by Tim Green
Jeremiah smiled sheepishly at the compliment and nervously touched his hand to the bristles that marked his receding hairline. “Well,” he said, looking around at the imposing old home that had been restored to its original grandeur. Through the carefully manicured trees, he could see the brilliant aqua green water of the lake. “I’m real sorry about your bike. I better be going now, if there’s nothing else I can do for you.”
“No,” she said, “there’s nothing else. Unless . . .”
Jeremiah looked expectantly at her.
“If you stop me for speeding sometime, you can let me off with a warning.”
He smiled broadly at her and Jill smiled back.
“You got it,” he said, then climbed back into his truck. With a wave, he whipped the vehicle around and started up the drive. Jill never did see him as he strained his neck for one final glimpse of her figure in his rearview mirror. And even after, when he could no longer look at her with his eyes, her image filled his mind so that he knew he would have to somehow see her again.
CHAPTER 14
Collin’s funeral was surreal, nightmarish. Like a minimalist drama played out on a modern stage, there were no extras. The service was held in an old funeral home in the village of Skaneateles. Kurt told Jill that he didn’t believe in the significance of funerals and grave sites and he said Skaneateles was as good a place as any. He wanted to conclude the matter with businesslike efficiency. He made no accommodations for his friends in the city or Collin’s friends from Washington. Besides Jill, Kurt, and Grace, there was only the funeral director and the pastor from the local Presbyterian church.
Against the advisement of the funeral director, Kurt didn’t give enough notice to any of the rest of his family to attend. Jill watched the director, a man obviously adept in these types of situations, try to sway Kurt into undertaking a grand affair. He pointed out quite clearly that conventional wisdom suggested that a funeral service was really for the living and not the dead. Kurt politely let him finish, then without emotion told him how it was going to take place and that if he uttered one more word to the contrary he’d go down the road and purchase his son’s twenty-five-thousand-dollar mahogany casket there.
There were no tears at the funeral either, and both the funeral director and the pastor eyed the family nervously. Jill felt sad, but she tried her best to model her outward demeanor after Gracie, who had subdued herself over the past several days with doctor-prescribed Valium, and Kurt, who was as frozen as if the veins that had been filled with formaldehyde were his. The times that Jill felt she was about to cry, she bit her cheek hard and sniffled quietly into a handkerchief. Kurt seemed not to notice.
When it was over, he shed his suit coat without comment and holed up in his library. He was on the phone a lot now too. Jill could see one and sometimes even two or three lines lit up together for hours on end. Their meals were filled with silence or sparse conversation about nothing important. Jill knew that some families dealt with death in this way, with stoic silence. She had to keep telling herself that it was important for her just to be there. The only consolation she had in her loneliness was at night when Kurt would crawl into bed and hold her tight.
In the darkness, they would whisper together, talking wistfully about the new life they would share very soon. Jill didn’t know whether it was healthy or not for him to not openly confront his boy’s death. She suspected that eventually she would have to raise the issue with him, to dredge up the dangerous emotions of anger and grief so they could run their natural course. But the loving moments in their bed at night were so powerful that she was afraid to taint them with talk of the tragedy. Each night she would put it off. Instead, she would scratch Kurt’s scalp as they lay there, and as they talked about the things they would have in their unknown, faraway villa by the sea, he would drift off to sleep.
On Thursday, after a long bike ride, she knocked on his office door and let herself in. Kurt rose from a morass of papers with a scowl on his face that faded slowly. He removed his reading glasses and left them on the desk. The lines around his eyes were more pronounced, and for the first time since she’d known him, Jill was conscious of the difference in their ages.
“I’m really busy, Jill,” he said, pinching the corners of his bloodshot eyes, “but come in.”
He motioned her to the couch and came out from behind his desk. They sat down together and Kurt gently touched her face. She averted her eyes from his to the lovely view from the grand picture window that looked out over the shady green lawn and onto the lake. Somehow, looking at him made her emotional. Softly, he turned her face back toward his until their eyes met once again. She fought back her hysteria, but couldn’t help from suddenly bursting into tears.
“What? What’s wrong?” he said. He spoke as though he had no clue as to why she would be crying.
“I just—” she said, quelling a sob, “I just want to know that you still love me, Kurt. Because I still love you. I know this is hard. I know you must be suffering inside, but I just want something to do. The only time we talk is at night, in the dark. I want to live a life with you. I’m hanging around here walking on pins and needles!
“Gracie, she’s practically comatose. You, you’re shut up in here day and night. You said you wanted me to stay here, and I am. But now I just want to know what you want me to do . . . I feel like I’m losing my mind . . .”
Kurt looked at her as though he only that moment realized she had been so distressed during the preceding days. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. He pulled her head next to his and stroked the back of her hair while she calmed herself.
Then she pulled away and, shaking her head, she said, “I’m sorry too. You’re the one hurting in all this and here I am bawling like a baby . . . I’m sorry. I just want to talk to you, Kurt. I want us to talk about what’s going on in the daylight when you’re not exhausted from a day of whatever it is that you’re doing.”
