In an Evil Time Page 5

  He replaced the plywood, went back outside. The nearest mound of earth and rock was fifty yards distant; he noted its location and the fact that there was a wheelbarrow near the pile. Then he went to the trailer to talk to Dulac again.

  “Everything looks good, Pete. Pouring the rest of the slabs next week, right?”

  “Right,” Dulac said. “Should have ’em all done by a week from tomorrow.”

  “One in the wine cellar looks like it might be a little tricky.”

  “Shouldn’t be. We’ll have that one down Monday or Tuesday.”

  “Fine,” Hollis said. “Oh, one more thing. Pretty good chance Chesterton and his wife will be driving up on the weekend. If they do, they’ll want to check progress for themselves. So I’d better have your spare key to the padlock on the gates.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Dulac got it for him. “You coming up with them?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Well, better remind Chesterton to lock up again when they leave. Remote site like this, we don’t want anybody getting in here that don’t belong.”

  “No,” Hollis said, “that’s the last thing we want. Somebody here who doesn’t belong.”

  5

  WHEN he came down out of the hills he drove straight home. Three-thirty already; not much time left in the workday, even if he’d been inclined to return to the office. What he needed right now was to talk to Angela, break the news that Boston was no longer an option and reinforce the argument that she wait awhile before leaving home.

  Only she hadn’t returned from Santa Rosa yet; there was no sign of her little Chevy Geo. Cassie wasn’t home, either. But parked in front was an unfamiliar Dodge pickup, old and a little battered, and as Hollis started his swing into the driveway a rough-dressed man appeared on the porch, stepping out from behind the screen of bougainvillea. Recognition thinned and tightened Hollis’s mouth.

  Angela’s first big mistake.

  Now what the hell?

  He stood waiting as Ryan Pierce came down the steps and approached him. Tall kid, on the gangly side. And on the scruffy side now: beard stubble, brown hair curling well below his collar, stained cowboy boots and Levi’s and a western-style shirt. Not much to recommend him, today or any day, except a pair of soft brown eyes and an ingratiating smile. Little gumption, no real focus or ambition. Hollis had never understood what Angela saw in him. Cassie thought it was gentleness, hidden depths that she’d been able to tap into. Maybe. His own best guess was that Pierce appealed to the strong maternal side of her; that she’d believed she could make something of him, teach him how to be a husband, father, man. Well, she’d been wrong. He had kept right on being immature, directionless through four struggling years of marriage and most if not all of the time since—no damn good to anyone, including himself.

  “Hello, Mr. Hollis. Long time.”

  Not long enough. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Looking for Angela. You knew I was coming, right?”

  “Wrong. If I had I’d’ve told you to stay in Wyoming.”

  “Montana. I told her in my last e-mail I was getting ready to drive down. She didn’t tell you?”

  “No.” And he’d ask her why she hadn’t, although he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “I heard she left the guy she married in San Francisco, about all the trouble she’s been having with him. Not from her, from my sister Rhona. It sounded messy and I couldn’t get her to talk about it and I’ve been worried about her and Kenny. I quit my ranching job even though we were in the middle of—”

  “Worried. Sure you were. How long has it been since you saw your son? Eighteen months? How many phone calls in that time? How many cards or letters?”

  “Look, Mr. Hollis, I know I’ve been a lousy father—”

  “Damn right you have.”

  “—but I’m not the same person I was before Angela and I broke up and I moved away. I’ve learned some things since I’ve been out on my own. Done a lot of growing up.”

  “Is that a fact.”

  “Yes, sir. I know you don’t believe it, and I can’t blame you, but I care about her and my son. I never stopped caring. Now … I’m ready to start being a father to Kenny. I mean that. Angela must’ve told you about the money I’ve been sending the past few months for his support.”

  “Is that what you think being a father is? Sending a check for a couple of hundred dollars every month?”

