Everything had abruptly changed. It occurred to me that he hadn’t asked how much money I’d brought, which was, as I understood it, his main interest in this entire unholy exercise. He was staring at the smudgy flames, grinning like a soulless fool, shaking his head from side to side with a look on his face that suggested a kind of existential weight had lifted off the man, replaced by his private realization, whatever it was. We remained like this, an uninterpretable tableau, for a minute, and another minute, until I finally broke the silence, saying, in a low voice, “Slader.”
In a single graceful and uninterrupted motion, he conveyed the butcher knife with his left hand from the sack, passed it into his right, and lurched across the pathetic fire itself, swiping the blade through the smoke without uttering a word. I fell backward, landing hard on the sharp-angled composing stick, yanked it out from behind my belt, and, regaining my footing, stood. My eyes were tearing from the ash he’d kicked into the air when he jolted through the shallow firepit. As I turned to face him again, his knife a revenant, a dream of a knife, it seemed, rather than something forged of metal, I heard a wet crack and an exhalation, a sorry moan, and witnessed Slader wheel around, buckle, and fall face-first into his fire. Before I could make sense of what was happening, my daughter was dragging the man by his feet—for all his dishevelment and blood welling now at his crown, his black shoes seemed to have been recently polished—pulling him away from the flames. The shovel she’d used lay in the tumble of brown needles and fallen leaves next to Slader’s knife, one I now recognized as Meghan’s, which I hadn’t noticed missing from the kitchen during our earlier cursory search. Nicole was paler than I remembered ever seeing her. An atmosphere of efficient savagery, how else to put it, had settled, if briefly, in all of her next gestures and words.
“First we burn his photographs, assuming he has any, and ID,” she said, as I stood there above my nemesis inert on the ground, feeling a strange sense of melancholy rather than relief or triumph or terror about what had just happened. “Then we put out this fire.”
Rifling through his knapsack, she found an apricot, a candy bar, a wallet stuffed with singles, a bus-ticket stub. The mailer he had waved at me was empty. A forger, a fraud to the last. Together my daughter and I excavated the hole we’d dug to hide the cache of plates and, enlarging it as twilight enshrouded the forest, the field, the house, and the rest of my world as I’d known it, we laid Slader, settled into a fetal position, in his grave, along with the worthless sundries he’d brought in the expectation of a different outcome to our final visit.
While we finished our work in the woods, Ripley, materializing out of nowhere like some mangy deity from the forest-spirit underworld, looked about and, as if confirming that what was done was done, turned to meander ahead of us, back up the hill to the house. We hosed off the shovel before putting it away in the garage, put the composing stick back in the studio, scrubbed the hefty knife and restored it to its block in the kitchen, changed and laundered our clothes after washing up. Our nerves were more jangled than either of us could admit—it was fair to say we were benumbed, in shock even—so though we debated whether to drive back to the city that night, I thought it best to set out early the following morning. That settled, Nicole proposed there was probably never going to be a right time to open Atticus’s gift of Comtes Lafon Meursault-Genevrières, so she carefully peeled away its foil wrapper, opened it with a corkscrew, and poured two glasses. We drank, having made no toast, as there was nothing in the world here to toast.
Much as a fast-moving storm can sometimes gather over the mountains, rush across the river, its wind and driving rain overwhelming the meadow and woods surrounding the farmhouse, only to be gone a quarter of an hour later, tears finally overcame Nicole. I hadn’t seen her cry, I realized, since she was much younger. Standing up from the table, I walked over to where she was sitting, placed my hands on her shoulders, and said, “I’m so sorry, Nicole.”
“So am I,” she told me, reaching her hands up, without turning, to cover mine.
With that, her weeping soon enough ceased and I returned to my seat, downed what wine was left in my glass, and poured some more. Curiously, any horror we’d felt began to dissipate, and our mood began to lift. Not lighten, as such, but fade, disperse like storm clouds replaced by a tentative sun.
