The Unforgiven (12 page)

The old woman’s head and shoulders shot back at the shock of the impact. Evy grabbed a handful of wispy hairs and drew back her grandmother’s head.

“I’m telling you something,” Evy said slowly. “I want you to listen. I listened to you all those years. You bet I did.” The paper-thin skin of the scalp stood away from
the skull in tiny peaks. Evy gave the woman’s head a shake, then let it go. A few white hairs stuck to her damp fingers.

“The first thing she did when she showed up here was to throw herself at Jess. Jess! And she keeps right on doing it. She thinks I don’t know. This morning she tried to fool me about it. Ha!” Evy began to laugh, a mirthless, gasping sound issuing from her throat. “She thinks I don’t know.” The girl’s laugh was an incredulous scream.

Suddenly she stopped, interrupted by another sound. It was a moan, faint but agonized, issuing from the direction of the basement. Evy glanced over at the cellar door. The moaning rose and fell. No words. Just a plaintive, incoherent wail of suffering, with little strength behind it.

Evy fixed her narrowed eyes on her grandmother’s face as the old woman listened to the piteous cries. Tears began to trickle down the creases of the old woman’s withered cheeks, and her frail chest heaved as she struggled to catch a breath.

Evy returned calmly to her seat beside the refrigerator and threw her grandmother an unctuous smile. “She’ll be sorry,” said the girl. Then she crossed her legs and resumed tapping the spoon against the sole of her slipper.

8

Maggie placed her pocketbook in her desk drawer and pulled her chair up to her desk. Then she looked down in surprise. Waiting for her was a flaky, cherry-studded pastry sitting on a piece of waxed paper. She examined it for a moment and then looked up. Grace sat typing with her back to her. There was no one else in sight. Maggie pulled off a piece of the pastry and put it in her mouth. She began to chew it thoughtfully.

Just then Evy came into the office, carrying a pile of manuscripts. She smiled sheepishly at Maggie. “I hope you like cherry,” she said.

Maggie swallowed the morsel she was eating and looked at the girl in surprise.

Evy shrugged. “I got it at the health-food bakery.” She waved her thumb in the general direction of the building next door.

“I just tried it. It’s good.”

Evy took a few steps closer to Maggie’s desk and began to fidget.

“That was nice of you,” said Maggie.

“I wanted to apologize to you about… you know. What happened last night. My grandmother is sick and
sometimes.… Well, I never know how she’s going to act. It was really nice of you to bring the pills over.”

“Forget it,” said Maggie. “I understand.”

“I guess I just worry about her, and I don’t want her to get all worked up. Sometimes with strangers, you know.”

“I’m sorry I upset her,” said Maggie. “Let’s just forget it.”

Evy smiled shyly at her. “Okay. Thanks.” Then she turned and went over to her desk to sit down.

An unfamiliar feeling of well-being lightened Maggie’s glum mood. Evy was a good kid, really. It took a lot of courage to apologize that way. She was having a hard time, and Maggie could certainly sympathize with that. She took another bite of the pastry so that Evy could see she was enjoying it. Then she pulled out the file of photographs she had been working on the day before. Maybe Jess was right about her, she thought.

The day passed for Maggie with hardly a glimpse of Jess, who spent his time in his own office. Their brief exchanges were businesslike. He made no reference to the night before. Although it made her feel slightly melancholy, Maggie told herself firmly that it was best that way. At about three o’clock Jess came into the office with Owen Duggan at his side.

“Maggie,” he called out.

She looked up.

“I want you to try your hand at a little reporting today. Owen’s going over to take some pictures of one of our local legends, Ben McGuffey, who’s retiring next
week on his ninetieth birthday. Ben’s a sailmaker, used to ship out on whalers in his younger days. It’ll make kind of a nice story, I think.”

“Okay.” Maggie gathered up her pad and pencil. “I’m ready to go.”

“Owen,” Jess went on, “you know what to do. The usual stuff. Kind of help Maggie out if she gets stuck on anything.” He smiled at her reassuringly. Flustered, Maggie avoided Jess’s eyes.

Owen gave Jess a ragged salute and started for the door. “Looks like rain,” he muttered, squinting up at the sky from the front doorstep. “Come on.” A distant fork of lightning cracked the sky as he motioned to Maggie.

