91
What’s to become of her?” Fiona asked. The view from Walt’s back porch included a dozen hummingbirds battling for control of the feeder. Shadows from the aspen trees slanted across grass that needed mowing. It was almost nine P.M. He’d made them a dinner of microwave lasagna, peas, and coleslaw from the deli. He was sipping Mexican beer. She preferred red wine.
“A white-collar guy like Sumner, he’ll win multiple extensions. He’ll push the trial back at least a year, maybe two. Days before the court date, he’ll cop a plea and get eighteen months in minimum, where he can get home visitations and play volleyball. She’ll be in college by then, immune from a lot of it.”
“I feel bad for her.”
“Yeah.” He worked on the beer and watched the hummingbirds duel with their long bills, their wings going a million miles an hour. He felt like that more often than not: insanely busy but just hovering in the same place. “We caught the woman. Reno, at the tables. We have the phone records connecting her to Cantell, and our visual of her here. She’ll do time along with the others.”
“But months, not years. That’s what you said, right?”
“Way of the world. She’ll do less time than either of the other two. They’re in for kidnapping. Big difference.”
“Kevin?”
“Doing better. I owe him a night of fishing. Maybe you could guide us on Silver Creek.”
“Love to do it. Just name a date.”
They took Bea for a walk around the block, the smell of barbecue lingering, windows lit blue with the glow of televisions. Crickets buzzed loudly, mixing with the sound of lawn sprinklers. A jet flew overhead, its wheels down for landing. Walt thought back to all the walks around the block he’d taken with Gail, surprised and comforted that those memories didn’t land in the center of his chest. He looked over at Fiona a couple of times and knew she was aware of him doing so, but neither said anything for a long time.
“You don’t talk much about your life before coming here,” he said.
“This was-is-a place for me to start over,” she said. “The past is better left where it is. You know?”
“I’m not sure I know, but I’m learning. Yes.”
Kids, playing in a tree fort, cried out. The tree fort had a stained-glass window and an asphalt roof. Walt wondered if this was the right place to bring up kids. The private jets. The tree houses.
“It’s not the same place it was ten years ago,” he said. “This place.”
“You’re tired. You need a break.”
“The girls will be back from camp tomorrow.”
“You must be looking forward to that.”
“Big-time,” he said.
Bea raced out ahead of them, then circled back and came to heel on her own. Fiona reached down and rubbed her head, and Bea jerked up to lick her hand; Fiona laughed.
Walt nearly said, “I could get used to this,” but held his tongue for fear how she might take it. Baby steps, he thought.
“We could go over to Henry’s Fork,” she said. “It’s fishing really well. With Kevin, I mean.”
It would mean motel rooms. Three or four days at least. Meals together. A five-hour drive each way. That was the subtext, and it wasn’t lost on him.
“I don’t think I’m good enough to fish Henry’s Fork,” he said,
“but Kevin would love it.”
“I can teach you,” she said. “It’s what I do, remember?”
“With the girls getting home, we couldn’t do it right away.”
“But you’ll think about it?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
Beatrice ran to the base of a tree and barked up at a pair of crows. Walt called her back to his side.
“You’re probably buried with work, anyway,” she said, giving him a way out of such planning.
“I am. But I always am. I can get away. It’s got to be coordinated with Kevin’s schedule. He’s back at the lodge. Lisa would have to watch the girls.”
“They could come, couldn’t they? We could take turns with them. They’d love the park. We could do a day trip.” They walked another half block. “Too pushy?”
“No. Not at all. It’s me and work. That’s all. I love this job, but it owns me. I have to prepare for the hearings. There’s a ton of paperwork to get done. There will be pleas. I don’t always see eye to eye with our prosecutors. I don’t want to be away and miss something.”
“If the kids hadn’t been on the plane,” she said, “do you think they would have gotten away with it?”
“I suppose the insurance would have paid out. If they hadn’t, then the plan was to go back months later and fly it out and sell it out of the country. A jet can hide for a long time in the Nevada desert.”
“So in a way Kevin and the girl… they’re the ones who stopped it.”
“And the bird strike-the plane going down. But, yeah, they did. It’s true.”
“Young love,” she said. “Chalk up another one.” Bea licked her hand again, causing Walt to reach down and tug her collar. “I didn’t mean to lessen your role in it,” she said.
“I didn’t take it that way.”
“But you’re okay. Right?”
“With wounding a man and killing another? Is that the question being asked?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You have every right to,” he said. “I don’t have an answer. That’s the truth. I don’t know what to say. He’d fired and hit John. Was aiming for a second shot. You don’t think at times like that. You just do what you do and live with the consequences.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“So here we are,” he said. “Do I think about it? Yup. Can I do anything about it? Nope.”
“It’s past,” she said.
They looped around the block and headed back toward the house. What was at first an uncomfortable silence settled away to the sound of Beatrice’s paws on the asphalt and the rustle of their clothing. A neighbor waved and called out to Walt, and Walt called the man by name returning the greeting.
Walt’s hand brushed Fiona’s, and for an instant he considered hooking her fingers with his, and maybe she was having the same thought the way her eyes looked out straight ahead, but nothing came of it.
“Beautiful night,” he said.
“Someday I’ll tell you,” she said, surprising him.
“No need. You’re right about the past. I like what you said.”
“Easier said than done, like everything else.”
“Looks like the Dalai Lama’s coming to town.”
“Are we changing the subject?”
He chuckled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Well… not nothing. Gail and Brandon.”
“What about them?”
“Just before the auction dinner, she ripped him a new one. Made him heel like a bird dog.” He rubbed Beatrice’s head.
“Because?”
“That’s the beauty of it. That’s why I can laugh about it. I have no idea. If I had to guess, it was that he missed some appointment with her. She has this real thing about being stood up. But it could have been him taking the wrong car, or forgetting to fill the ice trays or not cleaning hair out of the shower drain. But what got me was how sweet it was not to be on the receiving end of it, how I wouldn’t have traded with him for anything.”
She reached down for Beatrice as well, and their hands touched. Or was that what she’d meant to happen? he wondered.
About Ridley Pearson
Ridley Pearson is a New York Times bestselling author. He was the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in detective fiction at Oxford. He lives in Hailey, Idaho.
