Flirting With Pete: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  She moved on to the carpet of trillium under the oak, knelt and touched one of the blooms. The petals were three-pronged, low but elegant. They did well under deciduous trees, Jordan had said. She glanced at the maple on the other side of the walk. It, too, had a blanket of flowers beneath it. These were different, though. Each bloom was tiny, far less showy than the trillium, but there were dozens and dozens of them. They were blue.

  Creeping phlox. The name popped into her head. Caroline had grown creeping phlox. Hers had been pink.

  Casey straightened. Walking all the way to the back of the garden, she stood and inhaled the evergreens there— inhaled once, then again, and again. She lingered amid the pachysandra, then returned to the lilacs, put her nose to a cluster, and drew in its scent.

  These moments were peaceful. As soon as she settled into a patio chair to finish her coffee, though, a sense of urgency returned. Jenny Clyde was growing more desperate. In her way, so was Casey. Her mother was failing; her father remained elusive; and she knew that there was more to the story of Flirting with Pete.

  Draining the last of the coffee, she returned to the house. For hope— for good luck— she touched one of Ruth’s paintings as she passed, then went on up the stairs. She had already explored the master bedroom and found the clue it held in this bizarre scavenger hunt. Only the storage cartons remained.

  First thing, Casey found books. Some were the work of other psychologists, but most were Connie’s. Some cartons contained twenty copies of the same book; these cartons had come straight from the publisher. Other cartons held a mix of his books. Every book she opened had his signature on the title page.

  Signed copies, she heard her mother say. You could sell them for more than the retail price of the book. Why do you need all those copies of the same title?

  She could take one of each title for herself. Then she would have signed copies. Somehow, though, getting a signed copy this way hurt.

  Turning away from the cartons, she found the boxes that Jordan had carried here from the office. These contained inactive files. Casey perused them only to see if any were labeled “Clyde.” When she found none, she went on to the next box, and when she came up empty with that one too, she went on to the next.

  She stopped when Meg called up saying that her nine o’clock client had arrived, but she was back up there at noon. Thanks to a cancellation, she had two hours to spend at her search. She was calculating how much headway she could make in two hours when Meg offered to help. She accepted.

  Meg opened and closed cartons. Casey sorted contents. She found more books and more files. She found the original copy of Connie’s doctoral dissertation, typed on a typewriter whose “w” wasn’t quite right. She found original manuscripts of his books.

  “What are you looking for?” Meg asked when, with a grunt of frustration, Casey pushed yet another box her way to close.

  “Personal things of his,” she said, sitting back on her heels. Original manuscripts were a gold mine. Harvard would love them. Casey didn’t need them. “Pictures, letters, scrapbook,” she said; these she did need. “A high school yearbook. A large manila envelope with a ‘C’ on the front. Have you ever seen any of those things?”

  “No,” Meg said as she dovetailed the top flaps of the carton. “He never asked for my help when he was working up here.” Mirroring Casey, she sat back on her heels. “Are these books all his?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like to read?”

  “I do.”

  “Have you read his books?”

  “Every one.”

  Meg asked a timid, “Do you think I should try one?”

  “One of these? No. They’re academic. Not light reading.” Casey turned to the next open carton. “Ahh. A me-box.”

  “Maine.”

  “Hmm?”

  “M-e stands for Maine,” Meg said.

  Casey stared at her in astonishment, then laughed at herself. “M-e for Maine. Whoa. That one passed me by.”

  “Maine was Dr. Unger’s thing,” Meg said with enthusiasm. “That’s what the garden’s about. Y’know the back part, with the trillium and the junipers and the hemlocks? He told me once that the smell there reminded him of home, and I could believe it. I grew up in Maine, too.” She caught herself fast and said an emphatic, “Actually, I grew up in New Hampshire, but I was born in Maine, and the landscaping’s the same, one state to the other, unless you go to the coast, which is different because of the salt air and the wind.”

  “So he re-created that smell here.” Casey was appalled— she hadn’t made that connection either. “But not at the beginning. Before Jordan started working here, the garden was just grass and weeds.”

  “But then Dr. Unger got homesick. He told me that once, because sometimes I get homesick, too.”

  “Did he ever go back to visit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no one I want to see.” Abruptly, she brightened. “Did you ever wish you had dark hair?”

  Casey smiled at the sudden shift of topic, but she was quickly distracted as she sifted through the first Maine carton. It, too, was filled with books, but of a different sort. These books were old and well used. Connie had signed his name here, too, but not as the author. He had written a careful, formal, child-to-adolescent Cornelius B. Unger on the flyleaf to indicate ownership.

  She found Treasure Island and The Swiss Family Robinson, Moby Dick and Gulliver’s Travels. She found Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Wind in the Willows.

  “Those are old books,” Meg said.

  They also looked as though they had been read many times. There was a personal feel to these books. She sensed it keenly. The fact that Connie had saved them suggested they were childhood treasures.

  There were more in the box, classics as well. After Casey had looked at each one, she put them back and slid the carton to Meg.

  “So, do you like your hair?” Meg asked. She was wearing one of the scrunchies Casey had given her. It had lavender shades in it, and looked really pretty with her auburn hair.

