Winner Take All (13 page)

As Marcus rose from his chair, a sudden thought occurred to him. He did a careful search of the room, then said, “Kirsten, could I have a word?”

When she joined him in the front hallway, he was still intent upon his search. “What is it?”

“Stay there just a moment, please.” Marcus walked to where the house was dissected by the plastic tarpaulin, swept it aside, and
stepped through. Sawdust and old ashes drifted in the air. The house’s articles had been stuffed in packing crates and draped with more plastic sheeting. He unpacked several boxes in different rooms, until he was certain his search was both futile and discomfiting.

Kirsten called from the hallway, “Marcus?”

“Just a minute.”

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for something. Don’t come back, it’s filthy.”

When he stepped through the plastic drape, Kirsten asked, “What did you find?”

“Step outside with me.”

He waited until they were removed from the man’s influence to say, “There is no sign of the child.”

“What?”

“Not a picture, no mementos, dolls, toys, nothing.”

“The baby is sixteen months old, Marcus.”

“Listen to what I’m saying. There’s
nothing
. We arrive to find the man drunk. His only response to the custody document is a slurred denial. What kind of father does that imply?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’m going to meet this local judge. See if you can find some reason for me not to drop this case.”

Wilmington’s old town held an aura of carefully preserved history, capturing through struggle and money a past that never was. Gone were the seedy bars and topless joints and the beer wagons’ rutted tracks. Wilmington had entered a second heyday, fueled by two Hollywood studios who had fled the union-dominated west coast and a sudden upsurge in high-tech business. The ancient coastal oaks had been trimmed back, the rotting wharf district restored, the pre-Revolutionary houses as carefully done up as a bevy of aging brides.

Marcus turned by the church where the British military had stabled their horses after taking the manor next door for General Cromwell’s residence. He pulled into the drive of a house only slightly smaller than a full-blown plantation.

As Marcus left his car, the Wilmington judge appeared on his front veranda. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, sir.”

Garland Perry was thirty years senior to Marcus, and proclaimed
his staunch membership of the old school by appearing on a Saturday afternoon in starched white shirt and suspenders. He removed the pipe from his mouth. “I don’t normally like to do business on a weekend. But your secretary indicated this could not wait for next week.”

“I have to be back in court on Tuesday. You might have heard I’ve been asked to represent Dale Steadman.”

“Rumors to that effect have been circulating ’round here.” The judge rapped his pipe against the nearest pillar. A dark smudge suggested this was a long-held custom. “Personally, I find the idea that you’d take the side of a former opponent very repellent.”

“This case has nothing to do with New Horizons.”

“So you say.”

Marcus remained standing upon the front walk, looking up the three stairs to the older gentleman. “Are you opposed to my handling this case, or my representing Dale Steadman?”

“Mr. Steadman has the right of every citizen to legal aid, I suppose.” He blew hard on his pipe, then stowed it in his pocket. “But there are any number of lawyers out there.”

“He came to me.”

“Then I question his motives, as I do your own.”

“What do you have against Dale Steadman, sir?”

“Nothing more than any number of local people. He’s brash, he’s a drunkard, and he’s a stain on our good city.” He met Marcus’ gaze for the first time. “My advice, sir, is you’d be well served to send him packing.”

Marcus took Highway 132 back out toward Pine Grove. He drove past the Wilmington Golf Club, then took the Greenville Loop Road out to Towles Road. It was a round-the-elbow sort of drive, but he needed time to think. The absence of clear answers made for much disorder and no resolution. Near Dale’s plank bridge, Marcus halted and got out. Back behind him the day’s final glow bid him a pleasant farewell. The surrounding marshland was dotted with stick figures of salt-blasted deadwood. Their inky branches pointed him toward every step of the celestial compass, which only reflected the state of his cluttered mind. A pair of redwing hawks screeched from either side of the bridge, as though they’d selected Marcus as their feast and now sought to scare him from cover. Up ahead, the night only accented the house’s
damage. The northern half gleamed a yellow welcome. The south side was nothing but shadows and mystery.

The front door opened as he pulled through the stone entrance and into the circular drive. Even from this distance Marcus could see Kirsten’s distress. He climbed the stairs and asked, “What’s wrong?”

In reply she took his hand and led him inside.

“Where is Dale?”

“Asleep.” Kirsten drew him through the front corridor.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Kirsten.”

“I asked him your question for you.” She drew him up the stairs and halted by the middle landing’s only door. “Look in there.”

A ring of keys dangled from the lock. Marcus twisted the handle.

The room was crammed floor to ceiling with Celeste.

Boxes spilled photographs and teddies and kittens and dolls. Crates were stacked so high the bottom ones were crushed almost flat. An antique rocker was lost beneath a pile of smiling stuffed animals. The little desk held a trio of plastic mixing bowls filled to overflowing with pewter teething rings, pacifiers, and plastic infant’s toys. The roller crib was a single mass of fluffy angels. Silver frames had been roped together like plates and piled upon the diaper table so that one leg had given way, and the table was now supported by a high-backed chair.

