A Seahorse in the Thames (18 page)

“Why couldn’t she tell me?” Mom asks quietly when we’re done. I think she’s a little hurt. “Did she really think I would stand in her way? Did she really think I would try and talk her out of it?”

I reach out and put my arm around her. “Mom, Rebecca’s always been one to do spontaneous things. And I think we would’ve tried to talk her out of it. I’m pretty sure I would have. And if you’re honest with yourself I think you would have, too. Remember what happened with Tim?”

“That was different. Tim was incapable of taking care of Rebecca.”

“But maybe Rebecca was convinced there was no difference between Tim and Cosmo. She might’ve thought we our responses would have been no different.”

Mom dabs at her eyes with a manicured hand. “All I have ever wanted for her was for her to be happy. That’s all I have ever wished for.”

“Then I think you’ve got your wish, Mum,” Priscilla says. “I think Rebecca caught a glimmer of something grand and she went for it.”

“But we don’t know anything about this man. What kind of name is Cosmo?”

“Mom, it’s probably a nick name. And from what we can gather, he seems like a decent guy. Rebecca said she’d write me so I’m sure at some point we will get to know him better.”

“What do you mean Rebecca said she’d write you? You said she didn’t leave a note.” Mom says, looking up at me and frowning.

Oops. I didn’t mean to bring up the note about the check. I think of a quick fix.

“She left a quick note about making sure her fish was fed. There was just a little p.s. to me. She said she would write.”

Not exactly a lie. Just a blending of two truths.

Mom ponders the news for a few seconds. “So what are we supposed to do?”

“Well, I guess we wait to hear from her,” I answer.

“And what about her room at the Falkman Center?”

“Well, she’s paid up through the end of the month. If we haven’t heard from her by then, I suppose she’ll have to give her space up and we’ll have to move her things out.”

Mom sighs. “We’ll never find another place like that.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that, Mum,” Priscilla offers. “If she’s married, she’s not coming back to the Center.”

“I guess.”

Mom spends a few more minutes in quiet consternation. Then she seems to shake it off. I recognize this ability she has to shake off what she doesn’t want to think about. She has been doing it for years.

“I’m ready for lunch,” she says. “Let’s go to the Hotel Del. My treat.”

It’s a little after two in the afternoon when I leave Priscilla and Isabel at Mom’s. Mom has asked me over for dinner tomorrow night; Priscilla and Isabel’s last night in San Diego. I hug them goodbye and tell them I’ll see them tomorrow at six.

As I drive back over the bridge, I’m aware of how intensely glad I am that I have plans with Stephen for this afternoon. I’d be in a sorry state if I had to return home to an empty house with nothing to do but start a load of laundry and pay bills.

I pull in to my driveway and head inside my house, wondering if I should change into something more… more date-like. Maybe I’d better see what Stephen has in mind, first. I walk into my kitchen to pick up my phone and the answering machine is blinking. I press the button to listen to the message. The emotionless voice on the other end sends a shiver down my spine and I stand frozen as I listen to it.

“Hello. This is Kevin McNeil. It’s a little after noon on Saturday. My father is in town and would like to see you. He asks that you to come to the house tonight. Seven o’clock. Please call me when you get this message.”

Kevin ends the message by giving me his telephone number. It’s different than the one in the phonebook; the one I already have. This one is probably his cell phone.

The message ends and I stand there in sheer amazement.

Gavin McNeil is in town.

And he wants to see me.

I have this funny feeling Gavin didn’t just drive up from Palm Springs on a whim. I am fairly certain he came to San Diego because of me. Because of what I found.

With shaking fingers I pick up my phone to make the call.

Not to Kevin, but to Stephen.

S
tephen’s first response to my news that Gavin wants to see me is concern mixed with doubt.

“I don’t know if meeting him at the McNeil house is a good idea,” he says. “Even if I come with you—and remember, I told you I would—I don’t know if you should agree to meet anywhere other than a public place.”

“But what if I insist Lisa be there? She just doesn’t seem like the type to just stand by and allow harm to come to me.”

“I don’t know,” Stephen says. “Maybe.”

“I just want to be somewhere we can all speak freely. Besides, despite what Gavin has done, I just don’t think he’s capable of outright malice. He made some pretty awful choices in the past, but I think in his own skewed way he was just trying to protect his family. He just chose a really bad way to do it. And he paid for it. We all did.”

“If it’s true he did what he did to protect his family, who’s to say he won’t do it again?”

“Do you really think he’s going to murder us both in his son’s living room?”

He is silent for a moment. “So you want to call him and tell him we’re coming?

“Yes, I want to tell him we’re coming.”

