The Book of James (14 page)

swing around at any moment and demand she bring him some

coffee. But his eyes were glassy, unfocused. She hesitated near

the door. Nick was behind her, clinging to the back of her dress.

Her feet wouldn’t move. She was afraid. The only parent she had

known, the man who had made her life a misery, the man who had

nearly broken her bones and spirit while she was growing up, was

now helpless.

“Nick, go. Run through the woods and get Ginny or Harrison.

Hurry.”

Nick showed no hesitation. Asking a five-year-old to cut

through the back woods to the gate was a lot, she realized, but he knew those woods wel . Barefoot and pajama clad, he tore through

the dining-room doors to the terrace. It was drizzling. She could see the rain against the windows as he darted across the clearing.

She sat in the opposite wing chair and stared back at her

father’s wrinkled face. She needed these minutes alone with him

before the others came back.

“Father.” The tears started; she wasn’t sure why. “I hope you’re

in the same kind of special hell you made for me.” She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I hate you, and I’ve dreamed about this day since Mother died. You. Like this.” With that she kicked at his chair. The chair didn’t move. “I’d like to cut your eyes out for all the times you hit me. And guess what? I can do it now. For beating me. Treating me like an animal. For making me marry Bradford

when I didn’t want to. For—” She heard laughter coming from her

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throat. “I don’t have to, though. I got you back already in the worst way. And you never knew. You never knew a thing.”

She leaned over him and grabbed him by his hair, pulling his

head up. His dead eyes stared into hers. “And I have been laughing at the fact that I got away with it.” She took his wallet, pressed flat in his back pocket, and removed a stack of bil s from the fold and threw them in his face. “But the best is yet to come. It’ll make you spin around in your grave. I’m going to destroy the thing you care most about. You’ll see.”

“Goodness, Cora. Leave him be.” Ginny entered the room

holding Nick’s hand. “I called the ambulance from my house. They

should be here any minute.” She pried Cora’s fingers from where

they’d grasped her father’s col ar. “Let’s all go to the kitchen and wait,” she whispered.

She’d been true to every word, Cora thought, looking through

the woods in the direction of the cemetery—every threat she’d

made toward her father that day. But how could she know that

exacting her revenge would cost her the most important thing of

all? Her son.

The wind picked up, and she had a sudden desire to go in.

Make some tea. She was just coming in through the French doors

when she heard a loud thump in the downstairs of the house. She

listened closely. Now she heard nothing but the normal creaks and groans. She was starting toward the kitchen to investigate when

Harrison appeared behind her.

“Cora, I was looking for you.”

“I heard a noise coming from somewhere near the kitchen. I

want to go see what it is.”

He took her hand. “Your imagination, no doubt. Why don’t we

take a walk on the grounds? It’s so nice outside. Look at the stars?”

He pointed upward. “Beautiful.”

She glanced back toward the house, the kitchen area. Her face

wore a scowl. There was something there. She knew it.

I caught myself a few steps down with nothing more than a

wrenched ankle. The box and its contents continued down the

steps and hit the door at the bottom with a loud thud. I sucked in my breath and didn’t make a sound. I sat on that little step, light switched off, and waited. My ankle was a bit tender, but it could bear my weight.

I waited in abject darkness for Cora to come bounding along

to investigate the noise. I felt sick, and if I’d had any food left in my stomach, I might have thrown up right there. A bead of sweat

trickled down under my col ar, and I could feel that the hairs along my neck were drenched. My shallow breaths made me lightheaded.

After sitting still for what felt like fifteen minutes, I limped

to the bottom and gathered the papers strewn about, stopping

every second or so and straining for any hint of sound. Hobbling

back to my rooms with the box under my arm was no small feat.

My arms were scraped from the rough wal s; every muscle was

tense. I dropped the box in the living room and went to wash my

hands. I felt dirty from just that short time in Nick’s room. How THE BOOK
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immaculate Cora managed to sit in there at all without boiling her whole body in a sink afterward was beyond me.

I sat cross-legged and sorted through the papers one by one.

Most were school papers, assignments from senior English class,

chemistry lab notes, scientific hypotheses. I couldn’t help but

think,
Nick touched this paper
.
Nick sat in one of these dreary rooms
in this house and wrote this. Nick brought this report card home to
Cora.
Nick, Nick, Nick. A pile of papers surrounded me when I had finished. I was engrossed in one of the last papers in the box when my phone rang. I hobbled to my purse and answered it, irritated at the intrusion. “Hello?”

“Hey, Mackenzie. How are things going?”

I sat down on the couch. “Samantha? How are you?” It was so

good to hear her voice, I forgot all about the box in front of me.

“Pretty good. So tell me, how is the mother-in-law?”

I laughed. “God, I have so much to tell you. Are you coming

down here?”

“Yes, but what’re your plans? How long are you going to stay at

the house?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. She invited me for a week. I’m not sure I want to

stay that long, but I feel like I just can’t leave yet.”

“And that means what?”

“I don’t want to leave without figuring out what Nick was

talking about.” I stopped and took a sip of water. “And besides,

other than you, what is it that I have to come back to?”

“How about your job, your friends, your house, your family?

You can’t just run away.”

“I’m not running away. Trust me. But I do need you to do me

a favor.”

“I’m waiting to hear this one,” she laughed.

“I want you to go through Nick’s things.”

“Oh, no. I can’t clean out that mess alone. That’s not fair.”

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“I’m not asking you to clean out his stuff. I’m going to do that

when I get back. What I want you to do is go through his papers.

