The Deepest Water (9 page)

“You want to take a long walk, climb one of the trails up Mount Pisgah?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Can’t. But you should go soon if you decide to hike up a mountain. It’s going to rain later on, according to the weather channel. Tonight, let’s go out for dinner. Deal?”

She nodded. “Deal.” She knew she needed exercise as much as Spook did; the little bit of rowing she had done had made her back and arms sore, not a good sign. Since Brice went to the gym three days a week he probably didn’t feel the need for movement the way she did, but also, she had to admit to herself, she couldn’t face any more of the sympathy cards and notes, the condolences that had poured in from all over the country. Jud had touched the lives of many people, and many of them had reacted to his death emotionally. Now she was working through the box of cards and letters, responding briefly to each one.

Brice returned upstairs to his study and work, and she cleared the table, put things in the dishwasher, and got ready to leave. The phone rang and she paused to listen to the incoming call, then snatched up the phone.

“Willa? I’m here.”

“Abby, I’m glad you picked up. Are you all right? How are you?”

“Okay. I’m okay. Willa, the police are looking for you, state police.”

“I know. They’ve left messages on my machine. I’ll give them a call, but, Abby, I have to see you before I talk to them. Can we meet somewhere?”

Involuntarily Abby glanced up the stairs, then lowered her voice. “Yes. I’ll come over to your place.”

“No. I’m not home. I don’t want the police to know I’m back until after we talk, and they might come to the house. I suspect one of the neighbors was asked to call them when I turned up.”

“Where are you now?”

“Safeway, at Eighteenth and Oak. I’ll wait out front.”

Willa Ashford was forty-one and didn’t try to pretend otherwise. Her chestnut-colored hair had streaks of white already and she seldom wore any makeup, and was careless about how she dressed, usually in jeans and sweatshirts or sweaters, and running shoes. Abby thought she was beautiful.

She had had a crush on Willa in her freshman year when Willa had been her instructor. At the time Abby and Matthew Petrie were together, fighting most of the time, and with so little money that, although they both worked while they were attending school, they often didn’t know if they would be able to pay the rent, or buy groceries. The threat of being put out on the street had been ever-present. Willa had appeared so serene, so self-assured and composed, so beautiful and intelligent, everything that Abby knew she herself wasn’t, she had set up Willa as an ideal which no other woman could even approach. She had loved her, with reverence and adoration, the way she imagined good Catholics felt toward Mary.

In the spring of her freshman year Abby had dropped out of school; there would be time later for her to go back, she and Matthew had said, and he had only one semester to finish; he would graduate, then work while she got her degree. The only thing she missed, she had confided to her friend Jonelle, was Willa. And Jonelle had said wisely, “Honey, you’re looking for the perfect mother, someone whose shoulder you can cry on. Your life is the pits and she would make the fairy-tale mother for you to run to; that’s what you miss.”

She and Matthew maxed out their credit cards, borrowed heavily, skimped on everything; she worked at a restaurant and often took food home with her, hidden in her backpack. Then she learned that Matthew was into video poker, and although he graduated and got a job, money was scarcer than ever. Seventeen months after they were married, they separated, with the divorce following swiftly, financed by Jud.

During Abby’s year of absence from college, Willa’s husband died of pancreatic cancer. Then, when Abby registered to return to school, she had needed permission from Willa to be readmitted to her class; she had gone to her office without an appointment, unannounced, and found Willa drawn and pale.

“Will you take me back?” Abby asked at the door, reluctant to intrude on such obvious grief. “I’m sorry I dropped out. I’m single again, and I want to work toward my degree.”

“You got a divorce?”

Abby nodded. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

Willa had been at her desk; she came around it and motioned Abby to come in all the way and sit down. “I’m sorry about your marriage,” she said, closing the door. “I know how hard that can be.”

There were tears in her eyes, and she turned away quickly; then without knowing how it happened, Abby found herself holding Willa, and Willa weeping on her shoulder. That day they became friends, more than friends; Abby found a sister that day.

