Chapter
18
Vicki woke me with the news Friday morning. Within minutes, I was in the kitchen with Amelia and Lee, and once I had the basics, the only thing I could think was that I wanted feedback from James.
Someone tried to burn Lee’s house in MA, I texted. Call when you can.
The BlackBerry was still in my hand when it chimed. Barely a minute had passed.
“Hi,” I said, and stepped out of the kitchen onto the back porch of the Red Fox.
“What happened?”
“There was a fire last night. The house was alarmed, so the fire department got there before the whole thing was engulfed, but there was still a lot of damage. Lee is traumatized.”
“How did she find out? I thought the bank repossessed.”
“Not the bank,” I said, telling him what I had just learned. “The mortgage was taken over by a company called East Sea Properties.”
“Owned by the brothers?” James asked.
I smiled. “My first thought, too. The brothers would have wanted the insurance money. But no. East Sea Properties is actually quite large. Some of its holdings date way back, and they aren’t all on the coast. They cut a swath inland, all the way to Bell Valley.”
“Amelia,” he deduced as I knew he would.
“It’s not that she actually thought Lee would ever want to live there again, but she says it has emotional value and that Lee, not those brothers, should be the one to decide what she does with the house. Amelia’s pretty belligerent about it. It’s the principle of the thing, she says. I’m not sure Lee agrees. She isn’t into belligerence. But there’s no way Amelia would want that house damaged. She’s kept it maintained so that it would be ready for Lee if she wants to return.”
“A kind thing to do, but a tip-off. The brothers must have followed the trail. Otherwise, there’d have been no motive. Are the police sure it was arson?”
“Not yet, but the way the fire spread is suspicious. They’re putting a team on it today. They want to talk with Amelia and Lee, but I want to talk with that team. It’s a small town. Think they can handle this?”
“I’m looking at the website,” James said, sounding distracted as he read. “The police department has more than twenty officers. So they have the numbers, but I doubt they see much arson. You may want to ask.”
“I will. I take it we can’t use this in court today.”
“No. Arson, vandalism, threatening letters—they’re a whole other case. Today’s only about the trust fund. Sean may be able to slip in something about a pattern of intimidation. The other side will object, but the judge will still hear it, and if Lee is as sympathetic a witness as I’m guessing, it could register. I’d give him a call.”
“Right now. Anything else?” I had my own list of questions, mostly for Amelia and having to do with her insurer helping with the arson investigation. But James was good at this.
He considered it. Finally, he said, “Yeah. Meet me there?”
“Where?”
“At the house in Massachusetts. I want to see it. I also want to stop in at the police station to meet whoever’s doing the investigation. Actually, I have a better idea. I don’t know how early I can get out of here, but if the hearing’s at three, I could catch a shuttle and be at the courthouse by five. We could drive there together.” He smiled then—I could hear it when he said, “I’d do the driving. I miss my car.”
I wasn’t offended. I liked his plan. I might have said he would miss precious work time, or that Mark wouldn’t be pleased, or that he would be dead on his feet moonlighting this way. But I didn’t. I might be occasionally impulsive, marginally irresponsible, or borderline cowardly, but I wasn’t dumb. Arson in Manchester-by-the-Sea was a gift.
Leaving Bell Valley later that morning, we took two cars. I had been planning on driving Lee anyway, but Amelia insisted on coming, and then Jude, at which point I told them I was meeting James afterward, and while that might have been fine if it had been Lee alone, the thought of Amelia and Jude in the BMW with us wasn’t my idea of fun.
So Jude drove the Range Rover. I had no idea why he was coming—whether he hoped his presence would redeem him on the responsibility front, or whether he just wanted to be in on the action. I did know that he wanted to meet James.
That said, I was hoping he would get lost along the way, but there he was, standing with us in the courthouse lobby at two-thirty. Lee, who was looking nervously at the people nearby, made an involuntary sound when a new group arrived.
“Which one is Albert Meeme?” I whispered.
“Round one, bald head,” she whispered back.
I couldn’t miss him. He was looking directly at us. Likewise, the three men with him.
“Do you know the others?”
