She shook her head, walked to the coffee table, took up her tea, idly sipped.
“Karl had a tough childhood. His father had his mother committed when Karl was seven years old, and not long after that he divorced her. His father married four more times, all women of looks and little substance. He paid no attention to his son. Poor Karl practically lived at my house. My parents, at least, treated him kindly. I always knew Karl felt a way about me that I didn’t about him, but I was able to maneuver around that. Our senior year in high school, he proposed to me. I turned him down, of course. He made threats.”
“What kind of threats?” Jo asked.
“Oh, nothing dangerous. The ‘I’ll join the foreign legion and you’ll be sorry’ kind of thing. Well, he did. Or his version of the foreign legion. He applied to the naval academy and was accepted. He went off to Annapolis, and I went to Stanford. We saw one another occasionally when we were home for the holidays. I have to admit, Karl in his uniform was quite impressive. Then the summer between my junior and senior year, my father hired a young man on the crew of his yacht.”
“You fell in love, your father objected, you married anyway, and the young man proved in the end to be more than worthy. Superior Blue.”
“What I didn’t put in the book was how Karl came back into my life.”
They both turned at the sound of footsteps on the stairway. The boys came down.
“Mom, can we have something to snack on?” Scott asked.
“Sure. Okay with you if I give them some cookies?” Grace asked Jo.
“Fine. But go easy, Stevie.”
“In the kitchen, Scott. You know where.”
The boys went together. Jo watched them, smiling.
“Scott’s good with him. Stevie’s usually pretty shy.”
“Scott’s just happy to have another nonadult around. Or nonmom.” She looked down at the tea glass in her hand. “Where was I?”
“Karl coming back into your life.”
Grace nodded. “In some ways, the navy was the best thing that could have happened to him. Growing up, he had a father he could never please, whose love he could never fully win. I always felt sorry for him. He was such a lonely boy. The navy did something, toughened him, gave him, I believe, some concrete measure of himself, an acknowledgment of his achievements, things his father never did. There was something very attractive about him then. He had a powerful feel to him. He could walk into a room and take charge. It was as if he’d grown into the man he was meant to become. Very handsome, indeed.”
“You were married then. To the poor but worthy man.”
“It wasn’t like that, Jo. I didn’t drool over Karl. I was happy for him. He visited Edward and me whenever he was in town. The two of them got to be good friends. They both shared a love of the water, sailed a lot together.
“Karl left the navy to take over the Lindstrom business after his father died. Everything had gone to hell under his father’s haphazard practices. He was working himself to death. That’s when Edward convinced him to take a break, a two-week voyage around the Great Lakes, to relax. Unfortunately, at the last minute, there was a problem at one of the mills and Karl had to back out. Edward went anyway, alone, and disappeared in the middle of Lake Superior.” She stopped for a moment, and Jo could see that time hadn’t yet healed the wound. “Even though Karl was overwhelmed with his own problems, he dropped everything and was there for me. I was a mess. He was my spokesman to the press, my guide, my shrink, my business executive. He did what needed doing, what I couldn’t bring myself to do. For almost three years.”
“And then you married.”
“Yes.”
“You’d fallen in love with him?”
“No. Not like with Edward. I’d come to rely on Karl. And I thought Scott needed a father. It seemed the natural progression of things.”
“And now?”
“Karl has tried. It’s not his fault. It’s just that…” She paused, reached again for her tea, but missed and nearly knocked the glass over.
“Just what?” Jo asked after things were settled.
“At the very heart of him, he’s still a Lindstrom. He snaps at Scott. He makes decisions without discussing things with me and then he brooks no argument. Moving up here, for example. It’s lovely country, Jo. I won’t deny that. But I don’t belong here. And Scott desperately needs other children around. I know Karl thought it would be good to get away from where so many memories haunted us both, but-”
“You let him build a home like this without really wanting it?” Jo said, interrupting.
“I have homes in New York City and Malibu, too. I can easily afford a home like this.” She put a hand on Jo’s knee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that money wasn’t the issue.”
“I understand.”
“Edward and I, we shared everything. Our thoughts. Our fears. Our hopes. I knew his soul. I knew absolutely that he loved me. This honker, for example.” She squeezed the end of her nose as if it were a bicycle horn. “He loved my nose. Karl asked me a few weeks ago why I’d never considered having something done to it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Karl shares so little of himself. A Lindstrom trait. When he does, it’s not attractive. I’ve begun to feel as if I’m living with a stranger, although I’ve known him all my life. With all the problems over the logging issue, he’s hardly ever here. When he is, he’s still not really here.” She turned away from Jo, moved to the window again, clasped her hands behind her. “So I’m leaving him. I’m going to ask for a divorce.”
Jo put her glass down. “Are you telling me this because I’m a friend, or because I’m an attorney?”
“You do family law.”
“Up here, I do everything. But you have attorneys, I imagine. Good, expensive attorneys.”
“I don’t want you to handle the divorce, Jo. That’s not it. Just tell me what I’m facing.”
“Legally?”
“That. And anything else you think I ought to know. This is scary. I haven’t said anything to anyone, but I need to talk to someone.”
“Does Karl know?”
“I haven’t told him. But I can’t imagine he doesn’t know at some level.”
“Have you thought about counseling?”
“I’ve suggested it several times. Karl’s a Lindstrom, an ex-naval officer. He doesn’t believe in help. That kind, anyway.”
Something fell in the kitchen, a crash of glass on the floor.
“Scott? You guys okay in there?” Grace called.
Another sound followed, something high, but muted, a muffled cry. The women exchanged a quick glance and moved toward the kitchen. They’d taken only a step when two men pushed through the kitchen doorway. They wore ski masks over their faces, black leather gloves on their hands. Each gripped a boy. One of the men held a handgun. All the air seemed to rush from Jo’s lungs, and something hot and too heavy to hold very long pressed down inside her stomach. Even so, she felt the briefest sense of relief to see that the firearm was pointed not at the children but at her. She tried to speak but felt paralyzed. The two intruders seemed momentarily stuck, too.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man with the handgun finally asked her.
“I was about to ask you the same thing. More or less.” She was surprised that although she could barely breathe, her words sounded calm.
“Take whatever you want,” Grace said. “Leave the boys alone.”
“We’ll take what we want, all right.”
Jo looked at Stevie. Her son’s dark eyes were wide, little holes full of terror, and his mouth was open as if in a soundless cry. Jo wanted to kill the man whose huge hand dug into Stevie’s tiny arm.
“It’s okay, Stevie,” she said.
“Oh, but it ain’t okay,” the man with the handgun said. “Both of you turn around.” He swung the barrel in a tight circle.
Jo hesitated and Grace also did not move. The man with Scott in one hand and the handgun in the other put
