“Sometimes.”
“Dammit, I hate this.”
“It was Robbie’s father Jeff,” I said. “He’s the one who approached you. On Robbie’s behalf.”
She pushed her seat into recline and wrapped the kimono around her knees.
“All my life people have been trying to tell me I can’t do things I think I’m able to do,” she said.
“Is that what he did?”
“In effect. Someone on the architectural review board told him about my master development plan. He said it was too big a project for a person of my experience, meaning none, to handle on my own. I needed a construction manager and another crew. Robbie’s.”
“Okay. So you told him to get lost. Like you told Robbie at the restaurant.”
She looked like she wanted to be absorbed into her recliner, but answered me anyway.
“This is the part I knew you wouldn’t understand. I actually told him I’d think about it. I was so tired. We were just finishing up the north house. I don’t know what felt worse, my nerves or my back. I was having self- doubt, okay? I’m making him sound worse than he was. He was a pretty slick old guy. Fatherly,” she added, as her voice trailed away.
“Nothing would have come of it,” she said, her voice coming back. “Even if I thought I needed help, I wouldn’t have chosen Jeff Milhouser. And certainly not Robbie. I know I should have told you, but I was ashamed of the thoughts going through my head. And then after the restaurant thing I was embarrassed that I hadn’t said anything.”
“I’d’ve helped you if you’d asked,” I said.
“It happened during one of those funny times when neither of us was trying very hard to see the other.”
“I still would’ve helped.”
She looked up into the night sky.
“I know. I wanted you to think I was strong enough to do this on my own.”
“You are. Strong enough and doing it on your own.”
I liked the vantage point on the lagoon from Amanda’s terrace. In front of the houses on the other side of the channel you could see the outlines of Boston Whalers and shoal-draft sailboats tethered to moorings throughout the little body of water. It was hard to imagine that over a hundred years ago it was crammed with steamboats and fast-passage schooners trading with the bustling industrial plant.
“What about the other time?” I asked her.
“Sorry?”
“The other time Jeff Milhouser came to see you. There has to be another time.”
“What difference does it make how many times he came to see me?”
“Every difference in the world,” I said.
“I don’t know why you’re so interested in this.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re not letting this go are you?” she said.
“What did he say to you?”
She sank even further into her chair, collapsing into herself.
“It was the day after the house fire. I was staring at the ruins and suddenly there he was, like he appeared out of thin air, like Beelzebub or something. He said this was the kind of thing that happened when you lacked professional construction management. He said I’d been rude to Robbie, but he was still willing to help. That he was only trying to protect me. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the brave thing and ran away. Just like I did when I ran from Southampton the first time. And then when I ran back again. I ran in fear. Then Robbie’s killed, and I think, oh God. And then they arrest you. What am I to do? Tell everything that happened and hand them a motive? I hid in the City, but after a while I thought, Burton will never let this get too far. They couldn’t possibly win a case against an innocent man. And I wanted to come back. I wanted to see you. I wanted everything back to the way it was before. But that old bastard was right. It just keeps getting worse.”
“I can see why you wouldn’t tell the cops, but how come you didn’t tell me?” I asked.
She turned her face away from me as she talked, so it was hard to hear what she was saying.
“When he told me he wanted to protect me I told him I had all the protection I needed. And then he said, ‘Yeah, but who’ll protect the protector?’ It took me a second to figure out what he meant. Then it all became clear.”
“Misplaced concern,” I told her. “I’m still here.”
“That night of the fire, I was so angry, confused and afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I was on the verge of driving back to Oak Point to beg forgiveness when Milhouser showed up with his offers and not-so-hidden threats. I was afraid everything was about to turn ugly. I didn’t know what he could do to you. I didn’t know what you would do if threatened. I thought if I just left for a while so we couldn’t talk about it all the trouble would just blow away.”
“Never does.”
“I know. I was just afraid. Didn’t you tell me fear makes you stupid?”
“Yeah. Fear and anger. And I think there’s a third thing.”
“Scotch?” she asked, holding up the bottle. I took it from her and poured another one.
“Okay,” I said, “a fourth. You already brought it up.”
“Love?”
“Worse than all that other stuff combined, because it’s with you twenty-four hours a day. Makes you deaf, dumb and blind.”
“You’re just discovering this?” she asked.
“Yeah. I should alert the world.”
“When did this revelation come to you?”
“It crept up on me. I’ve been thinking a lot about not thinking clearly. You get out of practice when you’re working with your hands all day. Not that it’s stupid work, but there’s a routine to it that doesn’t stimulate the brain cells the same way. We were both up to our ass in construction for months on end, as you recall.”
“Hope to be again.”
“That’s the other thing that crept up on me. Letting work interfere with living some sort of normal life. I thought I’d done that once and learned my lesson. But there we were, passing each other in the driveway, not talking for days at a time. And when we did it was all shop talk.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said.
“One of those conversations sticks in my head. It was out in the driveway, as usual. It wasn’t that long ago. You were really busting ass getting that north property finished. Things had gotten a little out of sequence, you remember? Like you had the kitchen cabinets already delivered but there was a piece of wall between the kitchen and garage that hadn’t been closed in yet, and you couldn’t get the insulation sub back on the job. As it turned out, I had a couple rolls of insulation left over from my addition stashed in the shed. I went and got it for you. I said I’d put it in for you to keep things moving, but you never wanted me to do that kind of thing. You said, ‘Come on, Sam. Even I can install insulation.’ So I said, ‘Okay, let me give you the necessary equipment,’ and I went back to the shed and got my insulation installation kit. It was a little white cardboard box. Everything you need for the job. Staples, a little cat’s paw and needle-nose pliers to pull out misplaced staples. A special tape that’ll adhere to the vapor barrier in case it rips. And of course, the main attraction, my hammer stapler with the orange handle. We stuffed the rolls of insulation in the trunk of your car and I dropped the box in the back seat. And that’s the last I saw of the hammer stapler until that day at Southampton Town police headquarters when Sullivan held it up in a plastic evidence bag.”
There’s no such thing as utter silence. I learned that years ago sitting at night in my Adirondacks at the edge of the breakwater. The water itself always made little lapping, gurgling noises. And there were always bugs in the wetlands to the west and planes flying in and out of the City, gaining and losing altitude. Motorcycles or cars with bad tailpipes out on Noyac Road.
“When we were talking about fear and anger, we forgot to mention hate,” she said finally. “Robbie Milhouser was all three of those to me. You can’t imagine.”
“I can get a start. I know something happened in high school.”
Her hand was shaking, but she managed to get the wine glass up to her lips.
