Attempting to find birth records for Dianna and, more importantly, for her still nameless daughter, presented Jake with his first serious roadblock, since the state of Vermont’s public records wanted a formal application, and he wasn’t sure he was entitled to access, so he purchased a membership to Ancestry.com on the spot and found the rest in a matter of minutes.
Dianna Parker (1980–2012)
Rose Parker (1996–)
Rose Parker. He stared at the name. Rose Parker was the granddaughter of Nathaniel and Ruth, the daughter of Dianna, the niece of Evan. Apparently the sole survivor of her family.
He went straight to one of the search websites and started looking for her, but while there were nearly thirty Rose Parkers currently in the databases, none of them, to his extreme frustration, had the right birth year apart from one with an old address in Athens, Georgia, and the only Vermonter named Rose Parker was an octogenarian. He asked a librarian about yearbooks from West Rutland High School and was excited when she pointed to a corner of the reference section, but the collection yielded little of value. Dianna, having merely “attended” high school, had no graduation portrait in the 1997 or 1998 yearbook, and after Jake looked carefully through the years before that when she might have been pictured in clubs or teams or held class offices he had to conclude that she’d been remarkably uninvolved at West Rutland High; there was only her name on a dean’s list of scholars and a single citation for a prizewinning essay on Vermont during the Revolutionary War to show she’d made any mark at all on the school. Rose Parker presented an even more frustrating absence. Born in 1996, she’d left home without graduating from high school—Sally had told him that—so it made sense that there was no Rose Parker among the graduating seniors of 2012. In fact he found only a single image of Rose Parker from what must have been her tenth-grade year: a spindly girl in short bangs and large round glasses, holding a field hockey stick in a team photo. It was small and not completely in focus, but he took out his phone and snapped a picture anyway. It might be all he’d ever find.
After that, he turned to the sale of the house on Marble Street, from Evan Parker’s heir to its first owners not to be named Parker. As the women had said, Rose wasn’t present for the transaction itself, and was apparently indifferent to the fate of a century and a half’s worth of family possessions, not to mention her own childhood belongings. But the attorney, William Gaylord, Esquire, was right here in Rutland, and if he didn’t know where Rose Parker was today he had to have known where she was at the time of the sale. That was something.
Jake gathered his notes and walked out of the Rutland Free Library and through heavy rain to his car. It was just past three in the afternoon.
The offices of William Gaylord, Esq., occupied one of those former homes on North Main Street that had once housed the wealthiest citizens of Rutland. It had gray shingles and a Queen Anne turret, and sat just south of a traffic light between a forlorn dance studio and a chartered accountancy. Jake parked beside the single car in the lot behind the building and walked around to the front porch. There, a sign beside the door read LEGAL SERVICES. He could see a woman working inside.
He hadn’t given much thought to how he might justify his interest in a three-year-old real estate transaction to which he had no obvious connection, but he decided he’d have better luck knocking on the door than trying to explain his business over the phone. With Martin Purcell he had pretended to be a teacher in some small degree of mourning for his former student, and with Sally-the-barfly he’d been a clueless stranger out for a drink. With Betty and Sylvia he’d been nearly himself, a “famous writer” paying his respects to the home of a late acquaintance. None of this had been particularly easy for him. Unlike the devious fifteen-year-old girl in Saki’s most famous story, romance at short notice was not his specialty; he was far more than adept at constructing untruths on the page, when he had all the time in the world to get the fabrication right. True, he’d been able to walk away from each of these previous encounters with information he hadn’t had before, and that had been worth the personal discomfort, but here he couldn’t simply flounder through the conversation, hoping to learn something relevant. Here he actually knew what he was trying to find out, and it was hardly something he could come straight out and ask for.
He assembled his most pleasant smile and went inside.
The woman looked up. She was dark, southeast Asian—Indian or Bangladeshi, Jake thought—and wearing an acrylic blue sweater that managed to be loose at the top and tight as a cummerbund around her thick middle. She smiled, too, when she saw Jake enter, but her smile wasn’t as pleasant as his.
“I apologize for not calling first,” he said. “But I’m wondering if Mr. Gaylord is available for a few minutes?”
The woman was giving Jake a very thorough appraisal. He was glad he hadn’t gone full Vermont for this visit. He was wearing his last clean shirt and over it a black wool sweater Anna had given him for Christmas.
“May I ask what this is about?”
“Certainly. I’m interested in purchasing some real estate.”
“Residential or commercial?” she said, still plainly suspicious.
He hadn’t been expecting this. He might have lingered a moment too long. “Well, both, ultimately. But the priority is commercial. I’m thinking of moving my business to the area. I’ve been over at the library, and I asked one of the librarians to recommend an attorney who specializes in real estate.”
This, apparently, was what passed for flattery in Rutland, because it had an unmistakable effect. “Yes, Mr. Gaylord has an excellent reputation,” she informed Jake. “Would you like to take a seat? I can ask if he’s available to see you.”
