Disintegration

by Nicholson, Scott

  "No. I'm a Wells, damn it. This is my town. They can't take it away from me."

  "Sorry, Jake. You shouldn't have dropped out of your own life."

  "Give me your keys," he said.

  "No. It's my car."

  "Our car. Don't forget whose name's on the title. Wells."

  "Just like the house, huh? And there's nothing left of it but ashes. Everything we owned together is ashes now. Everything a Wells ever touched."

  They both looked at the urn. It had the power of a sacred relic, an icon that marked not the abiding mystery of faith and life but the absolute consuming nadir of despair and failure.

  "I'll drive you back to the Wells farm," she said.

  "I can't stay there."

  "You can't sleep in the bushes."

  Jacob looked at the couch, then down the hall at the starched covers of her bed. When you turn your back on your life, you leave everything behind, even those things that once seemed valuable. "Take me by the ruins, then. Show me where the person called to you from the woods."

  "That was you, Jake."

  "It wasn't. I swear."

  But he couldn't be sure. Maybe visiting the scene of the nightmare would rob it of its power. He had nothing left to lose. Except two million dollars, his wife, and the Wells homestead.

  They drove to Buffalo Trace Lane in silence, Renee keeping her purse in her lap, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. The town seemed like a movie set to Jacob, a false-front stage for the Wells illusion. He hadn't owned Kingsboro. All he had was a name heavier than blocks, girders, and bricks.

  As they pulled into the driveway, Jacob was struck by the harsh emptiness of the lot, as if the blank space in the sky required the satisfying geometry of walls and roof in order to be complete. The rectangular bed of ashes lay like a black, sunken grave. The yellow crime scene tape had drooped, and in places it was broken and fluttering in the breeze like the tails of crippled kites. The trees around the ruin were scorched, the branches stunted and bare. New blackberry vines had thrust from the dead embers scattered beyond the block foundation, as if sharp and painful edges were the next natural evolutionary step here.

  Renee stopped the engine and sat with her hands in her lap. "We're home."

  Jacob looked up to where the second floor would have been, to the haunted air of Mattie's vanished window. "I tried to save her. You believe that, don't you?"

  "I was there, Jake. I remember."

  "But you couldn't see. All that smoke."

  "Like I told the fire chief."

  "We were cut off from each other. You had to go downstairs. It was the only way out."

  "I thought you and Mattie were already safe, or I never would have left." Renee adjusted her glasses on her nose, as if using a memory trick to recall her half of the story. "But I had to get my glasses out of the car."

  "And the back door was open."

  "The door that swings both ways."

  "Huh?" Jacob imagined flames licking at the afternoon sky, a daytime Armageddon, a cleansing wave pushed up from the bowels of hell.

  "The door that swings both ways. Like you told me the night you were hiding in the woods."

  "I wasn't hiding in the woods."

  "Something about the door, Jake. And when you smelled the smoke, you told me to wait in the bedroom. Like you were afraid of what I might see."

  "I didn't want you to see Mattie. I wanted to protect you. Both of you. Like I couldn't protect Christine."

  That sounded good. He swallowed.

  The charred flecks of Christine's crib lay somewhere in the burned-out basement, along with a menagerie of stuffed animals, hair brushes, Barbie dolls, and an Easy-bake oven. The Weebles and Lego and Strawberry Shortcake and Pooh pajamas. Tweety Bird sleepers and Dr. Seuss videos. Purple plastic bracelets and silver wigs, sneakers that lit up with red LED's when a girl danced. The solid things were the only believable reminders of Mattie, because memory clung not to her smile in the sunshine but to her face in the fire.

  "Jake, I can't talk to Chief Davidson anymore. She suspects something."

  "It won't be much longer. The SBI has run about every test they have. They'll have to close the case soon, and we'll get our money."

  "It's not ours, though. You want to give it to Joshua."

