Ashes (25 page)

Richard had betrayed and Sean would repay. Again he felt weight bearing down on his shoulders. He watched as Richard laid plans and listened to his followers and gave them tasks that made them feel important. And realized that betraying Richard was not going to be the pleasure Sean wanted it to be, because he did admire Richard in many ways. The intelligence, the way of fostering loyalty and camaraderie. Other things as well: the tireless charity work, his obvious love for and devotion to his wife. Scarcely a meeting went by when he did not think at some point,
Christ, Richard, I wish you were on our side. I really do. Even one of you for every ten numbers-men like Halsey, what that could do. If you were on our side.

But what was his side? Was he not, in his own way, a traitor?

That’s different,
he told himself. It was different, it had to be, even if he was no longer sure exactly where the distinction lay.

* * *

A
fter the meeting he went upstairs. As he walked past the kitchen he saw Anna there, washing dishes. “Something wrong with the dishwasher?” he asked.

“A hose clamp went this morning. While I was out, of course,” she said with a rueful smile. “Water all over the floor when I got back.”

“Ouch,” he said.

“You said it. The part won’t be in until tomorrow. Richard said I should just wait but,” she shrugged. “I wasn’t raised to let dishes sit overnight.”

“Need a hand drying?” Sean asked, not entirely sure why he was offering.

“That’s sweet of you.” She handed him a towel.

They said nothing for a while but the silence was not uncomfortable. For reasons still a mystery to him, Anna’s presence soothed him, made the ever-present weight on his shoulders ease a bit. Strange that this should be so, for if there was anyone he needed to hide his true purpose from, it was her.

On the refrigerator was a calendar; next week would be the anniversary of the bombing. The day that had changed so many lives, including Jennifer Thomson’s. And his own. He should mark the occasion somehow.

“Anna?” he asked. “Do you know much about flowers? I mean, about what they mean. I know that red roses are for love, but what about other flowers?”

She handed him a bowl to dry. “You’re in luck. When I was in high school I worked in a flower shop after school. I don’t remember a whole lot, but let’s see. For the roses, some people say yellow roses are for jealousy, but others say they’re for friendship. Go figure. Pink carnations are for Mother’s Day.” Anna’s eyes lit up, she smiled. “Say, Sam, you don’t have a ladyfriend, do you? Is that why you’re asking? Don’t be shy, I won’t tell.”

Sean bit his lip to keep from laughing. His last ladyfriend of any consequence had been Monique, and she had never been much on flowers. A good bottle of wine or some pretty jewelry had been more her style. “Ah, no, not a ladyfriend.”

“Darn, and here I thought I’d uncovered some good gossip.” Anna sighed, flicked soap suds off her hands. “Nobody tells me
anything.”

He dodged that topic quickly. “Just someone who’s had a hard time of it lately, and I want to wish her well.”

“Hmm. Let me think.” Anna washed and rinsed a few more plates. “There’s lily of the valley, for return of happiness.”

“I like that.”

“There’s zinnias, for absent friends. Daisies for innocence. Somewhere people got the idea that white chrysanthemums are just for funerals, but really they stand for truth.”

He stood with a plate in his hands, wiping it carefully with the towel. “What would you like to receive from someone?”

“Roses are always sweet. But I think the one with the nicest meaning is sweet alyssum. It means ‘worth beyond beauty’.” She smiled. “I like that. Beauty doesn’t last, but worth does. Or should, anyway.”

“Yes,” he said, “It should.”

S
he drove up the coast, thinking that it was strange to be spending a Tuesday morning here, in her car, instead of in the cinnamon-scented sanctuary of the library. Strange that the sun should be so brilliant today, the sky without a single cloud in it. So used had she become to dim library light and overcast skies that this clear weather seemed wrong, as if she’d been transported back to Los Angeles. Ah, but Los Angeles skies were never this pure of a blue. Even the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara, much as she loved it, did not have Canada’s beauty. No softly rolling brown foothills here but gray stone and green pines, and in the distance snow-dusted mountains. It was a rougher beauty but somehow seemed more real.

