind the window too real. “Please come home with me, Daisy.”
“No.”
“If I have to plead with you, I will.”
“It won’t do the slightest good.”
“I must make the attempt anyway, for your sake.”
She turned away with a skeptical little smile that was hardly more than a twist of the mouth. “How quick people are to do things for my sake, never their own.”
“Married people have a mutual welfare that can’t be divided like a pair of towels marked His and Hers.”
“Then stop talking about my sake. If you mean for the sake of our marriage, say so. Though of course it doesn’t sound quite so noble, does it?”
“Please don’t be ironic,” he said heavily. “The issue is too important.”
“What is the issue?”
“You don’t realize the kind of catastrophe you’re bringing down on yourself.”
“But you realize?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
He was silent.
“Tell me, Jim.”
“I can’t.”
“You see your own wife headed for a catastrophe, as you put it, and you can’t even tell her what it is?”
“No.”
“Does it have anything to do with the man in my grave?”
“Don’t talk like that,” he said harshly. “You have no grave. You’re alive, healthy...”
“You aren’t answering my question about Camilla.”
“I can’t. Too many people are involved.”
She raised her eyebrows, half in surprise, half in irony. “It sounds as if there’s been some giant plot going on behind my back.”
“It’s been my duty to protect you. It still is.” He put his hand on her arm. “Come with me now, Daisy. We’ll forget this past week, pretend it never happened.”
She stood silent in the noisy rain. It would have been easy, at that moment, to yield to the pressure of his hand, follow him across the street, letting him guide her back to safety. They would take up where they left off; it would be Monday morning again, with Jim reading aloud to her from the Chronicle. The days would pass quietly, and if they promised no excitement, they promised no catastrophe, either. It was the nights she feared, the return of the dream. She would climb back up the cliff from the sea and find the stranger under the stone cross, under the seamark tree.
“Come home with me now, Daisy, before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late.”
He watched her disappear through the front door of the building. Then he crossed the road and got into his car, without looking up at the shadow behind the lighted window.
The noise of the rain beating on the tile roof was so loud that Pinata didn’t hear her step in the corridor or her knocking at the door of his office. It was after seven o’clock. He’d been chasing around after Juanita and Fielding for three hours until he’d reached the point where all the bars, and the people in them, looked alike. He was feeling tired and irritable, and when he looked up and saw Daisy standing in the doorway, he said brusquely, “You’re late.”
He expected, in fact wanted, her to snap back at him and give him an excuse to express his anger.
She merely looked at him coolly. “Yes. I met Jim outside.”
“Jim?”
“My husband.” She sat down, brushing her wet hair back from her forehead with the back of her hand. “He wanted me to go home with him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I found out some things this afternoon that indicate we’ve been on the right track.”
“What are they?”
“It won’t be easy or pleasant for me to tell you, especially about the girl. But of course you have to know, so you can plan what to do next.” She blinked several times, but Pinata couldn’t tell whether it was because the overhead lights were bothering her eyes or whether she was on the point of weeping. “There’s some connection between the girl and Camilla. I’m pretty sure Jim knows what it is, although he wouldn’t admit it.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he indicate that he was acquainted with Camilla?”
“No, but I think he was.”
She told him then, in a detached voice, about the events of the afternoon: her discovery of the check stubs in Jim’s desk, the call from Muriel about Fielding, her talk with Adam Burnett at the dock, and finally her meeting Jim. He listened carefully, his only comments being the tapping of his heels as he paced the floor.
He said, when she’d finished, “What was in the letter in the pink envelope that Muriel mentioned to you?”
“From the date I know it could have been only one thing — the news about Juanita and the child.”
“And that’s what motivated his trip up here?”
“Yes.”
“Why four years after the fact?”
“Perhaps it wasn’t possible for him to do anything about it at the time,” she said defensively. “I know he wanted to.”