17
Jack’s eyes opened slowly. The sun was shining on the water at the end of the dock. It must have been nearly noon. He couldn’t remember ever sleeping so late in Maine. This lake was made for the mornings, sleeping until noon an unpardonable sin. He shut his eyes against the brightness, rolled onto his back, and felt the stiffness that comes from tarrying too long in bed.
He wondered what Evelyn would have made of his laziness. He could imagine her flitting around the kitchen and hear her voice humming some unrecognizable tune. Morning was her time. She was always up first, out the door and on the water while dew still soaked the world. She would make it back to the dock to find Jack sitting in his Adirondack chair, both hands wrapped around his coffee mug. Despite the calendar’s insistence that it was July, mornings at Loon Magic were chilly. Jack wore a thick bathrobe over his sweatshirt and long pants. He smiled at her as she glided past him towards the beach. Good morning, beautiful. She would disappear into the cabin for a while, then pull up her chair beside him with her own cup of coffee.
These early-morning conversations were their favorite time of the day. The first few days of the summer, Jack would have his cell phone with him, still tethered to his Virginia life by the intrusions of work. But by day three or four, he was fully in the moment, cell phone parked on the nightstand, his full attention focused on the beauty all around him. Most of the time they talked about the lake, something that Evelyn had discovered that morning, something she had never noticed before. There was always something new out there. Other times, they would make tentative plans for something they wanted to do or get done that day. But more often than not, if the plan required leaving the lake, it would fall by the wayside, victim to the view’s magnetic power of inertia. So many times, these unhurried morning conversations would drift along into something much deeper. They would find themselves revealing their most tender thoughts about the kids and each other. They would share their fears about the future, talk through the occasional misunderstanding. Once every few seasons, Jack would come perilously close to unburdening himself. Maybe this is the time, he would think. He never summoned the courage.
The closest he ever came was only a couple of years after the act. Somehow the subject of Mitchell and Tricia’s marriage had come up. Evelyn was going on and on about how disappointed she was in Mitchell upon learning of his infidelities, a revelation which had come from Tricia herself in a rare moment of candor over cocktails one evening in Wintergreen.
Mitchell and I aren’t like you and Jack, Tricia had announced abruptly. I mean, on some level he loves me, and I love him, but it’s just not the same as what you and Jack have. Neither of us have anything approaching the . . . devotion to each other . . . that I see with you guys. Our marriage works quite well; it has been and continues to be very beneficial to both of our interests. But, no . . . Mitchell isn’t entirely faithful . . . never has been, really. But we manage.
The admission had astonished Evelyn. When she told Jack about the conversation, he admitted that he had known about Mitchell’s philandering for years. He had confronted him about it, and they had agreed to disagree. Evelyn then launched into a full-throated speech about how thankful she was to God for giving her Jack Rigsby for a husband, extolling his many romantic and moral virtues as both a husband and a father. Jack could hardly stand it. This outpouring of praise felt like stolen valor. Jack had opened his mouth to begin his long-planned confession when Kevin and Liz had burst from the cabin, run past them, and splashed into the frigid water.
The subject never came up again.
Now he lay in bed, trying to come to grips with his past, struggling to wrap his head around her sudden appearance in his life. Just yesterday she had spent three hours sitting in Evelyn’s chair, asking his opinion of her. He had never felt more uncomfortable in his life. She was . . . in her chair.
* * *
Starla had gotten up early and gone into town for breakfast at the Café. It had started to warm up; the sun was bright and the sky a brilliant blue. Scrambled eggs and two sausage patties sat on the table in front of her. She took a sip of coffee while watching the ducks sunning themselves on the rocks below—the rocks that peaked above the water only at the lowest tide. Her time with Jack felt like a blur, her memories of the afternoon a jumbled mess. A waiter topped off her coffee and took the plate from her. She leaned back in her chair and watched a large schooner loaded with tourists inch out of the harbor into Penobscot Bay. She pictured herself on that boat, alone, gliding away from this place she had visited for all the wrong reasons. If only she could disappear so easily.
