Possessions (8 page)

“We hope Craig finds his way back to all of us,” Ross finished gracefully. “Katherine, would you tell everyone about your house? It's very fine, especially the windows.”

She began, but almost immediately Ross took over, explaining how the house and its wall of windows followed the contour of the tree-covered hill, facing south above the panorama of English Bay, Vancouver and Vancouver Island.

“But the view,” Tobias said to Katherine. “How do you have a view with all those trees?”

“They're so tall,” she said absently, preoccupied with her thoughts. “We look between them; they're like pillars, holding up the sky.”

Derek looked up sharply. Tobias, too, looked surprised that she had said something interesting. “A pleasant fancy,” he murmured.

“Don't you love the trees?” Ann asked. “In Maine we live at the edge of a forest.”

“Craig helped clear them when we built the house,” Katherine said, remembering his triumphant smile when he and the crew finally pulled out a large tree that was dying but still stubbornly clinging to the earth. “He liked—likes—heavy work.”

“But aren't you tired of the forest?” Tobias asked Ann. “Fifteen years of peace and quiet: so excessive. Why don't you move back here?” There was a glint in his eye. “Jason could rejoin the company and we'd all be together again.”

Slowly Derek turned in his chair. “Have you taken up family planning, Tobias?” he asked evenly.

Melanie laughed. Tobias looked amiably vague and Claude changed the subject, and at that moment Katherine knew what was wrong with the evening.
No one was excited about Craig.
Jason seemed almost angry, and the others—even Victoria and Ann, who did seem to care that he was alive—were so restrained it was as if they had no feelings about him at all.
They'd asked questions, all except Derek, but at the table everyone was behaving as if this were an ordinary family dinner, with nothing unusual to discuss.

She cleared her throat. Her heart was pounding because she was afraid of making them angry. But after all, she was here to find out about Craig. “Why did Craig disappear fifteen years ago?” she blurted into the murmuring conversations.

The conversations stopped. Everyone looked at Victoria. But Melanie spoke first. “Why,” she drawled. “Most likely for the same reason he ran out on you.”

“Melanie, be silent,” Victoria snapped. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“They weren't married then, you know,” Tobias explained to Katherine. “Melanie and Ross, that is. So she never met Craig.”

“Superb roast beef,” Derek said pleasantly to Victoria. “Perfectly rare. Have you hired a new chef?”

“I hired him,” said Tobias. “But Claude found him.”

“I also found the orchid,” said Claude, touching the plant in the center of the table, its arching stems of white flowers mirrored in the mahogany. “Like the roast, it is quite rare.”

“Do you grow flowers?” Victoria asked Katherine. “Or vegetables? I confess I know nothing about the climate of Vancouver.”

Katherine put down her fork. She was Victoria's guest, and hopelessly inferior to all of these wealthy, self-confident people, but she was desperate to learn about Craig. With her eyes on the orchid, she said, “I was trying to find out why Craig ran away fifteen years ago. I thought you would help me. With—”

“Money,” said Melanie brightly. “And didn't we all know that was coming. You said I was wrong,” she told Ross. “Well, who's wrong now? The minute she found out her husband had a wealthy family—”

“No,” he said flatly. “I invited Katherine, and she came—”

“For her share of the wealth.” Melanie looked steadily at Katherine's lowered eyes. “Right? Veteran's pay. Or maybe—if Craig wanted to come back for a piece of the company, wouldn't it be smart to send a sweet wife to test the waters?”

Victoria was watching Katherine. Letting Melanie do the dirty work, Katherine thought. “‘Blow, blow, thou winter
wind!'” Tobias intoned. “Melanie, you are cold and unpleasant.”

“Or,” Melanie persisted, “hush money. Not to broadcast Craig's latest mess and whatever else he did in the last—”

“God damn it!” Ross pushed back his chair.

“We don't
know
why he disappeared,” Tobias said hastily. “Fifteen years ago. We have trouble talking about it,” he added. “Partly because we don't know. Claude worked with the police—”

“We thought he was dead.” Claude spoke directly to Katherine. “It never occurred to anyone that he might deliberately have disappeared.”

