by John Hart
“Does that surprise you?”
She ducked her head, wiped off the tears, and her fingers left a trace of dark soil beneath one eye. “She doesn’t approve of me coming here. She says it’s morbid.”
I squatted on my heels. “Your mother is very much about the present, I think. The present and the future. Not the past.” She studied the heavy sky and seemed oppressed by it. The tears had ceased, but she still looked sunken and gray. Beside her, the bouquet was brilliant and stark and weeping fresh. It leaned against the stone that bore the dead boy’s name. “Does it bother you that I’m here?” I asked.
She grew suddenly still. “I never thought you killed him, Adam.” She put a tentative hand on my leg; a gesture of comfort, I thought. “It doesn’t bother me.”
I moved to place my hand over hers, but, at the last second, laid it on her forearm instead. She jerked back and a small hiss of pain passed though her lips. A dark certainty filled me. The same thing had happened at the hospital when I’d touched her arm; she’d told me that I startled her. I doubted that now.
She canted her eyes at the ground, held the arm against her body, as if afraid I might reach for it again. Her shoulders angled away from me. She was frightened, so I spoke softly. “May I see?”
“See what?” Defensive. Small.
I sighed. “I caught your mother searching your room. She found the razor blade.” She rolled her shoulders in, made a ball of herself. I thought of the long sleeves she wore, the sweeping skirts, and the long pants. She kept her skin hidden. At first, I’d thought nothing of it, but the blade put everything into a different light.
“She should not have done that. It’s an invasion.”
“I can only assume that she’s worried about you.” I waited before I asked again. “May I see?”
She denied nothing, but her voice dwindled even further. “Don’t tell Daddy.”
I held out an open palm. “It’s okay.”
“I don’t do it much,” she said. Her eyes were soulful and afraid, but she held out her arm, half-bent. I took the hand, found it hot and damp. Her fingers squeezed as I pushed up the sleeve as gently as I could. Breath hissed between my teeth. There were fresh cuts and those that had partially healed. And there were scars, thin and white and cruel.
“You weren’t at a health spa, were you?”
She shrank away, almost to nothing. “Eighteen days of inpatient treatment,” she said. “A place in Colorado. The best, supposedly.”
“And Dad doesn’t know?”
She shook her head. “It’s for me to fix. Me and Mom. If Dad knew it would only make it harder.”
“He should be involved, Miriam. I don’t see how hiding this can help anyone.”
She lowered her head further. “I don’t want him to know.”
“Why not?”
“He already thinks something is wrong with me.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He thinks I’m twitchy.” She was right. He’d used those words.
I asked the biggest question, although I knew that there was no simple answer. “Why, Miriam?”
“It takes away the pain.”
I wanted to understand. “What pain?”
She looked at the gravestone, caressed the hard-edged letters of Gray Wilson’s name. “I really loved him,” she said.
The words caught me off guard. “Are you serious?”
“It was a secret.”
“I thought you were just friends. Everybody thought that.”
She shook her head. “We loved each other.”
My mouth opened.
“He was going to marry me.”
CHAPTER 22
Miriam had never been what my father thought she should be; she was right about that. She was beautiful in a pale and subdued way, but so reticent at times that one might easily forget that she was in the room. She’d been like that from the earliest days: sensitive and small, easily lost in the shadows. The rest of us were too outgoing perhaps. Maybe her mother wasn’t the only one who’d smothered Miriam. Maybe it had been a group effort, unintentional but cruelly effective. And I knew how weakness could compound over time. When she was twelve, some girls at school had been unkind to her. We never learned what the unkindness had been, something typical of girls that age, I’d always imagined. Whatever the slight, she’d gone three weeks without speaking to anyone. My father had been patient at first, then grown frustrated. There was an explosion near the end, harsh words not easily forgotten. She had cried and fled the room, and his apologies, later that night, had been to no avail.
He’d felt horrible about it, but dealing with women had never been his strong suit. He was gruff, spoke his mind when he spoke at all; and there was no place for delicacy in the man. Miriam was too young to understand that. She withdrew further over subsequent years, built the wall higher, salted the ground around her. She confided in her mother, and in Jamie, perhaps. But not in my father, and certainly not in me. It was a small sadness that began easily and grew until we barely noticed it.
Miriam was just quiet. That’s how she was.
The relationship with Gray Wilson must have been as precious to her as the memory of sunset to a blinded man. I could understand why she’d have feelings for the kid; he was loquacious and bold, everything that Miriam was not. And I could certainly surmise why they’d kept it a secret. My father would not have approved; Janice, either. Miriam had just turned eighteen when Gray was killed. She was about to start Harvard, and he was in his third month of work at the truck plant one county over. But I could see how the two of them might be together. He was easy and likable, handsome in a thick-boned way. And it could be true, what was said about opposites. He was large and raw and poor; she was small and delicate and destined for great wealth.
It was a shame, I thought. One of many.
Before I left the cemetery, I asked Miriam if she wanted me to stay with her, but she declined. Sometimes I just want to be alone with him, you know. Alone with the memory.
