by Deb Caletti
Daily, Weary types in the address: 52 Possession Loop. He map-strolls down the road, curvy and looming with evergreens, one that must be hell at night. He investigates all the houses along it, “drives” the roads that lead to town. He “walks” the streets of the island, explores the stores and the waterfront, treads the wide swaths of pastures speckled with private homes and B&B’s.
Henry North is there somewhere.
It’s the same thing every day until suddenly it isn’t. It happens. He types 52 Possession Loop and something unexpected occurs. A blip. A change.
A Record of Sale! Holy hell! She sold the place! Meaning: She’s moving. Meaning—he knows it, he feels it in his bones—she’s moving in with Henry.
It pops right up like a friendly toasted waffle, Isabelle’s change of address: 58 Possession Loop.
Henry, Henry, Henry. Right down the street the whole time.
He panicked, he admits. Well, shit! It was the big shift he feared, and so soon, too. He remembers quite clearly what happened to Sarah after she moved in with Henry and then married him—how that commitment started the downward slide of Henry’s insecurity and paranoia and general bad behavior, which Sarah tried to manage but could never manage. Weary saw the house sale and was flooded with alarm. He could think only of the terror of Sarah’s last days on that boat, and Virginia’s last moments, standing on that cliff. He had to do something. Someone had to know what was going on over there, if they didn’t already. The phone was in his hand before he realized it, the number dialed. He paced the room, heart thundering, jungle heat adding to nerves and sweat as he spoke to the clown-voiced officer before abruptly hanging up. Then he ran to the toilet, retched up his horror and regret.
And now, silence.
The last Visa charge was a U-Haul rental from Eugene’s Gas and Garage, on Front Street.
Maybe Isabelle’s ditched him, and the silence is only the lovely sound of Henry’s ruined heart.
Maybe they’ve barricaded themselves inside his house, together, against a common enemy, the police…They’re in a standoff, so to speak, using up rations of fancy cheese and fine wines, expensive, bland crackers.
Maybe Henry is in a deep depression. Maybe the stress has taken its toll, and he’s in bed with the covers over his head. He hasn’t showered for days. He’s contemplating suicide. (One can wish.)
Maybe he’s sick. A terrible flu. Summer pneumonia. Something vicious that could kill him (more wishing). Maybe Isabelle—still blissfully ignorant due to police who don’t do their jobs—is making him soup and fetching him glasses of ginger ale. Maybe she’s caught it, too, and they’ve been staying in, eating what’s left in the cupboards because they’re both too wan and frail to shop and cook.
This has to stop. Weary’s losing it. He must try to stay busy. Honestly, he doesn’t need to try. Weary is busy. He doesn’t just sit around thinking about Henry. Running a research facility is no walk in the park. He is swamped—counting birds, watching birds, catching birds, banding birds. Managing assistants. Attempting to discover the effects of temporal change in design of tools, and quantifying what appears to be the aiming of candlenuts onto rocks to extract kernels. Providing proof for newly found wonders: the way Corvus use their beaks for the equivalent of human hand gestures; the way they will name their captors. He also supervises the work of Matias Vargas, a Ph.D. student from the University of Auckland—research topic: Cognition and Neuroanatomy in New Caldonian Crows.
Do you see? He is not just plotting the downfall of Mr. Marvelous. He has a staff, and donors, and students, and lots and lots of winged charges. Right this minute, Lotto is waiting for him in the field. But after a morning of click-tap-nothing, Weary needs something to satisfy him. One small wired reward, one benevolent screen tidbit to quench and temporarily gratify. After his recent technological frustrations, he needs his go-to, his teddy bear in a lightning storm. He’s seen the video a hundred times or more. He taps the sideways triangle and it begins to play. There’s Gavin Gray’s voice. Professor Gavin Gray, dearest friend, deceased mentor. Pancreatic cancer, he didn’t have a chance. It’s an old video. North was still in Weary’s future when it was filmed. This research facility was. Gavin Gray was years away from his own death. But it’s comforting to hear Gavin Gray’s voice. It fills Weary with sweet nostalgia, gratitude. Weary has Gavin Gray to thank for this position now. Everyone needs someone like Gavin Gray in their life, someone who believes in you, who reaches out a hand, who keeps your secrets, even.
