The Widow's House

by Carol Goodman

  “No,” I said, gulping down the rest of my lukewarm latte. I reached for the book at the same time he did and our hands touched. He covered my hand with his.

  “If you do, if you see anything that frightens you, Clare, let me know.”

  I started to laugh, but Dunstan’s blue eyes pinned me with a look so grave I didn’t. He was, once again, the nineteen-year-old boy who would kill wasps for me and defend me against all danger, real or imagined. It had been a while since anyone had made me feel so protected. No wonder he’d become a cop.

  “Of course, Dunstan. First sign of trouble, I’ll call 911 and ask for you.”

  I’d meant to lighten the gravity just a little but he didn’t smile as he took out a card, put it inside the book, and pushed it toward me.

  “Call my cell first,” he said, “and I’ll be there before you hang up the phone.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Driving back to Riven House I thought of what Dunstan had said—not the part about him rushing to Riven House, sirens blaring (although I did find that oddly reassuring)—but the part about how he was afraid he’d driven me away because he’d already decided I wasn’t going to stay.

  He had acted like a jerk that year. Not just when he dumped the manure on the Wellness House, but all year, making fun of the writing class (What do you need it for, Clary, you already know how to write), and complaining when I couldn’t do something with him because I had to work. But had he started acting that way before or after I fell in love with Jess? Would it have made a difference if he hadn’t acted like a jerk? Although I’d made a joke of it, I remembered how embarrassed I’d been when he dumped that load of manure on the lawn of the Wellness House. As if everyone would know it had been the local’s crude boyfriend who’d done it. I walked around for weeks feeling like the smell of manure still clung to me. No wonder I was grateful to retreat into a fantasy of apple blossoms. I’d accused Dunstan of trying to pull me down in the shit with him and I’d seen in his face a confirmation of something. I’d thought at the time that it was a confirmation of his worst suspicions about me: I was a snob, thought I was better than everybody else, the adopted girl who thought she was smarter than her plain, hardworking parents, but now I saw that what I’d confirmed were his fears that I would leave him.

  Hadn’t I done the same thing with Jess when I accused him of sleeping with the tattooed barista? And hadn’t I allowed myself to grow distant from him because of my jealousy? There’d come a point when it had been too painful to imagine him with other women and so I had tried to make myself love him less. I’d even tried to think about other men (and who had I daydreamed about but Dunstan Corbett?) so that I wouldn’t think about him with someone else. The result, I hated to admit, was that I loved him a little less and maybe, just maybe, I’d wanted to come back here to see Dunstan again.

  I’d come to the fork in the drive, marked now by a stack of neat firewood where Jess and Dale had cut up the tree that had fallen on the Subaru. When I stopped the car I could hear the buzz of a chain saw coming from the field beyond the trees. Jess and Dale had repaired the weir and were working now on rebuilding the bridge that went over it. If I went back to the house now and went up to the nursery I could sit at my desk and watch them working—or I could walk across the field and join them. I had brought back a bag of cider donuts and a latte that I’d planned to drink at my desk, but I could bring it to Jess instead. In fact, I had an extra to-go cup in the car. I could divide the coffee between two cups and bring coffee and donuts to both men. I could reassure Jess—and maybe myself—that I wanted him and not Dunstan.

  I pulled the car past the fork so Sunny and her volunteers could get by—no one else used the drive to the house—split the coffee between the two cups, and got out. The day had warmed and the sun felt good on my face as I came out of the trees and crossed the field. It was already low in the sky over the Catskills to the west, turning the river into a wide band of glitter. Dale and Jess were silhouetted against that brilliant backdrop, their long shadows painted on the lawn as they worked on the bridge. Dale was on the ground below the weir, sawing the thick, twisting branches they were using to make the new rustic railing, and then handing them up to Jess on the bridge. They looked like figures in a Millet painting: Dale, with his weathered features, slouchy posture, and loose shirt would be the hoary old peasant and Jess his youthful apprentice. When Jess leaned down to take a branch from Dale his face was ruddy and healthy looking in the sun. I tried to lift my hand to wave to him, but it was awkward while holding two cups of coffee and a bag of donuts—and he had turned away to hammer in the rail while Dale sawed another one. He wouldn’t hear me over the buzz of the chain saw, so I put my arm down and then my head, to navigate across the muddy field.

