“What about the times when you meet Enrico?”
“Then, too.”
“Usually,” Carver said, “my clients want me to follow someone other than themselves.”
“Then I guess I’m not your usual client.” She fished in her straw purse and withdrew a dark blue checkbook. She scribbled in it with a white plastic ballpoint pen, tore out a check, and laid it on the table in front of Carver.
He read it upside down and saw that it was for a thousand dollars. He didn’t reach for it, though. Not yet.
Made uneasy by his hesitation, she said, “Beth told me your fees. I can afford you. I cashed in an old life insurance policy.”
“It isn’t the money,” he told her.
“It’s always the money,” she said sadly.
“Meaning what?”
“Money and love are always mixed together, like it’s a law of nature. That’s all I meant.”
“I’d like to know more.”
“There isn’t any reason for that.”
“I’d still like to know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe when you trust me more?”
“Maybe,” she said.
If it weren’t for Beth he might have politely refused the job, then stood up and left. Wisely if unprofitably turned his back on somebody else’s money and love and trouble.
Donna scribbled again with the white plastic pen, this time on a cocktail napkin.
“Here are my home and office addresses and phone numbers,” she said, and laid the folded napkin next to the check. She was obviously bothered when he made no move to reach for either. Carver on the fence, sensing trouble on both sides. “Beth assured me you’d help,” she told him. And he heard something new in her voice for the first time: barely controlled terror.
She stood up suddenly, as if her nerves simply wouldn’t allow her to sit there any longer, talking to a virtual stranger about the dark currents of her life. “Will you help?” she asked, as if this might be his last chance and hers.
He sighed, then picked up the napkin and check.
He said, “You won’t even know I’m around.”
With a relieved smile, she said, “Thank you. I’m leaving now, but I’m going to meet Enrico at Riley’s Clam Shop at ten o’clock tonight. Mark thinks I’m in Orlando, visiting my mother for the weekend.”
“Where’s Megan?”
“She’s with my mother.” With an abruptness that surprised Carver, her soft eyes brimmed with tears. “You don’t think I like this, do you?” She seemed angry at him, as if he’d accused her of something. “It isn’t easy being torn between two men, two worlds, with a daughter whose welfare I have to look out for.”
“No one would like it,” Carver said, still surprised by the sudden mood swing. Beth was right; her friend showed all the signs of being under tremendous stress. Something had gotten inside her skin and was pressuring.
“I’m a good mother.”
“I never doubted it.”
She sat back down, then clasped her hands tightly together and refrained from wiping away her tears, as if she didn’t want to smear her mascara.
Carver reached across the table and gently touched the tense hands, trying to soothe her. “Take it easy. Things can always be made to improve.”
She pulled her folded hands out from beneath his touch. “Sometimes they can never be made right again. Telling yourself otherwise is only naive and self-deceptive.”
“If you love this Enrico, maybe he’s your answer.”
She shook her head. “I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure. I do love him, even though we haven’t known each other long. But that only adds to the agony. I’m afraid I’m as much a traditionalist as my husband, Mr. Carver. The love I have for Enrico comes with a load of guilt. I mean, my God, I’m a married mother! I took my marriage vows seriously, even if Mark didn’t, and now I’m the one who broke those vows.”
“Marriage vows don’t give a husband the right to mistreat or neglect a wife, Donna. And believe me, you’re being too rough on yourself. You’re not the first woman to have an extramarital affair. And you wouldn’t be the first to have a good reason for one.” He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “My former wife had good reason.”
She looked at him curiously. “Did you mistreat her?”
“Not intentionally, but I backed her to the wall all the same, and the strain on our marriage made her look to another man for what she needed. After a while, I quit blaming her.” He wasn’t being completely honest, but he figured now was the time for a benign lie.
Calmer now, the moistness in her eyes almost back to normal, Donna got off a shaky smile and said, “Maybe you’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
She clutched her straw purse and stood up again. She seemed calmer. “Do you know where Riley’s Clam Shop is?”
“Uh-huh. Driven past it. It’s that place on Vista that looks like it’s built out of driftwood.”
She nodded. “Enrico and I meet there often.”
“Meet him there tonight as planned, then,” Carver said. “Don’t look around for me. Don’t even think about me.”
She gave him a glance from beneath the bangs, a shy smile. “What Beth said about you is right.”
“Oh? What would that be?”
“That you’re a good man but it doesn’t stick out all over you.”
Carver said, “Until recently, Beth led the kind of life that didn’t put her in contact with many good men.”
Still smiling, Donna chewed her lower lip for a few seconds, then said, “Thanks, Mr. Carver,” and turned and strode from the restaurant. The same men who’d stared at her when she entered watched her leave. A few women watched her, too, with what looked like curiosity. Maybe she was clouding up to cry again. Or barely suppressing a scream. She was a woman very near to an emotional explosion, Carver thought, and at times it showed.
After she’d gone, the waiter arrived with fresh drinks. Carver sat sipping his and watching the ice melt in hers.
About ten minutes had passed when he heard the shriek of rubber on concrete and a crash that shook the building.
2
In the corner of his vision Carver saw several gulls, wings flashing white against the darkening sky, take flight toward the open ocean. There was a hush, then a burst of activity and voices from the lounge, near the restaurant’s entrance. The diners at the tables near the windows looking out on the highway had parted curtains and were straining to see something to the north. Carver got his cane from where it was propped on the chair next to his and levered himself to his feet. He could see people from the lounge streaming out the door now, and he followed after them.
There was still plenty of light left in the evening. And heat. He felt the hot gravel of the parking lot sear into the thin soles of his moccasins as he made his way toward the highway along with most of the people who’d been in the restaurant. Two men nearby were wearing white uniforms and tall white chef’s caps. Someone tripped over Carver’s cane, sending its tip dragging through the gravel, mumbled an apology and then hurried on ahead.
On the broad highway, near the mouth of the lot’s driveway, dual strips of burned rubber blackened the concrete. Carver saw that they ran about a hundred yards along the highway, then, beyond the restaurant, veered across the yellow line and the adjacent lane.
In the tall grass beyond the shoulder, several hundred feet past the restaurant, a tractor-trailer lay on its side like a wounded dinosaur. It was obvious that the driver had slammed on the brakes and then skidded until the truck had hit the soft gravel shoulder. Probably it had jackknifed before overturning. The out-of-square trailer’s doors had sprung open, spilling wooden crates of oranges onto the highway. Oranges dotted the foliage near the truck, and hundreds of them had rolled onto the highway.
Distant sirens were warbling in the humid air, and miles down the straight, flat highway vehicles were pulled to the side and red and blue lights flashed. Carver moved to the front of the gaping crowd from the restaurant. He could see the tractor now, a shiny blue Kenworth, lying on its side at a sharp angle to the trailer, its wheels and underside exposed in a way oddly obscene. A husky man in Levi’s and a faded red tee shirt was seated nearby in the grass, a stunned expression on his bearded face. Half dozen people were clustered around him. He didn’t seem to be aware of them, or to be seriously hurt.