Land of Careful Shadows (4 page)

V
ega didn't call the Porters to tell them he was dropping by. He always found people to be more candid when he caught them off-guard.

It was only a ten-minute drive from La Casa to their house, but the scenery changed rapidly. In town, the houses were bunched together like cereal boxes, delineated only by their rickrack rooflines and chain-link fences. Out of town, the houses became more affluent and the land turned pastoral, rising sharply until all that surrounded Vega were vistas of skeletal trees and the remnants of old stone walls. In a couple of weeks, the magnolias and dogwoods would leaf out and soften the landscape; the forsythia would unfold its yellow tendrils like a blonde letting down her hair. But for now, everything had a washed-out and sorry feel from too much rain and salt and snow.

Vega drove along Lake Holly Road, past the reservoir. Yellow crime-scene tape still blocked the entrance. He tapped his horn and raised a hand to a Lake Holly patrolman in a town cruiser who'd been stationed there. The divers hadn't found any evidence of a child in the water so far, though that toddler's sneaker gave them all pause. Greco said no news was good news. Vega hoped he was right.

Farther up on the left, Vega saw the familiar fieldstone pillars of The Farms. He almost turned in, he was so used to driving there, rolling up his ex-wife Wendy's long, Belgian-block-lined driveway, rapping on the side door of the big white Georgian colonial, chatting up Rosa, the maid, in Spanish like he was the gardener asking for a glass of water, then waiting awkwardly outside for his daughter, Joy, to come sauntering out. He and Wendy were two completely different people now, if they had ever indeed been the same to begin with.

A quarter mile east, Vega came to a wooded road of homes made of cedar shingles and walls of glass. The area felt more natural than The Farms, though no less lavish. He matched Scott Porter's address to the number on a rusted green mailbox, then snaked his way up a steep driveway. He was thankful he wasn't doing this in January. Even now, with no chance of frost, he felt a certain give to the tires as they hugged the edges of the uneven blacktop that crumbled into dust and ravines on either side. It constantly amazed Vega that people who lived in expensive houses often had the most sorry-looking mailboxes on the most inaccessible roads. It was some sort of reverse snobbery he couldn't quite figure out.

At the top of the driveway, the land leveled out before a large white house with shutters the color of guava paste. It was supposed to be a colonial, but the dimensions were all wrong. The front porch was too narrow, the windows too large with too many partitions. There was a cupola on the roof that looked added and the siding was some sort of recycled material that didn't hold paint well. Still, it was huge and clearly expensive.

In the backyard, there was a giant redwood swing set and an enclosed trampoline. On the driveway, there was a freestanding backboard and hoop. A regulation-sized soccer net leaned against the stacked outdoor furniture on the patio. The Porters had kids—indulged kids. He wondered if the family was home. Both bays of the garage were open. One car was missing but the other had a black Acura RL parked in it. Vega felt a thud of longing for his own black Acura TSX, the purr of the engine, the way it zipped around corners. Not since his old Firebird had he loved a car that much. But he was tempting fate to even think about that car. Not when Joy was safe. Cars could be replaced.

Vega grabbed a flyer from a stack in his car and got out. When he turned around, he saw right away why the Porters had bought this house. The view was amazing. From their driveway, Vega could see all the way down into Lake Holly to the gray granite spires of Our Lady of Sorrows. He could hear the lonely peal of a train whistle as it left the station, the spray of wet tires on Lake Holly Road, and the muted airlock hiss of a car door slamming in some driveway far below. All the noises that fought for attention down there were distilled into something pure and harmonious up here.

He dodged puddles on the driveway and trudged up the steep risers of the front porch that he suspected were never used. He rang the doorbell. A dog barked from within. It sounded like a friendly enough bark, but just in case, he stepped back as the door opened. A woman pulled on the collar of an eager golden retriever.

