Necessary Evil (21 page)

“You don’t object
to taking long walks in the woods with me?” he teased, but I shut him up with a
look that was impossible to misinterpret.

Aunt Susanna had
lunch ready, but I had time only to grab a sandwich before running back to the
barn to relieve Jacob and take on my next lesson. I spent the rest of the day
teaching and readying the release forms for the upcoming camps. I completely
forgot to warn Aunt Susanna about crowding Randall.

Despite the
busyness of the afternoon, time dragged. I was impatiently looking forward to
the evening, even while dreading the spectacle of dressing for a night on the
town and leaving under the watchful eye of Randall and my aunt. But when I came
in, Aunt Susanna was in the living room, moodily watching TV, and Randall’s car
wasn’t in the driveway.

“Where’s the
professor?” I asked.

“He had a meeting
or something,” she said. “He won’t be back until late.”

I was relieved and
so eager to get out of the house that I barely noticed her subdued state. I
showered, pulled on one of my little-used and almost out-of-style dresses,
pulled my unruly hair back into a bun, and applied a little lip gloss. When I
came back downstairs to say goodbye, Aunt Susanna was in the kitchen, frowning
at the contents of the fridge.

“Going out?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll be back
late.”

“Joe Tremonti
again?”

“Yes,” I said,
trying not to let her make me feel defensive. “Will you be all right tonight?
You seem kind of down.”

She sighed and
shut the fridge door. “Oh, I’m fine. Darlene is coming over to keep me
company.”

She really didn’t
seem to want to talk to me, something that both worked in my favor and made me
feel guilty at the same time. Both feelings melted away when I walked into
Ranalli’s Italian Restaurant in Salem and caught sight of Joe, studying the
menu with a look of concentration on his handsome face. He rose when he caught
sight of me and pulled out my chair.

“I’m sorry I’m
late,” I said, consciously trying to keep my hands from pressing against my
stomach, which seemed to house a dozen fluttering butterflies.

“I get it – you’re
a working girl,” he said. His breath was on my neck as he pushed in the chair
and I couldn’t repress the shiver of electric excitement that went down my
spine. Then, with his mouth close to my ear, he murmured, “Besides, you’re
worth the wait.”

That held me
tongue-tied for the next few minutes.

The waiter came to
take our wine order, and I let Joe pick the wine and the appetizers, claiming -
a little incoherently - that I didn’t have the expertise that he did for such things.
He chose a hearty red with a dry finish, and it paired perfectly with the
dinner that accompanied it.

I didn’t need alcohol to induce a heady
feeling. Just being in Joe’s presence was enough to make a girl need a
designated driver.

Our talk, at first,
was platonic. I asked about his work and he talked about his summer courses,
the students he had, and the twists and turns of his book project - which
reminded me uncomfortably of the writer back home. He was looking for a new
house, as the one he was renting now was starting to feel cramped, and he’d
rented a little Catalina in Boston harbor and was looking forward to taking it
out.

“Of course,” he
said, focusing on the ruby liquid in his glass, “I’ll need a first mate. You
can’t run a proper ship without one. It just isn’t as much fun.”

His eyes, hazel
green in the soft light of the restaurant, shifted to mine. Time had chiseled
his face, sharpening the strong jaw line, weaving delicate patterns around his
eyes, and dusting his hair with just the right amount of white. He could easily
have graced the cover of any magazine - and I, with my wild hair only just
contained in its bun, my hands hardened through outdoor work, and my figure
maintained only by stress and physical labor, could not understand what on
earth he was doing here with me.

But good fortune
came rarely enough that I wasn’t about to question it now.

His smile
deepened, and my heart rate rose in response. It was only with great difficulty
that I managed to say, “Are you still accepting applicants?”

“Yes, from a very
narrow pool,” he murmured.

We ordered
dessert, even though I could barely eat, and a sweet wine to go with it. Then
over coffee, he mentioned that he was considering moving out here permanently.
That piqued my interest, naturally.

“You’re ready to
leave Braeburn?” I asked. “But I’ve heard that you were being considered as
head of your department.”

He laughed,
stirring sugar into his mug. “Where did you hear that?”

For a moment, I panicked.
Was it something that Randall had said? I couldn’t remember, so I said, “I
don’t know. Just picked it up somewhere. It isn’t true?”