Losing Robert had dredged up all of the debris that had settled at the bottom of her heart over a lifetime of disappointment. She knew it was coming, had prepared herself for his inevitably tragic end. But her preparations hadn’t been enough. Although she had earned the grudging respect of most who knew her, it was the grudging part that wounded her. She had always been the girl from whom everyone expected the worst. Starla Deloplane came from a long line of trailer trash. Her father was long gone by the time she was old enough to start school, and the Deloplane matriarch was a loud, profane, chain-smoking witch of a woman who constantly reminded her only daughter that she would never escape the fate that awaited her—that of a third-generation tramp whose only job would be leeching off the men in her life. Starla had come to believe it then, and she had never stopped believing. She took her mother’s advice to heart and implemented it to unprecedented perfection, rising above the financial status of every gypsy grifter in the Deloplane family tree.
But try as she might, the weight of the family reputation proved impossible to lift. She was marked for life. She may have been the trailer park girl who made good, but she would always be the trailer park girl. After Dee Ray, she managed to marry two other simple men who never stood a chance against Starla’s machinations. She kept Dee Ray’s name throughout—her way of honoring the father of her children for at least putting up a fight. Each ensuing divorce had enhanced Starla’s balance sheet as well as her reputation. She was a woman who wasn’t to be trifled with. Earlier in the week, armed with the startling news that Dee Ray was not, in fact, the father of her children, she had sensed an opportunity. Once Max’s investigator tracked him down, Starla had pursued Jack to this beautiful place with an ill-conceived plan to mine profit from this new set of facts. It had only dawned on her in the past twenty-four hours just how foolish an errand she had chosen. Jack was far too sympathetic a target, and she was far more wounded than she had realized. As she watched him closely at the cabin, she recognized the sorrow in his eyes. She discerned how damaged he was, and, to her great surprise, wanted more than anything for him to feel something more for her than resentment and regret. How did you think of me? She wanted to know the truth . . . to discover just how much she had to overcome.
Jack had seemed uncomfortable with the question, still gauging the stability of the woman in his wife’s chair. She was clearly after something. As their talk dragged on, he had grown more resentful of her presence in the cabin. With the question hanging in the air, he looked to the mantle at Evelyn’s favorite photograph. His answer was the confession that had eluded him for so long.
“That night at the hotel . . . I thought of you as something I had earned. There you were: trim, athletic, sexy, and best of all . . . anonymous. I had argued with Evelyn earlier that morning. We’d been going through a rough patch—two small kids . . . one a pinball and the other a colicky newborn. We’d been getting on each other’s nerves. Hadn’t had sex in months at that point. We both said some harsh things to each other, and then I was out the door and away for three days. I saw you in the bar and surprised myself by trying to imagine what you looked like naked. That’s not really my style . . . before or since, oddly enough. Later, when I noticed you in the rocker on that big porch, you looked even better. The funny thing is that I never remember actually making the decision to go through with it. The next thing I knew, there you were showing me exactly what you looked like naked. At that point, it was too late for second thoughts. I was all in. Then . . . you slipped out the door and out of my life.
. . . So, I slept with you to reward myself for putting up with the exhausted and hormonal wife who had borne me two children and loved me with all of her heart. I was willing to exchange the love and devotion of the most beautiful woman I had ever known for one night of strange pussy with a cocktail waitress. You were the single biggest failure of my life.”
Starla was silent. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him while he spoke, but she noticed that Jack never once looked her in the eyes. His eyes roved back and forth from his beer glass to the picture on the mantle.
“And now, twenty-six years later, here you are. What do I think of you now? To tell the truth, you scare me. I wonder what you’re up to. I have a hard time with the whole kismet thing. Maybe you thought you could squeeze some money out of me in exchange for your silence . . . but Evelyn’s death blew up that strategy. When I saw you at the Café, I couldn’t help remembering the sex. We men are pigs that way, I’m told. But now, seeing you here, sitting in my wife’s chair . . . that ship has sailed. So, I guess I don’t know what to think about you . . .”
Jack’s voice trailed off. He was done. Starla had let his words flow over her freely without objection or defense. She slowly stood up, placed her glass on the coffee table, and walked over to the fireplace.
“Thanks for your honesty. I guess I deserve it . . . all of it.”
Starla glanced out the French doors and saw the sun slipping behind the tree line across the lake. It felt suddenly colder, even inside. She began an honest, unscripted story of her own.
