The Probable Future (34 page)

THE CHARM

I.

I
T WAS THE SEASON WHEN PEOPLE IN
U
NITY
put in their gardens, when winter’s fallen maples were culled and chopped into firewood for the year to come, when the peach trees bloomed and spring fever was at its height. Usually, at this time, Matt Avery would be working overtime, but this year he had stopped answering the phone. Even the old oak tree was still standing, though it was leafless, and people said it wailed whenever the wind blew through. Matt didn’t care about the tree; he was a man who had always risen by 5:30 A.M. without having to bother setting his alarm clock, but now he couldn’t get out of bed. He heard his brother rattling around in the kitchen, fixing coffee, chatting on the phone with Liza, and there Matt would be, quilt over his head, convinced that getting dressed or brushing his teeth or even breathing was far too much of an effort.

Matt had fallen victim to the flu, a potent springtime variety that boiled the blood and made for light-headedness, an illness that left him suffering with
aching bones and a cough that rattled his ribs. Perhaps he was so afflicted because his resistance was down: in losing his thesis, he appeared to have lost everything. The world no longer interested him. Everything he’d ever tried in his lifetime had gone wrong. Now it was Will who was the early riser; he who used to wake at noon now concocted protein shakes at dawn. He who favored Scotch and gin gulped bottled water. As unbelievable as it seemed, Will Avery had taken up running. He left the house at six and didn’t return until eight, when Matt would once again hear him, whistling like a madman as he showered, some prelude of Chopin’s that could set a person’s teeth on edge if all he wanted was peace and quiet.

Will had begun to give piano lessons on their old Steinway, the one they’d both learned on so long ago, although Matt had been tone-deaf and Will had a natural aptitude. Their teacher had actually told their mother that Will flared with talent, whereas Matt … well, Matt was a lost cause. Indeed, it was true. And now he had misplaced his thesis to add to his many failures. Gone was the project he had been working on for so many years, due to be handed in at the end of the week. To be sure he had notes and the first drafts of six of the ten chapters. He had the very last page, the one he’d been revising when the damned thing disappeared. But what sort of fool did not have a copy of the finished product? A fool such as himself it would seem, a man who had taken twenty years to complete his education and who couldn’t seem to get to the end even then.

Whatever Matt Avery wanted slipped through his fingers like water. If he couldn’t have love, if he had no hope, then at least he could teach, or so he had believed. The chair of the history department at the state college, Brian Lewis, had proposed Matt teach a night class for the fall, an offer that would surely be retracted when it became known that Matt’s thesis was AWOL. Thinking about his fate, Matt couldn’t help but consider Charles Hathaway’s last days, how he’d taken to his bed when his granddaughter left and went back to live at the house by the lake, how he’d suffered with fevers
and delusions, even though his wife brought him chamomile tea and poltices made from poplar leaves. Charles Hathaway wrote in his journal that he’d dreamed of Rebecca Sparrow so often she seemed to be with him even in his waking hours, sitting at the foot of his bed, dripping with green water, slipping away from him whenever he tried to reach out.

When Matt did manage to get out of bed, for a glass of water or some Tylenol, he didn’t bother to check the phone to see if he had any messages. He simply had given up hope. True, Mrs. Gibson had put up signs in the library, but a lost manuscript wasn’t like a stray dog. It didn’t come when you called; it wasn’t taken in and fed by kindly neighbors; and it assuredly wasn’t waiting in a cage at the pound, tail wagging. The phone calls were always for Will, anyway, for he seemed to have taken over the house. Matt wondered what the mothers of Will’s students would think if they knew Will Avery had spent his entire adult life as a drunkard and a liar. But the fact of the matter was Will had stopped drinking completely. For all Matt knew, he’d stopped lying as well.