“I think I did
make the short list, but since Amber left…” He shrugged again and took a sip.
After a moment, he said, “I guess, I just feel like it’s time for something
new. Leave my old life behind. Find something else to do with it.”

I took a deep
breath and leaned back against my chair, staring at my china cup. Around us,
the din of the restaurant had died down as pair by pair, patrons finished their
meals and left. Joe and I had lingered longer than most. The fire flickered low
in the reproduction brick oven, the hostess by the entrance yawned and checked
her watch, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet.

Joe was leaning back,
too, regarding me with those intense eyes of his.

“That sounded,” he
said, “like the sigh of Atlas, groaning with the weight of the world on his
shoulders.”

I laughed
self-consciously. “Sorry. I was just thinking… I know this isn’t what you
wanted for your life, but I wouldn’t mind a chance to leave everything behind.”

“Oh? Has there
been more trouble?”

I shook my head,
then decided to come clean. “We – I thought I spotted someone digging out on
the trails the other night.”

“Near the
house?
”
He sat up straight.

“Down the trail
behind the house. You know, the old road. Anyway, when I went out to check,
they’d gone. They heard us and ran off before they could do any damage.” I
paused and looked at my hands. Without suppressing the bitterness, I added, “I
keep thinking that they’re going to stop, you know? But they don’t. They just
keep coming back. They just keep digging.”

“Did you call the
police?” he asked sharply.

“No. I didn’t see
the point.”

He hesitated, then
said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

We sat in silence
for a moment. I broke it with another sigh and an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, Joe. Just
thinking about leaving it all behind, to start again with a clean slate,
shaking off old responsibilities sounds like – well, like heaven sometimes.” I
reached past my mug and took my wine flute instead. There was still a few
ounces of the sweet wine left – I’d been pacing myself for the drive back home.
“But it is what it is,” I said, and drained the glass.

Joe leaned
forward. “Why don’t you?”

I shook off the
effects of the wine, and wished I’d eaten more and stared less. I blinked at
him. “What was that?”

“Why don’t you
start over? Sell the farm, move… Somewhere else. Start again. Or just start. You
never got a chance to go out on your own, to do what you wanted to do with your
life. Why not start now?”

I stared. “Start
over?”

“Why not?” He
covered my hand with his warm one and my heart nearly stopped. “Maddie, let it
go. That place is consuming you and giving nothing back. Sell the farm, let
your aunt find someplace to live, and
go
and
live
. Do it now. Do
it before you get too old, before it’s too late.”

The ice in my
fingertips was giving way to the warmth of his grasp. He didn’t just hold my hand:
his fingers roamed over it, stroking and caressing.

I was confused,
even without his touch complicating matters. Joe understood, if anyone truly
did, why the farm was so important. Although I didn’t like to talk about
business matters with him, I’d thought I made it clear that the farm stood for
more than just a family business that needed rescuing. Here he was, pressing me
to give it up, with touching urgency. He was concerned, truly concerned about
me - and I’d rarely felt so conflicted.

“Give up?” I
breathed. “Just give up?”

He studied my face
for a moment, then shook his head with a sad smile. “I guess that isn’t in the
cards yet, is it?”

I withdrew my hand
reflexively, regretting it in almost the same instant. “Not yet,” I said, and
was surprised when tears stung at the back of my eyes. “No, not yet.”

He nodded, then
sighed heavily. “All right,” he said. “But promise me you won’t dismiss the
idea entirely. Consider it. Some things aren’t meant to be saved.”

“I promise,” I
said, but the lump in my throat was so large it hurt to speak.

“Promise that you
also won’t go out chasing trespassers in the night anymore. You see something,
you call the police. Or me.”

“And you’ll be
there, zipping all the way up from Cambridge?” I teased, and he turned sober.

“Yes,” he
murmured, and the look in his eyes had me floating in a cloud the whole way
home.

Despite missing
him, I was glad to have the drive home to myself. I mulled over his words and
found myself wondering – why did I continue? Weren’t two years proof enough
that the farm wasn’t profitable?

Yet the idea of
giving up was so repugnant that I felt guilty for even thinking it.

Perhaps,
I thought, as I
pulled into the driveway,
the idea will grow on me.

It was late when I
got back. I let myself in the front door and Trusty ran over to greet me. We
went out the back again - her to do her business and me to check the stables,
as was my custom. There were a few whickers of protest when I snapped on the
aisle light, but the horses were comfortably bedded down and all seemed well.
My favorite, Greybeard, stuck his head out to greet me and seemed almost as
impressed by my unusual outfit as Joe had been.

