Misery Loves Company (9 page)

Long hours passed and shadows shifted across the room. Jules guessed it had been five hours but was not sure. Outside her room, she could hear him in the kitchen.

She knew she looked a wreck. But it had been grueling hours of reading and rereading, trying to figure out what he wanted from her. Surely he wasn’t just after a critique partner.

At first she’d circled a thing or two with the red pen, written some rudimentary notes, but her heart wasn’t in it. She’d lain on the bed, her arms and legs stretched out like she was in the middle of a jumping jack, staring at the message on the ceiling that had fulfilled its promise. She loathed the day she wrote those words.

After a short nap and another crying session, she decided
to try to tackle the pages without being emotionally tied to the scene. It involved a police officer named Kurt who was shot multiple times as he was investigating some kind of theft ring. His partner, Jake, had tried to save his life that night by administering CPR. The scene was written in vivid detail, with Kurt gurgling blood as Jake tried to listen to his last request, Jake begging him to hold on while trying to protect them both from an enemy that was hiding in the dark, perhaps poised to strike again.

It was vintage Patrick Reagan, but so much of it mirrored what happened to Jason that she was having a hard time concentrating on the task at hand. And truthfully, she didn’t really know what the task at hand was.

Was he trying to tell her he wanted an honest review, that he had a thick enough skin? That was hard to believe, considering his rants. He seemed to be telling her that he wanted her to know something, but like a good suspense novel, he kept only small clues coming. What did Patrick Reagan know?

He spoke in weird riddles. He wanted her to find her weak spots? She was clutching it in her hands. Jason’s death would forever be a weak spot, a place where she could easily be broken time and time again. But she suspected the author in the other room already knew that.

“Dinner is served,” she heard him say formally from outside her door. The shadows from the day were long gone and darkness had settled outside. And inside as well.

“ADDY, YOU ARE
out of this world,” Maecoat moaned as he leaned over his soup bowl.

“You mean the
soup
is out of this world?” Chris asked from the other side of the dining table. In the kitchen, Addy smiled.

“What did I say?” Maecoat asked.

“Whatever’s on your mind,” Chris growled.

Maecoat flashed a grin at Addy. “You really are a spectacular cook.”

“Thank you, Greg,” she said, bringing her bowl to the table and joining them.

Maecoat pointed his spoon toward Chris. “Is he always such great company at dinner?”

Addy cocked an eyebrow at Chris. “Usually a little livelier. Something on your mind, Brother?”

“Just . . . trying to figure out this Jules case. There’re so many unanswered questions.”

“The good thing,” Addy said, “is that there is no sign that harm has come to her. That’s good, right? In the police world?”

“An optimist. I like that,” Maecoat said.

“Since when?” Chris said.

“Since riding with you, grumpy.”

Chris sighed. “I know. Sorry. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.” Even Addy’s world-famous chowder didn’t sound appetizing. He looked up at them. “The captain is sending me to New York tomorrow. With Detective Walker. We tried to get it set up for this afternoon, but they had to schedule it for Saturday.”

Maecoat sat up straighter. “Seriously? Why?”

“I presented him with this idea about Reagan. He seemed at least somewhat intrigued.”

“That’s surprising. The captain doesn’t seem intrigued with much these days, except making our ticket quota and budget.”

“Honestly, I was surprised at how seriously he took me. I mean, he asked the usual question
 
—how was I doing and all that
 
—but as far-fetched as the theory sounded, he actually seemed to think I was onto something.”

“What’s in New York?” Addy asked.

“Reagan’s editor and agent.”

Maecoat asked, “So what’s going to happen? You’re going to go in and ask his editor if he’s involved in some disappearance of a lady they’ve never heard of?”

“I guess. I’ll let Walker take the lead.” Chris set his spoon down and leaned back. “I just can’t believe that he was spotted in town, which never happens in the winter, on the same day Jules wrote a bad review of his book. That can’t be a coincidence, can it? The same grocery store? At the same time?”

“Weirder things have happened, like how this soup magically disappeared in this bowl here. Seconds, Addy?” Maecoat held up his bowl.

