Then Marta forced a smile, and her tone softened. “Look, I know things worked out for me, but it took a very long time. There was a lot of disappointment. A lot of…humiliation.” She looked at Callie sincerely. “I don’t want you to go through what I did. Paul’s very spoiled and entitled. You’ll have to wait a long time for him to grow up.”
Callie could feel her anger rising, her cheeks reddening.
“You’re only angry because you know I’m right,” Marta said.
If anyone else had proffered this judgmental advice, Callie would have told them off, but Marta and Finn were her future in-laws. Paul had already caused a rift that would be hard to close. Much as she wanted to tell Marta to mind her own damned business, Callie held her tongue. This was doubly difficult because Callie knew that what Marta had said was partly true. Tonight Paul had certainly behaved in a rude and childlike manner, but under the circumstances, it wasn’t hard for her to understand where he was coming from.
“Take my advice,” Marta said. “Give him back that ring and run for your life.”
A night terror, an erotic dream, a vision of any sort wherein the victim claimed to be visited or tormented by the accused, served to condemn. If one had a complaint against a neighbor, the accusation itself often became the most damning evidence.
—ROSE WHELAN, The Witches of Salem
“What the hell is that?” Paul moaned the next morning, covering his head with a pillow.
Callie heard the shrill whine of machinery, too. “I’ll find out,” she said, happy for any excuse to get some distance from him. They’d had a fight when she’d gotten back last night, their first big one. Callie had tried to avoid it, but Paul had finished off a few more drinks after storming home and kept following her from room to room, going on and on about the wedding and about Marta, a continuing loop he’d been reciting for days.
“I have no intention of even going to the wedding!” he’d said, his words slurred and angry. He’d ranted about his father and about Marta.
“You’re drunk,” she’d said finally. “Go to bed.”
She’d been relieved when he took her advice, passing out on the bed. But she was so tense that she couldn’t sleep at all. She was still agitated this morning, both by Paul’s behavior and by Marta’s words. She didn’t want to talk to either of them today.
Pulling on shorts, she walked through the woods to see what was going on.
“It’s an impossible task!” Callie heard a male voice.
“I don’t care,” Marta was saying. She stood next to a man who was operating some sort of machine. The two were near the remainder of the oak Rose had died under. The rest of the grounds crew was shifting about, looking uncomfortable. “I want it out of here. Remove the entire root and put in grass. By this afternoon.” She turned and went back inside.
“This stump grinder isn’t strong enough,” one of the groundsmen complained.
“I’ve ordered an excavator,” the head groundsman replied.
As if he had summoned it, the huge machine arrived.
Callie stayed to watch, sitting on the ledge by the cliff to keep out of the way. The stump was easily removed as the excavator got to work, but the root proved more difficult. With each dig, the hole the machine created grew larger, but the root was still deeply planted in the earth. It radiated at least fifty feet from the stump.
“This is ridiculous,” one of the workmen said. “We’ll never get it all.”
“She wants all of the goddamned thing removed,” the head groundsman said. “If you expect to keep your job, I suggest you follow her orders.”
Eventually, Paul came out. He was showered and dressed. “I’m going for a drive,” he said.
Callie nodded. “Okay. I think I’ll go to the tearoom to see Towner.” And enjoy our time apart. “This is crazy, huh?”
Paul looked at the root. “No crazier than the whole wedding celebration.”
After Paul left, Callie sat in the sun, trying to relax…but she couldn’t stop staring into the gaping hole, listening to the swearing of the crew as the crevice grew deeper and wider with no sign of stopping. Looking into the blackness, she could see why the taproot was giving them so much trouble. It stretched downward and toward the house and was tangled with another underground root system. When the crew finally tried to pull it out, the earth began to crack, the root slowly splitting the ground as wide as an earthquake might, the crevice expanding all the way across the lawn, sinking the corner of the back steps.
“Stop!” the head groundsman yelled.
“Damn,” one of the workers said, shaking his head.
“That’s it! Enough! Fill it in. All of it. And then get someone in here to repair the goddamned steps before Mrs. Whiting sees this mess.”
The head groundsman went back to his truck and unhooked the chain they’d been using to pull the stump. Callie looked at the root; the knotted mass was as thick as a tree trunk and extended all the way under the house. As she stared, the hole began to fill with water. Was it seawater, seeking its own level? But no, the ocean was at least fifty feet below the cliffs. Even at the highest tide imaginable, it could never rise far enough to fill in the hole. Perhaps the workmen had nicked a pipe?
“Guys?” she called, pointing. They didn’t hear her. She left her perch and ran forward. And then she noticed something strange. The water threatening to fill the hole was a deep crimson. It wasn’t water. It looked like blood. Rising inch by inch.
“Watch yourself!” A crew member shoved her out of the way a moment before the excavator would have hit her. She hadn’t heard it approaching. She could feel the eyes of all the men on her as she quickly walked back to the boathouse.
Once inside, she took a long shower, trying to calm herself. She couldn’t quiet her thoughts. Nor could she stop the anger that was building inside her. Why had they come back here? Why hadn’t they returned to Matera right after the funeral? Paul was becoming a different person, different from when she’d first met him in Pride’s Crossing, and far different from the relaxed, happy guy she’d fallen in love with in Italy.
She dressed and dried her hair. Then she drove to Salem. Just as she crested the top of the Beverly Bridge, a car veered left into her lane. She blasted the horn, but the car kept coming. The driver finally jerked to the right, but not quickly enough. Refusing to brake, she hit his driver’s-side door.
They both got out and examined their vehicles.
“You were in my blind spot!” the man said by way of explanation. She handed him her insurance information without a word.
She could tell he knew she’d hit his car on purpose. And she didn’t feel bad about that. Didn’t even ask if he was injured. It wasn’t like her, and it felt odd. Afterward, she drove straight to Towner’s.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” Callie said. “I just had an accident.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No one was hurt, thank God. I’m just shaken.”