Chapter 6
Chapter Six
I've had two days to walk this envelope a quarter mile up the road, and I've spent both of them finding reasons not to.
I told myself I'd go Thursday and then there was the party. I told myself I'd go first thing Friday and then I made coffee, and then a second cup. Eventually I stood in the hall holding the padded envelope, doing nothing at all.
The truth is simpler and I don't enjoy it.
I've read every word in here. Twice. I've made notes in a book I keep in a drawer.
I've called a records office in Josephine County and left a message under my name, which I haven't done in two years.
Now I have to hand this back to a stranger and pretend it was a morning's inconvenience.
So I go before I can stop myself. Out through the gate, up the hot asphalt, past the Werners' hedge and the empty stretch where the cedars close over the road.
The shade deepens there, and the temperature drops five degrees.
Luna would love this walk. I left her behind.
I'm not sure why, and I don't dwell on it.
5216 sits further back from the road than mine does.
It's a beautiful house, tucked between 5226 and 5210 with enough cedar on either side to make the neighbors theoretical.
The lot runs long and green all the way down to the water, so the back of it looks straight out over Cozy Cove.
Like many of the homes along the peninsula, you could stand in that yard and not be seen from anywhere except the lake.
The house has gray shingles, white trim, and a porch swing where Eleanor used to sit.
There’s a black Lexus in the drive that I haven’t seen before.
It’s immaculate. There are no curtains up at the front windows yet.
The grass is freshly cut. Somebody has already put a pot of white flowers by the step, and it stops me, because it's such an ordinary thing, and I hadn't let myself imagine him as ordinary.
Somewhere on the walk up here I decided I'm not going to linger.
Julia was right about one thing. There's no law that says I have to put this into his hands and stand there while he works out what I've done. So I'll ring the bell, prop the envelope against the door, and be halfway down the drive before it opens. If he sees me and wants to talk about it, he can figure out where I live easily enough. It’s cowardly, but it’s also sensible, and I’ve made my peace with being both.
I ring the bell and hear it go somewhere deep in the house.
Nothing moves behind the glass. No footsteps, no voice. Good.
I crouch and stand the envelope against the doorframe where he can't miss it. I’ve barely set it down when the door opens, and I’m still bent over it.
Was he standing on the other side the whole time?
"Well," he says. "Hello."
I straighten up too fast. I know him instantly and my stomach drops.
The man from the terrace.
He's taller close up. Mid-forties, dark hair going gray at one temple.
He's in a plain gray T-shirt with a dish towel over his shoulder. There’s a smear of something white on his forearm.
Caulk, maybe. Or paint. He looks like a man who has been putting a house together and is glad for the interruption.
The smile he gives me is warm and entirely disarming.
That is exactly what I don't like about it.
"Oh, it's you. I mean, you were at Peggy's," I say.
“For about forty minutes. I was invited by a woman who wanted to know what I paid for the house, and once she found out, I stopped being interesting." He tilts his head. “You left early."
"I did."
"I don't blame you." He waits, pleasant and patient, and lets the silence do the work.
"Oh," I say, and point down at the envelope propped against his doorframe. I have to crouch and pick it up again, which somehow makes the whole thing worse.
"This came to my address." I hold it out.
"It's got your name on it. The numbers on our houses are almost the same.
Mine's 5261, and I think whoever's driving the route just mixed them up.” I stop.
Start again, because there's no good way in.
"I opened it. I mean, before I looked at the label. You see, I’d lost my glasses and I was going through a stack of deliveries and…
well, I slit the top of it and I was three lines in before I understood it wasn't mine. Sorry."
He takes the envelope. He doesn't look at it. He looks at me.
"Ah, it was a simple mistake," he says. "We all make mistakes."
He says it kindly. It should be the end of it. A chill slips down the back of my neck and vanishes before I can name it.
"Right," I say.
"So…I guess you looked them over."
"Scanned. More like."
Now he does look down. He turns the envelope over once, and his manner turns careful.
"I appreciate you bringing it over,” he says. "I was wondering when they'd arrive."
I shift from one foot to the other.
"Listen, I know it was wrong. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't." My mouth is dry. "I just want to say I understand what those are. Whatever they are to you."
He's quiet for a second. Then he steps back and props his shoulder against the doorframe, and when he speaks, his voice has dropped out of its easy register.
"My sister," he says.
"I'm sorry?"
"One of them's my sister. Not in here. But the same.” He turns the packet in his hands.
"It happened twelve years ago. She and her husband, in their home.
Nobody was ever arrested. Nobody has ever told me a single true thing about it.
And every few years I get it into my head that if I gather enough of the others, I'll see whatever they didn't." He looks up with a small, tired, self-deprecating smile.
"My therapist thinks it's very unhealthy. "
"Mine says the same thing to me," I say, before I can help it.
