A Gala Event

by Sheila Connolly

  “Sure.”

  Meg drained her coffee mug. “Okay, I’m good to go.”

  A knock at the back door signaled the arrival of the town inspector, whom Seth greeted like the old friend that he was. He said a quick hello to Meg, then the two men disappeared upstairs to look at the changes there. They ended up downstairs again to check out the powder room. “Looks good, Seth,” the man said. “Like there was ever any doubt. I’ll be on my way. Congrats, you two, by the way.”

  “Thanks for stopping by so quickly,” Seth replied.

  “Wow, that was fast,” Meg said, when the inspector had left.

  “We work together a lot. Besides, I got it right.”

  “What happens now?”

  “You start tiling.” Seth grinned at her as he ticked the steps off on his fingers. “The walls are prepped, and I’ve cleaned all the construction dirt off the floor. In case you don’t know, there’s a plywood subflooring, then a layer of cement backer board glued to the plywood with construction adhesive. I’ll put in an antifracture membrane, since old houses tend to shift and you don’t want anything to crack. You’re going to check your layout for the tiles, and line things up so they’re square. Remember, the level is your friend—keep checking to make sure things aren’t sliding downhill. Then we mix up some thin-set mortar and away you go. Don’t worry: I’ll be around to give you pointers.”

  “So, mortar and set, then repeat ’til the walls and floor are covered? How long does it take to set up?”

  “You’ll have to let it set overnight, then clean up the joints. Then you can grout. That doesn’t take as long to set as the mortar.”

  “So at least one bathroom could be done by the end of tomorrow?”

  “If all goes as planned.”

  “Does that ever happen?” Meg asked, smiling.

  “Now and then.” Seth smiled back.

  “But I still have to deal with dinner for the crowd this evening. I suppose I could have suggested tomorrow night instead, but I really want to get this over with and move on.”

  “I can understand that, Meg. Aaron has waited a long time for some answers. You may not have them all, but he doesn’t need to wait any longer. He should get on with his life, too.”

  “Exactly,” Meg said. The problem was, she didn’t see any clear path ahead for Aaron, whether or not he could accept his reduced guilt in the death of his parents. He’d been so young when he’d been sent to prison, and whatever skills—professional and social—he had learned had come from inside prison walls. How would he cope in the “real” world?

  Upstairs, Seth patiently explained once again the steps in laying out the tiles. Meg knew she wasn’t stupid, but this was a whole new skill, and since she was going to have to live with the results, she wanted to get things right. Finally Seth said, “Okay, now fly, little bird. I’m going to go downstairs and work on the powder room.” He left, and Meg wavered, unsure.

  “I can do this,” she said. And so she began, picking a starting point and calculating out from that. Seth had mixed the mortar for her, to a soupy consistency, and with her heart in her throat, Meg spread a small amount on one wall, carefully distributed it with her notched trowel, took a deep breath, and started. Spread, set, space, repeat. The larger wall tiles went up easily and had built-in spacers; the smaller tiles she’d chosen for the floor came in manageable sheets. In a fit of daring she had decided to add decorative border moldings at the tops of the half-high wall tiles. But even that turned out to be no problem.

  Why had she been so worried? Or was tiling really just the object of her transferred anxieties? It didn’t matter. The work was happily mindless, and Meg was pleased as the floor grew quickly. She remembered putting together jigsaw puzzles with her mother, when she was a child. She wondered briefly if her mother had kept those. Maybe she should ask her mother to bring a few along with her when she visited. She tried to envision sitting with Seth in front of a crackling fire and putting together little pieces of cardboard and wood, and almost laughed out loud. They were always so busy, and most of the time their activities had to have a tangible product, like a building or a barn full of apples, not just a pretty picture that would be broken down again shortly. But it had been fun . . .

