The Book of James (12 page)

Cora threw out the stew last night. But I also wanted the opportunity to talk to Ginny when she was lucid. She placed a mug of coffee in front of me. “Ginny, what were you doing out there?” I asked.

She sat down next to me at the table. “I was looking for my

brother, like I told you. My older brother, Fred. I saw him from my bedroom window, so I went out to talk to him.”

“Did you think he went to Cora’s? Is that why you were over

there?”

She looked confused. “No. I was only right outside here, then

I saw you near the fence.”

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“But you were in the woods on Cora’s property. I saw you up

ahead of me on the path.”

She shook her head. “Maybe it was Fred after al . It wasn’t me.

I’ve been behaving myself. Cora doesn’t like me wandering over

there like I used to.” She got up and continued mixing her ingredients. “So you’re a friend of Nick’s?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Cora had asked me not to tell Ginny

of his death. She hadn’t even told her I was his wife.

“I am. I met him in our apartment building. He became an

architect. You would have been very proud,” I said.

“Wel , where is he? Why didn’t he come too? I miss him so

much.”

I chose my words careful y. “He’s not with me.”

Ginny stopped mixing and sat down next to me. Her brow fur-

rowed a bit. “Because of Cora.” It was said matter-of-factly. “That was a horrible day, the day he left. He was only sixteen years old.”

She stopped and shook her head. “He came to me after the funeral

and told me he was leaving.”

I took a sip of coffee. “But why?”

She just shook her head. “He made me promise not to tell

Cora. She doesn’t know to this day that I knew he was leaving. Oh, please don’t tell her.” Her face had changed to one of horror. “She’d never forgive me.”

“I’d never tell Cora anything you tell me. I swear. But I still

don’t understand.”

Ginny bristled. “Cora’s relationship with Nick wasn’t right. I

told Cora that. A boy needs to have friends his own age. He needs to be . . .” She hesitated. “A boy. She kept him cooped up, always with her. Cora loved him, for sure, but she loved him a little too much. Didn’t want to share him.” I could feel my eyes welling up.

“So he stayed with friends of his father for a little bit, but Cora found him. Oh, she was so mad. She wanted him home—but then

he was gone. Just disappeared. She never saw him again.”

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“And you never heard from him after that?” I asked.

Ginny got up and poured more coffee into her cup. “I did. Five

years ago. A Christmas card. Come here, I’ll show you.” She went

into the living room and pulled a large scrapbook from the shelf. I sat next to her on the couch.

“Here it is.” She handed me the card. It looked well worn, as if

she’d read it often. I flipped it open and recognized Nick’s slanted scrawl. He had written a short note on one side, telling her that he was doing wel , he had managed to finish school, and he loved her and hoped one day to see her again. The date was printed on the

top right-hand side.

I hadn’t met him yet when he’d written this. We met the follow-

ing summer, in the apartment building where I lived. He’d offered to fix the outside lock on my door one day as I stood waiting for the maintenance people to repair it. My friends had left town in

droves for various vacation destinations, and I had stayed behind to work. After that, I saw him in the building and took the lead by asking him to dinner. Samantha was always telling me I needed to

live a little, so I figured, what the hel , he might be good company.

Nick and I never had the milestones that most relationships

passed: first date, first discussion about monogamy or where the

relationship was going, anniversaries. We couldn’t be bothered

with those sorts of things. We just sort of drifted together, and I was never certain when the friendship stopped and the relationship began. In fact, if pressed, I couldn’t even come up with the date of that first dinner. The only reason I was sure it was summer was because I remember wearing my blue sleeveless dress.

At my wedding, not even a year later, Samantha stood in front

of me in a ridiculous pink maid-of-honor concoction and said,

“Mackenzie, when I told you to live a little, I meant buy a new outfit, go to a party, not this.” So much for listening to friends.

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When I looked up, Ginny sat lost in her own thoughts, still

holding the card. “Ginny, what about Nick’s father? What did he

think about Nick and Cora’s relationship?”

“Bradford was a husband in name only,” she said. “He was only

there for a time after they married. He had a place in town, close to work, and he just checked in on his son. He traveled a lot, lived in Germany for a while.”

She got up and put the card back in her scrapbook. I saw there

were pictures glued to the pages. “Do you mind if I look?”

She handed me the book and went back to the kitchen. Most

of the photos were old. Ginny and a younger boy as children were

standing on the porch of their house. They were both smiling.

They couldn’t have been more than ten. There was a group shot of

the two children and a teenager with their parents at a beach. This teenager had to be the Fred she had spoken of. The milestones in

Ginny’s life were all here, in this book.

When I flipped forward, Cora’s wedding filled the pages. It had

taken place on the grounds. Cora had been an attractive woman

when she was younger. Her hair was dark and shiny. Her lips,

which now seemed thin and pulled downward, were lifted and

ful . I could see that this person was Cora, but the essence of the woman in the picture was so different. She was a beautiful bride.

In one photo, her husband had his arm around her, but she wasn’t

leaning in to him. She stood straight and tal , and she was frowning or squinting. It could’ve been just a bad shot. Maybe it was the last one of the day, and she was tired. Or the sun was in her eyes.

Or maybe she was hungry or had to go to the bathroom. Whatever

it was, it was clear that at the moment they had snapped that picture, she was miserable.

I turned the page. It was covered with pictures of Nick. Some

were duplicates of the ones on Cora’s wal s, but most I hadn’t seen before. I perused them, lost in my own thoughts, when one caught

my eye. It was taken near the woods. Two boys stood together, one 98

ELLEN J. GREEN

leaning down to the ground, picking up what appeared to be a stick.