Like the things in his desk. Look in the attic and see if there’s anything there. Oh, and the garage too.”

“And what is it that I’m looking for in his desk, the attic, and

the garage?”

“Anything from his past. From when he lived here. A journal,

letters, cards. Photographs—especial y photographs. Just see what you can find.” I was swinging my leg back and forth, waiting for

an answer, but she was silent. “Hey, did you hear me?” There was

a distinct sucking sound on the other end of the line. “Are you

smoking again?” I asked. She swore she’d given it up, but I knew

she sneaked one here and there.

“Yeah, I heard you. Then what?” she said, blowing smoke into

the receiver.

“I’ll call you with the address.”

“I have a bad feeling about this, but I’ll do it.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. “I owe you, Sam. Call me.”

I hung up and turned my attention back to the box at my feet.

It was almost empty, and I hadn’t learned anything except that

Nick was better at math than English. I sat again and peered inside.

At the bottom was a group of crinkled papers all stuck together. At first I thought it was another English paper, but when I pulled the pages apart I saw that they were letters. I read them through once, all thirteen of them. Then I stood up and put everything else back in the box. I carried it to my bedroom and shoved it underneath

the bed, out of view. With the letters still in hand, I crawled into bed with my cool glass of water and read them again.

They were from his father. He had managed to secrete the let-

ters to Nick at school so Cora wouldn’t see them. Mr. Whitfield

hadn’t seen his son in a while.

In his letters, he told Nick over and over that he loved him and

that Nick could trust him. It seemed that he was trying to coax

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information from his son.
Trust me, Nick
, he’d written.
I can’t take
you away from there without enough information. Tell me the truth
and let me help you
. Only Nick, and maybe Cora, would understand what he was referring to. Each letter became more demand-

ing, more urgent, more adamant than the last. Whatever it was

that he wanted to know, there was no indication Nick had ever

given it to him. The letters ended without conclusion.

I shook the papers in frustration. It was like a story with no

ending. They were all written within a period of six months, the

last dated May 18. No year. I tucked the letters into my purse.

Tomorrow I would venture upstairs again to put that box back

where it belonged.

I woke up to a buzzing sound. In my dream I thought it was an

alarm, and I kept trying to turn it off. When I opened my eyes, I realized it wasn’t a buzzer but a lawn mower, and not just one but numerous lawn mowers. They moved in unison across the yard. I

looked out the window and saw at least four mowers and an addi-

tional five men raking leaves and pruning trees. They all wore uniform shirts from the same company.

I changed into sweats and walked outside onto the small ter-

race. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still wet. Not an

ideal kind of day for groundskeeping, but it had to be done. Cora was so efficient: it made sense to have droves of people come in at once. It would take them a matter of hours to finish their work.

I walked down the steps, still favoring my right ankle, and out

into the clearing. No one even noticed me. I followed the perim-

eter of the house around to the front. I made it to the side of the house when I spotted a heavyset man in his early fifties overseeing the workers’ progress. He wore the same gray uniform shirt as the others and had a Phillies baseball cap on his head. His bel y hung out over his pants, and the buttons of his shirt strained in places.

He was sweaty, and his hands were covered with dirt. He glanced

at me but said nothing.

“You work for Cora?” I asked, trying to make conversation.

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“Does she own this place?” he asked in response. He squinted

in the sun, and the lines around his eyes folded with the expression.

I nodded.

“Then that’s who I work for.”

“It’s a big job,” I said.

The man had his hands on his hips. He stared into the distance

at the other workers. “Yeah, not too bad, though. Had this contract for ten years now.”

“Ten years? Who did it before that?”

The man shrugged. “Private gardener, I think. He disappeared

on her, so I hear. Then she hired us because it was easier. We come in and out of here in no time. That’s how we got the contract, I

guess.”

“How’s that?”

“We could bring a lotta men in and get it done quick. That’s

what she wanted. That and to rotate the crew.” He paused and

yelled an instruction to one of the men in the distance.

“Why would she want them rotated?” I asked.

He glanced sideways at me. “Who knows? So maybe they

can’t case the place. If you’re going to be out here, stay out of the way. We got work to do.” He marched across the clearing, barking

orders at someone else.

I took as long a walk as I could stand with a sore ankle. The

damp air felt good on my skin. I was exhausted when I got back

to my room. I kicked off my muddy sneakers and left them on the

steps before I opened the door.

I saw the woman before she saw me. She was young, maybe

early twenties, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had on jeans, a white shirt, and a smock with a logo overtop. She was leaning over my bed, and all I could think about was the box I had hidden beneath it.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled, probably a little too loudly.

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ELLEN J. GREEN

She turned, startled. “I’m with the cleaning service.” She gath-

ered the front of her smock in her fist. “I was just changing your sheets. Mrs. Whitfield told me she had a guest.”

“Cleaning service? I’m sorry. I didn’t know. How many of you

are there?”

“About thirteen, I think. We come once a week. Didn’t she tell

you?”

I shook my head. “Thirteen? That’s a lot of people. And you do

the whole house?” I was curious if Cora unlocked all those doors

for the cleaning crew. Except for Nick’s room.

“It won’t take long,” Cora said, stepping in through the French

doors. “But it has to be cleaned. I want you to be comfortable while you’re here.”

I sucked in my breath. The box was right there, not even two

feet away from her, even a little bit visible from the right angle. If she found it, I’d have no good explanation.

Cora walked to the bed, standing near the maid. “I’m not pay-

ing you to stand around talking. Clean the bathroom. That means

scrubbing the corners. Understand? I’ll be back to inspect, and it better be done right.”