“I think that’s obvious.” She shifted her weight, the floor creaking beneath her, and said, “You want to know why Solomon Wade killed my father? It’s not just because what he knew made him a threat. I don’t think it had anything to do with that, really. It was the idea that he thought he could slip out of Wade’s control. The idea that he thought Wade had anything but total power over him.”
It went quiet again, and the morning wind worked through the window and swirled her gown around her feet.
“You wanted to know my reasons,” she said. “You wanted to know why I haven’t gone to someone for help. Said you couldn’t believe a woman like me would be intimidated into such an agreement with Solomon Wade.”
She took a step closer to him, so he could see her face clearly, and said, “Do you believe it now?”
He nodded. “You’ve been waiting for him to get out. Waiting for Owen.”
“Yes.”
“He’s almost out. He’ll be coming back.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
She wet her lips and broke eye contact.
“It would seem to me,” he said, “whatever plan you’ve got, it’s going to need to be a damn good one.”
“We’ll be leaving,” she said.
“You don’t think Wade’s expecting that?”
“I know that he is.”
Arlen let his silence speak for him.
“Well, what do you propose?” she said. “Stay? Live the rest of our lives with a gun to our heads?”
“No, I wouldn’t propose that. But you’d better not make a mistake.”
“After the last six months of my life,” she said, “surely you don’t really believe you need to explain that to me.”
He gave that a nod.
“Well, there you are,” she said. “My reasons. You said you had your own decision to make. You can make it with those in your mind.”
He was waiting for more, expecting her to say something else, to implore him toward silence or trust, but instead she turned and walked almost soundlessly across the floor, opened the door, and slipped back out of the room.
25
THE NEXT MORNING they finished the generator shed and began work on the dock, and Arlen’s eyes wandered constantly, looking for Solomon Wade or Sheriff Tolliver or Tate McGrath and his sons. No one came. Paul sensed his distraction and asked after it, and Arlen dismissed it as a headache. He had a bandage on his hand from Rebecca’s bite, but Paul didn’t inquire about that.
She’d asked nothing of him. Told him her story and slipped back out of the room. What she wanted, evidently, was only his silence. She wanted her fourteen-now thirteen-days to wait until her brother’s release. No other help had been requested, no other plan shared.
It was at lunch that Paul asked about the clock.
The thing was massive, with a brass frame set in a beautiful piece of walnut that sloped away on both sides, its hands stopped dead on midnight. Arlen had seen it the day they’d entered with Sorenson but paid little attention to it then or anytime else.
“My mother ordered that clock,” Rebecca said, and though her eyes were empty her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere out at sea. “She loved it. It’s been broken for years now.”
“Maybe I’ll have a look,” Paul said.
“I think you’d have to know about clocks.”
“That’s what we all said about the generator, too,” Arlen pointed out.
“Exactly,” Paul said. “Arlen, help me get that down?”
The kid wanted so badly to have something to do for her. Let me help you seemed to issue forth from him like a constant shout, as if by helping her enough he’d convince her of something. I’ll show her that she needs me, he’d said. Now Arlen wanted to grab him and shake him and shout that he had no damn idea what she needed and what it could cost him. Her needs went beyond any that Paul could imagine. Her needs involved people who cut off a man’s hands and presented them to her in a box wrapped with twine, like a gift.
“Arlen?”
“Yeah,” Arlen said, blinking back into the moment. “Sure.”
They brought a ladder in and, with Paul on the ladder and Arlen standing on the bar, got the whole piece down. It weighed less than the generator but not by much. Paul studied the casing and then went in search of a screwdriver. When he was gone, it was just Rebecca and Arlen in the barroom. She looked at him in silence for a few seconds and then said, “You’re still here.”
“Wondering about my decision,” he said. “That it?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s a start on it,” he said. “There are two pistols on the chair beside your bed. I’d like one of them.”
“What?”
“Seems like a fair gesture of trust to me,” he said.
Paul’s footsteps slapped off the floor, and then the door to the kitchen banged open and he was back with them, in midsentence and midstride, discussing his theories on the clock’s malfunction before he’d even gotten the case off. When he’d knelt on the floor above it and ducked his head, Arlen stared back at Rebecca Cady, a look in his eyes that said, The rest is up to you.
She turned away.
All day long they worked, speaking to each other as if nothing lay between them. All day long Arlen watched the road for Wade and McGrath, and all day long he considered the countless reasons for gathering his bags and walking away from this place.
When darkness fell, his bags were where they’d been for days.
She came for him in the night.
He was in the chair at the window, had dozed off, and the sound of the door opening woke him. He could see her reflection in the glass as she entered. The pistol was in her left hand, looking big and ugly.
“Do you ever sleep?” she said, apparently thinking that because he was in the chair he’d been awake.
“I used to.”
He still hadn’t turned, and after a short hesitation she crossed the room to him. When she reached the chair, she didn’t say anything at first, just joined him in staring out at the sea. Then, still silent, she switched the gun from her left hand to her right and extended it to him.
He didn’t move to take it.
“There are bullets inside, if they make you feel better. I can give you more if you want them.”
He stared at the horizon line. Even in the dark of full night, you could make out the distinction once your eyes had adjusted. Shades of gray.
“Well?” she said, and gave the gun a little shake.
“You intend to leave,” Arlen said, not moving his hands from his lap, letting the big Smith & Wesson float in the air in front of his chest.
“What?”
“When your brother is released, you intend to leave.”
“That’s right.”
“He’ll look for you,” Arlen said. “And you want to know something else? He’ll look for me and Paul.”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“It didn’t.”
“It doesn’t now.”
“Like hell. It does now, and it will then.”
She moved the gun away, dropped it back to her side.
“So when he’s released, you’ll leave,” Arlen repeated. “And then I’ll have to deal with Wade, whether here or far away. You told me that yourself.”
She still didn’t say a word. He looked up at her for a time, and then he reached over and took the gun. He had to lean across her body to get it. When he touched the stock, his hand pressed against hers. Her skin was very cool.
He pulled the gun from her fingers and flicked open the cylinder and saw the cartridges, snapped it shut and set the weapon down on his lap.
“All right,” he said.
She didn’t move. He looked up at her and then got to his feet.
“That’s my answer,” he said. “I’ll be here in the morning again. Be damned if I know why, but I’ll be here in the morning.”
He crossed to the bed and leaned down and placed the gun on the floor beside it. She was still standing at the window, staring out at the ocean.