“What I remember the most about that night was taking a phone call at the bar from my next-door neighbor, who told me that my husband had plowed through several yards in the neighborhood, been arrested for a DUI, and would be spending the night in jail. My boss gave me the rest of the night off, and I had just stepped outside on my way home when you walked up. I felt like I was at the end of my rope. You asked me for a light. I remember looking at you and noticing how lost you looked, the same way you looked earlier in the bar. It was like The Hedges was the last place in the world you wanted to be. I just decided on a whim that I wanted to spend the night with you. You were my reward for putting up with a husband who was a lazy drunk. I didn’t think of you as a failure on my part at the time. You were a sliver of hope for me—proof that I was desirable to at least someone. You made me think that I could be the object of someone’s tenderness, even if just for one night.
The tears that welled up and spilled from her eyes had surprised them both—Starla because she couldn’t imagine where they had come from, and Jack because he hadn’t thought her capable of genuine emotion. They allowed the silence to linger as they gathered themselves.
“I understand why you don’t believe in kismet. I will never be able to convince you that we wound up here by chance, and that’s okay. But the real reason I have pursued you ever since the park is because I wanted to believe that maybe you don’t hate me, that maybe our night carried at least a little fondness in your memory. Ever since my son died, I’ve been trying to find the good in myself, wondering if there is any good in me. For me, that night was one of the good times. Seeing you here this week brought it all back.”
Jack began to regret the tone of his earlier remarks. Her story had stirred him in a curious way—not enough to recant a word of it but enough to reconsider the scorched-earth way he had dismissed her humanity. The fact was, he didn’t know a thing about the difficulties of this woman’s life; he understood nothing of the struggles and pain she had faced. Jack felt the need to throw her a lifeline. He asked her how long she planned to stay in town. She wasn’t sure and seemed determined to escape his presence before any further humiliation rained down on her.
“Wait, Carolyn. Listen, I was pretty harsh earlier and inconsiderate of your feelings. I’m sorry. It was rude of me.”
“No, I asked for honesty, and you delivered.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have to be an ass about it. Listen, before you go back home, why don’t you let me take you to dinner in town. Anywhere but here! I know all the best restaurants.”
They planned for the next night at Boudin’s at 7:00 . . . an arrangement that thirty minutes earlier, neither of them would have believed possible.
18
“Hey, Dad. It’s Kevin. How are you . . . how’s the lake?”
“Hey, Kev! So great to hear your voice. What’s this I hear about you having a girlfriend?”
Jack always enjoyed talking with his son on the phone. It had always been so much easier on the phone than in person for some reason. They hardly ever argued on the phone, for one thing. When they occupied the same room, they had a tendency to get on each other’s nerves. Jack loved his son, was proud of his successes. But they disagreed about a variety of inconsequential things, none of which amounted to much in isolation, yet the sum total seemed more significant with each passing year. Evelyn’s murder had ushered in a steely silence. So Kevin’s call had cheered Jack, boosted his morale.
“I suppose Liz told you about Angela.”
“She didn’t tell me enough. Who is she? What’s she like?”
Kevin enjoyed telling his father the story. Angela was an exciting story to tell, and his eagerness for the news eased the tension that had built up between them since his mother’s death.
“Dad . . . she’s incredible.”
“Sounds to me like you love her . . .”
“I do, Dad . . . I really do. She’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Kevin eventually put Angela on the phone. She introduced herself, and they chatted and laughed for the longest time. Kevin watched and listened with an enchanted smile on his face. When she finally gave the phone back to him, he had relaxed enough to ask the question that prompted his call in the first place.
“So, Liz tells me you’ve met someone.”
Jack didn’t like how it sounded—too much like an accusation. Maybe it was his guilty conscience, since he was about to head out the door to meet her for dinner.
“No . . . I haven’t met someone. Liz gets so carried away. I just ran into somebody in the park the other day that I knew from years ago, that’s all. She spoke to me at the Café when Liz and I were having lunch, and Liz jumped to conclusions.”
Instead of letting it go, Jack heard himself offering more information than his son had asked for. “She was a work associate from back when Mitchell and I first opened the agency. I was really surprised to see her in Maine of all places—that’s all it was.”
