by Tim Green
“Yes,” Taylor said quickly, “the one who killed himself.”
The president turned his head away and said nothing.
“That makes it even better,” Mulligan exclaimed. “We can get mileage out of that. The president commiserates with the father of a fallen agent. People will like that. The women will like it.”
Parkes was silent for a few moments more before he looked at Taylor as if to ask for his advice. “I don’t know . . . Isn’t he apt to be . . . distraught?”
The SAIC shrugged and said indifferently, “From a security standpoint it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“It’s a triple play,” Mulligan interjected. “We get the money, the fishing plays to the yokels without pissing off the greens, and we tug the heartstrings for the women. You’ve got to do this one, Cal.”
The president glowered at Mulligan. He was the president. He didn’t have to do anything.
CHAPTER 23
When Jill walked into the house, the workers were packing up their tools outside the library. Fresh wood shavings littered the marble floor in the hall and a fine yellow dust tainted the dark wooden threshold. The doors were closed, and Jill noticed right away the gleaming brass lock that had been installed just below the ornate knobs. She’d also seen the sign on the workers’ van—Fradon Locks. One of the men, a skinny youth with long blond hair and a full beard and mustache, smiled nervously at her and touched his dirty fingers to the bill of his hat as he passed her with his case full of tools.
Under normal circumstances, Jill would have rapped on the door and demanded an answer. But the circumstances weren’t normal. Not only was she growing used to Kurt’s reclusive ways, she was feeling somewhat guilty. She had been on her way back from some pointless antique shopping in Geneva when Jeremiah pulled up behind her in his cruiser and briefly flashed his lights. Jill had pulled over with a smile and waited patiently as her gigantic friend got out of the car and adjusted the tall hat that made him loom even larger.
“In a hurry, ma’am?” Jeremiah had said politely.
“No, Officer,” she’d responded, suppressing a grin. “I think I was going the speed limit.”
“That’s what I thought. So I figured if you weren’t in a hurry, you’d have time for a cup of coffee.”
And so she did. But now, back at home, she felt it was somehow wrong. She turned around and went upstairs to change into her swimsuit. In the long hall, she stopped in front of Gracie’s room and knocked softly on the door. While Kurt’s sister was still mostly silent, Jill thought that over the past several days Gracie had begun to show signs of healing. Just yesterday, Jill had seen her venture out of the house for a short walk into one of the flower gardens.
“Gracie?” she said quietly. “Are you in there? I’m going down to the lake. Do you want to come?”
“Come in,” Gracie said in a muffled voice.
Encouraged, Jill pushed open the door and went in.
“Asking an old lady like me to go for a swim?” Gracie said archly. She was sitting, straight-backed, at a writing desk against the wall next to the towering grandfather clock. While her spirits seemed more animated, she was still dressed exclusively in black and she wore the weary expression of an earthquake survivor.
“You looked like you were swimming pretty well early this summer,” Jill said. She could recall several occasions when she had watched with admiration as Gracie swam back and forth between the dock and the diving raft for thirty minutes at a time. “I know Kurt likes to refer to you as his older sister, but you’re in pretty good shape if you ask me.”
Gracie rose from her desk and opened her arms toward Jill. “Come here, my dear,” she said. Jill crossed the room uncertainly. Gracie embraced her gently and softly said, “This must all be so hard for you, being cooped up in this house with two bereaved siblings.”
“That’s all right, I—”
“Ah!” Gracie said, holding up her hand. “Don’t. You don’t have to say anything. I know you’re just doing what you think is right. I know you’re that kind of person. I knew that from the start.”
She held Jill out at arm’s length and it surprised Jill to realize how much taller she was than Gracie—Kurt’s sister was one of those people who seemed bigger by the sheer force of their personality.
“There aren’t a lot of women with the self-confidence to live in the same house with a ghost.”
Jill looked at her quizzically.
