I turned, walked around the table, and headed back toward the kitchen. I could see the man at the bar spin slowly around as I passed him, his eyes trained on the mirror again, the four seated figures he could see very clearly in the glass.
Louie snapped the dessert order from my hand as I came through the double doors. He was grumbling angrily.
That bunch at table six ever going to leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“Chocolate ice cream. That fat cow ordered dessert?”
“The espresso is for her.”
Normally I would have dropped the liquor order on my way to the kitchen, but I had not done that, I realized suddenly, because something had warned me away, had unnerved me.
“Well, go get the drink, Steve,” Louie said sharply. “I’ll have the dessert ready by the time you get back.”
I stepped toward the door, following Louie’s instructions. I walked slowly, haltingly, the air growing thick around me. I made it all the way to the door, then pressed my face up against the little square of glass that looked out onto the dining room. I could not move any farther.
“What’s the matter, Steve?” Louie asked after a moment.
I didn’t answer. Through the small square window, I could see the man at the bar, his hands still deep in his overcoat pockets, the untouched drink resting before him, its amber reflection winking in the mirror, the now motionless eyes trained determinedly on the oblivious, unthinking family.
“Steve?”
I didn’t look back at Louie. I felt the words form in my mouth, but I’m not sure I ever actually said them: “He’s going to kill them.”
I began to tremble. I could feel myself trembling. It was a sensation of helplessness, of being something small and delicate before a line of black, rumbling clouds. To the left, I could see the little man as he brought one hand from his coat, stretched his fingers slowly, then returned it to the pocket. A few feet away, the young girl fiddled with her napkin, looking out of sorts, while her mother toyed coquettishly with her husband’s bright red tie.
“Steve, what’s the matter?”
It wasn’t Louie’s voice this time, but a young woman named Marie who’d only come to work a few days before. She had reddish-brown hair, very straight, and her eyes were deep-set and dreamy, exactly the kind that in movies the leading man always yearns to kiss.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
I didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes trained on the little man at the bar. “He’s going to …”
“Who?”
“I …”
She saw the order slip quivering in my hand, snatched it from me, then burst through the door and out into the dining room, striding boldly up to the bar, where Sandy took it from her, reaching thoughtlessly over the little man’s untouched glass.
I was still standing rigidly by the door when she came back into the kitchen. The little man had drunk the scotch in one quick gulp and was heading for the door. A few feet away, Joey Santucci gave his wife a kiss while his teenage daughter looked on sourly.
I felt myself collapse, as if every muscle had suddenly been ripped from its mooring. I was actually sliding helplessly toward the floor when Marie grabbed me by the arm, drew me over to the small bench beside the cutting table, and lowered me into it.
“You want me to call a doctor, Steve?” she asked urgently.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. It was just something that reminded me of …” I couldn’t keep back the words. “… of my father.”
It was hours later, nearing dawn, and we were in bed in her apartment on MacDougal Street before I finally got the whole story out. I cried and cried, and so she held me through all that sleepless, gorgeous night.
And twenty years later, she’d walked out of our bedroom and down the stairs, and neither of us had thought to say goodbye.
I’d been at my desk for no more than an hour when the phone rang.
“Mr. Farris?”
“Yes.”
“Rebecca Soltero. I was wondering if you might be able to meet me for lunch today.”
“Well, it would have to be a short lunch,” I said. “And near the office.”
“That would be fine,” Rebecca said. “I’d just like to get a few biographical details before we do the other type of interview.”
She meant the kind, of course, that would return me to my father.
“All right,” I said. “There’s a small cafe on Linden, just down the block from my office. It’s called Plimpton’s.”
“Yes, I saw it yesterday,” Rebecca said. “What time?”
“I can meet you at twelve-thirty,” I told her.
She was already waiting for me when I arrived an hour or so later. She was wearing a long dark skirt with matching jacket and a white blouse. Her earrings were plain gold hoops. She wore no other jewelry.
I nodded crisply as I sat down. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you quite so soon,” I said cautiously.
She nodded. “I know,” she said, “but I’m at that point where I need a little background information.” She took a small notebook from her jacket pocket. “Information about you, I mean,” she added. “Biographical details, that sort of thing.”
“And the other interviews,” I said, “they’ll be focused on my father?”
“Along with your family,” Rebecca said. “I’d like to have portraits of each of them.”
“How many interviews do you expect to need?”
“It depends on how much you remember,” Rebecca answered.
“Well, how long are you planning to stay in Old Salsbury?”
She looked at me very determinedly. “I live in Boston,” she said, “but I’ll stay here as long as I need to.” Her eyes returned to the notebook. “I know that you lived with your aunt in Somerset for a while after the murders,” she began. “How long?”
“Two months.”
“And that’s when your uncle came to get you?”
“Yes.”
As I spoke, I remembered the morning Quentin arrived at Aunt Edna’s house, the old truck shuddering to a stop in her gravel driveway. I’d been stacking dominoes on the carpet in the living room, and when I looked up I saw Aunt Edna part the translucent blue curtains which hung over her large picture window, release a weary sigh, and shake her head, as if the sight of him alone was enough to exasperate her.
He entered the house seconds later, a large man with a round belly and thick legs. He was wearing rubber boots which rose almost to his thighs, and a gray, broad-billed cap that looked like the type worn by locomotive engineers.
He hardly noticed Aunt Edna, but strode powerfully over to me, jerked me into his arms, and said, “Well, Stevie, ready to live a man’s life now, are you?”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Aunt Edna looking at both of us crossly, her arms folded over her chest. “Put him down, Quentin,” she said sternly, “and come on into the kitchen. We have things to talk about.”
They’d talked about me, as I told Rebecca over lunch that day, a conversation I’d heard from just behind the closed door:
“As I said on the phone, it’s not working out here, Quentin,” Aunt Edna said. “That’s the long and the short of it.”
“I told you I’d take him, Edna,” Quentin told her. “I know you don’t want him.”
“Well, it’s not exactly that I don’t …”
“Besides,” Uncle Quentin interrupted, “he’s better off with a man.”
There was a brief silence after that, but finally I heard my aunt say, “All right, take him.”
And he had, the two of us rattling for hours along well-traveled roads before turning onto the more deserted one that led out to Quentin’s house by the sea.
“He was an older man, wasn’t he?” Rebecca asked.