“Not word for word.”
“Tell me what parts of it you recall.”
“I recall agreeing to be Betsy’s guardian in the event of Marianne’s death.”
“You didn’t read the will at all, did you, Phil?”
“No,” Phil said. “Actually I’ve never even seen it Bad habit. I don’t read contracts either. I took Marianne’s word on this one.”
“And even though you knew you might become Betsy’s guardian, you didn’t think it would come to this, did you? You didn’t really believe in the consequences.”
“No, I didn’t. I never gave it a second thought, not until I got the phone call about her death.”
“That troubles me just a little. I feel I’ve got a personal stake in all this, as unprofessional as that might sound to you. I’ve got to do what’s right for Betsy, and I know Mrs. Darwin well enough to give her … how shall I put it? To give her desires particular credence.”
“I didn’t know she had any desires,” Phil said, “but I’m ready to give them credence myself if you think it’s “right.”
“I think it’s right.” He sat forward in his chair and folded his hands on the desk blotter. “I’ll throw you a very small curve, Phil. There was another will. It was a holograph will that predates the one that makes you Betsy’s guardian. It was apparently written a few months after Richard’s death. That will was notarized and was legal at the time. Now, of course, legally it has no value, “because it was supplanted by this more recent will.”
“And it was different from mine?”
“Completely. Mrs. Darwin is named guardian over Betsy and Betsy’s money. There was money in trust. Did you know that?”
“Money that my mother left,” Phil said. “I didn’t know what Marianne did with it. It would have been just like her to put it away for Betsy. I got some of the same, and I got the old house.”
“I’d say that Marianne sometimes had more faith in Betsy’s future than she had in her own.”
“Well, she wasn’t far wrong, the way things turned out. I’m not sure I grasp this, though. Is Mrs. Darwin unhappy about all this? Does she have some claim to the money?”
“No, not at all.”
“To the guardianship?”
“Legally she doesn’t have any claim to anything. She didn’t know anything about the second will until yesterday, actually. She brought the hand-copied will to me after Marianne’s death, and I was compelled to reveal the existence of the later will. Marianne hadn’t told her about it.”
“That’s unhappy,” Phil said.
“Yes, it is. Mrs. Darwin is a disappointed woman. She’s got what you’d call a grandmotherly interest in Betsy, a very deep interest, and she was hoping to keep the child close, I think. Showing her this second will wasn’t easy for me. In fact, she tore it up in front of my face.”
“Tore it up!”
“A photocopy, actually. She was … upset, though.”
“Thank God you’ve already done it,” Phil said. “She’s coming here this morning?”
“Fairly soon. There’s no reason for any of this to I hang fire. The will you signed cannot be contested. The case is closed. What we’re talking about here, quite simply, is Mrs. Darwin’s feelings.”
“That’s never simple. I’ve heard a little bit from Marianne about Mrs. Darwin over the years. I’ve even corresponded with her once or twice. There aren’t any larger issues, though?”
“None that I can make out. Just the issue of settling her mind.”
“If she’s invested time or money of her own into caring for Betsy, I’ll be glad to compensate her.”
“This doesn’t appear to be about time and money. The issue for Mrs. Darwin, as closely as I can make it out, is one of guardianship. Mrs. Darwin would be happy to adopt Betsy. To put it more succinctly, she’d be unhappy not to adopt her. Given her long-standing relationship with Marianne and Betsy, that would be entirely natural. I have no doubt that it would be a simple process. No one would contest it. So if you have any hesitancy at all …”
“I don’t have any hesitancy, Mr. Benner.”
“That’s noble of you. You’re a man of your word. But is your heart in it? That might be an odd question for a lawyer to ask, but it’s crucial. You’re a single man. You’ve got no experience with children. It’s quite likely that without Marianne’s will, you wouldn’t be allowed the guardianship at all.”
“But the will exists, I agreed to it happily, and I’m still happy that I did. I feel lousy for Mrs. Darwin, but the case is closed.”