“The one in the dark suit is the lawyer for the family. The one in the navy blazer is Jack’s brother Duane. I don’t know the third.”
Sean did. Joining us, he said, “The tall guy is a former county sheriff, currently a private investigator. They’ve brought him along as a statement that they have the law on their side.”
“But if he’s not currently the law …,” I began.
“It’s all about image. They’re the dream team. Big local names. All of them.”
“Will the judge be swayed by that?”
“He shouldn’t be. But the old boys’ club still exists.”
I was thinking that Sean looked uneasy, and was hoping that Lee didn’t notice, when Jude said, “I know that guy.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The investigator. He was on my boat once.”
“Uh, Jude …”
“Seriously. Take a few tourists for a week at sea, film it, and what they pay for the privilege covers operational expenses for the trip, so it’s pure profit for us. Every guy is up for playing Deadliest Catch, and that one was really into it.” To Sean, he said, “His name is Billy DeSimone, right? Can’t forget the name. He uses it in the third person all the time.”
“Same guy,” Sean confirmed.
“He was a good poker player. He won’t recognize me cleaned up, but I stared at that face a lot. We used to go at it for hours. Say the word, and I’ll distract him.”
Amelia looked appalled but was saved from responding by Sean, who warned, “Do that and they’ll turn it into an attempt to influence the witness. Right now, Lee is the victim. There’s a purity to that.”
Jude looked annoyed, but Lee distracted us.
“Duane is staring at me,” she said, frightened. “He made a play for me when Jack died and didn’t like when I said no. I don’t see why they have to be here.”
“It’s their legal right,” Sean explained. “They have something at stake, too.”
“Yeah,” Jude groused, “a reputation for getting off the hook. Billy DeSimone knows how to use the system. Give him a couple of beers, and he’ll tell you all about it. He’ll make mincemeat of your case, Sean. You have no evidence linking Lee’s husband’s family with what’s happening to her now.”
“That’s not the point of this hearing,” Sean said, and suddenly glanced toward the elevator. Following his gaze, I saw James striding toward us. He looked confident, handsome, and utterly professional in his blue suit and sage tie. Eyes excited, he was looking at me.
If I hadn’t already loved him, I would have fallen head over heels again. Only after he kissed me did he greet the others.
I’m sure he knew exactly who Jude was, but, incredibly, their meeting was a nonevent. They had barely shaken hands when James introduced us to an older man who accompanied him. His name was Lyle Kagan. “I work with Lyle’s son in New York,” James explained, “but Lyle lives here in Boston, and he has experience with Albert Meeme. He’s agreed to testify.”
Lyle Kagan was a powerful witness. A respected real estate developer, he packed nearly as much star power as Billy DeSimone. Where Lee was appropriately meek, testifying simply to the facts of dwindling checks and nonanswers to questions, Lyle described a pattern of irregularities with his own trust that he had never been able to prove. It might have taken a while for Lyle to have his day in court, but it struck me, with pleasure, that Albert Meeme had messed with the wrong guy.
Affidavits were entered into evidence, along with Lee’s files. The other lawyer argued—condescendingly, as though Lee were either a gold digger or pathetically naïve—that Lee simply expected more than a fluctuating stock market could produce. But when the judge looked over the provided trust statement and found it inadequate, the lawyer couldn’t answer to the specifics of disbursements.
The petition was granted. Sean even got his requested accountant to examine the trust fund. It would have been a total victory, had not Lee’s brother-in-law whispered to Lee once we were in the lobby again, “Dye your hair all you want, but we know where you are. My offer’s still good. Say the word, and I’ll be your protector.”
Full voice, for our benefit, she repeated the threat verbatim, to which Duane made a face and said, “Where did you come up with that? All I did was ask how you’re doing.” With an elaborate annoyance, he left.
Lee was trembling. “I shouldn’t be doing this. It’ll get worse.”
“But now we’re on the record,” Sean assured her. “If they try anything more, it’ll backfire. First, we establish trust fund fraud. By then we’ll have a report that arson was committed. Each piece of the puzzle will fit it.”
