Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

Ellen, whose contacts in the publishing world are much better than a landscaper’s, hears that the book has been deemed unreadable. That, however, does not necessarily make it unpublishable. Time will tell whether Conrad has a posthumous bestseller.

“You remember what I said a while back,” Ellen said, tipping her head back onto the headrest.

“Which thing?” I said.

“When Derek was in jail, about how we were being punished for things we’d done,” she said.

“I remember. You still feel that way?”

“Look at what we’ve done, between the two of us,” she said. “How horribly wrong good intentions can go. I tried to help Brett Stockwell, and it backfired, destroyed people’s lives. You scribbled your name in a book, gave a girl a number to call if she wanted help. .”

“And the Langleys ended up dead,” I said. “Because Drew went to the wrong house to seek revenge.”

We both thought about that for a moment. I wondered whether Ellen was thinking what I was thinking, that maybe we were cursed or something.

“Where will we go?” she said finally. “After I go in there”-she jerked her thumb at the house-“and do my thing.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe no place. Maybe there’s no point. You can leave a place behind, but your secrets will just follow you. Maybe the best thing to do is stay put and ride it out.”

“I don’t want to wake up another day and see the Langley house.”

She had a point there.

“What about Derek?” she asked. “You think he’s going to be okay?”

“He’ll manage. He’s tougher than we give him credit for.”

Ellen powered down the windows, killed the engine. “You saw what he did this morning, didn’t you?”

“What?” I said as hot, humid air rushed into the car.

“He took one of your paintings, that one you did of the Berkshires, from the shed and put it on the wall in his room.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

Decorating his cell, I thought.

“He saved our lives,” I said. “When Drew was distracted by Conrad.”

Ellen reached over and held my hand, gave it a squeeze. “I’m going to send my resume to a whole bunch of public relations agencies. All over the country. And if I can’t get something from that, I’ll try something else.”

“I’m sure wherever it is, there’ll be grass to cut,” I said.

“Do something else,” Ellen said. “You could teach art. Work in a gallery. Go back to painting.”

“We’ll see.”

Ellen took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, preparing herself.

“You ready?” I asked her.

She glanced at me and tried to smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Because there’s going to be a lot of fallout from this. For you. For Conrad’s estate, his publisher, a whole lot of people.”

“Sometimes, even if it takes ten years to get around to it, you have to do the right thing,” Ellen said, and got out of the car.

Together, we walked up to Agnes Stockwell’s door to tell her that she needn’t feel guilty any longer, that her son, Brett, did not kill himself, that he was an acclaimed and published author, that he had died trying to save my wife’s life.