The Cutting Season (18 page)

Luis’s shed was on the other side of the main house, and she reached it in record time. She parked at the foot of a poplar tree, backing up the cart in such a way that its headlights shone on the front of the shed’s wood door. Cradling the flashlight between her neck and shoulder, she fiddled with the lock on the door’s latch, accidentally dropping her keys in the dirt more than once. She looked down and saw that her hands were shaking.

The door creaked when she finally got it open. She swung the Maglite, arcing its sharp white light against the shed’s walls. Overhead, a frayed string controlled a single bare bulb. Caren gave it a good tug. The shed, she could see, was extraordinarily well kept. She had Luis to thank for the clear path through the shovels and brooms and coiled garden hoses resting on their sides. It made it easy for her to make her way to the locked cabinet on the rear wall. Inside, she found the two weapons: a .32 pearl-handled six-shooter and a 12-gauge shotgun. She grabbed them both, along with a box of shells and round-nosed bullets, pausing long enough to load six rounds into the pistol before leaving the shed. She shoved the handgun into her jacket pocket. Outside, she laid the long barrel of the shotgun across the front seat of the golf cart. Then she drove back to the east.

Somewhere on the drive, she reached into her pocket for her cell phone.

Eric would be worried by now, she knew.

Punching in the numbers, she looked down, briefly taking her eyes off the drive. When she looked up again, barely a second later, there was a figure staggering directly into her path. She slammed on the brakes. The cart screeched and bumped to a rough stop, and her cell phone went flying out of her hands, disappearing into the darkness. Her heart sank. Detective Lang was long gone. There were no cops out here. It was just her, the .32, and the man standing a few feet in front of her, bathed in the hazy light of the cart’s headlamps. He was white and slender, with a mess of hairs scratched across his chin. The true shape and color of his eyes were hooded by a baseball cap, but he still looked awfully familiar. She hopped out of the cart, her hand shaking, the skin of her palm slipping against the handle of the pistol. “Hey, wait a minute!” the man yelled, waving his arms. He stumbled backward, tripping over his feet and falling to the ground. He held his hands in front of his torso in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, hold on a second!” he was pleading. “Aw, Jesus, lady, don’t shoot!”

The sheer fright in his voice stopped her.

She lowered the gun.

He still had his hands up. “I’m just trying to find my way out of here, I swear.”

“Who are you?”

“Lee Owens, ma’am. I’m a reporter.”

Then, sensing that wasn’t going to cut it, he added, “I’m with the
Times-Picayune
.”

S
he checked his wallet, finding both an employee identification card for the
Times-Picayune
’s offices on Howard Avenue in New Orleans and a Louisiana State driver’s license, both bearing the name Lee Owens. According to his license, Mr. Owens was thirty-nine years old . . . and lying about his height. He was no more than an inch taller than her, and she was just barely five feet seven inches. He was sweating openly, and the front of his khaki pants were stained with grass and mud, and he said very little as she drove them back to her apartment, keeping his hands visible in his lap. The shotgun was resting upright between them, the .32 still in her right hand. Up ahead, she could just make out the honey-colored light shining from the library’s upstairs window. “How in the hell did you get in here, anyway?” she asked.

“I came in with a tour . . . and then I just never left.”

Great
, she thought.

That’s just great.

She remembered the group this morning. He was the guy in the ball cap and khakis, the one who was taking pictures. “I guess I got turned around somehow,” he said. “I’ve been walking around in circles out here.” He looked up at the pale moon, the patch of stars behind the passing clouds, the only light this deep in the parish.

“What were you looking for?”

“Anything I could find about the girl, I guess.” Caren felt him looking at her. But she didn’t take her eyes off the road. “The Sheriff’s Department isn’t saying much, no more than the basic facts. I thought I’d come take a look around the place myself.” He sighed, sounding frankly annoyed with himself, as if he’d only just now realized what a stupid idea this was. “This cloak-and-dagger, stakeout stuff, this ain’t my regular deal. I’m not exactly a crime reporter. I cover the sugar industry at the paper. I’ve been on the Groveland beat for a while now. So, yeah, when I heard about the girl out here . . . it definitely got me to wondering if there was more to it, if the company was having problems again,” he said. “I’m just out here chasing a story.”

Caren slowed the cart to a stop, a few feet from the library’s front door.

“You didn’t know her, did you?” he said.

“No.”

