The Book of James (16 page)

promised drink in hand and sat next to me.

“So what happened to your girlfriend?”

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ELLEN J. GREEN

“My girlfriend got a very lucrative job offer in California and

decided it was more important than marrying me.”

I looked away, thinking she was a fool. “You’d been together a

long time?”

“Since our third year of law school. We tried to keep things

going long-distance. I even went out there a couple of times, but it was too hard, so we just broke things off.”

“When was this?” I asked, leaning toward him.

“Last year.”

“And you haven’t talked to her since?”

“A couple of times, but we’re not going to get back together.”

His eyes were downcast, but I could see he was frowning.

“What’s she like?” I asked.

“Ambitious.” He pushed back and the glider rocked gently.

“That’s too bad.” If I’d had three fewer glasses of wine I prob-

ably would’ve sensed that it was a raw topic and left it alone, but I had no such judgment in my current state. “And you couldn’t move

out there because of your brother?”

He stopped and looked at me. “It was all such bad timing. I

couldn’t pull up and move right away. And by the time I was ready to move, she wasn’t ready to have me move, end of story.”

I tipped my glass back and finished the teeny bit of wine still

in the bottom.

“Do you always drink so much?” He motioned to my hand.

“Only at the real y good parties.”

People started coming outside and yelling to us that they were

leaving. I looked at my watch.

“I guess I should be heading back home,” I said. I put one hand

on his shoulder.

He stood up. “I’m glad you’re not driving. I’ll walk you home

if you want.”

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The way I was feeling, he could have handed me a blanket and

I would have slept right there. I nodded. We made our way back

through the house.

The air was cool but nice. Our arms brushed as we walked. We

stood right outside the gate at Cora’s house, as we had days ago.

“Dylan, I want to go in through the back. I’m not going to

wake Cora up at this hour. Do you mind walking me around to the

other side?”

“Lead the way,” he said.

We walked down Chestnut Hill Avenue to Crefeld, turning up

the block until we came to the Cooper house.

“Now what? You want me to give you a boost?”

I shook my head and continued on until I reached the make-

shift gate in the fence.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I found the latches and squeezed through. I stood on one side,

Dylan on the other.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

He followed behind me, ducking through the bars.

“How the hell did you find that?”

“Ginny.”

“I grew up in this neighborhood, and I never knew that was

there.”

He was still looking at it, amazed, when I took his arm and

steered him through the woods to the clearing. The windows to

my room looked dark as we approached the house. The entire

stone structure looked empty. We walked up the steps and into the room. I turned to flick on the lights when a high-pitched scream

from behind me made me jump out of my skin. I wheeled around

and saw someone hitting Dylan in the head with what looked like

a smal shovel.

“Stop it!” I screamed, running to his side.

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ELLEN J. GREEN

Dylan held his head where he had been hit and moved back.

If I hadn’t identified the assailant when I heard that piercing wail, I certainly knew for sure when my fingers touched the bony arm.

Ginny. She stood there, trowel in hand, looking very frail and confused. She wore a windbreaker over a nondescript dress, and those trademark sneakers on her feet. I took the trowel from her trembling fingers.

“You’ve come back. I knew you would.” She now clung to

Dylan for dear life. “They’re coming after me. Please don’t let them take me away. Please?”

“What the hell?” he said, glancing at me. “Miss Cooper, do you

remember me?”

Ginny just looked from my face to Dylan’s with no idea of

where she was or what she’d done. Just then the door that led to the tunnel opened. Cora alighted from the steps, dressed in a simple

dark-colored dress. Her hair was wet.

“I was changing for bed when I heard screaming. What’s going

on?” she asked.

I stared in disbelief. There was no way she could have heard

that scream all the way in the main house.

“Ginny was here when I came in. She hit Dylan with this,” I

said, holding up the trowel.

Cora stared at Ginny for a long time without saying anything.

Ginny cowered before her.

“I’m sorry,” Cora said final y. Her face was hard and angry.

She grabbed Ginny by the arm and moved her toward the French

doors. Ginny still clung to Dylan and pulled him along with them.

I suddenly felt sorry for the frail woman.

“Cora, I can take her home if you want,” I offered.

Cora turned quickly without letting go of Ginny’s arm. “No. I

need to call—”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence, because just then, the

French doors opened and a man walked in. He looked to be in

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his sixties, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. His face was handsome and distinguished. The fact that he was wearing an old

pair of khakis and an olive-green zip-up jacket made no difference.

He had a commanding presence that suggested money and power.

“Virginia, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for

the last hour.” His face was angry, but he didn’t raise his voice. He looked at Ginny as if she were a child.

“Harrison, it’s Fred.” She motioned to Dylan. “It’s Fred. Don’t

you see?”

“What have you done here?” he asked, looking around.

“She must have been wandering in the house again, but now

she’s getting violent.” Cora took the trowel from my hand. “She hit him in the head.” She motioned to Dylan, who still had one hand

clasped over his wound.

“You’ve left me no choice,” Harrison said to Ginny.

I had no idea what that meant. I was watching the events

unfold as if I were watching a play. I expected the curtain to drop any minute and for them all to take a bow.

“No, no, please,” Ginny replied. “I’ll behave. I promise.”

Cora pulled her out the French doors, forcing Ginny to release

her hold on Dylan. Harrison merely nodded at us and followed

behind them. I watched the thin, frail form, in between the two

overpowering, solid ones, disappearing into the woods. Dylan just looked at me, as if no words could possibly do justice to what had happened.

“Let me see,” I said, taking him into the bathroom. The skin

was intact, but I could feel a small lump forming where he’d been hit. “Does it hurt?”

