Beloved (24 page)

A shower went a long way toward rinsing away the morning
'
s hysteria. The hot water seemed to ease the hurt in her shoulder, suggesting that maybe there was nothing supernatural about the pain after all. But if that
were
true, if there w
ere
no spirit working its malevolence on and around her, then Bing was right: The nasty tricks could only be the work of someone creeping around Lilac Cottage in the dark.

Some choice,
Jane thought grimly as she stirred her coffee.
A ghost named Judith or some homegrown pervert.

It occurred to her that she was feeling as tight as an overwound clock.
I need to get out more, to do something more aerobic than stripping wallpaper.

Jane was a jogger and had kept it up even after she got fired; but that all stopped the day she stepped off the ferry on
Nantucket
. She forced herself into a do-it-now mood and went back to her closet and changed into a jogging suit and her running shoes. She
'
d take a run first, and then come back for breakfast. Maybe by that time Mac and his noisy tractor would be done and gone.

She slipped on a headband, then hesitated on her side of the front door, feeling amazingly inappropriate in her pink and silver jogging tights. The tractor was idling quietly now; Jane wondered whether Mac and Jerry had gone back to the house. But no. Peeking out the window, she saw them tinkering with some big metal contraption, apparently the tree spade, that was attached to the tractor.

"
How come she
'
s getting rid of it, Dad?
"
the boy asked, glancing up at the hollies.
"
Doesn
'
t she know how much they
'
re worth?
"

Jane jumped away from the window, then crept over to the closer one, curious to hear Mac
'
s answer.

"
Don
'
t know that she cares, Jer,
"
Mac said quietly.
"
She has a blind spot or two. That
'
s okay. We know what they
'
re worth.
"

"
A
lot,
"
Jerry said, although Jane had the impression that Mac didn
'
t mean it literally.
"
You could sell this for a thousand dollars, couldn
'
t you, Dad?
"

"
I suppose,
"
Mac said absently. He was tightening a little silver clamp around a thin black rubber hose; Jane was frankly surprised that he could adapt his big, powerful hands to such finicky work. She was also surprised by the value of her hollies.

"
But you
'
d never sell it, would you, Dad?
"

Mac shook his head.
"
Nope.
"

Jerry went on.
"
Mom says you wouldn
'
t sell an inch of land or a blade of grass if your life depended on it. She says you
'
ll never leave
Nantucket
.
"

"
No secret there, son,
"
Mac said mildly, picking over a set of wrenches for one the right size.
"
I guess that
'
s why your mom and I aren
'
t together anymore.
"

"
Yeah.
"
The word drifted through the window to Jane
— a sad, single note of comprehension. There was a silence, and then Jerry said,
"
She has a new boyfriend. He
'
s a lawyer too.
"

"
That makes a lot of sense,
"
Mac answered. Jane thought she heard a kind of hardness creep into his voice.

Almost as an afterthought, she realized she was eavesdropping.
I have no business here,
she told herself.
I should just go.
She reached for the doorknob, then had second thoughts. What if Jerry was reaching out in some way to his father; should she blunder in on their heart-to-heart? Absolutely not.

Jerry was saying,
"
Two lawyers in one house is too many. You don
'
t know what it
'
s like, Dad. They talk about their cases all the time. I don
'
t like him. He
'
s always trying to take me to a Celts game, or the Bruins
—
except you know how Mom feels about hockey
—
and I think he
'
s just, I don
'
t know, trying too
hard,
"
he said plaintively.

"Well ..
. at least he
'
s trying,
"
Mac said quietly.
"
Some of the other ones didn
'
t.
"

"
He knows I don
'
t like him,
"
the boy boasted.
"
He doesn
'
t know
anything
about sports, not really. He called Michael Jordan
Matthew
Jordan the other day. How dumb can you get?
"

"
Hey, pal, c
'
mon. Give the guy a break,
"
Mac said. But Jane thought it cost him something to say it. Again she tried to move away from the window, but Jerry
'
s next question kept her glued to the spot.