She cut the engine, grabbed the shotgun and the pistol, and waved him out of the vehicle. Owens, confused, looked up at the building, unclear as to what was going on, why she’d brought him here. “What is this place?” he said, meaning the library, the cake-top miniature of the main house, dressed in the same white with black shutters. He seemed to genuinely not know where he was.

The library’s front door opened and Eric stepped out, fully dressed now in his slacks and shirt. Morgan, still in her nightgown, was a small shadow behind her dad. Eric looked at Caren, the guns . . . and Lee Owens. “Morgan, get inside,” he said sharply.

“Mom?”

“Get inside!” he yelled.

She quickly disappeared into the house.

Eric stood on the library steps, his eyes sweeping over this unexpected scene: a stranger, the guns, and Caren. “What is this?”

Again, she waved Owens out of the golf cart.

He slid out slowly, holding his hands out in front of him.

She gave him a slight shove, touching him for the first time. The back of his cotton shirt was damp, almost cold with sweat. She nudged him into the library, following a few steps behind. As she crossed the threshold, she turned and whispered to Eric. “He’s a reporter.”

Inside the front parlor, Owens removed his hat, as if he’d been asked over to tea, a gentleman caller meeting the family for the first time. He held out a hand to Eric, the de facto man of the house, making their acquaintance official. “Lee Owens,” he said. “I’m with the
Times-Picayune
.” Eric glared at him, keeping a protective hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Owens gave Morgan a polite nod. By the door, Caren laid the two guns on the antique side table. The long barrel of the shotgun hung off the side. Then she turned to behold Owens in the light. Now that he’d taken off his hat, she could see his eyes for the first time. They were mossy green and clear as rainwater. His hair was a mess of sandy curls, pasted against his skin. “Look, I’d really appreciate it if you guys just let me out of here,” he said. “I certainly didn’t mean to cause any problems.”

Flushed and overheated, Caren pulled off her jacket.

“He’s just a reporter,” she said to Eric.

“You don’t know that.”

Owens reached for his wallet, in an effort to clear this up.

The sudden movement was just enough to set Eric off. He lunged at the guy, covering the length of the room in a matter of seconds, until he was towering over him. Owens backed up quickly, defensively holding his hands in front of his chest. He shot Caren a look, begging for some help here. She sighed, feeling suddenly very, very tired. She walked up behind Owens and reached into his back pocket for his black leather wallet. From its folds, she produced the same bits and pieces of identification the reporter had shown her outside, including a credit card and a Subway sandwich card, creased and bent.

Eric scanned the information, his head down.

When he looked up again, he appeared not so much relieved as angry.

He tossed the wallet to Owens, hitting him in the chest. “I nearly had a fucking heart attack, Caren,” he said, forgetting for a second their daughter standing just a few feet away. He slumped into one of the leather armchairs. Elbows on his knees, he buried his head in his hands. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, and she finally saw how scared he must have been when she hadn’t turned up again right away.

On the coffee table, the cordless phone rang.

“That’s Lang,” he said.

Eric, it turned out, had panicked.

When she hadn’t returned, he grew concerned. Morgan was acting more and more skittish in her absence, swearing she’d heard someone outside their window, footsteps, she said. Eric had called the number on Lang’s card, and now this was him calling back, checking to make sure everything was all right. Eric reached for the phone. But Caren got to it first. She let it ring two more times. “Answer it,” he said. Owens was wearing an expression both sheepish and genuinely contrite. “Please,” he pleaded. “I’ll go, I swear.”

Caren sighed and finally answered the phone.

“Sorry,” she said straightaway, before reporting to Lang that the previous call was a mistake.

We’re all fine, she said, before hanging up.

Eric shook his head in anger. “What is wrong with you?”

She didn’t want the cop in her house, she said.

Which made no sense to Eric, who had no idea what was at stake.

He stood and stalked out of the room. Owens bent down to pick up his wallet, sliding it into his khakis, which were faded and worn. He set his ball cap back on his head and tipped the bill in her direction, a thank-you for the small act of kindness.

S
he drove him all the way back to the main gate, idling the golf cart while she unlocked the metal bolt. Owens stood directly behind her. When the gate creaked open, she turned to him and said firmly, “You never saw me, understand? We never spoke.”

“Fine with me.”

