Mittman, Stephanie (25 page)

Ash
knew what Cabot was after, knew even why he had chosen to have the conversation
in front of Charlotte. The man was no fool. Anyone with eyes in his head could
see that Charlotte had begun, like so many other women, to find Ash in need of
her special attention and care.

"I've
given him no reason to seek revenge," he said simply. He sat back in his
chair and crossed his legs.
Don't pursue this,
he thought.
"Ever."

Cabot
tapped against the arm of his chair, his fingernails making a clicking sound.
"Really?"

Ash
nodded. Sam's wife wasn't happy about the fact, but he'd never so much as run a
finger through that curly red mane, never brushed against those ample breasts,
even by accident. He believed, whether Helena Greenbough did or not, in the
sanctity of a true marriage. "Really."

Cabot
looked at his wife and pulled at his lower lip. "A man, by nature, doesn't
like to share. Look at the infant with his rattle, the toddler with his ball.
What's his is his, and he wants to keep it. Of course, if everyone felt that
way, there would be no need for courts, would there? It's when the bully comes
to the park and says, 'What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, too,' that
the penal codes come to be necessary."

"A
rather simplistic explanation of mankind and the law. All you've omitted from
that park is the serpent and the apple," Ash said.

He
did not wish to have a discussion of the purity of his soul in front of
Charlotte, any more than he'd like to meet his maker and, right at that moment,
explain to him his transgressions.

"I'm
not worried about the serpent or the apple," Cabot said. "I'm
worried, hypothetically, about what belongs to me."

"If
the child leaves his hypothetical ball in the park he shouldn't expect it to be
there when he returns. If the ball matters to him, he should cling to it
tightly."

"Or
leave it at home?" Cabot asked. "Would that keep it safe?"

Ask
knew what his answer
had
to be, for all their sakes. And yet he couldn't bring himself to utter the
words.

Maria's
knock came to his rescue. "That man is here again," she said to
Cabot. "The investigator. You want me to tell him you are busy?"

Ash
opened the curtain and studied the back of the man who waited on the front
porch. His coat was dirty and rumpled and his shoes worn down at the heels.
Beneath the brim of his hat his hair fought for freedom in several different
directions.

"Tell
him to go around to the back and I'll see him in the conservatory. It's best
that you don't meet him," Cabot said to Ash, and began the process of
coming out from behind his desk.

"A
third wheel—" Ash began, sure that a smaller wheel at the back of Cabot's
chair, able to pivot in any direction, would increase his mobility enormously.

"I
don't want a third wheel," Cabot snapped at him. "Do you understand
me?"

Charlotte
and he stared at each other for a moment after he was gone. "Wheels and
balls. How clever men think they are," she said with a sigh.

"And
do you know so much about men?" he asked as she stood tapping her foot in
annoyance.

"Not
enough," she said, opening the door she had closed behind Cabot. "And
not yet."

She
meant it to be the end of their discussion, going out in a dramatic flourish,
but he followed hard upon her heels like some lovesick puppy and asked,
"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It
means that a ball can be as abandoned in the cellar as it can in the park. And
a doll left on a shelf gets mighty dusty. And how dare he not care whether I'm
soft? I'm so soft, I'm rotting! Feel this!" She put her palm against his
face and ran her hand slowly down his cheek, turned it over, and ran the back
side down against his neck.

And
with the gesture all the fight seemed to go out of her, there in her office,
with a hundred little ceramic animal statues watching them and papers piled
high on her desk and hairpins in a dish on the windowsill.

He
didn't answer her question with words. Instead, he ran his own hand against her
cheek, imitated her move by caressing her neck, feeling the blood rush beneath
his fingertips.
Was
she soft?
Van Gogh's fur was a sisal mat
beside her. Rose petals were sandpaper. She was like talc itself, silky and
smooth and so soft, you weren't certain it was there at all—that you'd touched
anything or just imagined the sensation.

His
lips had to make sure of what his hands had judged.
Just her cheek,
he
warned himself. Then just her neck. The smell of her! Clean. Sweet. A hint of
something exotic he guessed he'd probably bought her himself on one of his
trips. Soft? Oh, no—there had to be another word for her skin, the tip of her
ear, the lid of her left eye.

A
tiny gasp escaped her lips as she offered them up to him. Those huge hazel eyes
begged him to teach her more. Two wayward locks of hair fell across her face—no
doubt he'd loosened something with his explorations— and she brushed the locks
away with her left hand. The simple gold band on her finger glinted in the
sunlight. How much brighter her office was than Cabot's.

Bright
enough for the light of day to shine in, and too bright to hide what was
growing between them. He backed up, letting his hands drop away from her with
more difficulty than he'd have had raising the mainsail on the
Bloody Mary
single-handedly.

"Oh,
please don't stop," she said softly. "I've so much to learn."

"I
cut your husband off at the knees once," he answered, wishing he could
look away, not watch her lip tremble, not see her bite on it to make it stop.
"I can't do it again."

"No,
of course not," she said. "I'm married to your brother no matter what
you told Kathryn about him breaking his vows. You know, I don't believe he'd
ever intended to keep them."

"I'm
sorry," he said, shoving his hand in his pocket to keep from touching her
again.

"You
Whittier men are always sorry," she said sadly. "And I'm sorry
too."

She
went behind the desk and sat down, reached back for a hairpin, and caught up the
wayward locks.

"If
you'll excuse me, I've work to do," she said, giving him a sad little
smile and bowing her head as if she cared at all about the papers on her desk.