“I’m talking about Annie,” Gracie said, smiling weakly. “Not a literal ghost, but she’s everywhere, really. The pictures Kurt has out, and . . . and Collin, when he was with us. I’m sure you saw the resemblance. But you’ve carried on without a word of discontent. I should have told you that I admired that about you long ago, but . . . well . . .”
“I feel like lately I haven’t been as equable as you’re making me out,” Jill said, blushing at the thought, having only just had coffee with another man.
“None of us has been ourselves,” Gracie continued pensively. “I know I haven’t. But these things take time to pass. If they’re to pass . . .
“Well,” she continued brusquely, “you’ve caught me in a contemplative, fairly buoyant mood. I’ll be overcome by the blue devils by lunchtime and I might even have to take one of my damn pills, but I’m glad you came to see me.”
She then said somewhat enigmatically, “I’m leaving tomorrow, and I don’t know if— when I’ll see you again. I respect you, Jill, and I know you’re going to make Kurt hap— I know you’ll make him as happy as he can be.”
She brought her hand gently to Jill’s cheek. It was cool and soft and Jill briefly shut her eyes. She wanted to ask Gracie a million questions, but of course she couldn’t. Gracie was older than Jill’s own mother would have been if she were alive. And, while the two of them had always gotten along, their difference in age and demeanor was an obstruction that neither of them had been able or willing to overcome.
Still, she was grateful for the reprieve from formality between them. She even wished fleetingly that their relationship had been different. But it wasn’t, and now it was too late. Jill pressed her own hand against Gracie’s, but instead of confiding, she thanked the older woman, kissed her on the cheek, and quietly left the room.
With a heavy sigh, she continued on down to their bedroom at the end of the long hall, where she changed into her swimsuit. The windows were open and a wonderful breeze, cooled by the towering trees, wafted past the white lacy curtains and into the room. Jill grabbed a large white towel from the bathroom and her book from the bedside stand, then went down the back stairs and straight outside. On the path, she stopped only to look fleetingly up at the big picture window into Kurt’s library. He wasn’t at his desk, but she could make out his form in a black polo shirt, poring over a bank of papers at the library table while his head wagged emotionally back and forth. He was talking into the headset connected to his phone. She sighed again and turned toward the lake.
After a dip in the water to cool off, Jill coated her face and limbs with sunblock and lay back in a comfortable lounge chair on the pebble beach. A jet ski droned by in the middle of the lake and spun around like an angry hornet. Jill looked up, shading her eyes, and silently cursing its rider for disrupting her tranquillity. She opened her book, Memoirs of a Geisha, and submerged herself in the world of a woman whose problems far exceeded her own. After a few chapters, she moved her chair into the shade of a large red maple whose branches encroached on the water’s edge. Soon she was asleep.
When she woke, she picked the book up from where it lay on the small, smooth stones, brushed it off, and stood to go. She had no idea how long she’d slept, but when she got back to the house she could hear Kurt’s voice, coming not from the library but from the large great room that dominated the center of the old home on the main floor. She walked through the kitchen, past the breakfast room, and into the great room. Her face flushed as three men in suits rose from one of the large couches centered on the fireplac
e. They greeted her simultaneously and with uneasy politeness.
“This is my girl— My fiancée, Jill, Jill Eisner,” Kurt said stiffly. His smile was forced, but he rose from the couch opposite the three men with the appropriate decorum. “Jill, these gentlemen are from the Secret Service.”
Jill looked at Kurt with alarm and forgot for a moment that she was standing in front of three strange men in her bathing suit. When she realized, she quickly wrapped the towel around her waist, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and said hello.
“Ms. Eisner . . . I didn’t see that she was going to be going on the trip with you and the president, will she?” mulled the oldest of the three men, Agent Morris, a tall, homely man with a blond crew cut and a bulbous nose.
“No,” Kurt replied.
“Then that’s about all we have, Mr. Ford,” Morris said after a reflective pause. “Thank you for your time. As I said, we’ll be back on the day of the trip and pretty much take over the whole property, but like you already know, we’ll do our best not to inconvenience you.”