  “Yes.”

  “What about your freckles?”

  Casey smiled. “I’m okay with them now. I used to hate them.”

  Meg’s eyes went wide. “You did?”

  Casey nodded. “Covered them with makeup before I had any business wearing makeup.”

  “You did?” Meg asked in delight.

  “Yup.” Casey dug into the next box and emerged with more children’s books. Same with a third box.

  “I guess he really liked to read,” Meg remarked. “Why do you think he kept these?”

  It was certainly the right question. Casey wished she had a good answer. “Maybe because he loved to read. Or because someone he loved gave them to him. Or because he knew these editions would be valuable one day.”

  Meg said, “I think he was saving them for grandchildren.”

  “He doesn’t have any grandchildren.”

  “But he will. Don’t you plan to have kids?”

  Casey wondered how the man could think of giving books to grandchildren when he wasn’t even on speaking terms with his child. Same thing with setting up bedrooms for grandchildren. She wondered what kind of fantasy life he had lived, all alone here in his beautiful home.

  “Don’t you?” Meg asked.

  “Don’t I what?”

  “Plan to have kids?”

  “At some point.”

  “Do you worry about your biological clock?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I do. I want kids.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Meg shook her head no. More quietly, with diffidence, she said, “Someday, maybe.” She perked up. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Casey thought for a minute. She couldn’t call Jordan a boyfriend. She was sleeping with him, though, so he had to be something.

  She compromised with an affirm
ative, “In a manner of speaking. For the time being, at least. But no more hints. My lips are sealed.” With a glance at her watch, she reached for another box. “One more of these babies, and then I’m back to work.”

  That last box contained high school notebooks. They told her Connie had studied chemistry, Latin and French, American history, and art. They did not tell her where he went to high school, though that was the information she wanted. Hard as she looked, she couldn’t find the name of the high school or the town— and by then, she had a client waiting, so she had to postpone the search.

  *

  Joyce Lewellen came at three. Her face was drawn, her fingers laced, knuckles white. “I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating. I’m just sitting home, walking from one room to the other. It’s like right after he died.”

  “Do you know the judge’s decision?” Casey asked.

  “No. We get it tomorrow. So here I am, anticipating losing and feeling the same old anger. I can’t talk to family, can’t talk to friends. I’ve seen them roll their eyes or give a kind of… sigh. They’re tired of me talking about it. They don’t understand at all what I’m feeling. How can they? They may have loved Norman, but he wasn’t part of their daily lives. He wasn’t key to their future.”

  Casey suspected it was more a case of family and friends having lost interest in the fight. They had moved on. So had Joyce’s daughters. Joyce was the only one who was running in place, going absolutely nowhere at all.

  “Can you get him back?” Casey asked quietly.

  “No. I can’t. I know that. But winning this case— it’ll give me something. It’ll end the whole thing.”

  “Closure.”

  “Yes. If I win, I get closure.”

  “And if you don’t win?”

  “No closure.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll always wonder why he died.”

  “What have the doctors said?” Casey asked. She knew the answer, but it didn’t hurt to have Joyce say it aloud.

  “They said he had a massive reaction to the anesthesia. He’d never had anesthesia before. How was I to know?”

  “You? Why would you know? How would you know?”

  “Someone should have.”

  “Why you? Why not his mother?”

  “How would she know? He’d never had anesthesia before. I just said that.”

  “Exactly. No one knew that he would react the way he did— not his mother, not him, and certainly not you. On the other hand, you’ve done everything you could to find an answer to why he died. Regardless of how the judge rules, you can find closure in that.”

  Joyce looked torn. “What if I can’t? I mean, it’s one thing to say that there isn’t enough evidence to get a jury to convict. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some evidence. Who’s to say that the evidence we have isn’t correct? That’s why I need a win. I need a definitive decision. ‘Not enough evidence’ won’t do it for me. I need this resolved.”

  Casey could identify with that. By the time she got back upstairs, it was late afternoon, and, bent on a resolution of her own, she was energized. She guessed that between the two rooms, there were still a dozen boxes she hadn’t searched. Alone now, she went at them with a vengeance, pulling, pushing, bending over rather than sitting so that she could more quickly examine the contents of each.

  When all was said and done, only one was memorable. The most personal of the cartons, it contained relics of Connie’s childhood. There was one crocheted afghan, slightly tattered. There were a pair of tiny brown shoes, badly scuffed. There were several baby pictures, showing Connie in various stages prior to school age. He was a sweet, vulnerable-looking child whose features pulled at her with their familiarity. It was a minute before she realized she saw herself in them.

  Likewise, the hair. There was a glassine envelope with a lock the identical color of Casey’s. She felt a catch in her throat, a visceral link, when she reached in and sifted that hair between her fingers.

  But the monkey got to her even more. It was faded brown and stuffed, with scraggly legs and patchy fur. One clouded eye hung by a thread, the other was missing altogether. It was the sweetest, rattiest thing Casey had ever seen. Lifting it with care, she buried her nose in its sparse little belly. It had the musty smell of age. She guessed that Connie had loved it. Guessed that he had slept with it long after anyone was supposed to know. Guessed that he had given it a life, a name, and a personality, such that to toss it away would have been murder.