“Rise and shine, brother,” Will would call through the wall before he went running, and why shouldn’t good old Will be happy? All charges against him had been dropped, now that the murdered woman’s dinner companion had come forward to say the victim had been considering taking out a restraining order against an old boyfriend, one who wouldn’t leave her alone. The boyfriend had turned up missing, and Will had been the one to identify him, from a photograph, as the so-called reporter who’d interviewed him and stolen the model of Cake House.
Inside Edition
had already dispatched a reporter to interview Will right on the town green, and there was a rumor that the
Today
show would be sending a film crew on Memorial Day. Will had been asked to be the parade marshal. Will Avery, who hadn’t visited his mother on her deathbed, who’d lied for sport and cheated on his wife, who’d frittered away his talents
and had been the sort of father available only for birthdays and special occasions, would be running alongside the mayor’s white convertible Cadillac on Memorial Day, his music students following along, tossing Tootsie Rolls and lollipops to the crowd.

Will hadn’t mentioned to anyone—except for Liza, in whom he now confided everything—the reason he’d taken up running. It was a reaction to the fear that arose inside him when he went into the station house in Boston to pick out the photograph of the man who’d stolen the model house. When Will got back to Unity, he was concerned enough about Stella’s safety to go and talk to the chief of police, Robby Hendrix, who had been three years behind Will in school. Robby had assured Will that Stella would not be in any danger, but as far as Will could tell, the most difficult case the Unity police force had dealt with, prior to tracking down what was possibly a cold-blooded murderer, was ridding the neighborhood of a family of rabid raccoons that had to be trapped up in the Elliots’ attic.

Will had little faith in the Unity police department, however well intended it was. And so he had taken up running. He had become the ears and eyes of the town, and by now he knew most people’s habits quite well. Henry Elliot, for instance, headed out to Boston at a quarter after six each day. Eli Hathaway was usually the first customer at the gas station on the corner of Main. Enid Frost opened up the doors to the train station at 6:30 exactly. On fair days she swept off the platform; when it rained she used a mop to clear away puddles.

Will found he could cover most of the town in two hours, making a loop that led around the common, down Lockhart, past the library and the elementary school and the shops on Main Street, all the while looking forward to the moment when he’d pass by the porch of the tea house, where Liza Hull was often waiting to cheer him on. Lately, Will had felt as though someone had drained the poison out of him; without alcohol, without the weight of his lies, he was light-headed and light-footed, faster than he’d ever imagined
possible. Another runner he’d met, Solange Gibson, the librarian’s daughter, had shown him a few stretches to prevent his legs from cramping up. Sometimes, when he was out on his appointed route, he’d meet up with one of his piano students and their families and they’d all be so pleased to see him Will had at first thought such people had mistaken him for his brother, someone else entirely, a well-respected man who cared about more than how easily something came to him or how little work he had to put in to get by.

When he heard that Jenny had come down with the spring flu, Will was so penitent he actually picked some of the phlox in his mother’s perennial garden that always bloomed early, an unexpected burst of white in the midst of all that May greenery. He ran over to Cake House one morning while Matt stayed in bed bemoaning both his future and his past. The wisteria was blooming and the whole town smelled sweet. Even the muddy lake, best known for its drownings, had a spicy aroma, more like cinnamon than its usual muck.

“I know you hate me,” Will said when Elinor opened the door. Elinor blinked when she saw Will, surprised to find him on her front porch. “I’m just here to visit Jenny. I won’t steal anything.”

“You’re not planning on getting back together with Jenny, are you?” Elinor wanted to know before she allowed him inside. She eyed the flowers, pathetic stalks of half-bloomed phlox. Catherine would have been embarrassed by such a paltry bouquet from her garden.

“Oh, no,” Will assured Elinor. “We’re through.”

Elinor’s ability to spot a liar seemed to be failing her; either that, or Will was actually telling the truth.

“Liza told me Jenny had the flu. I thought it was only polite to stop by.”

“So now it’s Liza.” Elinor opened the door wide. What a relief to know he’d finally moved on. “You should have said so.”

Will took the staircase two steps at a time, then wandered down the hall to Jenny’s room. Jenny used to sneak out her window at night to meet him, climbing down the twisted wisteria which grew along the roof so that she smelled like flowers and often made him sneeze. He was so allergic, Liza had convinced him to carry an Epi-Pen in his pocket when he went out running, in case he met up with a bee. He ran fastest when he passed that oak on Lockhart, for inside, where the wood was dead, a huge hive was nestled. Will could hear them humming as he ran past and he made sure to quicken his pace. Some people commuting to work in the city or over to North Arthur didn’t even recognize him as they drove past: he was a blur, nothing more. A man who was running from everything he’d ever been.

