Blue Heaven (6 page)

He dug in his pocket for his cell phone and powered it up. He had forgotten to turn it back on after the airplane landed, to check for messages. Maybe something from his wife, he hoped.

There was no signal. He had not even considered this possibility. He tossed the phone on the dresser.

He turned and looked around his room. Nothing special. A television, two double beds with worn bedspreads, a telephone on the desk with a phone book no bigger than a quality paperback beside it. Faded prints of elk, deer, and geese were on the walls.

Sitting on the too-soft bed, he opened his briefcase. After placing the hinged photos of his wife and daughter on the bed stand, he pulled out a manila file and laid it near the pillow. The file was two inches thick, the edges worn, the tab stained by his own fingerprints. The writing on the tab was smeared, but he remembered sitting at his desk, eight years before, and inscribing:

This is what had brought him to Kootenai Bay. This was the unfinished business. This is what had imposed such a strain on his marriage and family and the last few years in the department. The file contained the black cloud that loomed over him, blocking sunshine, preventing him from truly retiring and starting his new life.

Eduardo Villatoro got up and went to the sliding glass door and looked out on the lake and across it to the mountains. What a different world it was than the one he had left that morning. He could not imagine fitting into this world, or wanting to. He
wished
he still had his badge and gun.

T
HEY SHOULD BE home by now,” Monica Taylor said to Tom, who had just come into the kitchen from the living room where he was furtively watching an NBA game with playoff implications. He was wearing his brown UPS uniform shirt untucked over dark shorts. He had muscular legs that were already tan, she noticed. She wished, though, that he didn’t shave them. But he had explained that it was what bodybuilders had to do before a competition: shave, wax, and oil.

Tom stopped on his way to the refrigerator and looked at the digital clock on the stove. It said 5:30. He shrugged, opened the refrigerator door. The look of absolute alarm on his face mirrored her own, but for a different reason, and he said, “What, no beer? Do I have to go get some?”

“It’s going to be dark in two hours,” she said, wiping her hands on a paper towel. “I wonder if I should call somebody.”

Three place settings were on the table. Lasagna—Annie’s favorite—was baking in the oven. The kitchen smelled of garlic, oregano, tomato sauce, and cheese. Tom had pointed out that she needed another plate. “No,” she said, “I don’t.”

Against her better judgment, she’d let him in the house when he
showed up after work and said he was there to apologize for not leaving early that morning. He said when he got up he didn’t want to leave. He was trying to flatter her.

He was good at flattering her. That was part of the problem—she liked being flattered, even when she knew better. She’d first heard about Tom when she started work as the manager of her store. The three women who worked the registers out front tittered like schoolgirls when they described the UPS man. His arrival at three-thirty was the highlight of their afternoon, they said. Monica learned why. He was tall, well built, charming, chatty, and single. As he carried the shipments in through the back door, he made a point of flirting with each of the women in turn, complimenting them on their clothes and hair, telling them it looked like they’d lost weight. Monica was on to his act instantly, but she admired his endless good cheer, undeniable charm, and transparent élan, which he soon turned full force on her. Although she tried to deny to herself what she was doing, she found herself checking her hair and lipstick to make sure both were in order before three-thirty. She didn’t object when he lingered after his delivery, engaging her in small talk, offering to help stack boxes, move displays, or shovel snow from the sidewalk. Once, he caught a bat that had somehow gotten into the storeroom and impressed her by releasing it outside, unharmed. When the employees on the registers started gossiping about the amount of time Tom was spending in the store, Monica asked him to stick to business. He would, he told her, if he just wasn’t so darned attracted to her. When she said she had kids at home, he said he liked kids, and would love to meet them, and hey, how about dinner sometime? That was four months and a dozen dinners ago. Her eyes were open the whole time, until last night, when she deliberately closed them, looked away, and allowed herself a soft moan.

Tom shut the refrigerator door and turned toward her with his arms crossed. His forearms were massive. “I wouldn’t worry so much,” he said. “When I was growing up here people didn’t worry so much. I remember staying out after school fishing, shooting hoops, generally fucking around, until all hours. I’d get home when I got home. If I missed dinner, well, that was my fault. Now, it’s a damned federal case if kids just get out of sight for a minute.”

“Are you talking about me?” she asked.

He started to say yes, she could tell. But he caught himself. “No, not necessarily. I just mean people in general. Everyone’s so goddamned paranoid. We live in such a nanny state now. If a kid is late getting home from school, they put out an Amber Alert. It didn’t used to be like this around here. We trusted each other, you know? It pisses me off, is all. She’s probably just staying away to make a point,” Tom said. “She’s a prickly little number.”

“Tom,” Monica said, measuring her words, “Annie and William had early release today. They should have been home at two if they couldn’t go fishing with you.”

Something washed over him, the look of a guilty man.

“What?” she asked. “You showed up at the school, didn’t you? I assumed they weren’t there.”

Tom took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “We had two guys out sick today, so they gave me extra routes. I was busier than hell. I guess I forgot.”

Monica’s face tightened.

“I said ‘maybe,’” he pleaded. “I didn’t promise anything.”

“William thought you did.”

He shrugged. “Things happen, Monica.”

Monica had spent the day at work in a kind of stupor. All day, her throat felt constricted, and she excused herself to go to the back room and cry. She’d thought about calling the school, asking for Annie. She would explain what happened with Tom, but how could she possibly put it?

Your mom screwed up.

Your mom broke her word.

Your mom drank too much wine with Tom after you and William went to bed and invited him up to her bedroom. He swore he’d get up early and be out of the house by the time you and Willie got up.
He promised!

