Gilt (23 page)

I wasn't sure whether to be relieved I wouldn't have my mother around, or worried that her absence would allow Dan and me time to...what? I decided not to think about it. "That works for me," I said, more blithely than I felt.

"Why don't you call later? We'll make plans for tomorrow."

I nodded acceptance and got into the driver's seat. Dan waved to my mother before turning to me. "You forgot about your husband's notebook, didn't you?"

"What?" I twisted to check behind me as I backed the car down the drive and I caught the speculative look he gave me.

"Your husband's notebook. You forgot about it, didn't you? You sounded surprised when I mentioned it to your aunt."

"I did forget," I said. "All about it."

"Did you look through it?" Dan's voice was so quiet I barely heard him.

"Nope. The first time I saw it was when I found it with you. I haven't had time to go through it. You took it, remember?"

"I think you should go through it. There's information in there that pertains to you."

"Really? What kind?"

"Read it. Then we can talk."

That sounded ominous. I decided to shelve my questions until later and focus on my nervousness about the upcoming afternoon and evening. I was long out of the dating game, much less the sex game. What would Dan think if, or when, we had sex? I wasn't slim and svelte. I had a small muffin top around my waist, my boobs weren't perky and firm, and my skin didn't have the smoothness of youth. What would he think? How would I act? What would it feel like?

I tried to ignore my insecurities as I noted a few more sites of interest while we drove the mile outside of town to Portia's house. "New Catholic church," I commented as we passed the modernistic structure on the left.

"Does the town have more bars or churches?"

I considered his question. "It's about equal."

Dan grinned. "Nice to know there's a balance of good and evil."

"Hmm." Did I even
want
to have sex? I pondered that briefly. After all, sex added a complication to relationships. Suddenly there was possessiveness, jealousy, worry. Was it worth it? Did I want to go down that path?

"What's that?" Dan asked, pointing to the sprawling red-brick structure on the corner.

"New high school. It handles our town as well as surrounding communities." I barely heard my own words. I was mentally tallying positive versus negative on an imaginary tote board, chalking up the fun of having sex versus the angst involved.

I hadn't come to any conclusion by the time we arrived at the lane to Portia's house. "I can see what your mother meant about chores," Dan said as we drove along the gravel drive. "That tree needs trimming."

I peered myopically at the oak tree near the garage. It did appear lop-sided, with a couple of branches draping dangerously near the ground. "I suppose. Do you know anything about trimming a tree?" I glanced at his leg. "Won't that be tough?"

He tapped his leg with his cane. "You'd be surprised."

We entered the house through the kitchen entrance, on the west side of the house. "It's not locked," Dan said.

"Of course it isn't. Why would it be?" I led the way through the kitchen into the dining room where I turned the air conditioning to a lower temperature. I gestured to my right. "There's the living room and Portia's office is over there." I gestured toward the door near the staircase. "Bedrooms are upstairs."

Dan waggled his eyebrows. "Really?"

I flushed. "Yep. I'll make the beds while you check that tree."

"You're nervous, aren't you?"

I started to deny it but I stopped. Lord knows, I'd been lying through my teeth for days. It might feel good to be honest for a change. "I am. It's been years since I was, um, active."

Dan leaned on his cane and regarded me with bemusement. "I haven't exactly been a Romeo, you know. I'm probably as out of practice as you." He leaned forward and kissed me quickly. "Don't worry about it. If it happens, it happens."

"I know." I shook my head. "It just feels like you're--" I was going to say "pursuing me" but that sounded arrogant. "You're moving fast. After all, you barely know me. It's almost like you're on a mission or something."

For an instant his face changed, hardening or flattening with all humor vanished. "We're both on a mission, aren't we? To discover what really happened?" He put his bag on the bottom step of the wide oak staircase and opened it, taking out John's notebook. "Why don't you look this over? I'll go check that tree." He set the notebook on the step.

I held out my hand to stop him as he turned away. "Don't be offended."

"I'm not." He disappeared back into the kitchen.

I grabbed his bag and mine, dragging them up the stairs. He was offended, of course. I could tell. But I was only telling the truth. Dan was moving fast. And I wasn't sure I wanted to move that fast yet.

I paused on the landing before ascending the last six steps. The bathroom was on my right and straight ahead was the hallway with doorways opening off it. Portia's "suite" occupied the far north end of the second floor, overlooking the porch below. Her rooms were a bedroom, a tiny nursery room converted to a dressing room and a tiny bathroom. Three other bedrooms and a bathroom took up the rest of the space.

I put Dan in the room across from the bathroom. I took the room next to him with Portia's room next to me on the north. I put Amy in the room across the hall from me, sharing the bathroom with Portia. When Portia came home, it might be good to have Amy nearby.

I unpacked my clothes, dropping my purse on the bed and stuffing my iPhone into my back pocket. Next I busied myself with finding linens and making beds, pausing once to stare into the yard. Dan stood in the open garage doorway, examining a barbeque grill. His cane leaned against the side of the garage and he had taken off his blue shirt, the dark blue T-shirt tucked into his dark blue jeans giving him an overall sculpted look. The tight shirt showed off his well-developed chest and his muscular, tanned arms. He was so much shorter and stockier than John was. I was accustomed to a man who towered over me, someone tall and lean. Dan was nothing like John.

And yet there was that moment in the library when the two seemed so similar somehow. I tried to recapture the feeling but Dan moved, going back into the shadows of the garage and the fleeting memory vanished. I resumed making beds and setting out towels.

