"I am serious. We leave next week. I've booked a private car on a westbound train."
Edward stood up stiffly, slowly, and walked past her, even closer to the window. He was composed now, unable to express himself, trapped by his own facade. They were both quiet for a moment, and then he said, "I'm keeping the painting."
In the early 1870s, he'd befriended a visiting French Impressionist named Gustave Caillebotte. They shared several weeks of intense conversation-typical of Edward-and in the process, Caillebotte made a portrait of Eleisha sitting on a green velvet couch. She found it vain. Edward adored it.
Moving up beside him, she wanted to comfort him, but didn't. Neither one spoke. They had nothing more to say.
Chapter 17
This time I broke off first.
"Don't stop," Wade said, grabbing my hand.
"No more. When you're inside my head, I see his face like he's in the room."
Visions of Edward hurt far more than I'd imagined they would. He'd been so alive, so original.
But Wade's questions kept coming. "So, you went to Portland?"
"Yeah," I managed to answer. "Edward followed two years later. He stayed in different hotels until 1937, then bought a house. He'd just grown too used to company."
"You lived with him in New York for seventy-three years?"
"I'd almost forgotten. Seems like another lifetime."
I needed to stop talking about this, and I noticed Wade's eyelids flutter. How long had it been since he'd really slept? The previous night he'd been up playing Superman, and then he probably stood guard over me all day.
"Maybe you should rest."
I thought he might argue-still burning with curiosity-but he pointed to the door. "Not yet. There's another whole room out there."
"What… You rented a suite?"
"Seemed appropriate."
Walking out into the living room of a modern hotel suite surprised me, as if Wade had been kidding and I'd find myself in a hallway. The decor was sterile, predictable: a gray sleeper couch, dried blue flowers in a vase from Tiffany's, two assembly-line paintings of seascapes. But this probably cost six hundred dollars a night. Why would Wade spend that kind of money? To impress me? Maybe he just thought I was used to places like this? What a guy.
My mind needed a break. How long had it been since Edward jumped off his porch? Only six weeks. Couldn't be. The memories shook me more than I wanted to admit. That's why I pushed Wade out of my head. What if the three of us had simply stayed in New York? Would Edward still have lost it? He'd never liked Portland, but his attachment to me kept him from being happy alone in Manhattan. Was it love? Maybe. He could have cut and run that first night in Southampton, left us to die in ignorance, but he didn't. How much did we owe him? I didn't even have a photo, not even a photo.
And my William…
Stop it.
I wasn't ready to deal with his death. I wasn't prepared to mourn. Trying to mull over that loss and figure out my next move would only bring hysteria. What was my purpose now? Even if I did escape Julian and manage to live-which was doubtful-what was I supposed to do?
"We need to go out for a little while," Wade said from behind me.
"Aren't we supposed to be hiding out?"
"We're in Kirkland-miles from Seattle, and we'll go on foot. It'll be okay."
"I think you need some sleep. What's so important?"
"You'll see. First I want to go someplace and get a hamburger."
"Really? You always sort of struck me as the health-food type."
He smiled slightly. "Used to be. Back at the institute they served whole grain and greens three meals a day. Dominick got me hooked on beer, pizza, and burgers."
The mention of Dominick sent my mood into the shadows again. Wade turned away. "Sorry, I just don't have any other friends. Kind of sad, huh?"
"No, I don't have many friends either."
Getting out of the hotel turned out to be a good idea. The night was clear and cool. We walked in comfortable silence to a small diner called Ernie's and slid into a cushy booth where a matronly waitress who bore an astonishing resemblance to Alice on The Brady Bunch took our order.
"I feel like a kid on my first date," Wade said, holding his cheese-burger in one hand.
"Really? Maybe I should giggle a lot?"
He threw a French fry across the table. "Hey, is the room okay?"
"Room? The suite? Of course, it's fine." Why would he worry about something like that? "Listen, you should let me pay you back for all this. The hotel. The rental car. Everything."
"You don't need to. Anyway, where would you get that kind of money?"
"Me? Jesus, Wade, I thought you'd have figured that out by now. I'm… pretty well off: three rotating CD accounts in Portland, an account in Zurich, stock in Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard… Boeing."
He stopped eating. "How did you manage all that?"
"Accountants and stockbrokers. Money is the only thing that matters here. Julian has joint control of my Portland accounts, though. He doesn't care how much I spend, but if I'd pulled out four hundred thousand to buy a new house, he'd want to know why."
"Your accountants work with you at night?"
"Sure. If you're poor and strange, people call you mad. If you're rich and strange, they call you eccentric."
He finished his dinner without another word and paid the check. Somehow, our exchange seemed to have upset him. We walked down the street awhile in silence. "You think you've got us all figured out, don't you?" he said finally.
"No."
"Yes, you do. You take mortals at face value and then put them into neat little categories so you won't have to deal with anyone."
"Where are we going?" I ignored his statement, which struck me as pointless anyway since our relationship went far beyond face value, and I was certainly dealing with him. We turned into a park with green grass, slides, and a large swing set.
"Why are we here?" I asked.
"You'll see." His momentary annoyance faded, and he led me through the park until we found a patch of forest near the back. "Here, this is a good place."
"For what?"
Kneeling down, he lifted his shirt and pulled a thin box from the back of his jeans. "We're going to bury William."
My skin went cold. "What?"
"Don't look so surprised. When I was a kid, I had only one pet, an orange cat named Meesha. She got hit by a car, and I couldn't deal with it. My dad got disgusted, but my mom put her body in a box and took me for a long walk. She said, ‘You can't put this behind you or go on with tomorrow until Meesha's safe in the ground, and you know where to visit should you need to. That's the only thing my mother ever did for me that mattered."
"What's in that box?"
"Some of William's ashes. I got them while you were changing upstairs last night."
He began digging in the dirt with his hands. My knees sank down of their own accord, and I reached out to help him. Night wind blew through the leaves above us, and it seemed right to forget who we were, what we were caught in the middle of, and instead pretend to be just two people laying a ghost to rest.
"Do you believe in heaven, Wade?"
"I don't know."
The box fit neatly in its hole, and we gently patted the loose dirt back in place.
"We can't leave a marker," he said.
"It's all right."
For a long time we sat together, gathering our thoughts, thinking of the past, blanking out the future. Though still unable to mourn, I felt different now that perhaps William had found rest or even lived in a better place than this world.
"Thank you," I said, the words sounding inadequate.
Instead of answering, Wade stood up to leave. Our work here was done, and he wanted understanding, not thanks. The dirt beneath our feet changed swiftly into grass as we emerged from the forest patch into the park, walking in solemn silence like people leaving a funeral.