“We've thought and thought—” Ann exclaimed.

“Lack of information—” began Tobias.

“Trust!” stormed Jason. “Lack of trust! If that young fool had come home and told us what happened—”

“What
did
happen?” asked Katherine.

“He wasn't a fool!” Ann protested. “He was clever and dear and gentle . . .”

So was Craig, Katherine thought.

“The golden boy,” murmured Derek.

“Who wasn't a hero,” said Jason. “So he ran away, to keep from facing us.”

“More likely,” said Ross quietly, “he ran away because he couldn't face himself.”

“Why?”
Katherine's voice was frustrated.

“Cowardice!” Jason boomed, but Ann cried out, “He died trying to—” as Claude's courtroom voice rode over them: “It seems he didn't die.”

“That is quite enough!” Victoria stood at the head of the table, her eyes blazing. “I apologize,” she said to Katherine. “My family is behaving like a raucous mob.” She swept them with her gaze. “It is unforgivable.” At her gesture, the butler, wheeling in the dessert cart, stopped in the doorway. The room was still. Slowly, Victoria sat down and nodded permission to the butler to circle the table, offering a selection of desserts. The maid poured coffee. When everyone was served, Victoria said to Katherine, “Ross told you nothing about the sailing accident?”

Uncertainly, Katherine said, “Only that there was one.”

Victoria nodded. “We do find it difficult to talk about. Even
after so many years. And especially now . . . with the ending changed. But you shall hear the story.” She took a sip of coffee and looked around the table. “Claude will tell it.”

“Of course,” Claude said easily. Why? Katherine wondered. He wasn't there. Ross said it was the four of them.

“The four of them,” Claude began. “Craig, Jennifer, Derek, and Ross, were sailing home across the bay. It was dusk. The bay is often unpredictable, particularly at that time and especially near the Golden Gate; I am told great concentration is needed to sail it safely. But they had been at a party in Sausalito, with a great deal of drinking, and none of them was capable of such concentration. There was a sudden change in wind direction and the boom swung across the boat. It struck Jennifer, knocking her unconscious, and she fell overboard. Craig immediately jumped in to save her. Ross and Derek—though neither was an experienced sailor at that time—managed to turn the boat around and return to Jennifer. They found her dead. Craig, of course, was gone.”

Again the room was still. Katherine glanced at the closed faces of Ann and Jason, trying to imagine what it would be like to lose both her children on the same day. But it was unimaginable: her thoughts skidded from the idea and she wondered if that was why they had moved to Maine.

“Odd,” Tobias ruminated. “I thought there was something more to it. Of course I was living in Boston, but I seem to remember hearing that besides the wind, there was also a disagreement, one might say a quarrel, that distracted—”

“You
heard,
Tobias?” Derek asked coldly. “You never told us you heard voices. Do you also see visions?”

“Katherine should hear the whole story,” Tobias said quietly.

“Craig was quarreling?” Katherine asked. “What about?”

“They'd been drinking,” said Claude. “There were conflicting, and, I gather, belligerent opinions on the best way to sail the boat. For some reason, rumors about a quarrel, even a fight, cropped up afterward; no one knew why. I think it would be unwise to resurrect any of them at this late date.”

There was a pause. Melanie's fingernail rang nervously against her wine glass. “If you please,” said Victoria, and Melanie's finger was still.

“So,” Claude went on. “Apparently Craig made his way to
Vancouver. Most likely hitchhiking. Did he ever tell you, Mrs. Fraser?”

Startled, Katherine said, “How could he? I told you he never talked about—”

“Yes, I keep forgetting. Where did the name Fraser come from?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don't know.”

“A suburb of Vancouver, perhaps? On the southern edge of the city?”

“Named Fraser?” Ross asked. “Is there one, Claude?”

“Not far from the U.S. border. I found it on a map. I suppose he passed through it when he was running.”

