That is the one he always dreams about, the last one in Miami, a job so botched the owner never collected, even though the horse had been a Preakness winner and was insured for two million. Horses have hotter blood than humans, that’s what Hollis believes, and he was covered with blood by the time he was finished. He had to stand in the shower for hours, and even then the cold water was a pale remedy. That horse, a white thoroughbred, had refused to go down. Hollis had blood under his fingernails and all over his boots; two weeks later, after he’d headed back to Massachusetts, he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom of his rented rooms above the Lyon Cafe when he found horse’s blood in the rim of his ear. A single red thread which couldn’t tie him to any crime, and could be easily scrubbed away with a damp washcloth, and yet that mark seems to have been a curse. He still does not like to look at himself in the mirror, for fear he’ll see blood, and to this day he despises the color red. That horse continues to follow Hollis while he sleeps. He runs in pastures that are as red as blood; he races through guilt and grief. Kill something, and it’s yours forever. At night, you will be at your victim’s mercy, but that’s only temporary. Dreams, after all, are worthless things-Hollis knows that. They can’t reach you on the street where you walk; they can only torment a man with a conscience, any fool who allows it.
Now that the dream is back, Hollis often gets out of bed in the dark. He leaves March sleeping, and goes to sit in Mr. Cooper’s parlor, in the leather chair where Mr. Cooper liked to relax and smoke his cigars. He watches the light break through the sky above the Farm. Blood buys things and it always has. It was his dream to stand on top of Fox Hill and own everything in sight, and now he has made it all so real that if any trespasser comes by he’ll find himself hauled off to jail. It’s his, the acres of woodland, the houses, the fences, even this chair, where Mr. Cooper liked to read the Sunday paper, unaware that he was being watched through the window by a boy who owned nothing, not even the clothes on his back, which had been paid for out of the goodness of Henry Murray’s heart.
“Everything you have I own,” Alan Murray told Hollis when he came back from his father’s funeral.
Well, he’s fixed that, hasn’t he? Sitting in the dark, Hollis thinks about his money. He thinks about the woman, asleep in his bed. Why is it he continues to feel so poor? Why is he waiting for March to bolt out the door? He’s been worrying about Richard Cooper, who’s not giving up so easily and who has taken to calling. Hollis has been hanging up on him, but sooner or later March will answer the phone, and that won’t do. He’ll see to it the way he’s seen to the mail, so that March hasn’t received any responses from the stores that want to sell her work. A woman who has her own money can leave you when you least expect it; she can walk off anytime.
Long before anyone in the house is awake, before Hank has fed the dogs, before Gwen has written a letter to her father or March has set about making a cranberry coffee cake to bring to the Justices’ Thanksgiving dinner, Hollis has taken care of the phone lines.
“Must be some wire down,” he says, when March tries to contact Susie to ask if there’s anything else she should bring to dinner.
“Are you sure you won’t go with us?” March asks.
“Dinner with those old coots?” Hollis grins. “I don’t think so. I’ll stick to frozen food.”
Hollis has actually encouraged March to take the kids and go to dinner; their absence will give him the chance to look through her suitcase and her dresser drawers to make sure she hasn’t managed to receive any letters from Richard before Hollis could retrieve the mail.
“I want you to have fun,” Hollis tells March. “Enjoy yourself. Take Hank-he can eat the Justices out of house and home for a change.”
“Remember,” March says when they’re ready to leave, “you can always change your mind and come for dessert.”
“I’ll think about it,” Hollis tells her, even though he’d rather be tied into a straitjacket than have a meal with the Justices.
“Hollis isn’t going?” Hank asks when March comes out to the car.
Hank is in the backseat, and March hands him the coffee cake. “He hates polite society. You know that.”
“Well, I’m sure it hates him right back,” Gwen says. She’s sitting in the front seat, with Sister on her lap.
“You’re bringing the dog?” March asks.
“I’m not leaving her here.”
Hank looks over his shoulder at the house. “Maybe I should stay.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Gwen says. “Don’t you feel sorry for him.”
“It’s not that,” Hank insists.
Gwen smiles in spite of herself; it’s exactly that.
“It’s a holiday, that’s all,” Hank says.
“Well, you’re coming with us,” March says. “Hollis wants you to. One of the reasons Louise is getting a twenty-five-pound turkey is because I’m bringing two teenagers.”
When they get to the Justices’, Gwen and Hank take Sister for a walk, since March wants the dog to stay in the car during dinner. Actually, it’s a pleasure for the two of them to be alone in the smoky air, because today everything smells like roasted chestnuts and burning wood and cinnamon wafting from the windows of the bakery, where they’re working overtime to fill holiday orders.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so concerned about Hollis,” Gwen says as they walk past front lawns and fences. They’ve let the dog run on ahead through the last of the fallen leaves, those which haven’t been blown away or turned into dust. “He still hasn’t given me the ownership papers for Tarot.”
“He will,” Hank tells her. “He keeps his word.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll bet he does.”
“He does,” Hank vows. “You’ll see.”
Hank and Gwen take a longer walk than they’d intended, but the Justices’ house is crowded even without their presence. Dr. and Mrs. Henderson are there, along with the Laughtons, Harriet and Larry-all of them so polite and stuffy that Hollis would have gone nuts in their presence. The Hendersons’ daughter Miranda is there, free as a bird since her divorce last spring. Ed Milton has of course been invited, along with his twelve-year-old daughter, Lindsay, as has Janet Travis, the new attorney in town-since a resident of ten years is still considered a recent arrival-and her husband, Mitch, who teaches social studies at the high school.
“Where were you this morning?” Susie asks, after she’s hugged March and taken the coffee cake out of her hands. She can’t help but wonder if March knows that some of the white in her hair has grown in; March looks older with her hair like this, and her face seems drawn. “I’ve been trying to call you to ask you to pick up some eggnog.” Susie lifts the foil and peers at the cake. “Cranberry,” she says. “Yum.”
“I was home.” March hangs up her coat and follows Susie into the Justices’ kitchen. “Baking that cake.”
“Well, I called and called and no one ever answered.” Susie pours them each a glass of red wine. “Do you believe how many old folks are out there?”
“Ed Milton’s not old.” March samples the sweet potato casserole cooling on the counter. “He’s cute.”
“Don’t get all excited,” Susie tells her. “It’s not serious.”
Louise Justice comes into the kitchen, catching that last bit of conversation. “That’s what Susie always says. You’d think she was a frivolous person, if you didn’t know her better.”
“Here’s a drawback,” Susie says. “His daughter hates me. If she keeps being so nasty, I’m going to be nasty right back.”
“She’s twelve,” Louise says. “In six years she’ll be off to college and you’ll see her at Christmas vacation if you’re lucky. And for now, she lives with her mother in New York. They moved to Roslyn, out on Long Island, this past summer, and Lindsay likes seventh grade a lot more than she thought she would.”