Sarah deserved that, too, damn it.
“We’re in the jungle of Mount Khogi,” Gavin Gray says. He’s offscreen, speaking in hushed tones. “We’re observing Corvus moneduloides.”
The bird hops about on a tree branch. In the background, there is the twitter and chirp of the Mount Khogi forest. Corvus squawks a friendly awp before setting to work. First, he locates a forked twig. Next, he removes and discards one side of the fork. The camera zooms in on his black velvet head, his long, determined beak, snipping and snapping, removing leaves, tidying and perfecting. Making a tool. Light filters through the thick forest cover.
“Beautiful,” Gavin Gray whispers.
It’s the word beautiful that gets Weary every time. Also, the fixed, almost tender determination of Corvus. The bird does not care about the research assistant’s camera. It does not care about Gavin Gray’s wonder-filled eyes and pad full of notes. It does not care about inclement weather or a spring day or a stubborn strip of fleshy bark or the amount of hours it all takes. It cares only about its solitary mission. Weary admires this to no end.
“That’s all for now,” Gavin Gray says from another time. The video ends. Weary’s heart fills—with love and appreciation and respect. With sadness. With loss.
There is a soft knock at the door. “Yes?” Weary calls.
Lotto pops his head in. “You’re still here, Professor? I was getting worried.”
“You came all the way back. Apologies, Lot. I got hung up with these evaluations.”
“It’s raining like a bastard out there,” Lotto says, and it must be, because his hair is splattered to his head, and his boots are dripping.
“Let’s go.” Weary snags his rain jacket from the coat tree on the way out.
It is raining like a bastard, as Lotto says. Their heads are down. They hunch their shoulders as they tromp up the trail.
Maybe Henry North has gotten a job and is now too busy to cook or date. (Ha.)
Maybe he’s had a family crisis.
Maybe Henry North himself has been pushed off a cliff. Maybe he is swimming for his life, choking on seawater and his own terror.
Weary knows, he does, that his mind is trying to be kind with these vivid scenarios. They keep him occupied. They shield his vision from the maybes he can’t bear to imagine: Maybe it’s over, and all of this has been for nothing. Or worse. Much worse. Maybe she’s still with him, and the clock is ticking.
Chapter 13
Somewhere during this horrible night, it has begun to rain, hard, and Isabelle’s wipers are cha-chunk cha-chunking madly. She can barely see. She wipes the fog off her windshield in a circle with her palm. She knows this island so well, and yet she thinks she might be lost. Well, of course she’s lost, psychically, emotionally, and otherwise, as far gone and stunned as a human can get, but she also just can’t find the street, either, and she’s taking those turns too fast.
Who is this woman, she thinks, who has made another disastrous decision, who has just lost her home and is driving late at night with a painting and a silk robe in the passenger seat? Who is this person who pushes the accelerator down against all good sense? Look, she’s even wearing flip-flops in the pouring rain, the fool.
Something to notice: Isabelle is not angry, not blazingly furious, as one might expect. The new baby anger she’d begun to feel after her mother’s death had been tossed like a useless appliance into a trash heap, and so it is not only absent, but rusty and buried. Her anger is just a disorderly huddle
. It’s pieces and parts, lying under bent bicycle frames and carburetors, waiting for the magical day when they locate one another and weld into some new, magnificent monster.
More than anything, she’s confused. So unbelievably confused and shaken and in the strangest spinning fog of disbelief. Disbelief requires you to find belief, but right now there is only this grasping around in the dark and this mad driving, as she searches for Jane Mason’s house. Fight or flight? No, she’s fight and flight. She hasn’t been to Jane’s house in many years, and in this part of the island, where there are miles of yellow fields turned black, black, black in the night, she could be anywhere. She could be in a foreign country. What is making all of this worse is that she has no home herself. No home in Seattle, no home here, no home on this whirling planet. After what just happened, and with the sea of black out her rain-dripping windows, she feels like an astronaut sucked from the spaceship. There’s only the endless, dangerous universe she floats in.
