Places in the Dark (26 page)

But I knew Henry wouldn’t stop gnawing at it until he got a morsel. “There might be some money that’s unaccounted for,” I told him.

“Since when?”

“During the last six months or so.”

“The last six months?”

“Yes.”

I could see his mind working meticulously, sorting through the vague references I’d given him, offering, then dismissing, various possibilities.

“At the moment, I can’t even be sure that a single dime is missing, Henry,” I said quickly, like a man covering his footprints on the forest floor.

Henry looked aghast. “This is hard to believe, Cal.”

In order to protect Dora, I shifted the blame to my brother.

“I know it is, but I wouldn’t get too upset about it. Billy has been a little off base lately. In his thinking, I mean. Since the accident.”

Henry seemed barely able to get his breath, a pallor descending upon him, his breathing suddenly more labored. “But surely William doesn’t think that anyone here at the
Sentinel
would—”

“No, of course not,” I assured him. “Not at all.”

Despite my effort, I saw the dreadful thought surface.

“Six months,” Henry said thoughtfully. “Wasn’t that about the time when Dora—” He stopped, stared at me wonderingly. “Could it be Dora?” he asked.

I leaped to stamp out any such speculation. “Look, Henry, this is probably all just a big mistake. I want you to promise me that you’ll keep it to yourself until I’ve straightened it out.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “Dora. My God.”

“She’s not a thief, Henry,” I said sharply. “She absolutely is not. And I don’t want the question raised. Do you understand me? I don’t even want the question raised.”

He nodded reluctantly. “All right, Cal,” he said.

“This stays between us. Everything. Until I’ve had time to sort it out.”

Henry stepped back, a small, docile animal edging away from a larger, far more threatening one. “Whatever you say, Cal.”

“I’ll talk to you after I’ve had a chance to go over the books,” I told him.

“Of course,” Henry said. “However you want to do it.”

“Believe me, Henry, there’s nothing to any of this. Nothing at all. The whole thing is just a mistake. It’ll all go away.”

“I’m sure it will,” Henry said, all but trembling before me now.

But it didn’t go away. And for the rest of the day, each time I tried to push it from my brain, my brother’s face would swim into my mind, utterly aggrieved that he’d stumbled upon something dark and terrible in Dora, a dishonesty he had not guessed, all her innocence nothing more than a clever ruse.

That would have been bad enough. But I knew that Billy had glimpsed something even darker than Dora’s fraud. Over and over, I heard him say,
Another man
, then saw the question in his eyes:
Is it you?
Far more than the missing money, or even the possibility that Dora, for reasons still unfathomable to me, might have embezzled it, his question circled incessantly in my mind. For although my brother might be wrong about the books, he had incontestably been right about me.

Is it you?

It had not been a question at all. It had been an indictment, based on evidence that only Billy could have seen, some exchange of word or look between Dora and myself. He had sensed betrayal, I felt sure, sensed that something more than money had been stolen from him.

Repeatedly, incessantly, I relived the kiss Dora and I had shared by the bay, the look in her eyes as I’d drawn
her into my arms. My brother could not have seen any of this, nor heard a single word of what had been said beforehand. And yet I could not escape a grim conclusion:
He knows.

And so, almost as a way of distracting myself from the disturbing force I felt gathering within and around me, I returned to the
Sentinel
late that night, when I knew no one would be there.

Henry had returned the ledgers to their place on the shelf, and one by one, seated at Billy’s desk, my face no doubt pale and ghostly in the yellow light of the lamp, I read through the endless lines of figures, the evidence building one insignificant discrepancy at a time, a few dollars removed from petty cash, or withdrawn to pay a nonexistent bill, and always fraudulently recorded in the distinctly fractured script that gave no room for doubt that the recording hand was Dora’s.

It was past midnight when I finished, a faint light rising at the horizon beyond the windows. I returned the books to their place atop the wooden filing cabinet, then strode out into the early morning mist and made my way to the seawall, where, for a long time, I peered toward MacAndrews Island, trying to reason it all out, find some clue as to why she’d done it.

I knew that it had been my brother’s boyish trust that had made this possible, along with the fact he was unlikely ever to go over the accounting books with sufficient thoroughness to notice anything amiss. Dora would have known that about him, of course, and so she could have felt quite certain that she’d never be found out. Had a small gear not broken on an old machine, sent him off to Portland, where he’d swerved into a ditch and dislodged something in his mind, I had no doubt that he would never have come across the slightest hint of missing funds.

But what struck me most about the discovery, during that long night, was how little I cared that Dora was a thief. I even tried to convince myself that her reasons were pure. I imagined her handing the money over, bill by crisp new bill, to the men who lived in the hobo village outside of town, an angel of mercy, they would call her, sent to help them get back on their feet. It was pure fantasy, of course, but I was now captured in a world of fantasy, feeling nothing so powerfully as the memory of her lips on mine, the searing pleasure of her body in my arms. I resolved that I would do whatever I had to do in order to feel that happiness again. I gazed across the bay, dead-eyed and silent, at the great hump of MacAndrews Island, imagined Dora standing atop its black cliffs, and felt my love for her crash over me in a boiling wave, heard its steamy whisper pronounce a single word,
Anything.

She opened the door tentatively. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I had to.”

“It’s past midnight. I’m not dressed.”

“I have to talk to you, Dora.”

“Just a minute.”

The door closed. I lingered on the porch, motionless in the utter blackness, until it swung open.

“All right,” she told me.

She stepped back, watched me come into the room, her gaze following me as I strode to the small fireplace, then turned to face her.

She was wearing a long, dark robe, her feet barely visible below its hem. Her hair, long and in disarray, shimmered in the firelight, filaments of gold.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” I said. “On the beach. The way we …” I felt everything within me grow
fierce and bold, as if suddenly enamored by a single, stirring truth. “I can’t let you go, Dora.”