“You look terrible,” he said when he found Jenny in bed. She was feverish, her nose red, wearing flannel pajamas though the day outside was fine.

“Thanks so much.” Jenny tried to run her fingers through her knotted hair. She’d been working on a watercolor propped up on her knees. She’d taken up painting again.

“Nice landscape,” Will said.

Jenny laughed, then blew her nose. “There’s a tiger on the hillside. If you bother to look.”

“‘Tiger, tiger burning bright.’ But not, I suspect, on the hillsides in Unity. I didn’t know you could paint.”

“What did you know about me?” Jenny couldn’t resist that dig even though Will was arranging the flowers he’d brought in her water glass.

“Not much. I didn’t know much about my mother, either. I had no idea she was a gardener, but apparently she was. This stuff is all around the house.”

“Phlox,” Jenny informed him. In spite of herself, she had picked up stray bits of gardening lore from her own mother, though she
herself had never grown so much as an avocado plant from a pit. “It naturalizes. It may even do better when there’s no one around to tend it.”

Jenny narrowed her eyes when Will started tidying up her bedside table. He moved the bell that her mother had left so that Jenny could ring if she needed anything. A ridiculous notion, truly. Elinor herself wasn’t well and could hardly be anyone’s nursemaid, and when had she ever been so? Not when Jenny was a child, not on the day Jenny phoned Dr. Stewart herself, when her fever reached 104 and her throat felt like sandpaper, and her mother was out in the garden, heedless when it came to anything that existed beyond the gate.

“Isn’t this from the glass case?” Will said of the bell. It made a sweet sound when he held it up and shook it. “Didn’t it belong to Rebecca?”

Jenny took the bell from him and put it down beside her water glass filled with phlox. His fussing was making her uncomfortable. “Why are you here? What do you want? Frankly, I’m amazed that my mother let you in the house. Especially after it turns out you stole that arrowhead the very first time I brought you here.”

“That was terrible,” Will said sadly.

“Yes. It was. So what do you want now that you’ve returned to the scene of your crime?”

“I want your forgiveness.”

Jenny laughed, even though her throat hurt. Then she looked at Will. He wasn’t kidding. “And I should do this because …?”

“Because we’ll be better parents if we’re working together.”

Jenny stared at him, shocked. “And when exactly did you have this revelation?”

“Actually, I didn’t come up with this idea myself,” Will admitted. “I was helped along.”

“A woman’s influence,” Jenny guessed. “Marian Quimby?”

Marian had always been jealous; she had wanted Will for herself.
All through high school she’d called Jenny the dead-horse girl and the whore of Cake House. She’d traipsed around after Will, not that it did her the least bit of good: in the end, Marian went to law school and now had a practice in North Arthur.

“Marian?” In point of fact, this Marian had been the first girl that Will had sex with, on a couch in her parents’ basement. The summer after eighth grade. “Good God, no.” An awful thought possessed Will. “You don’t think Stella’s fooling around with Dr. Stewart’s grandson, do you? You don’t think she’s sleeping with him?”

“Of course I don’t think so. And we were talking about you, so don’t try to avoid it. Who’s the woman?”

“It’s Liza.”

“Liza Hull? My Liza?”

Jenny pushed her watercolors away. Will was staring right at her, when usually he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He was rangy-looking; he’d lost weight, Jenny realized, and his color was better. He was drinking bottled water and wearing running shoes, not at all his style. When was the last time he’d had a Scotch, told a lie, ruined someone’s life? How had this happened without Jenny noticing?

“It’s definitely Liza,” Will said.

The plainest girl in their class, Jenny’s boss, a woman who gave more thought to the ingredients of a piecrust than she did to her own appearance. Until recently. Several times lately, Liza had asked Jenny what she thought of an outfit, some dated pantsuit or dull, serviceable dress, and just last week Jenny had caught Liza gazing into the mirror above the buffet table, studying her own reflection, lips pursed, as though, all of a sudden, the way she looked meant something.