Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“The lawsuit will benefit us. This family. That’s why I’m doing it.”

“No you’re not! You don’t need FERAL to sue Adirondack. You could sue them without all this ridiculous animal rights nonsense, without trotting out my brother-”

“No one is going to trot out your brother.”

“You could do this without Dominique or Keenan. I like Keenan fine, but lately Dominique… before the accident, you and Dominique…” She shook her head: This wasn’t about Dominique. She knew that Dominique had no romantic interest in her husband, but sometimes it seemed Spencer had an almost slavish devotion to her. The two of them shared an obsessive interest in beleaguered prairie dogs, whales, and chinchillas. They were soldiers together in their fanatical cause, and-in New York and on the road-they were often together. She wondered why, suddenly, she was jealous of Dominique, and all she could think of was that she was angry at the woman for all the hours she had kept Spencer away from his family over the last five or six years-and, yes, used him. And now she was using him again. Using his disability. Keenan was, too. They all were. That whole hideous organization that cared more about pandas than people.

“What about Dominique?” he asked.

“Nothing about Dominique.”

“No, something’s going on in your head. What?”

“Look, this isn’t about Dominique. It’s about Charlotte. It’s about John. You know how I hate this whole thing. I’m only having breakfast with Paige tomorrow morning because I don’t want her alone with our daughter. I shudder when I think of the ideas she’d put into Charlotte’s head.”

As if she hadn’t spoken just now and explained herself, he said-still staring straight up at the ceiling-“If this isn’t about Dominique, I don’t know why you brought her up. We’re friends. Just like you and Eric.”

Eric, her associate from Brearley, had been at their home for dinner the night before. He’d brought with him a French green salad with basil shiitake mushrooms, a pasta dripping with a pesto he’d made of pine nuts and roasted red peppers, and a peach cobbler which he admitted he hadn’t baked himself but he assured everyone had not a drop of cream or butter in it and was built largely of soy flour and substitute eggs. He hadn’t planned to stay and eat with them, but she had insisted he remain. How could she not? He’d brought with him a small feast, every element of which (even the faux cobbler) was delicious. Had she and Eric flirted last night in front of Spencer and Charlotte? She thought not: She had been courteous and appreciative and (she hoped) charming and funny. But she didn’t believe either of them had crossed any boundaries. Sometimes, she knew, Charlotte thought she saw things that weren’t there. Her daughter didn’t realize that sometimes men and women flirted simply because they were friends, but there wasn’t anything to it. It was all part of being a grown-up. Everybody did it.

At least she presumed everybody did.

She wasn’t sure how she should respond to what Spencer had just said. Should she be defensive, or should she simply ignore the innuendo? She was angry, that was for sure. But it was also late and he was in pain. It was one thing to argue about the press conference, an issue that affected her child and her brother. It was quite another to squabble right now over… flirting.

“You’re right,” she said simply. “You’re absolutely right. And as for the press conference, I couldn’t tell you whether a surgeon should be there or not-especially since, in my opinion, there shouldn’t even be a press conference.”

He seemed to think about this, but he didn’t say anything. She considered simply turning out the light without another word, but she couldn’t bring herself to be that antagonistic. Not with him like… this. And so she leaned over and kissed him once more, a sisterly peck on the forehead. Then she curled up in a ball under the sheet, reached for the knob on the bedside lamp, and murmured a distant good night.

NAN MOVED CAREFULLY up the trail in the woods, watching for tree roots and rocks with every step. She’d been careful to park her car at the edge of the lot at the trailhead so that it was visible from the road, but this little hike had been such a spontaneous decision that she hadn’t even told Marguerite she was going. No one in the world knew she was here. She’d driven to North Conway first thing in the morning to buy bed linens at the outlet mall-some of her sheets had been in need of replacement for a very long time, and the ones in which Spencer had slept (and sweated and oozed) in his convalescence were beyond salvation-and on the way home she had surprised herself by pulling into the parking lot at the base of Artists’ Bluff, a little peak across the street from Echo Lake. Why not? she had asked herself. It wasn’t quite noon, she had sneakers in the trunk of her car, and it felt like sixty or sixty-five degrees outside. Other than the short nature walks around Sugar Hill on which she had taken her granddaughters, she hadn’t gone on a single hike this summer and already it was the second week in September.

It was only now, however, when she’d been walking alone in the woods for half an hour and begun to feel a bit winded that she began to question whether this agreeable little hike was wise. She worried suddenly (and uncharacteristically) that she might trip and break an ankle or, worse, her hip. She might be stranded here for hours. Perhaps even overnight.

No, not overnight. There had been another car in the parking lot, and so there had to be somebody else somewhere along the trail. Still, it would not be pleasant to sit for hours in the woods with a broken bone, and she was glad she had parked her automobile where people could see it.

She pushed aside a branch and continued upward. The end of the trail, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes farther, was a bluff with a panoramic vista of Cannon Mountain, Echo Lake, and, looming to the east, Mount Lafayette.

She wondered if this modest ramble had been inspired in some fashion because on the way home she had driven past the cliff on which the Old Man of the Mountain had once resided. Never had she supposed she would outlive him. Never. But she had. For only the second time since he had slid down the crag to his death-and the first since the days immediately after his collapse-she had actually pulled into the viewing area off the interstate to gaze up at the spot where ledges of red granite had once formed the face of one very tough hombre.

Tough even by her standards. The Old Man of the Mountain had never been a gentle grandfather. In Nan’s mind, he had always been the sort of character who, with a bit of bombast and a cantankerous hiss, really would have insisted that he would live free or die. Maybe that was why she liked him. In the last years of his life, of course, he’d been a little long in the tooth. Everybody knew it. He’d been forced by his mere flesh and blood caretakers-young pups a tiny fraction his age-to don steel cables and turnbuckles. To smooth epoxy on his visage like face cream.

But she still hadn’t ever expected that she would live to see him gone.

It pained Nan to admit it, but she was scared of dying. She had absolutely no confidence that anything awaited her once the old ticker broke down. And though some people, such as Walter Durnip, were fortunate enough to glissade away in their sleep-none of the pain or mess or dreadful inconvenience that came with a long illness-most were not. Most people went slowly, their vigor sapped from them bit by bit in small, degrading increments.

For all she knew, a year from now an impulsive jaunt such as this to the top of Artists’ Bluff would be impossible. For all she knew, a year from now she would be dead.