“With me as the bait,” Lee guessed.
But Amelia was one step ahead. “That man will not protect you. We will.” She homed in on Jude. “You will. You can keep her safe, Jude. This is right up your alley.”
Jude looked cornered.
“No. Jude.” Amelia was firm. “I need you for this. No one else can do it like you can.”
We left soon after—Amelia and Lee with Jude, James and I alone. The plan was for Jude to lead us to Manchester-by-the-Sea, but, with typical machismo, he wove through traffic in a way that was impossible to follow. After a halfhearted attempt, James caught my eye and, with a satisfied smile, turned on the GPS.
I wasn’t as interested in where we were headed as, there and then, with what my husband had done. Ebullient, I took his hand. “You made our case. You were amazing.”
“Nah,” he said in the deep voice I loved, “I just lucked out with Lyle.”
“But he didn’t go after Meeme when it was his own trust fund. Why now?”
“Time has passed. Lyle’s name is bigger now than it was then. And he felt for Lee. I’ve been talking with him since Tuesday, but he didn’t commit to testifying until this morning. That’s when I decided to catch an earlier plane.”
An earlier plane raised an interesting point. “Any trouble getting out of the office?”
His chin rose a fraction. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask, I just left. I was up half the night finishing a brief for Mark. I’d put in my time.”
“You don’t look exhausted.”
“Funny how you forget exhaustion when you score big in court. Besides, I have to look good to hold my own beside you. You look amazing, honey. Where’d you get the skirt and blouse?” The blouse was white, the skirt red and short. My sandals were black and high-heeled.
“Vicki’s closet. A change from a blue blouse and black slacks, don’t you think?”
He gave the outfit another admiring glance. “You could wear that to work.”
“I could not.”
“Well, you should. Or maybe not. You look too good.” After squeezing my hand, he returned his to the wheel. Rush-hour traffic was heavy, but he didn’t seem to mind the starts and stops. Gripping the wheel at ten and two, he gave a deep, satisfied sigh. “Boy, does it feel good to drive.”
A man and his car, I thought. But it could have been any car, I realized. He had been so busy that he hadn’t driven other than to come to Bell Valley.
“Freedom!” I said.
He echoed the word with enthusiasm, only afterward realizing the admission and adding a quick, “There’s just no reason for me to drive in New York.”
“But you do love driving. And you do love your car.”
He did a thing with his eyes that said it was true.
“And you love your work,” I added.
He snorted. “You know I don’t. I love the Bryant case, but the rest of it stinks. I’m just counting down, doing what I have to, to get that partnership in October. Once I have it, I can pick and choose.”
“But you said something’s up at the firm. What if it folds?”
“It won’t fold.”
“But what if it did? What would you do?”
“Would you ever consider leaving New York?”
“You’re being transparent, babe.”
“Would you?” I wanted to know if this was still a total roadblock.
Rather than answering, James switched to the one topic he knew I wouldn’t ignore. “Your Jude is a real piece of work. What do you see in him?”
“Talk about transparent,” I said, but allowed the change of subject. All things considered, James had been remarkably civil to Jude. “Nothing now. Ten years ago? Lots. I was young and inexperienced. He was worldly.”
“Neanderthal worldly.”
“He’s not that bad,” I said, though James wasn’t entirely wrong. “He says he’s grown. But he still doesn’t understand the concept of responsibility.” I told him about Noah and the baseball game. “Jude knows what he should be doing, but he can’t quite do it. There’s a disconnect.”
“He still loves you.”
“Not my problem,” I said.
“As long as you’re up there, it is. I know the type. He’ll keep trying.”
“He can try all he wants. I’m not available.”
“What if we were separated?”
My heart stopped. “Do you want that?”
“Hell no, but if we were, would you be with him again?”
“Why would I? I don’t feel anything for him.” I’d certainly had opportunity, though telling my husband that would only invite jealousy. “Ten years is a long time. He hasn’t changed. I have.”
It must have been the right answer, because James reached for my hand again and held it as we headed north on I-93. We talked a little, but the silence between was sweet. Every so often, he fingered my wedding band, not unlike what Jude had done but with a greater sense of rightness. When a buzzing came from his pocket, he ignored it. He answered a second one, but let a third go.
