Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

“And what’s all that concrete there, that trough running through the yard.”

It stung to hear his handiwork called a trough. Josh answered slowly. “It’s a water feature. It’s not turned on yet; the owner didn’t want it started until all the rest of the work was done. She’ll have a little stream that encircles the house. She calls it a moat. She hasn’t decided yet if she wants stepping-stones or an ornamental bridge for crossing it. She hasn’t chosen the lilies for it either. I told her she might want to put koi in there. Be real pretty.”

“Yes. It would. Moving water is always pretty. Here. Let me give you a hand with that gate,” the old man offered, surprising Josh and making him feel a bit more kindly toward him. The visitor’s canvas satchel clanked heavily when he set it down. The old fellow was stronger than he looked. He helped lift the gate and then held it steady while Josh aligned the two halves of the hinges. “She say why she wanted all this stuff done?” the man asked him, his voice tight with the effort of holding the gate steady.

Josh didn’t want to answer him, but it seemed stingy to be rude while the fellow was still holding the gate in place for him. He took a breath and then spoke reluctantly. “She’s afraid of vampires.” The pin was being stubborn about dropping down into the hinge. He wriggled it hopefully, and it dropped a quarter inch. “All this stuff, the crosses and the silver, the garlic and wolfsbane, and all this stuff is supposed to keep vampires away. They can’t cross it, she says. You and I might think that’s silly, but she says her husband was killed by a vampire, and she’s never gotten over it. Never been able to forget it, never been able to forgive it.” The little holes for the pin were not lining up. Josh grunted as he tried to edge the pieces into a better alignment. “I think she’s a little bit crazy, but she pays me on time.”

“She told you all that?” The man gasped out the words. Evidently holding up the wrought-iron gate was a harder task for him than Josh had thought.

“Yeah. Lift a little more, I nearly got the hinges lined up. She said it happened a long time ago, but it couldn’t have been that long. She doesn’t look any older than my kid sister, and she’s just twenty-two. That’s one pin in, just let me get the second one. Mrs. Reid said she loved her husband more than life itself, more than she loved herself. Kind of funny. She’s said that to me about six times now. That she wishes she’d realized sooner that she loved him more than life itself. That it would have changed everything.”

The stranger lost his grip on the gate for a second, but it was all right. Josh had just slid the pin into place. “You can let go now,” he told the man.

The old man did, and then he turned abruptly away. He coughed a couple of times and then pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “She in there now, you think?”

“Oh, sure. She works at night, sleeps days. I think she’s a writer or something. She told me that on the phone first time she called me. ‘Hope you don’t mind me calling so late, but I’m a night person,’ she said. I suspect she doesn’t sleep well at night. Too afraid of the vampires.” He shook his head in sympathy for the woman. “Well. Just about done here. Only thing left to do is set the stop for the gate, and then start her water flowing. Should be done just about sunset. Then I’ll get my pay and be gone.”

The old man turned, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and then turned back to him. The lines on his face seemed deeper. He cleared his throat. “So she’ll be coming out to pay you tonight?”

“Like clockwork. Every Thursday, right about sundown. Always pays cash, and last time, there were three old silver certificates mixed in with the regular bills. I showed them to her and told her that they were worth more than the others, that she should sell them to a coin collector or something. She just laughed and said money was just paper to her and that I could do whatever I wanted with them. She’s a nice lady.”

The old man cleared his throat again. “I might just stand here and wait with you for her to come out. That okay with you?”

“Sure. I don’t mind. Long as you don’t mind me finishing up my chore here.” He was getting more and more uncomfortable with the man’s questions. He decided to take a direct approach. “Look, Mister, if you’re a visitor, you can go knock on her door. I’m not the watchman or anything like that. I’m just the local handyman, doing odd jobs. She might already be awake.”

“I think I’ll just wait here with you, if it’s all the same to you. It’s a pleasure to watch a workman finish a task. Always good to see a job finished. Especially one that’s been a long time in the works.” A thin smile came to the old man’s face.

Well, he was an odd duck. “Fine with me.” Josh shrugged. There wasn’t much left for him to do. He had a piece of iron pipe to pound into the ground, and then a sack of dry Redi-Mix and just enough water in a jerrican to finish up the job. Once the pipe was set in the ground, the catch for the gate would drop into it and hold it shut until someone lifted the latch. He’d already wrapped the latch handle in silver wire like she’d requested. He’d done that job on his workbench the night before, trying to lay the coils smooth and flat. He’d done a pretty good job, he thought. The silver looked nice against the black of the wrought iron.

The man was mostly quiet as he watched Josh work. Once he took out a pocket watch and consulted it, and then glanced up at the sky. “Going to be dark soon,” he commented, and Josh nodded. He troweled the concrete flat and checked his work with a level. “That’s done,” he said, and with a grunt and a groan, he got to his feet. As he packed up his tools and tidied away the empty Redi-Mix bag, the lights in the cottage came on. “And just in time,” he added.

The stranger didn’t say a word. He just stood, staring toward the house, so silent he seemed to be holding his breath. His right hand stole into his coat pocket. He stared at the cottage door, and when the porch light came on, he gave a small gasp. A moment later, the door opened and Mrs. Reid stood framed in it. The porch light lit her as if it were a spotlight on a stage. She was dressed, as she always was, in what Josh had come to think of as her mourning dress. It was a simple shirtwaist dress, like something his mother might have worn in her youth, in a sensible dark fabric. Her hair framed her brow in two smooth dark wings that were pulled back into a loose bun at the back of her neck. Her makeup was perfect, but dated, as if she’d copied it from an old magazine. She looked at the both of them and did not speak.

“Evening, Mrs. Reid. I’m just finishing up here,” he said, when the silence seemed to stretch a bit too long.

“And just when you said you would,” she replied. Her voice was pleasant and husky and her words articulated. Her eyes moved from him to the stranger. Josh waited for the man to say something. When he didn’t, he filled in.

“I try to make my estimates as exact as I can. And when you’ve been a handyman as long as I have, well, you get a fair idea of how long a job should take. Now, this cement is still wet, so try to use the gate latch as little as possible until it’s set.”

“I won’t use it at all,” she promised promptly. But she seemed to aim her words at the man next to him. The stranger spoke suddenly.

“I got a letter. All these years of trying to track you down, and suddenly a letter comes and tells me exactly where you are. I should have known it came from you.”

She nodded slowly.

“So, all those years, did you know where I was?”