But she could hear Annie reply that Monica had sworn she’d never let a man—a stranger—into the family unless it meant they’d really have a father. Annie didn’t ask for the vow; Monica had volunteered it. Now she’d betrayed her own children with this man. How could she let herself do it? How could she ever fix things?

Annie was tough and smart beyond her years. The girl was grounded
in bedrock and would forgive her eventually. But she wouldn’t forget. Willie, though, poor Willie. This was the kind of thing that could scar a child, send him down the wrong path. A breach of trust was a serious thing. Dashed expectations were just as crippling. She’d give anything if only she could somehow erase Willie’s memory of the morning when Tom joined them at the breakfast table.

And Tom’s way of dealing with it was to say, “Things happen, Monica.”

He was an idiot, and it would be easy to blame him for what had happened. But she was the one who’d brought him into their home.

“I need to be alone and wait for my children,” she said. “They are probably the only thing I’ve ever done right.”

He responded by visibly softening, and approached her, wrapping his arms around her. She remained stiff, refusing to give in to his physicality. With his grip on the back of her head, he pushed her onto his hard shoulder.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, cooing into her hair. “They’re your kids, so they’re important to me, too. Of course you’re worried about them.”

“I’m sorry, too, Tom,” she said. Sorry she’d ever met him.

As he hugged her she opened her eyes and saw her reflection in the glass door of the microwave oven. She was still slim, blond, with oversized eyes and a wide mouth, and an overbite most men liked. She knew she didn’t deserve her looks; she had done nothing to earn them. It was the fault of genetics that she looked ten years younger than she was. She wanted to push away and run somewhere. How could he not read her in the slightest?

Tom was talking, saying, “I’d like to think you consider me one of the things you’ve done right.”

She didn’t respond, hoped he wouldn’t press her for an answer. He didn’t.

“It’s not often we’re alone without your kids here, honey,” he said. “We could, you know, use this time just for
us.
”

Of course, she knew what he meant, but she couldn’t believe he’d said it. She could feel him getting hard against her. He had moved his hips so his erection rubbed her abdomen.

She looked at the clock above the stove—5:45.

“Tom …”

He didn’t let go.

“Tom,” she said, pushing away with more force than necessary, alarmed at the revulsion she felt for the same man who had been in her bed the night before, “why don’t you go home now? I need to talk with Annie and William. You shouldn’t be here. You’ve done enough for today.”

A shadow passed over his face, and his eyes looked harder than she could ever remember them.

“Okay,” he said, flat. “I’ll get out of your sight.”

She didn’t correct him.

“This is all about not taking Willie fishing?” he asked. “Is that what this is about?”

What had she ever seen in him? she wondered. How could she have ever let his looks and steady job cloud the fact—the glaring fact—that he was a self-absorbed ass?

“Go,” she said.

Tom rolled his eyes, started to say something, but stopped himself. “Later, then,” he said, heading toward the mudroom and the back door. “You know, it’s hard to walk when you get me all riled up like this.”

“Don’t ever come back,” Monica said, her tone flat. “It’s over. It’s so very over.”

He snorted and shook his head in disbelief. “And I came here to apologize.”

Turning back to the stove to check the lasagna, she said, “No, I don’t think so.” The cheese was bubbling and turning brown. She reduced the heat to keep it warm.

“Hey,” Tom yelled from the mudroom. “That little bitch took my fishing rod and vest!” He filled the doorframe, his face red, his lovely mouth contorted.

“What?”

“That’s a six-hundred-dollar Sage fly rod,” he said. “I’ve got hundreds of dollars of flies in my vest. And the little bitch
took
it.”

It was as if the two bulbs in the overhead light had been replaced with red ones. She looked at him through a curtain of deep crimson, thinking she had never seen such an ugly man before.

“Leave,” she said, her voice rising into a screech, “and just keep going. Don’t you
ever come back in my house!
”

“Oh, I’m coming back,” he shouted. “I’m coming back for my rod and vest, goddammit.”

“LEAVE!”

For a second, she thought he would come back in after her. But he stayed within the doorjamb, veins popping on his neck and at his temple. Without turning her head and looking, she noted the block of knives on the counter next to her hand.

“Monica,” he said, “you’re a pretty good fuck. Not great, but good. You’ve got a nice mouth. But you’ll never get any man to stay around here as long as you’ve got that little bitch here. And that mama’s boy, Willie.”

It felt as if she had grabbed one of the knives and plunged it into her own chest. She gasped for air.

“GET OUT!” she screamed raggedly.

He shook his head, glaring at her, and went out the door, slamming it behind him.

She put her face in her hands and sobbed, calling him every name she could think of, feeling her heart break, terrified by the fact that she didn’t know where her children were and she was utterly alone now.

Knowing it was her fault they were gone.

W
HAT ANNIE had noticed first, as they’d driven up the road toward Mr. Swann’s house, was the smell. Something ripe and bold coursed through the pine-scented air, and it got stronger as they neared his home in the thick trees. He had allowed them to get off the floor once he’d turned from the service road onto his private two-track drive, and Annie had seen what it was that made the odor: hogs.

“There’s
my
family,” Swann said, smiling. “They know Daddy’s home.”

“Look at the pigs,” William said, leaning over Annie toward the open window of the pickup. “Man, they’re excited.”

When the hogs saw the red truck coming, they squealed and ran about in their pen, racing up and down a sloppy track, splashing through coffee-with-cream-colored puddles. Annie counted at least twenty hogs, maybe more. One was huge, tan and bristly, and looked to be the size of a small truck. She didn’t know hogs could get that big.