Beyond Midnight (69 page)

She swung her sore hand in a wide arc around her.
"
For
this,
Nat! For all of this.
"

Obviously it had never occurred to him.
"
That
'
s insane!
"
he said.
"
How could she think I
'
d offer it to her?
"

I
f the situation weren
'
t so tragic, it would almost be laughable. He was so naive.
"
She looks like an empress, Nat; all she lacks is the empire! She wouldn
'
t be the first woman to do what it takes to get one.
"

He was still incredulous.
"
I can
'
t believe she
'
d do something that
...
speculative!
"

"
For God
'
s sake, you work in the stock market,
"
Helen cried.
"
Does The Great Depression mean anything to you?
"

"
Jesus.
"

They were wasting time.
"
Nat
—
you know and I know that Linda is innocent. She didn
'
t overdose, and she didn
'
t commit suicide. Nat—you
know
that. After last night—you know!
"

It was the first time since he
'
d come to her in the middle of the night, devastated by grief and remorse, that Helen had alluded to his experience. It was too sacred to invoke lightly, but Helen was invoking it now.

Some of what he
'
d felt last night came back to him in a rush; she could see it in his face. He bent his head, deep in concentration.

When he looked up again, his face was grim.
"
The police won
'
t be able to do anything this fast,
"
he said.
"
But I can call my bank.
"

They went into his study and he looked up the phone number, telling Helen what he
'
d paid Peaches, explaining to her that the only place where she could cash a check on the spot for that size was the bank the check was drawn on.

"
I
'
ll tell them there was a problem,
"
he said, punching in the number.
"
I
'
ll get them to try to stall. I
'
ll go to the bank; you call the police. Get them here. You can keep me posted on my cell phone.
"

The meander through the bank
'
s hierarchy took an agony of minutes. Helen spent them pacing between the twin leather wing chairs that flanked the desk. Once, she stopped to stare through the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the lush garden and vine-covered bricks of one wing of the house. Was the owl still there? She wished she knew.

Finally Nat hung up.
"
Okay, we
'
re set. When she gets there, they
'
ll take their time. I
'
m on my way. Keep an eye on Katie, would you?
"

Helen nodded, eager to have him off in pursuit. He was walking past the sycamore table in the hall when the phone rang.
"
Maybe the bank,
"
he said, pausing to answer.

But it wasn
'
t the bank. Nat
'
s face looked startled, then glad, then calm by turns.
"
Hey,
"
he said casually. He gave Helen a fierce look, then put his index finger to his lips before he said,
"
How
'
s it goin
'
, Russ?
"

R
ussell.
It was all Helen could do not to cry out his name. With a wrenching effort, she made herself keep silent as she crept up to Nat
'
s side and tried to overhear what her son was saying.

But this was Russell. He wasn
'
t saying much. Between Nat
'
s
"
uh-huh
'
s
"
and
"
mm-h
m
m
'
s,
"
she wasn
'
t able to make out a single word, only that it was definitely Russ
'
s voice, mumbly and reluctant.

Was he hungry? Was he safe? Was he near? Helen tried to mouth the phrases for Nat to ask, then abandoned the attempt when he turned his back on her to concentrate.

"
Yeah, I thought it was you
...
yeah
...
sure, I don
'
t blame you. Mm-hmm
...
okay
See you soon
.
"

Nat hung up. Helen grabbed his arm and cried,
"'
See you soon
'
? He
'
s coming home? What does that mean,
'
See you soon
'
? Is he all right? Is he—?
"

Nat cut in quickly to say,
"
He sounded okay, Helen. Tired. Disheartened, maybe. But he sounded okay. He wants to meet with me to talk.
"

"
Meet with you! Where? When?
"

"
Right now. I can
'
t tell you where; he asked me not to.
"

"
What?
You
have
to tell me!
"

"
I gave him my word, Helen; don
'
t ask me that.
"

"
Nat—I
'
m his
mother.
You have to tell me, Nat!
"
she cried, cut down by his impossible demand.

Nat frowned, then shook his head with an anguished look of his own.
"
Don
'
t look at me like that, Helen. If Russ and I are going to have any kind of life together, then he has to feel he can trust me.
"

"
Yes,
"
she said numbly.
"
I understand.
"
She was almost to the point where she did understand. Instead she bowed her head and whispered,
"
All I ask is where he is. That
'
s all.
"

Nat let out an exasperated, tormented sigh.
"
All right! I
'
ll tell you, but on God
'
s honor, you can
'
t ever let him know that I did. He
'
s at the Common. With any luck I can bring him back here to you and still make it to the bank in time to intercept Peaches.
"

Peaches! Helen had forgotten completely about her.
"
Yes
...
hurry,
"
she urged.

