“No,” she says. “Don’t do that.”
“Love you?”
Her smile struggles against something else, something I can’t read. When it wins, it transforms her: Phyllis LeBlanc, the most beautiful thing you’ll see before you die.
“Do that all you want, baby,” Phyllis says. “Just don’t tell me so.”
5
The driveway to the River House is longer than it ought to be. Some Bell ancestor shaped it like a cobblestone question mark, dotted by the tastefully restored colonial mansion. It’s a design for magazine features of iconic upstate country houses. It’s a design to charm visitors and intimidate residents, but now I don’t suppose I qualify as either.
A maid answers a minute or two after I pull the bell. I note her hair straightened and pressed beneath a red kerchief, her starched apron that would have been cleaner this morning. The round eyes that are sadder, and harder, but the same as her son’s.
“May I help you, sir?”
“I’m here to see Bobby Junior,” I say.
She just nods and shows me into the parlor. She doesn’t ask my name. I wonder what Alvin has told her. Or what she’s told him.
An older man intercepts her in the hallway outside as she’s leaving. I recognize him more from his photos than the handful of times I have seen him in person—he is fatter than I remember. Just as full of that presence that can make an average man seem handsome.
“Mae,” he says, and then something else, too low for me to hear.
“To see Junior, sir.” Her eyes are on the carpet. Her back is to a large French vase, set in a niche on the far wall.
He is much taller. When he moves I can only see the back of his suspenders and shirtsleeves, and the severe sidecut of his thick slate-gray hair.
“… didn’t I tell him to let the business be?”
Mae responds quietly. I can’t make out the words, but the practiced, soothing way she says them tells me enough. Mayor Bell’s wife died years ago, but I’m sure Alvin’s mother had learned to use that voice long before then.
“Well, tell him to get that damned coolie out of my parlor! The Astors are due to arrive in a half hour…”
More soothing noises. I lean back in my chair—seventeenth-century French, newly upholstered, comfortable as burlap—and pretend I don’t hear a thing. The Astors must be connected to those rumors of a development project on the old Lutheran land. So: money and influence and the imminent possibility of gaining much more. Or the threat of losing it. Alvin’s fears suddenly seem plausible. Mae and Mayor Bell walk away together, still talking. His hand is on the small of her back and she holds herself as tightly as a ballerina.
Five minutes later, Bobby Bell the Junior stands in the doorway. He’s better dressed than his father and at least fifty percent less imposing. “I heard you’d come back.”
I shrug. “I’ve always had the house.”
“Yes. I suppose so. Listen, I hate to be rude, but Dad’s got some poo-bahs coming by in a few minutes and he needs the parlor. Why don’t we take a walk and you can tell me whatever you came for?”
I follow him through the hallway and into the kitchen. He leads us out by a smaller door that opens onto the gardens and a path to the river. Typical Little Easton, typical Bells. You might get in through the front door, but they remove you from the back.
“What brings you here, Davey?” he asks as we pick our way down the steep, winding trail. His tone is wary and polite. It’s been the same ever since that incident with his friends by the river. After they dredged for poor Thomas.
We pause at the river’s edge. “I wanted to ask you about the boy working in Craver’s store. Alvin.”
“Mae’s little devil? Do you know his own family’s scared of him? If it weren’t for Craver’s damned intervention, the kid wouldn’t dare show his cursed hands on River Road!”
“What did he do?”
Bobby shivers and meets my eyes almost accidentally.
“We never knew he had that … damned voodoo … or whatever you types have.” Bobby snaps his hands in my direction, as though flicking off a spider. “His family kept that secret. Well, can’t say it occurred to us to ask, either. It’s not something civilized people tend to think about. Still, Mae ought to have warned us, after all the Bells have done for her. And good God, even now when I think about that rout of a party…”
He pulls his pocket square and wipes his forehead. No longer young, the both of us.
“Party?”
“The viewing party we have up at the house every May. But Dad had this notion to raise funds for a regional declaration in favor of the war. We’ve got to put some pressure on Washington, after all, or the damn thing’ll be over by the time we get to the front. So we hired the boy for the night to park cars and collect glasses and make himself useful—a favor to his family. The winter ended late this year, all the orchards have been struggling. Which goes to show you charity isn’t always rewarded! The damned weasel revealed his little secret in the middle of the toasts! Touched Charles Yarborough and his wife, of all people, and let’s just say I think Charles’s chances of winning that state senate seat in September are just about shot.”
“Did you provoke him?”
“Hot damn, Davey, provoke him? We’ve done everything for that ungrateful bunch of—”
I flinch, and he stops, which is more than the Junior would have done a decade ago. It has never been good to hear, but after Victor that word is a blow from a loaded gun.
I release a slow breath. “So your theory is that he risked his family just to, what? See the looks on your faces when he described Charles Yarborough’s love life?”
Bobby rolls his eyes. “He’s probably some anarchist, intent on destroying
