She looked significantly at her mother; the other woman’s expression did not change.
“We’ve got to figure out Dad’s affairs. We’ve got to sort out our finances.”
She waited a beat, wondering if any of this was getting through. There was no way to know, but it had to be done, so she plunged ahead.
“A whole bunch of correspondence came in. Stuff from lawyers, finance people. Things I can’t figure out. I took it all to a lawyer in town. I’m trying to get us some help.”
At this, her mother nodded. Almost imperceptible, just a dip with her chin. But enough to give Miranda courage to continue.
“I can’t do this by myself, Mummy. I need you. It’s just the two of us now. We have to figure this out. We have to work together.”
Light began to emerge from her mother’s eyes. Her hand was steadier on her coffee cup. She chewed with more vigor. She nodded steadily.
“Mum? Mummy, do you understand what I’m talking about? We have . . . there’s a lot to do. Things I don’t understand. Grown-up things.”
Her voice cracked and her eyes dampened. Her mother stared at her and her expression began to come to life. Mild concern crossed her face. She reached out and touched Miranda’s cheek with her fingertips.
“You’re right,” she said, her voice hoarse and distant from disuse. “I need to snap out of it.”
Miranda was startled by this sudden expression of feeling and conviction. She watched in disbelief as her mother stood, tried to square her shoulders, took a step backward to steady herself, and left the room. Miranda listened to doors and drawers opening and closing behind her mother’s bedroom door, water running in the shower and sink. There was something deeply unsettling about the sudden flurry of overly ambitious activity. Miranda didn’t know what to hope for, what to look out for. So she waited to see what would happen. Her mother emerged an hour later, dressed, showered. Her shirt had been buttoned out of alignment, her lipstick was smeared a bit over one lip, and the gray roots of her black hair showed through from a severe part, but it was pulled back neatly into a barrette. She had a small purse on her forearm.
“Where are the car keys?” she asked.
“What are you doing?” Miranda asked.
“Going into town to get my hair done.”
“They’re in the drawer in the kitchen, right where you always put them,” Miranda answered automatically.
She watched her mother fumble through the wrong drawer for a moment and began to regret what she had said. “Wait. Mom. Wait. Let me take you. Let me drive.”
“No.” Her mother’s voice was firm. She found the keys and held them up, triumphant, a clownlike smile spreading across her face. “I’ve been a burden long enough.”
Then she was gone, leaving Miranda frozen in place. When Bunny hadn’t returned by lunch, Miranda told herself that this was all wonderful: a big, new step that her mother had taken back toward the world. When two o’clock came and went, Miranda tried imagining where she might have gone, then remembered the clothing store that she used to love. Maybe she’d gone shopping there or had stopped at the garden center, she told herself. By three o’clock, Miranda’s self-imposed fake cheer began to wear thin. She called her mother’s cell phone and was deeply discouraged when she heard it ring in the bedroom. By four o’clock, Miranda was in her own car, driving to the beauty salon. They told her her mother had come in; gotten a cut, color, manicure, and pedicure; but left by around midday. They said she was cheerful and that they were so glad to see her; it had been so long. Miranda left and drove around town, looking for her mother’s dark-blue Volvo. It was nowhere to be found. She drove up to the club and circled the parking lot, but her mother’s car was not there, either. Miranda parked, and racked her brain. Did her mother go up to Plattsburgh for some reason? Could she have taken herself to a restaurant? Was there a friend she might have gone to visit? There had been one friend. There had been a book group. Her mother had gone a few times. Then she gave up because she said they were choosing books that were more Oprah than New Yorker. Miranda had a general idea where the hostess’s house was. For lack of a better idea, she went in that direction.