  A car came up the road behind them, slowing as it passed the driveway. Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror. The Nelsons from 217, who lived around the corner. Their house had a thousand square feet less of floor space than the one he'd built here. With the insurance money, he could build an even larger one, an envy-inspiring Wells monument that would be three stories and--

  He wouldn't rebuild here. This wasn't his home anymore. He belonged in Joshua's house. And Joshua would get the two million, money from the fire and Mattie. Fair was fair. Jacob opened the door and got out of the car.

  The air carried a faint charred aroma in its heavy dampness. If he'd believed in spirits, he could imagine Mattie hovering over the bed of dead embers, picking among the ruins for the ghosts of toys. He touched his face, recalled the searing heat that must have been ten times as intense to her. The fire had robbed her of oxygen, suffocating her in its selfish consumption. The greedy fingers of flames had stroked and groped and seized, had pulled all that lay before it into its arms.

  The fire had risen from a muted spark and swelled to a stubborn, hungry thing. The fire refused to recognize its limits. Therefore, it was the fire's fault, not his.

  Never his.

  Because a Wells never fails.

  Renee came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. He shivered. She had always been colder than Carlita. "Jacob, what are we going to do?"

  "Wait."

  "But what happens after that? M & W is wiped out."

  "The partnership can declare bankruptcy. The claimants can't touch the insurance money. That's mine."

  "Ours. A joint asset."

  "Ours." The word had lost most of its meaning. Still, if she wanted to believe in a fantasy future, it would make things that much simpler. Betrayal worked best when it came as a surprise. Enemies were the only people you could trust, because they were predictable. The only trouble was figuring out which ones were enemies.

  "Why did your brother come back?"

  "He's a Wells. He's part of me." In a way that Renee would never be. Her blood, no matter how hot it ran or how much of it spilled for him, would never have the purity of Joshua's. Even Mattie and Christine were diluted, only half Wells.

  "Somebody knows, Jake."

  "Nobody knows."

  She pulled the Rock Star Barbie out of her purse. "Remember this?"

  The fire, laying on the floor, screaming "Wish me" against the crackling chorus of flames. "Mattie's doll."

  Renee triggered its audio chip and it bleated "Housewarming present."

  "Some kid playing a joke, maybe. Some drunk. Or crazy bum." Not like him. Not him.

  "I found it in the woods."

  "Forget it. Nobody saw nothing."

  "Let me show you something," she said.

  Jacob looked up the road, half expecting to see Davidson round the corner in her fat-wheeled SUV, all chrome and insignia and fog lights. If she smelled arson, she would hang the crime on somebody. And an arson that caused a child's death would be a second degree murder charge at a minimum.

  Renee tugged his sleeve, dragged him toward the woods. As they passed the wreckage, he wondered what the clutter meant to her, how the skeletal block wall and blackened wood and scorched appliances played against her obsessive-compulsive disorder. She'd wanted to clear the forest, level the oak and maple and birch and install landscaping, to regiment the wilderness and line the shrubs in a God-pleasing order. Jacob had convinced her that they wouldn't be in the house long enough for the plants to reach maturity, and she had settled for flower beds along the front walk.

  He fumbled at his shirt pocket and touched the pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Lights, the same brand as Joshua's.

  "I found
this, too." She pulled the plastic rattle out of her pocket and shook it, though the sound elicited sharp pricks of regret.

  "That was in the nursery," Jacob said.

  "Should have been."

  Jacob took the rattle in his left hand and shook it. It bore the face of a generic bear, its painted eyes long since flaked off. The handle was worn, but it felt familiar inside Jacob's grip. He had rattled the bear himself, as a tiny child whose twin lay in the crib beside him, whose mother leaned over in severe judgment, whose father stayed well away. Years that Jacob had rarely mentioned, no matter how deeply Renee had dug.

  It was one of the few relics Jacob had kept when he left home. It had been in his college apartment, and Renee had found it in one of her frantic bouts of cleaning. He'd shrugged it off, but Renee found it sweet and enduring that a rebellious, scatter-brained poet hung on to a childhood toy.

  And, by rights, the rattle should have been a melted lump of slag deep in the black bowels of the house.

  "Somebody was in the house, Jake."