  “No, sir,” Pierce said. “That’s why I’m here. I want to he part of his life from now on.”

  “Just like that. And on your say-so we’re supposed to welcome you with open arms.”

  “I don’t expect that. All I’m asking is that everybody give me a chance to prove how much I’ve changed.”

  “Your timing is lousy, Pierce. You say your sister told you about David Rakubian. Well, you don’t know half of how bad the situation is. Angela’s trying to cope with the biggest crisis of her life, and you showing up, trying to wiggle back into her good graces, is only going to make matters worse.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything to cause more problems for her. That’s the last thing I want.”

  “What you want doesn’t matter. What’s best for her and the boy does.”

  “Why’re you so sure that couldn’t be me?”

  “Your track record, that’s why.”

  “I told you, I’ve changed. I really have.”

  “Start proving it when this Rakubian business is finished. Until then, leave her and Kenny alone.”

  “Kenny’s my son.”

  “And my grandson. I didn’t walk out of his life eighteen months ago; you did. I’m the one who’s been here for him.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you, Mr. Hollis.”

  “Then stay away from my family.”

  “I can’t do that,” Pierce said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—not anymore. They’re my family too.”

  “Listen to me—”

  “No, sir. Just tell Angela I was here and that I’m staying with Rhona and her family. Will you do that?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to see them, both of them. Whether you like it or not.”

  Hollis’s anger began to spill over. He moved forward, trying to crowd Pierce without actually touching him. The kid surprised him by standing his ground. “If you bother her, upset her in any way, I’ll make you regret it. Now get off my property before I throw you off.”

  Pierce met his eyes for a ten count before he turned and walked slowly to the pickup.

  Damn him! Hollis thought. After eighteen months and at the worst possible time. Maybe Pierce had changed, grown up some and learned a sense of responsibility; those brown eyes hadn’t been as soft as they once were. But he was still a sorry-ass loser. Incredible how a sweet-natured, levelheaded girl like Angela could have such rotten taste in men.

  He left the car where it was, went up onto the porch. And what he found next to the door pushed Ryan Pierce out of his mind. More flowers. A big flashy arrangement, yellow and red roses, half a dozen other varieties, including orchids, all done up in an open vase that must have weighed four or five pounds—a hundred dollars’ worth, at least. And that wasn’t all. A white rectangular box was propped there, too, with the same local florist’s name printed on it.

  He plucked an envelope bearing Angela’s name off a long plastic fork stuck into the arrangement. Almost didn’t open it, thinking that what he would do was take all this sweet-smelling crap into the garage before Angela or Cassie got home, bag it, and hide it in the garbage can where it belonged. He could predict what the message said anyway. But then, on impulse to see if he was right, he yanked the card out of the envelope. With greater love hath no man. Not the exact wording he’d had in mind, but close enough.

  Crumpling the card, he bent to lift the white box. Might as well open that, too. It was in his hands before he realized that the address label on it did not carry Angela’s name. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson Hollis.

  He tore
the lid off. And stood staring, his rage burning high, at what lay within—at the silk-ribboned funeral wreath and the card that read in small, neat script: With deepest condolences on the loss of your loved ones.

  He was sitting in the living room, slumped down in his big leather armchair, when Angela and Kenny came home. He had been there for some time, unmoving and so inwardly focused that he was no longer aware of his surroundings. Lost and alone inside his own head, wandering in and out of the shadows. No, not quite alone. Rakubian was there, and Pierce, and the old man with his censorious eyes and critical mouth and the disappointment leaking out of him like a rancid oil. And Ma—the one recurring image of her that he could never drive away, that was as sharply detailed after thirty-six years as if it had happened yesterday.

