perfect wife, then letting your feet get in her path on her way to it would be a good way to lose a foot. This new person, this Jane McKinnon, was not going to be somebody you faced down eye-to-eye.
He heard the sound of Carey McKinnon’s tread on the front porch and looked down at him through Jane’s window. Henry would have been pleased. Jake could see Carey’s head beginning to shine through the thin, sandy hair, so he was no kid anymore. Jake hoped he had enough sense by now to understand the nature of the gift he had been given, but he supposed he probably didn’t. It often seemed to Jake that wisdom had settled on his own head like a wreath from heaven some time around age sixty, after it was too late to do him much good and was more of an irritation than a pleasure. He said, “Well, I’ve got to move on, or the damned dandelions will get a foothold on my lawn again and I’ll spend the whole summer on my knees digging them out with a knife.”
“Good. I thought you were just hanging around to get free medical advice.”
“Not me. I want mine duly recorded in an office in front of witnesses so I can sue for malpractice. See you, Mrs. McKinnon.”
“See you, Jake.”
Jake met Carey carrying boxes up the stairs. “Take good care of her,” said Jake. “I’ll tell you why at your fiftieth anniversary, if you’re not senile by then.”
“Better write it down, Jake. Don Herbick keeps calling me from his mortuary to ask about your health. I say, ‘Not yet, Don. But keep the motor tuned up.’ ”
“I suspected you probably worked closely with an undertaker, Dr. McKinnon. But I won’t desert you now that you’ve got a wife to support.”
“It’s always good to have your unqualified endorsement, Jake. I could hardly ask for anybody more unqualified.”
“It’s a pleasure to serve.” He walked out and closed the door.
Carey set the empty boxes on the floor and put his arm around Jane. “He’s right about you. When I walked in, I could hardly believe it. You actually married me.”
She smiled, craned her neck, and leaned back against his chest to give him a gentle kiss. “I’m glad to know that you’re not here about a refund. But don’t assume everything Jake has to say about me would make you happy. He’s got no excuse left for illusions about women.” She stepped away from him, picked up the dresses on hangers from the bed, and slipped the hooks over his hand. “To business. Take these down and hang them on the pole I’ve got across the back seat. Do not toss, crumple, or otherwise render them unsuitable for wear. Then report for further orders.”
He walked off down the hall and clomped down the stairs. She looked around and began to pull things out of her dresser drawers and put them into boxes. Carey came back and stood in the doorway. “It just occurred to me,” he said. “What are you going to do with this house? Sell it?”
She paused and looked at him. Why did she have to be the sort of person who already had calculated everything and made the decisions? “Come sit with me,” she said.
They sat together on the bed. “This is one of the conversations we should have had before. I’m through being a guide. I will never take another fugitive and slip him to a new place with a new identity. But for a while, this house is going to be a problem. I can’t place an ad in the paper announcing that I’m going out of business. It’s more than a little likely that one or two people are going to arrive here in the next year or two expecting to find that kind of help. I know that ahead of time, and I’m prepared to accept the way I’ll feel if I find out one of them tried on his own and didn’t make it.”
“How can you?”
“That’s not going to be an issue between us. It’s like what the insurance companies call a pre-existing condition. My problem.”
“So you’re going to keep it here, empty?”
“If we sell it, then maybe—no, probably—one night the new owners are going to be sitting downstairs watching television, and somebody is going to arrive and tell them things I don’t want them to hear. Or even worse, one of the chasers will have followed him here. This isn’t theoretical. It happened once.”
“It’s going to be a hard place to unload. I suppose you don’t want the phone company reassigning your number either.”
“I can afford to keep paying the bills. In a few years there will be fewer people who remember the address. The ones who do will know that it’s not the solution to anybody’s problem anymore. Then we’ll cancel the phone, sell the house, and use the money for a trip around the world or something.”
He laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to use up your money. We should have had that conversation before, too. I will support my wife. Keep whatever money you have safe, in case of an emergency.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “This is the emergency, tonight. Things are happening fast that will get set in cement, so we have to do all of them right. We take each other on, unconditionally. What I used to do has put you in jeopardy: not much jeopardy, but some enterprising F.B.I. agent could still stumble on somebody I helped, and you could wake up one morning to the smell of tear gas and the sight of men in bulletproof vests and baseball caps knocking down the door with a battering ram. There are also some very slimy people out there who still want to find some victim they didn’t get to torment enough, and would be very happy to step over your body for the privilege of asking me questions.” She paused to let the two unpleasant possibilities settle in his imagination. Then she smiled. “However. I did make a lot of money at it. You’d better share the rewards, because you’ve already taken on the risks.”
He shrugged. “We can use it to buy a lot of life insurance.”
She laughed and kissed him. “I’m serious. About once a month or so, you’ll see a lot of mail from my two business managers. One is Stewart Hoffstedder. He’s fictitious, basically just a mail drop in New York I use to pay bills for imaginary people, so you don’t want to know about any of that. The other one is named Michael Mesnick, and he’s real. He’s a former I.R.S. agent. If you ever fall into the morass of my finances, call him or his assistant, Kim Henmi, and they’ll straighten it out. Do not say anything about how ill-gotten my gains are. They think I’m a career consultant who spends too much money on travel and not enough on pensions.”
He gave her a hug and stood up. “I’ll try to remember.” But she was still sitting on the bed. “That’s it, right?”
She sat quietly for a moment. “Here is the rest of it. I don’t think I want to have to say this twice, because it’s a little … embarrassing. What I intend to do with the rest of my life is be your wife. I’m not reserving anything, holding anything back. This is the only life I expect to have, so I’m not willing to let it go wrong by little increments because I wasn’t paying attention. I will always be available to you, at any hour of the day or night. If you want to talk, I’ll talk. If you don’t want to talk, that probably means you should try even harder to talk. I’ll be listening.”
Carey sat on the bed hard, as though his legs had given way. “The sweet old-fashioned girl? Jane Whitefield?”
“Jane McKinnon. Older than old-fashioned,” she said. “Primal, actually.” He hugged her again, but as he smiled at her, he saw she wasn’t smiling. “The only thing I won’t do for you is play dumb.”
The supple, gentle touch of his arm around her seemed to stiffen, and after a second the arm dropped away. “I hope this is because you’re getting everything out of the way at once—housecleaning day.”
“It is.”
“Then I guess I don’t have any grounds to feel insulted. So I’ll just say that I love you. I married you. If I had any reason to imagine I couldn’t live up to the agreement, I would have to be insane. I don’t expect to ever give you any reason to feel … insecure. Okay?”
She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks. I’m sorry to bring that up again. Maybe we just know too much about each other. You’re a very attractive man, Carey. And you’re getting better instead of worse. You like women, and we all sense it, and so we all nuzzle up to you. And you’re also a very successful doctor in a provincial town. Everybody likes to be around men like you. None of that is going to change just because you’re married. What I’m saying isn’t ‘Watch your step because I’m onto you.’ I’m saying, I know you like women a whole lot. And I like you a whole lot. You’re used to variety and excitement and … whatever. I understand it. So here I am. I’m not everybody in the world, but I’m going to try to be everything to you. Just ask. No, you don’t even have to ask, because I’m saying yes now, for all time.”
“The strawberries,” said Carey.
She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed him hard, rocking him back and forth. “I’m so glad. You don’t know how relieved I am.”