Jack immediately felt guilty for lying. What the hell was the matter with him? Out of nowhere, he blurted out, “We’re having dinner later at Boudin’s to catch up, that’s all. It’s not a date. Just two acquaintances catching up . . . so, relax.”
The call had ended on a changed subject and a happier note, but as soon as he hung up, Kevin called his sister.
“Okay, I just talked to Dad, and he’s got a date with that woman you told me about! Tonight . . . at freaking Boudin’s!”
Angela listened to their back and forth after Kevin placed the call on speaker phone. She heard their competing views on the wisdom of their father possibly getting involved with someone so soon after their mother’s violent death. She felt hesitant to offer her opinion in such an emotionally charged debate. But she found it odd that Kevin and his sister had traded places where their father was concerned. Now it was Liz who expressed confidence in her father’s recovery, while Kevin suddenly had doubts. Something about this woman had flipped a switch within him.
“I guess I’m just a little suspicious of our father just happening to run into a ‘business associate’ from twenty-five years ago down on Pine Run of all places! I mean, I know all about six degrees of separation and all that, but the odds are pretty long, don’t you think?”
Liz cut in: “Good Lord, Kevin. I’ve never seen you so suspicious. What, you think she’s some sort of golddigger or something?”
“I don’t know what I think. But something doesn’t feel right.”
They left it there for the night.
* * *
Starla had agreed to meet Jack at the restaurant. It wasn’t a long walk from the Tidal Beach Inn to anywhere in town, and she needed the fresh air to help clear her head. She’d spent most of the day dreaming of what it might be like to reconnect with this incredible man after everything that had transpired over the past twenty-five years. It was pure fantasy, and she knew better than to even entertain such dreams, but it was too pleasant a thought to resist. The reality of the situation was much more painful. There was simply no chance in hell that he would want anything to do with her if she told him the truth, and even less a chance that she could summon the courage to tell him. Her only plan now was to leave their first and last date with his respect, with her dignity intact, and then to board a plane and get the hell out of Maine for good.
Boudin’s was a local place several streets back from the water, sheltered from much of the tourist traffic. Its clientele was largely made up of locals and people who came up for the summer, the one-weekers preferring the places on the water. Starla had stopped to glance at the menu in the window of the vestibule that protected the inside from the elements. It looked pricey. She entered the front door at 7:00 sharp. Jack’s hand popped up from a table in the back. She noticed the other couples along the way and felt overdressed. Too late to turn back now . . .
Jack stood as she arrived at the table and pulled the chair out for her. She felt embarrassed by the gesture, not sure that any man in her life had ever displayed such courtesy and manners. It felt uncomfortable. What had she ever done to deserve such treatment?
Jack began with an introduction to the place. “Boudin’s has been here for about as long as we have. We used to bring the kids here to show them that even in Maine, occasionally you eat off linen tablecloths. It’s got the best seafood in Camden. When the kids got older and we needed some time to ourselves, Evelyn and I would come here for date night . . . ”
Starla, struggling against swelling emotion from some secret place, smiled and tried to think of something to say.
“It’s lovely . . . part of me thought you wouldn’t show, that you might have thought better of it.”
Jack looked surprised. “Why would I do that? It’s Boudin’s, you look great, and I’m hungry.”
* * *
Angela was beaming. “Your dad sounds so sweet! I can’t wait to meet him.”
Kevin was still thinking about his conversation with Liz and their odd reversal of opinion. Maybe Liz was right. She had, after all, spent time with him, looked him in the eyes. She was in a better position to make a determination about his condition than he was after just one phone call. And Liz had actually met this woman. He probably needed to relax and be grateful that his father was making progress.
“Oh, he’s quite a charmer, my dad. You will love him. And yes, we need to visit him at some point so you guys can meet.”
“Wait . . . has Kevin Rigsby finally come to the place where he is willing to properly introduce me to his family?” Angela was in a playful mood, the kind of mood that usually led to fabulous sex. “Am I a lucky girl or what?!”
Sometime after midnight, Kevin’s eyes opened abruptly. This kind of thing usually happened when he was scrambling to meet a deadline. Once opened, sleep was a pipe dream. But there was no deadline looming. This time, he awoke next to the woman of his dreams after an incredible night, as content with life as he could ever remember being. But his first thought upon waking was also his very last thought before drifting off to sleep the night before . . . his father’s mystery woman.