  He’d been ten that summer, inside a hospital for the first time, the medicine smells, sick smells, death smells making his head swim—peering down at Ma in her white bed in the white room and thinking: She looks so small lying there. She looks like they put her in a pot and boiled her up and shrunk her. Her voice had been shrunken, too, a weak pygmy voice saying, “Don’t you worry now, honey, I’m going to be fine. Good as new in a few weeks, you’ll see.” And him so scared, seeing her that way, that he blurted out, “Do they have to cut you open, Ma?” And the old man looming there big as a house, blinking his censorious eyes and saying with his critical mouth, “It’s the only way they can get the cancer out. Quit that sniveling now, boy. Nothing’s gonna happen to your mother except she won’t be sick anymore when it’s over.”

  She died on the operating table.

  They killed her on the operating table.

  They wheeled her into a scrubbed white room full of lights and tubes and gleaming instruments and they cut her open and she hemorrhaged, she had some kind of virulent reaction to the anesthetic, and she died and he never saw her again because he wouldn’t look at her at the funeral, he closed his eyes when he walked past the coffin—he could not bear to see her dead, it was bad enough remembering her boiled up and shrunken in that other white room with the smells of medicine and sickness and death.

  It was not going to happen to him like that. He was not going to die on a goddamn operating table with his body sliced open, or in a hospital at all if he could help it. Surgery was not an option for him. There’d be no prostatectomy; no brachytherapy, the implantation of radioactive seeds; no transurethral resection, that swell-sounding little procedure where they shoved a tool with a tiny wire loop through your pecker and down into your prostate to scrape up the cancerous cells. External beam radiation … yes, all right, he could stand that even though it might eventually make his impotence permanent. Hormone therapy was okay, too. But he would not permit Stan Otaki or any other doctor to cut into the center of him. There were no guarantees with surgery anyway. Even if he survived an operation, the cancer could still spread and kill him sooner or later.…

  He didn’t hear the Geo pull into the drive, didn’t realize they were home until they came in through the front door. Kenny bounded in first, saw him, shouted “Granpa!” and came running. He launched himself from a couple of feet away, and if Hollis hadn’t caught him, hunching and turning his body as he did, he’d have taken a knee where it would have done his prostate the least good. Six weeks ago, after being under Rakubian’s thumb for so long, the boy had been quiet, skittish, clingy to his mother; now he was the child he’d been before the marriage, a bundle of energy, a nonstop chatterbox. Amazing how quickly kids his age could recover from a bad experience, if they were gotten out of it before there was any permanent scarring.

  “Hey, tiger. What’s got you so excited?”

  “Me and Jimmy Eilers played video games all day on his iMac,” Kenny said. “He’s got a brand-new iMac, well, his mom does. Tangerine, yuck, I like blueberry. Blueberry’s cool.”

  “Is that so. Who’s Jimmy Eilers?”

  “Joyce Eilers’s son,” Angela said from the doorway. “She’s in the group.”

  “The one with the relatives in Utah?”

  “Oh, Mom told you about that. No, that’s April Sayers.”

  “I won him every game,” Kenny said. “I mean I beat him every game. Well, most games. Hey, neat. Cool. ’Way, man. Dag! Far out, dude.”

  “Where’d all that come from?” Hollis asked. “Jimmy?”

  “His sister taught him. She’s ten and wears glasses and she’s got a big butt.”

  Angela said, “Kenny, that’s not a nice thing to say about Tina.”

  “Well, she does. Humongous, man. Awesome buns.”

  Hollis set him on his feet. “Go get yourself a Coke. You look like you can use one.”

  “Nah, I’m not thirsty. I had six Cokes with Jimmy.”

  “Upstairs and play, then. I want to talk to your mom.”

  “Grown-up stuff?”

  “Grown-up stuff.”

  “Okay. Mom, why don’t we have an iMac?”

  “We can’t afford one right now. Someday.”

  “Can I go boot up our crappy old computer?”

  “Boot up.” Angela rolled her eyes. “Yes, go ahead. And it’s not crappy, it’s a perfectly good—”

  Kenny wasn’t listening; he was already running for the hall. He let out a whoop and went racing up the stairs. The way he did it reminded Hollis of Teddy, the addled brother in Arsenic and Old Lace, and his “Charge!” up “San Juan Hill.”

