Stay (29 page)
Authors: Nicola Griffith
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Hard-Boiled, #Women Sleuths, #Lesbian
Tips of manicured but winter-pale Bermuda grass glittered in the frost under a hard blue sky and stinging lemon sun. Everyone wore sunglasses. Atlanta. I turned right off McClendon, and right again, and parked on the street. For some reason I was surprised to find the maple on my front lawn bare of leaves. I was even more surprised by the rose bushes, which had not been here in May, when I left. I got out of the truck and stretched.
Someone had cut the grass and cleared the leaves. I walked down the driveway, through the double gate, and into the back.
No flowers now, in November, but the mystery gardener had been at work here, too: shrubs trimmed, grass neat, flower beds turned. I peered through the garage window. The Saab was still there.
My key still fit the front door. I closed it behind me. The soaring living room felt enormous after the cabin. The floors gleamed. I sniffed: Murphy’s wood soap, and recently split kindling. Someone had laid the fireplace. In the middle of the dining room table stood a vase of freshly cut carnations. And a note, on yellow, lined paper.
Somebody called Beatriz has been taking care of the garden since you’ve been gone. She says you know who she is. Annie came into the coffeehouse the other day and said if you were coming back she wanted the key to the house because she wanted it to be nice when you got back
—
but she said she’d call you. I told her to leave the key in the mailbox. Don’t blame me if she didn’t! Welcome home
.
Dornan
Still holding the note, I walked back outside to the mailbox. The brass key was there. No mail. No doubt yet another uninvited guest had brought that in and put it somewhere.
A dinged-up old VW Rabbit pulled up outside the house opposite and a man with a scraggly goatee and bright yellow fleece jacket got out and climbed the steps. No sudden barking. He let himself in. New neighbor. Deirdre and her two massive dogs must have moved. At least he didn’t seem interested in my business. I put the key and the note in my pocket and went back in.
The phone machine blinked green. Next to it lay a sheaf of carefully transcribed messages, all in Dornan's hand. I read the top one, dated five months ago, at the end of May.
Atlanta police: routine call (but isn't that what they always say?) about some arson murder last week
. I flipped forward a few pages—one from Philippe at the Spanish consulate, wanting me to take on another body-guarding job—and a few more, then back two. June 14th.
Else Torvingen (your mum?), wanting to know if your friend was all right
. Another caught my eye.
Senor SomebodyorOther (heavy accent) saying something about how you owe Them (definitely capital T) a Favor (ditto) and they’re going to Collect. Some job or other they want you to do. You’re supposed to call
. A Tijuana number. I went through the rest, page by page, dozens of them, until I came across another message from my mother, this one dated on my birthday.
Else Torvingen again, sounding frosty. Something along the lines of “Hey, you didn’t call me back (you ungrateful cow), maybe you’ve gone off somewhere again without telling me, but Happy Birthday anyway
.” I glanced absently at the rest.
Sometimes it takes two.
One new message. I pressed PLAY.
“Aud, it’s Annie. I have been so
worried
about you. Why didn’t you tell me where you’d gone? I finally managed to track down that nice young man who runs the coffeehouses and he was kind enough to lend me your key”—not even a Sherman tank would deter Mrs. Miclasz when she had decided on something—“so that I could make the house a bit more welcoming for you when you got back. There are some bits and bobs of food in the fridge, and I tidied up a little. Aud, don’t disappear again. I know you feel alone, but there are people here who love you. Call me.”
I walked numbly to the fridge: milk, bread, cheese, eggs, apples, pâté. Even beer.
People here who love me. I had helped Beatriz last year, and seen her blossom. I had forgotten she was coming back from Spain to work in a downtown advertising agency. Annie, whose daughter I had killed. People here who love me. Whether I liked it or not.
I wandered into my workroom. The chair I had been working on before Julia’s death gleamed. I pushed it with a fingertip and it rocked back and forth on its runners, wood against wood. In the bedroom there were more flowers, and the bed was freshly made. I stroked the silky antique quilt. I imagined Julia’s mother smoothing it with her hands. Julia had never seen it.
And then I couldn’t avoid it any longer: the laundry room, where I would find my clothes and Julia’s still on the floor where I had dropped them months ago, the day I got back from Norway. The clothes that still smelled of Julia.
I closed the bedroom door, trod through the kitchen, and stopped at the door. I smoothed back my hair, took a deep breath, and went in.
The clothes were gone.
I tidied up a little
. Freshly laundered sheets…
I ran into the bathroom and yanked open the linen cupboard. No neatly folded clothes. Into the bedroom. Nothing in the closet. I jerked the top drawer of the dresser so hard it flew out, dumping underwear on the carpet. Nothing, nor in the second drawer, or the third. Nothing.
I ran into the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing. Nothing. She was really gone.
And then I laughed, and walked back to the laundry room, and to the dirty linen basket, and lifted the lid. There they were. I reached for the blue shirt but didn’t pull it out immediately, just ran my hand over it, touched the buttons, rubbed the cuff between my thumb and forefinger. Then I lifted it to my face and breathed.
Sunshine and musk and dusty violets, but so faint. I breathed again: her rich skin, and her hair, oh dear god her hair… Tears ran down my face, my neck, dripped on my hands, onto her shirt. All I had left of her. So faint. So very very faint.
The texts at the beginning of each section, while inspired by the
Oxford English Dictionary
and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, are faithful to neither.
I’m grateful to Timmi Duchamp, Steve Swartz, Holly Wade Matter, Mark Tiedemann, Vonda Mclntyre, Ed Hall, and—particularly—Cindy Ward for their many useful comments; to Marcus Eubanks, M.D., who helped with the medical details; to Carolyn Soloway, immigration attorney, who has now helped me twice—with information for this novel and in real life; to John Swartz, for sending a box of leaflets, directories, and maps; to Brooks Caruthers, for Arkansas details; to my editor Sean McDonald, for prodding me relentlessly in the right direction; to Colleen Lindsay; and to my agents, Shawna McCarthy, Danny Baror, and Jane Bradish-Ellames.