“And if Betsy herself would rather stay in Austin and live with Mrs. Darwin?”
Phil shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I haven’t even talked to her yet. All I can say is that Betsy and I are old friends, she likes it out in California. … Has she said anything about where she wants to go?”
“She’s not old enough to make that decision herself, actually. The question was merely conjecture. If she has a strong opinion in favor of Mrs. Darwin, though, it’s possible that Mrs. Darwin could stir up sympathy with the courts. It might take up a considerable amount of your time and resources.”
“All right. That’s fair. Obviously I don’t want to drag Betsy kicking and screaming back to California, but I’m not going to give her away, either. If Marianne wanted time to take care of Betsy, even though she’d already talked to Mrs. Darwin about it, then she had some good reason. If you think it would smooth things over for me to ask Betsy about it, I’ll do it. But as I see it, I’m not just a friendly uncle anymore, I’m legally her guardian. This isn’t any kind of a democracy. Mrs. Darwin doesn’t r get a vote. Betsy gets a vote—if we’re sure she’s thinking straight.”
He was interrupted by the intercom phone. Mr. Benner answered it. Mrs. Darwin was in the waiting room.
“I didn’t mean to suggest that you were being frivolous when I asked you these questions, Phil. I’m sorry if it seemed that way. Mrs. Darwin has no legal claim here, and I don’t anticipate any real problem with her. As you say, she has no vote. We’re in agreement entirely, but I had to make sure of that.” And then, into the intercom, he said, “Show Mrs. Darwin in.”
Santiago Canyon
1958
20
BY MIDWINTER IN 1958, Alejandro Solas had been waiting out the twentieth century for almost exactly twenty years—since the days of the flood in 1938. Only once in that time, 1940, for a period of three days, had there again been enough groundwater for the well to fill. It was in that year, 1940, that Colin O’ Brian had reappeared, but Colin’s appearance had meant nothing to Solas, because Colin could not have had the glass dog, and it was the glass dog that Solas wanted. A long time ago Solas’s desires had been confused, and the confusion had cost him dearly. The years had made him single-minded, though. He knew that one of the two women had the dog, or else it was lost forever in the well. If the dog were lost, then all of it, all of his efforts, had been in vain.
He focused on the narrow road that snaked down out of the canyon ahead of him. It was washed with mud, with runoff from the hills after a month of nearly constant rain, and Solas drove slowly, watching the mud-slick road ahead, the night dead-black except for the yellow glow of the headlights. He had driven his new Packard around from the northeast, up Villa Park Road and across the old truck trail through the Peralta Hills, then across the creek below the bottom edge of the swamp below the county park. It had taken him forty-five minutes, but he hadn’t passed another car in the last thirty. The precautions were excessive, or would have been, except that he had waited too long, been through too much, to take the chance of fumbling things tonight.
There was a turnout ahead, and he pulled off the road, cutting his headlights and sitting in the darkness, letting the car idle while he watched the road behind him in the rearview mirror. He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette, keeping his foot off the brake pedal so that whoever came over the hill behind him wouldn’t see him until it was too late to slow down. Mi
nutes passed as he smoked the cigarette down to the filter. No one was following him. He flicked the butt out the open window, switched the lights back on, and bumped back up onto the road. Another half-mile up he turned right along the dirt road that led into the grove. It was rutted by packing company trucks, and even though he edged along slowly, the Packard bounced on its springs. When he was certain the car was no longer visible from the road, he cut the engine and then sat in the quiet car.
In ‘40 Solas had considered killing Colin just for old time’s sake when Colin had stumbled out over the stone wall, confused, groggy, his mind darkened. Probably Alex would have killed him, if nobody else had been around—but he couldn’t afford the risk. It was likely that he would have been forced to kill the farmer who owned the house, too, and all that killing would have meant certain trouble. The eighteen years between 1940 and 1958 had been long, dry years, years of continual worthless vigilance that had tried his patience. Now, with the heavy winter rains, everything had changed. The high water was his destiny; he felt it deep within him. What would happen tonight would change everything once again.
