by J. D. Robb
“We’ll be out in the hall,” Norah told her in a low, urgent tone. “Are you all right?”
Angie nodded.
Norah took her husband’s arm. Walker’s face was still a blank, but Norah’s said if looks could kill, Henry would be stretched out on the floor, stone dead.
When they were gone, a new awful silence filled the room, and she wondered who would have the courage to speak first. Henry looked . . . so very guilty. At length, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, he said, “Where’s a secret sliding panel when you need one?”
Another exquisitely painful pause. She couldn’t help contrasting it with all the easy times, the banter and laughter, everything so natural between them. Good-bye to all that. “You don’t owe me any explanations,” she said eventually. “We both knew how this would end.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t. Angie, I’m sorry, I honestly thought I could save the house for you. That we could.”
She hadn’t meant that ending, but she was relieved that he’d misunderstood—now they wouldn’t have to speak of it at all. “It doesn’t matter. Apparently I’m not meant to live here, that’s all. It’s not a tragedy.”
He made a move toward her; she retreated.
He yanked on his tie, a habit when he was frustrated. “Christ, I’ve ruined everything.”
“It really doesn’t matter.”
“Stop saying that. I know you’re angry.”
“Why would I be?” Although now that he’d said the word, she could feel the emotion. As if he’d opened a gate and gestured her through it. “I hired you because I thought you were a crook. Nothing’s new, except now there’s proof. Don’t, Henry,” she said when he reached out again. “I mean Harry. Mr. Wilde.” She shut her eyes for a second. “Is anything you said to me true? Any of it?”
“No.”
She turned to leave.
“But that’s because I ran out of time! I was going to tell you my real name, my past, how I got into this stupid business—”
“I don’t even care about that. I knew you were lying about almost everything. But Henry—plagiarism. Stealing someone’s words. That’s—the worst thing.”
“Yes. And I knew you’d know it, too—that it’s the worst thing. But I didn’t do it.”
She tried to laugh. “Why would I believe that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“That one thing is true?”
“Yes.”
“How convenient.”
“Could I explain? Will you listen to me?”
“No,” she decided quickly. “I’ve listened to you enough. I’m afraid all you know how to do is tell lies.”
“Well—hang on a second.” He shifted his stance, moving from defense to offense. “Aren’t you being a little selective all of a sudden?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you were fine when I was telling lies for you; that didn’t bother you a bit. And what about all the lies you told me?”
She opened her mouth, but then couldn’t think of anything to say. “Very well. You’re right, I’m a hypocrite. Does that make you feel better?”
“No.”
“Henry, I can’t do this anymore.”
“Wait.”
“I wish you luck. I bear you no ill will,” she said with difficulty, and turned away.
“Angie, wait, don’t leave. You must know—I’m in love with you.”
Well, that was the final straw. Tears stung behind her eyes like vinegar; if she didn’t go now, she would humiliate herself. “No, you’re not. You just want me to not stop loving you.”
He looked stunned. “You—you—”
“But it’s too late. I already have.”
“Angie!”
“Good-bye, Henry.”
In the hall, Norah took one look at her face and said, “You’re coming home with us.”
Twelve
Henry woke up in his chair with a stiff neck and the bright sun in his eyes. Groaning, stiff-legged, he got up and walked to the bed, where he’d thrown his clothes last night, fumbled in his trousers until he found his watch, and cursed. How could it be ten thirty? Then he remembered: he hadn’t fallen asleep till dawn. That was when he’d given up on a light ever coming on in Angie’s room, or her shadow ever passing behind the drawn shade. Either she wasn’t there or she preferred darkness. He couldn’t decide which was worse.
He got dressed mechanically, without interest. Stared at himself in the mirror while he shaved and thought, You look hungover. Interesting. Who knew you could teetotal all night and still wake up resembling the corpse of a bloodhound.