  "He couldn't have known."

  "Who are you talking about?"

  "Who do think?" Jacob gripped the rattle hard enough that the plastic cracked.

  "Is that why you're giving him the money? Is he blackmailing you?"

  Jacob stared back at the house, at the black bed of charred ruins that may as well have been a mirror of their souls. He pulled out the pack of cigarettes and tapped one free, shaking the rattle in the process.

  "When did you take up smoking?" she asked.

  "I've always smoked."

  He flicked the lighter and touched it to the cigarette tip, fighting the impulse to also apply the flame to the rattle.

  Better late than never.

  "Do you trust me?" she asked.

  "I love you." As if that were an answer.

  She took the cigarette from his fingers. "Then let's do this together."

  She tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it with her foot. "A Wells never fails, and two Wells are better than one," she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As Renee drove Jacob to Dr. Rheinsfeldt's office, she looked over at the passenger seat and admired her handiwork. He'd moved into her apartment, cleaned up, and bought a couple of new suits. It was off-the-rack, Belk's stuff, but it would have to do until the money began rolling again. And it would. A shave and a splash of cologne, three weeks of sobriety to get the bugs off his skin, and he was ready to climb back onto the throne. Kingsboro was waiting for him to stand up and be a Wells, to take the town's future in his hands and push it into a prosperous new era.

  Attitude was the important thing. They had mourned enough. The SBI had turned in the final incident report, and the fire had been ruled "Cause undetermined." Not quite as good as a ruling of "accidental," which would mean that a definitive source of the fire had been found. As it was, the open-ended ruling left a cloud of suspicion lingering, but the insurance company was now compelled to pay. Two million dollars, minus the $20,000 that Renee had received for emergency housing and living expenses.

  Now they were bound together, joined for the future, and Jacob wouldn't be able to shake her. He had accepted the new arrangement with sullen resentment, but she had explained that no other options remained. A husband and wife didn't keep secrets from each other, and now they had to close ranks. They could deal with the rest of it after they squared the books of M & W Ventures and shut up Donald Meekins. They'd already signed the necessary forms, and Rayburn Jones had treated them like old friends, pleased to see Jacob back in Rotarian form. Jacob seemed to sit a little straighter, his eyes brighter and wider, confidence returning.

  They'd not talked about Joshua. Renee hoped he'd given up and left town.

  "This is important," Renee said, pulling into the parking lot of Total Wellness. "I know we each have to deal with grief in our own way, but the community will forgive you faster if you seek help. And don't forget to act humble."

  "Humble," Jacob said. "I can manage that."

  "We don't even have to talk about the girls if you don't want to."

  "Whatever the doctor thinks is best."

  Summer was giving way to autumn, the grass taking on a blue-green shade and the oaks on the lawn in full red canopy. The sky was blue and the clouds high and white, and the sadness had faded enough that Renee could once again believe that God watched over them all.

  She saw Rheinsfeldt at the second-floor window, looking down on them as they came up the sidewalk. Renee started to wave then wondered if that was a breach of etiquette. Maybe therapists didn't acknowledge their clients outside the confines of the confessional chamber. Jacob didn't notice the doctor, his gaze fixed on a hill in the distance where grading machines were at work notching a red gash in the slope.

  "That's Wade Thompson's crew," Jacob said. "We had an option on that land before all this recent trouble. I think he's aiming for student apartments. I would have gone for condominiums myself. Fewer headaches and a quicker return."

  He was sounding like the Jake of old, the one with plans and ambition. The man she had helped build, and the only version of him she was able to love. She had no use for the broken Jake who drank cheap liquor in the bushes and cowered at the mention of his brother. This reborn Jake had a bounce in his step and his complexion had gone to a healthy blush, the mottled and burned skin almost completely healed.

  "Be patient, honey," she said. "We're going to get it all back. A Wells never fails."

  "And two Wells are better than one."

  The receptionist recognized Jacob. "Good morning, Mr. Wells," the receptionist said, smiling in a way that would have made Renee jealous had she not been so pleased that another woman found her husband worthy of charm. "Please sign here."

