The Cure (21 page)

“Oh, you mean
Dale
Williams, right? The fella suing us?”

“Are you seriously going to sit there and try to make me think you don’t know Dale Williams is a
female
research chemist I sent to Brazil with the medical party?”

Riley felt the little room begin to tilt. He wanted the man to believe in his goodwill, but something didn’t fit. He said, “I didn’t know you sent a chemist. I thought they were all doctors. Why would you do that?”

“To help us discover how that tribe of Indians got sober all of a sudden, of course.”

Riley thought of old Waytee, a notorious drunk ever since a Brazilian prospector had shown The People how to get a wicked kick from fermenting fruit. He thought of venereal disease and tuberculosis and the other plagues that walked into the village with the miner and his greedy friends from down the river. He remembered the day Waytee came to say The People would drink no more. Riley remembered his joy that day, his certainty that God had used him to produce a miracle.

Riley said, “I led them all to Jesus. That’s why they quit drinking.”

“It’s one theory. I sent Dr. Williams and the others to explore different possibilities.”

“But the missions board said the team was there to heal The People.”

“That too.”

Riley tried to get his thoughts in order, to receive this information in some way that made sense. “You’re saying they had another mission? Something I wasn’t told about?”

“I don’t recall what you were told, Reverend. All I know for certain is that I spent quite a bit of money and many of my employees gave their lives to find a cure for alcoholism, and now you and Dr. Williams both claim to own it.”

“I don’t know this Dr. Williams. I don’t even remember meeting any women in the medical party.”

“She went down after you began your sabbatical, as I believe you know.”

“But I
don’t
know. I’ve never even heard of her.”

“Oh, Reverend, please. Obviously we both know where you got the formula. It would be a kindness if you put me in touch with her. It’s been many years. I thought she was dead all this time. I’ve carried her on my conscience.”

The man’s black eyes were fierce beneath his single bushy eyebrow. Riley felt the weight of them, felt them adding to all the other downward pressure of the lives that he had damaged. Fighting to bear up he said, “It wasn’t your fault. It’s all me.”

“No. She worked for me. I sent her down with all the others. That’s all there is to it. Now, I want to apologize to her. I want to see her and touch her, so I can know she’s really alive. I want to know how she survived. I want you to tell me where she is.”

Riley shook his head. “I don’t—”

The man sprang to his feet. “Do
not
sit there and try to tell me you don’t know!”

The explosion rocked Riley back against his seat. For a moment Lee Hanks loomed above him with clenched fists, projecting a ferocious energy out of all proportion to his size and age. Then the man seemed to call on some inner source of self-control, relaxing his fingers, adjusting his posture to let his shoulders slump. He turned away from Riley and lifted the coffee mug from the table. “I apologize,” he said, crossing the little room to pour the remaining coffee from the mug into the sink.

“You don’t have to do that,” said Riley, uncertain himself if he meant the mug or the apology.

“I’ve carried this with me for so long,” said Lee Hanks, squeezing soap into the mug, rubbing it around with his finger, rinsing it out, and putting the clean mug on the counter. “Then your letter came, and my people researched your lawyer and this town and told me your wife was the mayor out here, and for the first time I thought there might have been some benefit to someone after all, something positive from all that misery, you know. I had such high hopes, and . . . I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

“It’s okay,” said Riley. “I wish I could help you.”

The older man turned to look at him, standing at the kitchen counter with his hands wet. “You really expect me to believe you don’t know where she is?”

“I never heard of her until this lawsuit came along.”

“All right. Then how did you get that formula?”

There was a loud knock on the door downstairs. From where he sat, Riley could look out through the beads of condensation on the window to see both of Lee Hanks’s men just below. Apparently they had heard their employer’s outburst. The larger man with the military haircut held a handgun. He leaned forward and hit the door again, pounding with his left fist. Riley said, “You’d better tell them you’re okay.”