An impromptu shot: the camera caught their backs. They were the

same boys in the photograph I’d seen in Cora’s dungeon-gallery

the other day. Nick was in the forefront, separated from them. He was walking toward the camera; his head was down. The youngest

child was there, just half his body visible. He had turned his head toward the picture taker at the last moment. I imagined that someone had called his name to look right before the shutter snapped.

He had light coloring. The variations of gray in the photograph

muted some of the finer detail. His face was nondescript.

I carried the book to the kitchen where Ginny was making

pancakes.

“Ginny, when was this taken?”

She turned to look at it, studied it for a second, and then

snapped the book shut on my fingers. “I don’t know.”

“There was a picture at Cora’s that looked like it was taken on

the same day. The same boys were in—”

Her eyes widened. “You’ve seen this picture before?” Her head

was tilted to the side.

I shook my head. “No. One like it. I found it in the photogra-

phy room in the tunnels.”

“Found it?”

I nodded. “On the floor. But it disappeared. What’s the deal

with it? Who are those kids?”

“It was taken by me when Nick was around five; it was so many

years ago.” She carried her scrapbook back to the shelf. Then she sat down, elbows on the table, covering her forehead with a wrinkled

hand. “I’m tired now, and I want to eat.” Confusion reappeared as if a curtain had been dropped over her face. She had forgotten the invitation she’d extended for me to join her. I knew I needed to

leave.

“Ginny?” I started.

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She gazed up at me, her eyes clouded. “Please, no more ques-

tions. I talk too much.”

I walked out onto the porch and grabbed my slicker. The sky

was dark, spitting out a steady drizzle. By the time I got back to my room, I was covered in dirt, soaking wet, and starving. I took a long shower, letting the hot water run over my back, easing the tightness in my shoulders. Before I could even dry myself off, my cell phone began to chirp. I ran, half covered and still dripping, to get it from my purse.

“You made it through your first twenty-four hours, I see.”

“Dylan? What, are you checking up on me?”

He laughed. “Maybe a little. But I do need to get those papers

back from you. Are you busy?”

“No, I was just getting out of the shower.” I pulled the towel

around me. “Are you in your office or home?”

“I’m home this morning. Why don’t you come over, bring the

papers with you, and we can have lunch together before I go into

the office?” he asked.

He gave me directions and I wrote them on a scrap of paper.

I remembered it had taken us a few minutes in his car. I figured

it was no more than a five-minute walk. As I dressed, I realized I needed to stop at a store and pick up a few things. The two changes of clothing that had gotten me through my week of cooling my

heels in the hotel wouldn’t suffice. It looked as though I’d be staying longer than I had anticipated.

“One more signature, right here, and you should be all set.”

We sat at Dylan’s kitchen table surrounded by a pile of papers.

He was dressed in a Flyers T-shirt and jeans.

I pushed back in my seat. Dylan was gathering the papers

together. “Can you tell me everything you remember about Nick

as a kid?” I asked. “I mean, did he play Little League? Did he have friends? Did he do well in school? Did he get in trouble?”

“He was quiet. I didn’t know him all that wel .”

“You must remember something.”

Dylan stood up. “He kept to himself. He was a loner.” He fid-

dled with the catch on his briefcase and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what Nick was like as an adult—I’m sure he’d changed, or

you wouldn’t have married him—but . . .” He stopped.

“But what?”

“Kids made fun of him in school. He didn’t talk much, but

it was more than that. He was isolated.” He paused for a second

and tried to think about how to explain it to me. “At Chestnut

Hill Academy we were kind of like family. We’d go to each oth-

er’s houses after school, we’d walk home together, we’d do these

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community projects for school, we’d play sports and stuff, but

Nick never got involved unless he
had
to. Then only as much as was required. Every day a big black car would drop him off in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. I can’t remember that

he had any friends, to tell you the truth.”

He put the documents in his briefcase. “Even later on, in high

school, things didn’t change. He never even talked to anyone. He

never invited anyone home with him. He never went to any of the

parties or dances at school. In fact, when my father told me that you were coming in to the law office, I was trying to picture what you would be like. I was expecting Lily Munster.”

When I looked up, he was staring at me. His eyes were big

and such a remarkable shade of blue they were startling. “What?”

I asked.

He shook his head. “You’re not what I expected, that’s al .”

“Oh.” My thumb toyed with my wedding band, twirling it

around and around. “Nick was quiet and a loner, but not exactly

weird.”

“Not exactly?” Dylan said.

I smiled. “He was real y smart. And he had a complex person-

ality. Tense but charming. Sort of engaging but then aloof—”

“Rich but pretending to be poor,” he interrupted.

I laughed. “Yeah, there was that.”

“Tell me. Why are you so hell-bent on staying there at that

house? What is it?”

I frowned, trying to find the right words, then shrugged. “This

person I married, he never existed. I married a fal acy.” I stood.

“And the fal acy has a mother.”

He laughed. “A mother fal acy? Is that what you mean? A

mother f—”

I laughed too. “Come on. Let’s eat.”

We went to a small Chinese restaurant in the vil age of

Chestnut Hil . I ordered wonton soup, two egg rol s, and shrimp

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ELLEN J. GREEN

with broccoli. Dylan watched as I cleaned out the bowl of crunchy noodles they’d placed on the table and then dipped my egg roll

into the mustard dish.

“Hungry?” he asked.

I nodded because my mouth was ful , then told him about

Cora throwing out my dinner and about Ginny withdrawing her

invitation for breakfast. “And it’s not like I can just order a pizza and have them deliver it to that house. I might have to grab some snack foods and stockpile them in my room. Why aren’t you eating?” I motioned to his small bowl of soup.

“I’m due in court in a little bit, and I operate better on an

empty stomach. But you go ahead.”

Under normal circumstances I would have been more