Gail Bowen - The Last Good Day

He tossed us a smile. “You can take off now, Rose,” he said. “Joanne and I can watch the girls.”

Rose adjusted the strap on her ancient turquoise Jantzen. “I’m staying put,” she said. “Visit around me.”

Blake’s eyes widened, then he laughed. “You and my wife,” he said. “The only two women I know who find me utterly without redeeming features.” He pointed to my towel. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Not at all,” I said. But I did. He sat close, so close that I could smell the sharp citrus of his aftershave and see how the sun burnished the red-gold hair on his arms and legs. Too much proximity. I inched away.

Blake didn’t seem to notice. “We haven’t been able to reach Kevin to tell him about Chris,” he said. “Lily thought there was an outside chance he might have been in touch with you.”

“I would have told you,” I said. “I know you and Kevin are close.”

“That’s nice to hear right now.” Blake’s voice was gravelly. “It was always Kevin, Chris, and me against Zack, Delia, and Lily.”

I thought I’d misheard. Lily wasn’t a partner. She wasn’t even a lawyer. She managed the office.

Without taking her eyes off the diving board, Rose reached over and tapped Blake’s shoulder. “Button your lip,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Blake said, and he touched his thumb and forefinger to his mouth and made a tweaking gesture.

“Keep it that way,” Rose said. Something she saw on the lake displeased her, and she frowned. “Your daughter’s entry was a little sloppy,” she said, glancing over at Blake. “She’ll have to fix it or she’ll never be as good as she could be.” Rose stood and brushed the sand from her thighs. “Remember to watch your mouth, mister,” she said, then she strode towards the lake – a trim figure of rectitude in a slovenly world.

Blake watched her with a rueful smile. “Not much point hanging around since I’ve been issued a gag order,” he said. He stood up. “If you hear from Kevin, let me know. We should be the ones to break the news about Chris. We might be able to keep him from blaming himself.”

“Why would he blame himself?” I asked.

“Same reason we all do. We’re Chris’s family. We should have been able to pull him back from the edge.”

“The last time I saw Chris, I thought he had pulled himself back from the edge,” I said.

Blake’s blue-grey eyes were searching. “What do you mean?”

“When I talked to him after the barbecue, Chris was in bad shape, but after the fireworks he seemed better. He asked if he could run with my dog and me in the morning. He even taught Taylor a riddle: ‘What three words make you sad when you’re happy and happy when you’re sad?’ ”

Blake’s voice was a whisper. “And the answer is…?”

I swallowed hard. “Nothing lasts forever.”

“It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?” Blake said, then he walked off without waiting for my reply.

After lunch at our cottage, Rose and the girls went over to the tennis court to hit balls, and I cleaned up and took Virginia Woolf out to the rocker on the porch. Taylor’s cats, Bruce and Benny, were already curled up in their cat beds; Willie sniffed them incuriously, then flopped down by my feet. We were all settled in for a lazy afternoon when the first clap of thunder came. The cats ran inside and Willie’s ears shot up. By the time the second clap of thunder sounded and lightning split the sky, Rose and the girls were through the door.

“Now what?” Taylor said.

“Dry clothes,” said Rose.

“And an afternoon off for Rose,” I said. When she started to protest, I raised my hand. “I insist. The girls can spend the afternoon here. I have no plans, and we have a cupboard full of board games. I know I saw Monopoly in there and Trivial Pursuit and Risk.”

Gracie was towelling off her explosion of curly red-blond hair. She peered out from under the towel. “I’d forgotten about the games,” she said. She tapped Isobel’s arm. “Remember how Kevin used to let us play with all his old action figures when the adults played Risk?”

“That was before,” Isobel said.

“Before what?” Taylor said, always alert to nuance.

Isobel and Gracie exchanged a quick look. “Before the adults stopped having fun,” Isobel said.

“I’m for Monopoly,” Gracie said quickly. “But if we’re going to get in an entire game before the rain stops, we’d better bounce. Monopoly takes about a thousand years.”

Willie and I spent the afternoon on the porch contemplating the rain and listening to the whoops of delight and misery that erupted in the living room as real-estate empires rose and fell. We were content. When I glanced up and saw Noah and Delia Wainberg walking down the road towards our cottage, I felt a frisson of annoyance.

“Company, Willie,” I said.

His glance was mournful. Seemingly, he was no more eager to entertain than I was. But the Wainbergs were Isobel’s parents and our neighbours, and as they trudged through the rain, it would have taken a harder heart than mine not to welcome them. Delia was wearing the same black slacks and T-shirt she’d been wearing at the fireworks, and she was even more tightly wound than she’d been that night. Her short black hair was spiky, as if she hadn’t thought to comb it. She was pulling nervously on her cigarette, the way serious smokers do when they’re about to enter what they fear may be a no-smoking zone. Clearly, this was a day when it wasn’t much fun being Delia Wainberg.

As they neared my house, Noah Wainberg extended a large strong hand towards the back of his wife’s neck and kneaded it. At his touch, Delia’s head dropped to her chest and her shoulders relaxed. Husband and wife did not exchange glances, but it was a moment of exquisite intimacy. So often that week it had appeared to me that the awkward, amiable giant, Noah, was simply an extra in the high-powered drama that starred his wife and her partners. I’d been wrong. Noah was an essential supporting player.

I invited them inside and offered fresh coffee. When Isobel heard her parents’ voices, she came running. “I don’t have to go home yet, do I?”

Noah held his arms out to her. “No, Izzy. Your mother and I are just here on an errand. You can stay until Mrs. Kilbourn boots you out.”

Isobel beamed at her father, blew a kiss his way, and ran back to Monopoly. In his gentle presence, Isobel was sunshine, a child of smiles and lilting laughter. With her mother, she withdrew, as if to shield herself from something sharp and spiny that might, at any moment, be flung at her from Delia’s direction. When she left the room without acknowledging her mother, neither of them seemed to notice the slight.

The Wainbergs turned down my offer of coffee, but when I asked if I could get them anything else, Delia looked so longingly at the tiny shoulder bag in which I guessed she’d stowed her cigarettes and lighter that I volunteered to get her an ashtray. It took a bit of searching, but I finally found one on the porch. It was handmade: a shallow bowl of mosaic tile grouted together not very skilfully with an old silver dollar stuck in the middle.

Delia smiled when I handed it to her. “Kevin made this when he was a kid,” she said. “Amazing he didn’t pursue a career in fine art.” She pulled out a cigarette, lit up, and dragged gratefully. “God, it’s been a lousy week.”

Her voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s, and Noah cast her an anxious glance. “We’d better get this over with,” he said. “Delia and the others were going to put Chris’s graduation portrait from law school in the funeral program, but now they’ve decided they’d like to have a photo of all of them.”

“Of the Winners’ Circle,” I said.