Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Grace,” Jay said.

  “I mean it.” Her eyes were blazing as I had never seen them blaze before. I might have reminded her that this was Devon, where people did respect privacy, and that whoever had talked with Jay might have done it to help her—had she not been the mama bear just then. I didn’t cross mama bears in the best of times, and this, right now, for me, despite my very, very best efforts to stay calm, was not.

  Edward? Here?

  “My son did nothing,” Grace told Jay. “He’s a good boy who’s done a damn good job growing up without a father. These charges are bogus. The cops are going after him because they look like morons with no leads, so they’re grabbing the first smart kid around. Chris wouldn’t hack into anything. He couldn’t hack into anything.”

  “The FBI thinks he did,” Jay said.

  “Well, they’re wrong.”

  “They wouldn’t be charging him if they didn’t have evidence.”

  “What evidence?” she charged back. “How could they have evidence? Who did they talk to? And when? There haven’t been any Federal agents around here.”

  “Not that we can see.”

  That stopped her. Closing a hand on her scarf, she said in a voice that was only marginally conciliatory, “You mean, they’ve been snooping around in people’s computers—hacking into our accounts—doing the same thing they’re saying Chris did? Isn’t that illegal without a warrant or something?”

  “Cybersecurity still has lots of holes. Clearly, they were following a trail and saw something that led them to Chris.”

  Grace pulled herself up straight. “And clearly you agree, which means you’re not the lawyer for me. Come on, Maggie, let’s go.” She had started to turn when Jay caught her arm.

  “I do not agree,” he said. He went on slowly, firmly. “I don’t know what evidence they have, but I know how to discredit evidence. That’s what I do, sweetie. You need me.” They stood staring at each other, Grace smaller but no less ardent, with Jay, thin of hair and round of face, the blander of the two. Oh, he was pleasant enough to look at, but sexy enough for Grace to have slept with? I couldn’t see it.

  Not that I was any judge. I was immune to sexy. I hadn’t been with anyone since Edward—hadn’t been attracted to anyone since Edward—and the Edward who had just walked out of here was older, more tired, and clearly no more pleased to see me than I was to see him—which raised the question of why he was here. I didn’t buy into the new owner of the Inn thing. Edward was a venture capitalist, not a resort owner. There had to be a better explanation.

  Sounding defiant, Grace said, “There are other lawyers in the state.”

  Jay sighed, seeming to weary of the fight. “Yeah, well, since you and I have already played the ultimate game, now we can get down to business. Do you want someone to get your son out of jail today or not?”

  She gasped. “He’s in a cell?”

  “Not yet, but if we don’t get down there pretty soon, he will be. Are we going?”

  “Yes, you’re going,” I said, seeing my out. “Indulge her, Jay. She’s frightened for her son. Grace, I’m going home.”

  But the eyes that flew to mine held sheer terror. “No, no, Maggie, stay with me, just a little longer?”

  Jay took his parka from a hook by the door. “Tell you what.” He shrugged it on. “Maggie will drive you to the station. I’ll follow in my car. Keep her calm, Maggie. Make sure she understands that when we get there, she has to keep her big mouth shut.”

  * * *

  I didn’t know whether Grace was heeding his warning or simply too upset to speak. But after climbing into my truck, she huddled against the door with her legs tucked tight and her arms pressed to her sides. Her mouth was a thin seam just above her scarf. Her eyes focused on the windshield and didn’t budge.

  Mine did the same, if for different reasons. Forget Edward. Right here, right now, Grace was my responsibility. I negotiated the roundabout with care, waited for an opening, then fell into single file among the cars on South Main. There were more cars than usual for a Thursday afternoon—for any afternoon—in Devon. I told myself that it was rush hour. But rush hour in Devon? That was a laugh.

  With traffic holding the speed to a stop-and-go crawl, I darted a look at Grace. She didn’t see me in her periphery, didn’t blink, didn’t speak, any of which was so out of character that I worried she had gone to some far and irretrievable place. Needing her back, I said, “I’m sure there’s an explanation, Gracie. Jay will iron it out.”

  She said nothing.

  “Does Chris have his own computer?”

  “You’ve been to the house,” was her solemn response. “You’ve seen it.”

  “I’ve seen yours, not his.”

  “The one on the kitchen table is his. Mine’s in my bedroom.”

  I considered that as we crept along. “If his is in the kitchen, you must see what he does.”

  “Like I understand it?” she said so quickly she might have been asking herself the very same thing.

  “Homework, you mean.”

  “Any of it.”

  “Even social media? Games?”

  She lifted a hand only enough for a noncommittal wave.

  Computers were part of my life. I used them at the Spa for recordkeeping, and used my home laptop for research on new products, cyber-shopping, and keeping up with my mother. I used a tablet for reading, sometimes in the middle of the night, when I woke fighting to breathe and needed a diversion. My phone was linked with my other devices, and I had done the linking myself. I could troubleshoot any one of them. But hacking? I had no clue how that worked.

  “Does he belong to a club at school?” I asked. “A programming club or something?”

  “It’s a class.”