“No, but I’m getting a headache. I think I’m going home.”

Abruptly, he pushed off the toilet seat and exited through the

French doors, trudging through the clearing the way the other

three had.

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ELLEN J. GREEN

The five glasses of wine churned in my stomach, making me

slightly nauseated and woozy. Sleep came quickly, but my last

thoughts were that something was amiss. I couldn’t grasp it, but it was there, clinging to alcohol-laden brain cel s somewhere in the back of my head.

I was lying on the brocade sofa in my little living room, nursing a hangover, when my cell phone erupted. I struggled to get it while holding on to one side of my throbbing head.

“Mackenzie, Mackenzie, I hit pay dirt!” I winced and asked

Samantha to lower her voice a tad.

“No, you want to hear this, loud and clear.”

“What?” I asked.

“I searched your house.”

“What’d you find?” Suddenly the pounding in my skull became

less prominent.

“Nothing at first. I went through everything. Desk, dresser,

attic, garage. I couldn’t find a thing in all those papers. Nick didn’t keep so much as a yearbook—and then boom, there it was.”

“What?” I said louder.

“Tucked in with his bankbook. I never would’ve even seen it;

he had it stuffed into the side of an old checkbook cover. I only noticed it because I took that particular book out, and I felt a little bulge.”

134

ELLEN J. GREEN

“What?”
I said for the third time. If she were standing in front of me I would have stood on my tippy-toes and put my hands

around her throat.

“Safe-deposit key.”

“But that’s so cliché,” I said, truly amazed.

“Cliché or no, it was there and it makes sense. Where else

would he put something he didn’t want you to see?”

“So, did you go to the bank?”

“Yes, I did. I just got back. I think the Saturday crew was a little lax. I just signed your name and they let me in.”

“So what was in the fucking box, Samantha?” My head

pounded out a little beat with each syl able.

“Will you let me tell you? He had a copy of his wil , some let-

ters from a man in Philadelphia. A Mr. Heinz. And a manila enve-

lope with assorted odds and ends.” I could hear her excitement.

“Who’s Mr. Heinz? Can you tell from the letters?”

“They were written from Philadelphia. There’s—wait, let me

see—six of them.”

“Where were they mailed to?” I waited as she flipped through

them.

“Two are addressed to someplace in Portland, three are to

what looks like a dorm address at the university, and the last one is to a street I don’t recognize.”

“Dated when?”

“Starting in ’97, last one 2002.”

I rubbed my head and thought. Nick had left Philadelphia in

’96. These letters had to be from his father’s friend, the one who took him in as a teenager. Who else could it be?

“So what other odds and ends are there?” I asked.

“A few pictures and a green coin. They were all tucked together

in an envelope in the back of the box.”

“A green coin? What’re you talking about?”

“You’ll see for yourself. Give me an address and I’ll go mail it.”

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I looked at the clock. It was eleven thirty. I gave her Dylan’s

address and told her to mail it to me in care of Dylan McBride.

“Who’s that?”

“I’ll explain later. If you hurry, you can make it before the post office closes at noon. Mail it overnight.”

“Okay. I’m leaving now. This whole thing is getting interesting,

isn’t it?” she asked.

“More and more every day.”

“I’m going to see if I can get a flight down tomorrow or the day

after. I’ll let you know.”

I hung up the phone and stared across the room. A safe-

deposit box. Nick hid the key from me in an old checkbook

cover. Four years I spent with the man. We woke up together, ate

together, made love, bought a house together, made plans for the

future together, shared our lives—or so I thought. Now I wasn’t

sure who the hell he was. I could picture him in front of me so

clearly. I could see his face, his thick brown hair, square jaw, how when he smiled, his dark-green eyes became little slits, but I obviously never had any idea what was going on behind those slits.

Those lying green eyes.

A while later I was in my bed, curled in a bal , only moving

to take a sip of water every now and then or to swallow another

Tylenol, when there was a knock on my door. Cora stood at the

bottom of the stairwel . She moved past me quickly and stood

impassively in the middle of the living room. I tried to read her emotional state, but it was impossible. Her face was empty, almost tranquilized. I was a small child waiting to be chastised for a

wrongdoing. Then she became animated, like someone had flicked

a switch.

“I don’t expect a repeat of last night.” The words flew out of

her mouth with such force that I took a step back. “I invited you to come here—you don’t even know what today is, do you?” I was

afraid to say anything, so I just shook my head. “My son died six 136

ELLEN J. GREEN

weeks ago today. And what are you doing? Having parties? Inviting men back to your room?” She stopped for a second. “No, inviting

men back to
my
house. It’s a slap in the face to me and to Nick.”

My mouth opened to protest that we hadn’t been doing any-

thing, but nothing came out. She rushed right on.

“And if
he
hadn’t been in this room with you last night, none of that would have happened.”

Before I could respond, she looked down at me and grabbed

my left hand. Her hand felt like twisted rocks against my skin.

“This ring should mean something to you. My son isn’t even

cold yet.”

I swallowed hard. I could feel tears forming in my eyes. My

head hurt, I had that bleary half-sick feeling in my stomach, and I couldn’t think of anything to say to Cora because part of me felt she was right. “Cora, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect to

you.”

Her face slackened a little. “I’m sorry that Virginia got into

your room,” she said final y. “Harrison gave her a sedative, and

she’s sleeping now. It won’t happen again.”

“Her brother’s a doctor?” I asked.

Cora nodded stiffly. “Retired. He’s taking care of her.” She

walked toward the door. “Is your ankle okay?”

The question took me by surprise. It was only a little sore, and I didn’t realize I was still favoring it. “It’s fine. I just twisted it a little.”