She drove for an hour down a series of roads that went from pavement to dirt and then back to pavement again. She knew the house was in a remote location. Her mother had commented about how hard it was to find. But everything around here was hard to find. Once Miranda found herself back on the paved road, she realized she’d simply driven in a large circle. She plunged forward again, this time looking for the small bed-and-breakfast her mother had mentioned as a marker. The light was fading. But finally Miranda saw the small ROOMS FOR RENT sign in front of a multicolored house. She turned there. The pavement had seen better days. She dodged potholes that the flat, early-evening light made difficult to see. Then her car bumped across something more substantial in the road. Miranda pulled over to see what she’d crossed or maybe hit. She got out of the car and saw she had merely driven over some long-unused railroad tracks embedded in the pitted and patched asphalt. Just railroad tracks, she told herself. Nothing sinister. Nothing damaged.
She wasn’t ready to get back in the car. She felt stiff and sore from sitting so long with so much tension in her body. She pressed her hands into her lower back and stretched. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself and looked around, hoping the fresh scent of the woods would soothe her. The lowering sun glinted off something across the road. Miranda tilted her head back and forth, trying to discern what it was. A car. A car partially jammed into the weeds and shrubbery, as if someone had stopped unexpectedly. She couldn’t tell if the car was simply parked or had hit a tree—the vegetation was too dense. Maybe a deer had jumped out in front of it. Or the driver had found something he or she had been looking for. Miranda took baby steps across the street. She might be the only person passing by this spot for hours. Even days. She had to see if someone needed help.
She peered around the trampled scrub. A dark-blue car. A Volvo. The light was low enough that it was difficult to see in the windows. Miranda stepped closer. There was no one in the driver’s seat. Or the passenger seat. Or the backseat. But there was a purse there, in the footwell on the passenger side. Not hidden. Easy for someone to steal. It took her a moment. The dark, smooth leather. The two rounded handles. The large gold clasp. They’d bought it together. Her mother had thought the hardware made it too showy. Miranda had encouraged her. Told her she deserved something nice like this, especially since she’d use it every day. Miranda had called it classy. Her mother had laughed. It had all happened such a long time ago. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her mother laugh. Bunny had been happy making that purchase. Once she was back home, she’d carefully filled the “pocketbook,” as she called it, with her red lipstick and travel tissues in one pocket, a comb and small bottles of hairspray and lotion in the other, a wallet and notebook in the main compartment. Which stood open now, a gaping mouth hollering at Miranda from inside the empty car.
What the hell? Miranda thought.
She started yelling, trying not to panic, calling her mother over and over, switching to “Mum,” and then “Barbara,” and then “Bunny,” and then back again. The silent woods seemed to mock her hysteria. She ran up and down the road, but there were no houses or driveways, no trails into the woods. Just the empty, weed-infested railroad bed.
Wait. Not so empty. There was someone lying on the tracks.
Miranda ran, tripping and stumbling over railroad ties that were skewed by decades of disuse and severe weather. She found her mother prone, arms folded neatly across her chest, newly manicured fingernails interlaced, her freshly darkened and blown-dry hair spread out over the blackened gravel around her head, with grass sticking up around her legs and feet. She did not open her eyes as her daughter approached.
“Mummy?”
Miranda slowed and kneeled in the dirt. Her mother was breathing. She seemed asleep. Deeply, quietly asleep.
Was this
her plan? Miranda’s thoughts raced. When she left this morning, was this what she had wanted to do—get primped for death? Or was this a spontaneous action, an inspiration that had come upon her when she bumped over the tracks?
Miranda had been so hopeful about her mother’s focus that morning, hoped it was the result of a desire to return to life, not leave it. Yet here she was, waiting for a train on tracks that hadn’t seen one in thirty years.
“Mum? Please. Mummy. Please don’t leave me. Not like this. Not this way,” Miranda pleaded.
And then she thought, How sad. So sad. She can’t even get her own suicide right.