“I’m doing just what I said I was going to do,” he said quietly. “I’m putting things into motion that are going to expose the people who killed Collin.
“It’s not dangerous,” he said after reading the expression on her face. “Not yet. When it happens, and they’re exposed, it will be time for us to go. I’m planning for that too. I’m also divesting myself of everything to do with Safe Tech . . .”
“Kurt?” she said. Safe Tech had been so much a part of his life. Of course, he would have to leave his company if he was really going to carry out whatever plan it was he had been talking about, but to hear him say it was shocking. It highlighted just how determined he really was.
“That’s why I’m holed up in here. Do you understand now?” he said urgently. “There are a lot of things to do, as you can imagine. I want to disengage myself from the company without crippling it. Once I do that, we’ll take a long trip, just the two of us, and start a new life—together.”
“Kurt, you built Safe Tech from nothing,” Jill said in a soft, almost mystified tone. “Think about the things you’ve been able to do—the medical links, the data protection division . . .”
“None of that means anything,” he said calmly.
Jill simply stared.
“Just stick by me, Jill,” he pleaded. “The next month and a half aren’t going to be easy. I need to free myself from everything at Safe Tech and work my way through Collin’s death at the same time . . .
“And,” he said, his eyes afire with anger, “I want these people to be punished!
“I guess,” he continued more gently, “sometimes . . . I guess sometimes I’ll need to be alone. Just bear with me. There will be times, I know, that this will be hard. But I love you and I know I can count on you. That’s why I asked you to marry me. That’s why I want to share the whole rest of my life with you.”
Jill felt a pang of guilt. Wasn’t marriage supposed to be for better or for worse, in sickness and in health anyway? Kurt wasn’t himself right now, but that was no reason for her not to stand by him and
believe that he would work his way through this difficult time. After all, the only child he ever had had suddenly been killed.
“I want to help you,” she whispered.
“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “You can help. You can wrap up everything you’ve got going at Safe Tech. Don’t talk about why, though. I don’t want to create an internal panic. Why don’t you just tell the people that really have to know that you and I are going to go away on a quiet trip. You can turn all your projects over to your team.
“I’d like you to tie up any loose ends in your private affairs as well,” he continued gently. “Terminate your lease, whatever you need to do. Send anything that’s really important up here and I’ll have it taken care of.”
“I’ll need to go back to the city,” she began with a worried expression.
“Yes,” he said. “I was hoping you could go down and get it done in a day or so. I know I’m distracted with everything during the day and you might think I’m not as attentive as I should be, but I need you. I need to have you near, please . . .”
Jill looked from Kurt’s face to the massive ring on her finger and back to his face. She could see the anguish lurking beneath his surface. She knew he needed her.
“I can get Gus to arrange almost everything and maybe just go down for the day,” she said hopefully. Gus was her assistant.
Kurt looked at her fondly. “Thank you.
“Everything will work out,” he assured her. “Just give me a few weeks. Give me time and you and I will be off to have a life of our own. It’ll be just us, love. No meetings, no phones ringing, just you and me. Trust me, it will be— It will be everything we’ve dreamed of.”
His smile was warm and winning. She could see the pain in his eyes, a symptom of the grief she knew he felt. Jill knew she couldn’t do anything but smile back at him.
“Thank you for understanding,” he said. “By the way, if you’re out this week, shopping or anything, stop by the Wal-Mart and get two sets of passport photos.”
“My passport is good for a while.”
“Well . . . I want to make sure everything is in perfect order.”
“You don’t have to worry about mine,” she said. “I just had it renewed not three years ago.”
He looked at her painfully. “Honey, can you just do what I ask? I need them, that’s all.” His voice rose slightly and he spoke in a constrained tone. “Is it that big of a deal, or can you just do it?”
“I can do it,” she said calmly.
“Thank you,” he said, back to the Kurt she knew. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got so much to do . . .”
CHAPTER 15
Kurt worked until his back was sore from sitting and his ears ached from the constant pressure of the telephone headset. He set his glasses down and rubbed the sides of his nose as he got up to stretch. The shadows cast by the trees on the back lawn had grown long and he recalled now that it was several hours ago that Clara had knocked on the door and asked whether or not he wanted lunch. He was hungry, so he went to the kitchen and found a ham and cheese sandwich that Clara had evidently made for him before going off to her other duties. Kurt poured himself a glass of milk and wolfed the sandwich down without bothering to sit or to taste his food. As he mechanically ground down his meal, he gazed out at the lake, enviously pondering the people going by in their boats, oblivious to his acute world of pain and torment.
In such moments, the grief pressed down on him with infinite weight. He thought of Gracie. He knew she was bearing up, aided by the sedatives Kurt’s doctor back in New York had prescribed. Whether it was because of that or because of his own preoccupations, Kurt really hadn’t reached out to her the way he knew he should. At the very least, he owed her an explanation of what he was planning to do. He would also have to be sure that he extricated her from the upcoming events so that there would be no criminal culpability. But to do justice to her required more than just shipping her back to Greenwich. Gracie had been a part of his life for too long.
