"Well, all right, then. Let me tell you where I live."
I copied her address, then hung up. I was still standing by the table. My hands were still shaking, but not so badly.
I studied the map of Southern California. Anson was in the middle of nowhere. What would have been the odds? My mother had vanished for days and sometimes weeks when I was a child. I never knew where she went, but Southern California was so far from where we lived it was unlikely she had gone so far. Still, I didn't know. She had vanished again and again. More than once, my grandfather hired someone to find her.
Ken Wilson
Miami, Florida
Wilson sat in the dark on his porch, feeling old and disgusted as he listened to the frogs squirming along the banks of the Banana River. Moths the size of a child's hand scraped against the screen that was the only thing saving him from the clouds of mosquitoes and gnats that filled the night with a homicidal whine. Wilson figured all he had to do was punch one finger through the screen and so many goddamned monsters would swarm in they could suck him dry before sunrise. He thought about doing it. He thought it would be pretty damned nice to be done with the whole awful mess of his life.
He took a sip of watered Scotch instead, and spoke to his dead wife.
"You should've never left me. That was damned lousy, leaving me like this, just damned awful of you. Look at me, sitting out here by myself, just look at me."
He had more of the Scotch, but didn't move, alone with himself on the porch of his little bungalow that felt so different now with her gone.
Wilson had buried his wife three weeks ago. Edie Wilson had been his third wife. It took three times for him to get it right, but once he found her they had stayed together for twenty-eight years and he had never once, not once, well, not in any meaningful way, regretted their marriage. They didn't have children because they were too old by the time they hooked up, which was a shame. Wilson 's first wife hadn't wanted children, and his second marriage hadn't lasted long enough, thank God. Such things hadn't seemed important back then, him having the concerns of a younger man, but a man's regrets changed as he grew older. Especially when he got into the Scotch.
Wilson drained his glass, spit back a couple of wilted ice cubes, then set the glass on the floor at his feet.
He said, "Come to Papa."
He took the.32-caliber Smith Wesson from the wicker table and held it in his lap. It had been his gun since just after Korea, purchased for five dollars at a pawnshop in Kansas City, Kansas; silver, with a shrouded hammer and white Bakelite grips that had always felt a little too small for his hand, though he hadn't minded.
He put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Snap.
Sixteen years ago, Wilson sold his investigation business and retired. He and Edie had packed up, moved to south Florida, and bought the little place on the river, her liking it more than him, but there you go. The day they packed, he unloaded the gun, and had never seen a need to reload it; those days being gone, him needing "a little something" on his hip in case events grew rowdy, long gone and done. The gun had been unloaded for sixteen years.
But that was then.
Wilson had a nice new box of bullets. He opened the box just enough, shook out some bullets, then put the box down by his glass. Those.32s were small, but they had gotten the job done. He pushed the cylinder out of the frame, carefully placed a bullet into each tube, then folded the cylinder home until the axle clicked into place. He grinned at the sound.
He said, "Well, that calls for a drink, don't you think?"
He put the gun down on the wicker table, went inside for another one-and-one Scotch, and was heading back outside when the phone rang. He thought about not answering, then figured what the hell, it was late and might be important, though later he would think it was Edie, taking care of him.
He answered as he always had even though Edie had hated how he answered, complaining, "Goddamnit, Kenny, this is our home, not an office, can't you say hello like a real person?"