I stood in the hallway and stared at Portia's bedroom door. I hated to go into her space without her there, but she did ask me to do it. Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door and entered the brightly lit, airy room. It was sparsely furnished with a tall four-poster bed, a large dresser, and a writing desk against one wall. A fireplace was set between the two north-facing windows and above it was the shotgun, old TG, the twenty-gauge, that Uncle Leland had taught me and the boys to shoot when we were teenagers. It scared the crap out of me, and I suspect that was the lesson he wanted us to learn--guns were dangerous.

I crossed to Portia's dressing room/closet which smelled faintly of lavender. I knelt on one knee to peer behind the rows of shoes. Yep, the safe was still there, a gray square that sat on squat little feet. I recited the rhyme as I manipulated the lock, breathing a sigh of relief when the heavy door swung open.

Inside were several fat envelopes and four brown accordion folders. I tugged all of it toward me, surprised how heavy the files were. I leafed through the contents, frowning when I saw the official looking documents. I wasn't kidding when I told Dan I didn't bother to balance my checkbook. Anything financial usually made me run in the opposite direction. Well, maybe he could make sense of it all.

I turned my attention to the four envelopes. Each was addressed in Portia's flowery, elaborate handwriting and bright purple ink.
Eugenia Atwood Carlson. Amelia Carlson Nimmer. Rebecca Martin Atwood. Michael Bennington
. Each envelope was sealed. My fingers itched to open the one addressed to me but I restrained the impulse. If Portia said I could open it, I would. I tucked the envelopes back in the safe and swung it closed, twirling the lock and tucking the shoes into their places. I picked up the heavy files and went downstairs, grabbing John's notebook on the way.

I made a quick detour into the living room and got the novel from the table next to Portia's worn high-back armchair, positioned so she could check through the front window and see the lane and the fields beyond. The book had a lurid cover with bright crimson splotches on it. I grimaced. Why would a woman who lived alone in the country read a thriller novel about a slasher-killer?

I started for the kitchen, arms full before remembering the letter Portia mentioned. I doubled back to her chair and fumbled in the table drawer, finding three sheets of paper that I added to the stack precariously clasped in my arms. I went through the kitchen and dumped the paperwork on the coffee table on the back porch then returned to the house to check the contents of the pantry. As I expected, Portia had already laid in food in anticipation of our Fourth of July picnic. There was enough there to feed an army.

I glanced through the kitchen window as I returned to the porch. Dan leaned against the oak tree, his phone to his ear, idly swinging something in his hand as he talked. It looked like a paint canister. Where did he get that? He kept glancing at the house as he talked, as though checking for me. I wondered who he was talking to.

I yawned, last night's nightmares about Paul and his problems finally catching up to me. I extracted my phone from my butt pocket before dropping onto the wicker chaise lounge and kicking off my shoes. Although the porch faced south, it was bordered by dense maples, so it was cool and shady even in the afternoon's heat. The fragrance of moist earth, mown grass, and a flowery aroma mingled with dust from the porch drifted to me on the breeze. I turned on my iPhone to play movie soundtracks and tucked it under the chaise on the concrete floor, out of the way. With a contented sigh, I leaned back on the cushions and opened the first accordion file.

"Good Lord," I muttered, pulling out booklet after booklet of dense-looking legal and financial mumbo-jumbo. They were probably the official mailings from a stock broker or money manager. I got these occasionally and I always recycled them. Apparently Portia read them, made notations, and filed them.

I set that chunk of printed matter aside and rifled through pages of account summaries, quickly forgetting about reading the details and glancing at the figures at the bottom of the last page of the multi-page documents. Portia's estimate of her wealth was not exaggerated. When she died, Amy and I would be relatively wealthy.

The morbid thought made me shiver. It seemed like every time I turned around, I faced thoughts about death: John's death, Portia's impending death, life after death. I stared at the barn in the distance where sunlight shimmered in little mirages in the dusty driveway. All around me, the Iowa countryside brimmed with life and growing things. I pushed the accordion files to one side and picked up John's spiral notebook.

Each page seemed to be devoted to a different topic. Several pages had rows of figures with abbreviations next to them. Other pages were brief descriptions of the fire calls he went on, with cryptic notes about burn time and point of origin.

"John?" I called softly. "What's in here? What did you want me to see?"

No answer. It really wasn't fair. Why could he pop in when it was convenient for him and not for me? I went back through the notebook again, slower this time, and that's when I found what Dan wanted me to see. Several pages here and there were notes to me, drafts of the letter he had eventually written. The pages were full of rambling discussions of love, bewilderment, hurt, anger.

Did I say John never got angry? Here he did. This was where he let his anger show. This was where he expended his pain and his hurt. I read his words through tear-blurred eyes. Poor John. What a hell I put him through! Even now, years later, I remembered the arguments, the tears, the gut-wrenching feeling of raw emotion. John had absorbed all that and spilled it onto the page, finally culminating in that one reasoned, simple letter that I never received.

I sighed and let the notebook slip away from me, leaning back on the chaise and staring at the shadowy trees around me. What would have happened if John didn't die? Would we have stayed married? Would we have divorced? Did I really have the courage it took to walk away from my marriage?

A song caught my attention, playing softly on my phone.
Only Make Believe
, from
Showboat
. I smiled sadly. Was that what I had, a make-believe marriage? Even as I thought it, I dismissed the idea. I loved John as well as I could. That was really the only truth I remembered. It didn't matter if I would have divorced him or not. He was gone and it was time to consider my life now and who I was now, not who I was then. I had the feeling that a deep meaning, an existential turning point, was near, barely out of my reach. "John?" I called softly. "Are you there?"

A warm breeze blew over me, bringing smells of earth and greenness and a faint hint of rain. No smell of smoke or soap. He wasn't there. I sniffed again, drinking in the verdant aromas around me. For an instant, I understood how Portia felt. The land was living, an integral part of the world around us. It would be desecration to cover it with houses and roads.