* * *
The haddock chowder was heavenly, as if someone had discovered a brand new way to combine fresh fish, sherry, butter, and silk, never before attempted by any chef, living or dead. Each spoonful had been a delight, right up to the moment when Jack had asked her the question she’d been dreading.
“ . . . So, tell me about your son. What happened? How did he die?”
For one brief moment, Starla considered telling the truth: “My son was killed by the cops a couple of hours after he shot Evelyn, and by the way . . . he was your son.” The thought horrified her and vanished from her imagination.
“Jack, I would rather not talk about it. It’s still too painful.”
“I’m sorry. I understand.”
The entrées arrived, rescuing them from the moment. As they ate the exquisite meal, Jack carried the conversation, telling of his life in Richmond, his work and family. Then he began with his family’s history in Maine, their attachment to Loon Magic and all of its charms. Starla listened, mesmerized by his life—how vastly different it was from hers—stunned at the height, width and depth of the chasm that separated them. Jack then placed his fork down and fell silent for a moment as if trying to compose himself.
“I lost Evelyn last year in September. She was murdered in cold blood by a drug addict.”
19
The fact that Kevin found himself in the midst of an eight-hour road trip to Virginia was bad enough, but the fact that he had lied to Angela about it was worse. He had made up something about meetings with several clients that could only be handled face to face, assuring her that he would only be gone for a couple days and was actually looking forward to the beautiful and relaxing drive. Angela had smiled and hugged him but couldn’t hide her skepticism. She was worried about him. He hadn’t been the same since Liz told him about Carolyn. The idea of his dad being interested in someone else had shaken Kevin, driven him to late-night Internet searches and bouts of insomnia. During conversations with Liz, he kept dredging up the events of September, asking about details that neither of them could recall. Angela watched him leave that morning and immediately called Liz with her concerns.
“It’s like suddenly he’s back there again. Ever since you told him about this woman, he can’t stop thinking about his mother’s death.”
“Yes, he’s been peppering me with questions for days now. I tried to tell him that I think Dad’s in a far better place now than he was just a couple months ago, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. He’s become obsessed with the murder for reasons that I can’t understand.”
Angela listened to Kevin’s sister respectfully, letting her do most of the talking, and when she did interject something, choosing her words carefully.
“Liz, please don’t take this the wrong way . . . but did either of you, ever, even briefly, . . . blame your father for Evelyn’s death?”
* * *
As the car raced through the mountains of West Virginia, Kevin began to second-guess himself. What the hell was he doing? What had come over him? News of his father’s possible infatuation had, like a tripwire, ignited unexpected reserves of anger and resentment. But . . . anger at whom? Resentment over what? His mom’s death was a random tragedy. The killer was at fault, no one else. What Kevin was seething over at 80 miles-per-hour on Interstate 77 just south of Charleston was the meaninglessness of it all. What kind of world allowed a life like his mother’s to end in a convenience store parking lot? What was the point of it all?
He had spent the past couple of nights digging through the story again, reading the news reports, reacquainting himself with the obscurity of that night. He read of the Deloplanes. He reread the article that Liz had sent him about the three of them—the triplets—the hicks from the sticks.
He thought about the Quik Stop. He had dropped in several times himself when the family used to travel to Wintergreen to ski. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes from Mitchell’s place. Why did he have to stop in the first place? He tried to picture the Escalade in the parking lot, tried to conjure up an image of the gun in the hand of Robert Deloplane of 116 Oak Tree Drive in Madison Heights, Virginia. But he couldn’t connect all the dots. Nothing made sense. Everything was wrong. He needed to see it for himself. He had to touch the pavement with his own hands.
* * *
Jack had surprised himself. What about this woman made him want to talk so much? But now that the truth was hanging in the air, there was no turning back. He had noticed her look away when he said it. A little bit of color seemed to drain from her face. Why wouldn’t it? It was a jarring statement. How was she supposed to react? Jack continued, surprisingly relaxed . . .