Miranda stroked her mother’s cheek. Her eyes opened. Her expression was full of dull surprise, like she’d forgotten where she was and how she’d gotten there. She slowly sat up and rubbed her forehead with the back of her fist. In Miranda’s tear-filled vision, her mother looked far away and watery, as if she were at the bottom of a pool. Miranda blinked to clear her eyes. It didn’t help. There was something wrong with her mother’s face. One side of her mouth drooped and her cheek sagged, a wet tea bag. Her mother tried to speak, but only one half of her mouth moved. A thread of drool slid out of the slack side. Her brow furrowed in confusion. She tried to speak again, but her lips would not cooperate in the forming of words.
A stroke, Miranda thought. She’s had a stroke. And neither that train that isn’t coming nor the stroke will take her where she wants to go. Which is away from here, away from all this agonizing pain.
Miranda screamed for help, but her voice merely drifted upward into the darkening sky. She left her mother, crawled and stumbled, got to her car, found her phone, thanked the God she didn’t believe in that she had the merest of signals, and called for an ambulance. Then she went back to the tracks and held her mother, a rag doll, in her arms.
The next time Warren saw Miranda, she was much changed. She came in alone this time—there were delicate matters to be discussed—and he saw how the skin around her eyes was darker and their rims were reddened, her hair was twisted into a sloppy knot, her lips were tight and her gaze was clouded. Her eyes skittered over things, and she looked everywhere except at him. She slumped into a chair. Warren cleared his throat. He wished Dix was there, privacy be damned. He wondered if he should postpone. But there was nothing to be gained by delay. The quicker he got to the issues, the quicker they could be resolved. Things had been pushed off far too long as it was.
“I’m afraid I don’t have good news for you, Miranda,” Warren said.
He tended toward bluntness. This preamble was the best he could do to ease her into what he had to say. He watched as she tried to arrange her features into a simulacrum of strength. He was relieved that she didn’t start to cry. He was no good with women and tears. He glanced at a box of tissues on his credenza. Miranda finally looked directly at him. He took this as evidence that he could continue.
“How much do you know about your father’s financial and professional affairs?” he asked.
He was stalling a bit. For her and himself. He knew the answer would be zero. Miranda bit her lip, shrugged, and shook her head.
She’s too young, too protected, for all this, Warren thought. Her mother should be here.
“Normally, I’d want to talk to your mother about all this,” he said.
Miranda bit down harder on her lip, but this didn’t stop the tears. He reached for the tissues and set them down in front of her. She tore one free and daubed at her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said, referring not to his question but to her own crying. “It’s been . . . um, she’s . . . well, she’s in the hospital.” Miranda choked a little on a sob. “She’s had a stroke. We thought, well, I thought, that she was depressed. She’s been so depressed. For so long.” Miranda tore the tissue into little pieces and crumpled them into a damp ball. “The doctors think she might have had a few strokes. A bunch of small ones. Kind of masked by her depression. And her drinking. Which of course contributed. And then this last one. Bigger. Impossible not to notice this time.”
Warren had to look away. He was not turning from her tears, but to calm his own anger. Anger at the unfairness of life, the inability of money and class to protect someone from hurt, the many evils brought on by alcohol, the selfishness and arrogance of men like Miranda’s father. Miranda began talking again, her words tumbling along.
“I should have known. I didn’t know. I should have known. I should have done more. Gotten help. Should have made her get help. Right after my brother died. Shouldn’t have waited so long. Shouldn’t have waited until I found her on the train tracks. She’s down in Albany. Have to wait and see what the doctor says. So far, he won’t say much. Which makes me think it’s bad. Real bad.” She swallowed hard and wiped her cheeks. “So, no,” she said, attempting to strengthen her voice. “We won’t be able to get help from my mother. I’ll need to deal with everything myself.” Now she looked firmly at him, her eyes glistening. “I’m ready. I have to be,” she said.
“Miranda, I am very sorry. You have had too much to deal with this past year or so. It doesn’t seem fair.”
Miranda shrugged again.
False bravado. As if there’s any other kind, Warren thought.
