He said, “Laura’s worried about how it will affect Ann if something happens to me. She wants this all to end for Ann, for both of them. It makes sense.”
“It does if you love your daughter more than your former husband.”
He took another long pull of beer, then set the damp glass down precisely on its cork coaster. Outside, in the hazy distance, seabirds were circling high over the slanted colorful sails. Nearer to shore a man in white shorts and shirt was jockeying an outboard runabout down the coast, standing staunchly at the wheel to peer over the boat’s Plexiglas windscreen. The waves were giving him a wild ride; probably that was what he wanted.
“Laura’s threatening to tell the Kave family who I am,” Carver said. “I think she means it.”
“Bet on it,” Edwina said. She craned her neck, anticipating the arrival of their waiter. He was across the room, leisurely taking the orders of a table of executive types; he knew an expense-account-size tip shaping up when he saw one.
“She’ll be hanging around this part of Florida till this thing’s resolved,” Carver said. “She might talk to you again, try to get to me through you.”
“I doubt it. I told her you were compelled to do what you thought needed doing. She said it was a mistake. I told her maybe it was, but it was your mistake and neither of us had the right to keep you from making it. I asked her if she wanted to see her son’s killer caught. She said she didn’t care, it wouldn’t make any difference to her or to him. I told her if you were fucked-up, so was she. I’m starving; where’s the food?”
Carver grinned. “I wish I’d overheard that conversation.”
“No you don’t,” Edwina said. “There was more.” But she didn’t elaborate. Her green-flecked eyes were unemotional. She said, “Laura’s interested in more than your daughter’s welfare. You do know that, don’t you?”
He looked out again at the distant sails. “Maybe she is. A child dies, it does something to both parents that draws them toward each other, I guess. They’re the only ones who understand the depth of the grief, the pain. It’s a lonely place to be.”
“I know. And I can’t be there with you.”
“Yeah. But Laura coming down here and trying to talk me out of looking for Paul Kave, it might be the pain and loneliness that made her do it. I suppose I feel sorry for her. And she feels sorry for me. Some things develop between people and they can’t help it.”
Edwina said, “I’m going to eat this last zucchini.” And did.
The waiter finally glided over with their food, and Carver and Edwina asked for fresh drinks. He slowly made note of that in a leather-covered order pad.
“I’d like mine before the ice melts,” Edwina told him. Feisty today. The waiter let it bounce off and coasted away at half speed. A professional.
“Get the insurance claim in on the house?” Carver asked.
“This morning. I think the place might always smell like burned tires, though. Compliments of Paul Kave.” She tore a roll in half and buttered it.
“I put you in danger,” Carver said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. That’s what life comes down to sometimes, putting other people in danger and them willing. Nothing you can do that won’t make ripples that might become waves. Or might swamp boats.”
“Two members of the Kave family already know who I am,” Carver said. He told Edwina about his oceanside conversation with Nadine.
“Was there ever anything between Nick Fanning and Nadine?” Edwina asked.
He thought that was a curious reaction to his story. He’d hardly mentioned Fanning in his recounting of what had happened at the estate that morning.
Edwina must have read the puzzlement on his face, though her gaze was fixed higher, on his tanned, bald head, as if his thoughts might be printed there. “From what you’ve told me about him, and her, it seems a real possibility. The virile friend and business subordinate of the father, the rebellious daughter, the frequency of Fanning’s visits to the house. The setup might seem like a sexual challenge to a man like Fanning. Or to a girl like Nadine. Kind of thing you see on soap operas everyday.”
“That’s what’s wrong with the notion,” Carver said. “Anyway, whatever might have happened, it’s irrelevant now. Nadine’s too in love with Dewitt to see a wart on him.”
“Lucky Nadine.”
“You mean Dewitt.”
“No, Nadine.”
Carver slid his plate of shrimp nearer to him. The smooth white china was warm. He couldn’t imagine Nadine involved with Fanning.
“So how do you feel?” Edwina asked, forking a bite of salad into her mouth.
“About what?”
“Laura.”
“I told you, I feel sorry for her. Probably pity is all she feels for me. Hell, we got a divorce, Edwina; we thought it all out years ago and called off living together.”
“Numph,” Edwina said, around another bite of salad.
“Meaning?”
“I’m not sure she has it all thought out as thoroughly as you say. What love’s about is two people making a long-term investment in each other’s happiness, willing to go to the wall for each other. That’s what Laura doesn’t seem to understand. Maybe what you don’t quite understand.”
“That’s a lot for one ‘numph,’ ”Carver said.
“It only seems that way. Love’s actually a simple, one-syllable emotion.”
The sea smell of the shrimp and Edwina’s salad was suddenly too much. Carver’s appetite left him, but the hollowness in his stomach made him queasy.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about Laura. Or about Edwina, or Chipper, or Paul Kave, or about the wilderness he’d charged into and that had absorbed him.
He sat back and stared out at the waves, rolling in murky, ever-changing patterns and darkened by sudden low clouds. It all kept kaleidoscoping in his mind: Laura, Edwina, Paul, Nadine, Adam, McGregor, and the dark, sad corpse of his only son.
The ocean, vast and implacable, exerted a primal pull that was frightening.
Chapter 29
After leaving Edwina, Carver returned to the cottage and checked his answering machine. He’d received a call from Laura, and she’d left a number where she could be reached.
Carver dragged out his dog-eared directory and looked up the phone number of the Andrew Johnson Motel. It was the number on Laura’s recorded message. He imagined her sitting in her room, staring at vapid afternoon television and wondering where some oversized roulette wheel would stop. Or lounging by the motel pool, sweating and not really liking the sun, waiting for his return call. She was far from home, from where she belonged.
Carver decided not to return her call. Edwina was right about Laura’s renewed interest in him, and that scared him. He’d gone around the course once with Laura and didn’t want to again. Yet he knew that a mutually dependent attraction had been engendered by their son’s death, embryonic now, waiting to grow. She needed him, her fellow voyager through the mourning process. Carver didn’t want to need her.
He punched the Play button again on the answering machine and listened to a wrong number, a pitch to buy into a time-share project in Clearwater before his rare opportunity was gone forever, and a reminder from his insurance agent that the premium was due on the Olds.
Nothing from Emmett or Nadine Kave.
Carver had barely eaten at lunch, but he was feeling better now and figured he’d soon be hungry. He clomped with his cane into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator.
Not an inspiring sight. Only two cans of beer, a small steak he’d allowed to go bad, and a container of yogurt that never had a chance. Edwina had bought the yogurt weeks ago. Carver loathed the stuff; it looked like cream trying to be something else.
Plan ahead, he thought. Resolving to eat an early dinner out this evening and then do some elemental grocery shopping, he pulled the tab on one of the beer cans, shoved the refrigerator door shut, and carried the can out onto the porch.