“Of course not,” Kurt said, leading them out into the spacious entryway whose richly paneled walls were adorned with old oil paintings.
Jill caught one of the younger agents, a square-jawed redhead who also wore his hair cropped close, peeking back over his shoulder at her on his way out. She frowned at him and waited for Kurt to return.
“What’s going on, Kurt?” she asked when he came back into the room.
Kurt used the same false smile that he’d worn for the agents. It made her shift uncomfortably. “I’ll be taking the president out on a little fishing trip when he comes for his visit,” he said. “You might as well get ready for the publicity. It’ll probably be all over the news.”
“That’s exciting,” she said somberly. “What made you think to do that?”
“I want to talk with him about this Internet tax that they’re talking about putting into law,” Kurt explained. His words sounded prepared and his eyes wandered to some vague spot in the air beside her. “We both know I’m leaving Safe Tech, but you know how I feel about the company and the people in it, and this is an opportunity to help it continue to thrive. This will be my last act as CEO. I’d be negligent if I didn’t take the opportunity to help. Besides, he’s the president of the United States. It’s not often he’s staying in the neighborhood. It’ll be an experience . . .”
This was the first time since Collin’s death that Jill felt she had the moral advantage to say what she really felt. Her words came without forethought—she just spoke. “Kurt, are you absolutely sure you want to leave Safe Tech? I mean, I know you’ve talked about going away, starting a life together, and I want that. But can’t we do that right here? Can’t you still do what you have to do, expose whoever it is that has to be exposed, and keep living your life like it is? I don’t care who they are, Kurt. You can hire protection. We don’t have to really go anywhere. Do we?”
Kurt sighed long and heavy. He pinched the corners of his eyes before looking up at her with a weary expression. “Honey, please,” he said, “I told you what I have to do . . .”
There was a pause between them. They both knew that he really hadn’t told her what it was he had to do. And then Kurt seemed almost angry.
“No,” he said, “I can’t stay. You have to trust me. Neither of us would be able to stay after this is over, not in peace . . . You’re not having second thoughts?”
His eyes bore down on her and Jill remembered her own promise that she would follow him to the ends of the earth if she had to. She was having second thoughts about her blind faith, but to say so somehow felt traitorous. She did love him, very much, and she did want a life with him. Her father’s words came into her mind and she dropped her eyes. She was overthinking this.
“No,” she whispered vehemently, shaking her head. “Of course I’m not having second thoughts.”
“Good,” he said, and the dark cloud passed. The grateful smile that lit his face was almost reward enough for her self-containment. He closed the space between them and hugged her close.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said casually. “There’s this beautiful chapel in the woods outside on the other side of the river from Montreal. It’s on a hilltop and you can see everything for miles and miles around. It’s called St. Olaf’s and I was able to reserve it for a small ceremony. I don’t think there could be a more romantic place in the world to be married . . . I was hoping we could do that. I’ve always said that if I ever were to get married . . . again, that I’d do it there. I know you’ll love it.
“And if it’s all right, I thought you could go up there a few days early and make some preparations. I’ve already booked you a room at the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal under the company name. It’ll be a zoo when the president arrives here anyway and I thought you could take care of everything and then we could leave from there on our honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon?” she said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. “How long are we going for?”
“How long?” Kurt said, raising his eyebrows. “I was hoping the honeymoon was going to last for the rest of our lives . . .”
“Kurt,” Jill said, squeezing him tight. “That’s so nice.”
Kurt kept his chin on her head as he spoke so that she couldn’t see into his eyes. “And I’d like you to make sure that, when you’re making the arrangements, you put everything under your name. This presidential visit will draw a lot of attention to my name, even over the border, and I just think it’s better if we have a private ceremony. We’ll get married the day after my trip and be off to a place that I know you’re going to love . . . But don’t ask, it’s a surprise.
“Now listen,” he continued, taking her shoulders in his hands and looking now into her eyes. “Don’t overthink all this.”
She nearly winced at his words. It was strange, him saying what she’d just been thinking.