Addy smiled graciously. “Sure.” She rose and went to the stove. “I read her blog last night. I wanted to get a feel for what you were talking about.”

“And?” Chris asked.

“And I think that she’s a very sad woman. You have to kind of read below the surface, but she’s crying out in her loneliness. She’s heartbroken in every way.”

“How’d you come up with that?”

“I guess you have to be a woman
 
—”

“
 
—which you are,” Maecoat inserted cheerfully.

“Shut it, Maecoat,” Chris said. “Go on, Addy. What do you mean?”

“I mean that she’s trying to reach out to the world while keeping herself fully protected inside her home. She doesn’t know where to turn to help her anguish.”

“You gleaned all that from lighthouses and the history of that famous poet?”

“Sure. The poem she quoted from Freezan was about whether the perils of life are worth the risk of love. And the lighthouses. It was obvious how she paralleled their existence to her own
 
—a single light shining against a dark harbor.”

Maecoat looked impressed. “What were you? A genius major?”

“You’re getting pathetic now,” Chris said.

“Hey, it’s getting me more soup. I’ll go real pathetic for chowder.”

“I was an English minor.” Addy shrugged. “So maybe that’s how I read. Maybe I see metaphors in everything.”

“You read any of Patrick Reagan’s stuff?” Maecoat asked.

“Not lately. I did a few years ago. I’m not into the genre, though.”

“When you were reading Jules’s blog, do you remember her ever mentioning a writer named Blake Timble?”

“No. Who is that?”

“Nobody,” Chris sighed. “Just another random clue that is leading nowhere.”

“Maybe you’ll find something tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So,” Maecoat said as Addy returned to the table with his bowl, “who is up for a nice warm fire and long conversations into the night?”

Chris hunched over his soup bowl and ate in silence.

Dinner first, Patrick had insisted. Then they could talk. The food was nice. A seared chicken breast and roasted winter vegetables under generous amounts of gouda, all between sourdough. It was simple and elegant and under any other circumstance would’ve been delightful.

They chatted mildly, mostly about him. He talked about the places he’d been to research his novels, the famous people
 
—including two presidents
 
—that he’d met over the years. It was as if he was trying to impress her, which seemed ridiculous. She’d already been impressed with him over the years. He had to know that if he’d read anything other than the last two, maybe three, reviews of his books.

There was a candle lit between them, a short, fat one that made it seem like they’d stepped back into the nineteenth century. The warmth and flickering of the candle set Jules at ease. For the moment, she was pretty sure Patrick wasn’t going to murder her. The glowing amber light washed over his face, softening his features. But something kept telling her to stay on guard. Maybe it was Jason.

As dinner wound down, she decided to make herself useful. She went to the kitchen to start cleaning the dishes.

“Your notes? Written on the page?” Patrick pointed to the white paper waiting on the table near where she’d sat.

“Yes,” Jules said, barely above a whisper.

“Hm.”

She turned her back to him, thankful for the distraction
of washing the dishes. She didn’t think she could bear watching him read her notes. She’d tried to think like an editor would and been glad for a few typos, just for something to circle. He’d given her only one scene, so it was hard to understand the whole context. And it was still hard to understand why he’d written something similar to her husband’s murder.

After a few minutes Patrick simply said, “Good thoughts.”

Then he came to the sink and dried while she washed. She wanted to watch him, figure out what was making him tick. But instead she dutifully washed and he dutifully dried, like they were some old married couple in a routine they both knew.

After he finished drying the last dish, he grabbed a bottle of wine that sat on the counter. “Care for any?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Suit yourself. Good for the heart, though.” He took a glass, held it between two fingers, and poured gently. “In more ways than one.” He walked to the living area, sitting himself down and staring into the fireless fireplace.

There was nothing left to do in the kitchen, but Jules wasn’t sure she wanted to be near him. She still had no concept of time. What she wouldn’t give for a clock or a watch with a working battery!

She decided to join him in the living room. It was cozy, with afghans and plush pillows. Architecture magazines were neatly spread across a coffee table that was formed out of a large tree stump. A few logs sat next to the fireplace. The room smelled like pine. But with the sun set, the cabin was
even colder. She took one of the afghans and spread it over her legs as she sat down.

