chopping block of oak alongside the stove in the kitchen's center bore years' worth of stains.
Maria could also make out a faint musty odor among the kitchen smells-understandable, since the house sat like a mushroom in the shade of the monster trees. Her eyes swept the family room's casual, wood-walled interior, spying a lariat and a green sweater on an antique hardwood rack. The sweater had patches on each elbow. It was old, well-maintained, and comfortable looking. That about summed this place up. For one brief moment she fantasized about what it might be like to live here-with Dan.
This end of the house, with its tongue-and-groove pine-board walls and angled low ceilings, had the feel of a cottage. The adjoining family room was chock-full to bursting with books, photos, and memorabilia-every square inch of shelf and wall space was utilized. The bookcases were meticulously constructed, with an eye toward matching the walls- obviously built for someone who treasured their contents. She went exploring. Her eye skimmed over the collection, fascinated by its breadth and depth: Thoreau, Melville, Kipling, as well as a host of modern writers. Given the dust patterns, it looked like he kept the classics but didn't read them much. Maybe they were Tess's.
And there was lots more: the dog-eared pages of a Rutherford novel, The Forest; nearby a spy thriller; the fat copy of a Thomas Jefferson biography facedown on the desk- frankly, a surprise; a book of Ansel Adams photographs; three original oil landscapes on the wall by a painter whose signature was indiscernible, along with figure drawings and lithographs by other artists; the CD titles in the neat stack of plastic cases, mostly rock, Bob Dylan, a little opera, more light opera, and a smattering of country-western; the magazines on the coffee table: Time, Newsweek, U.S. News amp; World Report, People, a publication by the Audubon Society; an antique Queen Anne table that might be a skillful reproduction; a spreadsheet of professional football teams and their game scores atop it; and the chair where he sat and drank beer, judging from all the caps in the nearby wastebasket. Front and center on the little table where he parked his beer was a 9'xl2' photo of Tess.
The man was apparently a 49ers fan. She hadn't been to a game in years but she still watched them on television. When she did, she thought about her father, and if she'd had a couple glasses of Chenin Blanc, she cried. For a split second she smiled at how much she used to like football-how she analyzed plays with her father. There was loneliness in the memory, so she shrugged it off.
Maria found the personal stuff: the photos, family shots, Nate Young in every imaginable activity, smiling, laughing, a father engaged with his son. But many included a beautiful brown-eyed woman.
From the coffee table, beside another picture of Tess, she picked up a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. Inside the cover, there was an inscription:
To Tess: With the love in my heart taxing my mind for expression, please accept these words of another as a tribute to my devotion.
For some reason the words shocked her. The cowboy expressed his feelings. And judging from the reading material, he was not all belt buckles and boots. In fact, the real Dan Young came in a very odd and misleading package.
Below Dan's inscription in the Shakespeare was Tess's reply:
My dearest: Your words are more to me than a lifetime of spring mornings, because they have only you as their source. I accept this book of verse only as a supplement.
She considered the closet full of clothes-hadn't it been at least two years since the accident? Thoughts of the beautiful brown-eyed Tess, a stranger in most ways, familiar in a few, ignited in Maria a real sense of the pain Dan kept hidden under his deadpan humor, his relaxed shit-kicker affect. She guessed that Dan had not yet made the transition to life without Tess.
Dan had left his camera on the coffee table. It was a late model Nikon and she knew how to use it. Again a sixth sense told her she should not have the documents in only one location. She pulled both the photo and the documents from her purse and placed them on the coffee table. Picking up the camera, she turned it on, then turned on the flash and used the auto focus and electronic light meter with flash function to take a series of quick pictures. She'd tell Dan when he came back.
After putting the pictures once again securely in her purse, she went back to the photo albums. Not certain what she was looking for, she kept flipping pictures until she found Dan in bathing trunks, carrying a younger Nate on his back. A heavy-muscled hunk, Dan was very well proportioned, broad-shouldered, with a near washboard stomach and muscle tone everywhere. Not quite that trim now, but almost.
'What are you looking at?'
Maria closed the album and turned around, not sure what to say. Next to Dan stood a pajama-clad boy who looked about nine.
'Well, you're a handsome guy, Nate,' she said. She saw Dan's bone structure etched in the boy's lean face. 'I'm afraid I was spying-looking at pictures of you and your father.'
'And my mother?'
'Yes. And your mother. She's beautiful.'
'Nate, this is Ms. Fischer. Ms. Fischer, this is my very inquisitive son.'
Nathaniel's freckled cheeks broke into a smile. 'Hi,' he offered.
Attentive brown eyes looked up at her from under a reddish-brown mop of hair that sported a slightly unruly cowlick. She noticed Dan subtly attempting to smooth it.
'Ms. Fischer will be staying with us tonight.'
'Well, we haven't discussed-' She thought better of bothering with an argument. If she felt the need, she would simply ask for a ride. The man was a force.
The phone rang. Pepacita glanced knowingly at Dan. ''She doesn't call this late,' Dan said.
'Of course she does,' Pepacita replied, picking up. 'He's right here,' she said warmly-with none of the bite of a moment before.
'Well, what grade are you in, Nate?' Maria asked, curious about the call but not wanting the boy to feel left out.
'Can I tell you in a minute?' Nate said. 'My dad's really getting good at this.'
'It's OK, sis. It's no trouble,' Dan was saying. 'Now look at the light for me.' A pause. 'OK and it's red, right?' A pause. 'So stay right there in your bedroom. Nobody can get in that house if the light is red.' A longer pause.
'I understand. It's a windy night. Have you got the cassette in?' A pause.
'Turn it on.' A pause. 'Now, you know I can be there in four minutes on my motorcycle. Four minutes!' A pause. 'At eighty miles an hour I can.' A pause. 'I'm just kidding, sis.'' A pause.''OK, I'm sorry for exaggerating. Six minutes tops.
'Are you doing the tape now? Let's hear the breathing. Come on.' A pause.
'I'm calling you back in thirty minutes to see how you're doing.' A pause. 'OK.' A pause. 'No, it's no problem. I'm up anyway.' Dan hung up and looked at Maria.
'It's my sister, Katie. She has panic attacks. Having kind of a bad week.'
'Every week's a bad week,' Nate said.
Dan smiled and ruffled the boy's hair.
'It's the middle of the night, muchacha y muchachos,' Pepacita said. Maria could feel that Pepacita wanted her to stay.
'You're right. Nate, my man, what say I go tell you the story about the time I scared off a grizzly bear?'
'Really?' Nate said. Maria supposed it was a story that never got old for Nate.
Dan chuckled. 'Really.'
''Ms. Fischer could take a shower and change clothes and then we'll have a midnight dinner.'
'That sounds great,' Maria said.
The shower was luxurious. A large head poured water down into a spacious Jacuzzi tub set within an ornate three-walled tile enclosure. It had a striking floral shower curtain with rose and blue. In seconds she felt drowsy and lost track of time as the water relaxed her. Leaning forward, she let the liquid heat roll down the back of her neck. Then for some reason she came to with a start and looked to the side. She was almost certain she had seen the bathroom door closing. But it was locked. Perhaps it was Pepacita. Couldn't have been Dan. But she thought she saw a hand. And it didn't seem like it was Pepacita's. After trying to reconstruct the fleeting memory, she realized that she was so tired she could be imagining things.
Although she sensed he would not spy on her, and tried to convince herself it couldn't have been Dan, it still unnerved her. Then she decided he might have forgotten something. He was such an independent type maybe he