Speaking of hounds, where was Astra? There, he saw through the window, curled up in the sun on the landing of the outside steps. His usual spot. Since he’d fallen in love, he’d taken to staying out all night, sleeping all day.
Henry’s luck stayed bad when he encountered Smoak in the lounge, tidying up with a feather duster. At least the landlord didn’t know anything yet, either that or he’d acquired tact overnight; all he said was, “You’re up mighty late,” and “Afraid you’ve missed breakfast by a mile,” to which Henry responded with grunts. And Smoak wouldn’t leave. Now he was running a damn carpet sweeper over the rug. Nothing for it: Henry would have to telephone Angie with an audience.
“She’s not here,” Mrs. Mortimer informed him, chilly-voiced.
“She’s not?”
“Nope. She didn’t come home last night.”
That explained it. In the pause that followed, he heard all the disappointment, disgust, and condemnation with which he’d punished himself last night. But then Mrs. Mortimer said, “I expect you’ll find her over at the Hershes’.”
His emotions were raw; he couldn’t speak for a second. “You’re a very kind woman.”
“Just a silly one,” she said and hung up.
Norah Hersh was neither kind nor silly. “Yes, she’s here. No, she won’t come to the phone. Because she doesn’t want to talk to you. No, I won’t give her a message. Write her a letter, why don’t you, and then go away.”
He’d run out of choices. He took her advice.
Dear Angie,
I worked at the Sun with a man named Finster. It’s true he was engaged to the lady your cousin spoke of. I won’t talk about her, but I promise that what passed between us was as much of a “love affair” as the one Astra’s conducting with Lulu. But I take all the blame for it. Not my proudest moment, and it seems we reap what we sow. That’s all. You won’t care, but I had to tell you that anyway.
Finster found out. We were up for the same job, assistant managing editor. While I was out on a story, he called in an op-ed under my byline, and they ran it the next day. Somebody cried foul, said it was almost the same as an editorial in the Cincinnati Post a couple of weeks earlier, which it was. I recognized it myself. Great copy. Finster had laid his plans well, and his future father-in-law was the associate publisher. The rap stuck. I got sacked.
Newspapering draws a lot of scoundrels, wastrels, drunks, and degenerates, and we tolerate them. We consider them color. What we don’t put up with is copiers, at least not the egregious kind, and never at the high end of the profession or on the good papers. They’re scum. They get pitched out on the dunghill, and ever after their names are used as curses. If you love what you do, and I did, it’s the end of you.
One friend stuck by me, name of Paddy, an old rummy who took pictures for the Globe. But his liver rotted out and he died, leaving me an inheritance: all his cameras and a dog with one trick.
Here’s the funny part. Paddy had a not very lucrative sideline, cooking up photos of ghosts in haunted houses. You wouldn’t think there’d be much call for that, but fakers have to get their pictures from somewhere, and in a lot of the Northeast, Paddy was their man. Then I was their man.
Only I took it further than Paddy did and became one of the fakers. More money in that if you do it right, although never what you’d call a gold mine. For a while I
enjoyed what Lucien called “bilking the credulous and unwary.” I was in a bad way, and it felt like getting in a punch of my own for a change.
What I liked best, though, was changing my name. I can’t make you understand this, so I’ll just say it. Taking my reputation from me was the same as killing me. I didn’t do what they said, but it felt like I had. Hard to explain, but I felt as ashamed as if I’d done it. If booze is poison, I should’ve died, because God knows I gave it my best. But I couldn’t even pull that off, so I did the next best thing. I disappeared.
Sorry, this must be tedious for you. I’ll skip to the middle. By the time I met you, I’d given up drinking and started writing again, started sending pieces out under pseudonyms. To make a few extra bucks, sure, but also because it turns out I couldn’t stop. So Lucien was right again—I am a newspaperman, not a ghost detective.
