The door to the den swings all the way open and Roger, dressed in slim tan slacks and a cashmere cardigan, appears bearing a wooden tray.
“How was the therapy session?” he asks.
“I didn’t love doing it by Skype, but I guess that’s better than nothing. What’s really helping is being here.”
“So glad you could come out.”
“I’m so grateful to you for having me,” I tell him. What I don’t say is that I know Marion wouldn’t want me here for a weekend, and that the only reason I accepted his invitation was that he mentioned she was away.
“Just so you’re aware,” he says, as if he read my mind, “I’ve realized lately that Marion has been boxing you out in little ways, and I’ve had blinders on about it. I’m not sure why, but she seems slightly threatened by my other relationships. Not only with you. But with Quinn, too. Even Dad. I’m going to address that with her.”
“I’d love to be back in your life more, Roger. Especially now.” I smile ruefully. “Everything seems to have gone to hell.”
“It will work out, Button. The cops will find this detective’s killer. And you’ll figure out what’s going on with Hugh. Maybe it’s not what you imagine.”
He sets the tray on the coffee table, where I see he’s loaded it with a lovely antique teapot, matching cups, starched white napkins, and a small plate of cookies, a superbuttery kind he knows I love.
“Oh, Rog, this is so sweet of you,” I say, moved by the gesture. “And my, what a tray you set.”
“My mother always seemed to enjoy laying out a tray of pretty things. I guess she passed the gene down.”
“I wish I could have met her. She looks so beautiful in her pictures.”
My own mother had been great about not only displaying photos of Quinn and Roger with their mom but also encouraging the boys to speak about her frequently.
“Well, that falls firmly into the realm of the impossible, doesn’t it?” he says, pouring a cup of tea.
There’s nothing about his tone that suggests bitterness, but for the first time in my life, I wonder if Roger harbors any resentment—over his mother’s death, his father’s remarriage, my bursting onto the scene.
“Yes, unfortunately,” I reply, for lack of anything better to say.
“You still take a smidgen of milk with your tea?”
“Please. You know, I’ve been so horribly preoccupied with my own troubles lately, I haven’t asked a single question about you. Everything okay?”
“Uh, fine. Nothing much to report. And we need to stay focused on you right now.”
“Fine?” I can’t always read people as well as Hugh can, but I caught the brief hesitation before his response.
“Ha, have you noticed all my new gray hairs?”
“Yes, though I admit they give you a very distinguished air.”
He sighs, passes over my cup of tea, and pours one for himself before settling near me on the couch.
“In all honesty, I had a bit of a financial concern earlier in the year. Not what you’d call a disaster but more than a hiccup, and it had me worried for a while.”
“What happened?”
“Bad investment on my part. I was missing the game, I guess, and I took a risk that was ridiculously stupid—which I feel dumb admitting to you, of all people. The good news is that I contained the situation. There’s no long-term fallout.”
I’m stunned. Roger has always been the master of the smart, well-calculated risk.
“You promise?”
“Absolutely, it’s all good. But it put a damper on my relationship with Marion. I’ve always known she liked my money, but I didn’t know how much until I revealed what was going on and saw the panic in her eyes. She looked like a horse trapped in its stall during a raging barn fire.”
I’m stunned again, not simply by Marion’s reaction, but by hearing my brother say this, especially after his remark about her boxing me out. I’m relieved she hasn’t totally hoodwinked him, but I’d be sad to see him contend with a second failed marriage.
“Does this mean you’re having doubts about Marion?”
“Some, yes. But like you with Hugh, I’m going to see how it plays out.” He glances at his watch. “Why don’t you enjoy your tea while I see to dinner. I thought we’d eat about seven, if that’s fine with you.”
I manage to flash him a smile. After he heads to the kitchen, I make an attempt to engage with a novel on my iPad, but my gaze slides off the screen and my thoughts are constantly towed back to Mulroney, and Hugh, and Ashley Budd. And what happened to me in this region years ago.
I’m spared further torture when I see a text from Gabby, saying she’s fully returned to the land of the living and wants to meet tomorrow for coffee or drinks. I text back explaining I’m at Roger’s but that I’ll call her at some point this weekend. I can’t help but wonder whether I’d feel less frantic if I’d been able to spend time with her over the past couple of weeks.
I notice through the window that the sun has sunk low in the sky. I grab a throw blanket from the back of the couch, drape it around my shoulders, and wander out to the flagstone patio on the river side of the house.
Some days, if the sun is bright, the river tints blue, but today it’s somewhere between brown and pewter gray. When I was a girl, I used to go tubing on the river with my parents every summer, roping our tubes together and drifting lazily down it for hours. There’s nothing inviting about the water I’m staring at now, though. It’s flat and still, but it seems vaguely hostile, like there are dark things slithering beneath the surface.
I scan the area to the left and right of Roger’s house. I know we’re not as isolated as it feels, but you can’t see the houses on either side of us because of the trees that line the property.
The wind picks up and I return indoors, where I gather my belongings from the den and lug them upstairs to the large, pale-yellow guest room. I’ve slept here only once before, shortly after Roger restored the house, because Hugh and I always stay with my father when we come out to New Jersey. With more than a twinge of wistfulness, I realize how much I’d love to be in my old bed there tonight, hearing my father puttering around downstairs.
As I’m changing for dinner, my phone rings, and with a jolt I see Damien’s name on the screen. Ignoring his calls isn’t working, so this time I hit accept.
“I wanted to follow up after the other night,” he says, his voice disconcertingly soft. “I was really worried about you.”
I pause, considering how much to share.
“I’ve recovered, thanks. But . . .”
And then I do launch in, telling him about Mulroney’s death and my decision to come to Roger’s.
“This is scary stuff,” Damien says. “Can the cops do anything to help you right now?”
“Ha, you mean the ones from White Plains? I don’t think they have jurisdiction here.”
“Can I do anything, then?”
“I think the best thing you can do, Damien, is stop calling me. I appreciate your concern, but we shouldn’t be in touch.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”