“Down, Mango. Down, girl.” The woman was crouched with the force of the dog but she lifted her chin to take in the stranger at her door. Vega's eyes met hers and he felt like an M-80 had exploded in the doorway, throwing him backward, nearly knocking him off that too-narrow front porch. In those few seconds, he took the whole of her in: the comma shape of her jaw unaltered by age, the fluid way she tossed her ponytail, once blond, now faded to the color of fresh-cut lumber, the dancer's legs that still managed to go from crouching to standing in the time it took him to catch his breath.

“Jimmy?” A small crease appeared in the center of her forehead as if she couldn't decide whether she was glad to see him. He stuffed the flyer into his back pocket and stood there awkwardly, trying to summon the words that would have flowed so effortlessly all those years ago. She was supposed to be living in the Midwest somewhere—an alternate universe alive only in his dreams. Not here.

Not here.

The dog lost interest in the encounter and scampered off behind the door, her tags jingling until they faded away into another room, tinkling against her water dish. Linda stuffed her long fingers into the back pockets of her jeans the way she used to at seventeen as if they were scarf ends she might lose if she left them hanging.
Linda Porter. Linda Kendall Porter.
He wished he'd known the “Kendall” part before he found himself on her front doorstep. He couldn't talk to her as a cop. He couldn't talk to her at all.

“It's so amazing to see you.” She stepped forward and hugged him, planting a kiss on his cheek.

A kindness, he knew. Much nicer than “what are you doing here?”

“I'm sorry, Linda. I didn't mean to barge in like this. I came to talk to you and your husband, Scott. Except, I didn't know it was you. I mean—I was looking for Linda Porter. Adele Figueroa sent me.” He was stumbling all over his words. He wished someone could have warned him. Just standing in her doorway, taking her in gave him the same sensation as eating ice cream too fast—that burst of something foreign and physical on the brain, that sense that your body can betray you when you least expect it. If she dared him to jump off Bud Point again, at this moment, he just might do it.

He took in her features the way he couldn't at first. She had always had an aristocratic face—not beautiful by traditional standards. Too much nose. Her eyes too small and pale a blue to stand out. Yet she had aged well, not like many natural blondes who grow pinched and waxy when the rosiness of youth begins to fade. Age had stripped her to her essentials and made her striking. Even in the simple V-neck sweater she was wearing, she would turn heads.

She hooked an arm in his and led him inside her front hallway as if his coming were something she'd been looking forward to all day. She had always possessed the casual ease of the privileged. It's what drew Vega to her and scared him at the same time. He could never be that comfortable in his skin.

The house looked much better inside than out. From the double-height entryway, Vega could see a living room off to his right with a Persian rug and leather couches, and a formal dining room to his left with a pot of pink orchids on the center of the table. His boots were still muddy from the lake this morning and he felt embarrassed standing on her high-gloss red oak floors.

“This is sort of a shock for both of us,” he said. “I'm here on the job.” He fumbled for his badge. “I'm a detective with the county PD.”

“Really?”

“Really really. I'm here on an investigation.”

“Wow. I never thought
you'd
become a cop.”

Her words pricked some delicate membrane inside of him. He felt himself deflate with the slow unalterable physics of a balloon.

“I'm sorry, Jimmy. That came out wrong. I just assumed after—”

“—Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?” He said the words too brightly, hoping to put a period on that chapter in his life, to close it once and for all.

“Come, let me hang up your jacket. Scott took our daughter to get new soccer cleats. They should be back any moment. You want something to drink?”

“Coffee, if you have it, would be fine. Black with sugar.”

“Let me make a fresh pot.”

Vega followed Linda through the dining room into a large family room and kitchen all rolled into one. The kitchen was done in high-end cherrywood. The countertops were granite, the appliances, Sub-Zero. The Porters were doing well. He took a seat at the counter. The dog rubbed up against Vega's leg and he gave her a pat, wishing he had more time for a dog in his own life. Joy had always wanted a dog. Wendy was allergic to them.