Neither one of us mentioned George Tallman, but he was out there, big and real and boring as dirt. George had been in love with Miriam since they were young, but she’d never given him the time of day. He’d been lovesick and desperate and sad. So much so that, at times, it had been painful to watch. She’d settled, I saw that now. Alone and destined to be that way, she’d taken the easy route. She would never admit it, not even to herself; but it was fact, like the sky above was fact, and I wondered what George would say if he could see her here, tear-stained and dressed in black, weeping over the grave of a rival five years in the ground.
We parted with an awkward embrace and my promise to keep quiet about what I’d learned. But I was worried. More than that, I was frightened. She was a cutter, so full of pain that it took her own blood to wash it away. How did it work, I wondered. A cut an hour? Two a day? Or did they come without pattern, a quick slice when life reared its ugly head? Miriam was weak, as fragile and liable to drop as any of the petals she’d laid on his grave. I doubted that she had the resources to deal with the problem, and wondered if Janice had the requisite commitment. She’d kept it from my father. Was that to protect Miriam or for some other reason? I asked myself one more question, asked because I had to.
Could I keep my promise to stay quiet?
As I drove away, left her alone, I felt a powerful urge to visit Grace. It was not a conscious matter, but one of feeling. They were so different, the two of them. Raised on the same property by two men who could have been brothers, they could not be more opposite. Miriam was as cool and quiet as March rain; Grace had the raw force of August heat.
But I decided against a visit. There was too much to do, and Dolf, for the moment, needed me more. So I drove past the hospital and continued farther into town. I parked in the lot of the Rowan County Municipal Building and took the stairs to the second floor. Grantham thought he had a motive. I needed to take a look at that.
The tax assessor’s office was to the right.
I entered through a glass door. A long counter ran the width of the reception area; seven women occupied the space behind it. None of them paid me the slightest bit of attention as I consulted the huge map of Rowan County that was posted on the wall. I found the Yadkin River and traced it until my finger touched the long bend that contained Red Water Farm. I found the right reference number, went to the smaller maps, and pulled the one I needed. I spread it out on one of the large tables. I expected to see a single fourteen hundred and fifteen acre parcel with my father’s name on it. That’s not what I saw.
The farm was delineated on the map: Jacob Alan Chase Family Limited Partnership. Twelve hundred and fifteen acres.
The southern piece of the farm had been carved away, a rough triangle with one long side of curving river. Adolfus Boone Shepherd. Two hundred acres.
Robin was right. Dolf owned two hundred acres, including the house.
Six million dollars, she’d said. Based on the latest offer.
What the hell?
I copied the deed book and page numbers onto a piece of scrap paper and replaced the map on its rack. I went to the counter, spoke to a woman. She was middle-aged and round. Thick blue powder rimmed the hollow space beneath her eyebrows. “I’d like to see the deed for this parcel of land,” I said, and slipped the scrap of paper onto the counter between us. She did not even bother to look down.
“You need the Register of Deeds, sugar.”
I thanked her, went to the Register of Deeds office, and spoke to another woman behind another counter. I gave her the numbers and told her what I wanted. She pointed to the end of the counter. “Down there,” she said. “It’ll take a minute.”
When she reappeared, she had a large book under her arm. She dropped it onto the counter, slipped a thick finger between two pages, and opened the book. She thumbed pages until she found the right one, then spun the book to face me. “Is that what you want?” she asked.
It was a deed of transfer dated eighteen years ago. I skimmed the language; it was straightforward. My father had transferred two hundred acres to Dolf.
“That’s interesting,” the woman said.
“What?”
She put the same thick finger on the deed. “No tax stamps,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She huffed, as if the question weighed heavily on her. Then she flipped back a few pages to another deed. On the top corner was affixed a number of colored stamps. She pointed. “Tax stamps,” she said. “When land is purchased a tax is paid. The stamps go on the deed.” She flipped back to the deed that transferred two hundred acres of Chase land to Dolf Shepherd. She put her finger on the corner. “No stamps,” she said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She leaned down to read the name on the deed. “It means that Adolfus Shepherd didn’t buy this land.” I opened my mouth to ask the question, but she forestalled me with an upraised hand and a puff of cigarette breath. She leaned into the deed again, plucked off another name.
“Jacob Chase gave it to him.”
Outside, the heat tried to weigh me down. I looked up the street to the next block, where the courthouse sat, timeless and spare under the white sun. I wanted to talk to Rathburn. He’d been at the farm, trying to speak to my father about something. And there was something about Dolf, too. What was it that my father had said? I stopped on the sidewalk, tilted my head as if to better hear the words: And don’t you go talking to Dolf about this either. What I say goes for him, too.
Something to that effect.
I pushed my feet up the sidewalk, toward the jail. It rose, hard-edged and graceless, with windows as narrow as a woman’s face. I thought of Dolf, rotting inside, then was past, and moving up the courthouse stairs. The judge’s chambers were on the second floor. I had no appointment, and the bailiffs at security knew damn well who I was. They sent me through the metal detector three times, patted me down so well that I could not have slipped a paper clip past them if I’d put it in my underpants. I took it, like I could take it all day. Still, they hesitated; but the courthouse was public domain. They lacked the authority to keep me out.