The park was Suzanne and Bill Delacroix’s recommendation, a place popular with fishers, boaters, and day campers. Jennifer drove into the parking lot. There was only one other car there; as the Delacroixs had said, on a weekday at this time of year she’d have the place to herself.

She got out of the car. For all its sunny brilliance the day was chilly, and she put on her sweater. Resting on the passenger seat was a picnic basket, laden with food and some other odds and ends. Jennifer picked up the basket, slung it over her left arm, and began walking toward the beach.

Other than visits to the harbor, she had never been down to the shore during her time in Haven Cove. The beach had meant different things to her in California; it was a place of warmth and sunbathers. A place where the sands were soft under your feet and flags warned you of rip currents. This was different. The shore was rockier, the waves did not fall gently on the beach but beat themselves against granite, sending foam into the air. The sea itself was different, a darker blue, and the strong breeze ruffled the surface with whitecaps. This ocean was not a backdrop, the way it seemed in southern California. It was something not quite tamed. Something to be reckoned with. She thought of the Haven Cove marina, all those men like Gene who made their living out on the sea. What must that be like, to face that huge sea in all weathers every day? Was it brave, foolish, or simply a job to be done? Or all of the above?

She walked along the shore, not beachcombing or even looking for a picnic spot. The wind blew through her clothes, seemed to blow through her skin and bones as well. It was cold, yet comforting. A clean feeling, like letting the air into a musty house, blowing away cobwebs and dust.

Jennifer wore no watch, did not wonder about time. She had all day. She walked until she was tired of walking. She set down her picnic basket in the shade of a boulder, and walked out on the rocks until she was close to the water, enough to feel the spray of a particularly big wave. She sat, gazed out at the ocean. Mr. Bradbury said that soon you would see whales, making their way up the coast from their winter haunts in Mexico. She would like to see whales, and sea otters too. Perhaps Matthew and Suzanne and some of Suzanne’s day care kids would like to head down to the aquarium in Vancouver some time.

She sat, turned her face up to the sky, relishing the warmth of the sun on her winter-white skin, the coolness of the breeze and the ocean’s spray. Jennifer reached into her pocket and took out the letter she’d received yesterday. She had not opened it yet. The envelope was ivory-colored, with a faint watermark pattern. The address was in black ink; after a moment she recognized the style of ink. A fountain pen. Mr. Bradbury had one, that was how she knew it. She turned the letter over in her hands, looked at the return address on the back of the envelope. Dr. Duncan Levinson of Los Cielos, California.

It was a week ago that she had realized that March 21 was coming, and she had never given Dr. Levinson the one thing he had asked for.
Learn by going where you have to go. And tell me what you find when you get there.
So she’d written, and told what she’d found so far.

Jennifer opened the envelope, took out the letter, and read.

Dear Jennifer:

I was so glad to hear from you, and find out that you’re doing well. It seems that you’ve found a good place for yourself. Haven Cove is aptly named. And it seems that you’ve surrounded yourself with some nice people as well, never mind those “one or two exceptions” you mentioned.

Ever since our conversation I wondered how you were doing. You said that it had been a year, and that this was a good time for reflection. That’s true. And it’s not for nothing that tradition speaks of a year of mourning when there’s been a loss. I’ve often thought this year gives us a time to experience a full set of seasons, holidays, anniversaries, those sorts of things. To come full circle, so to speak, and realize that no matter what, life does go on.

If nothing else, I want to answer your question about earning the life you’ve been given. You asked when you know that you’ve earned it. And I can’t lie to you, Jennifer, I don’t think you can know that. It’s hard, but I think that the answers we want most are the ones that are the most difficult to find.

All you can do is what you have been doing. Be a good person, and a good friend. And yes, you’ve made mistakes. That means you’re human, that’s all. And it seems you’ve learned from them, so don’t worry.

I’m glad we talked last year, and I’d love to talk with you again some time. If you’re ever in California again, hop down to Los Cielos. You’re always welcome here.

