by Olga Bicos
But unlike his parents, Ryan didn’t sell Daniel short. He figured once he pointed out a couple of mistakes, Daniel would see the light. Hence, his trip here. A planned moment of enlightenment.
He leaned in close, whispering to his cousin, “It’s all yours, Danny. Everything you ever wanted. Are you telling me you’re willing to risk it? Your dreams for Cutty House? Just to take care of my miserable hide?”
“Is that what you think?” Daniel, smiled from ear to ear. He pocketed his car keys as he stepped back, freeing up his hands. He was loving this, the confrontation. “Ever heard the saying, kill two birds with one stone?”
“Now isn’t that clever? Only, here’s a thought. Holly gets fed up, doesn’t stick around for the big show. You lose the girl and the house.”
“She’ll stay. She doesn’t have a choice.”
Which gave Ryan pause. What does he know? “Everyone has a choice, Daniel. I think you’re making some rather poor ones.”
Something on Daniel’s face changed—his eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared. Just like that, the prey turned into the hunter. Ryan braced himself, knowing that whatever was coming, at least he’d be closer to the truth.
“Does her face haunt you?” Daniel asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Does she visit you in your dreams still? Do you even remember her? I can just imagine what it feels like, to see her so close. Alive again.”
Ryan felt each word drive into him like a bullet. Does her face haunt you? Dan was talking about Nina. The way he looked at Ryan—the venom in his voice.
A moment of enlightenment. Isn’t that why he’d come? Only, here was Ryan making all the connections. All the trouble Dan went to finding Holly, bringing her here… This wasn’t the simple reprisal Ryan had always assumed.
Nina and Dan?
He told himself maybe he’d known all along. The knowledge was just waiting for a moment like this, a trigger. Like those suppressed memories. He hadn’t been ready to face the truth until now.
He’s just like my father….
Ryan whispered, “Did you really love Nina that much?”
Daniel stepped back, giving himself room. At the same time, his fist swung around, aiming for Ryan’s face. Ryan ducked. He punched Daniel in the gut. Again. Bringing him down.
Of course, Ryan thought, catching his breath. Everything always came back to Nina.
He thought he’d known the truth. All of it.
Jesus.
Daniel lay on the ground. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth where he’d bit his lip. They were gathering a crowd—the day’s entertainment. There weren’t too many street brawls going down in Pacific Heights that afternoon.
“It just might be worth it, Ryan,” Daniel said, sitting up. “Damn if it just might.”
Ryan knelt down, keeping a tight hold on his temper. He’d miscalculated, and there was no more room for error.
“You never were very farsighted, Dan, but this is just plain dumb,” he said, still hoping for that enlightenment. “You think about what you have right now. Cutty House. Samuel and Vanessa in the palm of your hand. Everything you wanted ripe for the taking.”
He stood, looking down at his cousin. “My advice? Don’t fuck it up.”
But as he walked away, he heard his cousin yelling.
“You killed her, Ryan. You know you did.”
21
Vanessa found her husband seated on Ryan’s old bed, almost comatose with drink. With his shoulder slumped against the headboard, she thought he looked like a piece of baggage. A lump. He was so far gone, he didn’t even see her standing in the doorway watching him.
Samuel called this room The Shrine: Here once lived my son. It was almost fifteen years since Ryan had lived there and Vanessa still hadn’t moved or changed one item of furniture. The walnut headboard and plaid comforter, the shelves with sailing trophies and books. Everything was just as Ryan had left it before going to college.
Except Nina’s photograph, the one in the Tiffany frame. Vanessa distinctly remembered putting it away in the bottom-most drawer of the bureau.
Now the photograph was back on the bedside table. Her husband was staring right at it.
She felt the blood rush to her face. Don’t they make a fine couple, the drunk and his make-believe bride.
She felt herself collapse a little inside with the horrible thought. The last years had been wearing, making her wonder how long she could keep at it, playing “the good wife,” the one left behind and taken advantage of. The good soldier, Samuel Cutty’s wife. Another useless title like all the others she’d cultivated over the years: guest editor for the Orchid Gazette, president of the horticulture club, chairman of the local Cancer Society. The list went endlessly on.
You really are some weird society freak. Well, perhaps Nina had been right all along. It’s all she had left. Her dignity, her courage—those had long since drained away.
Almost in slow motion, Samuel raised his hand in a half gesture, as if reaching to touch Nina’s face. Watching, Vanessa felt a familiar rush of heat. Wake up, Samuel! She wanted to shake him, wanted to hit him with her fists to wake him up. Look at me! Not her!
Instead, she forced herself to see Samuel through something other than her disappointment. Visualize. See if you can change your reality. Isn’t that what her husband did each day with his drink?
She closed her eyes. Opening night, the Opera House brilliantly lit. Samuel had worn a top hat and she a mink stole he’d bought her, their first appearance together as man and wife. That night, she’d felt an almost maddening exhilaration looking up at Samuel, so tall and handsome it made her heart ache. They’d attracted a crowd, the new crown prince and his bride. She’d looked over at her father, saw him give a wink of approval. You see, Daddy? You see!
