Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

The only things.

The whisper war started while I was setting the table for supper.

Kate and Nicole sat hypnotized by the TV in the other room and I was tending to plates, glasses, cups, silverware, and napkins when Mary came in with a spoonful of pasta sauce for me to taste.

“Delicious.”

She poked me. “You’d say that even if it was terrible, wouldn’t you?”

I poked her back. “Probably.”

I slung my arm over her shoulder and strolled back into the kitchen with her.

“I met that man this morning.”

“Donlon? The one you told me about last night?”

“Um-hm. Nice guy and very helpful.”

“Anything the police should know about?”

“Not quite yet. I want to do something before I call Chief Foster.”

In the kitchen window long pre-dusk shadows. The first stars; a large passenger plane soaring toward the half-moon; a TV tower in the distance blinking red signals into the half-night. Mixed with this were the aromas of the kitchen — the scents of pasta, sauce, coffee, and the fresh bread Mary loved to bake.

She was in the process of using a fork to test the progress of the pasta boiling in the metal stockpot on the gas stove. “What is it you want to do?”

“Donlon says that over the years Lon Anders has had him deliver shipping materials to this cabin he owns. Donlon thinks there’s something illegal going on. So do I. I thought I’d check it out tonight.”

She went back to pulling strands of pasta from the boiling stockpot and then nibbling on them. “Sounds like something Foster should be doing. Since he’s the law and everything.”

“I probably won’t have much trouble getting inside.”

She set down the fork she’d been using to waggle pasta strands from the stockpot and faced me. Workday weariness and apprehension and an anger she was trying not to give in to — all of these played across her face. “Have you given any thought to what you’ll do for a living?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“When Foster finds out he’ll undoubtedly ask for your license to be lifted. And what will the state board think about a lawyer breaking and entering? You always liked that job you had in high school, bagging groceries. Maybe you could get that back.”

“I’m hungry!” Kate announced as she raced into the kitchen.

“Honey, go get your sister and you both sit down and by then I’ll be bringing out supper.”

“Nicole said you brought home ice cream. She saw it.”

Mary swept her up. “Your sister is a very good spy. But it’s not ice cream. It’s sherbet.”

“What’s sherbet?”

“You’ll just have to find out. But you’ll love it. Now go get your sister.”

She set Kate down. Kate said to me, “Do you like sherbet, Sam?”

I patted my stomach. “I love it.”

And then she was running away in that awkward, endearing way of hers, shouting, “Nicole, we’re having sherbet tonight!”

This was when the whispering started. The girls would be near us now.

“I thought you cared about us.”

“You know damned well I do. Don’t pull this on me.”

“All right. Then I’ll just say Please don’t do this, Sam. You know what kind of guy Anders is. Think of us.”

Nicole said, “Is everything all right, Mom?”

She’d caught us gritting whispers back and forth.

“Everything’s fine, honey. Please go get your plate and tell Kate to get hers, too. I’ll dish you up some pasta.”

“I’m not sure I like sherbet.”

“Oh, you’ll like this.”

“Eve had it one night for dinner. I didn’t like the taste.”

Easy for Mary to take a cheap shot here, but she declined. Bad woman Eve, the one who stole your dad from me, of course her sherbet would taste bad. “There’re a lot of different flavors of sherbet, sweetie. This one is peach. Remember how much you like peaches?”

That satisfied Nicole and off she went to supper.

For the next half hour not even the whisper war was allowed. Only angry looks from Mary and me trying to appear misunderstood and innocent.

The girls were put to bed early — under much protest from Kate who insisted it was “still light out” — with Mary staying with them at least twenty minutes.

A beer would’ve tasted good; I hadn’t had any alcohol all day. But I knew about the cabin now and I needed to be sober when I got inside.

When Mary came back I said, “I need to do this for Will.”

“Then at least call Foster.”

“I don’t have the faith in Foster you do. He’s like too many cops I’ve known.”

Significantly, she sat in the armchair across from me. “Everybody I know likes him.”

“Oh, he’s likable and all that. But he’s still the kind of cop who gets fixated on one suspect and won’t consider anyone else.”

“I know how much you care about Will, Sam. And so do I. But you have to agree that things look bad for him.”

“I know how bad they look, Mary. But that still doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

“Oh, God, Sam.”

She came over and drew her legs up on the couch and put her head on my shoulder.

“Not fair.” Her warmth, her flesh, the scent of her hair. I wanted to forget the cabin.

“Of course it’s not fair. Look what I’m up against. An obsessed man who’s too stubborn to ask the police for help.”

Then she really got not fair. She sat up and took my face in her hands and gave me the kind of savage kiss that was more redolent of desperation and fear than sex.

I had to push away and stand up.

“Then you’re really going?”

“I’m really going.”

I went into the bathroom and closed the door. Usually about this time I went upstairs and peeked in on the girls from the doorway. Their soft snoring and their Big Bird night-light and the dolls and stuffed animals they both slept with. My attachment to the three of them grew tighter every day. The girls would be as terrified as their mother if they could understand what I was going to do. As Mary had pointed out, the real danger was in the legal ramifications of what I proposed to do. I could indeed find myself out of a job. An unemployed step-dad was a real drag.

But searching the cabin was the logical end result of my entire investigation. There was no guarantee that I would find anything incriminating there but I still needed to do it.

I stopped in the kitchen and drew a quick but precise map to the cabin for Mary. When I got back to the living room I handed it to her. She glanced at it.

“I wish you were Batman. Then I wouldn’t be worried so much.”

“I wish I was Batman, too. This would be easy for him.”

She’d been waiting right outside the bathroom door the way Kate did sometimes when she just couldn’t get enough of me.

“Do I get a kiss, Sam?”

“Let’s see now — a kiss—”

If we’d gotten any more passionate we would have ended up on the floor. But once again I eased out of the embrace.

“I’m going to say some prayers.”

“It couldn’t hurt.” And then right there as I moved toward the side door I felt a ridiculous sadness. I even had a moment when I resented Will a bit. My life would be so easy if I didn’t have to worry that he’d be sent to a mental hospital and then to prison.

For life.