“No. Just a little spacey today.”
“The cancer? Everything okay there?”
“Status quo.”
“Angela? Kenny?”
“They’re fine. I’m thinking of getting Kenny an iMac for his birthday.”
“He’ll love it. How’s her new job?”
“Just what she wants for now. She’s already signed up for evening classes in the fall — start working for her MA so she can teach.”
Mannix said reminiscently, as if he were picturing Angela in his mind, “She looks so much better now that that fucking psycho is out of her life. Her old self again.”
“Not quite, but she’s getting there.”
“You did the right thing.”
“... Right thing?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t, Gabe.”
Mannix shrugged. “Status quo there, too,” he said, and signaled the waiter. “I don’t know about you, but I can use another beer.”
It wasn’t until later, after he’d been dropped off at home, that he realized what Mannix had meant by “the right thing.”
Gabe thought his advice had been taken after all; he thought Hollis was the cause of Rakubian’s disappearance.
Thursday Afternoon
He was resting on a chaise longue on the patio, the Thai food heavy in his stomach and an afternoon breeze cool on his skin, when he heard the truck pull into the driveway. Loud exhaust, rumbling engine — Ryan Pierce’s old Dodge.
Now what?
Reluctantly he stood and went along the side path. Pierce was just getting out of the pickup, wearing stained Levi’s, a khaki shirt, a battered straw cowboy hat. The Dodge’s bed was stacked with bags of feed and blocks of salt.
Pierce saw him and took off the hat. The way he stood there, hat in hand, made Hollis think of a none too bright farm boy. He shook the thought away. He was trying to be fair and equable with the kid these days, wasn’t he?
“How’re you, Mr. Hollis?” Still formal and polite. You had to give him that much.
“Holding up. What brings you here?”
“Well, I had to get some supplies and I thought I’d swing by, see if you were home. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Yes? What about?”
“Angela. Kenny, too.”
“What about them?”
“I guess you know I’ve been seeing a lot of them since they came back. Does it bother you and Mrs. Hollis?”
“Would it matter to you if it did?”
“I’d like to know.”
“You can hardly expect us to be jumping for joy, given your track record.”
“I suppose not. But my reasons aren’t selfish. It’s because I care about them and I want to do what’s right for them.”
“And just what do you think that is?”
“Start over again, the three of us. Be the family we never were before. I owe it to Angela, to my son.”
Hollis stared at him. “What’re you saying?”
“I’m going to ask her to marry me again.”
“Christ, Pierce! Are you crazy?”
“Never more sane. I love Angela, I love Kenny, I was a sorry damn fool for ever letting them out of my life. The three of us belong together. Whether you think so or not, Mr. Hollis.”
Anger kindled in him. He smothered it. Pierce was serious, earnest, and he was capable of the willful stubbornness of a mule. A show of anger would accomplish nothing, probably lead to a public shouting match.
He said slowly, keeping his voice even, “Does Angela know about this?”
“Not yet. I haven’t said anything, at least not directly. Seemed like a good idea to tell you first.”
“Ask me for her hand?” Hollis couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his tone. “You never bothered the first time, you just went ahead and knocked her up.”
A muscle ticced on Pierce’s cheek; otherwise his face was stoic. “I made a lot of mistakes back then. I’m trying not to make any more, anyway not the same ones.”
“Trying to convince Angela to marry you again is a damn big mistake. You know what she went through with her second husband. The last thing she needs is another commitment, another go-round with you.”
“I understand how badly Rakubian hurt her,” Pierce said. “Makes me sick every time I think about it.”
“You hurt her, too, once. Remember?”
“I’m not likely to forget. It won’t happen again, I swear that to you. I want to make up for what I did and what Rakubian did.”
“And I’m telling you, this is the wrong time to pressure her into a committed relationship.”
“I won’t pressure her. I wouldn’t do that. I’ll let her set the date when she’s ready. Until then, I’ll be there for her — however she wants me, anytime she wants me.”
Hollis waited until he was sure he could speak normally before he said, “Don’t say anything about marriage to her now. Give her time. She needs time, Pierce.”
“I want her to know how I feel, same as I wanted you to know.”
“Listen to me. I’m warning you, if you upset her, make her life difficult again—”
“I won’t. I told you that, and I meant it. Take care of yourself, Mr. Hollis, okay? You can’t take care of Angela anymore, but I can. And I will.”
After he was gone, Hollis trudged back to the patio. Weary, shuffling steps. You can’t take care of Angela anymore. Damn Pierce! Damn him because he was right.
15
Friday Afternoon
The second note came in Friday’s mail.
He didn’t see it until almost four o’clock. It had been one of his better days; no queasiness or discomfort when he woke up, mental faculties in sharper focus, some of his old energy. As long as he didn’t think about it too much, he could pretend that he was just another reasonably healthy, forty-six-year-old man. He left the house when Cassie did, surprised Gloria by showing up at the office at his usual time, surprised himself by putting in better than six hours of work on the site plan and conceptual designs for the Dry Creek Valley project. It was three o’clock before fatigue and a dull headache caught up with him. He considered pushing it another hour, decided that would be foolish, and left for home at three-thirty.
The envelope was the top one in the box. Same type, no return address. He was neither surprised nor upset when he saw it; he’d expected that there would be more. There was a sense of fatalism in him, of things going and already gone irreparably wrong. Buried under sublimating layers of hope and evasion most of the time, now up and crawling close to the surface again.
One thing to be grateful for, he told himself as he took the mail into the house: he’d gotten home before Cassie. She would not have opened a piece of mail addressed only to him — respect of privacy was part of their mutual respect for each other — but she’d have wondered and probably asked him about it, and then he’d have had to lie to her again.
In the kitchen he opened a bottle of Sierra Nevada, emptied half of it in two swallows. Then he tore the envelope open.
YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT. YOU’LL SUFFER FOR WHAT YOU DID.
He sat at the dinette table. Drank more ale, made a face and set the bottle down; it tasted foul now, as if by some alchemy it had been changed into dog piss. He peered at the postmark on the envelope. Smeared, as sometimes happened when the post office machines were freshly inked. It might have been North Bay again, but he couldn’t be sure.
He forced himself to think clearly, logically. Would Eric have sent a message like this one? It didn’t read like a plea for help; it seemed to be both accusation and threat. No sane reason for Eric to threaten him... no sane reason. Or maybe it wasn’t meant to be a threat. There was another way to interpret it. If Eric was too guilt-ridden to admit the truth outright, he might conceivably switch pronouns, substitute “you” for “we.” We won’t get away with it. We’ll suffer for what we did. Accusing himself as well as his father; threatening himself, if anyone, because at some visceral level he sought punishment and expiation.