  I wasn’t wearing the right shoes for it. When the weir broke the Saw Kill flooded the lower part of the lawn, turning the fields and gardens into a marsh. Although the weir was mended, water still stood in irregular patches and pools that reflected the glare of the sun back into my eyes, half blinding me. When I glanced up from the ground toward the weir the figures of the two men shimmered and blurred like a mirage, thin and insubstantial as wraiths in the bright autumn air. Something about the sight made me sad, as if I’d been given a presentiment of Jess’s death.

  Or maybe, I admitted to myself, it was my talk with Dunstan that had left me feeling sad. For years I had felt guilty for leaving Dunstan for Jess, so Dunstan’s confession that he’d been at least partly at fault should have made me feel better. Instead, it made me sad to realize how careless we’d both been of our feelings for each other. How easily Dunstan’s love for me had turned to resentment and jealousy and how easily I, blind to what he was going through, ran to Jess. Dunstan had driven me into Jess’s arms because he loved me too much. If I had known, would it have made any difference? Would I have stayed with Dunstan?

  It shouldn’t matter, I told myself. I’d wound up where I wanted to be, with Jess, and I was happy with that.

  Right?

  I stopped in the middle of the field, my eyes blurring with tears, stunned by the conviction that I had made a terrible mistake thirteen years ago leaving Dunstan, that I would have been happier with him. I would have written my books, maybe taught at the high school, while he made sure we had everything we needed. I wouldn’t have spent the last five years worrying about money and fighting with Jess about how much he was spending or carping at him about tattooed baristas. I wouldn’t have gotten sick this past winter. And who knows? By now we might even have a baby—a towheaded Corbett boy with chubby pink cheeks . . .

  The image of the baby was so real that I felt a cramp in my insides that made me double over. I looked up, as if looking at Jess could make up for the sheer disloyalty of the thought, and fixed my eyes on the figures on the weir . . .

  Only instead of the two men I saw a different tableau. A shawled figure stood on the bridge, holding a bundle in her arms. A second figure standing below it reached for the bundle. As I watched, the higher figure passed the bundle to the lower one over water that now had the gloss of ice. I held my breath, terrified that it would fall. I stepped forward, arms out, as if I could bridge the distance between us and catch the baby—because I was sure that’s what the bundle was—and stumbled in the mud. I looked down to steady my footing and when I looked up again the women on the weir were gone. The shawled woman was Jess in a hooded sweatshirt and the woman reaching for the baby was Dale taking a piece of wood from him. Jess was looking toward me, his eyes narrowed, his brow creased with worry. I lifted a coffee cup in greeting and he smiled at me.

  It was all right, I told myself, skirting the pond to reach the men. It hadn’t been a ghost or a delusion, just a trick of the light brought on by my mourning an imaginary child. Which was ridiculous. Who knew how things would have turned out between Dunstan and me? Besides, Jess and I had plenty of time to have children. I just had to quit mooning over my high school boyfriend and stop this cycle of jealousy and s
uspicion. Then Jess and I would be fine.

  As I approached I held out the two cups of coffee and bag of donuts. An offering.

  “I thought you guys could use something hot out here.”

  “Cool,” Dale said, taking the cup and inhaling the steam from it. “Mmm, I love Cassie’s pumpkin spice latte.”

  I smiled to think of grizzled Dale imbibing fancy coffee drinks and looked to see if Jess found it funny too, but he was wiping the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his flannel shirt so I couldn’t see his expression.

  “Have mine,” he said, lowering his arm. “It’s too sweet for me.”

  I knew Jess preferred plain coffee, but would it have killed him to pretend—or at least say thank you—in front of Dale?

  “Your loss, man. Are those cider donuts?”

  I handed Dale a donut and walked up onto the bridge to give one to Jess. He was still frowning at me.

  “Is that a new jacket?” he asked.