“Did Craig keep up his carving?” Tobias asked Katherine. “I always loved those little people he made—so realistic.”

“He went through a stage,” Ann recalled, “of wanting to make carving his career. Can you imagine?”

“I can't at all,” said Tobias. “I thought he was anxious to go into the company with Jason and Curt. My, my; so Ross wasn't the only one who wanted to break away.”

They had done it again, Katherine thought: moved on to small talk. She turned to Tobias. “You mean you think he left to break away? You see, I'm trying to find out what kind of person he was—is—”

“You married him,” Melanie said sweetly. “You must have known what kind of person he was.”

“Is he dead?” asked Tobias. “I didn't know we'd decided that.”

“No—!” Katherine burst out.

“It's hard to know,” mused Derek. “With Craig.”

“It is hardly a decision we can make,” Victoria said. All through dinner she had been intent on the conversation, her eyes following the rest of them. The only time she spoke out, Katherine realized, was to stop an outburst that might have revealed something about Craig. “Port and cognac in the living room,” Victoria added, and stood up.

Not everyone had finished coffee and dessert. Katherine understood that she was hurrying them through dinner.
Because she wants me gone.

It was simple; it was obvious. Why had it taken her so long to see it? Ross had asked Victoria to give a dinner and she had done it, but not because she wanted to. None of them wanted
this dinner; none of them wanted Katherine to be there. None of them wanted to talk about Craig.

Or maybe they did, but they could not confront the evidence that he had been alive all these years. And since they could hardly evade it with Katherine there, she was an interloper. And so is Craig, she thought. Even though he's not here.

What did he do, that his family can't rejoice that he's alive?

As clearly as if he sat beside her, she heard Craig say, Most families are rotten. He had said it often, when they were first married, adding that theirs would be different. Now he seemed so close she thought she could touch him. Rotten, his voice repeated.

“Please,” Katherine said loudly as the others pushed back their chairs. “Please wait.” They looked at her.

“In the living room,” Victoria ordered.

“No, please,” Katherine insisted; as long as they were together at the table, she might get them to listen to her. “I don't understand you. I have so many questions about Craig's life before I knew him, and I thought you would want to know about his life the past fifteen years. I thought we could share what we know because he never put his two lives together; he kept them separate—”

“That's
all
you want?” Claude asked. “Knowing what you do about the Hayward family and the company—”

“I don't know anything about them! Don't you understand? I don't know the man I married; I barely know his family; I don't know what to believe—I don't even know if I understand myself. Don't you see?” No one answered. “Well, then, there is something else. I thought you'd be so happy to know Craig is alive you'd do all you could to find him. You have so much wealth and power”—she ignored the triumphant look Melanie gave Ross—“I thought you might hire investigators, put advertisements in newspapers, call people you know in other cities where he might have gone . . . I thought you'd help me look for him. And I thought perhaps the reason he vanished before might be connected with why he's gone now, and if we knew that we might find him together much faster than I could alone.”

No one spoke. They looked out the window or at Katherine or at the white orchid reflected in the dark mahogany table. Laughter from the library reached them faintly, but the dining room was silent.

Katherine stood up. She felt light-headed and dizzy, but, strangely, almost excited. She had to handle it alone, without Craig's help. And if they became angry and turned their backs on her—she would handle that alone, too.

“And I did think you might help us with a loan, just until Craig gets back, because we don't have much money and I don't know what we're going to do. But I wanted a loan, not a gift, and one of the things I wanted to do with it was hire detectives to look for him. Because we have to find him and help him—” She stopped briefly. “If we can; if he's still alive. I don't know what's happened to him, he may be in trouble, or hurt, but you act as if
you're
the ones who are hurt, that he's insulted you because he—” She stopped again. No one had mentioned embezzlement and she would not be the one to bring it up. “He's been—he
is
a wonderful husband and a wonderful father and I love him and I won't turn my back on him, even if you do, and I don't understand how you can talk about flower gardens and wood carvings and orchids when Craig—”