The Reserve (20 page)

Evelyn Cole was no longer afraid that Vanessa was going to kill her. Not as long as Hubert was present. But the man was inarticulate and not very bright and was obviously smitten with Vanessa and in her thrall. He didn’t know the half of it, anyhow, Evelyn believed—that Vanessa’s rage and insane need to punish her mother had little to do with her fear of being sent to a mental hospital in Zurich or of being cut out of her inheritance from her grandparents and father. No, it was rooted somehow in the
distant past, in the darkness of her early childhood and the sordid things she imagined had occurred there. Most of Evelyn Cole’s own memories of those years were cloudy and indistinct, blighted by a pervasive, unaccountable, nameless shame. But, really, she was sure that nothing terrible had happened in Vanessa’s childhood. Certainly nothing at the hands of her father. There were no naked photographs of Vanessa that she knew of, although she had not gone through her late husband’s files, as Vanessa thought, or his albums. Somehow she had been afraid to examine them.

The guide had made several halfhearted attempts to explain to Evelyn Cole why Vanessa was doing this to her and had asked her to reconsider her decision to send Vanessa to Zurich and agree to turn her daughter’s inheritance over to her and, as he put it, “let bygones be bygones.” And if Evelyn agreed, the man said, he would take her back to the Tamarack Club tomorrow and would even be willing to drive her home to Tuxedo Park in her car. “Miss Cole can stay here at the lake, if she wants, and I’ll come back up on the train,” he said, adding that he’d need a few dollars’ advance for the fare.

Evelyn had agreed at once, but Vanessa read her mind and told the guide that her mother was lying, that as soon as she got back to the city she would take out a fresh set of commitment papers and would send the sheriff here to carry her out of the Reserve in a straitjacket, tossing her in a paddy wagon and driving her to some upstate insane asylum, where she’d be confined with the lunatics for the rest of her life. It would be worse than sending her to the hospital in Zurich, she had said to Hubert. And the man had believed her, and when the three of them had finished eating supper, he had locked Evelyn in the bedroom again. “I’m sorry to have to do this, Mrs. Cole,” he had said to her. “Maybe in the morning you two will see more eye to eye.” Then he had
gone outside and closed and hooked the winter shutters over the bedroom and bathroom windows, plunging both rooms into darkness.

Out on the porch, Jordan Groves said to Vanessa, “Look, I came out here this morning to talk to you. I don’t need ol’ Hubert here to hang around while I’m doing it. I don’t know what you two have going on between you, but I’ve got enough reasons of my own to want to drive the man into the ground with a hammer. So if you value his physical well-bring, you’ll tell him to disappear for a while, until I’m gone from here. Then you can resume whatever it is you two were doing before I interrupted. All right?”

“All right,” she said. “But, believe me, there’s nothing going on between us. Hubert, do you mind?”

He said no, he didn’t mind and got up and left the porch for the deck outside, disappearing in the direction of the outbuildings among the trees in back—the guesthouse, the toolshed, cookshack and woodshed, the outhouse, and the open lean-to where the help slept.

Afraid that her mother, still locked inside the bedroom, might hear the artist’s voice and cry out for help, Vanessa needed to get Jordan Groves away from the main building. “Let’s walk down by the lake,” she suggested, and the two left the porch and made their way across the sloping, rust-colored blanket of pine needles down to the rocky shore. She needed to keep the two men apart, too. Hubert, his resolve somewhat softened by her mother’s pleas last night, was not an altogether reliable ally in this and might take it into his mind to confide in Jordan or ask for his help, and she had no idea whose side Jordan would take in this, once he knew the truth.

He pulled his leather jacket off and spread it across the hull of Hubert’s overturned guide boat, against the dew. They leaned
back on the boat and held the mugs of coffee close to their mouths, warming their faces and hands, and gazed at the rising mist and the smooth, black surface of the lake. A pair of loons cruised low over the lake from north to south and dropped into the water with a quiet splash. Every few seconds the water was puckered by feeding trout and then was still again.

“I keep looking along the shore for Daddy’s ashes,” she said. “Or do you think when they hit the water they just sank?”

“The ash dissolved right away, probably. He’s part of the lake now. It’s what he wanted, right?”

“What about the bigger bits and pieces? There were some. I looked.”

“On the bottom, I expect. Or in the belly of a lake trout. Watch what you catch and eat,” he said.

“Jordan, really!” she said and smiled. “Where’s your airplane? How’d you get out here?” she asked.