Still, neither of us had any appetite. The salad we made sat largely untouched in our bowls, as we talked, roundabout, in fits and starts, of what had just happened. We didn’t wallow in platitudes like He deserved what he got or We had no choice or It was a matter of self-defense. We did, however, wonder if Slader had stashed his vaunted photographic evidence of my supposed crime somewhere safe, somewhere it might be discovered. Should that be the case, we would never know until it was too late to avert whatever the consequences might be. Worrying about it would be worry wasted, we concurred. I insisted again that if the authorities ever came around with evidence about any of these misdeeds, it was I who must take the fall.
After a pause, she asked, seemingly out of the blue, “When was the last time you read ‘The Purloined Letter’?”
“What? Been a while,” I admitted, despite having been inundated by Poe for weeks.
“Poe’s Sherlock, Dupin, had no patience with the police, as you know.”
“I remember well,” I said, noticing Ripley had joined us inside and was rubbing her whiskers against the table legs.
“When he solved the case of the missing letter, he said, and I paraphrase, ‘The Parisian police are very able in their way. Persevering, ingenious, cunning.’”
Now I saw where she was going with this. “And versed—by which Dupin meant mired—in the knowledge their narrow duties required of them,” I said, knowing that was essentially what Poe had written, though not his exact words.
Without further comment, I understood why Nicole was channeling Dupin. Our own police are no less persevering and all the rest. But also, like Poe’s, ours are capable of blind spots, missed leads, dead ends. All I could hope was that the brilliant Dupin, haloed in smoke from his meerschaum pipe, had it right in his long-ago assessment.
“You remember that at the heart of the story is a forgery?” asked Nicole.
“Yes,” I said, “but one that was fabricated not by the villain but our hero.”
“By both, actually.”
Incessant, the kitchen clock ticked as we sat in silence. Ripley, being Ripley, vanished as unexpectedly as she had appeared. Far off, after some stretch of time, our resident great horned owl called out from the depths of the darkness. He waited in vain, as did my daughter and I, for another owl to hoot in response, somewhere farther away in the thicketed forest that enveloped us all, living and gone.
Waking to the steady crash and murmur of the River Sheen below our rooms at the lodge, on our first morning back in Kenmare, I was overwhelmed by a wave of relief. Not that I was so simple or sanguine as to believe it would last. Yeats, my favorite poet, wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” The sum of my experience tells me he was right, as ever. But he also believed that we can begin to live fully only when we conceive of life as a tragedy, a maxim that would always be far more difficult for me to embrace, although I recognized its fundamental truth. Will had quietly left our room to meet with Maisie and Nicole for an early breakfast before they headed off to hike upriver past the stone-arch bridge above the falls. Outside my window, it looked to be a perfect December day for their exploring, the sky running with low spry clouds beneath a perfect dome of lapis. Myself, I had no ambitions beyond a “cupán tae,” as my Gaelic forebears called it, and a long sit with a book beside the peat fire downstairs. Later, we planned on driving over to the cottage where Nicole was conceived and, after that, the two kilometers to Kenmare village proper to see if Brion Eccles, owner of Eccles & Sons, Stationery and Print, where Will learned how to run a Vandercook, was still in business, still hale and hearty. A pub dinner late
r, maybe lamb stew or Kenmare Bay mussels, at Crowley’s or O’Donnabhain’s on Henry Street, just doors down from Eccles’.
We were here to fulfill the family promise we’d made to ourselves during the worst of the bad days of summer when Slader besieged us, and to do everything possible to pull our lives back together, to regain the balance we’d taken for granted before Tamerlane made its appearance. Yeats and his philosophy aside, I was determined to reclaim all that I loved.