Her mother’s desk is still in front of Henry North’s house. Now it’s raining. She should call Henry and ask him to bring it in, at least. No, Henry would have done that already. He’s careful like that, always the one to think about expiring yogurts and pipes freezing. Wait. Is he? Because who is he? Everything she knows about him hasn’t just disappeared, has it? Is he, in any way, the man she knows?
Wow. This makes Evan look like a prince.
Isabelle shuts Maggie right up. She jams a pillow over Maggie’s face to keep her quiet. That voice is the last thing she needs.
The road is skiddy with motor oil after the sudden shower, and a gust of wind whips down the empty road and rattles the car. This is how storms work on the island and in life, coming out of nowhere, downing tree branches and flooding basements. Isabelle grips the wheel. Help me, she pleads to whoever might be listening, though it seems no one is listening, and no one has been for a good long while.
The reply? Silence and pouring rain.
But wait. Way far off in that pasture, two squares of light appear in this dark night. They look familiar. It’s a long-ago familiarity—she used to ride her bike way, way out here when she was young, after dinner when the sun was setting. She’s sure that they’re the lights of Asher House. Beyond them, that dot of orange is the porch light of Osprey Inn. These are the two B&B’s right near Little Cranberry Farm, the name of Jane’s residence, with its small, charming house. It’s a farm if you count Jane’s two dogs, her patch of blueberry bushes, and all this land.
Isabelle spots the tilting mailbox next to that wide, wild swath of blackberry scrub that separates Jane’s property from the one next door. The car crunches up the gravel road, splashes in potholes that have filled up fast. When she gets out of the car, Isabelle clutches the painting to her chest, and the silk robe. There are no stars visible in the sky, only dramatic, fast-moving clouds. Beyond Little Cranberry Farm, Isabelle can hear the whoosh and swirl of the sea shouting madness, madness.
—
The old dogs are finally barking. They’re falling down on the job, because they didn’t hear the car drive up; after Isabelle rings the doorbell, though, they go crazy with the thrill and anxiety of a late-hours visitor on a night like this. Isabelle is shivering. She is still in her moving clothes: shorts and a T-shirt, those flip-flops. She hears the rustle and scuffle behind the door that means Jane is coming, accompanied by a small canine cyclone.
“Rosie. Button. Enough.”
Jane only cracks the door. She’s no wilting flower, but she’s still cautious.
“Isabelle? What in God’s name are you doing here?” Jane’s clad in her chenille robe, and Isabelle can hear TV sounds coming from the other room. When Jane opens the door wide, Isabelle sees that Jane holds a baseball bat.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Jesus, you scared me.”
—
Isabelle is wrapped in a quilt on Jane’s worn leather couch. Jane sits across from her in a mission-style rocker. Two empty glasses of Jack Daniel’s are on the coffee table in front of them. Rosie lays on one side of Isabelle and Button on the other, Button with his chin on Isabelle’s lap. The goldens are like two old ladies in the church basement after the funeral, hovering and providing what comfort they can.
“I have to remember he might be innocent.”
“Two dead women, Isabelle? Two.”
“One dead. One is missing. He says they don’t know for sure. She just took a boat that night…If he’s innocent, Jesus.”
“What, she ran off? I doubt that’s what the police think. Come on! Dear God. Has anyone gone missing in your life? Has anyone died tragically while you watched? Have both of those things happened? No, Isabelle. The answer is no.”
“But they couldn’t arrest him! There wasn’t enough evidence. There wasn’t enough proof…”
Isabelle sounds like she’s defending him. Is she defending him? Maybe she’s just defending herself and her choices. Her judgment. Her decision to trust. Belief is as vulnerable and tender as a flower bud, blooming away in good hearts, stupid, naïve hearts, hearts that should have barbed wire around them. Jane is right.
