He puts his arm loosely around her shoulder.
“I especially like that they protect themselves from predators by drawing in their feathers and closing their eyes.”
The pine forest path opens to a vista of the pale gray light of dusk, the lodge in the near distance.
“I’m not ready to go back to the lodge yet,” she says, her voice thin, a familiar panic rising as if this moment is the last opportunity she will ever have with Roosevelt McCrary.
“There’s something I need to ask just in case I don’t have another chance,” she says.
“I’ll answer if I can.”
“I don’t understand how you happen to own this camp?”
“Because I’m not your father’s son and not white?”
“I guess that’s what I mean.”
“I own one-third. Thirty-three and one-third percent.”
“But why?”
“When your father was director, the camp was owned by his uncle and two other doctors, who were friends. Your father died before his uncle and at your father’s request his uncle left his one- third share to me. The other two present owners were grandsons of the original doctors, but they are not involved except financially.”
“That’s strange, isn’t it?” Georgie asks. “You were Clementine’s son and she was a cook in your uncle’s house.”
“It is less strange the more you discover.”
Georgie rests her hand on his arm with the cane.
“Then tell me everything that you know.”
“I will tell you everything I know,” he says. “But later.”
Roosevelt brushes thin strands of damp hair off her brow, out of her eyes, where they have fallen.
“Now dinner,” he says.
SINCE GEORGIE CAN REMEMBER, she has been in a conscious retreat from sadness.
On a grief diet, she told Rosie—small portions of sadness carefully selected. Now she has a sense of danger, of something raw between them, as if Roosevelt will tell her something that might take the lid off of her Pandora’s box and she will never be able to close it.
The ground is slippery with wet leaves, and they walk with care, Roosevelt’s limp pronounced, her hand loosely in his as if an accident of proximity.
“Before Clem died in 1951, she told me that at your father’s request Irving was leaving his interest in the camp to me,” Roosevelt says. “So at twenty-one and at loose ends, I came here. A few months later Irving died and I have never left.”
A riotous bird sound fills the air—a sudden chilly wind laced with raindrops.
“A storm?” she asks.
He shakes his head.
“Weather passing overhead. That’s all.”
She leans her head against his shoulder.
“So many things just don’t make sense to me,” she says.
“They will make sense,” he says. “After dinner.”
“At least I understand you were important to my father.”
Georgie’s heart is beating too fast, adrenaline rushing through her blood, her breath in short takes.
“What I want to know now, before we go into dinner, what I need to know is whether you believe my father killed my mother.”
“He confessed to the police that he killed her.”
Roosevelt puts her hand, which he is holding, gently in his pocket, his voice strong and certain, the sound of it reaching into the woods beyond Georgie.
“I’ve wanted to believe that he was protecting someone else,” she says.
“Who would he have been protecting?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have no idea what went on between your parents except what your father confessed,” Roosevelt says. “Not any one of us was there.”
“But we can piece things together and either they add up or they don’t, right?”
“There’s nothing to piece together,” he says gently. “Except to say that William Grove was a good and decent and courageous man, Georgianna. That I know.”
“Then you believe that he killed her.”
Roosevelt picks up fallen branches on the path, throwing them off to the side. Slow to respond.
“I do,” he says finally.
“I was afraid that is what you’d say.”
“And something else. That morning before the police arrived, Clementine walked up the hill to William’s tent and spoke to him.
“ ‘You killed her William, didn’t you?’ ” she said.
“ ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I did, I did, I did.’ ”
“So that’s all, I guess,” Georgie says quietly. “All there is to say.”
“Not all. Later, after dinner, I’ll tell you.”
They have come to the lodge and Roosevelt stops, lifts her hand and brings it to his lips.
“I leave early in the morning. I guess you know that,” Georgie says.
“I do.”
“Maybe you’ll come to Washington and stay with us at the Home for the Incurables,” Georgie says. “We always have an extra room.”
They go through the swinging doors into the lodge, past the fireplace, into the dining area where Georgie’s family is already sitting at a long table listening to Oona tell her story.
Thomas hops up.
“What do you know so far?” Thomas asks as Roosevelt heads into the kitchen.
“Nothing,” Georgie says. “I know nothing.”
“Do you think he’s going to tell you?”
“I’m not certain that he knows anything,” Georgie says.
“Of course he does.”
“Thomas, cool your heels and come sit down with us. Leave Roosevelt alone,” Nicolas says. “See what we can make of this visit. We’re out of here at dawn for Chicago. The van will arrive at seven.”
The table is long and the eight of them gather at one end, Roosevelt at the head. He opens a bottle of wine—serves the lemon chicken with wine and fresh green beans and biscuits.
“A fancy dinner for a boys’ camp,” Venus says.
“This is not how we eat when the boys are here,” Roosevelt says. “This is the way Georgianna’s father ate when he lived with his uncle in Washington, D.C., and my mother was the cook at Dr. Grove’s house until she died.”
He pours wine for himself and lifts his glass.