  Solving the puzzle of the Eastman fire was less easy. No one had looked very hard at the time of the fire, and too many years had passed to find much tangible evidence now. Aaron had paid his debt to society, as the saying went, and no doubt he’d paid a psychological price as well. But he’d been little more than a child then, and a stoned one at that; was he a different person now? A better one? Hard to say. Meg’s heart ached for him: the man she knew now had no violence or hatred in him, or so she thought. Or wanted to believe.

  After a couple of hours, the walls and floor of the largest bathroom were finished, and Meg stood in the doorway admiring her handiwork. The lines were straight, and she hadn’t slopped too much mortar on the tiles. It looked good: simultaneously Victorian and modern. She felt a spurt of pride.

  Seth came up behind her. “Nice,” he said, and sounded as though he meant it. “You up for starting the master bath and shower? I’ve installed everything essential.”

  Giddy with her success, Meg said, “Sure, why not? It’s smaller than the other bath, right? Oh, but does that mean we’ll be taking sponge baths in the kitchen sink?”

  “It is smaller, and yes to the latter. But only for a day or two. Just grit your teeth and think of our forebears.”

  “Uh-huh,” Meg replied, unconvinced. “I’m not convinced they bathed at all.”

  After another hour, including some jiggering with fitting corners and edges, aided by Seth, the shower walls and floor were done as well. Meg checked her watch. “Shoot, I’d better start cooking. I told the Eastmans to arrive around seven. Is the house clean enough for company?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Seth said. “Blame everything on construction dust.”

  “Right, including the clumps of dog and cat hair creeping around the floor.”

  “I don’t think our company will complain. You want a bucket of hot water to clean up with? You, not the bathroom. Mortar is definitely not your color, and you’re wearing quite a bit of it.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Once more or less relieved of mortar spatters, Meg went downstairs to start a hearty chicken stew for dinner; luckily Bree had volunteered to refill the bare pantry and fridge. As she chopped, she wondered what they all could talk about without walking through any minefields. Aaron, what are your plans for the future? No, that wouldn’t work. Maybe they could talk about the alpacas, which were cute and funny—and safe. Will the three of you keep in touch now? Equally perilous as a topic of conversation. Lori had barely managed to keep Aaron informed of her address; Kevin had apparently not made any effort at all to reach out to him. But they were family—didn’t that count for something? Hadn’t Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”? But where was home for the fractured Eastmans?

  Aaron was the first to arrive, walking across the fields from the alpaca farm. “Meg, Seth,” he greeted them as he walked into the kitchen. “Smells good in here.”

  “I hope it tastes good, too,” Meg told him. “How are the alpacas?” Oops, she’d already blown that topic.

  “I’m getting kind of fond of them. The way they look at you, it’s like they think you’re acting silly, no matter what you do.”

  “Are they friendly?”

  “I’d say they’re not unfriendly, if you know what I mean. But they keep a distance. Works out fine.”

  Meg had run out of easy questions, so she looked at Seth in mute appeal. He fell back on the tried-and-true male option: “Want to see how the construction’s coming along?”

  The two men went upstairs, and Meg gave a small sigh of relief. Then Lori knocked at the back door,
and Kevin followed her in, having apparently offered her a ride over. “Come in and get warm,” Meg said. “Just hang your coats on the pegs there. Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got cider, hard and soft, wine, beer . . .”

  “Cider’s good for me,” Lori said. “Is it from your own trees?”

  “No, but it’s from Granford—this year’s crop.”

  Lori nodded. “This is a terrific room here, especially after dark. So welcoming. I love all the wood.”

  “I refinished the floor myself. It was the first thing I did to the house, after I moved in.”

  “Looks great.”

  Meg handed Lori a glass of fresh cider. “Kevin?”

  “A beer sounds good. You’ve got a lot of history with this place?”

  Meg handed him a bottle of beer. “You can have a glass if you want. Yes, this place was built by my seventh great-grandfather. At least I think it was seventh—I always get confused with the numbering. Anyway, a direct ancestor. It stayed in the family, but not my line. My mother inherited it from two maiden sisters a couple of decades ago. I moved in going on two years ago. And I’ve probably learned more about the people who lived here since then than my mother ever knew.”

