“Doctors always want to operate. That doesn’t mean they’re right. It’s simply all they know. I know better. I know that Norma loved me. I know that she died of a broken heart. I will go to my own grave knowing that.”
Outside, the chain saw ceased. Male voices hollered to each other briefly, then it fell silent in the dead woman’s room. Eerily so.
“Teddy, may I ask you something that’s none of my business?”
He looked up at her curiously. “What is it?”
“If you were so in love with Norma, then why did you let Les move in on her after Paul died? Why didn’t you marry her yourself?”
“That’s a fair question,” he admitted. “The simple answer is that she’d already gotten married again-to Astrid’s Castle. And I could never fit in up here. I’m a no-good bum of a piano player. I drink too much, gamble away every penny I make. I could never be an innkeeper, coping day and night with other people’s problems, always keeping a smile on my face. No, Les was the right man for her. And they were right for each other, or at least they were for a time. He’s just a guy who can’t stay married to the same woman for long. Norma was his third wife.”
“Does he have children?”
“I believe so, with his second wife. She lives outside of the city somewhere. Nyack, maybe.” Teddy stared down at the love of his life, his eyes filling with tears. “But the honest answer to your question is that you’re absolutely right-I should have made my move after Paul passed. Grabbed on to this woman and never let her go. But I couldn’t. I… I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what, Teddy?”
“That it would turn out badly. That I couldn’t cut it. I lacked the courage, Des. And that’s my single greatest regret. Because we all die in the end. Everybody dies. It’s the one sure bet we’ve got going. And if you haven’t gone after what you want, who you want, if you haven’t really, really tried…” Teddy trailed off, his chest rising and falling. “Then you’ve never really lived at all.”
CHAPTER 7
“Okay, that makes it official,” Spence Sibley announced, shoving his cell phone back in the pocket of his persimmon-colored Patagonia ski jacket. “This weekend’s gala tribute is now one hundred percent toast. They were fine with the highways and airports being shut down, no heat, no hot water. That stuff never fazes studio people. They just figure they can throw enough money at a problem and it’s solved. But when I told them that there’d been a death in Ada’s family, that was pretty much a deal breaker.”
“Awfully darned inconvenient for the family, too,” Mitch said, breath snorting out of his nostrils as he worked away at a sycamore branch with the heavy-duty pruning saw.
Both of the majestic old sycamores had pitched right over onto their sides, giant root balls and all, leaving craters in the ground big enough to lose a pair of United Parcel Service vans in. Their massive trunks were doing a handsome job of blocking the only way in or out of the castle. A nearby sugar maple had crashed down onto the roof of Choo-Choo Cholly’s depot, crunching its snow-capped roof as if it were made of papier-mache and shaving cream. Farther down the drive, dozens of smaller trees had come down, taking the power lines with them. Once Connecticut Light and Power gave the go-ahead, Jase felt he could horse many of these trees off to the side with the plow blade on his big Dodge Ram 4?4. For now, the three lumberjacks were not going anywhere near them.
“Mitch, I don’t mean to sound like an insensitive prick,” Spence said, his voice raised over the varoom of Jase’s chain saw. “It’s just that I’ve been working eighteen hours a day on this for weeks and weeks-twisting people’s arms, pleading with them. And now they’re not coming. Not Oliver, not Quentin, not anybody.”
“Will Panorama reschedule?” Mitch asked as he sawed, sawed, sawed. The blade had wicked jagged teeth that cut right through the pale speckled bark and deep into the wood.
“Oh, who gives a damn,” Spence replied, snapping off a two-inch-thick, ten-foot-long branch with Jase’s ratcheted tree loppers. They had razor-sharp jaws, and he was working them with intense fury. The young, clean- featured marketing executive was no more Mr. Upbeat Guy. He was Mr. Pissed-off Guy. “It’s not like I’ll be around to see it. I’ll be frozen solid by the time breakfast is served. They’ll find my cold stiff body right here, stuck to the pavement.”
Spence wasn’t exaggerating by much. It was absolutely frigid out there. The arctic wind gusts cut through every layer of clothing Mitch had on. He’d wrapped his scarf around his head and face so that only his eyes and nostrils were exposed to the elements, and they stung like crazy. His eyes wouldn’t stop tearing up. His nose kept running-and then freezing. Under his earflaps, his ears ached. His arm and shoulder muscles cried out in pain. His feet were numb. And the solid ice underfoot was incredibly slippery, even though Jase had laid down a heavy coat of sand and rock salt.
They’d quickly developed a routine. Mitch and Spence stripped away as many small limbs as they could with the pruning saw and loppers while Jase tackled the bigger limbs with his chain saw. Which suited Mitch just fine. He felt roughly the same way around chain saws as he did around loaded handguns. Much of this had to do with the fact that he sat through The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seven times in one weekend back when he was in the fifth grade.
Jase had thrown himself into the job with a manic form of abandon. He was obviously very upset about Norma’s death, yet when Mitch tried to engage him in conversation about it, Jase had purposely moved away from him, not wishing to share his heartfelt grief. Hard work was Jase’s way of dealing. He seemed tireless. Also impervious to the bitter cold. He did have on a pair of buckskin work gloves, but no coat. Merely that same heavy wool shirt he’d worn last night.
Mitch’s gloves were suitable for outdoor work. Not so Spence’s kid-leather dress gloves. Before they’d gotten started, Jase had led them across the courtyard to his cottage, where he’d fetched Spence a pair of work gloves. It was a low-ceilinged little cottage, smelling of mold and the kerosene space heaters that Jase and Jory had used in the night. Spence had seemed fascinated by the place. His eyes flicked eagerly around the cramped, dingy parlor as if he were taking in the sights of a preserved dwelling at Colonial Williamsburg.
“Well, at least you got your promotion,” Mitch reminded him as he kept on sawing, the icy air knifing in and out of his lungs.
“You’re right. I got my damned promotion.”
“You don’t sound so happy about it.”
“Right again.”
Jase halted his chain-sawing and barked out, “Okay, hold up a sec!” He jumped in his truck and used his plow blade to shove aside the heavy sycamore logs they’d produced. Then he backed up and got out, staring down the frozen, tree-strewn drive with an alarmed expression on his bearded face. “Man, it’ll take the crews forever to get here. And the more it blows, the slower it goes.”
The wind did seem to be picking up new strength, Mitch observed. It was positively roaring its way through the trees that were still standing, making them creak and groan most ominously under the weight of their ice coatings.
“We’ll be okay, Jase,” Mitch said confidently, even though he himself was quite unnerved to be standing out there under so many trees. He also couldn’t help noticing that the bright blue sky was starting to give way to dark storm clouds.
“I could hike my way down to the front gate,” Jase volunteered. “It’s only, like, three miles. I could make it.”
“And do what?” Spence asked him. “Where the hell would you go?
“He’s right, Jase,” Mitch agreed. “It’s another eight miles to town from there, and no one’s out on the road. Besides, it’s going to start snowing again.”
“I just, Norma wouldn’t…” Jase broke off, fumbling helplessly for the words. “Norma wouldn’t like this. How everything looks, I mean.”
The young caretaker seemed genuinely distraught. Mostly, it was his grief over Norma, Mitch felt. Partly, it was that Astrid’s Castle was his baby. Seeing all of this damage to its grounds was upsetting to him. Mitch