“To William Grove,” he says. “And to Clementine, who taught me how to cook.”
He reaches in his back pocket for a passport-size photograph of his mother that he passes around the table.
“I wanted you to see what she looked like,” he says.
Summer in Washington—Clementine stands beside a magnolia tree in bloom—tall and slender like Roosevelt, unsmiling, her gaze direct, her arms behind her as she leans against the tree.
A faded color photograph, but still evident the pale pink of the magnolias, her high cheekbones and wide-set eyes, a whisper of a smile.
“DO YOU KNOW that I got stolen in the middle of the night from my tent where I was sleeping with Freddy?” Oona presses the stuffed pink pig into Roosevelt’s hand. “This is Freddy.”
“Your father told me that you’d been stolen.”
“This bad-smelling lady came into the tent and she told me that Georgie asked her to take me to her house where she had toys and dolls and candy surprises for me. She was pretty nice, but it was dark outside and she was carrying me and kept tripping and that made her say words like fuck which is a word I know from Jesse who is my brother.”
“Her name is Linda,” Thomas says.
“I know her name is Linda. She told us that,” Oona says. “And Georgie hugged her. Now you and Linda are friends— right, Georgie.”
“You hugged her?” Roosevelt asks Georgie.
“I did.”
“Georgie is crazy,” Nicolas says. “We’ve gotten used to it, but I feel the need to put her in perspective for you.”
Roosevelt isn’t listening.
He has made strawberry short cake for desert, the strawberries small and fresh, swee
t biscuits and whipped cream.
He brings out another bottle of wine, leaning over to Georgie sitting beside him.
“Thank you, Georgianna,” he says quietly, bending closer so she can hear him.
THE NIGHT is cold and still. They clear the table and do the dishes—the clatter of plates against the counter, of glasses under the running water, Georgie leaning against the kitchen door listening to their laughter over nothing at all. Laughter—almost giddy laughter of relief that they are here. Against all odds, Nicolas says more than once.
“I thought it likely that we’d die. At least one of us,” Nicolas says, Oona sitting on his shoulders.
Rosie slips into the sofa next to Thomas, resting against his shoulder.
“But we didn’t die and now we’re here and it’s kind of remarkable,” she says.
Roosevelt lights a fire in the great room and Georgie’s family sits on sofas around a dry wood blaze, their feet on the coffee table.
“Do you remember William?” Thomas asks.
“I do,” Roosevelt says.
“I’m fascinated by him. I could hardly wait to meet you.”
“What Thomas is fascinated by is murder,” Nicolas says.
Roosevelt sits in a deck chair across from the sofa, his cane resting between his legs.
“What did he look like in the flesh?” Venus asks.
“Like Georgianna but tall. He had dark eyes and dark hair and strong bones. You’ve seen my photograph so you know.”
“And what about Georgie’s mother,” Venus asks.
“I didn’t know her,” Roosevelt says. “All I heard after she died was that she had been beautiful and was depressed.”
“Did anybody talk after she died?” Nicolas asks. “There must have been pandemonium at Missing Lake. Did your mother say something about it?”
“My mother didn’t talk …” He hesitates. “She was silent when William was taken away by the police in a motorboat.” His voice caught in his throat. “In handcuffs. William was in handcuffs.”
“Is that surprising? He murdered his wife,” Nicolas says.
“He did and sometimes a violent act may be that simple,” Roosevelt says, his voice rising. “But this was not.”
“What happened to make it not simple?” Thomas asks.
“I only know what happened to me that morning,” he says. “I sat on a tarp near the river most of the time alone and eventually my mother sat down beside me. She asked me did I have my things together—we would be going home to Washington, D.C., as soon as a motorboat was free to take us to the lodge. There’d be a bus at the lodge to take us to Chicago.”
“Then I asked, Is everybody going home, and Clementine said, Just us, and I asked, How come just us, and Clementine said, We are only here because of William and I figure William is going to jail for the rest of his life.”
“Because he killed her?” Venus asks.
“Yes because he killed her.”
Roosevelt leans forward, rests his chin on his cane.
“ That was all she said for days.”
“Were you at the campsite when my grandparents came to pick me up?” Georgie asks.
“They came by boat and your grandmother had on white gloves. Gloves in June. I remember that especially. I asked Clementine and she said something I can’t remember, but I know that Dr. Irving Grove’s wife did not wear white gloves in June.”
“You never met my grandparents?”
“I didn’t. I watched them. When they arrived, they went over to where you were sitting with the nurse—the only scene I really remember is that you screamed ‘No!’ as your grandmother leaned down to take you from the nurse.”
“And that was it?”
“You held your grandmother’s white-gloved hand and hung your head down and walked straight by the tarp where I was sitting and climbed into the motorboat and left.”
“What did you think of William?” Nicolas asks. “Or did you know him well enough to have an opinion.”
“I knew him. I knew him very well,” Roosevelt says, folding his hands behind his head, looking at Georgie. “He was a strong, decent, honorable man.”