“You know, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind for our first date,” he teases.

“I will take you out for coffee afterward.”

“I don’t like coffee.”

His first flaw. I was beginning to think he had none.

“All right I will take you out for ice cream.”

“Frozen yogurt?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“So what do you want to do until then?”

I like the sound of that. “Can I come over and make you dinner?”

“
That
sounds good to me,” he answers and I can tell he really means it.

He gives me directions to his house and I ask to make sure his second flaw isn’t that he doesn’t like lasagna. He assures me he loves lasagna. We hang up.

I wait for several moments before pressing the numbers for Kevin’s cell phone. I feel a strange sense of peace fall over me as I await the arrival of courage to make the call. I have this suspicion there is a man in Encinitas with his arm in a sling and his foot in a cast praying for me.

I make the call.

Kevin McNeil picks up on the second ring.

“McNeil,” he says.

“Kevin, this is Alexa Poole. I got your message.”

He says nothing for a second. “Are you coming?” he finally says.

“Will Lisa be there?”

“This has
nothing
to do with my family, understand? I am warning you. You keep them out of this!”

I feel a rush of Priscilla-like disdain welling up within me. “Look, Kevin, I have no plans to make threats to you, so I would appreciate it if you lay off making threats to me. I want Lisa to be there so that you will stop making them. And by the way, I am bringing a friend with me, someone I trust. If you have a problem with that, then no, I will not come.”

Kevin is silent on the other end.

“I apologize,” he finally says. “I assumed you were… you were…”

“Well, you assumed wrong. All I want from you and your father is the truth. You can keep your money. I swear before God I don’t want it.”

“I really would rather Lisa wasn’t involved with this,” he says in a calmer tone. “She won’t be there. Will you still come?”

I will come, but I pause for a moment before telling him.

“My friend and I will be there at seven.”

I decide to change into white rayon capris and a pink-striped linen top. Serafina has told me I look good in this outfit. Even Patrick has said I look good in it. It’s casual but in a dressy way. I want to look attractive to Stephen and in control to Gavin and Kevin. Before I leave, I put the check in my purse. I plan to tear it to bits in front of Gavin and Kevin. They can put the tattered pieces anywhere they please.

I stop at a grocery store on the way to Encinitas to get the ingredients to make lasagna. I buy a fat bunch of sunflowers on my way out of the store.

Though I try to convince myself I am not nervous as I follow Stephen’s directions, my heart is beating way too fast when I finally park my car in front of his little apartment complex. He lives above the beach in a forty-year-old building apparently inhabited by lots of other people who love to surf. Boards decorate every balcony.

I walk up the cement slab stairs with my bags and the sunflowers, wincing at the thought of Stephen negotiating these stairs with a broken ankle and elbow. I make it to the second floor and find his door. I feel my pulse surging through my body, making my incision itch and my breathing rapid. I ring the bell.

It’s been almost a week since I’ve seen him. The last time was Saturday. He was lying in a hospital bed watching ESPN. He had just found out he has a tumor in his brain. He answers the door on one crutch under his good arm, smiling in an effortless way. I can’t help but smile back.

“Alexa, are you a sight for sore eyes. Please come in.” He limps aside and I walk past him into this apartment. His living area is furnished with nice things but it’s littered with magazines, empty water bottles and bed pillows. I find my way to the kitchen where I find a sink full of dishes that have been rinsed but need to be washed. When I open the fridge to put the lasagna-makings away, I notice that it’s pretty much empty aside from a carton of orange juice, a jar of mayonnaise and a package of string cheese.

“Stephen, what have you been surviving on?” I put my things inside the fridge.

He hobbles into the kitchen. “Yeah, I guess I am kind of low on stuff. People at the church have been bringing me meals so I haven’t had to worry too much about that.”

“Do you want to go get some groceries?” I say.

“I’ll go anywhere,” he says with a smile.

We spend the rest of the afternoon getting groceries, talking about everything and nothing, and making lasagna. Stephen permits me to tidy up his apartment and wash his sheets and towels. The laundry room is two flights down; impossible on even one crutch with a loaded laundry basket. He tells me his mom will be by tomorrow to help him with the rest of his laundry. While the lasagna bakes, we sit on his balcony to watch the tide come in.

“I don’t think I could ever live anywhere but by the ocean,” he says to me as we sit on canvas chairs and look out over the water.

“Me, neither,” I say. “I love that it’s always constant, always dependable. The sound the waves make is as wonderful to me now as it was when I was little. I like that it always will be that way.”

“For a long time I didn’t appreciate that about the ocean—its persistence, I mean,” Stephen says. “There were quite a few years where I didn’t appreciate much about anything.”