  I looked down and saw that I was still wearing Dunstan’s denim jacket. I was surprised Jess had noticed. It was just an ordinary denim jacket, although it was too big on me. I could say I’d picked it up from the mudroom, but then Dale said, “Yeah, and since when did you join the police auxiliary?”

  He was pointing a half-eaten donut at the right sleeve. I pulled it around to see the patch. “Oh,” I said, inwardly cursing Dale. For a stoner Vietnam vet he’d become suddenly sharp-eyed and observant. “I met a friend in town for coffee and he lent me his jacket. I didn’t realize how cold it had gotten when I went out. They’re saying there’ll be a hard frost tonight.”

  “A friend?” Jess asked, undeflected by my weather report.

  Dale looked from Jess to me and widened his eyes in comic alarm. “Uh-oh, your old lady’s out gallivanting with the Man.” Then he turned away and fired up his chain saw.

  “Dunstan Corbett,” I shouted over the roar of the chain saw. “I was doing some research in the Village Hall and ran into him. We went for coffee at Cassie’s and he gave me his jacket when he saw how cold I was.”

  “What a gentleman,” Jess remarked dryly. “Has he gotten enormously fat? That jacket is huge on you.”

  “What? No! He’s just got broad shoulders . . . Why are you being so awful, Jess? It was just coffee with an old friend.”

  “An old boyfriend. I can’t imagine you’d be so casual if the situation was reversed. Didn’t you accuse me of hooking up with an old girlfriend when I came home a few hours late from my high school reunion? You were hysterical—”

  “You’re right,” I cut in. “I was just thinking today that jealousy has hurt us too much already and it’s time to move past it.”

  “Convenient thinking now that you’re back in your hometown with your old boyfriend and I’m stranded out here in the sticks sawing wood, for Christ’s sake.”

  “It was your idea that we move to the country,” I objected. “And there’s nothing to be jealous about.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Jess hissed. “I’m just beginning to wonder how much us being here has to do with you wanting to be back with your boyfriend Dusty—”

  “Dunstan,” I said. “And that’s ridiculous. We’ve been here two months and this was the first time I’ve seen him. We just ran into each other.”

  “And you immediately went for coffee and he gave you his letter jacket just like in high school—”

  “It was cold! And we went for coffee because he had some research material he thought would help me.” I took out Elizabeth Corbett’s diary from my pocket and thrust it at Jess as if it proved the innocence of my meeting with Dunstan.

  Jess stared at it and then asked me coldly, “If you just ran into each other how come he had the book on him? And if this is the first time you met how’d he know what you were writing about?”

  I knew that if I told Jess that Dunstan had heard about my research through town gossip he would be skeptical. And if I explained that Dunstan had come into the Village Hall on his day off because he knew I was there it would just confirm his suspicions that Dunstan was interested in me. I knew from my own jealous tirades that the more I tried to defend myself the more he’d be convinced I was guilty. It wouldn’t matter that I had done nothing wrong. Knowing how he would twist the argument made me angrier. I had lost half my friends in New York to Jess’s sophistry; I didn’t want to lose Dunstan.

  So instead I asked, “Are you really jealous of Dunstan? Or are you jealous that I may actually finish my book and you know you won’t finish yours?”

  It was the meanest thing I could say—I’d even shouted it to be heard over Dale’s chain saw—and I was instantly sorry. If I could have plucked the words out of the air and stuffed them back in my mouth I would have, but Jess was already turning away from me, his face white with rage. I reached for his arm to stop him, but he shook me off. It was the motion of shaking me off that upset his balance—that and the fact that the railing on the bridge was unfinished. His foot caught on an uneven plank and his arms pinwheeled to regain his balance. I screamed and reached for him, but my fingers only grazed the rough wool of his shirt as he fell over the edge of the bridge—straight toward Dale and his chain saw. I saw Dale lift his head—he wouldn’t have heard my scream over the sound of the chain saw—and the expression on his face as he looked up, the surprise turning to horror as Jess hurtled toward him. Did he even know it was Jess? The horror seemed to be for something else, as if the thing coming at him was a monster out of his worst nightmare. Something so frightening that he raised the saw to ward it off, at the same time stepping back into slick mud and losing his balance. He went down and the chain saw came down with him.

