Better Than This (39 page)

“Sally? Are you there? Pick up if you are, okay? I need to talk to you.”

Nothing. I hung up and tried again and went through the same routine. Now I started to get worried. Either she wasn’t picking up, or she wasn’t there. I tried her cell phone but it was turned off. A disturbing possibility occurred to me. I grabbed my phone and told Stacey that if she heard from Marcus she was to tell him I needed to talk to him.

“Tell him it’s important.”

“When will you be back?” she called out as I went out the door.

“I’m not sure.”

It took me forty minutes to get home, and even as I pulled in the driveway I knew what I’d find. Sally’s car wasn’t in the garage. Inside the house I went up the stairs calling her name. I found her closet almost empty, her drawers stripped and her make-up and toilet things were missing from the bathroom. I went right through the house but she hadn’t left a note. The flowers I’d brought home the day before lay where I’d left them on the bench. The petals were already curling, their colour fading from lack of water.

Sally had gone.

Part Three

I have no recollection as to what I thought about when I drove to Oregon that night. I made one stop on the way through the city to go to the office where I pulled the blinds and closed the door before I unlocked the drawer where I kept the old cigar box that contained my dad’s gun. I took out the disc with the program on it and locked that back in the drawer, but the box went with me. I kept it on the passenger seat of the car as I drove north on the interstate past Sacramento and then on up to the state line. As it grew dark I became weary. The oncoming lights blurred now and then and a couple of times I pulled over to snatch twenty minutes sleep, and once I reached Oregon I stopped for an hour. After that I was fine.

It wasn’t until I started again that I began to give consideration to what my intentions were. Until that point the driving and staying awake had been enough to occupy my mind and keep me from thinking about anything much. I finally pulled over at a stop where I bought some coffee and stood outside to drink it in the early light, breathing the cool air beneath a grey sky. When I was done I tossed the cup in a trash can and found a public phone where I called information and asked for the listed number of a Garrison Hunt in White Falls.

“I have a listing at Cedar Drive. Thirteen thirty-three.”

“That’s the one,” I said and I wrote it down.

I went back to my car and drove on until I reached the next exit, and then I followed the highway inland until I hit the turnoff for the county road to White Falls. By ten o’clock I was only a couple of miles away. I passed by a diner and half a mile on I slowed and swung around and I went back and sat in a booth with a cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes I’d bought. I took the cigar box inside with me and left it on the table. When the waitress wasn’t about I opened it and slipped out my dad’s note. I read it through once, even though I knew it by heart. At first I didn’t know what any of it had to do with me being where I was or what answers I hoped to find there.

My dad took his own life because the intricate machinery of his mind was more finely tuned than is the case for most of us. It required less to upset the balance. The failure of his business was the collapse of everything he’d worked for all his life. He’d always had faith in the idea that if a man worked hard and honestly, and provided he was suited to the work he did and could do it at least as well as the next man, then he would be fairly rewarded for his labours. But he learned that isn’t true. When he was forced out of business, it wasn’t just his livelihood that he lost, it was his identity. Everything he believed in, that had made him who he was, was taken away. In one fell swoop he understood that hard work and honesty count for little in an age when big is best and the little guy can be shoved aside in an instant on the whim of some faceless executive a thousand miles away. He felt like his whole life had been ground into the dust then tossed aside like so much worthless scrap. The delicate spinning cogs and wheels inside his brain seized up and a black veil fell over him. Another person might have picked themselves up and started again, got a job somewhere. But not my dad. He couldn’t face the disintegration of his universe and so he took the .38 and blew out his brains.

