The Four Corners Of The Sky (7 page)

Georgette’s mother lured “the girls” with dainty pimento cheese sandwiches to listen to her tell them how Jack and Sam’s father, the judge, “lost it all due to alcohol, down to his self-respect and lower than that.” How Grandee, Sam and Jack’s mother, had gone so crazy that the sheriff was forced to subdue her on Main Street in her bare feet, because she was breaking store windows with a hammer and then dancing on the bloody glass.

Over deviled eggs, Kim told them how Jack remained a bad influence on George until Kim straightened him out and married him and gave birth to Georgette.

She told them how Jack was jilted by George’s sister Ruthie and left town.

How Sam started kissing a woman in public and then openly lived with her till the woman ran off.

How the judge drove off River Road at a high curve “on a fateful night” and drowned in his car in the fast Aquene rapids below, his body not recovered for weeks, and how Grandee was unable to grasp the fact that he was dead and kept asking for years where her husband was.

Kim said she knew the whole story: Sam had called the police at midnight to say that the judge was missing. Emerald police had gone looking and found his tire marks in the muddy ruts of River Road, gouged over the side. It took them three weeks to dredge the car from the water below and by then the judge’s body was “no more recognizable than the side of a cow in a meat locker.”

Some people said it was odd that Judge Peregrine had driven off to Raleigh in the worst rainstorm in a decade; they started rumors of suicide but the rumors didn’t go anywhere. Judge Peregrine’s funeral service at St. Mark’s was the biggest that Emerald had enjoyed since the funeral of his grandfather, the Boss.

The funeral was when Annie’s father had robbed his dead father, stolen his sister’s car, and left town for good. “I was the one who saw him go,” Kim boasted. “‘He’s got your car!’ I yelled at Sam. But would she do a thing about it?”

The answer was presumably no.

After the reception, Jack and Sam’s mother retired to her bedroom, locked the door behind her, and stayed there for a year, overcome, the town assumed, by grief. Sam told the cleaning lady, who “did the house” once a week, that she was never to bother Grandee, that Sam would clean her room herself. But the cleaning lady later told Kim that she’d once seen the judge’s widow crouched on her brass bed, eating a live mouse, her lips smeared shining red. Grandee would still be loose in Emerald, a certifiable madwoman, if she hadn’t stabbed Sam with scissors and the sheriff hadn’t talked Sam into signing her mother into a home.

In fact, said Kim, not to mince words, over the centuries the whole Peregrine family had gone bat-shit crazy.

Annie had no reason to doubt the truth of these sad stories; she knew far less about her family than Georgette’s mother did; in fact she knew only what Mrs. Nickerson told her. And, given these sagas of dementia and sudden death, of lost wealth and lost love, of a house filled with such sorrow, she could easily understand why her father had called Pilgrim’s Rest a pit of snakes, a cage of tigers, and had told his young daughter that he’d never go back there; why Aunt Sam—although insisting that her own childhood at Pilgrim’s Rest had been “just fine”—had such sad eyes and why she declined to talk about any family but the one she and Clark and Annie had made for themselves.

R
acing the storm home to Pilgrim’s Rest in her convertible Porsche, Annie outdrove the memories that had unexpectedly jumped out at her because of Miami Detective Daniel Hart’s phone call.

Thunder rolled across the tobacco fields and a fat drop of rain splashed her knuckles as she downshifted to turn onto the gravel road that wound to the top of River Hill. Speeding up the drive, she parked efficiently in the open barn.

Above the porch of Pilgrim’s Rest a banner flapped loudly from the overhang, its letters spelling
Happy Birthday Annie. 26!!!

Aunt Sam, tall and nutmeg-tan, ran onto the porch. The storm blew the door from her hand, slapping it against the house. Sam’s cropped hair was prematurely white now, but she still played tennis every day and she still looked trim in her shorts and purple T-shirt with the logo of her movie rental store Now Voyager[__] across it. She was waving a FedEx envelope. Annie had the irrational feeling that her aunt was gesturing “Back up,” as if she were trying to warn her to turn around.

Clark’s Volvo drove slowly into view behind her. He backed into the barn beside the Porsche and emerged carrying the two large plant cones. “You win,” he called. “You beat me.”

Malpy ran into the yard from the side of the house and raced in circles around Annie. Wind blew back the Maltese’s white fur from his face.