A little while later, Jess entered the office and walked over to Grace’s desk. He dropped a stapled manuscript on her blotter. Grace picked it up and looked at it.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

“First installment of that series on island landmarks,” said Jess. “Give it a thorough going-over.”

“Are we running this?” she asked.

“Next week.”

“I thought you were going to wait on this until Mr. Emmett gets back.”

“Changed my mind,” Jess said.

“When is he coming back?” Grace asked petulantly.

“I dunno. I haven’t heard from him yet.”

“I wish he’d hurry up,” she whined. “So we could get things settled around here.” She looked significantly in the direction of Maggie’s desk.

“Why, Grace—what’s the problem?” Jess asked politely.

The older woman sniffed, and raised her eyebrows. Across the room Evy chewed on her pencil, pretending to be concentrating on the proof sheets in front of her.

“Well,” Grace went on indignantly, “I just think there’s some unfinished business that can’t be settled until he gets back.”

“You mean Maggie,” Jess said patiently.

“I didn’t say that,” Grace protested. “I was just saying that I’ll be glad when Mr. Emmett gets back.”

“It seems to me,” said Jess firmly, “that we’re a lot better off with the extra help around here. That’s what I intend to tell Mr. Emmett when he gets back. You have to admit, Grace, that your load has been a lot more manageable since she came.”

Grace emitted a loud sigh. “Whatever you say,” she agreed.

Jess paused, as if he were going to say something else, and then thought better of it. He did not want to start an argument over Maggie. That would not make Grace any more favorably disposed to her. With a shrug, he left the room.

Grace turned to Evy, who looked up from her proof sheets. Grace rolled her eyeballs and shook her head. “How do you like that?” she demanded.

“I wasn’t really paying attention,” Evy claimed innocently.

“Looks like if he has anything to say about it we’re going to have Miss Forgetful Butterfingers with us forever.” Grace groaned.

“Maybe not,” said Evy.

“Well, didn’t you hear that? She’s got him so he can’t see straight already. We don’t need her here.”

“Oh, well. What’s the difference?” said Evy. “She’s not that bad.”

Grace snorted indignantly, annoyed that the girl was not supporting her view. Knowing Evy’s weakness, she threw the girl a sly glance. “I think he’s got kind of a crush on her, don’t you?”

Evy lowered her eyes to the pages in her hand. Grace could see her whitening. “I don’t know,” she said.

“That’s what I think,” Grace announced. “I wonder if they’re up to no good together. I’ll bet. He sure looks at her that way.”

Evy stood up abruptly and stuck her chin out in the air. “Who cares?” she said. “I have to get some new erasers in the art room.”

“Go ahead,” said Grace. “I’m not stopping you.”

A crack of thunder greeted Maggie and Owen as they emerged from the sailmaker’s shop.

“We’d better hurry,” said Maggie.

“Oh, it won’t rain for a while yet,” the photographer assured her. “I’ve become a semi-pro forecaster since I’ve lived here.”

“Well, I have work to do.”

Owen glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly five.”

Maggie ignored his remark and started walking. The photographer made her uncomfortable. All during their talk with the old sailor she felt his eyes on her. It was not lascivious. It was more as if he was studying
her, trying to place her. She was eager to get away from him. However, Owen kept pace with her as she hurried along.

“That was kind of fun,” he said. “Ben’s quite a character. Did you notice his hands? Brown as an Indian’s. And those long fingers. Really beautiful hands. They tell a whole life’s story.”

“He’s had an interesting life,” she agreed. “A regular Conrad character.”

“You did very well with him. He really opened up to you. That story about him falling out of the boat and the swordfish towing him in the tangled line was great.”

“It should be a good story,” she said.

“Were you a reporter on the papers you worked for before?”

Maggie stiffened and answered him curtly. “No.”

“Where’d you work? Big dailies? Small-town papers?”

“Small papers. Why?” she countered.

Owen was taken aback. “Just curious. I thought maybe you came here to escape the rat race. It’s the perfect place for it. I used to work in New York myself, years ago.”

Maggie backed down. “Just small papers,” she said.

“I just keep having this nagging feeling,” he went on, “that I know you from somewhere. That’s why I wondered if you ever worked in New York.”