“Anchored in a cove up a ways. No sense in advertising its presence.”

“I didn’t hear it come in,” she said and wondered if her mother had.

“I cut the engine back pretty far. Practically glided it in.” He turned to Vanessa then and said, “I know you saw my wife over at Hubert’s place yesterday.”

“Yes. I did.”

“And what did you make of it?”

“Make of it? Why, nothing. I went there to hire Hubert to bring in supplies to Rangeview. I had business with him. I assume she did, too. That’s all. Why, was there more to it than that?”

“A lot more. What’s he doing here now?”

“You’re changing the subject, Jordan. And it’s not really any of your business anyhow,” she said. “But if you must know, he rowed
out with the second load of supplies after dark, so I suggested he sleep on the porch and go back in daylight.”

“Well, that’s not what he told me. Anyhow, what he’s doing out here
is
my business. The man’s been sleeping with my wife. She’s in love with him, she says. So if he’s sleeping with you, too, I’d like to know it. It’s got nothing to do with you. You’re free to sleep with anyone you damn well please.”

“Thank you very much.” She laughed lightly and lay the palm of her hand against his cheek. “No, Jordan dear, I’m not sleeping with Hubert. He’s very pretty, and sexy in a stolid sort of way. But there’s nothing between us. I’m curious, though. What
did
Hubert tell you?”

“About why he’s out here? He said he was helping you with your mother. Didn’t make sense, so I didn’t believe him. I don’t believe you, either. The fact is, I’m reasonably sure my wife’s in love with a man who’s screwing at least one other woman. You. And probably a couple more for good measure. I’m going to see that she knows it, and I’m going to take the bastard down for it.”

“For what?”

“For deceiving her. And me. And deceiving you. Though I don’t expect you’re in love with him, too. Are you?”

Vanessa laughed again. “Oh, if I’m in love with anyone, Jordan Groves, it’s probably you,” she said. Smiling, she put her mug down on the boat and kissed him, sweetly, sincerely, not quite passionately, but capable of becoming passionate in a matter of seconds, he could tell. Reluctantly, he removed her hands from his face and pushed her away, and her expression suddenly darkened, and she said, “Oh, dear.”

He followed her gaze and saw what she saw—Hubert St. Germain trudging slowly toward them, head down, hands at his sides, and a few feet behind him, Evelyn Cole. She walked wood
enly, but with calm determination, her face cold and tightly knotted. And she held a double-barreled shotgun aimed at his back.

“What the hell is
this
?” Jordan said.

“Oh, Christ, she’s got one of Daddy’s guns,” Vanessa whispered.

They drew near, and in a trembling voice Evelyn Cole told Hubert to stop right there. “Mr. Groves, I need you to take me out of here in your airplane,” she said.

Hubert said, “I went to check on her, and she was waiting with the gun. It was in the closet. We forgot.” He looked glum, as required by his lines, but also oddly relieved, and Jordan wondered if this were an event somehow rehearsed and staged for his benefit, some kind of weird, amateurish piece of theater.

“He doesn’t
have
his airplane, Mother! Please, put the gun down. You don’t need the gun!”

“No, I do have it. I have my airplane,” Jordan said. “But somebody tell me what the hell this is all about.”

“They’ve gone crazy, Mr. Groves! Crazy! Both of them. They won’t let me leave. You have to take me out in your airplane! Where is it?”

“He doesn’t have it here, Mother. He came by boat. Hubert brought him in, didn’t you, Hubert?” Vanessa looked at the guide and then at Jordan Groves with pleading eyes,
Lie for me, please. Both of you, goddamnit, lie for me!
Neither man’s eyes answered one way or the other.

Jordan took several steps to his right, separating himself from Vanessa and the others. Evelyn Cole watched him warily, but kept the shotgun trained on Hubert’s back. The end of the barrel wobbled a little, Jordan noticed, as if it had grown heavy to her. He said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but it can’t be worth someone’s getting shot. Whyn’t you let me have that gun, Mrs. Cole? I’ll fly you out, if you’ll give me the gun.” He extended his hands, palms up.

“No, you can’t!” Vanessa cried. “You don’t have your airplane! Don’t believe him, Mother. He’s lying. He came over in Hubert’s boat. See? It’s right here,” Vanessa said and patted the hull of the guide boat.

“Put the gun down, Mrs. Cole. We don’t need anybody getting hurt. We can all discuss whatever’s going on. Whyn’t you give the gun to me?” Jordan said and with both hands extended took a step closer to her.