“Isn’t that an odd description under the circumstances?” Nicolas asks.
Roosevelt’s words are measured.
“I believe it’s possible to be a decent man and in the heat of circumstance commit an unforgiveable crime. I have to think that.”
He gets up and puts another log on the fire.
“Not a man likely to lose his temper and murder his wife?” Nicolas asks.
“Likely?”
Roosevelt adds another log and then another.
“People do all kinds of things in circumstances. According to my mother, he had a temper. He was known for that. And …” He hesitates, glancing at Georgie. “His wife was not an easy woman.”
He folds his arms across his chest, standing at the head of the table—the room hushed.
“When Clementine was ill, the two of us had talks about her life. She told me that the Nazis were invading Lithuania, probably that very day, probably the village where William’s family lived, and they were rounding up the Jews. You know that William was a Jew?”
“My grandmother wanted to be sure I knew,” Georgie says.
“Georgie wants to believe her father was innocent,” Nicolas says. “But it looks as if that is not news you have to give her.”
“The only proof I have is his confession,” Roosevelt says, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Maybe there isn’t an answer,” Venus says. “Maybe no one knows since no one was in the tent with him.”
“Of course there’s an answer,” Thomas says. “Everything has some kind of answer.”
“It can happen that when you’re looking for something you can’t locate, you discover something else,” Roosevelt says. “Something more important.”
“What might we find out?” Venus asks. “I’m all for new possibilities.”
“Just an observation,” Roosevelt says.
THERE IS AN EASE about the evening, the company, the way the conversation floats over and around as if it were a part of all of them, as if they had always belonged together and to this place that none of them had ever even seen before except Georgie.
Roosevelt is ballast.
“It’s odd, isn’t it,” Rosie says to Georgie when she kisses her goodnight, “as if we’ve always known him. And he isn’t even chatty.”
THE REST OF the family has gone upstairs in the lodge to sleep. Including Thomas.
Only Georgie is left in the great room with Roosevelt watching the fire burn.
“MIDNIGHT,” ROOSEVELT SAYS. “I make a night check around the cabin area before I go to bed if you’d like to join me.”
“I would. I will.”
He hands her a flashlight, and they go out the screen door of the lodge, down the steps and into the darkness.
A perfect, clear, cold night brilliant with stars, a three-quarter moon.
“Easy to trip on roots,” he says, and turns on the flashlight.
“I wish we could stay here longer,” she says. “At least another day.”
“The campers come tomorrow and you’ll be glad not to be here.”
They walk side by side along the path, close, Georgie brushing against him, her heart pumping, still a little breathless.
“Sweet night, wasn’t it?” she asks.
“Better than I dreamed,” he says.
They walk around the latrine, Roosevelt shining his flashlight into the woods.
“Have you ever had trouble here?”
“We have,” he says. “Towns around here are poor, so people steal. Or sleep in the camp beds because they haven’t got a place or had a fight with their wife. Not when the boys are here, but when I’m here alone.”
“Do you worry in the wilderness?”
“I’m accustomed.”
They walk in silence along the path from the latrine to the cabins, check them one
by one, inside and out.
He stops by one.
“Listen.”
Something is making a noise.
“Skunk.”
He starts up the steps.
“Step back. Way back.”
She slips into the stand of pine trunks.
“Hold on to Mercy’s collar. She’ll try to follow me.”
He props open the screen door and steps in. Quiet at first except the sound of his voice speaking to the skunk and then in a matter of moments, the skunk saunters out, down the steps and meanders under the building.
“No smell?” she asks.
“They’re not afraid of me.”
“Why not you?”
“Because I’m not afraid of them,” he says.
He joins her on the path to the next cabin and she leans lightly against him, eased by the safety of his presence. Something she has missed, this kind of safety.
A man who has the trust of skunks.
It makes her giggle how easily she is won over. Someday she will tell him it was the skunk.
“You were telling me about women in your life.”
“Women.” He has an easy laugh even more pleasing for his seriousness. “There are not a lot of women in Missing Lake. Hardly any now.”
“So you’re not going to answer me?”
“I am,” he says.
He opens the door to the director’s cabin and sits down on one of the deck chairs across from Georgie, who collapses on the couch.
“There were women in my life, but none I wished to marry. Including Linda’s mother.”
“You made Linda the red wheelbarrow. She told us.”
“I made her a wheelbarrow to carry her dolls when she was a child. Now she walks down Main Street in Missing Lake with her toys in the wheelbarrow looking for a little girl to play family with her.”
What was it about Linda this morning, Georgie is thinking. Not a woman who could have carried a gun. Or injured a child. Even Oona must have known that about Linda.
“My guess is this,” Roosevelt is saying. “The night before last at the bar at Blake’s, Linda saw Oona sitting with your family and she wanted her.”
“Does she know who we are?”
“She does.”
“Who would have told her? Mr. Blake? I never told him who I was.”
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