I stayed a few
moments with Greybeard, hugging his neck, stroking his nose, and breathing in
the familiar scent of sweet hay. A thousand happy memories competed with the
few negative ones connected with the smell, and I remembered the first time I’d
led Greybeard into the stall. He had been ten years old then, a gelding who
used to run the racing circuit, yet he was a gentleman of a horse: well
mannered, calm, and hardly ever out of temper. I’d loved him at first sight,
the deciding factor for Uncle Michael.

When someone
smiles like you did,
he’d
told me,
you know there’s something special about the horse. A man would be
a fool to let him get away.

Trusty came
running up to me, her ears streaming behind her, and I bid Greybeard goodnight.
I felt refreshed as we walked up the porch steps. Time in the stables with my
horses, on my land, had that effect on me.

“Joe may be
right,” I said to Trusty, and she cocked her head at me. “That’s a decision
that I’m going to have to make someday. But not tonight, at least. Not right
now. Right now, we remain.”

By the wagging of
her tail, I knew Trusty agreed with me.

July 5
^th
,
1855

There were
fire-works in the town center today and Obadiah drove us all into town to view
them. Naturally, Alexander would not ride in the wagon, but went on ahead, where
he and Reuben H. met and played a few sly pranks on the good townsmen. I
watched him dancing with the girls in the square and wished, not for the first
time, that he would marry one and settle down somewhere near me, so we could
visit and I could have conversation with my best friend.

But I know
Alexander, better than most, though that might be mother’s pride. He is a
restless spirit, this son of mine, a man roaming a world that he persists in
keeping at a distance. He has always been the stranger in the midst of the
crowd, the sailor adrift in a crowded sea. He will not settle down, but only
because he feels that there is no safe ground. It is not true – there are many
that would see his good qualities, who would welcome them into their hearts and
families, if only he would allow them to.

I cannot help but
feel that if he had not lost his father, my beloved Justice, he would not feel
so alone. Obadiah is a good man, but has not the qualities that would draw a
boy like my son. I feel great guilt about this sometimes...

The next morning,
I tripped into a hole on my morning run.

It was my fault
that I hadn’t seen it. I’d been running on a cloud of giddy thoughts, memories
of last night’s date running through my head like a musical montage scene from
a romantic comedy.

I dwelt longest on
when we said goodbye. Joe had just told me that he was heading back to
California in the morning, for a few weeks, for business. My face must have
fallen, because he stepped closer and lifted his hand to trace it along the
outside of my face.

“Going to miss me,
Maddie?” he asked, smiling, his eyes moving over my face and hair.

He was so close
that I couldn’t breathe. When I didn’t answer, he cupped my face and leaned in
until his lips were close to my ear.

“I’ll miss you,
kid,” he said, and my heart stopped when he kissed my cheek.

I savored that
exciting, roiling feeling, when my foot touched air where earth should have
been. I went flying, but I was sharp enough to catch myself with my hands and
roll almost before I knew I’d been tripped.

I landed on my
back, bewildered, watching the flashing emerald of leaves dancing in the
morning sun. I laid there for a long moment, allowing my surprise to cloud my
mind and forbidding it from considering and processing reality.

I didn’t want to
acknowledge it. I wanted to lay on the ground, staring at the clean, clear sky,
and believe - if only for a moment - that my life was every bit as fresh and
comforting.

But reality made
no allowances for my mood. The ground was uncomfortable under my back and the
growing, throbbing pain in my ankle competed with the stinging of my palms.
When my breathing returned to normal, I rolled up onto my feet, brushed my
knees off, and went over to sit by the hole.

A hole is such a
silent thing. It’s a danger unlike most others, where the absence of matter is
its greatest weapon. I pondered that it wasn’t dirt that killed my uncle, but
the lack of it.

Lindsay had been
broken by a tree, but it was because the path had been removed that her horse
had fallen.

We’d fallen on
hard times, not because of a treasure, but because of the absence of one.

Sitting there
beside the trap that had so neatly caught me, staring into its shallow depths
as calm as any Bhuddhist in his mountain top retreat, I thought:
You could
almost say that Uncle Michael was killed over nothing.

It was a thought
clear and detached, as remote from me as my emotions seemed to be at that
moment.

But the longer I
stared at that shallow crevice - the nothing that was ruining everything - the
volcano of fury that I’d been holding at bay for years erupted.