It sounds like he wants to be honest with me about something. Something he thinks I should know before we go any farther in our friendship.

“How come?” I invite him to tell me.

“When my Dad died, I kind of walked out on my mom and everything my parents had taught me about how to live. I caused my mother a lot of grief. And she didn’t need it just then.”

“How did your father die?”

“He got some kind of virus that settled in his heart. It was like a flu of some kind, but it invaded his heart and never left. I was a senior in high school when he got sick and he died a month after I graduated. I moved out, mad at the world, at God especially, and I started doing pretty much whatever I wanted. All those things that tend to ruin a young life.”

Stephen looks over at me and smiles, though it is not a smile of mirth. “I became the guy your mother always warned you about.”

I smile back. I don’t tell him my mother really didn’t warn me about anything.

“I got married too young to a woman I really didn’t know very well and we were able to poison our marriage with fatal choices within the first few months. He looks away from me. “We were divorced two years later. That was eight years ago. I have no idea where Trish is now.”

He does not sound like he misses her nor that he still has feelings for her, but I can sense in his voice that he wishes there was a way he could fix what he broke. It is hard for me imagine Stephen living the way he is describing. Something had to have happened to him to change him.

“But you don’t seem like that kind of person anymore,” I say gently.

He turns his head back around and the smile on his face is so very different that the one he wore only moments before. “That’s because I am not. Those years I was on a collision course I had a mother who was praying for me. She was praying that God would send someone my way, someone who could pull me out of the pit I was in. Someone I would have the wisdom to listen to. And that’s just what God did.

“I was working for guy who had a painting business. He was a Christian and I knew it when he hired me. He was always very open about his faith. When my so-called marriage fell apart, I got evicted because I couldn’t pay my rent. I was living in my car. I kept showing up to work hung over, but this guy did the most amazing thing. Instead of firing me, he invited me home to his house. And not just for supper. He invited me to come live with him and his wife. They showed me love at the very moment I knew I needed it more than anything else in the world. After a few months of living in their home, going to church with them, talking over the heavy stuff like why God gave me a brain tumor when I was twelve and why he allowed a good man like my father to get a virus that killed him, I gave what was left of my life to God. It was like being raised from the dead, Alexa. Nothing was the same for me after that.

“I went back to school, got my carpentry license, started my business, and I never looked back, except to see where I had come from.”

I am hearing all of this; registering it, but the words “it was like being raised from the dead,” keep repeating themselves in my head. This is why I cannot picture the Stephen I know living a twisted, marred life. That man is dead. It is startling to consider this.

I feel tears at the corners of my eyes and I am completely taken aback by their presence.

“I wanted you to know where I have come from, Alexa,” Stephen says softly, fixing his eyes on mine. “And I wanted you to know where I’m headed. I want you to be very comfortable with both.”

I think he sees what is lurking in the corner of my eyes. He doesn’t ask me to respond. Then he does the most amazing thing. He reaches over and puts his hand over mine.

And we sit that way; just watching the waves hit the sand, until the timer on the oven goes off. Stephen somehow allows the heaviness of what he has told me settle around us in those quiet moments before we go in to eat. His hand on mine and his silence has a remarkably calming effect.

I am not a whiz in the kitchen, but I do make pretty decent lasagna, and it’s satisfying to watch Stephen eat three helpings. He doesn’t want me to, but after we are done eating, I clean up the dishes already in the sink as well as our own. At six-thirty we make our way slowly down the stairs and to my car.

I don’t say a whole lot about what we are about to do on the way over. Stephen lets me ramble on about my childhood growing up in the El Cajon valley, living in Mount Helix, trying to learn how to ride a bike on winding neighborhood streets that challenged gravity. When I finally pull up in front of the McNeil house, I’m out of things to say. I turn off the ignition and I just stare at the house.

Stephen takes my hand, with his bad arm, actually, and holds it. “I’d like to pray with you before we go in.”

I am pleasantly stunned. I nod.

Stephen closes his eyes and after a moment, I do too.

“Father God, we just ask that you would go with us now into this house. Help us to set things to right. Give Alexa grace and wisdom to say and do the things that would please you. Guard our every step. Protect us from any harm, physical or mental. Enable us to bring peace and healing to this situation. Help Gavin McNeil to do the right thing. Give him courage and strength. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

I whisper the word, “amen.” What a lovely word. As I say it, I feel the tension of the last few days ease on my head and heart. It’s a strange and wonderful feeling.

Stephen squeezes my hand and then lets it go. “Ready?” he says.

“Yes.”