“You and I are going to be happy once I get everything settled here,” he said earnestly. Then his voice dropped and his eyes began to mist as he choked out the words. “I’m not going to be in mourning forever, Jill . . . Just help me get past these next seven days and I promise, I promise things will be different.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, Kurt planted one more kiss on her forehead and disappeared behind the doors of his library. For a moment, Jill felt an equanimity that had eluded her since the day Collin died. She did have to trust him and stop overthinking things, and this one time she really believed she could.
But then a quiet grating sound ravaged the silence of the room, the sound of the bolt on the library door sliding home. It was an obscene note that pierced her to the core. It was the sound of deception and it punctuated the fact that she had just been played for a fool.
Jill turned and angrily wrung her hands as she went upstairs to change. A small voice from inside her heart whispered that despite her anger, the right thing was to do what he asked. But her mind, the one thing she’d always coveted with pride, cried out. Something was happening, something very dangerous. She huffed at herself disgustedly under her breath. The voice of her father echoed in her mind once again and she wanted to spit.
“Well, maybe I am too smart for my own good,” she said aloud with a scowl. But she wasn’t her mother. She had never believed in blind subservience and she couldn’t start now. It wasn’t her. Yes, she wanted to marry Kurt and she would even go away with him. But something was going on, something strange, something very wrong. She was going to find out what it was before things went any further.
She stood still and listened. Over her own breathing she could just make out the rumble of Kurt’s voice in the room directly below her, talking animatedly on the phone. She pulled a shirt over her head and pressed her lips tightly together. He could lock the door, but he couldn’t keep her out.
CHAPTER 24
The next day Kurt watched a delivery truck rumble up the drive and disappear into the trees. The vehicle shifted g
ears with a clank that echoed through the woods. Kurt looked up at the flurry of tree swallows swooping through the sunshine and chattering loudly at each other in their liquid melody. The birds reminded him of Collin. Collin had been the one to encourage him to have nesting boxes put out for them in the spring.
One evening several years ago, the two of them had been sharing a bottle of wine over dinner at Rosalie’s Cucina, their favorite restaurant right here in the village of Skaneateles. Collin had pulled a rumpled, folded-up article out of his jacket pocket and pushed it across the table. It was about the birds and the thousands of insects they ate. He’d torn it out of an airline magazine on his flight up from D.C. The two of them went out the next day to a little shop just past Auburn called the Bird House, purchased two dozen box kits and poles, and put them up together all over the lawn. It was a small thing, but a good one, the two of them working and sweating together out on the lawn to help propagate the musical little birds.
Kurt stood there for several minutes, his mind wafting slowly among images from the past. Tears began to spill over the rims of his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice until the flow was steady and he could actually taste the salt on his lips. In his daydream, he seemed to be lifted out and away from his own body, and he was faintly reminded of the stories of what happened to people when they died.
He could see himself standing in the same spot, in the sunshine, only he wasn’t alone. His arms were wrapped around a full-grown Collin and Annie as she was before she died. So real was the fantasy that Kurt could almost feel their bodies. A long low sob escaped from his throat and he shook his head violently to clear his mind. Breathing deeply, he wiped the tears roughly from his face and turned to the ample stack of freshly delivered boxes.
With a razor, he slashed them open one by one to reveal an ensemble of underwater equipment, all of which was midnight blue and smelling of fresh paint. He had known exactly what he needed and ordered everything over the Internet in a matter of a few hours. Even though he could have had any number of people who worked for him around the house unpack the gear, Kurt had given every one of them including Clara the day off. He carried each piece down to the boathouse himself and loaded it carefully into his twenty-five-foot fishing boat. In the other slip was the boat Kurt used more often than not for pleasure cruising or waterskiing, a twenty-three-foot open-bow that was practically new. The cream-colored fishing boat was in good shape too, but older. It had come with the property when Kurt bought the house seven years earlier. It was equipped with the appropriate down riggers for deep trolling as well as pole-holders for surface lures.