Sam, running toward them, stopped suddenly. Then she shouted, “Phone,” turned around, and hurried back inside the house.

“Gonna let loose!” Clark yelled. As if to prove his point, rain poured suddenly down; a twisting gust yanked his hat off and spun it like a top across the yard. Dropping the cones, the long-legged doctor loped after it. Up on the porch steps, he shook his legs to unstick his rain-soaked khaki trousers. Behind him, his little white dog shook his short wet legs too.

“Hi Malpy.” Annie kissed the Maltese. “Teddy still bossing you around?”

Clark said, “Bosses everybody.” The Shih Tzu (who’d been chosen for Annie because they were the longest-lived of dogs) was now nearly twenty, blind, arthritic, self-important as ever; these days, Clark said, she never left the velvet poof in her pagoda except to reassert her supremacy over Malpy.

Annie stood with her uncle on the porch, looking out at the rain. On the horizon a black mass of clouds tinged with an eerie green twisted and swirled off to the east, like an old satin cloak dragged across the sky.

Clark rubbed water off his sandy hair. “Actually I got here only two minutes after you did. Just goes to show.”

“I had to pull off the road for a phone call. A weird cop from Miami, looking for Dad. I told him I had no idea.”

Clark nodded thoughtfully. “Why’d he call you?”

She shrugged. “Exactly.”

“You bring your cat?”

She told him that her friend Trevor was taking care of Amy Johnson back in Chesapeake Cove.

“That’s good.” Clark wiped his glasses on his shirt. “I just don’t see why you never ask that fellow down to meet us. Plenty of room at Pilgrim’s Rest.” Trevor, her condominium neighbor, was a single man her age.

“He wouldn’t take the time. Workaholic.”

Clark shrugged excessively and pointed at her.

“Don’t start,” she warned. She pointed at the house next door. “But Georgette would like Trevor.” Annie had been trying to fix up Georgette since high school.

Georgette now lived alone with a Siamese cat named Pitti Sing; her mother Kim had moved recently to a golf community in Southern Pines. Clark shook his head at his neighbor’s house. “You want to talk workaholic? Georgette’s at the hospital fourteen hours a day; at night, she watches television or she comes over here, watches movies with Sam and me. I want her to fall in love.”

Annie touched his face. “You want everybody to fall in love.”

“I tried it myself a couple of times. I enjoyed it.” Clark stepped back as wind blew the rain in on them. “It’s let loose. Told you.” He stretched his hand out into the downpour as if to test it. “My grandma used to say they would get rain so big one drop could drown a cat. So when I was little, whenever it rained, I hid our cat in a dresser drawer—”

Annie had heard this story before. “—and your cat had her first litter right on top of your blue crewneck. That’s why you went into pediatrics.”

“It’s sure why I never wore that blue crewneck again. So, go on in and happy birthday.” Gesturing at her Navy uniform, Clark held up the forefinger that meant a pun was coming. “You hear about the red ship that collided with the blue ship and all the sailors were marooned?”

“Top ten worst,” she said. She ranked most of his puns in the “top ten worst.”

He pushed on his glasses, bent to examine the service ribbons on her white jacket. “So, is that for sure, you’re getting divorced next week?”

She shrugged. “The lawyer swears.”

Clark nodded. “Good.”

She nodded back. “Yep.” They’d been able to talk to each other with nods since the day they’d met long ago in the Pilgrim’s Rest barn.

“About love?” he added. “Next time, go for the package. Looks, brains, job. Don’t settle.” He hugged her. “Or on the other hand, settle and be happy.”

“Got it, Clark.” She smiled at him, his favorite smile.

“You’re not planning on taking Brad back, are you? Don’t even think that.”

She raised her eyebrow at her uncle. “Aren’t you always telling me I move too fast?”

“That’s sure what I told you when you married Brad.”

Annie changed the subject. “Want to hear some good news? I can’t wait to tell D. K. He’ll love this.” She said she had been chosen to test pilot a new short-takeoff vertical-landing carrier jet they were testing for Navy purchase. An F-35. The Lightning II.

“Lightning II, that’s great. Sounds easygoing.”

“I think I can get it over 1200 miles per hour. That’ll be a speed record. So it’s July 14, five in the morning. Another pilot will do the same test.”

“How do you feel about this?”