The bond deepened and strengthened over the next few years; Abby changed her major to art history, and, later, began to work at the museum where Willa had been appointed director when the former director retired.

When Abby realized that Willa was seeing Jud, seeing a lot of him, sleeping with him, she had been outraged, furious: “Leave him alone! Back off now while you can. You don’t know what he’s like!”

“I know him,” Willa had said calmly. “Maybe better than you do.”

“You don’t! He’ll use you. He’ll take and take, and when he’s done, he’ll be off with someone else. I know exactly what he’s like. He’ll kill you. You’re not like the others.”

“Abby, for heaven’s sake! You’re talking about your father!”

“And I love him more than I can say, but I’m not blind. I’ve watched him all these years, using women, then putting them in his novels as if they had been objects to be examined under a microscope, dissected, spread out for the world to see, and finally discarded.” She drew in a long breath, fighting to control her fury, her anguish. “Willa, please, you must know about some of the others, how he’s treated them. You’re too good for that. You deserve someone who will really love you, not just for a fling, but forever. And he can’t. He just can’t be that way. He isn’t mean or vicious, he’s just… “She spread her hands helplessly. “He’s what he is. He’ll hurt you. Kill you.”

They were in the back courtyard at the museum, where several statues gazed endlessly into a reflecting pond. When a few people came out to stroll, Willa started to walk away; Abby caught her arm.

“You’re acting like a jealous child,” Willa said in a low voice. “I’m an adult, and so is Jud. I believe we can both take care of ourselves.”

Abby dropped her hand, and watched Willa return to the museum and pass out of sight. Since that day, two years ago, they had been distant, polite, no longer sisters.

She spotted Willa instantly, standing outside the supermarket, her back to the parking lot; she was wearing jeans, a long shapeless jacket, and hiking boots. Abby drove through the lot and stopped, pushed the button to roll down the passenger window, and called her name. When Willa turned, all color drained from her face as she stared at the van. Abby had driven it in order to give Spook a little more room than her small car afforded; she had not considered what effect seeing the van and the dog would have on Willa.

“It’s me,” she called. “Get in.”

There was an awkward moment after Willa got in, before Abby started to drive. “I phoned,” Willa said, “but then I realized you had relatives around, so I didn’t expect you to call back.”

“I didn’t know you called,” Abby said. It was entirely possible that Brice had told her, but she had no memory of it. There had been so many calls the answering machine had not been able to record them all. “I was going to take Spook out to the Arboretum, let her run. Is that okay with you?”

“You don’t have to spend time with me,” Willa said quickly. “I mean… If we could just park somewhere…”

“Do you want to go for a walk with us?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, the Arboretum.”

Spook was standing on the floor of the back seat, her forepaws on the back of the passenger seat, whining softly. Willa turned to pet her and Spook licked her hand.

The Arboretum, a few miles south, was a sprawling park reverting to a natural state with a minimum of human interference, enough to keep trails cleared, and to control the exuberant growth of brambles and poplars and poison oak. On the lower side was a river, and a large pond with nutria burrows on the banks and ducks in the water. The southern edge of the park extended up Mount Pisgah, where trails varied in difficulty from acceptable for strollers to trails so steep and rough that it took experienced climbers to follow them. Abby intended to take one midway between the extremes.

“I’ll have to keep you on the leash until we get up the trail,” Abby said to Spook, snapping on the leash at the car park. Half a dozen other cars were in the lot, but it was a large area; not a person was in sight. They walked past the administration building with its information leaflets, and a large anteroom where school children assembled before starting nature walks. Beyond that building was a big barn used for an annual plant exchange, or to put on demonstrations of various kinds, to display mushrooms, with experts who would identify whatever fungus, mushroom, or toadstool the patrons brought to them, or horticulturists who identified sprigs of plants, flowers… Behind the barn the trail led up the mountain.

As soon as they had followed a curve or two, and were out of sight of the buildings, Abby took the leash off Spook. It was against the rules here, but Spook was too well-behaved to cause a problem, and watching her bound off between trees, Abby smiled faintly. Creature of the forests and mountains.