She held tight to the memory and opened her eyes. Looking back into the room, she tried to fit the image like a overlay on the man sitting on the bed. Puffy eyes, red nose, yes, but he was still handsome. His hair, now completely silver, abundant and well-kept…the cleft in his chin and piercing blue eyes. A woman might still find him attractive.
A few years back, she’d read about alcoholism. With support and treatment, many alcoholics can rebuild their lives…. She had thought she could help him. She’d gone to meetings and sought counseling. But in the end, it was just another project. Like her orchids and charities. Something else to pour her soul into, to make her feel less empty.
That book about marriage? Was it possible for a person to pick the wrong fork in the road and run straight into ruin? One bad decision leading to forever?
What about doubling back to find a new path? Was she just being lazy, letting it all slip away? What if she worked harder, pushed harder?
Even now, she could feel that desire to change rise within her. The emotion warmed, rejuvenating her, so that she felt herself able to move inside the room toward her husband. The day she’d asked Daniel to take over Cutty House had been much the same. Something in her had screamed for a chance.
But there was fear, as well. Her meeting with Holly hadn’t gone well. Daniel no longer seemed such an asset. And Nina. Watching her husband mooning over the girl’s photograph, Vanessa now found that Nina seemed more terrifying and alive than ever.
In the end, she wasn’t sure what forces urged her to sit next to Samuel, hesitating just an instant before she put her arms around him. She leaned her head against his shoulder, stroking his back as she sat beside him on the bed.
She knew Samuel was lost somewhere in his head. Welcome to the world of drink. But perhaps she could use this moment in her favor and reach out to a place where things could still be fluid instead of fixed.
“I want you to come back to me, Samuel.”
Her duty as his wife. The choices we make…
“I can help you get through this,” she coaxed. “Together, we can start over.”
Did it really matter that he’d lost their money? They still had Cutty House—barely, but it was st
ill viable. If she could get him back, make him even half the man he used to be. Together…
But Samuel didn’t so much as break his gaze from the photograph. Slowly her memory of him, those days when she thought it might be her husband’s political career she’d be planning, vanished back into the ether of the past. How little you left me, Nina.
All that potential lost, while she tried desperately not to see Nina smiling at them both—laughing at her.
Imagine, Daniel bringing Nina back to haunt them.
Vanessa didn’t know how long she sat there. Minutes? An hour? She just knew her arms ached, and she was tired of being the only one carrying the burden. She dropped her hands, giving up.
“I’m having a party. At the house,” she told Samuel, her voice sounding cold and full of instruction. “I need you to do something for me.”
For the first time, he turned to look at her, her command bringing him back in a way that her warmth and forgiveness never could.
She told him what she needed.
“It’s the least you can do,” she said.
Her rage bubbled inside her almost as if part and parcel of the motion of rising to her feet. Like a child, she reached across Samuel for the photograph. She slammed it down on the nightstand. Heard the glass shattering beneath.
She didn’t bother to wait for Samuel’s reaction. Walking down the hall, she brushed away her tears, focusing on the day ahead. She had a benefit for the church to organize. Easter dinner for the homeless. A lot of calls to make.
She kept going over her schedule for the day, trying not to see Nina’s face. Trying not to compare the memory of it with the image of the architect, Holly Fairfield. But she knew.
Just like Nina, Holly wasn’t going away.
Work. It was as good an antidote as any for what ails a body.
That was Holly’s thinking as she pored over design books, at one point even digging up old notes from a class she’d taken on the modern movement, trying to concentrate on the fundamentals of lines and symmetry.
The last few days she’d worked late into the night, fighting sleep, almost fearing the moment she might doze off over her drawings, stopping only after Harris would come home and shoo her off to bed.
The problem: She couldn’t control her dreams. They were filled with images of Ryan. The strange sense that he needed her to stay, at the same time, pushing her away. Their kiss.
Come morning, she’d wake up and work even harder.
Eventually, the day came when she thought she was ready. Time to unveil her work. She’d dressed in her power suit and taken the designs into Daniel’s office down the hall from hers at Cutty House. She’d held her breath as he flipped through the drawings.
As cheerleaders went, he wasn’t bad.
He could go on a bit, sure, and at some point, Holly had to question his sincerity. But she chose instead to bask in the glory of words like, genius and revolutionary.
Daniel might not know it, but she was dead-on with her designs. She just might cause that “scandal” he coveted.
She was on her way back to her office after their little pep rally—Go, Holly!—ready to check over the as-built measurements. She’d been thinking about crawling up into the space created for the heating ducts, trying to see what treasure might reside with the original ceilings. She’d need a hard hat with a light.
Only, the minute she stepped into her office, she knew something was wrong. Out of place. She’d been working long hours here and at home over the last days. She thought she’d gained a certain hypersensitivity. Or maybe it was just healthy paranoia.
It took a moment for her to spot the problem. A nondescript file, thick with papers, sat in the middle of her desk where she couldn’t miss it. She opened the folder, seeing that each packet of papers had been stapled at the corner. Someone had stuck a Post-it at the top like a label.
Interview of Ryan Foster Cutty…
The words blurred a little. She had to focus as she set aside the design drawings and picked up the package. She removed the Post-it, leafing through what looked like a transcript, the kind used in criminal investigations.