To say the auction, two months and as many weeks ago, had been successful would be a serious understatement. Bidding in the room, as well as by phone and online, had been furious, despite a newspaper article that had called the penciled autograph in Tamerlane “possibly spurious” and suggested even the letter was not without its concerns—ironic, since, as I now knew, it was the real thing. But this detractor’s criticisms were like stacking a few sandbags in the face of a mountainous tsunami—he did, in fact, hail the unveiling of a genuine thirteenth Black Tulip as a “major literary event”—and had no discernible effect on the sale. Beethoven’s doomed string quartet manuscript proved not to be a harbinger of Poe’s fate at auction. Once the lot marched decisively into seven figures, the numbered paddles in the gallery rose less frequently, then finally ceased, leaving the last of the bidding to proceed from afar. Vanquished bidders and curious onlookers seated in folding chairs facing the auctioneer’s podium whispered and exclaimed as bids jumped by larger increments until there were only two parties left, both on the telephone and thus enshrouded in anonymity. Applause filled the room when Edgar Allan Poe’s first book was hammered at well over three times its high estimate, though most could do no more than guess who its new owner was.
If Will knew, he didn’t let on. Nor did I ask. Grateful it was out of my house, my shop, my life, I didn’t care one whit who owned it now, although an educated guess would be that it went into a private collection, since most institutions would announce their stellar acquisition to the world and plan to exhibit it sometime soon. I recalled my husband saying back in August that two of the twelve prior known copies were in private hands, one of the owners anonymous. Now, for the foreseeable future, another would disappear into the shadows. I couldn’t help but believe Poe himself might revel in such concealment and mystery.
To say, further, that the strange dispersal of proceeds from the sale came as a shock to me would be a stone-cold lie, cold as the tumbling waters of the Sheen below the balcony outdoors. Close as my husband had once been to Atticus, he, along with the rest of those in our small world of book people, couldn’t know, as I did, that Atticus’s allotment from the Tamerlane sale was to go into a blind trust for his covert daughter with Mary Chandler. I always figured that as Maisie got older, the resemblance to her biological father would become clear to Will, and maybe even to their not quite shared daughter. But Atticus had been religious about keeping his distance, and likely would have denied speculation anyway, never wishing to acknowledge Maisie as his progeny because he didn’t want to destroy his family, and, even more persuasively, because Mary had sworn Atticus and me both to secrecy. Even when his own diagnosis of a cancer not dissimilar to Mary’s intervened, he took the risk of meeting with Will only that once in Rhinecliff. Distracted as he was with other matters, my husband didn’t see that he was sitting with Maisie’s father.
Atticus took the further step of meeting with me and Maisie, albeit briefly, for a gelato near Washington Square Park, when he’d traveled down from Providence supposedly to view the Poe. Furtive, we signed documents while we sat on a bench as Maze tossed crumbs of her uneaten cone to pirouetting pigeons near the fountain.
“Death’s just that way,” he said, watching Maisie from behind the dark screen of his sunglasses. “We can know the why, but never precisely the when.”
“Speaking of the when of things, when can I tell Will about you and Mary?”
Atticus coughed, cleared his throat. “Mary thought never. Not to protect herself, but to protect me. Me, my family, Will, and, above all, Maisie,” he said, slowly, pausing on each. “For myself, I think it’s best to leave it up to you, Meghan. I’m putting things in order, including what you insisted on the phone, that I take care of Abigail Fletcher by overpaying for manuscripts and books she seems finally willing to let go of. Restitution, you called it.”
“That, and penance,” I said, leveling my gaze at him and, disconcertingly, seeing my face mirrored in his tinted glasses, darkened and distorted. “May I ask what will happen with that facsimile Will printed with Nicole?” I ventured, not wholly sure I knew of its real place in the larger picture.
Atticus shook his head. “Honestly? I thought about destroying it, but it was truly a beautiful piece of work, something I sense would give Abigail Fletcher the same satisfaction, whether spurious or not. Besides, when such things are out in the world, they often take on a life of their own, become as indisputable as the originals. So, to answer your question, it’s in Abbie’s collection,” he said, looking away. “As for telling Will about Mary and me, let me finish up my own finishing up. After I’m gone, as I say, you can decide what’s best.”