“He wouldn’t come in here,” Kirsten said from behind him. “Wouldn’t even look. He just gave me the keys and stumbled off to bed.”

Marcus cut off the light and shut the door. “Why does this make you so sad?”

She continued to stare at the closed door. “Is it possible to love too much?”

“No. I don’t think—”

“What about the pain? What about all the worries and all the things you can’t keep shut up inside anymore?”

The questions were too important to be discussed in the middle of an ash-soaked stranger’s home. Marcus draped his arm around her shoulders and steered her back down the stairs.

“What if loving this much only gives the world a way to crush you again?”

“Again?” He opened the central French doors and led her out into the night. The gravel path was bordered by ankle-high lamps, such
that their way was clear yet the starlight remained undiminished. “Who hurt you the first time?”

There was no mistaking the panic in her voice. “Answer my question, Marcus.”

He guided her out onto the dock. He tried to pitch his voice so that it mirrored the water’s calm lapping. “We need to learn to trust one another, to have confidence that such a hurt won’t ever come. And if it does, then it will be from some outside source, and we will face it together.”

At the boat’s side she finally balked. “That’s not good enough.”

“Kirsten, we’re arguing over a future that hopefully won’t ever come. It’s been an exhausting day. In the morning these things will—”

“What if I can’t learn to trust you?”

Muted light glimmered off her overwide eyes. “What are you saying?”

“What if I shouldn’t be here?”

“Kirsten, I believe with all my heart that you are heaven’s gift.”

His words only pushed her farther back down the pier. “Then you’re not seeing who I truly am.”

“So show me.”

The path’s light seemed too much for her, as she canted away from the illumination and angled off into the grass. “What if I can’t?”

“I will work to earn your trust.” When she only fled more swiftly, he called, “Years, if need be.”

Marcus heard her slam the car door. Gravel scattered like shotgun pellets as she rounded the drive and headed away. He stepped into the boat, burdened by the weariness of just another defeat at the hands of someone he loved.

T
HE NIGHT REFUSED TO DEPART
of its own accord. Around four Marcus dressed and went out to chase it away. He stretched long and slow, the sea breeze faint as a sleeping woman’s breath, the air so warm he left his sweatshirt on the poolside table as he started his run.

The plank bridge thunked a series of musical wooden notes beneath his tread. He followed the road along the water’s edge but saw nothing save huge stone gates and more floodlit manors. Streetlights cast the willows and sea oaks in malarial tints. Beyond them, where the road turned inland and the houses became less imposing, broad rises of magnolia and elm formed inkstains upon a starlit sky. For a time Marcus was able to outrun even his thoughts. There was a singular purity to a predawn run. Every promise still held the potential of fulfillment. Even now.

Back at the yacht, he took the narrow stairs down into an opulent central cabin. He called both Kirsten’s apartment and her cell phone, but received no answer. Then a thought occurred to him. Marcus dialed the number for Deacon’s home, reflecting that perhaps a shred of joy could be found for someone who needed it almost as much as he did.

Afterward he showered and made coffee in the yacht’s overequipped galley. On the upper deck he was greeted by a soft world quilted together by mist and gray light. From this angle the morning fog appeared as the water’s uppermost layer. Marsh islands hung suspended in both time and space. Overhead a jet painted a long finger-trail aimed straight toward dawn’s rising tide. Across a narrow channel
rose Masonboro Island, its high-backed hills the result of dredging the Intracoastal free of silt. The dunes glowed sable and expectant, while overhead gulls sang a sea-born chantey.

Marcus sat there long after his coffee had grown stone cold, until the sun split the horizon into an eruption above and heat below. Whenever possible, he had refused divorce and custody cases. There in the dawn’s light he recalled one particular instance when the work could not be avoided. A longtime client had discovered his wife with not one outside lover, but six. The man had been utterly devastated. Time after time he had asked Marcus how it was possible to live with someone for seventeen years and not know them at all.

Gradually the July sun began searing his skin. But there was a clarity to this position, a pressure to see everything with morning’s purity. Kirsten was the most irritatingly secretive woman he had ever met. She held a huge portion of herself clenched impossibly tight. He would like it otherwise. He desperately wanted her to share all with him, even though he was certain her secret would prove to be appalling.

Here in this gift of quiet Sabbath space, he asked himself the carefully avoided question. What if she refused? Marcus set his cup aside. It was not like he needed a lot of time to think this through. The morning’s importance had lain with confronting the issue. The answer was immediate.

Whatever she chose to give him would be enough. Half of Kirsten’s heart was a thousand times more than he had ever expected, or deserved.

He walked across the gangplank and took the gravel path toward the house. Finally he had an answer for that long-ago client. You lived with someone and never knew them fully because the alternative was unthinkable.