“So you want to tell me why you're here? Or are you just going to handcuff us when Scott gets back? Not that I mind the handcuff part.” She grinned and her smile was better than ever on her raw-boned face, full of shadows and planes that caught and swallowed the light.

Vega laughed. “I don't even keep cuffs on me. They're in the car. But don't worry. You're safe. All I want to do is ask you some questions.”

“That's how it always starts, doesn't it? In the TV shows.”

“It's a lot more tedious and full of paperwork in real life.”

Linda undid her ponytail and refastened the rubber band twice around her hair to put it back exactly as it had been before. Vega always marveled at women and their hair, how they could play with it, restyle it, brush it, all without missing a beat in their conversations. If he talked while he shaved, he cut himself.

She went over to her kitchen cabinets and began opening them with the manic force of a TV chef, all the time keeping up a running commentary about how messy the house was when it wasn't messy at all. He'd forgotten that when she was nervous, she babbled. When he was nervous, he clammed up, instead studying the photographs on some bookshelves that flanked the flat-screen television. Between clay turtles and uneven pinch pots sat a row of photographs. Linda in various sundresses and tank tops standing next to a wiry man with thinning blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. Scott, no doubt. Vega wanted to feel the neutral emotions he would have felt if he were looking at a photo of a friend and his wife. He knew it was childish to feel anything after so many years.

“You stay in touch with anyone from the old days?” asked Linda.

“Not a period in my life I'm dying to relive.”

“Oh, right.” There was an awkward pause. Even Linda seemed at a loss for words.

“You?”

“A few. Megan Cartwright and Ann McKinley—who was Ann Lesser and then Ann Rothstein and then went back to her maiden name after her second divorce—”

“—You see Bobby at all?” Vega wanted the question to flow, but Bobby Rowland's name could never flow between them.

“On occasion,” Linda said slowly. “He still owns his dad's old hardware store downtown. I'm in there quite a bit. He's also the chief of our volunteer fire department.” Linda stopped pulling out dishes and looked at him. “You know about his younger son, right?”

“I went to the funeral Mass.” Vega nodded sadly. “When was it? Three years ago?”

“Just about.”

Vega wondered if she'd been there too. He hadn't seen her but there were so many people and he was in and out quickly, cowed by the cavernous space that was filled with so much memory and grief. Before that, it had been more than twenty years since he and Bobby had spoken.

“I gather you've forgiven him,” said Linda.

“Water under the bridge. Sorta pales beside losing your fourteen-year-old to cancer, you know?”

“And how about me? Do you forgive me?”

He turned to the bookcase and scanned the shelves. “Where are your kids' pictures?”

“You're looking straight at my one and only.”

The only photograph Vega could see was a school picture of a caramel-skinned girl with onyx eyes. Her sleek black hair was long and parted on the side and her gaze had a sort of womanly awareness to it. Vega guessed her age to be nine or ten.

“This is your daughter?” He lifted the frame.

“Our Olivia, yes,” said Linda. “She's Guatemalan.” The loveliness of her daughter's face leeched all the nervous energy out of her. She seemed to finally exhale. “Scott and I spent two years with the Peace Corps there. That's how we met. We'd planned on having a big family but it didn't work out so we adopted Olivia instead.”

“Is that where you picked up your Spanish?” She didn't study it in high school. Her family had insisted she take French. Ironically, that's where they met—in Madame Driscoll's French class. Vega bet neither of them could so much as order a meal in a French restaurant anymore.

“I learned more than Spanish in Guatemala,” said Linda. “Being with the people—it changed our lives, gave us a calling of sorts. Not that Scott doesn't do standard criminal defense work as well. That's what pays the bills. But Latin-American issues are our passion.”

“Huh. I thought I was the beginning and end of your Latin-American issues.”

“You never thought of yourself as Latin-American.”

“
You
did.”

“That was my parents, Jimmy. That was never me. And they've changed, like everyone else. They love Olivia so much, how could they not?”