  “A class, with lots of kids? Then maybe they’ve mixed him up with someone else? Maybe with another student? Who’s to say one of them didn’t hack into his computer.”

  She looked at me then. “And go after our clients? Why would one of his friends do that? They have no connection to the Spa.”

  “But they know you work there,” I said. “Maybe one of them has a crush on you. Chris emails you, right?”

  “Texts. Kids don’t email.”

  “He’s never done it?”

  “Maybe once or twice.”

  “So your email address is on his computer, and your email connects to the Spa. It’d be easy enough for his friends to get it. He must be online with them every night.” I made it into a question, but wasn’t sure Grace knew the answer. Her work schedule was demanding. Between her loyal following and the fact that she was one of the few massage therapists willing to work evenings, she was heavily booked, which meant Chris was often alone. I had asked her about it once; she said she had taught him how to cook, how to text her, how to call 911.

  She didn’t reply now, simply stared at the windshield. At the next standstill, I studied her. Jay had warned her against speaking, but I was remembering what my own lawyer had taught me prior to my first court hearing. Dress simply, Mackenzie. Modest clothes, low heels, light makeup. Court people are plain people, so you need to downplay style. Having been at work, where scrubs were required, Grace conformed in every regard but her hair. As beautiful as those curls were, they caught the eye, which wasn’t a good thing right now. Had I been in her shoes, I’d have put an elastic around them.

  Grace did the opposite, finger-combing them fuller and forward to hide her face, and I totally understood. The closer we got to the police station, the more the congestion and the longer the standstills. Cars were pulling over and parking on both sides of the street. Likewise, media vans with satellite dishes. Some had the call letters of Vermont stations, but a few spoke of national brands—national brands. It made no sense. But I saw the logos. Their presence made the situation even more alarming.

  Hide, my instinct for self-preservation cried, and it was all I could do not to pull my own hair free of pins and use it as a shield.

  But Grace c
ouldn’t hide. Her son was on the other side of the press. “How can they be here so soon?” she cried.

  I didn’t know. But if I had been uneasy before, I was beside myself now. There were three things I religiously avoided in life—law offices, police stations, and the press—and here they all were.

  I gripped the steering wheel tightly, thinking only about dropping Grace off and getting the hell away. She might be hidden under all those curls, but I felt way too visible. Edward had known me. I was the one he had nodded to, not Grace. If he had so easily seen through the makeup and bangs, the press would, too. Oh sure, I had nothing to run from. My case was over and done—well, done except for these last few months of probation. My fear was irrational. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  The police station was a mile from where the three roads met in the center of Devon. It consisted of a low set of buildings strung along the southernmost blocks of South Main, and was built of square stones the color of unbleached linen, with wide stone steps leading to a black double door. The Town Hall was directly across the street, built of the same local stone but with ivory pillars, black shutters, and nine front steps to the police station’s three.

  Desperate to be done with it, I drove through the parking lot and right up to the station’s entrance. As onrushers merged on the steps, their numbers seemed to swell. I heard Grace breathe, Oh God, though the thought might have been mine. Frantic, I checked in my rearview mirror and saw Jay rubbernecking for a place to park. Finally, he just pulled up beside me.

  I rolled down my window and spoke before he could. Call me a coward, but there was nothing more I could do for Grace.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” I told him straight off. “Grace is going to get in your car now. You’ll take her inside.” I turned to Grace. “Jay can help you. I’ll only be in the way.”

  I don’t know what I’d have said had she argued. Mercifully, she simply swallowed, pulled up her fur-edged hood, opened the door and rushed around the front of my truck to Jay’s car. If the vultures saw her, they didn’t yet know who she was.

  They had certainly known me once. The Massachusetts Attorney General made sure of it. My crime, while unintentional and tragic, was personal for her. Her father had been crippled several years earlier when his car was hit by a person who was texting, and while the state legislature subsequently made texting-while-driving illegal, the penalty was a fine so small as to be no deterrent at all. The AG was incensed—and she was right. I’m the first to say that. A slap on the wrist accomplishes nothing. So she continued to make noise, louder each time a new car came on the market that offered enhanced access to technology.

  Then I showed up, lost in a densely wooded area and—stupid, stupid, stupid—taking my eyes from the road to look at my navigation screen and missing a STOP sign just as a van sped through. That driver and my daughter were killed. It didn’t matter that he hit us or that forensics showed him going faster than the limit. I was the only survivor.

  Seizing on the case, the AG strong-armed a bill through the state legislature banning interactive technology from functioning in a moving car. Granted, auto manufacturers sought injunctions and have since won years to implement changes, but the legal maneuvers took the case viral. The Massachusetts AG had called it the Mackenzie Cooper Law, and the name stuck. As if the horror of losing my only child wasn’t enough, I became the poster child for distracted driving.

  And the press? Ate. It. Up. For weeks, the media was parked outside our door, crowding in every time I left home, intruding on our misery with telephoto lenses, even at our daughter’s funeral.

  I deserved it. I deserved every bit of the punishment. Still, here, now, the memory threatened to close up my throat.

