Down River Part 28

"My father owns this place. The house, the land. All of it."

Robin leaned back, put her hands on the table's edge. "I don't think so, Adam." She tilted her head, still confused. "Dolf owns two hundred acres, including the house we're sitting in."

I opened my mouth, but no words came. Robin spoke slowly, as if I were not quite right in the head. "That's six million dollars, based on the latest offer. One h.e.l.l of a motive to squeeze your father into selling."

"That can't be right."

"Check it out," she said.

I thought about it, shook my head. "First of all, there's no way Dolf owns a piece of this farm. My father would never do that. Secondly"-I had to look away-"secondly, he's dying. He wouldn't care about money."

Robin understood what that statement cost me, but she refused to back away. "Maybe he's doing it for Grace." She put her hand on mine. "Maybe he'd rather die on a beach some place far from here."

I told Robin I needed to be alone. She put soft lips on my face and told me to call her later. What she had said made no sense. My father loved this land as he loved his own life. Guarding it was his special trust; keeping it for the family, the next generation. Over the past fifteen years, he'd given partial ownership to his children, but that was for estate planning purposes. And those interests were merely shares in a family partnership. He kept control; and I knew that he would never part with an acre, not even for Dolf.

At eight o'clock, I went to the house to ask my father if it were true, but his truck was gone. He was still out, I thought, still after the dogs. I looked for Jamie's truck, but it was gone, too. I opened the door to a cathedral silence, and followed the hall to my father's study. I wanted something to put context around what Robin had said. A deed, a t.i.tle policy, anything. I pulled on the top drawer of the file cabinet, but it was locked. All of the drawers were locked.

I paused, considering, and was distracted by a flash of color through the window. I walked to the gla.s.s and saw Miriam in the garden. She wore a solid black dress with long sleeves and a high collar, and was clipping flowers with her mother's shears. She knelt in the wet gra.s.s, and I saw that her dress was damp from having done so many times. The shears closed around a stem, and a rose the color of sunrise fell to the gra.s.s. She picked it up, added it to the bouquet; and when she stood I saw a small but satisfied smile.

She'd piled her hair upon her head; it floated above a dress that might have come from another age. Her movements were so fluid that in the silence, through the gla.s.s, I felt as if I were watching a ghost.

She crossed to a different bush, knelt again, and clipped a rose as pale and translucent as falling snow.

As I turned from the window, I heard a noise from upstairs, a sound like something being dropped. It would be Janice. Had to be.

For no reason that I could articulate, I still wanted to speak with her. I guess we had unfinished business. I climbed the stairs, and my feet were quiet on the thick runner. The upstairs hall was bathed in cold light through tall windows. I saw the farm below, the brown drive that cut through it. Oil paintings hung on the walls; a wine-dark carpet ran away from me; and the door to Miriam's room stood ajar. I stood at the crack and saw Janice within. Drawers were pulled open and she stood with hands on her hips, studying the room. When she moved, it was for the bed. She lifted the mattress and apparently found what she was looking for. A small sound escaped her lips as she held the mattress with one hand and scooped something out from underneath. She dropped the mattress and studied what lay in her palm; it glittered like a shard of mirror.

I spoke as I stepped through the door. "h.e.l.lo, Janice."

She spun to face me, and her hand closed in a spasm; she whipped it behind her back, even as she bit down in obvious pain.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Nothing." A guilty lie.

"What's in your hand?"

"That's none of your business, Adam." Her features calcified as she drew herself up. "I think you should leave."

I looked from her face to the floor. Blood was dripping on the hardwood behind her feet. "You're bleeding," I said.

Something in her seemed to collapse. She slumped and brought her hand from behind her back. It was still clenched shut, white at the knuckles in spite of the pain; and blood had, indeed, channeled through her fingers.

"How badly are you hurt?" I asked.

"Why do you care?"

"How badly?"

Her head moved fractionally. "I don't know."

"Let me see."

Her eyes settled on my face, and there was strength in them. "Don't tell her that you know," she said, and opened her hand. On the palm of it lay a double-edged razor blade. Her blood put a sheen on it. It had cut her deeply, and blood welled from perfectly matched wounds on each side of the blade. I lifted the blade and placed it on the bedside table. I took her hand, cupped mine beneath to catch the blood.

"I'm going to take you to the bathroom," I said. "We'll wash this off and take a look."

I ran cold water on the cuts, then wrapped her hand in a clean towel. She stood rigidly throughout the entire process, eyes closed. "Squeeze tight," I said. She did, and her face paled further. "You may need st.i.tches."

When her eyes opened, I saw how close she was to breaking. "Don't tell your father. He can't possibly understand, and she doesn't need that burden, too. He'll only make it worse."