A lot of scurvy, defrocked journalists end up at the cheap papers, the kind with more pictures than words, or else they become press agents. I thought I was too good for that, but, wrong again. I’m tired of sinking. You probably don’t want the burden of knowing it’s because of you that I saw what I was turning into. So I’ll spare you, and lie, and say it was my better nature finally surfacing. One thing is true: the thought of leaving you and going back to my old life is like ice water in the face. I can’t do it. So I’ll try for any job now, and I’ll write anything, tripe probably, under my own name.
That’s it. I wish we could’ve gotten your house back. I came to love it, too—I never told you that. I see you there. I want it for you. These cameras are worth something, the typewriter’s almost new. They won’t be enough, but even a little money could be a new start. Since no one’s more resourceful than you, I don’t count out the possibility. Especially if the dancing ghost returns to Willow House some moonless night . . .
I’ll never forget you. I’m sorry you can’t believe the main thing, the truest thing I said last night. That you cared for me for a little while is the memory I’m holding closest. My highest honor. The gift I don’t deserve but will keep with me the rest of my life. Be happy.
Harry Wilde
Thirteen
Angie jumped off her bicycle in a billow of petticoats and exposed stocking—luckily nobody was around to see—and leaned the machine against a tree in front of Mr. Smoak’s house. They should invent something to hold it up once you landed, a swiveling metal bar or rod you could kick into place, up or down. A kickstand, you could call it.
She knocked on Smoak’s door with one hand while trying to smooth her wild hair with the other. How she must look. A fright, but she’d left Norah’s in a hurry and raced all the way. Her hope was that Henry would be too glad to see her to notice her shortcomings.
Mr. Smoak, wearing an apron and holding an uncooked pie, opened the door. His sweet baby face crumpled when he saw her. “Oh dear, you’ve just missed him. He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Left an hour ago for the train station. He walked.”
“He walked?”
“You won’t catch him now, I’m afraid. He was taking the two forty-seven.”
She sagged against the doorframe. “I see.”
“Come inside.”
“No. No, thanks—”
“He left you something. Please, come inside.”
So in she went, weak-legged and empty-headed, and followed Mr. Smoak up to Henry’s room.
“He threw a lot of stuff away, all them machines and thingamabobs for detecting, you know, ghosts. Gave me his barometer, but the rest he said is for you.”
Oh, Henry. His cameras and all the tripods, lenses, plates. His typewriter! “Did he leave anything else? A note,” she specified when Mr. Smoak looked blank.
“Oh. No, sorry, no note. Just paid his rent, whistled up his dog, and left.”
“And . . . no forwarding address?”
“No, ma’am.”
She must have looked alarmingly bereft, because all of a sudden Smoak remembered he had a pie to put in the oven and excused himself. He meant to be kind, but she had no desire to sit alone in Henry’s room and think or pine or cry or whatever Mr. Smoak imagined an abandoned lady might do. She closed the door on Henry’s heartbreaking legacy and went down the outside steps to the yard.
What to do? She couldn’t think. To have come this close and missed him—she rapped her knuckles on her forehead in frustration, skewing her hat. Idiot! You think you’re so smart, and look what you’ve done.
She had to find him, that was all. He’d go to Boston first—that’s where the two forty-seven went—but then he might go anywhere, anywhere in the whole wide world, so she’d have to act fast. An ad in the newspaper? Henry Cleland Wilde, please come back. A. D. was wrong about everything.
Walker would help her. He had all those journalist connections. If anybody could track Henry down, he . . . he . . .
What was that thing that just streaked by? A blur of brown and white dashed through the hedges between Smoak’s and the neighbor’s yard. A cat, she’d thought at first, but no. No, now that she considered, it had looked more like a dog. Yes. It looked like . . .
“Astra!” A man’s weary, irritated, out-of-breath voice. Henry’s.
Everything tingled. Weird, because simultaneously, everything went numb. She could easily have let her knees give out and collapsed in the grass, prostrate from gladness. A miracle. Here came Henry, loping down Lexington Street with a bulging gladstone bag in one hand, empty dog collar in the other.