Wiping his hands on his slacks, Mr. Hanks stepped up to the window. He tapped on it, waved at his men below, then turned back toward Riley. “The formula, Reverend Keep?”

“I found it. That’s all I can tell you.”

Hanks crossed to the top of the stairs. “Have it your way.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Reverend Keep, you haven’t told the truth since the day your lawyer mailed that letter to me.”

“I found it! I’m telling you I just found it!”

“You stole it. You know it and I know it. The only question is who you stole it from. I funded that expedition down to Brazil and all those people were on my payroll. Any decent attorney could make a solid case that the formula is mine from that alone. But now I have this woman coming from out of nowhere after all these years, suing me, someone I thought was dead because of me, and after paying you twelve million dollars and investing far more than that in research and development, it looks like I’ll just have to cut my losses or face a public relations nightmare given everything she’s suffered.”

“I still don’t understand what Brazil has to do with any of this. I found that formula written on a piece of paper right here in Dublin.”

The bald man stared at Riley. “I think you’re serious.”

“I am.”

“All right. Who wrote the formula?”

“I don’t know.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

Riley stood up. “I don’t know
anything
!”

Lee Hanks started down the stairs. Riley remained standing at the top, watching him descend. At the bottom Hanks opened the door and paused. “You mentioned that you live this way because the money’s not for you. You said you wanted it for your family, and for me. I’ll ask one more time, what did you mean by that?”

“I got your people killed down there,” said Riley. “I should have stayed with them. I should have known what The People would do to them after I left. So I thought maybe if I gave you a chance to sell the medicine . . . I knew you had a heart for missions work, and I thought it might help you feel better about everything if you could be part of getting the cure out to people. I thought maybe you could make some money too.”

“
Some
money?” Lee Hanks looked up at him and gave one short bark of a laugh. Then, shaking his head, he stepped outside.

Riley watched through the upper window as the two young men in suits escorted their employer across the dewy grass to the gravel driveway where the Cadillac awaited. The smaller man opened the rear door for him, but Hanks paused to speak to the man with the broad shoulders and the military haircut. The bodyguard turned to stare up at Riley’s window, then looked back at his employer, and nodded. Hanks got in the back seat, the smaller man got in behind the wheel, and the Cadillac reversed out of the driveway, leaving the broad-shouldered man behind.

For thirty minutes Riley stood at the window, watching the man. Lee Hanks’s bodyguard paced in the mist below Mrs. Harding’s elms a little while, examining the ground. Then he stooped to pick up a short fallen branch. He snapped it in two, dropped the longer piece, and carried the shorter piece in his left hand to the concrete bench beside the untended rose arbor in Mrs. Harding’s side yard. Riley thought about the man’s suit slacks getting wet from sitting on the concrete in the mist. The bodyguard did not seem to care. He began to whittle. Riley noticed how quickly he opened his knife, the way he did it with one hand, the way he did not even look down at the knife to open it. Riley noticed how seldom the man looked down at the short stick in his hand as the blade shaved bits and pieces from it, the way he kept his eyes up, looking back and forth between Riley’s garage apartment and the street.

Another group of homeless people happened by, this time without a military escort. The man whittled for a few more moments, then rose to his feet. Both his hands were empty. Although Riley’s eyes had never left him, Riley did not see him put the knife away. The knife was simply there in his hand, and then it was not.

The man walked through the fog toward the homeless men. They turned toward him warily. The man spoke with them for a few minutes and then he walked away, strolling casually toward downtown as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be on foot in a dark business suit. When the man had passed out of sight, Riley focused his attention on the homeless men. All of them were still standing on the street in front of Mrs. Harding’s house. All were staring up at his apartment.

Riley Keep decided it was time to leave.

He would use the door in back.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
IVE

H
OPE OPENED HER FRONT DOOR
to Riley just as a drab olive Humvee rolled past her yard, complete with four soldiers and a machine gun mounted in the back. The governor had responded quickly to Bill Hightower after ignoring her requests. She shifted her attention from the passing troops to Riley and snapped, “What do you want?”

