Creations (14 page)

Again Victor paused. “Alright, Max, I’ll see what I can do. Is there any way you can reach her?”

Max looked at her listing on his omni; her link was blocked to incoming calls. He hadn’t expected any different. “No, I can’t. But if you can get me back to the US then I can try to find her.”

“Max, why don’t you —”

“Victor, please, just do this for me. Tell me when the next flight is, or if you can bring it forward. I need to do this.”

* * *

It was four days later that Max was able to go, taking the Samoan flight. He stayed in the house the whole time beforehand, trying Gillian’s number again and again, but with no success. He didn’t know what Victor had told the others, and really couldn’t care. By the time the day of the flight came round, he was counting the minutes.

The flight stopped in L.A. to refuel, but Max didn’t even bother looking there. Their own house was being rented, and although there were friends she could have stayed with, Max could think of only one place she’d go.

* * *

He parked up on the wooded hillside much as he had five months previously. Lights were on in the house, but there was no sign that anyone inside had heard him pull up. He hesitated on the doorstep for a full minute before he finally rang the bell. It was Gillian’s father who answered the door.

“Go away, Max,” he said. “You’re not wanted here.”

“I need to see Gillian.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“Ira, please, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think we could work this out. I need to talk to her, there are things she needs to hear me say.”

Ira let him in, wordlessly. The front door led straight into the lounge, and it was there that he saw Derry, plus Laura and Roy, sitting round the room on the exact same chairs they’d been on for his last visit. It almost looked comical seeing them there as if they’d never even moved, though the expressions on their faces broke the impression immediately. Laura and Roy lived nearby, and had obviously come round to give Gillian moral support. The overwhelming atmosphere of the room was one of hostility.

Max didn’t stay in the room, or even say anything to them. They weren’t the ones he was here to see. He went through the far
door and up the stairs, into the room they still kept for Gillian, and there he found her, sitting on the bed staring at the floor. Max wondered if she’d escaped up there when he’d rung the doorbell; she must have known it would be him.

“Gillian, it’s me. How are you?”

“How do you think I am, Max?” She didn’t even turn to look at him.

“I know you’re upset, and you’ve every right to be. But please just hear me out on this.”

“On what? You lied to me, and not just a small lie either. Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Yes, I would have done, eventually.”

“Really? You get these letters, threatening you, threatening
me
, and you keep them to yourself? Just when would you have said anything? Did they have to burn the house down before it occurred to you to warn me?”

Max couldn’t argue; it pretty much summed it up. “Look, these people,” he said, and then faltered. He was about to say something about the religious nature of the notes, make her think about how close to her beliefs they actually were, but he’d already decided it wouldn’t be a good idea. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was doing everything I could to make sure nothing happened, I had the university’s security in on it and they were talking to the police. Everything that could be done was being done.”

“Except telling me? Did that little detail escape you? That person taking my picture could have been anyone. No — not just anyone, one of
them
, and I have no idea about any of it until those notes turn up. Did you not think even then it might be a good idea to tell me?”

Max felt as if all the energy had been sucked out of him. There were no arguments he could put up, nothing he could say. She was right, and if he was honest, then this moment had only ever been a matter of time.

“Is that all you’re going to do, stand there?” she said.

“Gillian, you’re right, everything you’re saying is right, but please try to understand.”

“No, Max. I understand perfectly. And you know what? Those people got one thing right. You are a coward. You went out there to hide, not because of the opportunity it gave us, not because it would let us have a child, but to hide. And all along you pretended you wanted the same thing as me. I sat in that house day after day, while you worked ten hours at a stretch, doing something you couldn’t even tell me about, all because we’d have a chance to be a family at the end of it. And all along it was a lie.”

“That’s not true, I took that posting for those reasons too. You know I’ve always wanted a family just as much as you. That job was the luckiest break we’ve ever had, why would I pass it up?”