I screamed.

It was long and
painful, ripped from the depths of my soul. The sound echoed off of the
shimmering trees, silencing the chorus of forest sounds, and making Trusty jump
and bark anxiously.

When the first
sound died away, I screamed again, longer and even louder than the first time,
and Trusty was frightened into stunned stillness.

After that, I was
beyond noticing what else was happening. Ignoring my throbbing ankle, I jumped
up and ran back and forth on the path, furiously kicking at stones, pounding on
the trees, throwing branches, and finally - in a fit of pure fury - I grabbed
my music player and smashed it against the trunk of a sturdy old oak. The
screen cracked under the impact, and I counted it as victory. I threw it into
the bushes and then returned to the hole.

My rage didn’t
abate until I had filled it by hand. I threw rocks into the hole, so forcefully
that many bounced out again. I piled on branches and then used my hands to
shovel dirt into it.

By the time it was
filled, my hands were bleeding, my face throbbed with heat, and my spirit was
spent. It wasn’t until I was halfway to the house that I realized I was still
sobbing.

                                                                 
***

Randall was in the
kitchen when I returned. He was yawning, rubbing his bleary eyes, and frowned when
he saw my dirt-stained outfit. When his eyes took in my bleeding hands and the
mess that was my face, he jumped out of his chair and raced around the counter.

“What happened?”
he asked, alarmed.

I waved him off
with an impatient hand and wrenched the refrigerator door open. My throat was
raw from rage, but I grabbed the orange juice from the fridge and reached for a
glass.

How Randall knew
where the emergency kit was, I don’t know, but he had it out and open when I
turned with my glass and jug. He presumptuously took them from me, insisting
over my protests that I wash my hands. I did so, moaning when the soap stung my
open flesh; but he paid no attention then, nor when I objected to his
slathering on the antibiotic. The cuts were minor, but he put bandages on the
bigger ones anyway, his mouth set in a line that was almost as hard as the look
in his eyes.

“Care to tell me
how this happened?” he asked, when he was finally finished. “Or am I supposed
to guess?”

I was pouring
orange juice into the glass, silently cursing as my shaking hands dotted the
counter with spots of orange juice. I told myself that I shouldn’t have come
through the kitchen. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, let alone
Randall. I had this half-formed idea that if I ignored him, he’d drop the
matter, but he didn’t take his eyes off of me, not even as he moved to close up
the emergency kit.

Finally, I gave.
As much as I
didn’t
want to talk, I couldn’t leave him standing there
without some explanation.

“I tripped,” I
grunted, and he snorted.

“On what? A
landmine?”

“On another hole.
On the west trail.”

He gaped at me.
“On the
trail
? What is it doing on the
trail
?”

“You’re the
expert,” I snapped. “You tell me – that’s where they always are. Anyway, it
isn’t there anymore. I filled it up, hence…” I held up my bandaged left hand.
“Guess I won’t be playing the piano for a while. Damn hunters.” I drained the
glass in one long swallow, and nearly choked on the lump in my throat.

Randall rubbed his
mouth, his face pinched with thought. When I finished my drink, he asked, “Are
you sure it’s the treasure hunters that left the hole?”

I heaved a deep
sigh. “Of
course
it’s the treasure hunters. Who else goes about leaving
open holes for people to fall into?”

Despite my best
efforts, my voice cracked on the last two words. I buried my head in my hands,
trying to calm the whirling pattern of torturous thought.

Let it go, let it
go, let it go, Maddie...

I thought I might
as well try to stop Niagara from going over the falls.

“They keep coming
back,” I fumed. As I continued, my pitch grew, even if my volume stayed the
same. “They keep coming back and they just. Keep.
Digging
. It’s like a
game, where they dig the holes and I have to find them before someone else
falls in them. And I can’t run fast enough. I can’t find them all. I planted a
phony letter, pound my feet off in the morning, and ruin my hands filling the
holes, and I still can’t keep up. There’s always more piles, more digging – if
this is a game,
I’m
losing it. And if I lose this, I
lose
everything
.
Damn
them!”

I brought my fist
down hard on the counter, taking perverse delight in the pain that radiated up
in a spider webbing of nerves from the impact point. 

Randall gazed at
me with a new understanding.

“That’s why you run
in the mornings?” he asked softly. “Because you’re looking for the holes?”