The house that was now hidden by the grove had been built on this property shortly after the turn of the century—twenty years after the fight at the well. The man who had built it was dead now, and his son, who had maintained it for twenty years after that was dead, too. Whether the family had any connection to the mission at San Juan Capistrano Solas couldn’t say, but after the war the property had changed owners, and the house had been used as a rectory off and on since then. He knew that it wasn’t the church that had bought the house; it was Colin O’Brian, who had spent the intervening years sitting beside the vastly deep and lonesome waters of the well, awaiting the return of his beloved.
The church should have capped the well long ago. They had covered or diverted nearly every other known pozo encanto left over from the days of the conquistadors. Clearly they were waiting for the same thing that Alex was waiting for, and which he had a fifty-fifty chance of finding tonight. One of the women had apparently returned and was living in the house, although Solas didn’t know whether it was Jeanette or May, nor did he know which of them had carried with her the glass dog all those years ago. Tonight he would find out.
He took a pistol out of the glove compartment now and tucked it into his belt. If he decided to use it, he would simply throw it into the well afterward. Perhaps he would throw a couple of dead people into the well, too, just for the sake of neatness. He climbed out of the car and headed into the darkness of the avocado grove. The ground was firm under his feet, an only slightly spongy layer of packed leaf mold. The night was cold, and he was glad to have worn his driving gloves. Growers would be smudging citrus groves if it got any colder. Behind and around him the grove was silent and still. There was a path that edged the grove from down the creek, a remnant of the old Santiago Trail that had followed the creek into Orange, and he watched the trail closely now for signs of anybody else out and about, which wasn’t unlikely tonight. Time was running out. The last thing he needed was a surprise from a competitor.
The heavy limbs of the avocado trees nearly swept the ground, and the darkness around and behind him might have hidden an army. He listened for sounds, but the night was still aside from the slow dripping of water on the mulchy ground. Momentarily he saw the lights of the house through the trees, and he thought about how he would do this, what kind of an entrance he would make, what he would say. As the crow flies, he was twenty years older now than he had been the last time they had seen him, although the twenty years had been kind to him. There was silver in his hair now, and he had become a man of the twentieth century, but he was still unmistakably Alejandro Solas, and it would be good to see the instant recognition in their faces—especially May or Jen’s face, whomever he would find there. The whole thing had an amusing quality, particularly the wild idea of killing a person who had been missing for half a century, whom literally nobody on earth could identify. The truth was that a person displaced in time was hardly a person at all.
He stopped at the last row of trees, looking out through the curtain of broad, black leaves. The side porch of the house was lit, and he saw Colin come out of the living room and onto the porch, where he opened a drawer in a wooden cabinet and took something out.
The glass dog?
Colin switched the porch light off on his way back into the other room. There was no moon, the night was utterly dark, and Alex walked without further hesitation toward the old well, pausing by the mossy stones to look down into the depths. There was water in it still, but the level had dropped significantly. Although last week it had seemed that the well was a cleverly hidden door, now he could see nothing at all in the water—no magic, no promise, no connection; it was as if the door had receded again into the earth.
After a moment he looked back at the grove again, but it lay still and dark. He crossed the ankle-high lawn and peered in through one of the porch windows. He could see them, the two of them, sitting and chatting. Colin’s face was turned toward him, but he couldn’t see the face of the woman, only her arm, dark hair, and shoulder. She might be either May or Jeanette. Savoring the suspense, he waited for her to shift in her chair, so that he could be sure who she was, but the two of them were deep in conversation, and the longer he waited, the more chance that someone or something would interfere. He stepped softly to the porch door finally, turned the knob, and swung the door open on its hinges.