Jake sat in the nook opposite her desk. There was a love seat facing the front window and an old trunk with a potted fern and a stack of Vermont Life issues, the most recent of which seemed to be from the year 2017. He could hear her somewhere behind him, talking to a man. He tried to remember what he’d just said about why he was here. Commercial real estate, moving a business to the area. Unfortunately he wasn’t entirely sure how to get from there to where he needed to go.
“Hello there.”
Jake looked up. The man standing over him was sturdy and tall, with abundant (but thankfully clean) nostril hair. He was neatly dressed in black pants, a white button-down shirt, and a tie that would have been at home on Wall Street.
“Oh, hi. My name’s Jacob Bonner.”
“Like the author?”
Still a surprise. Always would be, he suspected. Now what should he say about the business he was supposedly moving to the Rutland area?
“Yes, actually.”
“Well, not often a famous writer walks into my office. My wife read your book.”
Five monosyllabic words, speaking volumes.
“I appreciate that. I’m sorry to come in without an appointment. I was asking at the library, and they recommended—”
“Yes, so my wife said. Would you like to come in?”
He stepped out of the nook and past the apparent Mrs. Gaylord, following William Gaylord, Esq., back to his office.
Various local citations and memberships framed on the wall. A degree from the Vermont School of Law. Behind Gaylord, on the mantelpiece of a blocked-up fireplace, a few dusty framed pictures of himself and the woman with the less than pleasant smile.
“What brings you to Rutland?” Gaylord said. His chair creaked as he settled into it.
“I came up to do some work on a new book, and see a former student. I used to teach in northern Vermont. Until a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, yes? Where was that?”
“At Ripley College.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That place still in business?”
“Well, it was a low-residency program when I was there. Now I think it’s online only. I’m not sure what’s happened to the actual campus.”
“That’s a shame. Drove through Ripley not so many years ago. Pretty place.�
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“Yes. I enjoyed teaching there.”
“And now,” said Gaylord, taking charge of the segue himself, “you’re thinking of moving your business—as a writer—to Rutland?”
“Well … not exactly. I can write anywhere, of course, but my wife … she works for a podcasting studio in the city. We’ve been thinking about moving out of New York, letting her set up a studio of her own. I told her I’d look around while I was here. It seemed to make sense. Rutland is such a crossroads for the state.”
Gaylord grinned, showing crowded teeth. “It is that. Can’t say that’s always a good thing for the town. But yes, we’re pretty much on the way from anywhere in Vermont to anywhere else. Not a bad place at all to put a business. Podcasting is quite the thing, isn’t it?”
Jake nodded.
“So you’d want something zoned commercial, I imagine?”
He let himself be led. At least fifteen minutes on the multiple “downtowns” of Rutland, the various state incentive schemes and earmarked loans for new businesses, the waivers sometimes available for companies aiming to employ more than five people. He had to keep nodding and making notes and pretending to be interested, all the while wondering how he could get them both to the house on Marble Street in West Rutland.
“I’m curious, though,” said William Gaylord. “I mean, I’m from this area, and I’m committed to the future here, but most folks, coming up from New York or Boston, they’re thinking Middlebury or Burlington.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jake nodded. “But I came here a bunch of times, as a kid. I think my parents had some friends in the area. In West Rutland?”
“Okay.” Gaylord nodded.
“And I remember visiting in the summers. I remember this donut shop. Wait …” He pretended to search for the name.
“Jones’?”
“Jones’! Yes! The best glazed donuts.”
“A personal favorite of mine,” Gaylord said, actually patting his gut.
“And this one swimming hole …”
There had better be a swimming hole. In a Vermont town? It seemed like a safe bet.
“Plenty of them. Which one?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was probably seven or eight. I don’t even remember the name of my parents’ friends. You know what it’s like when you’re little, what you remember. For me it was the donuts and the swimming hole. Oh, and there was also this one house in West Rutland, right down from the quarry. My mother called it the marble house, because it was on Marble Street and it had a marble base. We knew when we passed it we were almost to our friends’ house.”
Gaylord nodded. “I think I know the house you mean. Actually I handled the sale of that house.”
Careful, thought Jake.
“It was sold?” he asked. Even to himself he sounded like a disappointed child. “Well, I guess that stands to reason. I have to tell you, I had this whole pipe dream going when I drove up here yesterday. We’d move to Rutland and I’d buy that old house I used to love when I was a kid.”
“Sold a couple of years ago. But it was a mess, you wouldn’t have wanted it. The buyers had to put in everything new. Heat, wiring, septic. And they paid way too much. Not my place to talk them out of it, though. I was acting for the seller.”
“Well, you’d have to expect to put some money into an old house like that. I remember how run-down it looked,” said Jake, recalling Betty’s childhood assessment of the place. “Of course, to a kid it doesn’t say ‘run-down.’ It says ‘haunted.’ I was a big Goosebumps reader, those summers. I was definitely into that haunted house in West Rutland.”