He wondered briefly if there was a way to bring her. That notion was enough to amuse him. He was old enough to be able to judiciously weigh sentiment against practicality. It was hard to imagine Gracie anywhere but home. The house in Greenwich was essentially hers. She had fussed over it through the years, conducting an endless cycle of decorating and remodeling. She had friends there. It was a beautiful and comfortable place with its rolling grassy lawns and its labyrinth of flower gardens, fountains, and greenhouses. Kurt made a mental note to have the deed transferred into her name as well as establish a comfortable trust fund.
While he knew Gracie would miss him, his real connection to her over the last twenty years had been Collin. After Collin had gone away to school, Gracie and Kurt spent less and less time together. It wasn’t that either of them had stopped loving the other, it was just that their lives had begun to follow different paths.
Kurt set down his milk glass and went up the back stairs to Gracie’s room. He knocked quietly on the open door before going in. The room was expansive enough to allow for her bedroom furniture on one side and a sitting area on the other. Everything was as neat as if no one lived there. Gracie was between the two areas, sitting in the large window seat in a black dress with her long gray hair pulled back into a tight, austere bun. She was staring blankly out into the front yard. Tear tracks ran from her eyes under her gold-framed glasses all the way to her pointed chin, and her face drooped with anguish. Beside her on the seat lay an open scrapbook. Kurt looked down at the half dozen pictures taken at a birthday party they’d had for Collin when he was only six.
The sight of his boy, so young, his face beneath the conical silver hat and afire with delight, gripped Kurt’s throat like a chokehold. He closed the book gently and sat down noiselessly beside his sister.
“Hello, Gracie,” he said quietly.
“Hello, Kurtis,” she said, choking on her words without averting her eyes from the window. In her hand was a string of rosary beads, and Kurt saw now that as she fingered them, her lips moved silently. Kurt knew that for the first time since he’d come back from the capital, Gracie wasn’t under sedation. Her eyes were sharp and her words had an edge of pain that was unmitigated by the drugs.
He watched her without speaking. The idea of telling her what he planned to do sounded easy enough. He just didn’t know how to start.
“It’s a mortal sin, Kurtis,” she softly wailed. “It’s a mortal sin and I can’t get it out of my mind the way that little boy was so afraid of hell. Remember that old Bible I had? He was so afraid of the picture of hell. He was no more than a baby. He made me get rid of it . . .”
Kurt was confused for a moment, but then his Catholic confirmation lessons came back to him. “Suicide,” he whispered. A Catholic who committed suicide was doomed to hell.
“He didn’t commit suicide, Gracie,” he told her.
Gracie’s eyes darted his way and she glared accusingly at him. “Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t say that to make me feel better, Kurtis. God knows and it’s his will, not mine!”
“No, Gracie. He didn’t. He really didn’t do it,” Kurt said urgently. “He was . . . He was murdered . . .”
A strange light filled his sister’s faded blue eyes as she whispered, “How can you say that?”
Kurt told her in solemn tones what he now believed had happened on the night Collin was killed. He omitted, however, the details of who the girl was, who sent her, or why. When Gracie asked who would do such a thing, Kurt chose to be evasive. He said he was looking into it.
“I’m going to find them, Gracie,” he assured her. “I’ll find them and . . .”
“And you’ll kill them,” she said flatly.
Kurt stared at her, not knowing what to say.
“I know you,” Gracie said, looking away from him and back out the window. “And I’m not going to try and stop you.”
After a few moments she said, “The Lord tells us to turn the other cheek, but the Bibl
e also says that for an eye an eye shall be taken . . .”
A tall, dark walnut grandfather clock that stood on the opposite wall clicked. Its gears churned audibly and five deep gongs filled the room before the silence returned.
“I want you to stay with me for a few weeks,” Kurt said quietly. “Stay here with us, me and Jill. But then you’ll have to go back home, Gracie, to Greenwich. I’m giving you that house, and enough money so that you won’t have to worry about anything.”
Gracie nodded and Kurt knew from a lifetime together that he didn’t need to say anything more. She understood completely.
“Is she going with you?” she asked without a hint of bitterness or envy. It was simply a question.
“Yes,” Kurt said, then added, “I think so.”
“You think?” Gracie said, looking back at him. “You’ll need her, you know.”
“Yes,” Kurt said, “I know.”
Gracie looked back out the window. “She’ll go with you. She loves you very much, Kurtis. You would have been very happy together.”
“Maybe we still will.”
Gracie sighed heavily and bit into her lower lip, wincing in pain before nodding violently. Fresh tears coursed down her cheeks. Without looking, she reached over and gave his hand a quick and forceful squeeze before taking up her beads once again.
As Kurt stood to go, he saw her lips take up their silent dance of prayer. This time he knew the prayers weren’t for Collin’s soul, but his own.
CHAPTER 16
Jill looked around at the things that made up what for several years had been her home: the worn beige leather couch with its carved wooden oriental coffee table, the Modigliani prints, the stain on the hardwood floor next to the rug where she and Kurt had knocked over a bottle of red wine the first time they ever . . .