She shook her head gently. “Cal, please, there’s something you don’t know.”

I saw her script in the ledger books. “It doesn’t matter, Dora.” I swept forward, drew her into my arms, felt her body grow taut. “I don’t care what you’ve done. Nothing matters to me but you.”

She eased herself out of my embrace. “I can’t, Cal.”

“Why not?”

She seemed unable to answer, so I provided an answer of my own.

“I know you don’t want to hurt Billy,” I said.

She looked at me regretfully. “I already have.”

“You can’t help who you fall in love with.”

She said nothing, and so I made the only demand that mattered to me. “Tell me you love me.”

She touched my face. “I do.”

“Then?”

She drew her hand away. “I can’t, Cal.”

“You can do whatever you want.”

“No,” Dora said.

“I won’t let him stand in the way.”

Her eyes flared, and I saw a terrible resolve rise in her. She walked to the fireplace and stood beside it, rigid now, suddenly more stone than flesh. “You’d better go, Cal.”

“I won’t give you up. I’ll do anything, but I won’t give you up.”

“You don’t care who you hurt?”

“No.”

I moved toward her again, but she stepped aside and quickly opened the door.

“Please go,” she said.

“I’ll do anything,” I repeated as I stepped outside. “Remember that.”

“Good-bye, Cal,” she said in a tone that sounded so final, I whirled around, determined to appeal it.

But the door was already closed.

A
nd you never saw Dora again?

It was Hap Ferguson’s voice, sounding urgently in my mind as I drove the final miles toward Tom Shay’s cabin. He’d called me in the day following my brother’s funeral. Later, as we’d talked in his office, he’d sometimes scribbled notes into the same small pad in which he’d once written Dora’s name.

And you never saw Dora again?

No, never again.

And during that last meeting, Miss March didn’t say anything about leaving Port Alma?

No.

You only talked about business? Yes.

The fact that she might need to take over for William?

That’s all we talked about.

Where did you go after you left her house?

I walked home.

I heard my footsteps in the autumn leaves, moving along the walkway, headed home.

Straight home?

Yes.

Straight home until I noticed the light burning in my mother’s room.

So you didn’t see William at all that night?

No.

The door to Emma’s room was closed, as I saw when I stepped into the shadowy foyer, but Billy had left the door of our mother’s room ajar. I could see them in the light, my mother in her bed, Billy in a chair beside it. He was hunched forward, his hair wild and unruly, his face buried in his hands. My mother watched him silently, her expression so grave that I knew he’d told her everything, poured out all his love for Dora, what he knew of her and didn’t know, his brightest hope, his darkest dread, then sunk his face in his hands, and waited for The Great Example to point the way.

For a time, she remained silent, her eyes very still, turning the question over in her mind, trying to decide what her son should do, follow his heart no matter how perilous and uncertain the route, or choose the unimpassioned path, leave his one true love behind. Then, with great effort she lifted her hand, drew the gold band her own mother had given her years before from her finger, and gave it to my brother, her head high, determined, as certain as she had ever been that the heart knew best.

“For Dora,” she said.

Billy leaned forward, kissed her cheek, and took the ring from her hand. He grasped the cane he’d propped against her bed and brought himself to his feet, the issue now settled for all time.

By the time he turned back toward the door, I was gone.

What did you do after you got home?

Nothing.

And you stayed there the rest of the night?

Yes.

And the next morning?

I went to see my brother.

All that night and the following morning, I’d relived the scene I’d witnessed in my mother’s chamber the evening before. I had no doubt that Billy would do exactly as she advised. He would go with his heart, rely upon his deepest gift, the trust he had in life, the deep and all-surpassing nature of his love. I also knew that once he’d confronted Dora, she would have no choice but to leave Port Alma. Nothing I might say or do would be able to dissuade her after that. And so my only question as I drove toward my brother’s house that morning was what I could do to stop him, and in doing that, buy the time I needed to convince Dora that we could be together, even if we had to leave Port Alma. I could hear myself urging her to do just that, assuring her that in time Billy would get over it, forgive us both, welcome us back into his life again, my voice no longer a lawyer’s voice as I said these things, no longer calm, reasoned, but charged with an ardent passion.

Were you going to William’s for any particular reason?

No.

Even as I recalled the lies I’d told Hap that day, all I’d concealed from him, I still couldn’t fathom how it had all happened, the whole tortured story that had led me to the mountain road I now drove down, my life reduced to a single purpose:
Find her.

I knew I was closing in upon her, the road narrowing steadily, drawing toward the dead end Hedda Locke
had described, Tom Shay’s mountain refuge only a few short miles away. But with each mile, I could feel an inescapable desperation building in me, a ravenous hunger to recall everything that had happened, so that I could fit it neatly into whatever Dora might later tell me, and thus bring it into conformity with my own sense of things, reach, at last, the center of the web I dangled in.

So you just decided to drop by William’s house?

Yes.

And that was on Saturday?

Yes.

The day he died.

Yes.

Did you mention to William that you’d seen Dora the night before?

Hap’s face appeared again, his eyes closing slowly as he leaned back in his chair, tugged gently at his right ear.

No.

Why not?

He was in a strange mood. I didn’t want to disturb him.

What sort of mood?

He seemed … elated.

Elated? Why?

Because he was himself again, I suppose.

How did he look?

Like our mother. That same look in his face.

What do you mean?

Completely self-assured.

A door opened, just as it had that afternoon, and I saw Billy sitting upright beside the fire, his gaze no longer puzzled. All doubt and all confusion had fled. No man before or since ever looked more reborn.

“I’m glad you came by, Cal,” he said, his voice quite calm. “I wanted to tell you that I made a mistake.”

“Mistake?”