  “Must be nice, having that kind of roots,” Kevin said, taking a large swallow of his beer. “I mean, our house was about the same age, but Dad liked it mostly because it was big and showy and in the right part of town, not because we had any real history with it.”

  Minefield alert, Meg thought, even though it was Kevin who had brought it up. “What’s it like where you live now?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Nothing special. I don’t have a family, so I live in a small apartment. I don’t spend much time there anyway. Mind if I have another beer?”

  He’d finished the first one fast. Was he nervous? “Help yourself, Kevin,” Meg told him. “Lori, where are you living now?”

  “I rent a floor in a house in a small town—well, bigger than Granford, maybe, but hardly a city. Hey, you guys, I’ve got a futon if either one of you wants to come and visit.” Lori looked at each of her brothers in turn, with mute appeal in her eyes. Both men avoided her glance. Yes, a warm and connected family, Meg thought to herself. Not. When had it all gone wrong? Or had it ever been right?

  Dinner lurched along with conversation in fits and starts. At least Meg hadn’t assumed it was a purely social occasion, because in that case it would have to be called a failure. Maybe it was the pending discussion of What Really Happened that had put a damper on the evening. Aaron was mostly silent but watchful. Kevin kept drinking, becoming increasingly morose. Lori tried to fill the silences with cheerful babble, for which Meg was grateful. But she had to admit she was anxious herself. As she had told Seth, she just wanted this to be over so they could all move on.

  When the bowls were all empty after the main course, Meg decided it was time to act. Seth cleared the table, and they exchanged a glance; he nodded, then sat down again. “Aaron, Lori, Kevin, I’m sure you know I, we, wanted to talk to you about what we’ve learned about the fire that destroyed your home.”

  Meg took a moment to survey the siblings’ responses. Aaron looked briefly hopeful; Kevin looked upset; Lori looked something like eager. It was Lori who spoke first. “Have you found something new?”

  “Possibly, although it doesn’t answer all the questions,” Meg said. “And what we’ve uncovered isn’t always pleasant to hear, I’m afraid.”

  “Just go ahead and spit it out, will you?” Aaron said, although not rudely.

  “All right,” Meg began. “From documents we’ve seen, the ones that Aaron came looking for, and from people we’ve talked to, it looks like your father was a con man. I can’t speak to his official job, but he created a shell investment fund that was mainly a Ponzi scheme.” When Lori looked blank, Meg explained what that was, until Lori nodded. “He managed to convince a lot of the wealthier people in Granford to invest with him, but the reality was, there actually wasn’t much money there. When it looked like the whole thing was about to fall apart, we’re guessing that he decided that torching the house to claim the insurance on it was the best or fastest way out of the hole.”

  Aaron had been staring at her intently as she spoke. Now he said, “You mean, he set the fire?”

  “We have no physical evidence of that, but it looks like a strong possibility,” Meg told him gently.

  “Then how did he and Mom end up dead? And Gramma? Did he want to kill me, too?”

  Seth spoke up. “Aaron, we don’t have all the answers. There’s little evidence to work with. If we accept this motive, I think we have to assume that he planned to get out, with your mother and grandmother, and he would have checked your room, too. Did he know about your little den in the basement?”

  “I don’t think so. He wasn’t the type to prowl around and kick the furnace. He called in other people to do that. So you’re saying he didn’t know I was down there? Maybe he and our mother died trying to find me?”

  That was a thought that Meg hadn’t considered. It might temper Aaron’s legal guilt, but it would still leave him with a personal wound, that they might have died trying to save him. “Aaron, we don’t know that,” Meg said gently. “From what I’ve read, it looks like they died in their bedroom, which was directly above the furnace room. Seth thinks it might have been due to smoke inhalation, so they never had a chance to get out.”