The judge’s chamber was a different story. It was easy to find—up the stairs, past the D.A.’s office—but getting in was another matter. Nothing public about chambers. You got in if the judge wanted you in. The door was made of steel and bulletproof glass. Two dozen armed bailiffs guarded the building, and any one of them would take me down if the judge told him to.
I looked up and down the empty hall. Beyond the glass, a small woman sat behind a desk. She had a tea-colored face, yellow hair, and severe eyes. When I rang the buzzer she stopped typing. The eyes focused, she lifted a finger, then left the room as fast as her swollen legs could shift her.
Gone to tell the judge who’d come calling.
Rathburn had on a different suit, but looked about the same. A little less sweat, maybe. He studied me through the glass, and I could see the wheels turn. After a few seconds, he whispered to his secretary, who put her fingers on the phone. Then he opened the door. “What do you want?”
“A minute of your time.”
“On what subject?” His glasses flashed, and he swallowed. No matter the verdict, he thought I was a killer. He stepped forward until his body filled the crack in the door. “Are we going to have a problem?”
“Why did you come to see my father the other day? That’s what I’m here to talk about.”
“You can have one minute,” he said.
I followed him past the small woman with the hard eyes and stood in front of his desk as he closed the door down to a crack. “She’s looking for an excuse to call the bailiffs,” he told me. “Don’t give her one.”
He sat and I sat. A light sweat appeared on his top lip. “What was the argument about?” I asked. “You and my father.”
He leaned back and scratched at his toupee with a finger. “Let’s get one thing straight first. The law is the law and the past is past. You’re in my chambers and I’m the judge. I don’t do personal in chambers. You step over that line and I’ll have the bailiffs in here so fast you won’t believe it.”
“You locked me up for murder. You locked Dolf up for murder. Hard to keep that from being personal.”
“Then you can leave right now. I don’t owe you anything.”
I tried to calm down. I told myself that I came here for a reason.
The judge’s face had gone dark red. A chair creaked in the other room. I leaned back, breathed in, breathed out, and he smiled in a way that made me queasy. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s better. I knew that somewhere there was a Chase that could be reasonable.” He smoothed his polished, white hands across the desk. “If you could just talk your father into being equally reasonable.”
“You want him to sell?”
“I want him to consider the well-being of this county.”
“That’s why you went to see him?”
He leaned forward and cupped his hands as if he were holding some great jewel. “There is opportunity here. Opportunity for you, for me. If you could just talk to him. . . .”
“He knows his own mind.”
“But you are his son. He’ll listen to you.”
“That’s why you agreed to see me? So I could talk to my father?”
His face closed down, smile gone. “Somebody needs to make him see reason.”
“Reason,” I said.
“That’s right.” He tried another smile, but it failed. “Things have gone from bad to worse for your family. Seems to me that this is the perfect opportunity to steer your family in a better direction. Make some money. Help the community . . .”
But I didn’t hear all that. My mind was stuck. “Bad to worse . . .” I repeated the phrase.
“Yes.”
“What do you mean?”
He opened his hands, lifted the right one, palm up. “Bad,” he said, then lifted the left hand. “Worse.”
I pointed at the r
ight hand, knew that he could read the tight anger in my voice. Knew that he enjoyed it. “Start with the bad,” I said.
“I’ll start with the worse.” He jiggled that hand. “Another loved one in jail for murder. People getting killed and hurt on the property. An angry town—”
“Not everybody feels that way,” I interrupted.
He tilted his head, continued in a louder voice. “Risky business decisions.”
“What risky business decisions?”
His mouth twitched at one corner. “Your father’s in debt. I’m not sure that he can pay.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s a small town, Adam. I know a lot of people.”
“And the bad?” I asked.
He lowered his hands, took on a pained expression that I knew was false. “Do I really need to explain it?”
I bit down, hard.
“Your mother was a beautiful woman. . . .”
He was twisting the knife for his own satisfaction. I saw that and refused to participate. I came to my feet, raised a finger, then turned and walked away. He followed me into the antechamber. I felt him behind me as I passed his secretary’s desk. “Bad to worse,” he said, and I turned to face him. I don’t know what his secretary saw on my face, but she was dialing as I closed the door behind me.
CHAPTER 23
My father was drunk. He was alone in the house and he was hammered. It took about three seconds for me to figure that out, mainly because I’d never seen it before. His religion was work to excess and all other things in moderation, so that in the past, when I’d come home drunk and bloody, his disappointment shone out like holy fire. This thing that I saw now . . . it was new and it was ugly. His face was loose and drawn, eyes gone wet. He filled the chair like he’d been poured into it. The bottle was open and close to empty, the glass down to half a finger. He stared at something in his hand, and strange emotions moved in him so that his features seemed to flow across the bones of his face. Anger, regret, remembered joy. It was all there in staccato bursts, and it made him look like a soul unhinged. I stood in the door for a long time, and I don’t think he blinked once. Were I to close my eyes, I would see the color gray touched with small, cold yellow. An old man in a fractured slice of time. I had no idea what to say to him.