  Angela sat in Cassie’s chair, tucked her feet under her. “What is it, Dad?” Warily.

  “I talked to Eric this morning. The Boston apartment fell through.”

  “Oh, damn!”

  “Don’t look at me like that—I didn’t have anything to do with it. His friend’s folks changed their minds when they found out why you wanted to stay there.”

  She sighed, pressed thumbs against the edges of her eyes. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It sounded too good to work out.”

  “Utah might be better. It’s a lot closer than Boston.”

  “Utah may not work out either.”

  “No?”

  “April’s relatives have a limited amount of space. They live in a mobile home park.”

  “So they wouldn’t be willing to put you up for a while?”

  “They might be. April isn’t sure.”

  “When will you know?”

  “As soon as she talks to them. If the answer is no …”

  “You can still stay right here.”

  “Daddy …”

  “Okay, forget I said that. Where in Utah?”

  “I’d rather not say. Even if I go there, it’s better if you and Mom don’t know exactly where we are.”

  He needed to go to the toilet again; he stayed where he was, crossing his legs. “Your brother’s driving up for the weekend,” he said. “To see you, mainly.”

  That put a smile on her mouth. Such a radiant smile she had, like her mother’s; when the two of them were happy and laughing, they lit up a room. “When’s he coming?”

  “He’ll be here tomorrow around dinnertime.”

  “It’s been a long time since we’ve all been together. I just wish … well …”

  “I know,” he said. Then he said, “You may as well know that Eric’s not the only one who wants to see you. I found your first ex hanging around when I got home this afternoon.”

  “Ryan? Oh God, he’s here?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us he was coming?”

  “I didn’t expect him this soon.… I thought we’d be gone before he showed up. You didn’t say that I’m taking Kenny away?”

  “No. It’s none of his business, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I wanted to tell him, but I was afraid to.”

  “Why? He wouldn’t try to stop you?”

  “I don’t know, he might. He wants to be a father to Kenny again, be part of his life.”

  “So he kept telling me. That, and how much he’s changed. I don’t believe it.”

  “I think he has, Dad. I hope he has. It�
��s not good for Kenny to grow up without a father, his real father.”

  “You don’t have to see him or let him see the boy before you leave.”

  “But I should, now that he’s here. He has a right to.”

  “Does he? After all this time? Kenny barely remembers him.”

  Angela gnawed her lower lip. “Where’s he staying, did he say? With Rhona?”

  “… Yes.”

  “Is he going to call or stop by again?”

  “One or the other, I suppose.”

  “You weren’t … nasty to him, were you? I mean—”

  “We had words. What did you expect?”

  “I’d better go call April,” she said. She got up and left the room so quickly he wondered, frowning, if it were Pierce she was hurrying to call instead.

  Thursday Evening

  Alone with Cassie, Hollis said, “You see the look on Angela’s face after she talked to Pierce? If I didn’t know better, I’d think she still has feelings for him.”

  “You don’t know better. She’s still in love with Ryan.”

  “Are you serious? After all this time and the way he behaved?”

  “Nobody’s rational where love is concerned, you know that. Angela least of all.”

  “For Christ’s sake. How long have you known about this?”

  “All along.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to. He left town and then she married Rakubian on the rebound.”

  “You don’t suppose she’d …”

  “What? Start up with Ryan again?”

  “He hurt her once. He’d do it again.”

  “He’s not a kid anymore, and neither is she.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “If Rakubian stops being a threat,” Cassie said, “she might turn to Ryan, yes. Depending on whether he really has changed as much as he claims, and if she were sure enough of him and his feelings for her and Kenny. She’d say it was for the boy’s sake, but it’d be just as much for her own.”

  As though he didn’t have enough to worry about as it was.…