Part One
Chapter 1
Claire did not believe in the evil of the world, and so when it touched her, at first she did not recognize it for what it was. No pointing red tails and pitchforks as in the movies, not even malice in the heart. Evil as simple as an accident, as boring as the aftermath it brings. Forster saying death would have been easier than enduring what followed. A small, domestic evil as random as lightning, as devastating to those touched by it.
* * *
She had longed for home — a place of connection and belonging and family — for so long it was hard to believe that her struggle to attain it was about to be consummated. Eighteen years since she first came to the ranch. Her only regret that Hanni, her mother-in-law, wasn’t there to share the moment she finally got it back for the family, because what was the worth of something unless it lasted through one’s desire for it, a whole lifetime if need be, or beyond it, into one’s children’s lives also? She couldn’t imagine anything better than Josh or one of the girls taking over when the time came. She looked around at all that was hers: the blush of sunset on her blossoming citrus trees; Forster, coming down the steps from the porch two at a time, wrapping his arms around her. Hers — his love — also.
“Hurry, the girls have a surprise for you. Pretend you don’t know.”
Forster was throwing a party, a Claire-will-live-forever party, since she hated birthdays and their reminder of time passing. Yes, about to have everything, but time itself had escaped her, moved on, made her a little more leathery, a little more tired than she wanted to be. At last she had time to spend with the children, just as they were growing up and going away.
Everyone had been invited, everyone came, barbecue for over two hundred, pushing at the seams of the farmhouse, spilling over onto the lawn, eddying around the rose gardens, the shadowy edges of the stalwart orchards. Her mother and father had driven down from Santa Monica — witnesses to her hard-won good fortune. She took a long look around as if she were about to depart on a journey and would need this memory: the citrus fruit hanging heavy with juice; the leaves on the trees turned ever so slightly toward the last rays of sunshine, showing their faintly silvered backsides.
* * *
In the kitchen, the caterer was scolding a newly hired waiter who’d come in late and ungroomed. In her room, Gwen, sixteen, put on lipstick and mascara for the first time. The guests walked along admiring the healthy rows of trees, the food-laden tables, as Lucy led the younger children in a game of hide-and-seek. People ate as much as they could bear and drank more. Unnoticed, Joshua snuck out from the bar with a bottle of vodka hidden away in a newspaper. Everyone was giddy with the rare sense of work put aside in favor of pleasure.
* * *
As Claire stood admiring the paper lanterns strung across the lawn, her lawn, rocking in the faint breeze, the banker Relicer sidled up to her with a plate stacked high with ribs. Even under the magic golden pink of sunset, time had not been kind during the last ten years she had been in business with him. He looked as severe and expiring as in his mahogany-lined office — aged, pale skin and caved-in cheeks that spoke of a life of frugality.
“It’s a beauty,” he said. “What you’ve accomplished with our money.”
“Money didn’t accomplish this,” Claire said, feeling smug with the last check to him in her pocket. She would put it in the mail after he left. “It just kept developers away long enough for it to provide.” Impossible to explain that the land was alive and fertile. It just needed coaxing along.
Relicer gnawed at the rib beyond simply getting the meat off, intending to suck the very marrow out. A tardy waiter came by and in offering a napkin almost flipped the paper plate on the banker’s shirt. Claire frowned, noticed the waiter’s greasy blond hair, his unkempt nails. She would complain to the caterer. The young man apologized, but the expression on his face, small eyes and large nose crowded together, wasn’t the least sorry.
“The money wasn’t exactly a gift.” Claire looked down at her feet. The moment of sweetest revenge. They would no longer be needing his services; the trees were bowing under the weight of their record harvest; prices were up and the loan would be paid off and the Baumsarg ranch would never be beholden again. A happy birthday indeed. Forster had been right that the place never felt as much theirs since the debt, but Claire knew that sometimes necessity made one temporarily do the wrong thing.
The most devastating revenge: the thin envelope with its single stamp, a check for the full amount, and a simple note requesting the closing of the credit line. Gwen made her way over to the rescue. “Come on, Mom. Cake time.”
Claire looked back at Relicer, happy to be abandoning him. “It’s a hard job living here, not a vacation.”
As she walked with her daughter, she noticed the girl’s first attempt at makeup. “I wish you’d wash that off. It makes you look too old.” When Gwen frowned, Claire relented, putting her arms around her shoulders. “And too beautiful. What happened to my little girl?”
A mountainous tower of frosting masquerading as a cake was wheeled out on a cart, and by it stood Lucy and Gwen, unhappy that Josh was as usual nowhere in sight to sing his part. Raisi, Claire’s mother, offered to go looking for him, but Octavio took charge. The girls sang “How Sweet It Is” in harmony, one part missing, and it sounded strangely romantic and dreamy coming from their mouths instead of the usual James Taylor version that Forster loved to play. Did the girls mistakenly think that Forster’s favorite song was hers also? The girls didn’t know differently because Claire had no time to listen to music, much less have favorites, so on Saturday nights, exhausted from a long day doing errands that had been put off during the week, she deferred to Forster’s taste.
“Where’s Josh for the picture?” Claire asked. He had hit a new stage of rebelliousness that was unfathomable after the docile joys of raising daughters.
After a half hour’s search, Octavio found him drinking vodka with older boys in an irrigation ditch.
“There are going to be consequences to this,” Claire said when she found out. “This is not acceptable. Those are teenagers. Not ten-year-olds.”
Josh looked at Octavio, betrayed. “But they said—”
“You missed cutting my cake. Singing the song your sisters prepared. You weren’t in the family picture. Things are going to change.”
A charmer, Josh held out an orange as a peace offering. It used to be a joke between them when he got in trouble. The most precious thing for the family and the most common.
“Not going to get you off the hook this time, mister.”
“We can always take another picture.” Forster held the camera, not paying mind to his son’s ruffled hair, his crooked smile, his fingers making rabbit ears behind Lucy’s head, and at the time Claire was angry that the pictures were too silly to use for the Christmas card. “Behave!” she said. Forster was distracted after overhearing Claire’s conversation with the banker, a double impotence — the farm’s loan and this man’s presence lording the fact over them. Forster remained sullen until she reminded him that this would be the last time they would have to entertain the man. “You can give him the check yourself.”
Claire handed him the envelope, then gave him a thumbs-up. “We need you in the picture—”