I stared at him,
disappointment almost supplanting my fury.
Of all the people in my life, why
is it that you are the first person to put that together?

Aunt Susanna, for
all her fretting, only ever questioned why I would run in extreme weather.
Lindsay assumed I was doing it for my health and figure. And Joe didn’t know
about my morning activities.

I answered more
abruptly than I meant to.

“Yeah,” I said,
and shoved the juice container back into the refrigerator. “Not that it helps
much. I can only run about a third of the trails in the morning. This hole
could have been there as long as two days, I don’t know. These amateurs
treasure hunters don’t exactly keep regular business hours. I’m just lucky one
of the girls didn’t ride into their latest excavation like Lindsay did...”

The idea was like
a physical blow and with it came anger. I slammed the fridge door, then I sank
into the stool and buried my face in my hands to ward off the sudden images -
memories that came hard and fast, falling figures and crushing accidents, and
helplessness joined the anger in twisting my gut.

I wanted to call
Joe. I wanted to ask him to not get on that plane, but to come back to help me
fight this. But as much as I wanted to call him, I wouldn’t. This wasn’t Joe’s
fight. It was mine and mine alone. And I’d never felt more alone in my life.

“
Damn
them!”
I whispered into my hands. “
Damn
them all!”

The silence
stretched out. It was so quiet that I could almost hear the beating of
Randall’s heart. I kept my hands pressed tight against my eyes, as though by
doing so I’d keep the craziness at bay.

I heard Randall
shift, and I wished that he’d leave the room. But he didn’t leave. Instead, he
moved closer, taking the seat beside me.

I did
not
want
to deal with him at that moment. I sat up abruptly, preparing to get up and
leave; but as though he knew, he stopped me.

“Madeleine,” was
all he said.

Live with a man for
four weeks and you can’t help learning something about him. In Randall’s case,
I’d learned to tell a lot from what name he called me. “Warwick” meant that he
was thinking of me as a colleague and was probably going to tell me something
in an impartial and informative matter and, perhaps, be open to my commentary.
“Maddie” meant he was feeling friendly, or that Aunt Susanna was present and he
thought he ought to be on his best behavior. “My dear Madeleine” preceded an
admonishment of some sort, usually delivered in the tone of a father exhausted
from the intellectual struggle with his two-year-old.

But he’d never
called me just plain “Madeleine”. For that matter, hardly anyone did, and none
with a tone infused with such...

I didn’t dare
decide what his tone was infused with, but I looked at him. My eyes were
bleary, but not too much to see the concern lines etched on his face.

“Don’t give up
now, Madeleine,” he said. He took my hand, which had fallen to the counter, and
squeezed it gently, his thumb rubbing circles on the back of it. “You’re
stronger than that. We just need a little more time. Don’t let them beat you.
Not these people. Not yet. Not when it’s just starting to look like we’re on
the right track.”

“Right track?” I
asked. My voice was thick and clumsy, affected by my emotional outburst. I was
too worn to even remove my hand from his grasp. “How do you figure that?”

There was no
denying the glitter in his dark eyes. “Because their pattern has changed.
They’re doubling their efforts, as though they knew I was here. I don’t think
these are just amateurs, Madeleine - although they aren’t professional
archeologists, if their holes are anything to go by. But they are serious and
they are persistent, which means this is more than just a nightly recreation.
They’re
working
at this. Think about it: they aren’t digging in the
fields anymore. They’re digging in the trails. Why?”

I groaned and
shrank away, taking my hand back to cover my face.

The trails…

The whirling
slowed and faded as the words came into sharp focus. Why the trails when all of
the clues pointed to the fields? They ought to be churning up the paddocks and
the hay field, places that were not only mentioned in the so-called clue, but
also a good enough distance from the house that, with a little care,
trespassers could avoid detection. Back when all of this started, that’s where
most of the vandalism happened. Uncle Michael’s hole had been a singularity.
Now the reverse was true. It was the path where they were digging, not the
fields.

Why?

I asked it out
loud before lifting my head to look at him again.

“I think that,
like me, they’ve realized that there’s more to that letter than meets the eye,”
he said. “If a century of empty-handed searches of that field isn’t enough to
convince someone that there’s nothing there to find, I don’t know what would.
But there is something on this farm, Maddie.
That’s
what we both know,
these intruders and I – Alexander did leave something behind and someone is
going to find it. If we don’t move fast enough, it’s going to be them.”