“Don’t mind competing. Don’t like losing. There’re a couple of guys faster than I am. At flight school, Brad could always kick it over that extra point-whatever. But who knows, this could be my time.”

Clark patted her cheek softly. “I’m mystified as to why anybody would
want
to set a speed record at five in the morning; five in the evening either.” He rubbed her back. “But, hey, you like that dark blue world.”

“I do.” She looked at the roiling clouds. “I do like it up there.”

Aunt Sam stepped out to join them on the porch. She stared at her niece. “That was the phone. What’s wrong with you? Were you crying?”

“A little while ago. But I’m fine.” Annie looked carefully at her aunt; the vertical lines between Sam’s eyebrows were frowning more than usual. “What’s wrong with
you?
”

Sam squeezed Clark’s hands. “What’s the matter with Annie, Clark?”

“Nothing. Her divorce isn’t final yet.”

Sam reached out to her niece. “A FedEx just came for you, from Jack.”

Annie stepped away. “From Dad? I just got a weird phone call from Miami about Dad.”

Sam pointed back inside at the hallway. “This FedEx came just a little while ago with some balloons. Was the phone call from Miami a man named Rafael Rook?”

Annie shook her head. “Rafael Rook? No, it was from the Miami police. A Sgt. Daniel Hart. He’s looking for Dad. For ‘fraud.’”

Clark said he wasn’t surprised. “The police were always looking for Jack for fraud. But balloons? That’s a first.”

“Happy Birthday to me,” Annie said flatly. “I’m twenty-six. I haven’t heard a word in a decade. Now it’s a FedEx card and balloons. Sweet.”

“So, who’s Rafael Rook?” Clark asked Sam.

“A good friend of Jack’s. He wanted to talk to Annie.”

The porch door slapped again, loudly, flung against the house by the strong wind. Clark pulled it shut. “Sam and Georgette have been working on your party for a week. But we better cancel. This could be the big one. A real twister.”

“That’s what you always say.” Annie pulled her aunt closer. “Okay, Sam, what’s the problem? Something’s wrong with you, and it’s not my birthday party getting rained out. What’s this about?”

Frowning, Sam put her hands on Annie’s shoulders. “It’s Jack.”

“What’s he done now?”

“He wants you to come to St. Louis right away, Annie. He’s dying.”

T
he storm had darkened the sky and in the hall Annie had to turn on a light. Carefully she read the small grubby wrinkled sheet of writing paper that was all there was in the FedEx envelope. Its letterhead showed a gold sun either rising or setting on a gold horizon line. Below the sun was an address: Golden Days Center for Active Living on Ficus Avenue in Miami, Florida. The penciled handwriting slanting up across the note was unsteady and smeared.

Annie,

Meet me in St. Louis where we stayed before. Fly the
King
. Crucial. Sam says she kept my flight jacket. I need it. Did you hang onto your pink cap? Bring it. I hear you’re brilliant and beautiful. Always were. If something happens to me, remember, Queen, King, Sam. I love you. Come fast.

Dad (Jack Peregrine)

PS Lindbergh

Nothing else was written under PS. Instead, pinned to the paper by the minuscule hook of a fuzzy dry fishing fly was a small key. A key to what, she had no idea, although it looked like a file cabinet or maybe a lawnmower key.

For a long time, Annie stood there in the hall of the house, turning the letter in her hands, caught between rage and distress. A dozen helium
Happy Birthday!
balloons floated on the ceiling.

Wet through, Clark and Sam returned from the yard, where they’d done what they could to protect their gardens from the storm—stake the hollyhocks, secure the cone protectors over the roses, wrap the peonies and shrubs and borders. Malpy shook rain at Teddy, who growled at him.

Sam, running a towel through her short hair, watched Annie.

Her niece held out the FedEx. “And this was it?”

Sam dried her arms. “No…Well, yesterday Jack calls and tells me he’s dying and to give you this FedEx that was coming today…I guess I must have told him you always come home on your birthday.”

“Good God, Sam, how much do you talk to Dad? According to this Sergeant Hart, he had my goddamn new cell-phone number written on the back of a photo.” Annie jerked loose her white Navy shirt.

“Sit down, you’re upset,” Sam told her.

“I sure am.”

Sam looked defensive. “I don’t talk to him much. Not all that much. Lately twice a month, he calls.”

“Twice a month?”