All of Us and Everything (30 page)

They pulled up to the house on Asbury Avenue by midafternoon and found three men standing on the lawn.

One was Olive Pedestro's son. He was walking the two dogs—Ingmar and Toby—and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

“The dogs,” Augusta said. “Why isn't Jessamine walking them?”

“Maybe she's taken the day off and got Virgil to cover for her,” Ru said.

Jessamine never spontaneously took the day off.

“Clifford Wells,” Liv said, recognizing the second man on the lawn from the engagement page.

“Go ahead and call dibs,” Ru said. “Just please don't eat him alive.”

“I'm in no condition, to be honest,” Liv said.

Atty pointed to the third man. He had sandy windblown hair and wore khakis and a pale-pink polo shirt. He stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking up on the toes of his loafers.

“One of yours?” Esme asked Liv.

“Nope.”

“And it's not Teddy Whistler,” Atty said.

“Though he does have a history of stalking our front lawn,” Liv said.

“Where is Teddy Whistler now anyway?” Liv said.

“Well, it's Saturday so…” Ru checked the time on her phone. “He's probably getting ready to crash a wedding.”

“Oh, I know who that is,” Augusta said. “It's Herc Huckley's son.”

“Herc Huckley's son?” Nick said. “Why is he here?”

“He wants to ask you about the contents of a certain box,” Augusta said.

Atty told Olive Pedestro's son that her grandmother would settle up with him later on.

“She's kind of busy,” Atty said, watching her grandmother introduce her bandaged-up grandfather to the son of a man named Herc Huckley. “Her husband got shot yesterday so, you know…”

“Her husband?”

“Yeah,” Atty said, taking the leashes from him.

Augusta and Nick started talking to the stranger and, together, they stepped into the house.

Meanwhile Ru said hello and Cliff said hello. They stood there a few minutes and then she started twisting the engagement ring off her finger. She handed it to him and said, “Do you want to come in for a drink?”

Cliff looked at Esme and Liv. “Your sisters, I take it?”

She nodded.

“And your mom is with…?”

“My father, actually.”

“Wow. That's big.”

Ru nodded. “It's pretty huge.”

“And your niece? Atty, right?” He pointed at Atty, who was now holding the leashes and staring straight up at the dark clouds overhead.

“Do you want to meet everyone?” Ru asked.

Liv and Esme stopped Virgil Pedestro as he was making his way back to his house and talked him into helping them unstrap the glass display case of taxidermied squirrels off the roof rack of the station wagon. He was rounding the car, sizing up the job.

“Are those squirrels?” Cliff asked.

“Yes, and they're boxing.”

Cliff tilted his head. “I see that.”

“I don't think they were caught in the wild that way.”

“One would assume not,” Cliff said.

“How's the Sony gig?” Ru asked. “Did I tell you how happy I am for you?”

“I think you did, but you're not.”

“I'm trying to be.”

He then stared at Ru, tilting his head in the same way he'd looked at the boxing squirrels. “You were in love with me at some point in time, right?”

“At many points in time,” she said, though now she knew it wasn't true. She'd never felt what she felt for Teddy—something like being struck, to be honest, as in
lovestruck.
Sometimes words were so simple. She'd never thought of it as being struck like a bell and then walking around vibrating with love, the shock of it.

“I see,” Cliff said.

“I'm so sorry about everything,” Ru said.

He put the ring in his pocket and then started breathing heavily. He bent over and put his hands on his knees.

“Are you okay?”

“Uh, no. I'm not okay! Jesus! I can't even look at you. I can't…” He then straightened up, but he did it too fast. He reached out, and she tried to steady him with both of her hands, but he tipped backward then tried to right himself too quickly, driving his knees into the soft dirt of the lawn. “Jesus,” he whispered. “I didn't believe it. I thought, all along, I thought once you saw me…I thought you'd realize…”

“Hey!” she shouted to her sisters. “I need a little help here!”

Esme and Liv walked over quickly, leaving Virgil Pedestro to wrestle bungee cords and rope.

“I think he's having a panic attack,” Ru said.

“Let's bring him in,” Esme whispered.

Liv and Esme steadied him, guiding him to the front door. Only Ru stayed in the yard. She watched them walk him to the door and disappear into the house. Then Liv immediately turned back, grayed behind the screen. She pushed it open and walked back down the steps and across the yard, passing Ru. She opened the car door, pulled out one of her oversized leather bags. She walked to Ru, reached into the bag, and handed her a picture book.

“Ping,” Liv said softly. “You remember this book, I guess, because you remember everything.”

Ru held the book. “This book scarred me as a child.”

“Of course it did. You were the littlest duck.”

Ru flipped through pages. “Why are you giving it to me?”

“I don't know,” Liv said. “Except I don't think you're Ping, Ru. I'm Ping. I've been out in the wilds. I've been lost and almost eaten alive like Ping here and I've seen the birds who are slaves to men, and I'm glad I'm home.”

“Thank you.” Ru closed the book and held it to her chest. “I'm going after Teddy Whistler. I'm going to try to win him back before he wins Amanda back.”

“And I might go and cherry-pick your ex-fiancé.”

“That's okay with me.”

“It's good to have sisters.”