"Can't understand what? That his daughter is suicidal?"

"She's not suicidal. That's not what this is about."

"What, then?"

She shook her head. "It's not your place to hear about it, no more than it's mine to tell. She's getting help. That's all you really need to know."

"Somehow, I don't think that's true. Come on. Let's get you downstairs. We'll talk about it there." She agreed reluctantly. As we pa.s.sed the tall windows, I saw Miriam driving away. "Where is she going?" I asked.

She pulled up. "You don't really care, do you?"

I studied her face: the set jaw, the new lines, and the loose skin. She would never trust me. "She's still my sister," I said.

She laughed, a bitter sound. "You want to know; fine, I'll tell you. She's taking flowers to Gray Wilson's grave. She does it every month." Another tight sound escaped her. "How's that for irony?" I had no answer, so I kept my mouth shut as I helped Janice down the steps. "Take me to the parlor," she said. I led her into the parlor, where she sat on the edge of the fainting couch. "Do me one last favor," she said. "Go to the kitchen and bring ice and another towel."

I was halfway to the kitchen when the parlor door slammed shut. I was still standing there when I heard the heavy lock engage.

I knocked twice, but she declined to answer.

I heard a high sound that may have been keening.

Miriam was where her mother had said she would be. She knelt, folded into herself, and from a distance it looked as if a giant crow had settled upon the grave. Wind moved between the weathered stones and shifted her dress; all that she lacked was the sheen of feathers, the mournful call. She moved as I watched. Deft fingers sought out weeds and plucked them from the earth; the bouquet was positioned just so. She looked up when she heard me, and tears moved on her skin.

"h.e.l.lo, Miriam."

"How did you find me?"

"Your mother."

She pulled out another weed and tossed it to the wind. "She told you I was here?"

"Does that surprise you?"

She ducked her head, wiped off the tears, and her fingers left a trace of dark soil beneath one eye. "She doesn't approve of me coming here. She says it's morbid."

I squatted on my heels. "Your mother is very much about the present, I think. The present and the future. Not the past." She studied the heavy sky and seemed oppressed by it. The tears had ceased, but she still looked sunken and gray. Beside her, the bouquet was brilliant and stark and weeping fresh. It leaned against the stone that bore the dead boy's name. "Does it bother you that I'm here?" I asked.

She grew suddenly still. "I never thought you killed him, Adam." She put a tentative hand on my leg; a gesture of comfort, I thought. "It doesn't bother me."

I moved to place my hand over hers, but, at the last second, laid it on her forearm instead. She jerked back and a small hiss of pain pa.s.sed though her lips. A dark certainty filled me. The same thing had happened at the hospital when I'd touched her arm; she'd told me that I startled her. I doubted that now.

She canted her eyes at the ground, held the arm against her body, as if afraid I might reach for it again. Her shoulders angled away from me. She was frightened, so I spoke softly. "May I see?"

"See what?" Defensive. Small.

I sighed. "I caught your mother searching your room. She found the razor blade." She rolled her shoulders in, made a ball of herself. I thought of the long sleeves she wore, the sweeping skirts, and the long pants. She kept her skin hidden. At first, I'd thought nothing of it, but the blade put everything into a different light.

"She should not have done that. It's an invasion."

"I can only a.s.sume that she's worried about you." I waited before I asked again. "May I see?"

She denied nothing, but her voice dwindled even further. "Don't tell Daddy."

I held out an open palm. "It's okay."

"I don't do it much," she said. Her eyes were soulful and afraid, but she held out her arm, half-bent. I took the hand, found it hot and damp. Her fingers squeezed as I pushed up the sleeve as gently as I could. Breath hissed between my teeth. There were fresh cuts and those that had partially healed. And there were scars, thin and white and cruel.

"You weren't at a health spa, were you?"

She shrank away, almost to nothing. "Eighteen days of inpatient treatment," she said. "A place in Colorado. The best, supposedly."

"And Dad doesn't know?"

She shook her head. "It's for me to fix. Me and Mom. If Dad knew it would only make it harder."

"He should be involved, Miriam. I don't see how hiding this can help anyone."

She lowered her head further. "I don't want him to know."

"Why not?"

"He already thinks something is wrong with me."

"No, he doesn't."

"He thinks I'm twitchy." She was right. He'd used those words.

I asked the biggest question, although I knew that there was no simple answer. "Why, Miriam?"

"It takes away the pain."

I wanted to understand. "What pain?"

She looked at the gravestone, caressed the hard-edged letters of Gray Wilson's name. "I really loved him," she said.

The words caught me off guard. "Are you serious?"

"It was a secret."

