“Ours. A joint asset.”
“Ours.” The word had lost most of its meaning. Still, if she wanted to believe in a fantasy future, it would make things that much simpler. Betrayal worked best when it came as a surprise. Enemies were the only people you could trust, because they were predictable. The only trouble was figuring out which ones were enemies.
“Why did your brother come back?”
“He’s a Wells. He’s part of me.” In a way that Renee would never be. Her blood, no matter how hot it ran or how much of it spilled for him, would never have the purity of Joshua’s. Even Mattie and Christine were diluted, only half Wells.
“Somebody knows, Jake.”
“Nobody knows.”
She pulled the Rock Star Barbie out of her purse. “Remember this?”
The fire, laying on the floor, screaming “Wish me” against the crackling chorus of flames. “Mattie’s doll.”
Renee triggered its audio chip and it bleated “Housewarming present.”
“Some kid playing a joke, maybe. Some drunk. Or crazy bum.” Not like him. Not him.
“I found it in the woods.”
“Forget it. Nobody saw nothing.”
“Let me show you something,” she said.
Jacob looked up the road, half expecting to see Davidson round the corner in her fat-wheeled SUV, all chrome and insignia and fog lights. If she smelled arson, she would hang the crime on somebody. And an arson that caused a child’s death would be a second degree murder charge at a minimum.
Renee tugged his sleeve, dragged him toward the woods. As they passed the wreckage, he wondered what the clutter meant to her, how the skeletal block wall and blackened wood and scorched appliances played against her obsessive-compulsive disorder. She’d wanted to clear the forest, level the oak and maple and birch and install landscaping, to regiment the wilderness and line the shrubs in a God-pleasing order. Jacob had convinced her that they wouldn’t be in the house long enough for the plants to reach maturity, and she had settled for flower beds along the front walk.
He fumbled at his shirt pocket and touched the pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Lights, the same brand as Joshua’s.
“I found this, too.” She pulled the plastic rattle out of her pocket and shook it, though the sound elicited sharp pricks of regret.
“That was in the nursery,” Jacob said.
“Should have been.”
Jacob took the rattle in his left hand and shook it. It bore the face of a generic bear, its painted eyes long since flaked off. The handle was worn, but it felt familiar inside Jacob’s grip. He had rattled the bear himself, as a tiny child whose twin lay in the crib beside him, whose mother leaned over in severe judgment, whose father stayed well away. Years that Jacob had rarely mentioned, no matter how deeply Renee had dug.
It was one of the few relics Jacob had kept when he left home. It had been in his college apartment, and Renee had found it in one of her frantic bouts of cleaning. He’d shrugged it off, but Renee found it sweet and enduring that a rebellious, scatter-brained poet hung on to a childhood toy.
And, by rights, the rattle should have been a melted lump of slag deep in the black bowels of the house.
“Somebody was in the house, Jake.”
“He couldn’t have known.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Who do think?” Jacob gripped the rattle hard enough that the plastic cracked.
“Is that why you’re giving him the money? Is he blackmailing you?”
Jacob stared back at the house, at the black bed of charred ruins that may as well have been a mirror of their souls. He pulled out the pack of cigarettes and tapped one free, shaking the rattle in the process.
“When did you take up smoking?” she asked.
“I’ve always smoked.”
He flicked the lighter and touched it to the cigarette tip, fighting the impulse to also apply the flame to the rattle.
Better late than never.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“I love you.” As if that were an answer.
She took the cigarette from his fingers. “Then let’s do this together.”
She tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it with her foot. “A Wells never fails, and two Wells are better than one,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Renee drove Jacob to Dr. Rheinsfeldt’s office, she looked over at the passenger seat and admired her handiwork. He’d moved into her apartment, cleaned up, and bought a couple of new suits. It was off-the-rack, Belk’s stuff, but it would have to do until the money began rolling again. And it would. A shave and a splash of cologne, three weeks of sobriety to get the bugs off his skin, and he was ready to climb back onto the throne. Kingsboro was waiting for him to stand up and be a Wells, to take the town’s future in his hands and push it into a prosperous new era.
Attitude was the important thing. They had mourned enough. The SBI had turned in the final incident report, and the fire had been ruled “Cause undetermined.” Not quite as good as a ruling of “accidental,” which would mean that a definitive source of the fire had been found. As it was, the open-ended ruling left a cloud of suspicion lingering, but the insurance company was now compelled to pay. Two million dollars, minus the $20,000 that Renee had received for emergency housing and living expenses.
Now they were bound together, joined for the future, and Jacob wouldn’t be able to shake her. He had accepted the new arrangement with sullen resentment, but she had explained that no other options remained. A husband and wife didn’t keep secrets from each other, and now they had to close ranks. They could deal with the rest of it after they squared the books of M & W Ventures and shut up Donald Meekins. They’d already signed the necessary forms, and Rayburn Jones had treated them like old friends, pleased to see Jacob back in Rotarian form. Jacob seemed to sit a little straighter, his eyes brighter and wider, confidence returning.
They’d not talked about Joshua. Renee hoped he’d given up and left town.
“This is important,” Renee said, pulling into the parking lot of Total Wellness. “I know we each have to deal with grief in our own way, but the community will forgive you faster if you seek help. And don’t forget to act humble.”
“Humble,” Jacob said. “I can manage that.”
“We don’t even have to talk about the girls if you don’t want to.”
“Whatever the doctor thinks is best.”
Summer was giving way to autumn, the grass taking on a blue-green shade and the oaks on the lawn in full red canopy. The sky was blue and the clouds high and white, and the sadness had faded enough that Renee could once again believe that God watched over them all.
She saw Rheinsfeldt at the second-floor window, looking down on them as they came up the sidewalk. Renee started to wave then wondered if that was a breach of etiquette. Maybe therapists didn’t acknowledge their clients outside the confines of the confessional chamber. Jacob didn’t notice the doctor, his gaze fixed on a hill in the distance where grading machines were at work notching a red gash in the slope.
“That’s Wade Thompson’s crew,” Jacob said. “We had an option on that land before all this recent trouble. I think he’s aiming for student apartments. I would have gone for condominiums myself. Fewer headaches and a quicker return.”
He was sounding like the Jake of old, the one with plans and ambition. The man she had helped build, and the only version of him she was able to love. She had no use for the broken Jake who drank cheap liquor in the bushes and cowered at the mention of his brother. This reborn Jake had a bounce in his step and his complexion had gone to a healthy blush, the mottled and burned skin almost completely healed.
“Be patient, honey,” she said. “We’re going to get it all back. A Wells never fails.”
“And two Wells are better than one.”
The receptionist recognized Jacob. “Good morning, Mr. Wells,” the receptionist said, smiling in a way that would have made Renee jealous had she not been so pleased that another woman found her husband worthy of charm. “Please sign here.”