smelled good and people seemed happy. It was a nice interlude from the hovering trouble.
Toward dusk, I turned homeward, making my usual pass by Renee's house, then deciding to treat myself to a fancy dinner. I stopped at a supermarket and bought a good-sized chunk of wild salmon, linguini and Parmesan cheese, sourdough bread, an avocado, and vinaigrette dressing. Then I figured that as long as I was burning up a paycheck I hadn't earned, I might as well also pick up a bottle of Powers, so I swung into an establishment called Wild Bill's, toward the eastern edge of town.
Wild Bill's wasn't a place I frequented; it was newish, a combination liquor store-bar-casino with a faux western decor and a well-groomed clientele. But it was convenient, and I stopped there occasionally when other places were closed or I was short on time.
There were close to twenty vehicles in the parking lot, including several big pickup trucks. If I recognized one of them as being Seth Fraker's, it didn't register consciously.
But as I went into the liquor store, I passed an open doorway to the barroom and glimpsed him at a table in there with a couple of other people.
I would have ignored him and just bought my whiskey, except that he was laughing and I caught the flash of those perfect white teeth.
I walked through the doorway and down to an empty section of the bar, making eye contact with Fraker long enough to see his laugh freeze. Then I turned my back to him and ordered a Maker's Mark, intending to have only the one drink, and leave. All I wanted was to piss on his parade.
But a minute later he came over and leaned against the bar beside me, swilling his own drink a little too close to my face-not exactly belligerent, but letting me know who was top dog. He was unsteady and his breath smelled heavily of gin. No doubt it was Bombay Sapphire.
'Look, I've got nothing against you personally,' he said. 'But I'm sick of this loony tunes bullshit. She better back off, and I strongly advise you not to get in the middle of it.'
'I'm not here on Darcy's account or anybody else's,' I said. 'Believe that or not, I couldn't care less. But as long as I've got the chance, let me ask you-you have any idea how she feels, the way you treated her?'
I assumed he'd get defensive in a nasty way. Instead, he scrunched up his face like a kid about to start blubbering.
'You have any idea how I feel because I can't help being like that? How much I hate myself for it?'
I almost laughed in disbelief. 'You should get an Oscar for keeping your pain so well hidden.'
'You don't know anything about it,' he muttered. 'You're an arrogant prick.'
He raised his drink as if he was going to drain it. Then, without warning, he sloshed it into my face.
My open right hand came across the bar in a sharp hook and slapped the glass out of his grip. It bounced on the floor like a baseball, a hard one-hopper, bursting into a spray of shards.
The other customers in the room went still, leaving only the sound of the video poker machines bleeping and burbling their jingles in the next room.
Fraker stared, stunned, at his empty hand, then looked up warily at me and started edging backwards.
'Yeah, I am an arrogant prick,' I said. 'But I never gave myself the limp-dick excuse that I couldn't help it.'
The bartender, a young woman who clearly wasn't accustomed to this kind of thing, had gone as silent as the customers. I pulled out the change left from the twenty-dollar bill I'd bought my drink with and dropped it on the bar.
'Sorry about that,' I said to her. 'Here's for your trouble.'
I drove home braced for the wail of sirens in my ears and the flash of police lights in my rearview mirrors. They'd have had plenty of excuse to run me in; on top of everything else, I reeked worse of Fraker's gin than he had. But nothing happened, and by the time I got to Canyon Ferry, I couldn't help smiling. I'd broken my resolution about physical confrontations, but in a way I could easily live with. I'd come home without my whiskey, but no amount of booze could touch the way that slap had felt-fast, hard, and right on the money-or the look on his face.
This day was already one I would cherish in memory, and a couple of hours later it got impossibly better.
I was in my cabin, with water starting to heat for the linguini and the salmon marinating in a teriyaki barbecue sauce, ready to grill, when I heard the faint sound of an engine. That was highly unusual. There was almost no traffic up here anyway, let alone on a Sunday evening.
I opened the door and watched the approaching headlights. The vehicle was a small, dark-colored station wagon-just like Renee's forest green Outback.
I strode to my gate, not daring to believe it, and half-terrified that if it was her, that might mean something was wrong. But she got out of the car and stepped into my embrace, seeming weary but fine.
After a minute or so, she said, 'Remember when Gary asked me to think back about when I spent time with my father and Astrid?'
'Yeah?'
'He was right-I started digging around in my head, and found something. Can I stay here a while?'
'As long as you can stand it,' I said. 'Come on, you're just in time for dinner.'
I put my arm around her and walked her to the cabin.
39
I eased myself out of bed next morning, leaving Renee to sleep in after her long drive from Seattle. I quietly stoked the fire, boiled water, and made myself a cup of strong black coffee. Then I wrapped up in a down coat and sat outside on the cabin steps.
The early morning air was still crisp, but the real bite of winter was gone. The patchwork of bare earth and snow spread out before me turned darker every day; the trees were greening, with fattening buds. I was starting to hear songbirds, instead of just the occasional croak of a crow or screech of a magpie. In general, the land and sky felt softer. We'd still get hammered again a couple of times, but it was like a receding tide; each time a wave withdrew, spring had gained more ground.
It seemed that my own world might be changing, too, although I couldn't yet gauge how much.
Renee had taken a leave of absence from her research job. Her employers hadn't been happy about the short notice, but they had agreed, and the door was open for her to return. Whether she'd do so was up in the air, along with more.
She hadn't yet said anything about Ian. I decided I'd let her bring that up when she was ready to. But the engagement ring was gone from her finger, and we both understood that her staying here was, in part, a trial to see how things might work out.
But the main reason that had brought her back here, which she'd mentioned on arriving last night, was harder-edged and more compelling-the memory of an argument she'd overheard between her father and Astrid. It had happened during Renee's last visit with them, only a few months before Astrid's death.
Renee had been aware that the tension between the two was rising, and by that time, the bloom was definitely off the rose. Professor Callister, mild and good-humored by nature, seemed prickly and even angry. Astrid's treatment of him was aloof, disdainful, and sharp. She was gone by herself a lot, sometimes until late at night, and she made no attempt to explain her absences. Infidelity wasn't mentioned outright in their exchanges, but the atmosphere was charged with that possibility.
On the evening of the argument, Renee had been out with friends and got home around eleven. Her father was alone, reading in the living room. He said good night to her with his usual affection, but she sensed that something had happened; he was almost grim, and later she heard him pacing around restlessly and even muttering to himself, a habit he'd never had. That kept her restless, too.
She dozed, but woke up around three in the morning to the strident voice of her father challenging Astrid. He seemed to be confronting her with an object-something that she had hidden and he had found.
'What the hell are you doing with this?' he demanded. He sounded more upset than Renee had ever heard him.