“Sometimes, I’m afraid, life is like that,” he continued. “One bad thing seems to lead to, to even cause, another bad thing.”
Miranda looked away, out the window.
“I want you to know something right now and before we go on,” Warren said. “I will help you. I will be here for you every step of the way.”
Miranda nodded slowly, whispered, “Thank you,” and started crying again, more quietly this time.
“Let me give you a minute,” he said, standing up and stepping toward the door.
He left her alone so she had some space to collect herself, but also to ask his secretary to make a call for him. Miranda seemed more composed when he returned with a glass of water for her.
“OK,” he said as he resettled himself behind his desk. “Let’s get to work. Are you ready?”
Miranda took a deep breath, blew out her cheeks, and said she was.
“It all seems to have started,” Warren began, “with the logs for your house.”
Warren began telling her a long, convoluted story, which he had pieced together from documents Miranda had provided and conversations he’d initiated with various men around town. Warren had also had a long talk with Richard Stone over the phone one evening. Warren had noted the not-so-faint slur in the other man’s voice, had heard the sound of ice cubes hitting a glass, had registered the unusual volubility as Stone warmed to the more sordid details of Chick Steward’s story. So he was unsurprised that he received much more information than he would have expected to from a more discreet lawyer. Or one discussing the affairs of a living man. Or one who had not drunk quite so much.
Chick Steward had wanted a certain kind of look for his mountain home, and that took a certain kind of logs—the kind of logs that couldn’t readily be bought around the Adirondacks anymore, the kind of logs that reputable contractors didn’t have easy access to. He had found what he wanted in Canada and had them shipped down. He may not have been aware when he bought them, but the logs were far too good of a deal, Warren told Miranda, even though he suspected her father knew and enjoyed what he had done, putting one over on those who had tried to stand in his way.
Miranda frowned in confusion.
They’d been harvested illegally, Warren explained. People kept track of this sort of thing.
Then there was his contractor. He had done some things he shouldn’t have. Maybe he did them on his own without telling Chick the ramifications, or maybe he did them at his client’s direction. There was no way to know now. But the house was much bigger than had been officially permitted. The septic, well, and driveway were not to code. These things would be serious issues anywhere, but especially in the Adirondack Park. Somehow, all this illegal work had been signed off on by the building inspector. Hard to say w
hether he was dumb and lazy or had been paid off. Even if he hadn’t noticed the violations, the neighbors had. Two had sued her father. One because the septic was leaching near his property; another because her father had dug out part of the stream to create that swimming hole and thereby disturbed prime fish habitat, and because an outbuilding her father had constructed was never permitted.
Meanwhile, the contractor had gone bankrupt and sued her father for incomplete payment. Chick had claimed shoddy workmanship. There was no way to know what really transpired between them. The contractor had since left the area. The building inspector who had signed off on the illegal work had retired on disability he claimed came from falling while on the job. People had seen him golfing. Not so disabled. The new inspector had been nosing around and didn’t like what he was seeing. The former building inspector had had a large garage built but could not document paying for it. He had made other home improvements as well. The now-bankrupt contractor had done the work but never issued a bill. It was not clear who paid for it.
Warren paused in his story. Sighed. Then explained that there were suspicions Miranda’s father had paid for the work at the inspector’s home and rolled the charges into the work for their log home, in order to get the inspector to ignore the obvious infringements. Then he may have stiffed the contractor, who couldn’t exactly sue for payment of illegal work.
Miranda listened in silence. In shock, Warren feared.
Finally she whispered, “I had no idea.”
“Of course not,” Warren said.
“But it sort of makes sense,” she said. “I mean, I remember some things.”
Warren decided now was not the time to discuss the risky investments Chick Steward had made, many of which had gone sour, or the soon-to-come cutoff of his employer-supplied health insurance.
“What do I do?” Miranda whispered.
“What do we do,” Warren said. “I am here to help you. You will not, cannot, do this alone.”
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