“Did you kill her?”
“No, of course not. Jesus. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“But it’s your fault, right? That she’s dead?”
“Yeah…maybe.”
Ryan’s words the night of the accident. His taped statement to the police. Someone had left it all here, conveniently on her desk.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat reading through the papers. There were several police reports. Even a copy of the autopsy. When someone stepped into her office after a cursory knock, the fear must have shown on her face. Caught red-handed.
“Holly, it’s just me,” Emma said, leaning against the office door.
Holly gathered up the papers strewn across the desk and stuffed them back into their folder. She placed the lot upside down at the corner of her desk. “Emma, you scared ten years off my life.”
“Your door was open. I could see you sitting there.” Emma shrugged, tentative in her welcome. “I thought I should come by and talk about what happened. You’re probably still pretty mad. About the clothes, I mean.”
The clothes? Holly had to make a mental shift, had to drag herself away from a dark and stormy night of twelve years ago.
The shopping trip—the clothes. Almost a week had passed, but Emma had finally found the courage to confess.
“Come in,” she told Emma. “I won’t bite. Not yet, anyway.”
Emma looked a little relieved, seeing that Holly hadn’t lost her sense of humor. “I feel like I’ve let you down,” she said, “and I wanted to explain.”
Emma, Daniel’s cohort in Holly’s transformation into Nina, had come for absolution.
“Is this when I wave my magic wand of forgiveness?” Holly asked.
“Only if you want to. Look, I know it was weird and so dumb. Honestly, you shouldn’t even talk to me.” Here, she smiled. “But the clothes were pretty cool. She wasn’t like us, you know. She’d never just throw on some jeans and a T-shirt.”
“Apparently.” Not giving an inch.
“I just wanted to tell you not to worry. It won’t happen again.”
“Approaching an apology, but not quite there. Come on, now. You can do this.”
“I am sorry.” Emma shrugged. “That just sounds so lame, given the circumstances.”
“Maybe that’s what I don’t understand,” Holly said, thinking about what she’d read in the report. “The circumstances.”
“Yeah, well.” Emma looked up at the ceiling. Frowned. Finally, she looked back at Holly. “Listen. I thought Daniel was okay with this. That he wanted you here, looking like Nina, because you were some kind of lucky charm.” She glanced over her shoulder, checking the door. It was closed.
She stepped over to the desk and sat down in the chair in front of Holly. “And I knew how much he wanted to mess with Ryan. I mean, that party was set up just so that Ryan would get this big creepy feeling when he met you. Because Daniel blames him for Nina’s death.”
Holly felt an enormous weight press down on her chest. Her eyes flicked over the folder stuffed with police reports and transcripts.
Daniel blamed Ryan for Nina’s death? Well, he’s not alone.
But Emma wasn’t finished. “Daniel was pretty upset when he thought you might leave.” She seemed to think about what she was going to say. “I told him you would stay, that you weren’t like that. I told him you wouldn’t just quit.”
Again, Holly glanced at the folder on her desk. Those papers were a warning, a folder stuffed with innuendo and finger pointing as the investigation focused on Ryan as a killer. A gift from someone who wanted her long gone, probably the same person who had sent the invitation to the vineyard, whispering Nina’s name in the hallways. Go home!
“But I think you should,” Emma blurted out. “I think you should leave. Go home.”
; Go home! Just like the words on the window.
“I’m not leaving,” Holly said.
She couldn’t read Emma’s reaction, but she imagined it had to be one of relief. She’d warned Holly well and good. Go home; keep safe. And if Holly was just too stubborn to listen, well, that wasn’t Emma’s problem, now, was it?
No, Holly wasn’t leaving, wasn’t allowing “unknown sources” to run her out of town. But she was asking questions. Like why Ryan had lied to her, telling her the evidence twelve years ago didn’t support the theory that he’d run Nina off the road.
She sighed, picking up the folder and setting it carefully inside her desk drawer. Once she had her hands folded neatly back on her desk, she asked Emma, “Do you have a minute?”
Emma nodded, suddenly only too eager to please. Holly picked up her pen. “Why don’t we talk about your ideas for the kitchen, then?”
22
Ryan stood outside, enjoying the breeze, waiting for his father to show. Out on the deck, he could feel the motion of the water beneath his feet. The tide here ranged from five to seven feet, the houseboats resting on a tidal flat so that sometimes he’d look down and see only mud. When the tide came in, the house would pull away from the bottom, rising gently. Smaller homes rocked noticeably during storms.
I can just imagine what it feels like, to see her so close. Alive again.
Good old Daniel. His cousin had always wanted to step into Ryan’s shoes. Now it seemed he was content to live his nightmare.
You killed her, Ryan. You know you did.
And now Daniel had some big idea to punish him. Make Ryan pay for his high crimes. Because God knows a fucking lifetime of regrets wouldn’t be enough.
Ryan stared up at the bruised night sky. Wispy clouds scudded across, but otherwise everything stood out brilliantly clear. Sausalito rested below the fog line. Tonight, a big dish of a moon waited above as city lights reflected off black water, shimmering with the wind.