“I’ll finish it.”
“But … I don’t have a list.”
I used to pride myself on never having a list. I found them creatively stifling, I’d tell people. What if I planned to make French onion soup but then saw some impossibly delightful-looking artichokes? Now the thought seems as frivolous as it does ridiculous.
Angus is looking at me. His face is a stark contrast to mine. Calm. In control. “I’ll finish it,” he says again.
This time I don’t protest. I can feed the residents hot dogs and frozen peas for a week, if that’s what it comes to.
With his keys in my hand, I leave via the front door. Angus’s truck, blessedly, is right out front. I recognize it from outside Rosalind House. I let myself in the passenger door and slide onto the vinyl, locking the door behind me.
*
I don’t remember driving to pick up Clem from school the day Richard told me he was going to jail. I don’t remember parking the car or walking through the gates or greeting any of the other mothers. But I do remember Clem’s smile when she saw me. And I remember thinking: I wonder when I will see Clem smile like that again.
The drive home had been filled with her usual random, fluttery chatter. I answered the odd question, made the odd ooh or ahh but my mind was miles away. I didn’t have any intention of telling her what Richard had done. Richard would have to do that. The twenty or so minutes I’d taken to pick up Clem solidified my shock into something cold and hard. Richard hadn’t just betrayed his investors; he’d betrayed us as well.
A truck was blocking the driveway when we got home. I’d ordered some plants for my new garden bed and some ornamental stones. Ornamental stones! How ridiculous it seemed to have ordered ornamental stones. The tradespeople who swarmed the house probably wouldn’t get paid for the work they were doing. The ornamental stones would have to go back. The decent thing to do, I realized, would be to go around tapping them on the shoulder right now, telling them to stop work and go be with their families, but my cowardice, it turned out, was stronger than my righteousness.
Inside, I went straight to the kitchen and was surprised to find Richard wasn’t there. After what he’d told me, the idea that he could get up and move around freely seemed preposterous somehow. But his barstool was empty, swiveled to the left as though he’d got off in a hurry. I put some shortbread and cut-up fruit on a plate for Clem and then went looking for him.
“Richard!” I called. I wandered back through the house, across the parquetry floor Richard had insisted we have, past the paintings he’d ostentatiously bought at auction. “Richard?” I knocked on the door to his study. Somehow the fact that he went in there, into that place where he’d caused all this trouble, felt like more of a betrayal. “Are you in there?”
There was no answer, so I barged inside, angry now. How dare he ignore me after the bombshell he just dropped! I took two steps into the room, and that’s when I stopped. Dead.
*
Angus’s truck is remarkably clean. It has one of those little plastic bags hanging from the glove compartment for rubbish. Like so many things about Angus, it isn’t what I expected.
It’s a short but uncomfortable drive home. Though it’s warm, rainclouds curl in the gray sky, threatening but not delivering. Part of me yearns for the rain to start streaming down, a gray blanket to disappear into. The shopping bags, filled with Lord-knows-what, are in the back. Once he loaded them in, Angus got into the truck without so much as a word, and started driving.
About halfway home, I feel the need to say something. “I appreciate you stepping in like that, Angus.”
Angus shrugs, keeping his eyes on the road. If Mother was here, she’d say it was impolite not to respond when someone spoke to you, but in this case, she’d be wrong. A quiet shrug, no big deal, was the nicest response he could possibly give.
I try for a laugh. “I guess I’ll have to start shopping at Bent & Dent.”
His eyebrows shoot up and his glance touches mine for a heartbeat. “Why? Because one woman who didn’t have her facts straight assaulted you while you were trying to do your job?”
“Because,” I say to my lap, “I’m not strong enough to go through that every week.”
We crunch onto the driveway of Rosalind House. Angus shuts off the engine but doesn’t get out. “I’m sorry about what I said the other day,” he says. “Of course your daughter has lost more than her home and her money. Obviously you have, too.”
Now I’m the one to shrug. Mostly because I don’t trust myself to speak.
Angus lifts his hand, and for a second I think he’s going to touch my cheek, but he stops a few inches short. “How’s the face?”
“Fine,” I say, though it’s starting to throb again. I glance in the mirror. There’s a fairly distinct hand mark. “Nothing that won’t heal.”
“Are you all right to go inside? I can take the groceries in if you’d rather hang out here for a while.”