  As he signed them in, Renee interrupted him. "Jake?"

  "Yes?" He looked down and saw he'd been writing with his left hand. "Oh."

  He switched to his right and finished his signature. They barely had time to pick up magazines, Home Design for him and Entertainment Weekly for her, before they were summoned down the hall to Dr. Rheinsfeldt's office.

  "So," the doctor said, taking the couch this time. The room smelled of potpourri and long-burnt incense. The furniture had been rearranged, and Renee wondered if a chair had been taken out especially for their visit. With only one chair in the room, besides the small chair at the computer desk, one of them would be forced to sit beside the doctor. Divide and conquer, maybe that was the doctor's strategy.

  That was fine with Renee. This outcome was already determined, so Dr. Rheinsfeldt could use whatever technique she desired. "We've decided to start over," she said.

  "That's good," the doctor said, pursing her Prussian mouth in a manner that suggested she was displeased. "Willingness is half the battle."

  Jacob sat beside the doctor. "I realized I was blaming myself for what happened," he said. "And then I blamed my wife."

  "You realize there's no blame here," Rheinsfeldt said. "Just a tragic accident."

  Renee and Jacob exchanged looks. The doctor went on, oblivious of their feelings. "When we suffer a loss, we each must design our own grieving process. Some people cry their eyes out all the way up to the funeral, then calm down and never seem to be bothered again. Others show no emotion and go around cold and dead on the inside for months or even years. It's not uncommon to slip into clinical depression"--she looked at Jacob over the top of her glasses frame--"especially if substance abuse is involved. And with your history, Jacob--"

  "I'm done with all that." Jacob tugged at his tie, centering the knot under his throat. "I owe it to Mattie and Christine to keep living."

  "The other thing," Renee said, "is he's coming to grips with his past."

  Rheinsfeldt ignored her, focusing on Jacob. "From your records, that seems to be the origin of your trauma."

  "I think Jacob and his twin brother were competing for their father's affection, and Jacob always felt he never shined as brightly as his brother," Ren
ee said. "At least in his father's eyes."

  "I'm aware of Warren Wells," Rheinsfeldt said. "He was a consummate overachiever, apparently. And your twin brother?"

  "It doesn't matter now," Jacob said.

  "I sense anger," Rheinsfeldt said.

  "I have a right to be angry. Joshua played mean tricks on me all during our childhood. Even though we were physically identical, he was somehow stronger and more willful than I was. He always had the best-looking girlfriends, the star positions on the sports teams, the best grades. Even when I did his homework for him."

  "So you felt inferior to him?"

  "At first. Then, when I decided that I was going away as soon as I was old enough to live on my own, it didn't bother me anymore. Mom died and everything changed."

  "You felt abandoned?"

  "No. I felt relieved. Dad was just distant and reproachful. Mom actively despised us."

  "Were you... physically abused?"

  "No." Jacob's eyes fixed on the floor. "That would be too simple."

  "Jacob's never been violent with me," Renee said. "He wouldn't spank Mattie. I always had to be the disciplinarian."

  "Does that cause you resentment?" Dr. Rheinsfeldt asked her.

  "Maybe, but let's focus on Jacob," Renee said. "I think he needs it more than I do right now."

  "Tell me more about Joshua," the doctor asked Jacob.

  "I went away to college, determined that I was never coming back here. I even toyed with the idea of changing my name. I just wanted to forget that I was a Wells, especially after Dad put all this pressure on us to follow in his footsteps."

  "How did he do that? You said he was aloof."

  "He had his ways. He was a slave master, a plantation owner born in the wrong time. He was a conqueror, not a father. With him, it was all about winning."

  "And Joshua pleased him more than you did? Or, you at least perceived it that way?"

  "Joshua had a way of... I don't know, dodging responsibility, shifting blame. If a lamp was broken, it was always my fault. If the newspaper was rumpled, I'd be the one who had no respect for the property of others. A bad report card, and I'd be the one not performing up to my abilities, even if my grades were better than Joshua's."