Maria smoothed her tattered and stained clothing.
"I must look awful."
"I told her we would pull some of Tess's clothes out of the closet," Dan said.
"Ah, comprendo. I will see what I can find."
"We're dying of hunger. How about something to gnaw on while we wait for dinner?"
Pepacita nodded and whisked out some smoked salmon; then as fast as any chef, she sliced a couple of hothouse-ripened tomatoes and garnished them with crumbled Feta cheese. Dan disappeared for a couple of minutes and reappeared in jeans.
Each taking a plate, they moved to the couch, where Dan sat at one end and Maria the other. After a few genuine compliments about the house, Maria turned earnest.
"So what do we do with these documents?"
''For the moment keep it in your purse,'' Dan said. ''We'll figure out where to put it after dinner."
"I need to use your phone. I've got to call my mom and my boyfriend. Late as it is, they'll think I died."
"Right there," Dan said, pointing to the phone in the family room.
Her mother was easy. In that special tone that said "I'm really tied up," Maria told her mother that she would call her in the morning.
"Hey, you," she said to Ross, glancing at Dan out of the comer of her eye. Thankfully, he rose to leave but not without a little knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. She recalled liking his mustache. She knew she looked uncomfortable and tried not to. Can't pull it off.
Dan disappeared down the hall.
"I got hung up. It was a real adventure."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't sound so worried. I'm sorry I didn't call. I'm just fine. I was out in the woods and I ended up in an industry laboratory and it's a very long story. I can't tell you now. It would take too long. I'll call you first thing tomorrow."
"You're at the Palmer Inn?"
"No, I'm staying with some friends."
"Do I know them?"
"It's a lady named Pepacita, and a fellow named Dan Young."
"Why do I know that name?"
"Sometimes he handles environmental cases. Ross, I know this is really going to sound strange to you, but you have to trust me here. He's the lawyer for Otran Enterprises."
"That Dan Young? Why the hell would you-"
"Calm down. It's one night. There are a lot of people here and there is a good reason."
"Does this Dan Young know what I don't get to know?"
"Don't say it like that. It's attorney-client privilege for him too."
"Oh great, some industry asshole…"
"Wait, wait, I can see this is going to be a thing. I will get permission from Patty to tell you ninety percent of this. Hey, I don't even know all of it. Dan Young's not telling me what I'd like to know."
"When can we talk?"
"Tomorrow. I promise." She hung up.
Not so mysteriously, Dan reappeared.
"Do you always eavesdrop?"
"Only when vital national-security interests are at stake." His eyes were bright, but he betrayed only a hint of a smile.
"I'm not laughing."
"Well then, I guess I won't, either. Hey, Pepacita, how are we doing on the clothes?"
"I will show Maria to the clothing and the shower. Nate's in his room. Supposedly in bed, but probably reading under the covers with a flashlight."
"Excuse me, I'm going to check on my son," said Dan.
"Surely."
The kitchen was redolent with the aroma of home cooking, of spices simmering slowly on long, lazy afternoons-garlic, cloves, onions: a potpourri of smells. Pans of all sizes hung on a wrought-iron frame suspended above the island stove. Racks laden with a wide assortment of spices perched in long rows behind the cooktop. A chopping block of oak alongside the stove in the kitchen's center bore years' worth of stains.
Maria could also make out a faint musty odor among the kitchen smells-understandable, since the house sat like a mushroom in the shade of the monster trees. Her eyes swept the family room's casual, wood-walled interior, spying a lariat and a green sweater on an antique hardwood rack. The sweater had patches on each elbow. It was old, well-maintained, and comfortable looking. That about summed this place up. For one brief moment she fantasized about what it might be like to live here-with Dan.
This end of the house, with its tongue-and-groove pine-board walls and angled low ceilings, had the feel of a cottage. The adjoining family room was chock-full to bursting with books, photos, and memorabilia-every square inch of shelf and wall space was utilized. The bookcases were meticulously constructed, with an eye toward matching the walls- obviously built for someone who treasured their contents. She went exploring. Her eye skimmed over the collection, fascinated by its breadth and depth: Thoreau, Melville, Kipling, as well as a host of modern writers. Given the dust patterns, it looked like he kept the classics but didn't read them much. Maybe they were Tess's.
And there was lots more: the dog-eared pages of a Rutherford novel, The Forest; nearby a spy thriller; the fat copy of a Thomas Jefferson biography facedown on the desk- frankly, a surprise; a book of Ansel Adams photographs; three original oil landscapes on the wall by a painter whose signature was indiscernible, along with figure drawings and lithographs by other artists; the CD titles in the neat stack of plastic cases, mostly rock, Bob Dylan, a little opera, more light opera, and a smattering of country-western; the magazines on the coffee table: Time, Newsweek, U.S. News amp; World Report, People, a publication by the Audubon Society; an antique Queen Anne table that might be a skillful reproduction; a spreadsheet of professional football teams and their game scores atop it; and the chair where he sat and drank beer, judging from all the caps in the nearby wastebasket. Front and center on the little table where he parked his beer was a 9"xl2" photo of Tess.
The man was apparently a 49ers fan. She hadn't been to a game in years but she still watched them on television. When she did, she thought about her father, and if she'd had a couple glasses of Chenin Blanc, she cried. For a split second she smiled at how much she used to like football-how she analyzed plays with her father. There was loneliness in the memory, so she shrugged it off.
Maria found the personal stuff: the photos, family shots, Nate Young in every imaginable activity, smiling, laughing, a father engaged with his son. But many included a beautiful brown-eyed woman.
From the coffee table, beside another picture of Tess, she picked up a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. Inside the cover, there was an inscription:
To Tess: With the love in my heart taxing my mind for expression, please accept these words of another as a tribute to my devotion.
For some reason the words shocked her. The cowboy expressed his feelings. And judging from the reading material, he was not all belt buckles and boots. In fact, the real Dan Young came in a very odd and misleading package.
Below Dan's inscription in the Shakespeare was Tess's reply:
My dearest: Your words are more to me than a lifetime of spring mornings, because they have only you as their source. I accept this book of verse only as a supplement.
She considered the closet full of clothes-hadn't it been at least two years since the accident? Thoughts of the beautiful brown-eyed Tess, a stranger in most ways, familiar in a few, ignited in Maria a real sense of the pain Dan kept hidden under his deadpan humor, his relaxed shit-kicker affect. She guessed that Dan had not yet made the transition to life without Tess.
Dan had left his camera on the coffee table. It was a late model Nikon and she knew how to use it. Again a sixth sense told her she should not have the documents in only one location. She pulled both the photo and the documents from her purse and placed them on the coffee table. Picking up the camera, she turned it on, then turned on the flash and used the auto focus and electronic light meter with flash function to take a series of quick pictures. She'd tell Dan when he came back.