"Are you going to be all right, Garth?" I asked tightly.
He nodded. "I'm all right now. I'm just explaining why I had to leave."
"Sacra Silver didn't do this to you, Garth; Mary did. I love her too, but obviously not the way you do. When you give of yourself like you have, it makes you vulnerable; it gives to the person you love the power to hurt you very deeply. In your case, I'm thinking that kind of hurt could literally be fatal."
My brother shook his head. "I don't know how to fight him. I can punch him out, throw him in the river, maybe even kill him, but none of that seems to make the slightest impression on my wife. She's still afraid of him-afraid for me. She believes Silver is a man I can't handle, and it's that attitude I can't handle."
"She loves you, Garth, and she doesn't want you hurt. You have to give her points for that."
He nodded, but tears continued to stream down his cheeks. "It doesn't matter, Mongo. If she loves me so much that she pushes me away and humiliates me in an effort to save me from ghosts that exist only in her mind, then it would be better if she didn't love me; if we were just friends, at least she might be able to confide in me. I'd rather she hated me than loved me and. . do this. I tried to explain that to her this morning, but by then I wasn't able to talk too well myself. I can't fight ghosts, Mongo; I can't help her fight her terror if she won't let me. I couldn't-can't-deal with it. That's why I'm here, and not there."
I glanced at my watch. I had to leave for my luncheon meeting, and after that I had to zip down to Foley Square to give a deposition. With luck, I would be finished by four-thirty; assuming rush-hour traffic wasn't hopelessly snarled on the West Side Highway or George Washington Bridge, I figured I could be in Cairn by early evening. "I'd like your permission to drive up and talk to her."
The tears had abruptly stopped. Garth rose from the bed, closed his suitcase, carried it to the closet. "You don't need my permission to talk to Mary, brother. Like you said, she's your friend too. You introduced us to each other."
"I don't want my brother to think I'm butting into his business."
Garth, completely clear-eyed now, turned to face me. "I don't think you're butting into my business, Mongo. As a matter of fact, it looks like my wife and I could use your help now. She's in trouble, in her head, and she won't let me help her, which gives me trouble with my head. Whatever Sacra Silver has on her, if he does have anything on her, doesn't matter. It's her fear that's tearing us apart, not Sacra Silver. She has to trust me and our love enough to let us work this out together."
"I'll give her the message." I walked to the door of the bedroom, turned back. "I'm thinking that dealing with Mary's haunts may keep us preoccupied for a while. Maybe we should cut Vicky's visit with us short."
Garth nodded curtly. "I'll call April."
"You want me to call? It might be easier for me to explain."
"No, Mongo; I'll call. I don't have any trouble explaining the situation to other people. It's my wife I can't talk to."
Sacra Silver's car was back in the driveway. I pulled my Volkswagen Rabbit up behind it. I got out, walked up the flagstone path to the front door, knocked. There was no answer, and I knocked again. I hadn't called first, because I hadn't been sure what I wanted to say over the phone; also, considering Mary's state of mind, I had been concerned that she might simply refuse to see me. As a result, it could very well turn out that I was wasting my time. I knocked a third time. When there was still no answer, I tried the door. It was open, and I went in.
"Hello?" I called. "Mary, you home? It's Mongo."
I walked through the living room and down a connecting corridor to the music room, where I found Sacra Silver, to all appearances quite alive, sitting in Garth's chair. He was wearing new boots, brown, the same jeans, and a new T-shirt, this one yellow. He was sipping at what looked like Scotch or bourbon on the rocks, and he lifted the tumbler to me in a mock salute as I entered the room. His cold, piercing black eyes glittered with amusement, and his thin lips curled back in a sneer that was for him probably a genuine, heart-felt smile. He was obviously enjoying what he considered to be his little reincarnation joke, but he was going to be disappointed if he expected any reaction from me.
"How you doing there, big fella?" I said casually. "I was looking for Mary. Is she around?"
He was definitely disappointed at my lack of response to seeing him not only alive and well but back in Garth's home, and back in Garth's leather recliner. His smile, what little there had been of it, vanished. "If she was here, Frederickson, she'd most likely have answered the door, wouldn't she? Do you always walk into other people's homes uninvited?"
"No, but in this case the home happens to belong to my brother and sister-in-law. In the absence of an owner to tell me I'm not welcome, I guess I have as much right to be here as you do."
"What do you want?"
"Like I said, I want to talk to Mary."
"What if she doesn't want to talk to you?"
"Then I'll go home."
"She's at the hospital. I don't know when she'll be back."
"Who's hurt?"
The simulated smile returned to his face. "The assistant pastor at her church. The dumb schmuck was skulking around trying to hide a flag, of all things-something to do with an argument over whether it should be on the altar. The bozo was taking the sucker down into the basement; he tripped, fell down the stairs, and broke his back." Now Silver laughed, a kind of nasal bray that grated on my nerves. The image of a man breaking his back obviously amused him. "There must be a moral there someplace."
"If there is, I'm sure you'll tell me what it is."
Silver drained off his drink, set the tumbler down on the small, glass-topped table to his left, smacked his lips. "The moral of your story is that it doesn't make any difference whether or not you get to talk to Mary; there's nothing you can say that will make her change her mind about anything. She belongs to me, and she knows it. The sooner your brother realizes that and accepts it, the sooner he'll be able to get on with his life. Maybe he already has, because I understand he walked out of here this morning. Smart move. He doesn't know shit about Mary. For Christ's sake, they've been married two years, and he doesn't even realize she's queer, or that she spent six months in a mental hospital after she almost baked her brains on peyote. She and I have done things together she probably doesn't even remember."
"You know what Robin Williams says about the sixties," I replied with a shrug. "If you remember them, you probably weren't there. What's your point?"
He rattled the melting ice cubes, then leaned back in the chair, studying me through narrowed lids. He was obviously not getting the audience response he wanted, and now looked even more disappointed. "I'm saying that you're wasting your time if you came here to try to get Mary to change her mind."
I retrieved a straight-backed chair from across the room, pushed a microphone out of the way, and sat down across from the other man. "Big fella, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I give a shit about what you, Mary, or Garth decide to do. I care what happens to my brother and Mary, and I wish them happiness, but I have enough trouble managing my own life and times without trying to tell other people how to manage theirs. I may think you're a prick for surfacing in their lives and disrupting them like you have, but you're Mary and Garth's problem, not mine. This matter is between the three of you, and it's none of my damn business."
I watched him watching me as he reached out with one of his long arms and began to absently turn his empty tumbler on the glass-topped table beside him. I knew he was trying to gauge my sincerity, and so I gazed back at him with my most sincere expression-which in this case was meant to project profound indifference. Finally he asked, "If you don't think it's any of your business, why are you here?"