Almost as if unleashing the dog had been her cue, Willa began to talk. “A few months ago Jud told me about the fight you two had. All that time and he never mentioned it until last summer. He told me some of the things you both said, and how ashamed and sorry he was.”

Abby watched the trail ahead of them. It was hardly wide enough for two people; now and again their shoulders brushed each other, or their arms did.

Phrases from that fight had taken up dwelling in her head, noisy tenants who would not be hushed. They clamored now.

“If you do it to Willa, I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll write you off completely!”

“What I do is none of your business. Willa’s a big girl, which is more than I can say about you. You didn’t learn a damn thing the first time out, did you?”

“This has nothing to do with me. At least, I didn’t hang in there and hope for better tomorrows for years the way my mother did. With some people there aren’t any better tomorrows. All tomorrows are just like all yesterdays.”

“This has everything to do with you! You stepped in it with Petrie, and turned around and did it again with Brice, and didn’t learn a thing.”

“Don’t you dare bring Brice into it!”

“I’m watching you turn into your mother, do you realize that? You’re becoming more like her every day, crying for a security blanket, and it’s not there, kid. Believe me, it’s not there. You provide it or no one does.”

“I’m not talking about my mother, or Brice and me. I’m talking about you! Don’t you ever consider what you’re doing, one woman after another, used, tossed out? How you make them feel? Like trash! And now Willa.”

“You ever see a woman tied to a bedpost here? See me force my way in where I wasn’t invited?”

“I saw my own mother cry herself to sleep night after night!”

“I was never unfaithful to her and you know it! So does she. You’re mixing apples and oranges.”

“Oh, what’s the use! I should go now. Take me across so I can go.”

“Not yet. Let’s finish what you started.”

“Take me, or I’ll swim across. Now!”

“You’re too mad to be allowed to get near a car. You’d kill someone on the road.”

She was so angry she couldn’t stop shaking.

Jud came across the cabin to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Just calm down and I’ll row you over.”

She shrugged him off. “I’ll get my stuff together. Let’s not talk about any of this again. Never. I’ll never mention Willa’s name to you again. But I mean it, if you hurt her, I’ll never see you again.”

The scene, two years old now, was in her head as if it had happened yesterday, and there was nothing she could do to get it out of her head. She felt outraged and confused that he had told Willa about it. Abby had never mentioned it to Brice. He knew something had happened, but she had not said a word about it to him.

Spook came running out of the woods, gave Abby and Willa a good-natured lick, and raced off in the other direction.

“I wish I had known a lot sooner,” Willa said. “He hated it that a fight like that had come between you, but he didn’t know how to fix it.”

“We sort of patched it up again,” Abby said.

“Not talking about it isn’t exactly patching up anything.”

Abby knew that and had kept trying over the past two years to pretend that being polite and dutiful was gradually healing the wounds. They had both kept up the pretense. Neither had mentioned Willa’s name again.

“He called me after he talked to you last week,” Willa said, her voice almost too low to hear. “He told me you couldn’t make it out that weekend. We had planned… He wanted to talk to you alone; that’s why he said Friday, when Brice would be at work, and that evening I was planning to join you. Then he said you couldn’t make it, and we put things off for a week or two. Abby, he wanted to tell you that we were going to get married. He… we both agreed not to tell a soul until he had talked to you. He wasn’t sure how you would take it. He didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else before he talked to you.”

Abby stopped moving. Married? She clutched Willa’s arm and pulled her around to see her face. Willa had tears on her cheeks. “He asked you to marry him?”

Willa nodded. “Last month. We were planning to be married in November. But he had to talk to you before we could announce anything.” She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands, then put her hands in her pockets, and, hunched as if with a chill, started to walk again.

Abby stood paralyzed, too surprised—even shocked—to move as Willa went up the trail. She looked like an old woman. Then Abby ran to catch up; she grabbed Willa and embraced her and held her as hard as she could. Champagne, a celebration, how happy he had sounded. And she had said no, she couldn’t make it. After a moment Willa drew back. Then, hand in hand, they continued to follow the trail upward not speaking now.