  That was certainly what she had felt about her stuffed duck. Daffy. Not terribly original, but there you had it. Daffy. Its wings went in different directions, and its beak curved to the side, but she hadn’t ever been able to pack it away. Even now, it sat on her dresser back at the condo, its lumpy body propped against a lamp.

  Her Daffy had loved her with all his little stuffed heart at that time in her life when she badly wanted two parents. She didn’t know what Connie’s need had been for this monkey, but she knew that she couldn’t put it back in that box. She couldn’t even leave it with Angus on Connie’s bed.

  Carrying it downstairs, she propped it against the pillow in her pale blue room, angled toward the nightstand, where the photograph of Connie lay. That must have been the right thing to do, because the monkey settled in and looked content. That was some solace to Casey, because when it came to learning more about Flirting with Pete, she had struck out. In all of the cartons, there had been nothing remotely resembling a large manila envelope with a “C” on the front. She didn’t know where else to look.

  Discouraged, she headed for the garden, but found herself instead sitting on the carpeted runner that covered the stairs leading down to the office, studying Ruth’s paintings. If woodlands were the center of Connie’s life, the ocean was the center of hers. Where he favored deep, dark shades of greens, reds, and blues, Ruth’s art sparkled with pastels. If ever there was a statement of the difference between two people, these paintings were it. Casey wondered for the umpteenth time what had ever drawn them together.

  Ruth’s paintings were hopeful and bright, even at dusk in the stairwell’s shadow. They were an invitation. She was sorely tempted. But torn.

  *

  Thursday nights were for yoga, and Casey needed the class. She skipped it, though, because even more than yoga, she needed to talk with her mother. She figured that Caroline might have a word or two to say on the matter of Ruth.

  This night, however, Caroline didn’t have a word to say on any matter at all. She was sleeping, perhaps breathing more heavily than normal, though not sounding distressed. Feeling a great big lump in the pit of her stomach, Casey sat by her side, held her bent hand, and studied her face in the dim evening light. She didn’t mention Ruth’s name. She didn’t have the heart, with everything else Caroline had to fight.

  After a while, she called softly, “Mom?” She waited, watched for a blink, a twitch, even the tiniest tic to indicate awareness. “Do you know I’m here, Mom?” She waited, watched, grew frightened. “I need to know what’s going on with you. This is starting to make me nervous.”

  Caroline just lay there, propped on her side with her eyes closed.

  Casey leaned closer. “Can you hear me?” she asked in full voice.

  She waited a while longer. Caroline remained motionless, breathing in small echoes. In time, unable to deal with the fear, Casey kissed her mother’s cheek, stroked her hair, and said, “It’s okay, Mom. You’re tired. We’ll talk next time I come. You’ll feel better then. I love you.” Her voice broke. She kissed Caroline’s cheek once more and pressed her forehead there to absorb Caroline’s warmth. She needed that warmth. It had been there for her even when she had sworn off it in the name of independence. She had been shortsighted then. She saw that now. One could need warmth and still be quite independent. Caroline had known that. Through good and bad, she had been loyal and loving. Casey didn’t want to lose her.

  Fearing that it might happen anyway and not wanting to face that
possibility, she gently put her mother’s hand on the sheet and backed out of the room.

  *

  Friday, in Casey’s book, was professional enrichment day, on which, typically, she attended seminars, met with colleagues, read professional journals. On occasion, she went to the beach. Restorative therapy, she called it.

  She headed for the beach this Friday morning, but not to play. She needed answers, and Ruth Unger was the only one left who might have them.

  She called first, of course. She didn’t want to drive all the way to Rockport and find that Ruth wasn’t there.

  Ruth answered the phone. Casey hung up. Juvenile? Yes. But she had a right to a moment’s regression. Her disdain for Ruth went back to her teens, when she had first discovered the woman’s existence. Lacking other explanations for how Connie could ignore his daughter, she made Ruth the bad guy.

  Ruth had stolen him from Caroline, or so ran the first scenario. Connie had been on the verge of calling Caroline again, when Ruth had stepped right in, turned his head, and pinned him down.

  Ruth had poisoned him against Casey, went another scenario. When Connie had expressed an interest in contacting Casey, Ruth had gone into a jealous rage. She wanted him to focus on making her pregnant, rather than distracting himself with the product of a one-night stand— who might not even be his child, Casey imagined Ruth arguing, because we don’t know who else Caroline Ellis was seeing at the time.

  Casey even imagined that Ruth had gone so far as to snatch letters Connie had written to Casey from the outgoing mail.

  In time, the scenarios fell apart. The more Casey learned about the workings of the human mind— and the more she watched Connie— the more she held him responsible for his own behavior.

  Not that Ruth was completely off the hook. Casey didn’t understand why, particularly after the years passed and they remained childless, she hadn’t prodded Connie into making even the smallest gesture toward his only child. Casey didn’t understand why she hadn’t made the gesture herself— or called Casey to tell her of Connie’s death— or why she hadn’t contacted her since.