"I'll
go see what's keeping your husband," he said, trying to remind them both
that they had obligations they shouldn't forget.

"What?"
she looked up at him, distracted.

"Where
were you, just now?" he asked.
What do you daydream about? What time of
day is your favorite? What color makes you smile? What song makes you weep?

"I
was remembering a line from Whittier," she said, trying to dismiss him
with a wave of her hand.

"Ashford?"
he joked. Lord, he thought, she was almost as pretty sad as she was happy. And
then he corrected himself—happy she took his breath away. When she was sad, he
simply didn't want to breathe anymore.

"John
Greenleaf.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are
these..."

"...
It might have been."

She
nodded and shooed him off again. "I've work to do."

There
was no use arguing with her. She and her poet friend had summed up his life in
a couple of lines.

***

"How
much?" Cabot said to the man who stood in the shadows.

"Twenty.
Thirty if you need physical evidence."

"Just
get it lined up, in case. That's all."

"I
know my business," the man said. "And it always turns out to be
necessary."

"I
know you've found a puddle of piss when you promised an ocean of
information," Cabot said.

"This
your investigator?" Ash asked. The man turned his back so that Ash
couldn't see his face and Cabot reached quickly into his breast pocket, pulled
out his wallet, and handed the man several bills. "You come to the back
door next time," he told the man.

"Yeah,
yeah," the man said, counting the money. "And you try to remember I'm
not the one on trial and I'm not the one who's done anything wrong, yet."

Yet.
The
word hung in the air as the man strode purposely to the outer door and slammed
it behind him, rattling the glass panes throughout the conservatory.

"Just
what does that guy do?" Ash asked him. "Besides ooze pus?"

"Every
now and then he saves a neck," Cabot said. "And the less you know,
the less Brent can accuse you of. Just leave him to me."

"And
leave my investigation and my neck to him? I think not, Cabot."

"I
will take care of it." Cabot pounded on the arm of his chair. "You take
more reassurance than a five-year-old!"

"Perhaps
because you've given me all the authority and discretion of one," Ash
snapped back. He'd be damned if he left his fate to some weaselly little man
who used people's back doors.

Cabot
shrugged as if that was all Ash merited. "Where's Charlotte?" he
asked.

"I
left her slaving away in her office," Ash said. "As usual. Do you
have any idea how lucky you are to have such a beautiful and dedicated
wife?"

"Dedicated?"

"It's
Sunday, and the moment she got back from taking your mother to church she was
hard at work."

"And
that makes me a lucky man?" Cabot played with the spokes on his wheels as
if Ash needed reminding. "And she's
your
mother, as well."

"I've
never met a woman like her," Ash said. He kept to himself how soft she
was, how good she smelled, how just the thought of her got juices flowing that
he had to fight against with all his might.

"And
you never will. I made her—shaped her like a sculptor. And while I'll agree I
started with the finest marble, without my hand she would be some diplomat's
wife dolled up in a fancy dress with a smile pasted on her pretty face and not
a thought in that head of hers."

"You
sound like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But I think you've forgotten the end of
the tale."

"You
might do well to wipe your drool before you call my wife a monster. It would
have a more resounding ring of authenticity that way." Cabot's eyes looked
straight ahead, riveted on Ash's row of trouser buttons.

"It
was a cautionary tale," Ash said, refusing to let his brother intimidate
him. "The lesson being that everyone needs love. So when the monster
demanded it from his creator, and was denied... well, you know how the story
ends."

"Oh!
Am I in mortal danger from Charlotte?" Cabot hunched his shoulders and shivered
dramatically, pulling on his suit lapels as if he were freezing.

"If
arrogance were fatal, undoubtedly. But I'd say your person is safe. It's your
marriage that's teetering on the brink."

"Thanks
to a few kicks at the underpinnings, no doubt. Wasn't pushing me off the roof
enough for you?"

His
memories of the event were hazy. After all, he was six at the time, and the
whole incident had happened so fast. And afterward there had been all that
commotion, the yelling, the crying, his mother begging to be allowed to see her
son, his father's thunderous voice forbidding it, his brother's friends
scattering to the winds. But of one thing he was completely sure. He did not,
would not have, pushed his brother from the roof.

He
remembered backing away, yes. Remembered his brother making silly faces at him
and dancing across the roof line in pursuit. His brother's face, filled with
surprise as his last step took him over the edge of the roof, was etched
forever in Ash's memory. But Cabot was far away from him, out of his reach as
his short little child arms stretched out to catch him before he fell.

"I
did not push you from the roof," he said, turning on his heel and passing
Davis, who was just coming into the room with Liberty on his shoulder. Even in
his anger Ash noticed how big the bird was for the slight boy. Ash wondered how
many burdens Davis bore that were too large for those small shoulders.

"Did
you come when I called you?" Cabot called out after him as Ash left the
conservatory doors open behind him and took off for the stairs.

***

Once
Davis had gotten the double doors closed—there was a trick to it that the
mister had shown him—he returned with the parrot to the stand near the
wheelchair.

"Your
father will be here within the hour, I believe," Mr. Whittier said to him.
He had a deep voice and spoke slowly, not like the men down at McGinty's, who
spat words at him quickly and with anger. "Did you practice again
today?"

"Yes,
s-s-sir." Always the same.
Sir
wouldn't come out. But here in the
garden room there was nothing to kick that wouldn't fall over or crack, so he
just dug his nails into his palm and tried again. "Yes." So clear.
The word was his, belonged to him. "S-s-s-sir." He opened his mouth
to try again, but the mister waved away the attempt.