“I think so,” Ru said. “I don't know who I'd be without you two. A lost star with no constellation.”

“Right.”

The note was taped to the front door.

Augusta,

Dogs taken care of. Casseroles in the fridge.

Off to the beach for the day—to live a little.

Live a little,

Jessamine

Augusta held the note so tightly that it fluttered in her hand. Jessamine was going to live a little and she suggested Augusta do the same. This was what living felt like, Augusta thought, and it was thrilling and surreal. She looked at Nick and there was no realism here. This man she'd known and not known all these years—a man she'd met by chance in a freak storm—was back in her life.

And this man, the son of Herc Huckley, who showed up as the result of another freak storm, was standing in her entranceway.

“I don't think we're up for this conversation now, Bill,” Augusta told Herc Huckley's son.

“But you are Flemming,” Bill said to Nick, “right?”

Nick nodded.

Esme and Atty walked into the house, escorting Ru's fiancé, who looked pale and slack-jawed. Esme said, “Excuse us! Just passing through!”

“You started The Amateur Assassins Club?”

“Long, long ago.”

“And my father…” Bill said.

“He was a good man,” Nick told him.

“Was he?” Bill asked. “I mean, he was always, I don't know, afraid.”

“He was a better man than I was,” Nick said. “He could hold steady. I couldn't. There's strength in holding steady in this world.”

“Let's get you up to bed,” Augusta said to Nick. “You need to rest.”

“Yes, okay, sorry to intrude,” Bill said. “I hope you're feeling better soon, and maybe we'll talk again.”

Augusta and Nick slowly climbed the stairs.

This was where Liv found Bill Huckley. He was staring at the ground with his hands on his hips. “You look like you could use a drink.”

“Are you offering?”

“Follow me.”

Clifford Wells and Bill Huckley were given the good Scotch, kept in the back of the cabinet. They all sat down at the dining room table. Cliff's hand was shaking as he sipped. Bill tapped his glass on the table's edge.

Atty unleashed the dogs, who curled up under the table.

Huckley explained how he'd come to see Augusta Rockwell with the box of letters. “My father was in The Amateur Assassins Club with Nick Flemming.”

“The Amateur
Assassins
Club?” Atty asked, with delight in her voice.

“Don't,” Esme said. “Just please.”

“I'm actually thinking of starting a movement,” Atty said.

And Esme had a tiny pinprick of a memory—the desire to start a movement of her own—in defiance of her mother. Maybe that's what each generation had to do to define who they were. Now that she thought about it, she was sure that this had been the subject of her college entrance essay. She'd announced to the Ivy Leagues that she was going to start a movement. What kind? She couldn't recall. It was a total blank.

Bill looked at them searchingly, as if he might be able to recognize their faces somehow. “And you all are his girls, the ones he was always writing about. Let me guess.” He rubbed his chin. “Your name starts with
L,
” he said to Liv. “And yours with
E,
” he said to Esme. “And you must be young A? Where's R?”

“She left me,” Cliff whispered. It was the first coherent word he'd uttered since his collapse on the lawn. “Who's Flemming?”

“He's our father,” Liv said.

“He's been shot,” Esme added.

“It's like someone had to take some kind of blame,” Atty said, “like we had to play it out somehow and this was how it went.”

“Jesus,” Cliff said. “This is a dangerous place.”

Liv patted his arm. “You have no idea.”

“I had a short-lived drug problem too,” Atty said. “Very short-lived, but I learned some valuable lessons.” She decided on the topic of her college entrance exam. She'd been mocked by her peers, kicked out of school and home, abandoned by her father. She'd been doped up on Valium and witnessed a shooting. But when you really looked at it, maybe all this meant was that she was a survivor.

“In the letters,” Bill said, in a hushed voice, “it seemed like Nick Flemming was very, um, involved in your lives, but from afar. It's almost like he…”

“He rigged my life,” Esme said, and then she sighed. “But I accepted the rigging. In fact, I'm probably my father's primary accomplice.” Her eyes were glassy and distant.

Atty stood up and nodded at Cliff. “What do you think?” she said to Liv.

“I've got to work on my own personal Zen,” Liv said. She was thinking about what Atty had said about how Liv had gotten wealthy men to marry her:
Love must love you.
She wanted love to love her. She wanted to believe in love. “You know, it's okay if you fire me and want to get out from under my wing. I get it.”

“No, I like it,” Atty said. “It's been really educational.” She noticed Ingmar and Toby curled up together in the corner, which was sweet in a way she couldn't possibly feel jaded about. She announced to the rest of the room, “I'm going for a walk.”

“It's going to rain,” Esme said, but it felt like the last warning she'd ever give as the mother of a child; Atty was changing before her eyes. Telling her to put on rain boots and bring an umbrella—those days were over.

“Then I'll walk in the rain.”

Atty marched out of the dining room through the living room, passing the many faces of dead Rockwells, and out the front door.

There, in the middle of the cramped front yard, was the glass case of boxing squirrels. Virgil Pedestro must have wrestled them loose from the hood of the station wagon and then abandoned them. The station wagon was gone now. Ru must have taken it. Atty assumed she was crashing a wedding or trying to stop the crashing of a wedding.