‘Good. Well, no more listening to conversations that aren’t your business, all right? And no more talking about shooting people. We clear?’
‘Yes. I won’t tell Mommy.’
‘She’d just worry, and you don’t want to get Daddy into trouble.’
‘No.’ She frowned. ‘Can I tell her about Uncle Angel saying a bad word?’
I thought about it.
‘Sure, why not?’
I went downstairs, where Angel and Louis had opened a bottle of red wine.
‘Make yourselves at home.’
Angel waved a glass at me. ‘You want some?’
‘No, I’m good.’
Louis poured, sipped, tasted, made a face, shrugged resignedly, and filled two glasses.
‘Hey,’ said Angel, ‘Sam’s not going to tell Rachel I swore at those guys, is she?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re in the clear.’
He looked relieved. ‘Thank Christ. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with Rachel.’
While they drank, I called Marielle Vetters. The phone rang four times, then went to the machine. I left a short message to tell her that I’d be heading up there to talk with her the next day, and she should go over all that her father had told her in case she’d forgotten to share with me anything that might be useful. I asked her to give Ernie Scollay a nudge too, on the off-chance that he might recall something that his brother had said. I kept the message deliberately vague, just in case she had company or someone else, like Marielle’s brother, happened to hear it.
After an hour of conversation I went to my room, but not before looking in on the strange, beautiful, empathic child fast asleep in her bed, and I felt that I had never loved her more, or understood her less.
38
Marielle heard the phone ring at the same time as her doorbell. For a moment she was torn between the two, but clearly the phone could wait while the doorbell could not.
‘You want me to see who it is?’ asked Ernie Scollay.
He had come over earlier, seemingly still troubled by the amount they had revealed down at the bar in Portland, but Marielle knew that he was also lonely. A shy man, and one who did not care much for either of the local bars, he had formed a bond with Marielle’s father following his brother’s suicide, and when Harlan Vetters in turn had died, he had transferred his affection for the father to Marielle. She did not mind. Apart from being kind, if cautious, company, Ernie was good at fixing anything from a stubborn hinge to a car engine, and Marielle’s old car needed more attention than most. Her brother’s best friend, Teddy Gattle, had frequently offered to look after it for her at no charge, but Marielle knew better than to take him up on it. Ever since they were teenagers, Teddy had eyed her with a mixture of adoration and barely concealed lust. According to her brother, Teddy had cried more than her own mother had on the day Marielle got married, and he had celebrated her divorce with a drunk that lasted three days. No, even if Ernie Scollay had not been around, she would have paid money she could little afford to maintain her car – would, in fact, have set the car on fire and walked to her two jobs – rather than accept a favor from Teddy Gattle.
Marielle stepped out of the kitchen and looked down the hall. Her brother’s familiar, rangy figure stood outside, although she could not see him clearly because the exterior light wasn’t working. Odd, she thought: I only changed that bulb last week. There must be a fault with the wiring. Another job for Ernie, she supposed.
‘It’s okay, it’s just Grady,’ she said.
He’d probably come to apologize, she figured. About time too. He’d had enough of Teddy Gattle’s hospitality, and realized what a jerk he’d been for bringing that vacant space in female form into her house. She’d been tempted to burn the sheets once Grady and whatever-her-name was had departed, the skank. Ivy, was that what Grady had said? Holly? What an idiot. What a pair of idiots.
But she loved her brother, for all his flaws, and now they were all that was left of the family. Two failures: he in art, she in marriage, both in life. She didn’t want to lose him again. Even when absent, whether at college or trying to make it as an artist in New York, and, finally, lost to his addictions for a time, a