Riley took half a step backward. “Don’t you think we ought to talk?”

“It’s a little late for that.”

She turned and strode back to her kitchen without a word, but behind her the door remained wide open.

At the counter she resumed her work, mashing boiled potatoes. Woman’s work. The only kind of work Riley had left to her. She heard his footsteps coming in, the familiar sound of them, the rhythm that was his alone, ingrained within her psyche like a muscular memory. How she wished she could forget it, be surprised that it was him. How she wished she did not know him as she did. But just as she knew his footsteps, she knew he wanted her to turn, to acknowledge his presence.

She would do no such thing.

He said, “I guess Dylan explained about the lawsuit.”

“So we’re gonna start there, are we?”

“What does that mean?”

“I was just wonderin’ how you’d break the ice, with so many interestin’ things to talk about.”

“Hope—”

“I was thinkin’ we should start with the way you got me fired before we get to how you got me sued.”

“They haven’t fired you, have they?”

She drove the potato masher into the pot, bearing down on it with all her strength. “There’s a recall election scheduled for next week, ‘cause of that car and the mortgage money. They’ll do it then.”

“But with this lawsuit, people will know there’s been no bribery. You got the car and all from me.”

“You think that’s a
help
?” She twisted at the waist, looking at him finally, showing as much of her back as she could manage while still laying angry eyes on him. “Everybody knows how you got that money, Riley, just like everybody knows we’ve got a thousand homeless people and the National Guard and a military curfew all because of you.”

“Not all those homeless guys are here because of me. There’s always been those old guys who hang out by the docks.”

“Oh, excuse me. That’s right; we’d still have Jim-Jim and John Donnelly to worry about, and let’s see . . . Nehemiah Shore and Marty what’s-his-name.” She turned and began chopping onions for the potatoes, putting her entire upper body into it. “Yeah, we’d really have our hands full either way.”

“I didn’t start this. The word was already out about a cure before I got here. It’s the whole reason Brice and I came home.”

“So you didn’t come for me and Bree. What a surprise.”

That got him pretty good. He didn’t reply for almost a minute. Then finally he said, “I didn’t know.”

She lifted the chopping block to scrape the onions into the potatoes. “Didn’t know what, Riley?”

“You have his clothes up there in your closet. I . . . I just assumed you got a divorce.”

She stopped. She spoke to the bowl of potatoes. She would not let him see her eyes well up. She would not let him think that she was crying about him when it was just the onions. “Have you ever slept with another woman?”

“No.”

“Then what did you expect?”

“So that’s the only reason?”

Laughing bitterly, she wiped her eyes. “Did you come over here with romantic notions, Riley?”

“Well, I was kind of thinking maybe—”

“Don’t flatter yourself. When we got married, I made a commitment. Not just to you, either. I believe in Jesus, Riley. I
really
believe. So I’m gonna try to do what Jesus wants me to do, even if it kills me. There’s been a lot of people told me I should divorce you, but I’m not gonna weasel out by pretending alcoholism is adultery. It isn’t. And neither is abandonment. Jesus meant what he said, plain and simple, and I’m not done believin’ just because life stinks. Commitments matter to
me
.”

Riley said nothing as she moved her attention to the garlic. His silence gave Hope a small sense of satisfaction. She had waited more than seven long years to pierce him with those words, the first four watching helplessly as he dissolved himself in alcohol, the last three wondering if he was out there dead somewhere, and now that she had finally spoken her mind on the matter, her words had clearly driven deep beneath his skin just as she had always hoped.

Why not wound him just a little? Every word was true. Why should she avoid the obvious? Had they not made the same promises, invested the same emotions, endured the same hardships? Had they not suffered the same horrors? Yet he had run away while she had stayed. It was something to be remembered, something to remind him of, whether he liked it or not, whether he was sober or not.

He broke into her thoughts. “Would you like to be divorced?”