“Lucky? Do you want to know what’s lucky, Max? You were lucky that plane left the day it did — more ESOS wastefulness, why use a boat when you can fly a plane from Washington and back — but at least it got me out of there. That was ‘lucky’. If I’d had to wait just one more day in the same house as you, you’d have been a dead man.”

“But I did it to protect you.”

Gillian was still looking at the floor at that point, but he could see her smiling to herself: a satisfied smile rather than a happy one, as if she’d finally managed to work out where he was coming from. It wasn’t the kind of smile that suggested a pleasant conversation lay ahead.

“You did it to
protect
me?”

“Gillian, please, you’ve got to listen to me. I’m the one they wanted to scare, not you. It would have killed me to see you going through that. It would mean they’d won.”

She didn’t respond, but looked at him instead, a mixture of disbelief and fury in her eyes. It was the first time she’d so much as faced him the whole time they’d been talking. “No excuse. You lied, plain and simple. You put me in danger.”

The tone she was taking with him was if anything more scary
than the screaming and shouting he might have expected. It’s over, she was saying. This isn’t just something to fight about and fix later. It’s done.

He moved toward her involuntarily, as if to see whether she would respond.

“Don’t even come near me,” she said.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go.”

“I won’t do that.”

“You’re in my father’s house. If I tell him I want you to go, he’ll make sure you do.” Max ignored the threat that implied; despite the calmness of her tone he could see the suppressed rage that was driving her.

“And what are you going to do?” he said.

“I think that’s my business, don’t you?”

It was then that the doorbell rang for the second time that night. Gillian reacted with a start; whoever it was clearly wasn’t expected. It must have been Ira who went to answer it again. It was a man’s voice at the door, someone Max didn’t recognise, and given the look of concerned concentration on Gillian’s face, neither did she.

“We’re looking for Roy Hocker. We were told he was here.”

“Can I see some ID?” A pause, then Ira’s voice again. “Yeah, he’s here. Why, is anything wrong?”

“We need to talk to him. This is important.”

There was the sound of feet coming over the threshold, two men entering the house, people down in the lounge standing up in response. There seemed to be no resistance to their coming in.

“Roy Hocker?” one of the newcomers said.

“Yes, what’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“I have a warrant for your arrest. You’re going to have to come with us.”

“Arrest? What for? What’s going on here?”

“We’ve received complaints of harassment, and threats to
commit bodily harm.”

“What? No, no way, it can’t be —”

“These are serious charges, Mr Hocker. This will go a lot easier if you just come with us.”

“Excuse me, you’re in my house now.” It was Ira’s voice, firm but not aggressive. “Just what is he supposed to have done? You owe us that much.”

“The charge is under section 4 of the 2018 transmissions act. Mailing threatening communications.”

Suddenly Max knew why they were here, even though he could hardly believe it. It appeared Roy had come to the same conclusion.

“Wait — did he call you? It was him wasn’t it? Lowrie? Listen, there’s a man up there now, he’s in this house, he must have —”

“I’d advise you to co-operate, Mr Hocker.”

Gillian left the bedroom at that point, rushing downstairs to see what was going on. Max stayed where he was, listening in voyeuristically as events unfolded.

“Are you talking about the letters my daughter’s husband was getting?” It was Ira again:
my daughter’s husband
, Max noted, not
my son-in-law
. “Just what kind of evidence do you have here?”

“I can’t discuss that at this time. Mr Hocker, this way. Now.”

Whatever was said next was indistinct as Roy was led from the house. Max heard Laura saying “Where are you taking him?” over and over, her voice close to cracking, Ira trying to console her the whole time, until the voices spilled out onto the street and were lost. Whole minutes later they came back in, Ira, Gillian and Laura, rejoining Derry in the lounge. Heavy footfalls announced Ira’s climb up the stairs. He stopped when he was in the doorway, and looked at Max with contempt.

“If I ever find out that you were anything to do with this, I will kill you.” Then he went back down the stairs.