His eyes move over my face, unhurried.
"Then we're both in trouble," he says. "Henry Westburn."
"Mallory Grant."
"I know."
He says it lightly and moves straight past it. I don't know why it catches on me, but it does. It goes in and lies down somewhere and waits.
"Do I detect an accent?" I say.
"New York." He glances back over his shoulder into the house. "My brother's out here. He's been building a business for years and he finally wore me down about coming in on it, so." He shrugs. "New coast. New everything."
"What's the business?"
"Security." He waves the envelope vaguely at the house, at the world.
"HomeShield Security. We install cameras, alarm systems, access control, smart-home automation, the whole miserable business of making people feel safe.
" He smiles without much humor in it. "You can see the appeal, after what happened.”
"I can."
"And you?" he asks.
I hesitate, which is stupid, because it's the easiest question at any party in America.
"I was a journalist," I say. “Crime. Freelance."
Henry goes still.
He doesn't do anything theatrical. He just stops moving, and for a second the whole street seems to lean in, and then he laughs, once, quietly, and rubs the back of his neck.
"You're joking."
"I'm not."
"I've been chewing over these unsolved murders for years, and then I move here and find out there’s a crime journalist living just down the road." He shakes his head at the sky. "Do you have any idea what that sounds like?"
"It sounds like a coincidence."
"It sounds like the first lucky thing that's happened to me in a long while."
And then, because I can't help myself, I say, "If you've been at this for years, why are you still ordering archives?"
He looks almost pleased, and it's gone before I can be sure I saw it.
"Because half those county papers never went online," he says.
"If you want what they printed in 2014, you have to write to the paper, or write to the library, and then wait.
Months, sometimes. I've got requests out all over Oregon and I stopped keeping track of them a long time ago.
Things turn up when I've forgotten I ever asked. " He lifts the envelope an inch.
He straightens off the frame and hooks a thumb behind him. "Do you want to come in? I've just made coffee. I'll show you what I've got and you can tell me it's nothing, and honestly, that would be a relief. I'd love for a professional to tell me I'm a crank."
He steps aside, and I can see straight down the hall.
It's dim and cool in there, and it smells of other people's furniture.
Moving boxes are stacked along one wall, taped shut, none of them labeled.
Two framed paintings lean against the skirting board, waiting to go up in the pale rectangles where somebody else's pictures used to hang.
Past all of it is a room I've never stood in.
A long window looks out on the water and the low green line of Yarrow Point.
In front of that is a table with paper spread across it.
And I want to go in.
Julia's voice is right there in my head, but I want to go in anyway.
Fortunately, I don't have to.
"Mallory."
I glance over my shoulder.
David is on the road behind me.
He's come up from the house in his running clothes, breathing hard, sweating through his shirt. He got in this morning at eleven. He kissed me and asked about the party, then went out and ran eight miles. It's what he does when there's something in him he'd rather run from than say.
"There you are," he says to me. Then he turns to Henry. "David Grant."
He puts out his hand, so Henry has to take it standing where he is. It's completely civil. It's completely a move. And I watch my husband do it.
"Henry Westburn," he says. They shake. "You're at 5261."
"I am." David's hand stays out a half beat longer than it needs to. "New in?"
"A few days."
"How are you finding it?"
"Quiet," Henry says. "Watchful."
David smiles with his teeth. "That's Hunts Point."
There's a silence. Out on the water somebody's boat noses past and the wake reaches the shore a long time after it's gone.
"Your wife found my mail," Henry says.
"So she said."
"He's just invited me in for coffee." I don't know why I say it. It comes out of me before I've decided anything, and I hear how it sounds the second it's in the air.
"I've got a pot on,” Henry says it to David, evenly, without a flicker. "You're both welcome."
"Sounds great." David's smile stays exactly where it is. "Another time, maybe. We've got that dinner with Helen tomorrow and we still haven't done the shopping for it." He glances at me. "I forgot to tell you."
It's the first I've heard of it, but this isn't the place to ask. I nod and look back at Henry.
"Another time," I say.
"For sure."
David is already turning. "Welcome to the neighborhood."
His hand comes to the small of my back, warm and firm, and it isn't affection. It's a hand on a door. “Let the man unpack."
A part of me is glad to be walking away from that doorstep and back into the plain hot afternoon.
We're only ten yards on when Henry calls out.
“Oh, Mallory."
I turn. He's still in the doorway with the envelope in his hand, and he says it easily, as though it's nothing at all.
"Next time, I'll be sure to stand on your left. So you can hear me properly."
I nod and smile.
He goes in and shuts the door.
David is talking about parking, about the Helen dinner, about nothing.
We walk down Hunts Point Road. Heat rises off the asphalt. Cicadas grind in the cedars.
Then I stop.
I never told him about my ear.