The town was an easy twenty miles north of Boston, but it was well after five when we reached Lee’s house. Though surprisingly close to the road, it was low and sprawling, definitely a good thing, given what had happened. A fire would have spread upward more quickly, causing greater damage. Instead, the destruction was limited to the bedroom wing of the house, which was broken and charred.
The front door opened to living areas that I guessed to be exactly as Lee had left them. Decorated fittingly for an oceanside home, it was done in beige and glass. With large windows covering every ocean-facing wall, artwork was sparse but spectacular, a collection of large nature pieces encased in weathered wood. As amazing as they were, though, I was riveted to the small framed pictures of a light-haired, happier Lee with her husband, who, while not traditionally handsome, exuded kindness.
Though the entire house smelled of smoke, it was more concentrated in those parts that had burned. The master bedroom was the worst. Someone had known where to start for the greatest impact. Built-in units, his and her chaises, a king-size bed once dressed in fine linens—all were unsalvageable. What damage hadn’t been done by the fire had been done by the firefighters in their effort to control the blaze. Adding insult to injury, the moist salt air poured through gaping holes where huge windows had been.
I felt sick to my stomach, but Lee looked worse. When she went back outside, I followed. The others weren’t far behind. Amelia had seen enough and wanted to get on the road; I suspected that though she regretted her lot in life, she found Bell Valley as comforting as anyone else. Jude, looking irritated as he toed ashes outside, joined her at the car, but Lee was the first in, angling away from the house she had loved.
Once they were gone, James and I walked along the bluff. Below us, the tide was out, exposing wet sand, snarled seaweed, black rocks. For a time, we sat shoulder to shoulder with the sun at our backs, enjoying the cool breeze off the Atlantic. Our fingers were linked. It was a special moment; I felt closer to him than I could remember.
“I’ve missed this,” I said, burrowing even closer.
“It was your choice to leave,” he breathed against my forehead.
“I mean big picture. This has been gone for years.” I turned my cheek on his shoulder to look at him. Everything appealed, from his windblown hair to his blue eyes to the shadow on his jaw. “Don’t you miss it at all?”
“Hell yes, I miss it,” he said. “I miss this, miss drinking with my college buds, miss playing pickup basketball—but things change.”
“Not things like this,” I argued. “What we have here, now, is a personal relationship. It may not be as easy to come by as it was when we were in law school, but we have to make time for it.”
“What about responsibility? Your Jude doesn’t have it, you said. Well, I do.”
“Too much. There has to be a happy medium. I’ve said it before—I don’t want to be an extreme. I can’t live as an extreme. Why did I have to walk away from my life to see that?”
He didn’t answer, but I knew he wasn’t convinced. Either that, or he was just more stubborn than I was. Or more blind.
We didn’t stay much longer. James had a plane to catch. We did stop at the police station on our way out of town, and though only a skeletal staff was working, the fire was big news. They had nothing to add to what we already knew, but James was able to introduce himself and leave his card. He also made an impression, something I never ceased to appreciate—and the dispatcher wasn’t even female. He was a guy wearing a Red Sox hat, and though James had little time to watch games, he could talk baseball. Me, I’d have been all business, but James had a way of doing business and making a friend in the process, guaranteeing that the guy in the Red Sox cap would call the instant there was news. The fellow also recommended a fabulous eatery right next door and even made a call to guarantee us a quick in and out.
“You’re so good at that,” I commented while we waited for our lobster rolls. “He’s your best bud now.”
James was looking around the restaurant. “It’s easy to be nice to nice people. You’re the same way.” His eyes found mine again. He seemed wary. “Could you live in a town like this?”
“In a heartbeat.” We were an easy drive from a city; there was no traffic to speak of; our server seemed to know everyone in the place.
“I couldn’t. I’d feel choked.”