“Henry!” she called, and “Henry!” again, before he could burst through the hedge and disappear. She never wanted him to disappear again.
He heard her and skidded to a halt, twisting around slowly, pink, perspiring face registering hope and surprise. “Angie?” Oh, the way he said it, just her name. He thought she was a miracle, too! She picked up her skirts and ran to him. Cannoned into him—almost knocked him over. Talking would take too long; she wanted to kiss his amazement and disbelief away. He was the first to remember they were standing in full view of the world; they clasped hands and ran to the side porch, their side porch, and then it was time for words.
“I’m so sorry I doubted you! I never will again. Can you forgive me?”
“You read my letter?”
“You wrote me a letter? Oh, Henry.”
“You couldn’t have—I just mailed it.”
“I’m so glad you wrote me! But, no, Walker told me.”
“Told you what?”
“About that horrible man, Finster.”
“What does Walker know about Finster?”
“Everything! Walker’s been investigating you! Not with a detective, like Lucien, but by calling up and sending cables to his newspaper friends. He said he knew you were in the business almost right away.”
“He did? How?”
“I don’t know. Oh—he said what cinched it was when you said ‘bulldog edition’ while he was showing you around the Republic.”
“Wow.” She loved his bewilderment, his continued incomprehension. She felt like a god, a deus ex machina saving the day. Giving Henry back the thing he wanted most (after her): his reputation.
“Did you know he’s been fired?” she asked rhetorically.
“Who?”
“Finster! No, you didn’t know, because nobody could find you!”
“Finster got fired?”
“Yes, and you got exonerated, sort of, but nobody could tell you, because Harry Wilde had vanished!”
Henry fell back against a porch pillar. “Wait, Angie. Hold on. I’m not—”
“And it wasn’t in the papers, unlike when you got fired, because Finster’s future father-in-law wanted to keep it quiet to protect his daughter. Your, um, your . . . ”
“Angie, you have to know—”
She flipped her hand. “I do know.” She didn’t know how, but she did. Finster’s unfaithful fiancée, Henry’s former . . . indiscretion, was not a person she needed to worry about, now or ever. “Walker says ev
en though there was never a formal exoneration, everybody knows you didn’t do what Finster said.”
“Everybody knows?” Henry’s eyes, just for a second . . . no, those couldn’t be tears. But he swallowed twice, and he couldn’t seem to speak.
“Everybody.” She took his hands. “Do I have to call you Harry now? I don’t mind. It’s rather dashing, actually. Harry—can you forgive me?”
“Oh, Angie. For what?”
“For thinking the worst of you. I’m ashamed, Henry. I should’ve known.”
“Well, I don’t see how. I had a lot of sins to overlook.” He stopped kissing her fingers and turned serious. “There’s still one that’s not forgivable.”
“Impossible.”
“I mean it. Because of me, you’ve lost Willow House.”
“Are you going to marry me?”
His jaw fell, but she gave him credit for a fast recovery. “If you’ll have me,” he said, with all the devotion and enthusiasm she could hope for.
“I will have you. And then, for all I care, we can live in a tree house.”
“Sweetheart.” He kissed her so tenderly, she thought she might weep. “I couldn’t agree more. Because wherever you are—”
“I know. Wherever you are—”
They finished the sentence together, a trick they would continue for years. “Is home.”
Epilogue
“Nice hat.”
Angie jumped. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She snatched off the flashlight she’d tied to the top of her head with a pair of garters. “I was trying an experiment.”
“Very fetching.” Henry crossed to the bed and kissed her. He smelled good, like newsprint and tobacco and excitement.
“You’re early,” she said against his lips. “Not even midnight yet. Did you put it to bed?” She liked using newspaper jargon. She was dying to say “bulldog edition,” but so far the Paulton Republic hadn’t done one.
Henry turned on the tasseled lamp and sat beside her. “Can’t quite see it in church, though,” he said, examining her flashlight-suspender contraption.