"I thought you were just friends. Everybody thought that."

She shook her head. "We loved each other."

My mouth opened.

"He was going to marry me."

CHAPTER 22.

Miriam had never been what my father thought she should be; she was right about that. She was beautiful in a pale and subdued way, but so reticent at times that one might easily forget that she was in the room. She'd been like that from the earliest days: sensitive and small, easily lost in the shadows. The rest of us were too outgoing perhaps. Maybe her mother wasn't the only one who'd smothered Miriam. Maybe it had been a group effort, unintentional but cruelly effective. And I knew how weakness could compound over time. When she was twelve, some girls at school had been unkind to her. We never learned what the unkindness had been, something typical of girls that age, I'd always imagined. Whatever the slight, she'd gone three weeks without speaking to anyone. My father had been patient at first, then grown frustrated. There was an explosion near the end, harsh words not easily forgotten. She had cried and fled the room, and his apologies, later that night, had been to no avail.

He'd felt horrible about it, but dealing with women had never been his strong suit. He was gruff, spoke his mind when he spoke at all; and there was no place for delicacy in the man. Miriam was too young to understand that. She withdrew further over subsequent years, built the wall higher, salted the ground around her. She confided in her mother, and in Jamie, perhaps. But not in my father, and certainly not in me. It was a small sadness that began easily and grew until we barely noticed it.

Miriam was just quiet. That's how she was.

The relationship with Gray Wilson must have been as precious to her as the memory of sunset to a blinded man. I could understand why she'd have feelings for the kid; he was loquacious and bold, everything that Miriam was not. And I could certainly surmise why they'd kept it a secret. My father would not have approved; Janice, either. Miriam had just turned eighteen when Gray was killed. She was about to start Harvard, and he was in his third month of work at the truck plant one county over. But I could see how the two of them might be together. He was easy and likable, handsome in a thick-boned way. And it could be true, what was said about opposites. He was large and raw and poor; she was small and delicate and destined for great wealth.

It was a shame, I thought. One of many.

Before I left the cemetery, I asked Miriam if she wanted me to stay with her, but she declined. Sometimes I just want to be alone with him, you know. Alone with the memory.

Neither one of us mentioned George Tallman, but he was out there, big and real and boring as dirt. George had been in love with Miriam since they were young, but she'd never given him the time of day. He'd been lovesick and desperate and sad. So much so that, at times, it had been painful to watch. She'd settled, I saw that now. Alone and destined to be that way, she'd taken the easy route. She would never admit it, not even to herself; but it was fact, like the sky above was fact, and I wondered what George would say if he could see her here, tear-stained and dressed in black, weeping over the grave of a rival five years in the ground.

We parted with an awkward embrace and my promise to keep quiet about what I'd learned. But I was worried. More than that, I was frightened. She was a cutter, so full of pain that it took her own blood to wash it away. How did it work, I wondered. A cut an hour? Two a day? Or did they come without pattern, a quick slice when life reared its ugly head? Miriam was weak, as fragile and liable to drop as any of the petals she'd laid on his grave. I doubted that she had the resources to deal with the problem, and wondered if Janice had the requisite commitment. She'd kept it from my father. Was that to protect Miriam or for some other reason? I asked myself one more question, asked because I had to.

Could I keep my promise to stay quiet?

As I drove away, left her alone, I felt a powerful urge to visit Grace. It was not a conscious matter, but one of feeling. They were so different, the two of them. Raised on the same property by two men who could have been brothers, they could not be more opposite. Miriam was as cool and quiet as March rain; Grace had the raw force of August heat.

But I decided against a visit. There was too much to do, and Dolf, for the moment, needed me more. So I drove past the hospital and continued farther into town. I parked in the lot of the Rowan County Munic.i.p.al Building and took the stairs to the second floor. Grantham thought he had a motive. I needed to take a look at that.

The tax a.s.sessor's office was to the right.

I entered through a gla.s.s door. A long counter ran the width of the reception area; seven women occupied the s.p.a.ce behind it. None of them paid me the slightest bit of attention as I consulted the huge map of Rowan County that was posted on the wall. I found the Yadkin River and traced it until my finger touched the long bend that contained Red Water Farm. I found the right reference number, went to the smaller maps, and pulled the one I needed. I spread it out on one of the large tables. I expected to see a single fourteen hundred and fifteen acre parcel with my father's name on it. That's not what I saw.

The farm was delineated on the map: Jacob Alan Chase Family Limited Partnership. Twelve hundred and fifteen acres.

The southern piece of the farm had been carved away, a rough triangle with one long side of curving river. Adolfus Boone Shepherd. Two hundred acres.

Robin was right. Dolf owned two hundred acres, including the house.