  “Text me,” I managed to call, but to Grace or Jay? I was too desperate to escape to care which. Shifting gears, I paused only to make sure that none of those converging on the police station were anywhere near the front of my truck, before leaving the horror behind.

  3

  Driving against traffic, I returned to the center of town. Officer Gill wasn’t there; he would be at the station, wanting in on any excitement to be had. I stopped at the crosswalk anyway before turning right onto Cedar. Then I kept a moderate foot on the gas, block by block, quarter mile by quarter mile, pushing against the walls of the past until they began to recede.

  My window was still down. The fresh air was a must. This late in the day it was cold but so, so different from the city air of those memories that the farther I drove, the better I felt. One turn had me driving past the pretty yellow farmhouse that, even with fallow fields gone soggy, made me smile. Another turn opened beside the facsimile of a mountain that Devon called its own. It had no black diamonds, just a double chair to lift skiers to six downhills, and the Magic Carpet where every child in town learned to ski. There were no takers today. The only remaining snow lay in fraying mounds under the evergreens that bordered the slopes.

  With the reassurance of familiar sights, my mind began to clear. I had a good life here. It was carefully rooted and logical. Guided by that logic, I knew that Jay calling Edward the new owner was a euphemism. Edward was in venture capital. He would simply be representing a group, which was exactly what people in town were saying—that a group had bought the Inn. A venture capitalist might head that group or simply be here laying the groundwork for its takeover of the Inn. Whatever, his presence would be temporary.

  That didn’t explain why he had grown a beard or wore muddy boots. It didn’t explain why he hadn’t let me know ahead of time that he was coming. That was the most upsetting. Did he seriously think I wouldn’t be hurt seeing him? We had been married for five years and together for another two before that. Even through the devastating days at the end, he had never been callous. What had first drawn me to him, twelve years ago, was his ability to communicate.

  * * *

  His back was to me as he stood across the room. It wasn’t a large room; art galleries on Newbury Street were never large. But the good ones carried weight, meaning that museum curators attended their openings. I recognized one of them now, talking with the friend whose work I had come to see. Her medium was colored pencils, which she bought by the thousands, sharpened, cut and arranged point out, end out, flank out—any which way—to recreate parts of the human body. Since my own medium was clay, I was considered more conventional, although conventional wasn’t a word my parents would use to describe me. Tonight I wore a calf-length drape of a dress that was definitely more artist than patron. It had been created by another friend, who had given it to me in exchange for a set of mugs for her mom. The silk was a breathy-pale coral, painted with flowers and lines in surprisingly gentle burgundies and browns. It was sleeveless, had a deep V in the front, and clung at the bodice before falling in slim drifts to uneven points that overlapped the top of my boots. The boots were cowboy-style, but of slouchy leather with a bronze sheen. I wore an armful of bangles, a narrow scarf tied as a headband, and goose bumps.

  In fairness, the goose bumps were there before he turned. But they spiked when his eyes caught mine. They were a startling light blue, almost iridescent. On a purely artistic level, they intrigued me.

  Not wanting to stare, I quickly retreated to the sculpture before me. Minutes later, I felt a warmth at my shoulder. “Are you the artist?”

  As pick-up lines went in my circle, it was clichéd. But his natty suit said he wasn’t in my circle at all. His voice was deep and serious. I dared only the briefest glance at him before saying, “Don’t I wish. This hand is amazing.” With a soft jangle of bracelets, I raised my hand to a similar pose, much as I had done when the artist was making the piece. My hand—her hand—was relaxed, raised and turned at the wrist, fingers extended and graceful in an almost pious way.

  We stood side by side. He held a wine glass as he studied the piece. “How many pencils are in it?”

  “Seven hundred and thirty-three.”

  He sputtered a low laugh. “That was a rhetoric
al question. How do you know the answer?”

  “I know the artist. I watched her make this.”

  “Seriously?”

  I looked up at him then. We were still arm to arm, but his eyes were on mine. I felt a fast link. “Very. We knew each other at Ox-Bow.”

  “Ox-Bow.”

  “Chicago. Actually, it’s in Saugatuck—that’s Michigan—but it’s affiliated with the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s an artists’ colony. We were both fellowship students.”

  “So you are an artist, just not of this piece.”

  I knew the difference between polite indulgence and genuine interest. My father was a master of polite indulgence; I rarely knew what he actually thought. This man was different. There was something … bare … about his face.

  “I work in clay,” I said. “The challenge for me would be replicating the sheer feeling of this.” I nodded toward the hand. “Look at it—wrist, knuckles, fingernails, all in perfect proportion and pose. It comes to life.”

  He said nothing.

  Awkward, fearing I’d lost him, I asked, “Don’t you think?”

  He remained serious. “I do. But I’m pretty dumb when it comes to art. I’m here just tagging along with a friend.”

  That made sense. His hair was neatly cut, his suit dark and sedate, his loafers polished. The only thing even remotely artistic about him was his tie, which had tiny flowers—ironically—in the same coral as my dress. I wondered if someone had put the outfit together for him. I had a friend who earned money doing that. Her medium was gouache, but she worked at an exclusive men’s shop to pay bills. If this man used someone like her, the tie might be as far as he dared go.