A lot of it is just small talk.
I remarked about the weather.
She told me about her car.
I asked if her homeowners’ insurance had paid out.
Our home — now Ardith’s home — was burglarized a few months ago and she’s had problems collecting. They took some costume jewelry and a clock radio, and that was about it.
The insurance had finally paid up.
I asked about her photography, which is one of Ardith’s loves from college years, and she said she hadn’t shot much lately. She takes great pictures, lots of mood and emotion in them.
“I get out the old albums sometimes,” she said. “All that stuff of you and Matt. Some of it’s quite beautiful. But all of it makes me cry.”
Those pictures — Matt and I wrestling on the floor, Matt and I goofing at the beach, Matt and I doing you name it — would have made me cry, too. Ardith seemed to follow us around with her camera for every one of those five short years.
Small talk has a way of getting bigger when you’ve been through the things that Ardith and I have been through. This time, she changed the subject.
“Did you see the notice this mortuary ran in the paper?”
“Yeah. I called. They said they were computerizing their list of ‘property owners.’ Said not to worry.”
“Well, they told me the same thing, so I worried. I thought about that cemetery up in L.A. County, where they just dug up the old ones and cremated them, then sold the plots to new people.”
“I don’t think they’ll try that here,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because if they do, we’ll see the earth has been disturbed and I’ll personally throw each and every one of them in jail.”
“You tell them that on the phone?”
“In fact, I did.”
“Good.”
I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out the flask of Herradura I keep in the trunk of the car, along with the spray bottle, paper and beach towel. Jordan Ishmael looked into the trunk one day and saw the box and what was in it, and because it’s a county sedan, he had to say something about lugging around personal stuff. I told him the towel was for my son and the tequila was for his ex-wife and that shut him up. As I took a pull on the liquor I thought back to the bizarre expression on Ishmael’s face at the station just a few hours ago. I thought of the look on Frances’s face, too, the day before. Same look, I thought: confused and pissed off and frightened and utterly bloodthirsty. You’d think I’d have better things to remember with the remains of my son just a few feet away.
I offered her the flask and she took a sip.
“Still blacking out on this stuff?”
“No. I’ve cut back a lot.”
“Those were some scary times.”
“Dumb.”
She handed back the flask. “You’re not built for booze. It just takes too much to put you down where you like to be.”
“I really don’t want to be there anymore. I nip maybe a half pint a night now, usually less. Maybe a beer or two.”
“That’s still an awful lot of booze.”
“A little less every week. I’m going to be okay with it, Ardith.”
“You’re not going to be young forever.”
“I’m not even young now.”
“You still go to that cave? Drink and smoke and sleep it off?”
“I still like it out there. No pass-out nights, recently.”
“That you can remember.”
“No, really. I’m over the worst of it.”
I looked down the slope to where a fresh grave was being dug. Gravediggers don’t use shovels now; they use CAT backhoes. They carry the lining vaults around in little trailers attached to little tractors. The ones here all go about their work with an indifference that makes me wince sometimes. It’s just a business, really, just a living. You can’t expect them to stare off toward the Pacific and think of the boy they buried almost two years ago.
“Kenneth doing well?”
She nodded.
“I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Thanks.”
In fact, I’m not glad she’s happy. I’m not a capacious enough man to wish her supreme happiness with a new husband, when she never really had it with her old one. She married Kenneth not long after I moved out. At first it surprised me, because she never told me she was even dating. Then I realized how naked and unsupported Ardith felt — and had been feeling — for some time. Kenneth is a retired commercial pilot, a big, heavy-handshaking, wide-smiling block of a guy who has the personality of a sunny eight-year-old. He’s financially solid, and according to Ardith, a kind and caring man. I’ve spent as little time as possible around him, but it’s easy to see he adores her. She’s a trophy. And he’s a rock for her.
“I’m glad it’s working out for you two,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to see you have a family again someday.”
I truly would like to see that. Ardith is only thirty-five years old, but time goes by fast. It would kill something inside me, but maybe some things inside me would be better off dead.
“No. Kenneth won’t do that. He’s got four grown.”
“Things can change.”
“I’ve never yet seen a human being grow younger.”
Well.
“How are you and Melinda?”
“Okay.”
“Okay sounds not so good.”
“I think... well, it could be argued that we didn’t really make a good decision.”
“It was too soon, Terry. You knew that.”
“Everybody knew it. We did it anyway.”
“People aren’t overly bright.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just mean all of us, in general.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Hang in there. There’s another chance for you, Terry. But you have to take care of yourself. You got to be standing up for it.”
Ardith has a kind and loving heart. It was one of the many things I loved about her and still do. But she was always, always, always, first and foremost, before and after everything else, afraid. She was always afraid. And that is the part of Matthew’s death I blame on her.
“I still love and care about you a lot, Ardith. Just for what it’s worth.”
“I love and care about you, too.”
“We had a lot of bad luck.”
“Lots of that.”
The gravediggers worked and the clouds slid across the reservoir and Catalina Island sat in the ocean like a black stump.
We sat a few more minutes. Ardith reached over and hugged me, then stood and walked off to her car. I stayed a while longer, drank some tequila and lay down on the beach towel to look up at the passing clouds.
Fifteen
I was proud to walk onto Sheriff Jim Wade’s sprawling ranch property for the Orange Classic. It was a sunny cool morning and the aroma of the hillside sage mixed with the smell of horses and hay and leather. Penny skipped along between Melinda and me, holding our hands, in her pink dress and white straw hat with the pink ribbon. I felt patriarchal.
I was also temporarily content at what we’d been able to do for Brittany and Abby Elder. The Horridus had made his move, but he hadn’t done what I feared the most, and we’d been there fast to get the physical evidence and, most importantly, the physical description we needed so badly. I checked my watch. Right now, as we rode the tram toward the Wade Ranch, I knew that Amanda Aguilar and Brittany were conspiring to give a face to our monster. I felt luck in the air and luck in my blood and I knew that Amanda was going to get from Brittany what she hadn’t been able to get from Steven Wicks. We were going to get him, soon.