  “Their bedroom was directly above the furnace room, and they found what was little more than my old chemistry set in that room, and that was one reason they looked at me,” Aaron said stubbornly. “They figured I caused the fire and cleared out, which is why I was found outside. So even if it was the smoke or fumes or whatever, it was still my fault.”

  Suddenly Kevin spoke. “No, it wasn’t.” Everyone turned to look at him. “I know because I was there.”

  30

  Aaron looked at his brother with something like wonder. “You were there that night, in the house?”

  Kevin nodded. “I was there with you in the basement.”

  Lori looked shell-shocked. “What the hell? How come you never told anybody?”

  “Because I thought I was the one who started the fire.” That silenced his siblings momentarily.

  “Kevin, I think you’re going to have to explain yourself,” Seth finally said.

  “I kind of have to start from the beginning, okay?” Everyone nodded. “Okay, remember, I was eighteen, a senior at Dad’s snobby alma mater. Lori was off messing up at college, so there was a lot of pressure on me to do better. My grades were okay and I was on the right track to get into an Ivy school. But I wasn’t happy. I didn’t have a lot of friends at school—most people figured I was kind of a nerd. So one night I decided to do something about it, and it was a whole lot easier to find drugs than to find a girl around there. So I called Aaron. You really don’t remember any of this, baby brother?”

  Aaron shook his head. “I never have, and believe me, I’ve tried. In prison I read that the combination of shock and the drugs I was playing with can kind of wipe the slate clean. The memories just aren’t there. Sorry.”

  “What are you apologizing for?” Kevin said. “That’s what let me get away with it all these years.”

  “Kevin, you said you were going to explain,” Lori said impatiently. “What the hell happened?”

  “Look, I knew what Aaron was doing in the basement. I wasn’t totally clueless, and I did a little snooping because he kept disappearing down there, even when I was around, but we never talked about it. I was so squeaky-clean back then! I thought I needed to loosen up a little, experiment, like, and I figured Aaron would know where to get the stuff I’d heard about and how to use it. Even if he was younger, I guess I kind of trusted him to look out for me. I couldn’t ask the guys at school.”

  “Thanks a lot, Kevin,” Aaron said. Kevin shot him a quick look to see if he
was being sarcastic, but it was hard to tell.

  “Yeah, well . . . So I called Aaron and I said some kind of vague things about getting some stuff, and somehow he figured out what I meant and he said, sure, no problem. I drove down late one night without telling anybody. I parked before I got too near the house so nobody could see the car from there, and walked over, and Aaron let me in through the basement door. As far as I know, Mom and Dad never knew I was there. And Aaron was really cool about the whole thing. He didn’t make fun of me, and he told me that he thought as a first-timer I should stick to weed. He had some good stuff, he said, and he showed me what to do. God, this sounds so stupid now, but I’d never smoked anything, although it was around at school. I couldn’t say if Aaron had taken anything else, but at the beginning he didn’t seem too out of it. He just sat there with this kind of half smile on his face and watched me get wasted.”

  “Wow,” Aaron said. “I did that?”

  “Yeah, you did,” Kevin said with a humorless smile. “I can’t tell you how long this went on. What time did the fire department think the fire started?”

  “Maybe around one a.m.,” Meg said.

  Kevin nodded. “Okay, so I would have arrived around eleven, maybe—I know it was pretty dark. We would have been smoking down there for maybe two hours? And then . . .”

  “The fire started?” Meg prompted.

  Kevin nodded. “The basement was kind of a pit, because nobody went down there. I was really wasted, you know? And that stuff you gave me, Aaron, it made me kind of paranoid.”

  Aaron shrugged. “It happens. You never know until you try. As I remember it, at least. I hear things have changed.”

  “Can you get on with it?” Lori demanded. “So the two of you are stoned out of your minds on the floor in the basement. What about the fire?”