Max couldn’t leave, but in the current climate going downstairs was probably best avoided. Instead he watched the
clock, trying to put events together in his mind. Had it been Roy, all along? It certainly fit Roy’s beliefs, but by including Gillian in the threats he was acting against his own soon-to-be family. Could he really have done that?

Eventually Max decided enough was enough; whatever was waiting for him downstairs, hiding in the bedroom wouldn’t make it any better. He got up, and headed for the stairs.

The lounge was in silence when he came down. No one said anything when he took the seat nearest the staircase, not even to tell him to go. He looked round at the others, but no one returned his gaze. He seriously considered leaving at that point; he’d run this evening over so many times in advance of being here, how he would resist leaving at all costs, but nothing had prepared him for this. He was about to get up and go when Laura’s omni rang, the loud tone making everyone in the room jump.

She kept the receive side muted, a hushed conversation, most of which was carried on by whoever had called. It took three minutes in all, during which Laura did nothing but say, “yes”, and, “I see”, before finally hanging up. Then she turned to Ira, her face white, and said: “That was our lawyer. He’s saying Roy should plead guilty.”

She passed on everything she’d been told after that: the way someone at the savings bank where Roy worked had found a collection of documents hidden in his area of a shared terminal, the way she’d been concerned enough by the contents to call her supervisor, and the way he’d then called the police, who within hours had matched those letters up with the evidence from UCLA security.

When she’d finished talking nobody spoke. Gillian was sitting with her head in her hands, while Ira stared at the far wall. Derry was just looking at her hands, clasped together in her lap.

“Oh my God,” Gillian said after an age. It was all anyone seemed able to say.

Max got up to leave. If anything there was even more that he and Gillian had to talk about, but this wasn’t the time. Some cooling off period would be needed before they picked up the discussion again. “I’m going to get a hotel,” he said. “Call me sometime and we can talk more.”

He was halfway to the door when Laura stood up, marched over to him and slapped him hard enough to send him staggering backward. Then she ran up the stairs, sobbing copiously. Max watched her go then left, red heat spreading over one whole side of his face.

* * *

Gillian called him the next day, saying little but arranging to meet that afternoon. He couldn’t read much from her tone, but the fact she’d called at all was significant.

He went down ten minutes early and found a quiet spot in the hotel bar. At first he wondered why the print on the far wall looked familiar, until he realised it was one of hers: a single golden butterfly, sunning itself on a tree branch, with the Sacramento woodlands behind it. The detail was exquisite, right down to the hairs on its body and the delicate veins running through its wings. He remembered the day she’d made that sale, her biggest yet, to a firm that supplied hotel chains around the country; there were a few by her, he saw as he looked round the bar, but for some reason the butterfly picture was holding his gaze more than the others.

Her almost photographic eye for detail never failed to amaze him, he thought. A couple of centuries earlier she could have been among the best of the botanical artists, recording the wildlife around her far better than any camera of the day. Even these days she attracted enough interest to make a living out of it. He tried to remember the butterfly’s species classification as he looked at it, Nymphalidae something or other. He was sure it
would come to him.

She turned up on time, her expression neutral as she approached and sat down.

“Max, there are some things I need to say.”

“Sure, that’s all I’ve ever wanted, to talk.”

“Now what you did was still wrong, you need to admit that, but if I’d ever had any idea it was someone in the family —” She shook her head as if she couldn’t find the words.

“So was it definitely Roy?”

“He’s denying it, but even his own lawyer is telling him to plead guilty, to try to get the sentence down.”

“And what about your parents? And Laura?”

“Laura’s taking it badly. She’s hardly talking. Dad’s been onto Roy’s C.O.F friends, to see if they knew anything about it. He can’t believe it though, Mum can’t either.”

“The Children of the Faith”:
Roy had worn his badge for a reason when he’d met Max that time. Was it really so hard to believe that wasn’t the only message he’d decided to send?