Chapter 6 - The Sad Man in the Big House
|
Sunday arrived wearing too much sunlight.
I stood at the kitchen window before anyone else came down.
My hands would not stay still.
I smoothed my dress over my stomach.
I straightened cups that were already straight.
Rosa watched me from the stove.
"She is four, Clara."
"She will not be grading any of us."
I almost laughed.
Then the garden gate clicked.
Vincent was already outside.
He had been there since before I came down.
He wore no jacket.
He wore no tie.
He had left his guards inside the house.
He looked like a man trying very hard to be ordinary.
Carmen came through the gate holding a small hand.
Grace wore a pink sweater.
Her dark curls bounced with every step.
A stuffed rabbit hung from her other hand by one ear.
The dimple appeared before her smile did.
She saw Rosa first.
"Abuela Rosa!"
She ran the last few steps.
Rosa caught her and kissed the top of her head.
Grace held up the rabbit.
"Buttons lost a button."
"We have to fix him before lunch."
Rosa nodded like this was national news.
Then Grace noticed Vincent.
She stopped.
She studied him the way children study weather.
"Who is that?"
Rosa kept her voice gentle.
"This is my friend, mi amor."
"He lives in the big house."
Grace looked up at the windows.
"All of it?"
Vincent answered before Rosa could.
"Too much of it."
Grace considered this seriously.
"That is a lot of house for one friend."
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Vincent Moretti had faced down judges and killers.
A four-year-old had just reduced him to silence.
Grace walked closer.
She stopped one careful step away.
"You are sad."
It was not a question.
Vincent lowered himself onto the kitchen step.
He sat slowly, the way you approach a wild bird.
Now his eyes were level with hers.
"Sometimes."
Grace nodded like she had suspected it all along.
"My rabbit gets sad too."
She held Buttons up between them.
"His name is Buttons."
"He is brave even when he is sad."
Vincent looked at the rabbit.
Then he looked at Grace.
"He is lucky to have you."
Grace smiled.
The dimple deepened.
She reached into her pocket with great ceremony.
She produced half a cookie wrapped in a napkin.
"I saved this from breakfast."
"You can have it."
"It is the big half."
Vincent took it with both hands.
He held it like glass.
"Thank you, Grace."
She watched him until he took a bite.
"Better?"
"Better."
She nodded, satisfied with her medicine.
Then she climbed onto the step beside him.
Not touching.
Just near.
She swung her legs above the stone path.
"Do you have a garden at your house?"
"This is my house."
"You should plant flowers."
"Rosa says sad houses need flowers."
Vincent swallowed hard.
"What kind of flowers?"
"Yellow ones."
"Yellow is the happy color."
He nodded like she had given him an order.
"Yellow ones, then."
I stood in the doorway with my hand over my heart.
My unborn daughter kicked softly.
I thought about Daniel in the rain.
I thought about Elena in a faraway room.
I thought about all the years this man and this child had lost.
Grace was offering him the big half of a cookie.
It was the smallest thing in the world.
It was also everything.
She stayed for one hour.
She drew a rabbit on the back of a grocery list.
She gave the drawing to Vincent without ceremony.
He folded it once.
He put it in his shirt pocket.
When Carmen called her for lunch, Grace hugged Rosa.
Then she turned back at the gate.
"Bye, sad man."
Vincent raised one hand.
"Goodbye, Grace."
The gate closed.
He stayed on the step for a long time.
He did not follow.
He did not call her back.
He kept the promise he had made in the kitchen.
He had simply been in the room.
That restraint cost him more than any order he had ever given.
That evening my telephone rang from a number with no name.
Rosa had arranged it through Carmen.
I sat on my bed with the screen against my knees.
Then Elena's face appeared.
She was thinner than her photographs.
Her dark hair was pulled back severely.
A plain wall stood behind her.
A window showed the gray edge of Michigan trees.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
We were two widows of the same lie.
Her husband had survived it.
Mine had not.
"Clara."
Her voice was soft and hoarse.
"I owe you an apology that has no size."
"You owe me the truth."
She nodded at once.
"Yes."
"Start with Michigan."
Elena folded her hands in her lap.
"Richard's people drove me to my aunt's house that first night."
"He told Chicago I had stolen from the family accounts."
"He filed papers before I even knew my name was on them."
"The embezzlement charge is his lock on my door."
"If I walk into Chicago openly, they arrest me before I can speak."
My throat tightened.
"And Grace?"
"Richard told me Grace was safer forgotten."
"He told me Vincent knew."
"He told me Vincent agreed."
She closed her eyes.
"I believed him for exactly one year."
"Then a woman in his office mailed me a photograph."
"It was Vincent at Elena's grave."
She stopped.
"It was my grave."
"An empty grave with my name on it."
"He was kneeling."
"I knew then that he had never known."
I wiped my cheeks.
"What happens now?"
"Now we do it lawfully."
"Detective Laura Mitchell believes the frame will collapse."
"Prosecutor Jennifer Park is building the honest case."
"My recorded statement goes to them this week."
"Your husband's recording goes beside it."
"And when the warrant falls, I come home."
"I will walk into that house through the front door."
"Not hidden."
"Not carried."
"Walking."
I looked at her exhausted face.
"Grace asked about you once removed, Elena."
She went still.
"What did she ask?"
"She asked Rosa whether the sad man lives in the big house."
Elena covered her mouth.
"She does not know me."
"She will."
"She asked about him like she already belonged to him."
Elena began to cry without sound.
Then something changed in her face.
Her eyes moved past the camera.
Her whole body went rigid.
"Elena?"
A knock sounded through the telephone.
Three slow raps.
Not a neighbor's knock.
A patient one.
"Elena, who is that?"
She looked back at me.
Her lips formed my name.
May you like
Then the screen went black.
The line was dead.