"Dad? I was, wondering ..
. would you still be with Mom if she didn
'
t leave first?
"

There was a pause, painfully long, before Mac let out his breath in a deep sigh and said,
"
I don
'
t know, son.
"

Now
she was ashamed for eavesdropping. She backed away and knocked over a galvanized bucket that had been left inside near the door, setting off a crash that could be heard on
Martha
'
s Vineyard
. So she picked up the bucket and walked brazenly out with it, intending to make a business of taking it around to the back.

McKenzie looked up and took in her
jogging
outfit in one withering glance.
"
Off to milk the cows?
"
he asked pleasantly.

Jerry was still crouching with his back to Jane. He swung his head around and said,
"
Hi again.
"

Jane shifted the bucket from her right hand to her left and walked up to the boy and said in her most cordial voice,
"
Hi again to you too. I
'
m Jane.
"

"
I
'
m Jerry.
"
That seemed to be all he had to say to her, so he went back to working on the tree spade.

A regular chip off the old block,
she thought, stepping over and around their tools.
"
I thought I
'
d go for a jog,
"
she volunteered to no one in particular. When no one in particular responded, she walked smartly away from the scene to the potting shed, where she got rid of the damn bucket. She hadn
'
t bothered to stretch and wasn
'
t about to, not with McKenzie directly in her line of sight. So she just set off cold and passed them at a brisk pace, just as she would have done at her peak of fitness.

That lasted about a block.
My
God,
I
'
m out of shape,
she realized, pausing to wheeze and bend her back belatedly. She decided to walk briskly for a while instead, her thoughts on the sad and poignant conversation she
'
d just overheard.

Why do people marr
y when they
'
re so clearly opposite?
It wasn
'
t the first time she
'
d wondered. Couldn
'
t they see it would never work? Although Jane did not agree with her father on many things, she did agree with him on one thing: A couple had to be
compatible
.
If nothing ma
tched
—
experience, education, age, interest
—
how could they hope to stay in love? How could they hope to spare their children the pain of separation?

She walked on, her pace slowing as her reverie deepened. McKenzie, although not her type, was undoubtedly a terrific catch for someone. He was even stronger
—
not to mention, silenter
—
than the proverbial strong, silent type. If that was some woman
'
s cup of tea, she could hardly do better than Mac McKenzie.

But for him to marry an ambitious urbanite who
'
d probably end up Attorney General of Massachusetts? Jane shook her head. No, it was as unsuitable a match as
...
as McKenzie and
her.
No wonder he never had anything except a sneer and a snotty word for Jane: he was taking all the hostility he felt for his ex-wife, and dumping it on her.

The sad thing was, this Celeste of his was probably just as good a catch for the right someone as he was. She sounded very directed, very purposeful, which was not a bad thing. But Celeste had one set of values, and Mac had another, and poor Jerry was caught in the middle. She wondered what the custody arrangements were, and whether they
'
d changed in the past three years.

She turned to go back home. The southwest wind had begun to pick up, bringing with it the instant ocean chill that day by day she was becoming accustomed to. The only way to stay warm would be to jog, so she cranked up her determination and broke into a trot. With the wind at her back it wasn
'
t so bad. And she had a view of the ocean, brooding and magnificent, all to herself.

Jane jogged along the empty road past empty houses, wondering anew how anyone could abandon this wild and charming isle in the off-season. She wasn
'
t far from home when she spied a little clump of blue tucked in front of a large rock that marked the corner of someone
'
s drive. Suddenly, jogging seemed irrelevant. Jane stopped at once and crouched down before the pale blue clump for a closer look.

It was a small cluster of flowers, tiny and insignificant and without even a redeeming fragrance. But they were flowers
—
in
bloom
—
and
that made them more valuable to her than a pocket of amber. The house they belonged to was, of course, shuttered up for the winter. Jane plucked one of the pale blue blooms with its short stem and ambled homeward with it, cradling it in the palm of her gloved hand and marveling at its delicate resilience. She thought of Shelley
'
s immortal question, the one everyone asks at the first proof that winter is packing it in at last:
Can Spring be far behind?