just fine. I didn’t realize it was after five. I’m sorry to hold you up.”
“I waited because I wasn’t sure you had keys. I didn’t want to lock you out.” She pulled a purse as big as a suitcase from beneath the desk.
Tate felt a little embarrassed to tell her that he didn’t have any keys. She strode out from behind her desk, and he stepped out of her way, having a sense she might walk right over him. She continued on into his cousin’s—his—office, reached into the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out keys that she handed over to him.
She was through the front door when he thought to ask, “Did they find Marilee James’s little boy?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “No. I’m going over to her house now and take some fried chicken.”
The door closed behind her, and Tate watched through the big plate glass window as she walked away down the sidewalk and turned the corner. Miss Charlotte wore an amazingly short skirt and high heels for a prim-and-proper woman. And she didn’t walk; she marched.
He went out to the BMW that he’d left right there with the top down, his computer in full sight. He had figured a person could do that in Valentine.
Making a number of trips, he carted the computer, monitor and then a few boxes into his new office. After he’d set the things down, he stood smoothing the back of his hair. That he ought to be doing something to help in the search for little Willie Lee James tugged at him. He felt helpless on that score. There didn’t seem anything he, not knowing either the child or the town, could do.
He left the boxes in a stack and started to connect up his computer, but then decided he was too impatient to see his new home. He wanted to get a look around while the light was still good. He locked the front doors and was one step away when he stopped, remembering the small grey woman he had earlier seen appear. Was she still in there?
He didn’t think she could be, since Miss Charlotte hadn’t said anything about her. Still, the thought caused him to go back inside to check.
On the door glass of the office was printed: Zona Porter, No Relation, Comptroller. He did not hear sound from beyond the walls. He knocked. No answer. Very carefully he turned the knob and stuck his head in the door. The office, very small and neat, even stark, was empty.
Well, good. He felt better to have made certain.
Back at the front door again, he locked the door of his newspaper, wondering if one even needed to bother in such a town. Whistling, he strode to his BMW, where he jumped over the door and slid down into the seat. He backed the BMW out of its place and had to drive the length of town and turn around and come back to the intersection of Main and Church Streets. His cousin Muriel’s house, which he had bought sight unseen since he was nine years old, was on the second block up Church Street, on the corner. He heard Muriel’s clipped tone of voice giving him the directions.
The town was pretty as a church calendar picture in the late-afternoon sunlight that shone golden on the buildings and flags, houses and big trees. Forsythia blooms had mostly died away, but purple wisteria and white bridal wreath were in full bloom.
It struck him how he knew the names of the bushes. He had learned a few things from his ex-wife, he supposed. He experienced a sharp but brief stab of regret for what he had let pass him by. He had not cared about houses and yards during his married years; he had not valued building a home and a family.
Then he immediately remembered all that he had experienced in place of domesticity, and he figured his life and times had been correct for him. In fact, that was what Lucille had told him: “You need to be a newspaperman, Tate, not a married man.”
Funny, he hadn’t thought of Lucille in a long time. Her image was fuzzy, and her voice came only in a faint whisper from deep in memory. She had been a rare woman, but neither of them had fit together in a marriage. Set free, she had blossomed as a psychologist, mother, political activist.
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, he thought as his gaze lit on the big Porter house that came into view—the Holloway house, he mentally corrected.
He thought of his season now, as he pulled the BMW to a stop in the driveway just outside the portico. His season had come to put down roots. He had reached that point, by golly, finally, at the age of fifty-one. It was a fact, he thought, that might daunt a lesser man.
His strides were long and swift. He took the wide front steps two at a time and unlocked a door that needed refinishing. It creaked loudly when opened.
He stepped inside, into a wide hallway. There was a pleasant scent of old wood. He walked through the musty rooms, the oak flooring creaking often beneath his steps as he gave everything a cursory, almost absent look, noting the amazing fact that Muriel had pretty much left everything just as it was.
When Muriel had decided to leave, she had definitely decided to leave.
He poked his head out the back door, the screen door that definitely needed replacing, then walked more slowly around the kitchen that had not been painted in twenty years. His cousin had not been a domestic type, any more than he had been. On into the dining room, where he unlocked the French doors and stepped out on the wraparound porch. By golly, he liked the porch! He was going to sit out here on hot afternoons and smoke his cigars and drink iced tea thick as syrup with sugar.
Just then his gaze fell on the wicker settee, where he saw a little boy asleep.
A little boy, a dog, and a big orange cat who regarded Tate with definite annoyance.
Four
Vast Stretches of the Heart
When Parker’s blue pickup truck, with the white-and-gold Lindsey Veterinary Clinic emblem on the side, came pulling up in her driveway, Marilee went running out to meet him. There was in the back of her mind the idea that he would be bringing Willie Lee.
She saw immediately that he had not.
“I heard about Willie Lee. Is he home yet?” Parker strode around the front of his truck toward her.
“No…all this time, Parker…” Her arms pried themselves from her sides, and she reached for him.
He took her against him and held her tight. Then, as he walked her back into the house, with his arm around her shoulders, Marilee told him of her conversation with the principal, of having searched the neighborhoods, of calling Sheriff Oakes, and of the helplessness of just having to wait. She did not mention the fear that was rising to choke her throat, that maybe this time Willie Lee was truly gone, a fear that had haunted her since the night she had delivered him early, blue and choking for breath.
“He is just out diggin’ in a ditch for crawdads or explorin’ ant trails or something that boys do,” Parker said with perfect reasonableness.
Recriminations for having felt the burden of being a mother echoed in her brain, bringing shame and self-loathing.
“He’ll turn up, Marilee. It’ll be okay,” Parker whispered in her ear as he again drew her close.
What was great about Parker was his solidity in any crisis. Probably it had something to do with being a veterinarian, facing life and death on a regular basis. He was not daunted by a crisis, but was, in fact, better in a crisis than at normal times. He could offer himself in a crisis, whereas during normal everyday times, he withheld himself and kept his affability around him like a shield.
“Did you bring any cigarettes?” she asked.
“No. Why would I have cigarettes?” He looked startled.
“Parker, don’t you keep any, just in case?”
“I quit three years ago, and so did you, remember?” he said with a righteousness that Marilee thought uncalled for in the situation.
Annoyed, she almost asked him to go get her a pack, but then the phone rang.