“Haunted.” Gaylord shook his head. “Well, I don’t know about that. A lot of plain old New England bad luck in that family, maybe. But I don’t know about any actual ghosts. Anyway, we can find you another old Vermont haunted house in the area, no shortage of them.”
He had Jake write down a few of the agents he worked with, then he spent a few minutes rhapsodizing about a Victorian up toward Pittsford that had been on the market for nearly a decade. It sounded delightful.
“But does it have a wraparound porch like that West Rutland house?”
Gaylord shrugged. “Don’t remember, tell you the truth. Is that a deal breaker? You can always add a porch.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
He was running out of ideas and on his last nerve. He also had pages of notes, by now, on commercial properties in Rutland, Vermont, that he couldn’t have cared less about, and he was the proud possessor of a folder of state policies and programs and completely unneeded brochures about home buying, and also a useless list of Realtors with the William Gaylord, Esq., seal of approval, as well as printouts of listings for old houses in and around Rutland. Outside it was getting dark and still raining, and he was facing a long drive back to the city. And he still knew nothing more than when he’d come in.
“So,” said Jake, making a show of gathering up the papers and recapping his pen, “I suppose there’s no way of buying back that house from the new owners? I wouldn’t say no to updated septic and electricity, actually.”
Gaylord looked at him. “You’ve really got a thing for that place, don’t you? But I’d say no. Not after all the work those people have put in. If you’d come along three years ago I had a very motivated seller, I can tell you. Well, technically I didn’t have her. I was the in-state counsel for the sale, but I never dealt with her directly. She had representation down in Georgia.”
“Georgia?” Jake asked.
“She was going to college down there. I think she just wanted to start over somewhere, make a clean break. She didn’t come back for the closing, not even to clean out the house. With everything that went wrong in that family, I can’t say I blame her.”
“Sure,” said Jake, who blamed her enough for the both of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Breakdown Lane
As he was passing Albany the phone vibrated on the seat behind him. Anna. He pulled off onto the shoulder to take the call. From the moment she spoke he knew there was something wrong.
“Jake. Are you all right?”
“Me? Of course. Yes. I’m all right. What is it?”
“I got a horrible letter. Why didn’t you tell me this was happening?”
He closed his eyes. He could only imagine.
“A letter from whom?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
“Some jackhole named Tom!” Her voice was shrill. He couldn’t tell if she was afraid or angry. Probably both. “He says you’re a crook and I’m supposed to ask you about somebody named Evan Parker who’s apparently the real author of Crib. I mean, what the fuck? I went online and … Jake, oh my god, why didn’t you tell me this has been going on? I found posts from back in the fall on Twitter. And Facebook! And there was something on a book blog, talking about it. Why the hell haven’t you told me about this?”
He felt the panic, pressing hard against his chest, liquifying his arms and legs. Here it was: the thing he’d spent all this time trying desperately to prevent, unfolding in the breakdown lane. He couldn’t believe it still surprised him that another wall into his private life had been breached. Or that he hadn’t prevented it from happening.
“I should have told you. I’m sorry. I just … I couldn’t stand thinking about how upset you’d be. You are.”
“But what is he talking about? And who is this Evan Parker person?”
“I’ll tell you, I promise,” he said. “I’m pulled over on the side of the New York State Thruway, but I’m on my way home.”
“But how did he get our address? Has he ever contacted you before? I mean directly, like this?”
It appalled him, the weight of what he’d hidden from her.
“Yes. Through my website. There’s also been contact with Macmillan. We had a meeting about it. And …” He especially hated to admit this part. “I got a letter, too.”
For a long moment, he heard nothing. Then she started screaming. “Are you kidding me?
You knew he had our address? And you never told me about any of this? For months?”
“It wasn’t so much a decision. It just got away from me. I feel awful about it. I wish I’d said something when it started.”
“Or any moment since.”
“Yes.”
For a long moment, silence filled up the distance between them, and Jake looked forlornly at the cars rushing past.
“What time will you get home?”
By eight, he told her. “Do you want to go out?”
Anna didn’t want to go out. She wanted to cook.
“And we’ll talk about it then,” she said, as if he thought she might somehow forget.
After they hung up he sat there for a few more minutes, feeling horrible. He was trying to remember his own first decision not to tell her about TalentedTom, and to his surprise it went back—all the way back to the very day he and Anna had first met at the radio station. Over eight months of this, innuendo and threats and hashtags to spread the poison as far as it could go, and nothing had made it stop! It would have been one thing if he’d managed to handle the problem, but he hadn’t, and in fact, it had gotten bigger, like a nautilus circling farther and farther, ensnaring people he cared about: Matilda, Wendy, now, worst of all, Anna. She was right. His worst mistake had been not to tell her. He saw that now.
The Plot Page 20