Maggie’s stomach tightened into a knot. A photographer from New York. Maybe he had even been at her trial upstate. A vivid memory came back to her of flashbulbs and floodlights bursting through the darkened corridors of the courthouse. No matter
how she tried to hide her face, they swarmed over her, mosquitolike, devouring her with their cameras. In the grainy black-and-whites she looked stunned and ghostly. “I’m sure we’ve never met,” she said coldly.

A flash of lightning was accompanied by a tremendous thunderclap.

“Uh-oh,” said Owen. “Here it comes.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the rain started, pouring down on them. Owen drew his jacket over his camera equipment. “There’s my jeep,” he yelled to her. “I’m going to make a run for it. Tell Jess I’ll bring the pictures in a day or two.”

Before she could reply he was sprinting across the street. Sheets of gray, chilling rain drove down the sidewalks and the street. Maggie ran for the
Cove News
building, but it was already too late to preserve an inch of dryness. She threw open the door and stood panting in the front hallway, water dripping down her face and hair, seeping all the way to her soggy shoes.

Jess came out of his office and stared at her. “God, you’re soaked,” he observed.

She glanced down at her dripping garments and shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”

“You’d better go home. It’s nearly five anyway.”

Maggie nodded, still panting.

Grace and Evy came out and stood in the doorway of the office. Grace shook her head and clucked her tongue.

“Where’s Owen?” Jess asked.

“He’s gone home. We got a nice story from Ben.”

“Tell me about it tomorrow,” Jess urged her. “Go on home now. Get out of those wet clothes.”

By the time she reached the door of her house, the downpour had become a steady rain. Maggie was chilled through by the cold, wet garments plastered to her body. Wearily she sank down into a chair in the dank, cheerless living room. Almost immediately she jumped up again, conscious of the spreading stain from her wet clothes. The oncoming gray twilight gave the house a gloomy aspect. Maggie could feel a vague depression settling over her.

Jess had made no further advances, no mention of seeing her. Perhaps she had been successful in convincing him last night. So, there she was, just as she should be, alone in her damp, empty house.
That’s just what you wanted, wasn’t it,
she thought. Listlessly she paced the living room floor, not even bothering to turn on a light. At last she stopped in front of the fireplace and stared into the ash-filled grate. She realized she should try to pull herself out of it. There was no point to just sinking further into her depression.

Bending down, she began to build a fire, deftly adding wood to kindling until a small fire burned energetically in the fireplace. She stared into it for a few minutes. The wet fabric facing the flames felt as if it were beginning to steam.

All right,
she told herself.
A hot shower, dry clothes, and you’ll feel better.
Forcing herself wearily to her feet, she trudged into the bedroom and dropped her clothes in a sodden pile on the floor. Then she headed for the
bathroom, stopping on her way to poke her head into the living room. The fire was crackling cheerfully. The chill was beginning to come off the room.

Maggie closed the bathroom door halfway.

She walked over to the tub, leaned over it, and turned on the water. She adjusted the hot and cold spigots until the water ran hot. She wanted to make it hot enough to banish the chill. Then she turned on the spigot for the shower. Standing up again, she was about to step into the shower when she paused to glance at herself in the mirror above the medicine chest. Gray circles were beginning to form under her eyes. She had slept so little the night before, tormented by familiar, troubling dreams. She was weary, and she wondered if she would sleep more soundly tonight.

With a sigh she stepped up over the high rim of the tub and stood squarely beneath the cascade of hot water. It felt soothing, heating up her chilled flesh and dousing the cold, rubbery strands of her damp hair. She let it fall over her, drinking in the heat. Then she turned and began to grope for the bar of soap in the clamshell.

Suddenly she stopped. Through the loud rain of the shower she heard a noise outside the bathroom. She stood still, listening. The house was silent, except for the steady beat of the water on the floor of the tub.

Stop it,
she thought.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Shaking her head, she stepped back under the full blast of the water, rubbing a nubby washcloth over her skin. With grim determination, she began to hum.

From just outside the bathroom door, she heard a
dull thud. Instantly she grabbed for the spigots and turned them off. She stood naked in the tub, gooseflesh rising on her bare arms. Once again there was silence outside. She waited uncertainly behind the curtain, her heart thudding. With a sickening sensation in her stomach, she realized she had left her robe in the bedroom. What if she pulled back the curtain and someone was there? She could not step out naked.