He slipped through the opening between the gate and the fence. The only cars in the parking lot were her Volvo, Eric’s rental, and Donovan’s late-model Acura, still parked in the same spot since this morning, before the cops took him away. Owens said his own car was parked on the highway, where he’d left it so it wouldn’t be spotted anywhere near the grounds after hours. It was at least another mile and a half to walk, in pitch darkness, but he would have to navigate that on his own. Caren closed the gate, securing the metal latch.

There was one thing she wanted to ask him, though.

Through the white bars of the fence, she called out to him. “Hey, what did you mean back there, what you said about Groveland having problems
again
?”

Owens turned back to look at her.

The night silence between them was briefly filled with the soft rustling of cane leaves in the distance. Owens scratched the stubble on his chin. “Hunt Abrams, the farm manager over there, he’s not local, so you know.” He took a few steps closer to Caren, lowering his voice even though they were, pray to God, the only two souls out here. “They’ve moved him around a bunch of times,” he said. “Bakersfield, California, their operations in South Florida. He was only six months at a fruit-processing plant they own in Washington State before they moved him out here, to this start-up.” He nodded in the direction of the sugarcane to the south and west, swaying over the fence.

“I don’t understand,” she said, still not getting the nature of the company’s “problems.” Owens seemed initially inclined to leave it alone, to keep his mouth shut. But then, looking at her, he changed his mind, deciding to trade one act of kindness for another. A pretty lady out here, he said, you ought to know who your neighbors are.

“Word is, ma’am, he’s got a bad way with his workers,” he said, his breath visible and snaking through the bars of the fence, almost touching her on the other side.

“How’s that?”

“Well, let’s just say some of his people don’t make it out of the fields.”

Caren got a sudden image of those church ladies at dawn, the black priest, and the candlelight vigil, remembering how the women had taken note, literally, of Hunt Abrams’s every move, documenting it, as if for some future purpose. Had they known then that there was more to this story, that Abrams was a man who ought to be watched closely? Owens seemed to think so. “But you didn’t hear it from me,” he said. He made a show of pressing his lips together, as if he’d already said more than he should have. Then, with a tip of his cap, he bid Caren good night, before turning and starting his long walk down the winding farm road.

13

“I
want to see it,” Eric said.

The rain had started in again, falling in black sheets against Morgan’s bedroom window. He’d waited until she fell back asleep, watching from the doorway as Caren held her hand in the dark, as their daughter’s breath deepened and she curled herself into a tight, soft ball. Caren kissed her on the forehead and then started out of the room. When she stepped into the hallway, Eric grabbed her by the wrist. “Caren,” he said. His tone was soft and forceful and quietly intimate, so that she wasn’t clear if the touch was meant to signal aggression or affection. His eyes were sunken and blood red.

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“Morgan’s shirt,” he said. “What did you do with it?”

She stared at him for a moment.

“I got rid of it,” she said, meaning the bloodstain. The light from her bedroom across the hall outlined the hard angles of his face, the tense, squared shoulders, but she could not, in shadow, read his expression with any precision. She heard the rain pattering on the roof and the bullish sound of his breathing. “I washed it,” she said.

“I want to see it.”

“I
washed
it, Eric.”

“I want to see it!”

She sighed, glancing over her shoulder. The door to Morgan’s room was still open. Eric made a move in that direction, but she stopped him. She knew where the shirt was, knew every detail of her daughter’s room, even in the dark. He waited for her in the hallway, watching through the door as she went straight to the top drawer of the bureau beside Morgan’s bed. The shirt was folded neatly. She walked it to Eric in the hallway. He unfurled it right away, snapping the fabric, holding it in front of his eyes. Dissatisfied with the light, he walked into Caren’s bedroom. There, turning the cotton over in his hands, he asked her, “Where is it?”

“It was on the sleeve, on the left side.”

Eric inspected the white sleeve, his eyes finally coming to rest on the grayish half-moon shape where the stain used to be. He studied it for a long time, and then looked up at her. This time, by lamplight, she could see his face clearly. He let out a long sigh. “You know what Morgan told me, when we were in the car today, when it was just the two of us? She told me she never saw any blood.”

“What?”

“She didn’t see any blood, Caren.”

“I showed it to her, Eric,” she said. “It was
on
her shirt
.”

“Are you sure it was blood?”

His tone was gentle, an exaggerated show of patience for a woman whose motives it was clear he no longer trusted.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t know what to think, Caren.”

“I know what I saw, Eric.”

“But, Christ, if it really was blood on her shirt, why the hell did you
wash
it?”