He left her and she rushed to the salon that fronted the street, throwing open the inside shutters in time to see him tear off in the Porsche. Light poured through the formal, empty room, highlighting the subtle patina of well-polished wood, the bleached antiquity of the patterned rug, but making the room look, somehow, more unused than ever. Too many ghosts. Helen shuddered and fled upstairs to tend to poor, neglected Katie, an innocent pawn in a game to which only Peaches knew the rules.

But Helen found that she could no more focus on Katie than she could memorize the Constitution. Her concentration was somewhere else entirely, with her own lost child. The decision she made to call Becky was no decision at all; it was an act of pure, driving instinct.

"
Becky!
"
she said when her daughter answered the phone.
"
Thank God you
'
re home. Russell
'
s back. I
'
m at Nat
'
s. How fast can you get here? Don
'
t ask questions, honey—move!
"

Becky, loyal soldier, said excitedly,
"
I
'
m on my way, Mom!
"

Helen waited and paced, beside herself with anxiety. What if Nat couldn
'
t persuade Russ to stay? Only mothers could do that. No one was closer to a son than his mother. Nat couldn
'
t understand about Russell and Hank. He said himself he hadn
'
t been close to his own father. And in any case, she was the one who
'
d said the hurtful things that drove Russ away; she was the one, the only one, who could take them back.

Before Becky got the chance to put a foot over the threshold, Helen was out the door.

"
Watch Katie!
"
she cried over her shoulder to her astonished daughter.
"
I just want to make sure Russ is okay. I just want to see. I
'
ll be back
...
few minutes, tops. Watch Katie!
"

She ran to her Volvo—amazingly, still in the street with its engine running and driver-side door open—and got
in,
racing toward the rendezvous spot
while
trying out excuses in her mind to account for her presence o
n the Common if she were seen.

****

A block away on Summer Street, Peaches watched from her car as the white Volvo streaked through the intersection.

Goodness. Everyone'
s in such
a
hurry today,
she thought with a grim smile. She pulled back out into traffic, ready to make the loop back around to
Chestnut Street
.

All in all, it had been a good decision not to race them to the bank. Why risk everything for six months
'
wages when there was a whole damned pension plan, wrapped up in velvet, waiting under
a seat cushion in Nat's study?

**
*
*

If Helen had been born two hundred years earlier, she might have been going off to the Common—known then as the Swamp—for no other reason than to fetch the family livestock after a day of grazing. But she was a thoroughly modern woman on a desperately modern mission: to reconnect with her son.

Surely the Common was the place to do it. The family shared a lifetime of memories there, all of them happy. Concerts, kites and ice cream; May Days, Haunted Houses, and caroling—nothing bad had ever happened to them at the Common.

Pray God today was no different.

She pressed forward on her mission, leaning over the wheel like a jockey over his steed, urging the car forward. Pointless: traffic was bumper to bumper. Worse still, there were no parking places anywhere near the Common. Since it was midday on a Friday, it should
'
ve come as no surprise; but Helen was moving in a dream, where neither time nor days had meaning.

She crept along
Hawthorne Boulevard
and then, in desperation, brazenly fell in with the cars looping around the Common, scanning the triangle of green for signs of Russ and Nat. She passed almost under the shadow of the memorial to Roger Conant, the site of the mischief that had started it all; but her mind, heart, and soul were focused on the park.

She saw them before they saw her and slammed on her brakes. They were sitting on a bench at the north end, as far from the crush of tourists milling around the
Witch
Museum
as they could get. Helen let out her breath in a burst of relief, like a diver who
'
s been under water too long.
He
'
s home
...
alive
...
safe
...
with Nat.

Her heart went out to both of them: to the man and to the boy, both of them feeling their way gingerly through the conversation, both of them in clothes that could use a wash. Nat was turned part of the way around to face Russ, listening intently to him. He was leaning with his right forearm on his thigh, his left hand gripping the backrest behind Russ
'
s shoulder. Russ was sitting bolt upright, his palms flat on the bench alongside him, the toes of his Nikes lifting and fa
ll
ing alternately. Once or twice he lifted one hand to make a point.