Hoping that you and life treat each other well,

Duncan Levinson

Jennifer read the letter over again, then folded it and put it in her pocket. She didn’t know if she would ever feel like she had earned this life she now had, nor if she would ever have what they called closure. She had no desire to ever return to the States, let alone California, for more than a short visit. Bombs had rained down on the Middle East in retaliation, but there was no trial of conspirators, no justice had been meted out. In a way she missed the innocence she’d once had. She had learned many lessons over this past year, and they were not lessons she would have asked for, given the choice.

But who was ever given the choice in these matters? She had not asked for the building to be blown up, not asked for her picture to be splashed across newspapers and computer screens.

Speaking of which.

Jennifer got to her feet, brushed off her behind. Did a little dance as the needles-and-pins sensation went through her feet. She made her way back to her picnic basket and opened it. A sandwich: roast chicken and provolone cheese. The last of the winter’s tangerines. A bottle of ginger ale. And another bottle.

She took the bottle out, held it up in front of her. It had an elegant, fluted shape, and it had once contained rosemary-infused olive oil.

Last night she had rinsed the bottle clean, peeled all the labels off it. She had set the bottle aside, and rummaged through a box until she found what she was looking for. A souvenir, of a sort.

A copy of a weekly newsmagazine. A year old, now. She held the magazine, stared at the woman on the cover. Physically little had changed. She was a bit heavier. Her hair had grown out some. Her left arm sometimes ached if she bumped it the wrong way. There was a scar down the instep of her right foot. Very much the same, and yet she felt she barely knew this woman, crying in the arms of firefighter.
Who was he? I never thanked him for saving my life. Where is he, how is he doing a year later?

She'd torn the cover off the magazine, crumpled the paper with her image on it and put in a glass bowl. Jennifer lit a kitchen match and set fire to the paper, remembering too late that she probably should have turned off the smoke alarm. It didn’t go off — so much for technology. Pete Puma, intrigued by the smell of burning, mewed and bumped against her legs. “Later, Pete. Mama’s busy.”

When the ashes were cold she'd taken a spoon and mashed the burned wad of paper into fine dust. Then, scooped the ashes carefully into the bottle, stuck the wooden stopper in the top. Another match lit, this time a candle set alight. She let wax drip around the stopper until it was sealed completely.

Now she stood on the beach with the bottle and its ashes inside it. She smiled. A strange message to be sending in a bottle. If anyone found it, what on earth would they make of it? No matter. She strode back toward the beach, walked out onto the rocks to get as far out as she could. With all her strength, she threw the bottle as far and as high as she could into the sea. A brilliant flash of pale green as it caught sunlight, then plunged into the water, sending up a splash like that of a fish leaping. A few seconds later the bottle surfaced, and she watched as it caught the ebb tide and floated out to sea, out of her sight, and then was gone forever.

She wanted to say something to mark the occasion. Could not think of a thing. She turned, walked back to the shade of the boulder, and ate her lunch. She spent the rest of the day at the beach, until the sun was sinking and it was time to go home, and drove back to Haven Cove with a sunburn and a light heart and her pockets full of pretty stones and sea glass.

S
pring came early to Wisconsin that year, and not a moment too soon, as far as Sean was concerned. If nothing else, it meant he could start running outdoors again. He’d been forced to go to the YMCA two towns over, which had a circular indoor track. Something to run on, to be sure, better than outside where he would most likely go flying on a patch of ice and crack his head open. But God, it bored him until he thought his brain might implode.

As soon as the weather warmed enough for the ice to melt away he found places to run. His favorite was a path in the woods, across the lake from the Deer’s Head Lodge, on the national forest land. So good to run with earth underneath his feet instead of asphalt or warping parquet wood. What a pleasure, one of the few he had, to feel the warmth of sun and the coolness of wind, to breathe in the scent of the forest. Even the scent of Richard’s Christmas tree farm could hold nothing to it, for the woods scent was natural, not cultivated. The only thing that pleased his senses more than the scent of the Wisconsin woods in spring was the Blaine kitchen, pleasantly warm on cool spring evenings, sometimes smelling like fresh-baked bread, sometimes like apples and cinnamon, sometimes like fresh rosemary.