Bill Pronzini - Hellbox

“I’m ready to head out,” he said, “do battle with some trout. Sure you won’t come along?”

“I’m sure.”

“It’ll be cooler down in the valley.”

“I don’t mind the heat as much as you do,” she said. “I made you a couple of sandwiches. They’re in the fridge.”

“ Grazie. What would I do without you?”

“Make your own sandwiches and load them up with too much butter and mayonnaise.”

He laughed. “So what’re you going to do with yourself here alone?”

“Read, relax. Maybe take a walk in the woods.”

“Watch out for bears.”

“Uh-huh. Bears. If I see one, I’ll imitate one of your growls and scare the wits out of it.”

As soon as he was gone, she tried Cybil’s number again. Still no answer. Oh, Cybil, come on! she thought. Then chided herself for being such a worrywart. But when you had an elderly, fiercely headstrong, frail, and fall-prone mother that you loved dearly, it was increasingly difficult not to worry.

She read for a while, stretched out on one of the deck chairs, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate. Another unanswered call. An unbidden image of Cybil sprawled out on the duplex floor flashed across her mind; immediately, she blanked it out. Too much imagination, dammit, inherited from Cybil-one of the 1940’s most accomplished pulp fiction writers and the author of two well-received mystery novels written in her late seventies. The Writing Wades, mother and daughter. Although in Cybil’s not-so-humble opinion, a series of stories and two books about a tough-talking private eye named Samuel Leatherman was superior work to the creation of advertising slogans and campaigns. “We both write fiction,” she’d said once, “but when you get right down to it, my kind’s more honest.” Well, maybe she had a point. A debatable one, anyway.

Lunch was a dish of strawberries. At one o’clock, another call went unanswered. Then, at one-thirty “Hello?” Cybil’s voice, sounding perfectly fine.

“There you are,” Kerry said, relieved. “I called a couple of times earlier-”

“Did you? Why?”

“Oh, just to let you know that we’re still in Green Valley-”

“Where?”

“Green Valley. In the Sierras near Placerville.”

“What’re you doing up there?”

Oh, Lord. “Looking for a second home. I told you that the last time we talked, remember?”

“Of course I remember. I think it’s a good idea.”

“What is?”

“That you have a second home.”

“Well, I think we finally found one that suits us. That’s why we’re still here-staying a few days to make sure we like the place enough to make an offer. It’s a hillside cabin with a valley view-”

“Good, I’m glad. You can tell me all about it when I see you. When are you coming home?”

“Well, we’re not sure yet. We were planning on Thursday, but we may stay over the Fourth and drive back Saturday. If there’s anything you need-”

“Why should I need anything?”

“I just thought there might be.” Don’t ask where she’s been, Kerry thought. But a question slipped out in spite of herself. “Were you out shopping?”

“Shopping?”

“This morning… today.”

“Yes. Jane Greeley and I went to lunch afterward. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“Where I was and what I was doing. Checking up?”

“No, no…”

“Yes, yes. Well, I’m fine. No falls lately. But I did cut my thumb slicing a tomato last night. Bandaged it all by myself, too.”

“Don’t be testy, Cybil. I was just-”

“I’m not testy. When did you say you were coming home? After the Fourth?”

“We’re not sure yet. Either Thursday or Saturday.”

“Is Emily up there with you?”

“No. She’s in Los Angeles with her school glee club. I told you that before we left, didn’t I?”

“No, I don’t think so. When will she be home?”

“Sunday.”

“That long?”

“Well, they’re giving a holiday performance-”

“When are you going to bring her over for a visit? I haven’t seen the child, or you or that husband of yours, in weeks.”

One week, to be exact. Cybil really was getting vague, her memory slipping badly. No use trying to deny it.

Kerry said carefully, keeping the concern out of her voice, “One day next week, whichever one’s good for you.”

“Any day is fine. I’m always here, you know that. Except when I go out to shop and have lunch with Jane Greeley. Call first, before you come.”

“Of course I will.”

“Good-bye, dear. Enjoy the rest of your little vacation.”

“’Bye, take care,” Kerry said, but her mother had already broken the connection.

She sighed as she tucked her cell into her purse. The thought that Cybil might not be with them much longer crossed her mind; instantly, she rejected it. Just because her mother was showing signs of senility didn’t mean she was teetering on the edge of the grave. Her father’s death had been difficult enough to deal with, even though they hadn’t been close, but it had happened so many years ago, her memories of him were faint and fuzzy, like images in very old photographs. It was different with Cybil. Friend and mentor, a woman she admired and respected-yes, and needed-as well as loved. Losing her would be as painful as losing Bill or Emily.

But it wasn’t going to happen soon. It simply wasn’t. Why start hanging crepe needlessly?

Time to go for her walk. Worry always made her restless, and the only cure for that was exercise. Besides, the cabin had grown stuffy with trapped heat. It’d be much cooler in among the pines that crowded around the edges of the property.

Bill probably wouldn’t be back before she was, but just in case, she wrote him a short note and left it on the kitchen table. Then she rubbed some sunblock on her face and bare arms, put on her wide-brimmed sun hat, closed all the windows, and locked up after she went out-a precaution because she didn’t see any need to take her purse along. Bill had a key; Sam Budlong had given them two.

Where to go? The woods behind the house seemed the most inviting. She went up past the gnarled old apple trees and through the gate in the sagging perimeter fence. A barely discernible path, man-made or animal-made, meandered through the timber beyond: she’d spotted it on Saturday’s inspection. She picked her way along it for a hundred yards or so, to where it split into two sharply divergent forks. Arbitrary choice: the right one. She turned that way, and the forest closed in around her.

Much cooler in among the old-growth pines, the air scented with a mixture of resin and needle and leaf mold. The cool semidarkness, the cathedral-like quiet, reminded her of Yosemite-a camping trip she’d been taken on there as a child, not by Cybil and her father-he hadn’t been an outdoorsman in any sense of the word-but by the family of a school friend. Fabulous mountain vistas and ice-blue lakes that she could still recall with a sense of wonder, but it had been the forests, dark and deep and hushed, that had impressed her the most. She never tired of walking in forests vast like those or small like these, reexperiencing that childhood pleasure.

Dark, deep woods. The phrase made her think of the poem by Robert Frost about woods-walking on a snowy winter’s evening. A poem that was also a metaphor about life, the long travel from beginning to end and the promises you made along the way. Promises like hers to Bill and Emily and Cybil and herself, the meaningful ones that she had kept and would continue to keep if she could, if only there were enough time.

Gloomy reflections, harking back to her concern for Cybil. She erased them the way Cybil had taught her to erase unpleasant thoughts as a child-with one mental swipe, as if they were chalked words on a blackboard.