The past remains with us for all our lives. The years of our childhood are like the heat of the forge, the hammer blows of the blacksmith the accumulated experiences that shape us as people as surely as a lump of metal is transformed into something useful. I grew up keenly missing my dad’s presence. He left me at an age when I needed him most, when I needed him to guide me through the transitional years from boy to man. All the occasions when the changes his death brought on our lives made me feel excluded or separate or simply confused were in themselves of little consequence. But collectively they were filtered through an idea my dad’s note had planted in my mind, that when you get down to the line it’s the little guy against the world and if you want to survive and keep control of your life you better make money. The more the better. This seed was fed and watered abundantly by experience as I grew older. Everywhere I turned was the proof that money governs all. Like it or not, there’s no escaping it. Even when I met the woman I fell in love with and married I couldn’t forget, because if I ever did Sally’s mother was there waiting to remind me.

I had no guilt about selling Leonard Hoffman’s program to Morgan. It didn’t matter to Hoffman, and Morgan had cheated his partner to make his fortune so I wasn’t about to feel sorry for him. Even after he’d paid me off he would still have more money than he could spend in a lifetime. Dexter was a different matter, but he was no angel either. I would have to live with what had happened. But it was all worth nothing without Sally. She was the one thing that was pure and good in my life. I loved her as much as I ever had, perhaps more. What was the point in having done the things I had to wrestle control of my life from indiscriminate forces if Sally was gone? And in case I should have any doubts about any of this, where had she gone? She’d run away to be with Garrison Hunt who had grown up rich and never knew what it was like to be like the rest of us, prey to the whims of our boss, or some scheming bastard like Dexter. It seemed to be one irony too many for me to take.

I got up at last and tucked the cigar box under my arm as I paid for my coffee. The waitress gave me a smile and wished me a good day, but she sounded as if she meant it. She was in her late thirties and wore a wedding band. The skin of her hands was roughened and wrinkled from her work. She chatted to her customers and brought them their food and was on her feet all day. I expect she had a husband at home and a couple of kids and by the time she went to bed every night she was exhausted. I’d parked next to a rusting six-year-old Toyota in the lot which perhaps belonged to her. She and her husband

3 3

probably struggled to pay their bills every month. Maybe he worked in a local factory that could close down any time because somebody a thousand miles away decided to buy it up and move production somewhere more convenient, or because doing so might earn him a few points against some rival in the corporate structure. I tipped her and she called me back holding up the bill.

“Hey, I think you made a mistake this is a ten.”

“No mistake,” I said.

She smiled. “Thanks. Have a good day.”

Well, perhaps I would.

It didn’t take long to reach White Falls, the town where Sally had grown up. I knew if I turned right at the gas station and passed through the centre of town I’d soon find myself at the house where Ellen and Frank still lived. At a store I asked the way to Cedar Drive and wrote down the directions. It turned out to be a road that led out of town which began with houses on either side, which petered out until a couple of miles further on there were hardly any. I found the address I’d written down, where Garrison Hunt lived. The house had been there for generations, set in acres of land and announced by a driveway barred by a white wooden gate, beyond which it led back through the woods. The gate was open, so I turned off the road and drove on through. It took several minutes to reach the house. Unlike the massive tasteless pile where Nelson Morgan lived, this was imposing but much more refined. It was built on three floors, a rectangular shape in English Georgian style with symmetrically placed tall windows in rows and a sloping slate roof. The outside was rendered plaster painted an off-white shade, and the garden and grounds that surrounded it were planted with mature trees that had probably been established for a hundred years or more. The entire place, surrounded by woods and fields as it was, spoke of old money, family money that Garrison Hunt and his forebears had made from land over several generations. Out front was parked a four wheel drive, and in a building the size of a family house that was evidently the garage the back of another car was visible, though it wasn’t Sally’s.

3 4

After I’d stopped I put my dad’s gun in my pocket and went to the front door. While I waited a dog barked from out back somewhere, and then the door was opened. I recognized Garrison right away. I’d only met him once when I was dating Sally, but he hadn’t changed a lot. His hair remained thick, his smooth good looks were unblemished and he had the healthy glow of those who live in the outdoors. Unlike me he wasn’t showing any grey. He was wearing blue jeans and boots and a worn cotton shirt. Behind him was a cavernous entrance hall with doors leading to rooms on either side and a wide carpeted staircase. The floor was made of wood parquet which years of use had rendered slightly battered and scratched. Rock music filtered down from an upper floor.

