Chapter 22 #3
Chloe is watching him now, not me, and I suddenly understand something.
She knew about the records. She found the records.
She came here in October and did exactly what she was supposed to do, politely and carefully and entirely inside the public archive.
But there is a difference between a name in a ledger and Ines Cardoso’s delighted face, and Chloe Ramirez has just realized it.
“He hasn’t done anything,” I say. “Whatever you think you’ve found, Julian hasn’t done anything to anyone.”
Rowan goes quiet.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” he says.
“What is?”
“Every time somebody tells me something is none of my business, it’s somebody with something to lose.” His voice is still mild, still thoughtful. “And sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they aren’t. I’ve spent nine years trying to tell the difference.”
“This isn’t a hospital board or a corrupt mayor.”
“I know.” He looks across the room, where Theo is laughing at something Ben has said and Mabel is correcting a label that belongs to her own museum. “I think you’re probably right. That’s what makes this difficult.”
For the first time all evening, I don’t know what to say to him.
Rowan looks back at me. “I’m not asking you to tell me anything tonight.”
“Good.”
“But if you decide there’s something I should understand, I’d like to hear it.”
I think of Mercy Rood. I think of a child dead of croup in 1809 and a lonely man writing her name down because somebody should. I want to tell him so badly that my jaw hurts.
I don’t.
Mabel arrives to take Rowan away to look at something, and he goes willingly, thanking me for the food on his way, and he means it. Chloe stays where she is for a second.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
“For what?”
She looks after Rowan.
“I don’t know yet.”
Then she follows him.
I break down my tables at half past nine.
Lucy helps, which she doesn’t normally do, and Ben Carter helps, which is how I learn that he is twenty-eight and he is from Ohio and that his mother has a bakery.
At ten I put six trays in the van in a parking lot with three vehicles in it that were not in this town yesterday morning.
Then I drive up the hill. The gate is open. It’s always open now, which is something I stopped noticing in November and am noticing tonight.
Julian meets me at the door in a grey sweater with his sleeves pushed up.
“How was it?”
“Seventy-one people. Mabel said sixty.”
“Mabel always says sixty.”
“Fern’s parsnips went in the first fifteen minutes.”
“They would.”
He takes my coat and hangs it on the hook by the door, and I follow him down the hall towards the library where the fire is. I am four feet into the room before I see it.
The papered door is open. The shelves inside are half empty.
There are journals on the floor in stacks, in date order, and another crate is standing open on the library carpet with straw in it.
A dozen volumes are already inside, packed in tissue, with a piece of card on top of them in Julian’s handwriting.
The whole room smells of leather and paper and dust. He doesn’t apologize for it and he doesn’t explain it. He stands there and lets me look at it, which is the single bravest thing I have ever watched that man do.
“He asked about the funeral,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
“He asked whether there was a funeral for the last Volkov, and I said I didn’t know. He said in a town this size the caterer would know.”
Julian is quiet for a moment.
“That’s very good,” he says. “I haven’t heard anyone get to it that quickly.”
“He isn’t coming to find out, Julian. He’s already found out. He came for the confirmation. He came for the present tense.”
“I know.”
“He knows about the bell.”
Julian looks at me.
“Ines told him.”
Something passes over his face that’s not quite regret. “Of course she did.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did he. That’s almost worse.”
“Yes.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“I know. He sent requests for an interview.”
“Which you didn’t tell me about, but we’ll get back to that. He says he’ll respect your no. He says he won’t come to the gate or put a camera over the wall. But if he sees you in town, he’ll say hello. And you’re packing.”
Julian looks towards the open crate.
“Yes.”
I look at the dozen journals.
“Don’t do this quietly,” I say. “That’s all I’m asking tonight. If you’re going to go, don’t do it in stacks of twelve while I’m out doing crab things. Do it in front of me.”
Julian looks at the crate for a long moment. Then he says, “Sit down. I’ll make you tea you won’t like, and I’ll tell you exactly what I’m planning, and you may say anything you wish about it.”
So we do that.
And he tells me all of it. The arrangements and the firm in Boston and the six weeks and the shutters, laid out plainly and in order, with nothing kept back.
It’s what I asked for in a hidden room in December and what I now discover I did not want in the least. I sit in the good chair and listen to the man I love describe how he intends to stop existing in Black Harbor, and I don’t argue with a single word of it.
Not that night.