“It was one of those scorching days of late summer, high 90s in Richmond. I had the bright idea of making a quick trip up to Wintergreen to my partner’s cabin to escape the heat . . . totally spur of the moment.”
Now, his own eyes dropped to his plate as he steered basmati rice into straight lines. Starla silently watched his hands, trying to steady her heartbeat.
“Evelyn didn’t really want to go. I had talked her into it. So she spent much of the trip up acting put out with me for dragging her off on another spontaneous detour. But the closer we got to the mountains, the more she perked up. It was going to be a great couple of nights.”
Jack paused and glanced at Starla. Starla met his gaze, tears forming in her eyes.
“Then, out of the fucking blue, I got a hankering for beef jerky.”
There were no tears in Jack’s eyes—just steely anger. He reached for his wine glass and emptied what was left.
“You know, it’s no secret that I’ve always been a big fan of beef jerky. Evelyn used to tease me about it. She thought it was nasty stuff, couldn’t even stand the smell of it. But as fond as I am of it, I go weeks . . . sometimes months without having any, you know? To this day, it baffles me why I had to have beef jerky at that exact moment.”
* * *
Kevin pulled his car into the Quik Stop and got out slowly, feeling stiff from the drive. He had spent one late evening looking at the pictures in the Lynchburg paper that showed the Escalade in the third space from the edge of the woods on the far right end of the parking lot. He remembered the yellow police tape drooping down forlornly around the broken glass on the passenger’s side. There were only a few cars in the lot now. He walked over to the spot, glanced at the edge of the woods, closer and thicker than he had imagined. That must have been where he’d hidden, safely shielded from the two street lamps at either end of the property. It would have been dusk in September—even better. He tried to imagine his mother sitting there in the car, head back against the headrest with her eyes closed, humming some old tune the way she always did, oblivious to her fate. Maybe it was best that way . . .
* * *
“I saw the Quick Stop on the side of the road, so I pulled in the lot and the strangest thing happened . . . ”
Starla had pulled herself together, drawing from wells of composure which she didn’t think she possessed. She was now looking at Jack, hearing his story, paying closer attention. She realized that all she knew of the events of that night had been printed in the newspaper. The sheriff’s office had treated her like a criminal, offering her neither information nor condolence. She found herself suddenly hanging on Jack’s every word.
“There was a space right in front of the door where the brightest lights were, but it was flanked by two muddy, oversized pickups, so I decided against pulling in. I parked as far away from them as I could, over where it was darker. Would have made all the difference. That’s another thing that eats at me. I didn’t even like that Escalade. I bought it for Evelyn. Why did I care if it got a little mud on it or a scratch, for God’s sake?”
Now it was Jack struggling for control. Although these thoughts had been his constant companions for months, he had never spoken them aloud to anyone. It was disturbing and comforting at the same time—an uneasy emotional alliance.
“So, I leave her over in the dark end of the parking lot and go inside for my jerky. Hadn’t been inside very long—I don’t know, maybe five minutes? There was country music playing. I actually got in a debate with the guy behind the counter about how stupid the name of the store was . . . like that mattered . . . ”
* * *
He stood at the spot where the broken glass had been, where his mother’s cell phone had come to rest—probably in the exact spot where Deloplane had stood. He bent down to the asphalt and rubbed his hand over the scratchy surface, searching for a shard of glass. There was nothing. Everything had been swept clean. No marker had been erected, no memorial to the victim. It was just another parking space, stained with oil and gas. Kevin Rigsby began to cry his first tears for his mother.
* * *
“While I was wasting time in the store, my wife was being robbed of her wallet by one Robert Deloplane—a local drug addict and one of the worthless Deloplane triplets, spawn of Starla and Dee Ray Deloplane of Amherst County, Virginia. But Mr. Deloplane wasn’t content with mere armed robbery . . . he was feeling ambitious on this night and decided that he would point his stolen gun six inches from her face and pull the trigger . . . multiple times, I’m told. All of this while I waxed eloquent about what had become of the once-proud English language to a man with an eighth-grade education.”
* * *
Kevin gathered himself, rose from the ground, and walked slowly to his car. It had been a long grueling day, but it wasn’t over yet. He had one more stop to make. He reached for his phone and punched in the address . . . 116 Oak Tree Drive, Madison Heights, Virginia.
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