I get out and come around to the passenger side to help Stephen out. We walk slowly up to the front door on a winding stone pathway that it lit by tiny solar-powered lights. When we get to the front door, I ring the bell.

Kevin answers it, as I expected he would. He hasn’t changed much in the last seventeen years. His face is fuller, he has a bit of gray at his temples and his gut is a little more pronounced. I imagine I would’ve recognized him anywhere. Kevin notices Stephen right off, standing there with his arm in a sling and his ankle in a cast and I am sure Kevin is wondering if Stephen is really my idea of a bodyguard.

“Hello, Kevin. This is my friend Stephen Moran.”

Kevin nods to me and then he starts to offer to shake Stephen’s hand but with the sling and the crutch, he quickly withdraws his arm.

“Nice to meet you, Kevin. Don’t worry about it,” Stephen says pleasantly.

Kevin clears his throat. “Won’t you come in?”

We step inside the McNeil house. It feels strangely tomblike. There isn’t a sound inside to indicate there is life within it. It’s obvious Lisa and the kids are not here. Even Gizmo the dog appears to have been banished.

“Please?” Kevin says, motioning us to the den, Gavin’s former study.

We walk inside the study. Gavin is standing there with a tumbler of amber liquid in one hand. He looks the same, but very much older. Older than just by years.

“Hello, Mr. McNeil,” I say.

His smile is tired and not very convincing. “Please call me Gavin,” he says.

“This is my friend Stephen.”

Gavin looks at my wounded friend, sizing him up. “Won’t you sit down.” He takes a chair by a large picture window. Stephen and I sit on the sofa where I sat with Lisa on Wednesday. Kevin folds his arms across his chest and leans on a built-in bookcase near his father.

“Can I get you anything?” Gavin holds up his drink.

“No, thanks.”

An uncomfortable silence follows.

“Look, why don’t we get right to the point,” Gavin says. “I hear you found a check that I wrote and that was never cashed. Kevin says you want to know why your sister Rebecca had it. He told me you are going to call the police if I don’t tell you why.”

I clear my throat and I feel Stephen move his arm closer to mine. “Actually, Gavin, since I last spoke to Kevin I have found out why Rebecca has that check.”

Gavin’s eyes widen in surprise. So do Kevin’s.

“Kevin mentioned Mindy’s name in our telephone conversation,” I continue. “He accused me of being in some kind of partnership with her to extort money from you. I assured him—and I assure you now—that is not the case. I just wanted to know the truth. Since Kevin would not tell me, I looked Mindy up. My sister Priscilla and I met with her yesterday. She told me about the check. She told me everything.”

I pause then to let my words sink in. I can see in Gavin’s eyes that he’s unsure what to do with someone who knows the truth and who is not interested in money.

“So you know about…”

“I know about James Leahy. I know what happened to him.”

When I say James Leahy’s name, Gavin visibly flinches in his chair. He pauses for a moment before continuing our conversation.

“What do you know?”

“I know that there was a fight. That when my sister and Mindy left this house the day you asked them to bring James Leahy down to see you, James was lying in this study with blood all over his face. Mindy told me he was dead.”

Kevin’s face is now drained of color. He shifts his weight off the bookcase and takes a step toward me. “That’s a lie! James wasn’t dead. He just got knocked out. His nose was broken, that’s all. And if he hadn’t thrown the first swing—”

But Gavin stops him before he finishes.

“What do you want from me?” He says every word slowly. “You don’t want money. What is it you want from me?”

“There is nothing I want from you. If I could have Rebecca back the way she was before Leanne drove her car into a tree, I suppose I would ask for that. But you can’t give my sister back her old life.”

I feel Stephen stir beside me I sense that perhaps the conversation is not going where it should. I remind myself that Gavin never wanted anything bad to happen to Leanne or Rebecca. He never even really wanted anything bad to happen to James. It just did.

“I really don’t want anything from you, Gavin. And I don’t mean that in an accusatory way. I had wanted the truth, but I got that from Mindy.”

“You didn’t get the truth from her,” Kevin snarls.

Gavin ignores him and puts his drink down and studies me. “Then why did you come when Kevin called you? You obviously haven’t gone to the police.”

I reach down into my purse and pull out the check. “I wanted you to see that I’m destroying this check. Not because you wish it but because it’s what Rebecca wants. I also want you to know that I could use it to go to the police. I could take this check down to the police station and tell them that I have information about a James Leahy who I believe died in your house seventeen years ago after you fought with him. That you have a black belt in karate and dealt him a blow that didn’t just break his nose. That you paid my sister fifty thousand dollars to pretend she didn’t know about any of this. But Rebecca asked me to destroy this check, so I will.”