“What I’d like and what I’ve got are not the same. I can’t change that, so it makes no sense to wish for any different.”

“I could always find a woman, give you the reason you need. If you want.”

She dropped a clove into the press. He was right. He had put on a lot of muscle, built up his shoulders, made himself look pretty good again. Any women would find him attractive. But if he thought he was going to trap her that easily he had another thing coming. She said, “Could you really do that?”

When he did not answer right away she despised herself for pausing in her work, for waiting without breathing, and when he finally said, “No,” she hated the relief she felt.

She crushed the garlic. A siren screamed in the distance. She tried to ignore it. His familiar footsteps behind her back moved to the window. He said nothing as she finished with the garlic, stirred the potatoes, put them in the refrigerator, and removed a package of chicken breasts. Finally he spoke. “You could win that recall vote if you wanted to. You could announce plans for a new convention center or something. Whatever you think would work.”

“You just don’t get it, do you? I won’t take your money.”

“You’re the only reason I have it. You and Bree.”

“I won’t take a penny from you.”

“Mom! He’s only trying to help.”

Hope turned to find Bree standing in the kitchen door. She looked from her daughter to Riley. “Did you know she was standing there?”

“Of course not.”

She saw that he meant it, but that did not matter. This was all his fault. Everything. She said, “Honey, your father and I need to have a private talk. Would you mind goin’ to your room for a while?”

Her little girl said, “I’m not sayin’ you should take his money. I’m just sayin’ he’s tryin’ to help us.”

“There’s things going on here you don’t understand.”

Bree said, “I understand more than you think. I know why you don’t want his money. But I also know he’s tryin’. That’s really hard for him. You should cut him a little slack.”

Bree’s eyes were on her father, her face softer than Hope had seen it in a very long time, almost as if Bree were a parent looking at her child, instead of the other way around.

Hope watched Bree and Riley looking at each other and saw the two of them as they had been in Riley’s last few moments living in that house, a marauding memory of three years back, when in a drunken rage Riley had raised his hand to Bree, and Hope had stepped between them. She remembered that eternal instant underneath his upraised fist. She remembered wondering if he would bring it down on her and finish them forever. She remembered begging him to leave, just leave, and the drunken dawn of understanding as he saw the way she looked at him. She remembered terror in his eyes as he escaped into the cold November night—the last time she would see him for three years—and as Hope saw him looking at their daughter now, a sudden rush of fear returned. She saw a reckless hope in him. She saw that hope reflected in her daughter. She had to stop Riley before he gave Bree ideas, before he hurt her little girl again. She said, “Bree, you need to go upstairs right now. This is a private conversation.”

“Did you tell him about the baby?”

“Bree! Get upstairs!”

The softness vanished from her daughter’s face. With a clipped “Yes,
Mother
,” she spun on her heel and stormed away.

Riley said, “What was that about a baby?”

Hope turned back to her work. Barefoot in the kitchen, doing women’s work. The future gaped before her, black and bottomless. How could she have failed her daughter so completely? “We were talkin’ ‘bout your money, and the fact that I won’t take it.”

“But what baby is she talking about?”

She had to head this off. She went on the offensive. “You shoulda told me she was standin’ there! What’s the matter with you?”

He took the bait. “I didn’t know.”

“She’s too young to hear about this stuff between us, Riley.”

“I agree.”

“All right, then, just so’s you know.” Then, in case he wasn’t totally distracted, she added, “And I will
not
take your money.”

“You don’t need my money. Dylan said half of it is yours already.”

Hope paused, her hands cold on the chicken. She had not thought of that. She understood they had named her in the lawsuit because she was Riley’s wife, but in the madness that her husband and her daughter had inflicted on her life she had not thought it through.

She heard more sirens, at least three altogether. There was a time when she would have phoned to find out what was going on, but her town was in other hands now. Whatever the problem, let Bill Hightower and the governor and his army sort it out.