“Hi,” Garrison said with slightly quizzical intonation.

I gave him a moment, waiting for the inevitable flash of recognition. Though he and Sally weren’t aware that I knew about them, and so wouldn’t be expecting me to turn up on their doorstep quite this soon, I figured the penny would drop. It didn’t, however, which seemed like an added insult.

“You don’t know who I am do you?” I said at last.

His pleasant smile faltered. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure that I do.” He peered more closely but still couldn’t place me.

My hand closed around the handle of the .38 in my pocket and I wondered if I brought it out it might jog his memory. “Where’s Sally?” I demanded.

He was distracted as I spoke because at that moment a dog came bounding through the hall. It rushed towards the door, some big hairy breed with a gruff deep bark like a bear. I stepped back in alarm.

“Jenny, get this dog out of here,” Garrison hollered as he seized it by the collar and dragged it back across the floor. A teenage girl appeared.

“Sorry,” she said and took hold of the dog’s collar. “Come on, Harry. Get back here.” She started dragging the unwilling beast away even though it was big enough to bowl her over with just one swipe of its dinner-plate sized paws.

“My niece,” Garrison explained when he turned back to me.

“Look, why don’t you come inside? We can talk somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”

I didn’t argue, but followed him across the hall and into a large room filled with comfortable, if slightly worn furniture. The fabric on the couches was faded and even frayed here and there. Rugs that were thrown on the floor looked as if they had once been luxurious and expensive but that was in the dim and distant past. Now they were well used and the patterns were melting away.

Garrison stood by the fireplace, and though he invited me to sit I didn’t. I could see from the way he was looking at me that he felt as if he should know me, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t fit a name to the face. I didn’t help him out. At one end of the room, by the window there was a pile of children’s toys scattered on the floor. Upstairs the sound of rock music got suddenly louder then abruptly faded when a woman’s voice shouted for it to be turned down.

“My sister and her family are staying with us right now,” Garrison offered in explanation. “It’s kind of a mad house here today.” He smiled disarmingly, and then held out his arms in a gesture of defeat. “Look I’m sorry, you obviously know me, but I’m afraid I can’t place you.”

I hadn’t expected this. I’d thought he might try and stop me from seeing Sally, but not this. The only thing I could figure was that they had seen me drive up and decided to try playing it dumb.

“I want to see her,” I said flatly.

“See who?”

My hand closed around the gun again. I thought this would be so much quicker if I pointed it at him, but for the moment I refrained. “Let’s drop this facade shall we, Garrison. Where’s Sally?”

“Sally?”

Either he was a brilliant actor, or he was telling the truth, because for a second or two he looked blank, then at last a glimmer of memory stirred.

“Wait a minute.” He snapped his fingers. “Yes! You’re Nick

Weston aren’t you? You married Sally Johnson.” He looked totally surprised and a little bewildered. “Are you here visiting?”

“I came to see Sally,” I told him, but by now my befuddled brain was clearing and a faint unease was stirring.

His bewilderment increased and then the door behind me opened and a woman’s voice said, “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

I turned to find an attractive woman with tousled blonde hair in the doorway. She looked from me to Garrison with an expression of mild inquiry.

“This is…” Garrison paused for a fraction. “Nick Weston. Nick married an old friend of mine from town. Sally Johnson, as she was then. You know, Frank and Ellen Johnson?”

The woman smiled and came forward with outstretched hand, though behind the smile she looked vaguely uncertain. There was a mirror on the wall by the door, and I caught sight of my own reflection in it. I was unshaven and there was a kind of wild look in my eye and I saw how I must appear to them.

“My wife, Kate,” Garrison said.

I shook her hand in numb response as the blood drained from my face and I felt the world spinning out of kilter. Kate Hunt smiled pleasantly and said hello, but when she looked towards her husband I saw his quick shrug of incomprehension. She handled the moment smoothly.