“I just panicked,” she said, which was a lie. But it was the only sentiment she thought he would understand. She knew exactly what she’d done, had handled the task with care and relative calm. There wasn’t much in her life she could completely control, but her daughter’s laundry was under her jurisdiction, she’d decided. Eric sighed again, sinking onto the side of the bed, Morgan’s shirt still balled in his hands.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

“Yes, you did. You knew if you called me with this, if Morgan was in any kind of trouble, that I would come down here. You knew I would drop everything.”

“You think I made all this up just so I could see you again?”

Eric looked up, his eyes meeting hers, but he didn’t say anything, and his silence revealed his suspicions.

“A woman was murdered, Eric!”

“I know that.”

“There were police here, and they were talking to our daughter. I was scared, Eric, and, yes, if I’m being honest, I’m glad you’re here,” she said, which, on its own, was hard enough to admit. “Why in the hell should I have to go through all this alone?”

“I have never asked you to raise Morgan alone. Let’s be clear about that.”

He stared at the shirt in his hands. “That was your choice, Caren.”

Outside her bedroom window, the light was moving toward dawn. The sky was slate gray, and there were droplets of rain dotting the glass. Eric clasped his hands around Morgan’s shirt. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He was momentarily lost in his thoughts.

Finally, he set the laundered shirt gingerly atop her quilt.

“This is weird for me,” he said.

“What is?”

“Being here with you,” he said. “I mean, I’m getting married in three weeks.”

He glanced down at his hands, resting them as a set in the space between his bare knees. “You’ve been dragging your feet about getting Morgan’s plane ticket for the wedding. You haven’t made any plans to get her there. And I don’t know what to think, what you must be feeling.” He looked up, waiting for her to tell him what she was feeling. She didn’t, however, and in the end Eric seemed to have expected this. He rose from the bed, leaving the shirt behind. “I just want to move on, Caren.” Fine, she thought.

“I’ll buy her plane ticket tomorrow.”

“Okay, then,” he said, heading for the door. She could sense his dissatisfaction. But it was only long after he was gone that it occurred to her that maybe Eric had wanted something more from her, needed it even, especially now, on the eve of his marriage to another woman. Maybe, she thought, he had his own reason for coming all the way down to Louisiana, blood or no blood.

H
e had always said he didn’t blame her for what happened.

And she supposed she was meant to feel grateful for that.

But, truth be told, she had always very quietly considered his lack of rage over her behavior, what she’d done, his own act of betrayal. He had not taken the news like a man so much as he had taken it like a lawyer, with a level head and a clear tone of voice. He asked for few details but seemed comforted to know that it had happened only once, with a man she hardly knew, a guest passing through her hotel. Inside of fifteen minutes, he was holding her hand, owning up to his own bad behavior—the way he often used work as a shield, holing up in their extra bedroom with stacks of files most nights, just so he could have an hour or two to himself, something that, on the other side of becoming a father, he’d come to cherish more than sleep. Parenthood had turned out to be a costly miracle. It gave them a beautiful girl, yes, and a vaulted perch upon which to see the world, to sit and reflect on the nature of pure grace, the surprises life can bring. But it took from them, too. Eric was a new lawyer at a prestigious firm, working eighty-hour weeks; and Caren was by then managing most of the hotel’s day-to-day operations, the dream of someday returning to law school having been laid aside by motherhood. Whatever of them was left at the end of the day went to Morgan first. She and Eric spent more and more time in their separate corners, their separate roles as her parents. Mothering, she learned the hard way, was about loss as well as love.

Those were rough years for Caren, right after Morgan’s birth.

She had taken Helen’s death particularly hard, and having a child so soon after losing her mother had felt almost like a base form of punishment, pointed and cruel.

Eric repeatedly brought up Chicago as an option, a solution to their overworked lives and a place where they might settle down. His mother could watch Morgan some days. She might offer both of them, but Caren in particular, a guiding hand in parenthood. But the mention of his mother in place of her own only made Caren’s grief thicker, hardening in places to an impenetrable crust. Eric told her almost daily that he hadn’t meant it that way, but by then she wasn’t listening. Any mention of Chicago and she would change the subject, sometimes walking out of the room. Eric grew irritated, then angry, repeatedly accusing her of making things deliberately harder on them, of having no real concept of family—which was as close as he would ever come to commenting on her background.