I told him he could trust me, shook his hands, kissed his cheek. Afterward, when Maisie and I said our goodbyes and walked toward Broadway and the East Village, I could feel his eyes on us, on Maisie in particular, as we receded from view. Before we reached home, I decided she would learn about her parentage on her twenty-first birthday, when her trust was opened. If Atticus wanted to die in peace, taking his secret with him, who was I to interfere?
Downstairs in the tearoom at the lodge, I found myself a wingback chair of floral damask nearer to the fire than the windows, and settled myself in. Soda bread and blackberry jam were delivered on a tray along with my black tea. The sun poked in and out from behind the clouds. Piano music, improvisational and romantic and unknown to me, played softly in the background.
I had half expected to see Slader show up, menacing and proprietary, at the auction, but he didn’t. And after Tamerlane was sold for a record amount, I was certain he would appear, like an unwelcome specter, an inescapable bane, when we were upstate during the full glory of the Hudson Valley autumn, but he never showed his sallow face. Oddly, his absence was more of a noticeable presence than I might have expected. The paranoiac needs a foe in order to persist. Slader had worthily filled that role for years. I had seen no notice of his, or anyone else’s, arrest in the apparent murder of that man on the road. The simplest answer was that Slader had gotten what he was looking for and moved on into another life far beyond these precincts.
One morning in late October, when Will and Nicole were sequestered in their printing studio working on a new Stone Circle project and Maisie had ridden her old Schwinn Black Bomber to the village to visit the Bancroft twins, I remembered something Slader had used to taunt me. For whatever reason, I’d hardly thought about it in the weeks after he assailed Maisie and terrified me with his photo mask of my brother Adam, floating surreally in the woods across from the farmhouse. I closed my laptop in the study, where I had been doing some remote correspondence for the shop, and, after tying the laces of my walking shoes, descended the front porch steps and crossed the road.
Fallen leaves crunched underfoot as I stepped deeper into the tangled woods, searching for the ash tree where, back in August, I had discovered the glossy photograph of Adam, fixed with an elastic string on either side and with my brother’s eyes scissored out for Slader to see through. The photo seemed nowhere to be found. After these intervening months, had the paper disintegrated, or been blown away? Or, perhaps, had Slader himself retrieved it? Hands on hips, I paused to look up through the forest canopy. A brisk breeze detached some of the highest leaves that came floating down, like so many lost souls, to the woodland floor, a few alighting on my shoulders and head.
Then there it was, sheltered still among tiny wildflowers now dead, club moss that had yellowed, and faded orchard grass that had coll
apsed and fallen over the image, partially obscuring it from view. I knelt down. Still hesitant to touch the thing, I brushed away stems and leaves that partially buried it.
“Who killed you?” I asked, startled by my human voice here in nature’s surround. No answer was forthcoming, of course, but for the first time since the murder, I felt as if no answer was possibly the only answer I would ever have. No answer was possibly even for the best, given the alternatives.
Reaching out, I removed the photo from its makeshift shrine and carried it back to the house, where, with Nicole’s help, I would restore its eyes and frame it to place among other family mementos on the chestnut side table in the foyer. While it would never represent full closure, it would have to constitute, for me, closure enough. Will once referred to forgery as not a distinction without a difference, but a difference without a distinction. So it would have to be with my forged reconciliation with Adam’s death.
“Mom? Meghan?” was followed by nervous laughter, and when I looked up to see Maisie and Nicole standing over me in the tearoom, I realized I’d fallen asleep by the fire.
“What’s doing?” I asked with a yawn, closing the unread book in my lap.
“What’s doing is we’re ready to go see my birthplace,” Nicole said, reaching her hand out to me as Maisie retrieved the book on my lap, a Jane Austen novel I’d read many times before and returned to as a kind of security blanket.
“Not your birthplace,” Maisie corrected her.
“The place where my birth began then.”
As we drove to our old cottage, crosscurrenting memories flickered in and out of mind, like the rushing sunlight on the windshield, glinting through the tunnel of trees overhead. Yes, this was where Will and I had attempted to escape our troubles long ago, and succeeded but briefly. Happy times, unhappy ones. Nicole’s life began here, true, and Will’s almost ended.
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