She said, “How much money is there, exactly?”

“I don’t know. It changes with the stock market. Some days we get another hundred thousand, some days we lose a hundred.”

“On average, then.”

“It’s grown to around seven million, last time I checked.”

“Altogether?”

“Your half.”

Seven million dollars to her name. If the number had been smaller, she might have been more tempted. But this was something she could never hold inside her mind. It was purely theoretical, a number like that, and therefore easier to deny. She shook seasoning on the chicken breasts and said, “You keep it.”

“All right.”

“Well, don’t knock yourself out tryin’ to change my mind or anything, Riley.”

“I don’t care one way or the other, so long as you’re happy.”

“Happy?” She laughed. Then, “Don’t you wanna ask me why I won’t take it?”

“I know why.”

“You don’t know a thing.”

“I do. It’s the five thousand dollars.”

It surprised her that he understood. She kept her back to him and flipped the chicken breasts to sprinkle on more seasoning. She did not want him to see the confusion he had planted in her. Yet on reflection, it should be obvious why she would not take the money, even to Riley. She thought about the two homeless alcoholics in New Jersey who had walked into a newspaper office and set themselves on fire to protest the price Lee Hanks planned to set on the cure. Dead, both of them, and on front pages all around the world. She thought of the massive wave of outrage rolling through the country, the picketing and sit ins, the rallies and marches, good people throughout the nation rising up against the injustice of it. She said, “You also need to take back that car and mortgage money.”

“All right.”

“All right. Now tell me ‘bout this lawsuit.”

“I don’t know a lot about it yet. Dylan just got a copy himself. He said it’s about the patent rights. Some woman named Dale Williams says she invented the formula and I stole it from her.”

“Did you?”

A pause. “No.”

She noted both the pause and the lack of indignation. Not “Of course not!” but simply “No.” She felt a sudden rush of pity. He was such a simple man, naïve in so many ways. It was why he had fallen so completely to the bottom in the face of undiluted evil. Like a little boy, he would be surprised when the judge or jury saw through his lies. He would be putty in their hands. She asked, “We both know you didn’t figure out that formula yourself, so where’d you get it, Riley?”

“I . . . I sort of found it.”

The poor fool. “Where?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not? If you didn’t steal it from this woman, why can’t you tell me where it came from?”

“I just can’t.”

“Okay, how’d she know it was you behind the patent if you didn’t get it from her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dylan told me you set up some kind of company to hide behind, right?” It was all over the news about BHR Incorporated. She had already figured that one out—Bree, Hope, Riley. But BHR and Riley weren’t the only defendants named in the lawsuit. Her name was in the complaint, so she had a right to ask these questions. She said, “I think it’s important to find out how she knows who you are. You guys worked really hard to keep it secret. You didn’t even tell me. But this Williams person knew anyway. She even knew about me.”

Riley said nothing.

Hope said, “Maybe she found out from Dylan.”

“Dylan wouldn’t do that.”

“You trust him.”

“He’s a good man, Hope. You and him . . . I see why you like him so much.”

Hope thought of Dylan, of how she had suspected the worst of him when the car and mortgage payments came, wondering if he had done something illegal to get his money, wondering if he was some kind of criminal in spite of all the ways he had shown himself her friend, in spite of all the times she had watched his lips while he looked elsewhere, longing to kiss them, to tell him everything there was inside of her, to press herself full length up against him. She thought of all the lonely nights wrestling with her demons, desperately resisting the apparent equation of abandonment and adultery. Weren’t they much the same? Her husband had chosen alcohol over her. Was that not infidelity? Oh, how often she had longed to release herself to the common sense of that. But in her weakest moments, when Dylan’s handsome kindness nearly overwhelmed her, she had been unable to elude the plain sense of her Savior’s words, so she had whispered, “Rescue me,” and although she did not understand the reason for her torture, Hope had tried to accept it as a necessary part of something greater than herself, and by so doing, somehow, she had survived.