  I scrambled down off the bridge as fast as I could. There was so much blood on the ground that it was as if the weir had broken again and let loose a tide of blood over both men.

  “Are you all right?” I screamed at Jess.

  He nodded, his face white beneath blood splatter. He was kneeling beside Dale. The chain saw was lying over Dale’s right shoulder. Jess pulled it off and threw it to the side where it sputtered and whined in the mud like a dying animal. Dale screamed and blood spurted from his shoulder and it occurred to me that maybe moving the chain saw had not been the best idea. But Jess wouldn’t have known that. He’d never had to deal with something like this. Growing up on a farm I’d witnessed some horrible accidents—an apple picker who’d gotten his hand stuck in a thresher, Derrick Corbett getting his foot run over by a truck, my own father catching a splintered ax blade in his face while chopping wood . . . I could hear my dad’s voice now.

  Stop the bleeding. Apply pressure. Call for help.

  I stripped my jacket off (Dunstan’s jacket that had started all the trouble), wadded it into a ball and, shouldering Jess aside, pressed it into Dale’s shoulder. He let out another wail and looked at me with eyes that rolled like a spooked horse’s.

  “You’re okay,” I told him, although I was far from sure that was true. “It missed the carotid artery. I’ve stopped the bleeding.”

  But not for long. I could already feel the thick denim moistening under my hands.

  “Call 911,” I yelled at Jess.

  I saw Jess patting his pockets and knew already he didn’t have his phone. I can’t think if it’s even near me, he had said once when I complained about not being able to reach him.

  I didn’t have mine either. I had left it in my pocketbook in the car.

  “You have to go to the car—it’s parked at the fork—get my phone from my bag and call 911, then go to Sunny’s barn and get help.” Hopefully there’d be a crowd of volunteers so close to the Halloween parade. Hopefully they wouldn’t all be stoned. “Tell them to bring one of the drying racks. We have to get Dale out of here and the ambulance won’t be able to get close enough in this mud.”

  Jess nodded at me but remained kneeling. He was staring at the reddening jacket in my hands, his face the sickly white of curdled milk.

  “Go!” I screamed to break
his trance.

  He lurched unsteadily to his feet and stumbled away like one of Sunny’s puppets with a string broken. How badly had he hurt himself in the fall? But he was running now and I had to worry about Dale first. I turned back to him and found his bloodshot eyes fixed on mine.

  “It’s okay,” I said, “Jess has gone to get help. We’ll get you out of here.”

  He said something I couldn’t make out. I lowered my head closer to his lips and smelled beer and pot on his breath as he rasped something that sounded like chop. I thought he was talking about the chain saw chopping into his arm but when he tried again I made out choppers.

  I pulled back to look into his face—at the web of lines creasing his leathery skin around once clear blue eyes. It had been over forty years since Dale Cartwright had served in Vietnam, but that’s where he’d gone. Maybe we all went to our worst place when we were scared.

  “Yeah,” I said, “they’re on their way.”

  He jerked his chin to show he’d heard me. The motion must have jarred his injured shoulder. His lips drew back over yellowed teeth in a grimace of pain. I pressed down harder on the jacket and blood oozed through the denim onto my hands.

  “Aanggg . . .” he groaned.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to keep the pressure on.”

  “Aangg . . .” he groaned again, and then, gritting his teeth, “aangg-ul.”

  “Angel?” I asked. “Don’t start seeing angels on me, Dale. You’re going to make it.”

  “Saw . . .” he said.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “You fell with your chain saw in your hands and hurt your shoulder. But you’ll be okay—”

  “Saw aangg-ul,” he bit out, “when . . . fell . . .”

  “Oh,” I said, remembering the look of horror on Dale’s face when Jess fell on him. He hadn’t looked like he was seeing an angel.

  “Aangg-ul,” Dale sputtered, and then, fixing me with a suddenly lucid stare, he spoke clearly. “I saw the angel of death.”