“It’s awfully cold in here,” she said. “Why not light a fire? That’s such a lovely stone fireplace.”

“It was. Yes, it was,” he said quietly.

A few minutes passed. He’d sip his wine, swallow it slowly, stare into the air.

“Patrick,” Jules finally said. “How long do you intend to keep me here?”

“As long as it takes.”

“But I don’t want to be here.”

“It’s because you don’t yet understand.” He sighed and set his wineglass down, turning his attention to her. “Do you think I am in the sagging middle?”

“I don’t understand.”

He just stared at her.

“What is the ‘sagging middle’?”

“I thought you would know such a thing,” he said, looking away and returning to his wine.

“Obviously you have a lot to teach me,” Jules offered with a small smile.

He seemed to want to oblige. “The sagging middle usually happens around chapter 17. Somewhere within the second act. It is the most difficult area for the writer to wade through. The beginning is easy. Your task is to set everything up. To introduce all the characters. The end can pose challenges, most especially if you’ve written your character into a corner, but that makes it that much more fun to try to
resolve. But the sagging middle . . . that’s where your subplot runs out and your characters have shown all their cards. Where you must rise up out of the ashes or you will lose your reader.”

Jules nodded. “I see now.”

“No. Not everything. Not yet.” He leaned back more comfortably in his chair. “There are some who say I’m in the sagging middle of my career. My own personal chapter 17. What do you say?”

Jules kind of wished for that glass of wine now. “The last thing I said got me into a lot of trouble, so maybe I’d do well to keep my mouth shut.”

He smiled at her. Not the warmest of smiles, but an acknowledgment of her wit, she guessed. “You’re here now, with me, so you might as well get it all off your chest.”

“This conversation lends itself to a nice fire.”

“It stays unlit,” he said tersely.

“Fine. But your ‘guest’ is freezing cold, so you should at least acknowledge that. To get back to the subject at hand, you know that I am a big fan of yours, if you’ve read anything I’ve written at all.”

He nodded slightly while gazing at the fireplace.

“True, I haven’t cared for your last three books. The last two in particular. So what? Plenty of people have liked them. Obviously. You remain on the bestseller list. What does my opinion matter to you?”

“I suppose it matters because I believe you have great insight into my work. You always have. I’ve appreciated that,
you know,” he said, glancing slightly at her. “With the invention of the Internet, any hack can type out his opinion, with no thought to what he’s doing or saying. Sometimes I wonder if they’ve read the book at all. They cheapen our world, our offerings, by their ignorance. An opinion not steeped in wisdom and intelligence is worthless. But you . . . were different.”

Jules swallowed, hoping not to say the wrong thing. She’d once read that he never read his reviews. But here he was, confessing to it. “Thank you. It was easy because you always drew me in deeply to your stories.”

“I’d say you’re just trying to flatter me, except I know it’s true. You’ve said so for years.”

Jules nodded and smiled at him. Something about him made her want to make him feel okay. For years, she’d imagined him as a man completely in control of his world. A man who rose above everything and everyone else. But now, as he sat in his chair with his glass of wine and his empty fireplace, she was sensing something much different about him.

“Patrick, why am I here? Why am I really here?”

He didn’t answer.

“You can trust me, Patrick. You know that.”

“You can’t trust anybody, Juliet. Because you don’t know that, you’re here. And because you don’t believe me, you’re going to have to be here awhile, until I can prove it to you.”

“Maybe I understand more than you think.”

“I am certain you don’t.” He looked at her. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“What, exactly, do you see in my eyes? You’re not a mind reader.”

“But I am an observer. It’s what makes me able to do what I do. You are an observer too. That’s what makes me look away
 
—I know you can see. It is why you can hold my gaze for mere seconds.”

Jules held her breath as she watched him. He was back to staring at the fireplace.

“It would be much more gazeworthy if there were fire in there,” she said with a small smile.

He rose and she thought she might’ve convinced him, but he left the room momentarily. She glanced at the door. How easily she could run! But like he said, she had no idea where she was. And it was snowing. She didn’t even have a coat. But his hung by the door. Still, as far as she could tell, she wasn’t in immediate danger.