Jake reminded himself that Bill had been a selfish man, so caught up in his books that he barely paid attention to the people around him. Besides, he’d done this all for Alice. He’d done what she wanted. And now Harry was back, and Jake wondered if Harry had factored into all of this, if Alice wanted to start a new life with Harry. Lying awake, he’d try to remember that time with Alice immediately after Edith had died. It was comforting, but Jake found his mind wandering further back, thinking of Mrs. Codd, his neighbor, all those years ago. She’d been dead now for over fifty years, and Jake often wondered if anyone else ever thought of her. Her sons, maybe, if they were still alive.
Sometimes he thought of his parents, both long dead as well, his father from drinking at the age of fifty-five, and his mother from congestive heart failure ten years later. He’d kept to his promise and never gone to see either of them after that first year of college, although he’d sent his mother updates whenever he moved addresses, and she’d sometimes write back. She’d written him when his father died, describing the circumstances, but never mentioning that she’d like for him to visit. He wouldn’t have, even if she’d asked. After she died, he’d received a letter from a lawyer, saying that there was some furniture and other possessions that he might like to have. Jake never responded. A second letter arrived, but that was it. He’d felt nothing at the time, but as he’d gotten older, his anger at his parents had increased. Why had they brought him into the world if they had no interest in loving him? It had made him what he was, of course: successful, able to find his own love and happiness, unburdened by guilt. But why had they done it? If he could go back in time, he would ask his mother that question, just to see her squirm.
Jake wasn’t sure he’d be able to go to Bill’s funeral, but knew it would look strange if he didn’t. He went but avoided talking with Alice, who surely knew that he had done her bidding, and was shocked to see Grace McGowan—it had to be her—sitting quietly by herself at the back of the church. The sight of her scared him, somehow, as though she knew what had happened. But that wasn’t possible, was it? She was here because she’d loved Bill, and she was hiding in the back of the church, not wanting to be seen.
But then she’d actually come into the store. Jake watched from the back room as she talked with Harry, and then they exchanged numbers. After she left, Harry told him that she was looking for a job. He was alarmed, wondering if she knew anything, even though he thought that was impossible. But it gnawed at him.
On the Wednesday evening after the funeral, Jake closed up shop and went and sat on the bench across from the Village Inn to read that day’s paper. It was something he sometimes did when the weather was decent. No one noticed an old man on a bench. But that night, he’d done it hoping to see Grace, maybe find out where she was living. Many cars drove by, plus a few pedestrians. He was about to give up when a couple came out of the Village Inn; he recognized Harry right away, and then he recognized Grace. Had she gotten a room at the Village Inn, and had Harry been in there with her? It was a definite possibility, but maybe they’d just had a drink at the bar. They turned left, up the hill, and Jake followed them at a distance, up to Barb Whitcomb’s place, where they stopped and talked some more. Jake, not willing to risk being seen, turned back.
That next afternoon Jake talked with Barb, sidling up next to her as she was coming back from the Cumberland Farms with her Megabucks ticket. He found out that she’d been advertising one of her spare rooms on the Internet, and that the girl, Grace McGowan, had come up from New York City the previous Friday. “She cries in her room, that much I can tell you. I don’t ask what’s going on because it’s none of my business.”
“You think she’s here because she knew Bill?”
“You’d know more than me,” Barb said. She told him that she was leaving the next day to visit her adult daughter, who lived on the Cape. “She’s back in rehab, telling me she’s cured, of course, and don’t I want to come down and see it for myself.”
“Maybe it will take this time.”
“That’s what she says, John. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
That night he didn’t sleep at all; he kept thinking of Grace, wondering why she was still in town, why she was clearly after Harry. He wanted to call Alice, but knew that would be a mistake. They talked frequently, but always at the store when no one else was around. She didn’t want anyone to know about their connection. He paced the condo, then at dawn he got dressed and made a new cosh using a sock and quarters from his change bowl. He showered, then dressed for the day, pushing the coin-filled sock down deep into his suit pants pocket.
That night, after the sun had set, Jake went up the hill to Barb’s house. There was no good place to sit and watch, so he stood quietly in the stand of birches across the street, his eyes on the bowed-out second-floor windows. He thought he caught movement a few times, maybe a shadow passing across a curtain, but he couldn’t be sure. But if he stayed here long enough, he knew he’d eventually see Grace either arrive or depart. Either way, he could get to her. He shifted from leg to leg and shook his arms to keep his circulation going. He’d slept a little bit in the back office of the store that day, nodding off in the wooden swivel chair. He dreamt he heard Bill’s voice, slicing through the wind, telling him to wake up, but his eyes were glued shut, and he couldn’t open them. He was worried he was going to fall off the cliff and into the cold water below, but he couldn’t open his eyes, and he couldn’t stop walking forward, feeling for branches that would keep him on the path. Bill’s voice got closer, then farther away, and Jake jerked awake only when his elbow slipped off the arm of the chair.
He’d been standing and watching Barb’s house for less than an hour when the front door opened. He stood as still as possible. The slender figure, too tall for Grace, he thought, walked from the dark house into the light of a streetlamp on the sidewalk. It was Harry, which wasn’t surprising. How long had he been inside? Had they been fucking, or had she been telling him about his father? Probably both. Jake waited a few minutes, then crossed the road to the house. He tried the door but it was locked. Looking back over his shoulder, he pressed the doorbell; two chiming notes sounded from within the house. He pulled the sock from his pocket, and waited, hoping she’d swing the door open freely, expecting to see Harry again.
Instead, she cracked the door open three inches and peered out. Jake pushed against the door with all his strength, catching her unaware, and she stumbled back.
“Hey,” she said, right before he hit her in the jaw with the cosh, dislocating it. She crumpled instantly to the floor like a knocked-out boxer in the ring. Jake stayed standing, his heart tripping in his chest, wondering if the blow had killed her, but her chest was still lifting and falling under her striped shirt.
The door was open behind him, and Jake pushed it almost all the way closed with his foot, then he crouched over Grace McGowan and hit her several times on the side of her head.
Chapter 30
Now
Harry had no memory of being at Caitlin’s motel room, but he did remember the ambulance ride, and he knew that he’d tripped and fallen, even though it was a fuzzy memory.
There was a persistent, low-frequency ringing in his ears, and the inside of his head felt swollen, almost like a balloon had been blown up inside his skull. Earlier, one of several doctors who’d come in to question him had asked him what town he was in, and he was totally surprised that he hadn’t immediately known. She’d moved on to other questions, but before she left, he’d said, “Kennewick. I’m in Kennewick, Maine.”
She’d smiled and told him that was correct.