This from a man who had yet to propose marriage, she thought.

She didn’t think it was fair, Eric asking her to move across the country without some kind of commitment, or at least a spoken promise to stay by her side. It was a kernel of resentment that grew into an irrational panic: he was going to eventually leave her, just like her father had left her mother behind. She and Eric were two people who had started out about as far apart in life as a man and a woman could have, and she started to wonder if Eric sensed it, too. The marriage talk had ended almost as soon as Morgan was born. She was starting to worry that her background mattered more than he let on.

She didn’t even realize how angry she was.

Only how easy it was to act out.

Men came through the doors of her hotel every day, dozens by the hour, in fact. She found one from some far corner of the country, Seattle, or maybe it was Boston or Newport. She didn’t remember. Nor did it matter, anyway. There was no way to soften it, to get around what she’d done. It was a stupid and impulsive act, a test with unseen consequences. And she, of all people, should have known better. One of the first things they teach you in law school, in the first week of any decent trial prep course: don’t ever ask a question if you can’t live with the answer.

T
he night she told him about the affair, they actually went to bed together, falling asleep in tandem for the first time in months. And then just before dawn the next morning, Morgan starting to stir in the next room, Eric whispered in her ear that
he
was sorry. It was obvious to him now, and he could finally admit to himself that there was a reason he had never proposed to her after all these years, why he’d never made it official. Lying half-awake in their bed, she listened as he told her that, deep down, if he was being honest with himself, he could admit that he’d always had doubts about whether she was the one. “I don’t blame you, Caren,” he said. “I really don’t.”

She was lying on her side, facing the wall.

She remembered feeling numb from the waist down.

“So that’s it?” she said. “You’re done?”

“I’m tired, Caren.”

Morgan called out from her bedroom. She was still sleeping in Pull-Ups, even at five, and needed to be changed first thing. The morning duty was always Caren’s, since Morgan was born, and so she alone walked down the hall to her daughter’s room, helping her pick clothes for school and then starting breakfast. By the time she returned to their bedroom, Eric was already dressed for work. He kissed her, quite tenderly, his breath warm and sweet. It was the look in his eyes that finally broke her, when she finally started to cry. What she saw was relief. In the end, her transgression had cost him nothing. She had given him his way out.

That was August, 2005.

Within weeks, Eric, without telling her, went to Chicago for a second interview in the Economic Development Department of then-senator Barack Obama’s hometown office. Eric had grown up in Chicago and had ties to the newly elected freshman senator.

He blew his cover that weekend, though, calling home to tell Caren he was not meeting a client in Tulsa, as he’d said, but was actually in Chicago. He’d been watching news reports about the hurricane, and he wanted her and Morgan to get out of the city while they still could. Caren, who had grown up near the Gulf (and slept through Category 3 hurricanes), would have stayed in the city, at the Grand Luxe Hotel, where some of her coworkers were bringing their families . . . if Eric hadn’t insisted they leave.

Two last-minute plane tickets to join him in Chicago seemed extravagant and unnecessary, and things between them were still quite raw. She thought it was best if she stayed down south. She had wrongly assumed that getting a hotel room would be easy. But everything was booked, from the capital to Alexandria, even as far north as Monroe. In the end, they headed west. Caren pulled Morgan out of school and loaded up the Volvo with a single suitcase for both of them, plus a plastic bag with crayons and coloring paper . . . grabbing at the last minute the paisley-covered box of her mother’s things that Lorraine had sent her, setting it on the front seat beside her for the five-hour drive across the state line. They rode out the tail end of Katrina in a motel room outside of Beaumont, Texas, on and off the phone with Eric, neither one of them with any idea that the last evidence of their life together was being washed away as they spoke, Morgan reaching for the phone every few minutes to say hi.

Eric took that job in Chicago.

He wanted Morgan with him, but made no specific mention of Caren.

She asked for time to think about it.

They stayed in that motel room for days, she and Morgan, with its sage-colored curtains and thick, dusty carpet. Caren made the beds every day and cooked their meals on a small range stove in a corner of the room. A trucker’s special, they called it, a place for people with no real home. They ate grits and butter, fried apples when she could find the right kind, and thick slices of ham on toasted bread—the sort of food her mother used to set aside just for Caren, nights she worked in the kitchen, nights Caren waited up for her. She felt a strange peace there, the whole of her life contained within the four walls of that motel room, her daughter napping on her lap some afternoons.