21
BENNER STOOD UP, walked to the door, and greeted Mrs. Darwin, who came in and immediately smiled at Phil and held out her hand. He stood up and shook it. She had what his mother would have called a bowling-ball figure, and her extra weight smoothed out her skin so that she appeared to be younger than she was. Marianne had called her grandmotherly and so had Benner. She wore a billowy dress with some kind of African folk art print, silver hoop earrings, and a tangle of silver chains. Somehow he had expected her to be a little less up-to-date, more a knitting-and-cookies-type grandmother.
“Good to see you again, Phil,” she said to him, taking a seat. He sat down again, too. “I’m so terribly sorry about Marianne.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She sat biting her lower lip, looking steadily at him.
“I …” She broke off her sentence and looked at Benner. “Can we be candid? Right from the start? None of us can pretend this is a social call.”
“Please,” the lawyer said. “I’m enjoining everyone right now to say just what they mean. For Betsy’s sake, we’ll keep this open and clear.”
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Darwin said. “I detest it when we hide our feelings, especially when our feelings matter so very much. I hope you agree, Phil.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Then I’m just going to tell you that I loved your sister very much.”
Phil nodded at her.
“The truth is that she got worse again over the last couple of months. Depression is a funny thing, Phil. Perhaps you’ve had some experience with it yourself. In some people it just comes and goes. It’s chronic, in other words. And all I can say is that when Marianne was down, she was so far down that the last thing she wanted to do was talk about it. That’s why she didn’t tell you anything. I think she saw it as a weakness in herself. I told her she was wrong. Nearly every day I told her, but it’s the nature of the disease that the farther down a person sinks, the less they listen to reason. It’s like … it’s like a drunk. When they’re drinking, you might as well talk to the wall. That’s not when they see reason. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Phil said. “A lot of things work that way.”
“Well, with Marianne it certainly did. She got worse. The medication didn’t seem to help much. I did what I could, but a body can only do so much.”
Phil didn’t say anything. Her words made him remember that he hadn’t done anything for Marianne at all. On the other hand, he hadn’t known. Unlike Mrs. Darwin, he hadn’t been close
enough to her to see it. But of course he hadn’t tried to find out. … He let that endless line of reasoning go and listened to Mrs. Darwin again.
“I might as well tell you that over the years Marianne wasn’t always capable of seeing things right. Some mornings she would lie in bed and cry for hours. It’s typical behavior, actually, for a depressed woman. Someone had to look out for Betsy, and that’s what I tried to do. I’m a fair seamstress, and you’ll pardon me for saying that I sewed her more beautiful clothes than Marianne could have afforded to buy. Don’t get me wrong, Phil. I don’t say that because I deserve praise or credit.” She shook her head, casting her eyes at the floor. Then, after a moment, she looked up sharply at Phil.
“Clear and plain?” she asked.
“Please.”
“All right. I think I do deserve credit. I don’t want any praise, but I want credit. I very nearly raised Betsy. She ate breakfast in my kitchen as often as she ate it in her own. She wore clothes that I sewed for her. It was I who helped her with her homework. When her poor mother was stretched out on the bed, not moving, lost to the world, it was me that Betsy came to, looking for help, looking for a hug, a little bit of reassurance. When Marianne was working, I drove that girl to school and picked her up again. I was her mother. I don’t mean to take anything away from Marianne, but I baked cookies for her soccer team, I sewed the team flag, I …”
She started to cry now, shaking her head, her face in her handkerchief. Her body shook with the sobs. Benner looked out the window at the rain still falling on the Austin rooftops. From the office Phil could see the Capitol buildings and the gray surface of the Colorado River where it flowed beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge. He had never been very good at times like this. He always kept his own emotions locked up tight. He thought of putting a hand on Mrs. Darwin’s arm now, just to give her a little support. She was obviously overwhelmed by the suddenly lonesome world. But it was clear that she was going to ask for something that he couldn’t give her, and so he sat where he was and waited until she caught her breath.
The Rainy Season Page 10