“It’s not her fault. I just—”
“And after you stood by her when Christine died.”
Jacob turned, his fists clenched. “You don’t know anything about that. Shut the hell up.”
“She was family to me, too. I meant to send a card, but how do you say you’re sorry when something like that happens?”
Jacob had been asking himself that same question for nearly a year. Christine’s death had been different, tragic in a quieter way. Christine meant “follower of Christ,” Renee’s choice. Coming from Joshua’s lips, the name now sounded like a grim cosmic joke.
“So when my other child dies, you pop up out of nowhere,” Jacob said.
“Misery loves company,” Joshua said. “Just like the good old days.”
He reached up and rattled the brass pipes of a wind chime that hung from the porch’s support beam. A die-stamped metal sparrow perched atop the chime, its crevices gritty with age. The chime had been there as far back as Jacob could remember. Their mother had tapped it with her cane to summon them to dinner or bedtime, and the soft notes were a reminder of long summer nights in the forest or games in the barn.
Joshua mimicked their mother’s high voice as he climbed the porch steps. “Time to come in, boys.” His voice rose to a piercing shrillness. “Jake! Josh!”
Joshua took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, then stood aside. The damp, woody odor of the trapped air enveloped Jacob. Joshua gave him a gentle nudge in the back.
Jacob took a tentative step forward, on the threshold of a life he’d spent a decade burying. A long Oriental carpet led into the foyer where the dining room, sitting room, stairs, and hall intersected. The framed photographs of dead Wells ancestors hung on the walls, dim with dust. A rustic butcher-block table stood on uneven legs against the far wall, topped by a gray doily and an empty crystal vase. A wrought iron coatrack skulked in the corner like a sharp-edged stalker. A path was worn in the center of the oak stair treads. The bottom baluster was still splintered from their mother’s fall. Except for the smell and cobwebs, everything was as it had been on Jacob’s last visit. The day they’d buried Warren Wells. This house was a museum of pain, a mausoleum of bad memories.
Jacob waded forward, as if the past were a wet stack of calendars. Even Joshua’s voice, coming from behind him, sounded years younger. “I haven’t had the power turned on. No phone, neither. Didn’t want anybody to know I was around.”
Jacob finally mustered enough oxygen to speak. “How long are you staying?”
“That’s up to you.” Joshua lit a cigarette and the acrid smoke helped drive the stench of failure from the foyer.
Jacob reached the entrance to the sitting room. Books lined the shelves around the central fireplace, the burnt umber of the leather a complement to the bricks. Spread across the mantel was a collection of knickknacks, clay cats, glass figurines, hand-carved exotica from across the world. Their mother had been a collector and had wiped down the objects weekly, spacing them in such a precise manner that she could tell if a piece had been shifted even so much as a centimeter. She would have slammed her cane against the floor in anguish to see the figures now, clouded by accumulated dust.
Joshua crossed the sitting room, his boots shedding dried mud. He flicked his cigarette ash into the fireplace, picked up a crystal poodle, and held it to the muted light that leaked through the drapes. He rubbed a finger across the animal’s head then raised his arm as if to fling the object against the grate. Instead, he tossed his cigarette onto the brick apron of the hearth, mashed it out with his foot, and returned the poodle to its proper place in the menagerie.
“It’s a little chilly in here,” Joshua said. He pulled a couple of thin books from the nearest shelf. “Hemingway. Dad’s favorite writer. I think we ought to build a fire.”
Jacob sat in a Queen Anne chair, a piece of furniture not designed for comfort. If the foyer was a hallway into the past of the entire Wells family, this room was solely his mother’s, stiff and formal and brutal, as severe as a prison cell. Jacob had rarely spent time here during his childhood, and he perched on the edge of the chair as if expecting his dead mother to clatter around the corner, cane-first, and shout at him not to disturb anything. He breathed shallowly, afraid even to stir the air too much.
Joshua stooped and opened one of the volumes to the front pages. “First edition, what do you know?”
He tossed the books onto the log irons, where they lay like clumsy giant moths with paper wings. He pulled out his lighter. “Welcome home, Jake.”
He flicked the flint wheel and stared into the dancing flame. The flame touched the brown pages and burst into brighter life, sending shadows crawling along the curtains. Joshua grinned, his eyes sparkling with the reflected fire. He echoed familiar words, written words:
“Hope you like the housewarming present.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Donald Meekins was definitely avoiding her.
Renee looked at her watch. She’d been waiting for twenty minutes in the little room with Jeffrey Snow, who sat at his desk and occasionally looked at her over his computer. Jeffrey was fresh out of college and had been hired by M & W Ventures after the previous office manager had been caught kneeling under Donald’s desk by none other than Mrs. Meekins. Jeffrey was as far from blonde and bouncy as they came, with a weak chin and faded gray eyes, and his name wasn’t Staci and he didn’t sign his name with a little heart over the letter I. He had just the proper amount of stern bookishness to cow tenants who were behind on the rent and enough equanimity to divert those who clamored for repairs or a new paint job.
“Can I knock?” she asked Jeffrey.
“He’s on an important phone call. Long distance.”
“I see. Has Jacob been by?”
“Mr. Wells?” Jeffrey looked around the office as if expecting to see him in one of the chairs by the rubber tree. “I haven’t seen him, ma’am.”
“This week?”
“Not since the accid—” Jeffrey pulled at his tie as if it were cutting off the oxygen to his brain. “Not since March.”
“He got my message, so he must have come by at least once.”
“He still has a key.”
“I guess things are a mess around here. I know Jacob and Donald were in the middle of a big land deal west of town. The way the economy’s going, you can’t afford to sit on anything.”
Jeffrey tapped at the keyboard as if randomly plugging in numbers to escape her. “I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am. I only keep track of the leases.”
“I like Ivy Terrace. Easy to keep clean.”
“Yes, ma’am. And Donald paid you up three months ahead. That qualifies you for a five percent discount if you renew.”
“We’ll be building another house soon,” she lied. “When we get things straightened out.”
Renee stood and arched her back, stiff from the long wait. She looked at the telephone on Jeffrey’s desk. There were three lines in the system, each with a red indicator light. One line each for Donald and Jacob, and one line for Jeffrey. None of them were lit.
Renee picked up her purse from the floor beside her chair. Jeffrey did a bad job of hiding his relief at her leaving. “Tell Donald I’ll give him a call later,” she said.
“Certainly, Mrs. Wells.”
Renee waited for Jeffrey’s attention to return to the computer screen, and then she marched past him, twisted the knob to Donald’s office, and flung the door open. Donald was behind the saltwater aquarium looking at the miniature undersea world, his face distorted by water and glass. The fish moved in darting patterns of color, nervous in their narrow world.
“Bring any bait?” Donald asked.
“No. Just some dynamite.”
The light in the room was soft, the furnishings heavy and dark against walls of paneled walnut. Donald had built his environment to match his personality. Aside from the fish, the only bold color in the office was the plaid upholstery in the wooden case that held a clutch of dusty golf trophies. Along the rear wall was a bookshelf that was bare except for some piles of loose papers. A filing cabinet beside the desk looked as if it had been placed there for effect instead of utility. Donald came around the aquarium and approached Renee with the slow steps of a condemned man climbing the scaffold.