“Like I feel in New York?” I didn’t want to rock the boat of our earlier goodwill, but that had been my big mistake. I had to learn to express myself. Urgently, I leaned forward. “Don’t you see, James? This is the best—of us, of life. My mom used to argue that tombstones don’t list jobs. They list relationships—daughter, wife, mother. Forget everything else right now; I need to recoup the wife part.” Straightening, I wagged a finger between us. “You, me, woods, beach, lunch together—I want this. Can I get it in New York?”
“Yes,” he said without a blink. “I’ll show you. Come back with me, Emily. We’ll have this weekend. We’ll relax, we’ll play, we’ll talk.”
“What about work?” I asked, because, for us, Manhattan was synonymous with that. “It’ll still be in your face.”
“I’ll do it between what we want to do.”
Sitting back, I studied him. He was open, vulnerable.
Funny, I had been worried that he would sway me with words. But it was the look that did it now. I could have returned to Bell Valley to consider. I could have walked through the woods and communed with my coyote. I could have fully analyzed the pros and cons.
But three weeks had passed without Manhattan stress, and if I was to decide which road to take next, I had to test my strength.
“Okay,” I said.
He did blink then and straightened. “Yes?” He seemed to be holding his breath. “Just like that?”
“For a visit,” I cautioned, but James seemed relieved enough to not fault the word.
“What about your stuff in Bell Valley?”
“I can do without it. There’s something to be said for spontaneity.”
“Hah,” he barked, but teasingly. “Try insurance.”
I smiled. “Like I’ll have to go back for them? Maybe I’ll just want to go back. I still have another week before Walter expects me at work.”
I wasn’t thinking of Walter during the drive south. As the sun sank, headlights went on, and traffic picked up, I was thinking about what I’d told James. Tombstones don’t list jobs; they list relationships—daughter, wife, mother. Even as I addressed the wife part, the daughter surfaced. I had to call my dad and let him know I was trying, but I wanted more privacy than the car allowed.
Besides, another call was more urgent, or Vicki would worry. Not only was she my best girlfriend, but she was my direct link to Bell Valley news. Her report this night was that Jude was camping out at Lee’s, not so much to protect her as to escape Amelia after a harrowing drive home.
Had the timing been different, I might have been more nervous about my return. But since it was the start of the Fourth of July weekend, more people were leaving New York than coming. It was after midnight when we entered the city. Traffic was light in our part of town, pedestrians were few, and the dark hid a wealth of things I didn’t want to see.
And then there was James, plastering me to his side when we left the car at the garage, backing me against a streetlight for a kiss and then some, foreplay that had us running the last block. Dropping clothes wherever, we made love in the front hall and again on the bed. It was two in the morning by then, but he was up at four-thirty working—or so he confessed when I woke up at nine. When I started to say, See, nothing’s changed, he showed me it had.
We went out for brunch. We walked around Gramercy Park and up Park Avenue. We shopped. When I complained about the heat, James reminded me of the furnace in Bell Valley that first day in the woods. Not as hot as this, I argued, to which he laughed and dragged me into the nearest ice-cream shop, and when I argued that between Bell Valley and this, I was eating too much, he said I looked better than ever.
He tried. Really he did. He reminded me how much fun we could have in New York. But there were still those times when the sounds of the city penetrated closed windows or the ding of his BlackBerry tripped a reflex and my stomach tightened up. There was no one I wanted to call. I didn’t know anyone on the street. I felt lonely.
Moreover, by Sunday morning, I was starting to worry about James. He worked whenever we were home, furtive when I was around, open about it when I was reading, sleeping, or showering. It was utterly sweet and positively insane. He couldn’t sustain this kind of schedule. He put up a good front, but with Friday’s excitement fading, his speech was suffering from exhaustion once more.
Using this as proof that we had to make changes in our lives, I put off calling my father. He would only argue that we had jobs most lawyers would die for, and he was likely right. With the Sunday Times spread on the kitchen table, I studied the help-wanteds. Seeing nothing remotely interesting, I surfed the Web for legal positions in Stamford, Newark, even Philadelphia. Granted, a headhunter would know of better openings, but what I saw here was discouraging.
Humbled, I e-mailed Walter. How could I not, with guilt nagging as I watched James work?
