Despite waking up on the couch, Nate felt as though it was almost a normal morning. He changed the dressing on his shoulder wound, took his pills, put coffee on for his soon-to-be ex-wife, and flipped through the soggy newspaper to the bleeding obits.
An avid golfer, Kevin Struthers leaves two daughters, Nancy and Olivia, both pediatricians, and (as he tenderly called them) a “brood” of seven grandchildren. His wife, Elsie, predeceased him.
Nate raised an orange-juice toast to good old Kevin and washed down the bitter aftertaste of the riluzole and antibiotics.
Glancing through a window, he checked the front yard. Nothing there but two boot-shaped indentations in the soggy front lawn. He withdrew from the late-morning gloom and sat at the kitchen counter, listening to the coffee percolate and flexing his hand, testing the muscles. The numbness had crept from wrist to forearm. With mounting dread he regarded his arm. Maybe the stress had accelerated the disease. He wondered if his body would give out before he could get done what needed to get done.
After Yuri’s intrusion last night, he and Janie had sat on Cielle’s bed for hours to honor an unspoken agreement to stay with her until she drifted off. They were all three wired from the encounter, tension jumping from one to the other. It wasn’t until the morning sun crept through the windows and overtook the shadows that Cielle had dozed off. After an awkward moment at the top of the stairs, Nate and Janie had parted ways.
She shuffled into the kitchen now, rubbing her eyes, a snarl of hair raised in the back. Drawn by the scent of coffee. Cielle was still slumbering; there’d been no question she’d miss school today.
“Don’t you look all perky and ready to go,” Janie mumbled.
“Got a date with the bank.” He poured her a cup and slid it across.
Her gaze snared on something on the counter. His left hand, trembling slightly against the marble. Involuntary. He pulled his hand into his lap but in doing so knocked over one of his pill bottles, which rattled more loudly than seemed probable. The silence made an awkward return.
“You were really gonna do it?” Janie said. “Kill yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Idiot.” She took a sip. “Why? Because of the disease?”
He thought about it. Given the monumentality of the decision, it struck him as odd that he had no ready answer. “I wasn’t killing myself because of the disease,” he finally allowed. “I was killing myself because there was nothing left but the disease.”
She leaned against the doorway to the study. “You couldn’t find something? Anything? To make it worth it for another day, another week?”
“Like what?” he said. “I’m not researching the cure for cancer. I’m not Lou Gehrig-don’t get to make a speech in front of a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium. All I had left was to inflict this on myself and others.”
Her face stayed firm, whether from grief or anger, he didn’t know.
He got up and started digging through the kitchen drawers, leafing through take-out menus, old receipts.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I need a pretense to get back into that private viewing room at the bank. Best bet is bringing something official-looking to put in my safe-deposit box, something I can just leave in there.”
He was pulling together a few old pieces of mail when Janie said, “Take this.”
Something in her voice sounded different, and he stopped what he was doing and looked up. She was offering up a stapled document. Even from across the room, he could see what it was.
He took a beat, because he didn’t trust his voice. “You sure?”
“Of course not.”
He stayed put by the kitchen drawer, unsure what to do next.
At length she nodded. “Yes. I’m sure.” She shook the divorce papers impatiently.
He crossed and took them on his way out.
* * *
The line at the bank offered a good vantage to the private viewing rooms. There were two of them, an added complication that Nate was none too keen to account for. A wizened man stepped into the desired room as Nate neared the front of the line, forcing him to stall by pretending to fill out deposit slips. When the man at last shuffled back into sight, Nate hurried forward to the next available teller and was buzzed through. The security guard waited, the same older gentleman from round one. As they stepped into the vault, he studied Nate with eyes as small and hard as marbles.
“Two twenty-seven, right?” he asked.
Nate offered his best grin even as his hand left a sweat stain on the divorce papers. “Two twenty-six.”
The guard said flatly, “Senility must be comin’ on stronger than I imagined.”
Nate got his safe-deposit box and strolled as casually as possible into the open private viewing room. The watercolored girl at the beach-still there. He hastened the pneumatic door closed with an elbow, then tossed down the box and rushed to pluck the painting off the wall, flipping it over.
At first he could scarcely believe it was still there. The business-size envelope taped firmly to the backing. So many worst-case scenarios had flashed through his mind in the past twenty-four hours that he’d half convinced himself he’d willed one into existence. But no, the envelope easily peeled free. Stepping out of a sneaker, he folded the envelope three times and hid the dense rectangle beneath the insole. He pulled the shoe back on, laced it tighter than necessary.
As he placed the divorce papers inside the safe-deposit box, bade them good-bye, and lowered the lid, he couldn’t help but note how the contraption resembled a coffin. This was one burial he didn’t mind a bit.
The security guard helped him deliver the box to its resting place within the vault, refusing to return his smile. As Nate headed out, the thrice-folded envelope dug into his arch, but he felt like he was walking on air.
Chapter 27
“Should we open it?” Janie asked.
“No,” Nate said at the precise moment Cielle said, “Dunno.”
The three of them were pulled into the kitchen table, the envelope sitting untouched on the otherwise blank surface like some unsavory dish. Outside, the hunched clouds seemed to be giving way to dusk, a transition from gray to grayer.
Janie’s laptop glowed on the counter opposite, open to the home page for New Odessa restaurant, complete with the number for reservations. Beside the computer stood the cordless phone. Nate’s impatience burned beneath his skin. He wanted to call the restaurant to see if Pavlo was there and willing to take early delivery.
“Did Shevchenko ever say anything about opening it?” Janie asked.
“He didn’t even mention what it was.”
Cielle took the envelope and held it up against the overhead light. They’d each given this a try, hoping for a better result. A single sheet, folded, no writing or typing visible.
“What could be so important that it could fit on a single piece of paper?” Janie asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Nate said, rising. “Let’s just get it to the man and call it a day.” He’d reached the counter and was thumbing the area code into the phone when he heard a ripping behind him.
Cielle, sliding her finger beneath the flap.
Nate hung up.
She tilted the envelope, and the folded paper fell out. She reached for it delicately, laying it open. Janie rose, leaning over the table. She gave a faint, dismayed groan.
“What?” Cielle said. “I don’t get it.”
Nate’s legs carried him across, and he stared over Cielle’s shoulder, seeing what the paper held as Janie answered in a voice flat with regret, “A list of names.”
There they were. Eight of them. Handwritten. And beneath each one an address in the L.A. area. The top name was crossed out.
Nate felt his stomach lift, as if he’d fallen off the edge of something. “No.” His voice was loud, almost a shout. “You were safe. You were in the clear.”