The stranger lost his grip on the gate for a second, but it was all right. Josh had just slid the pin into place. “You can let go now,” he told the man.
The old man did, and then he turned abruptly away. He coughed a couple of times and then pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “She in there now, you think?”
“Oh, sure. She works at night, sleeps days. I think she’s a writer or something. She told me that on the phone first time she called me. ‘Hope you don’t mind me calling so late, but I’m a night person,’ she said. I suspect she doesn’t sleep well at night. Too afraid of the vampires.” He shook his head in sympathy for the woman. “Well. Just about done here. Only thing left to do is set the stop for the gate, and then start her water flowing. Should be done just about sunset. Then I’ll get my pay and be gone.”
The old man turned, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and then turned back to him. The lines on his face seemed deeper. He cleared his throat. “So she’ll be coming out to pay you tonight?”
“Like clockwork. Every Thursday, right about sundown. Always pays cash, and last time, there were three old silver certificates mixed in with the regular bills. I showed them to her and told her that they were worth more than the others, that she should sell them to a coin collector or something. She just laughed and said money was just paper to her and that I could do whatever I wanted with them. She’s a nice lady.”
The old man cleared his throat again. “I might just stand here and wait with you for her to come out. That okay with you?”
“Sure. I don’t mind. Long as you don’t mind me finishing up my chore here.” He was getting more and more uncomfortable with the man’s questions. He decided to take a direct approach. “Look, Mister, if you’re a visitor, you can go knock on her door. I’m not the watchman or anything like that. I’m just the local handyman, doing odd jobs. She might already be awake.”
“I think I’ll just wait here with you, if it’s all the same to you. It’s a pleasure to watch a workman finish a task. Always good to see a job finished. Especially one that’s been a long time in the works.” A thin smile came to the old man’s face.
Well, he was an odd duck. “Fine with me.” Josh shrugged. There wasn’t much left for him to do. He had a piece of iron pipe to pound into the ground, and then a sack of dry Redi-Mix and just enough water in a jerrican to finish up the job. Once the pipe was set in the ground, the catch for the gate would drop into it and hold it shut until someone lifted the latch. He’d already wrapped the latch handle in silver wire like she’d requested. He’d done that job on his workbench the night before, trying to lay the coils smooth and flat. He’d done a pretty good job, he thought. The silver looked nice against the black of the wrought iron.
The man was mostly quiet as he watched Josh work. Once he took out a pocket watch and consulted it, and then glanced up at the sky. “Going to be dark soon,” he commented, and Josh nodded. He troweled the concrete flat and checked his work with a level. “That’s done,” he said, and with a grunt and a groan, he got to his feet. As he packed up his tools and tidied away the empty Redi-Mix bag, the lights in the cottage came on. “And just in time,” he added.
The stranger didn’t say a word. He just stood, staring toward the house, so silent he seemed to be holding his breath. His right hand stole into his coat pocket. He stared at the cottage door, and when the porch light came on, he gave a small gasp. A moment later, the door opened and Mrs. Reid stood framed in it. The porch light lit her as if it were a spotlight on a stage. She was dressed, as she always was, in what Josh had come to think of as her mourning dress. It was a simple shirtwaist dress, like something his mother might have worn in her youth, in a sensible dark fabric. Her hair framed her brow in two smooth dark wings that were pulled back into a loose bun at the back of her neck. Her makeup was perfect, but dated, as if she’d copied it from an old magazine. She looked at the both of them and did not speak.
“Evening, Mrs. Reid. I’m just finishing up here,” he said, when the silence seemed to stretch a bit too long.
“And just when you said you would,” she replied. Her voice was pleasant and husky and her words articulated. Her eyes moved from him to the stranger. Josh waited for the man to say something. When he didn’t, he filled in.
“I try to make my estimates as exact as I can. And when you’ve been a handyman as long as I have, well, you get a fair idea of how long a job should take. Now, this cement is still wet, so try to use the gate latch as little as possible until it’s set.”
“I won’t use it at all,” she promised promptly. But she seemed to aim her words at the man next to him. The stranger spoke suddenly.
“I got a letter. All these years of trying to track you down, and suddenly a letter comes and tells me exactly where you are. I should have known it came from you.”
She nodded slowly.
“So, all those years, did you know where I was?”
Her lips moved very slightly, stretching almost into a smile. “I did. Of course I did.”
“You did.” Josh heard the man swallow. “So. ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ Was that it?”
“Something like that. And you’ve been both, haven’t you, Raymond?”
“Many more years as the one than the other,” he said, and his wariness came more harshly into his voice.
“That’s true. Only a few years of being a friend. Back at the beginning.” She said the words, and the man’s confirming silence flowed up to drown the conversation.
Josh felt uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what he was witnessing, but knew he didn’t want to know. He put the last of his tools into his toolbox, shut it, and latched it. Mrs. Reid had been a good customer, and he knew he couldn’t just stand by if the stranger became rude or aggressive. He spoke into their silence, his voice too loud and his affability sounding false. “Well, if you’re satisfied, Mrs. Reid, I’ll call it a day and head for home. Got a cat to feed, you know.” He glanced at the man and added, “Unless there’s something else you need before I go. Anything else you want me to do?”
She looked at the man before she brought her gaze back to him. “No, Josh, I think you’ve done everything I need. I’m satisfied.” She looked at the stranger again and added, “How about you, Raymond? Are you satisfied?”
The man was quiet for a moment and then said, “I think I am. But I don’t understand why.”
“You don’t understand why you are satisfied? Come, Raymond. I thought this was what you longed for, all these years.”
“It might be. But what I don’t understand is why you are doing it? And why you sent me a letter. Unless you wanted to me to witness it?” The last words came slowly, even more reluctantly from him.
She lifted one slim shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Because it finishes it, I suppose. Because I thought it would give you pleasure. Give you, perhaps, a sense of something finished.”
She stepped off the porch then and came down the path. The stranger made a small sound in his throat. But Josh carefully unlatched the gate and went to meet her. He’d recognized the fat envelope she carried. It would be the final payment for his work, in cash, just like before. As he took it from her, she smiled and then her mouth worked oddly, as if there were something she wanted to say. She swallowed hard and turned away from him abruptly. As she walked back toward her house, she spoke without looking back at him. She crossed the dry moat and stopped briefly on the other side. No bridge, she’d specified. Strange, but that was what the customer wanted, so that was how he’d built it. “Turn on the water for me, so the stream runs, before you leave. And shut the gate behind you when you go, will you?”
“Of course.” He was a bit hurt by her abruptness but decided it probably had something to do with the stranger at the gate. The man hadn’t even tried to come in, hadn’t even greeted her, really. And she hadn’t asked him in. Must be some very bad history between them, he decided, and resolved he’d see the stranger on his way before he left. He left the path and knelt in the dirt to find the spigot for the stream. He’d set it into the ground, along with the switch for the pump. It was only accessible from this side. She’d have to cross the running water if she wanted to turn it off. He’d pointed that out to her once, to be sure she understood. She’d just looked at him and then said quietly, “That’s part of the plan. Build it that way, please.”
And he had.
He opened the fiberglass hatch on the protective box and reached in to turn open the valve and then flick on