Just wanted to check in, I typed. I’m doing better, but I’ll need the last week you’ve given me. I’ll e-mail before next weekend to let you know about Monday.
LET ME KNOW? Walter typed back quickly and briefly. It’s next Monday or nothing.
Just thinking about it, I felt a roiling inside. I called Vicki, who let me vent in ways James might not have, and though I felt better, nothing was solved. I stood at my closet for a long while, looking at those black slacks and blue blouses, not wanting to wear any of them, but knowing that I would if I returned to Lane Lavash.
I dreamed of my coyote that night, and she wasn’t alone. She was with her pups and several other adults, no less than eight pairs of coyote eyes watching me with an odd expectancy. Too soon, they dissolved into the forest. I went after them this time, only to slip on a granite ledge and awaken abruptly.
James didn’t know about the dream. My arm felt cold sheets on his side of the bed, and when I found him working in the kitchen, talk of a dream seemed silly. Humoring me, he came to bed and was quickly asleep, but I lay awake worrying for a time. By sunup Monday, I was feeling queasy—knowing how hard James was trying and wanting to please him, but feeling the old life lurking, waiting to pounce.
So I baked corn bread. Had I ever done that before? No. Did I know what I was doing? No. But on one of those Bell Valley mornings, I had loved eating Lee’s corn bread, and I couldn’t think of a better diversion. I found a recipe online, ran to a convenience store for the ingredients, and while James typed nearby in a pool of papers, I played cook. Two loaves were in the oven, and I was opening the door every few minutes, waiting for their tops to brown, when my cell rang.
Seeing the New Hampshire area code, I felt a twinge. Last time it had been my kitten. Now I feared it was Lee or, if not Lee, Jude. But the problem was Vicki. “She’s in the hospital,” Amelia reported. “She started having contractions last night. They’ve let up, but she’s being held for observation. The problem is, the doctors may recommend bed rest for the next four months, and Vicki is panicking, which makes the problem worse. She won’t listen to her husband, and she won’t listen to me, but she may listen to you.”
I immediately called Vicki, and Amelia hadn’t exaggerated. Panic was the only possible cause for her frantic rush of words. I promised her I would be back by nightfall.
“Nnnno,” James wailed, slumping when I told him.
“I have to. She was there for me, and now the tables are turned. This is what it’s about, James. It’s what I’ve been saying.”
“But you just got here. Today’s the holiday.”
“And you need to work.” I kissed him, but his mouth didn’t yield. “I’m not moving there permanently. I just want to help her figure out what to do. I know you’re not happy, but this is important. It’s who I want to be.”
“The runaway wife.”
“The trusted friend. What if this was us? What if I was pregnant and there was a problem and we needed someone to help us sort it out?”
“We’d do it ourselves.”
I sighed. “Then I guess women are the ones who need the village, and for me right now, Vicki is it. I want to be there for her. Can you love me for that?”
He snorted. “Do I have a choice?”
I smiled and kissed him again. “No.”
Moments later, I was in the bedroom. Technically, I didn’t need to pack anything, since my bag was still in Bell Valley. But, for the sake of variety, I took a few things. And my laptop this time. And my diamond studs.
Always needing hair clasps, I was rummaging through a cabinet in the bathroom when I spotted a box of tampons. I picked it up, thinking to take it, because I’d had my period before leaving New York last time and had to be due again.
Actually, if I hadn’t had it since then, I was late.
I was never late.
Granted, a drastic change in lifestyle could affect a woman’s body.
But I was never late.
My heart began to pound. Cautious, I set the tampons down and took a different box. Like any woman who was trying to get pregnant, I had a supply of these, but I was conditioned to expect disappointment. When the first strip showed positive, I threw it out and tried again. When the second read the same, my hand began to shake.
“James,” I called in a tremulous voice. Fixing my clothes, I left the bathroom. I was shaking all over by then. “James!”
Eyes distant, he looked up from his screen. I held out the second strip. He stared at it, disoriented, before realizing what it was.
“Positive,” I whispered, afraid to say it aloud in case it wasn’t true.
But it was. James saw the results, too. I was pregnant.