“I heard the airplane,” Evelyn Cole said. “I was awake, and I heard the airplane. They’ve kept me prisoner, Mr. Groves. My daughter’s lost her mind, and this one, he’s helping her.”

Hubert slowly turned around, saw the over and under barrels of the shotgun a few inches from his chest, and inhaled sharply at the sight. He wasn’t sure the woman had ever fired a gun. Dr. Cole was the hunter. A good shot, too. But he’d never seen the wife with a gun in her hand. He looked along the length of the under barrel and saw that the safety was off and knew that the shotgun was hair triggered and remembered the box of shells stored in the drawer of the gun rack in the doctor’s clothes closet. He concluded that both barrels of the shotgun were loaded. The woman was having trouble holding the gun, he could tell. The barrel was ninety centimeters long and in her weakened condition was too heavy for her. If she doesn’t fire it first, Hubert decided, she will have to lower it. The moment for her to fire the gun has almost passed, he thought.

Mrs. Cole took her eyes off the guide to glance at Jordan Groves’s large open hands, then his eyes. She saw that he was a kind man, a worried man, and that, unlike the guide, he was not caught up in Vanessa’s insanity. “Please, Mr. Groves,” she said to him. “Please help me.”

“Vanessa,” he said. “For God’s sake, let me take her out of here, before something really bad happens.”

“It already has,” she said. Suddenly Hubert grabbed the barrels of the gun and wrenched the weapon to his left, with both hands pushing it away from Jordan and Vanessa so that if it went off it would fire harmlessly into the air. Evelyn Cole tugged fiercely back, surprising Hubert with her strength, causing him to yank hard on the barrels. The woman pulled back, but then lost her grip on the stock, and suddenly the barrels of the gun in Hubert’s hands felt like twinned snakes. He let go of the barrels and the shotgun flipped 180 degrees in the air, end over end. In precise, unforgettable detail Hubert and Jordan and Vanessa saw it happen. They watched in horror as the hair-triggered shotgun fell through the air between them and Vanessa’s mother, and the stock hit the ground first, and the gun fired. Both barrels emptied almost simultaneously into the woman’s chest. The force of it blew her backward the length of her small body and tossed her onto the ground in a crumpled heap, arms and legs akimbo. Her head flopped once, twice, then was still. Blood bubbled from her open mouth onto the hard ground. The dark, fist-size hole in her chest instantly turned scarlet and filled and overflowed. Her blue eyes stayed open, as if in permanent surprise.

No one uttered a word. The morning mist had risen above the warming lake and had dissipated. The sky was cloudless and azure colored, and on the far side of the lake the mountains of the Great Range glowed in bright sunlight. Jordan looked across the glassy water, and each individual tree—one and one and one—leaped from the bright greenery, sharp to the eye, even from this distance. A perfect Adirondack day. The sound of the shotgun blast echoed back once from the high gray cliffs. The two black loons broke free of the water and flew low to the northern end of the lake and disappeared above the trees.

Vanessa said, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Hubert knelt down beside the woman and touched her throat. “Yes.”

“You’re sure?” Jordan said. “She’s really dead?”

“Yes,” Hubert said. “She took both barrels.” He stood up and looked off at the mountains on the far side of the lake.

Vanessa turned and started walking toward the house.

“Where are you going?” Jordan called.

“To get a shovel!”

“What the hell for?”

She stopped and looked back at him, her fists on her hips, and studied him for a second. “To bury her, Jordan,” she said and hurried on.

“To
bury
her! My Christ! Will you tell me what on earth has been going on here?” Jordan said to the guide.

Hubert stood and looked at his hands. His guilty hands. This was an accident that shouldn’t have happened. If he hadn’t tried to take the shotgun away from her, the woman would have had to put it down of her own accord. Or she would have handed it over to the artist. Maybe the artist would have flown her out of here then. And maybe Vanessa Cole would have agreed to do what her mother originally wanted, ship her off to that hospital in Europe. Only first they’d make the mother promise no brain surgery, no lobotomy that can turn you into a vegetable, that would be the deal, and maybe in a few months or a year Vanessa would come out cured of whatever mental sickness she had, and she would return to America, and her mother would have forgiven her by then for all this. For being kidnapped and imprisoned here at the camp by her own daughter. And someday Vanessa Cole would get her inheritance and enjoy the kind of life she was supposed to have.