My God, my God, my God, my God…
I swear to you, Isabelle. We were just hiking, and we were standing over a lookout, and she was emotional, gesturing. She said, “I don’t even know what I want,” and that’s when it happened. Her foot—it’s like the ground crumbled. She either slid or did it on purpose…I don’t know which, but Virginia was like that. Sensitive. Always so sensitive! And, Sarah, I give you my word, Isabelle. I woke up and she was gone. The dinghy was gone. I never heard a splash, never heard the motor, nothing. They found it washed up on the beach, but anything could have happened. She was pissed. She could have taken a tanker out of there, for all I know. I swear to God, I just went to bed and I never saw her again.
You never saw her again? You have no idea what happened? With two women, Henry? Two?
I swear on my life. I swear on anything, everything…Do you know what I’ve been through? Park Service investigation, and then the FBI, Isabelle! It was a national park! The fucking FBI cleared me! Two other people fell right nearby in the previous two years! They put up warning signs after that. And, Sarah—I have been hounded! I have been hunted! I am an innocent man. You have no idea how badly they wanted to find me guilty. They didn’t have anything. Nothing! They questioned me repeatedly, searched my house, followed me…
You lied to me!
Isabelle, try to understand. Please! I just wanted to live again. I am so sorry. I was going to tell you!
“Proof,” Jane scoffs.
“I don’t understand this,” Isabelle says. “I don’t understand how this can be happening. This isn’t anyone’s real life. I don’t even know where I am right now. This doesn’t feel real.” She starts to cry again. This is how it works—tears, shock, and questions, talking in circles, tears again.
“I know, sweetie.” Jane scoots the dogs off the couch, sits by Isabelle. She rubs Isabelle’s back like a mother would.
“I don’t get why this is happening to me.”
“I know,” Jane croons. The painting is propped against Jane’s end table. What a day it’s had. “I’ll tell you, though. Something felt off about that man. I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust him for two seconds.”
This pisses Isabelle off. It’s the kind of thing her mother would say. This superior, after-the-fact knowledge makes her feel like an idiot.
She is such an idiot. Does she need reminding? She lacks this piece other people have, this instinct that senses danger. Say she’s stupid, say whatever you want, but danger is a concept she can’t seem to grasp.
“He was good to me, Jane. How was I supposed to know? He was successful, competent. He knows how to cook! He likes dogs.”
Button’s ear twitches.
“He lied to you.”
“God. Why did he let me find out like this? After I sold my house? I thought we were so close. I thought we loved each ot
her! If he’s innocent, why didn’t he tell me?”
How could I tell you? How? he cried.
You were just going to let me go on, not knowing the biggest fact of your life? Now, the biggest fact of mine?
Of course I knew this day would come!
And this is how you let me find out?
I was going to tell you, I swear—
After the last piece of furniture was in? After I, what, married you? I don’t even know what to think! I don’t know who you are. You’re a stranger.
I’m not a stranger. I’m the man you know. The man you love! Why do you think I didn’t tell you? If I told you from the start, would you have even given me a chance? Gotten to know me? Without ever knowing me, would I ever have had a prayer that you’d believe me?
How can I believe you now when you lied to me like this? The man I love would not have kept this a secret.
We wouldn’t have had a chance. Not if I’d told you earlier. You’d have never seen that I’m not that man.
We don’t have a chance now.
Don’t say that! Please don’t persecute me like everyone else! Please don’t condemn an innocent person. Try to understand! You do know me. I’ll prove that to you.
“Guilty people keep secrets,” Jane says.
—
The painting is now propped against the round, stuffed chair in Jane’s guest bedroom. The rain pelts onto the roof. Isabelle is wearing a Bonnie Raitt concert T-shirt of Jane’s and a pair of sweatpants that must have belonged to Jane’s lover, Eva, because they’re not Jane’s size.