The Rainy Season (30 page)

She nodded. “Very reasonable,” she said, looking at him hopefully.

“Well,” he said, “maybe everything’s not gone forever, you know?” The sun glistened on the wet vegetation.

She smiled at him now. “Where can we find him?”

“On the way home,” Phil said. “At the mission.”

THERE WERE SEVERAL
booths open at Watson's, the drugstore on the plaza. Mrs. Darwin led Betsy to one by the window. The afternoon was overcast, but still dry, the first nice day in months, and the plaza was active with people going in and out of the antiques stores and bank buildings. Betsy remained silent, looking out through the window. When a waiter brought menus she let hers lie on the table. Mrs. Darwin watched to see if she would pick it up, but the girl was apparently willing to be just a little bit sullen, even after a wonderful two hours of shopping at the mall.

“Phil tells me that they have a wonderful milk shake here,” Mrs. Darwin said. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Betsy nodded.

“Are you hungry, child?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“Of course you are. Phil told me that you hadn’t had breakfast. I’m surprised he doesn’t feed you more regularly.”

“I didn’t wake up yet.”

“Well, you must be hungry if all you had was a cookie at the mall.” She signaled the waiter. “We want milk shakes,” she said to him. I’d like boysenberry. Betsy?” Betsy shrugged again. “Chocolate?” Mrs. Darwin asked. Betsy nodded now. “And what to eat? A hamburger?” The girl nodded again. “Let’s have two of the hamburger plates, with fries,” Mrs. Darwin said to the waiter, who wrote it down and left. The two of them sat in silence again. “What are you watching so intently?” Mrs. Darwin asked after a moment. She craned her neck to see what it was that Betsy saw. “Do you know someone out there?”

“Uh-huh,” Betsy said. “Elizabeth.”

“Who? I don’t see who you mean. Who’s Elizabeth?”

“She went into a store over there.”

“I see. How do you know this Elizabeth?”

“She came to see Uncle Phil.”

“Ah. I suppose a man like your uncle Phil has a lot of women come to visit him?”

“I don’t know. I only know about Elizabeth.”

Again there was a silence. “Do you know, Betsy, you and I are going to have to learn to talk to each other again. Sometimes things happen to us that change us, but we’ve got to be careful not to let them hurt our friendships. We can overcome things if we stick together. Your uncle Phil hasn’t said anything against me, has he? Anything bad about me?”

“No.”

“Because I’ll admit that we had some trouble in Austin, when he came to get you. I want to show you something.” She opened her purse and took out the paper that Marianne had written the first will on. “I want you to read this.”

Betsy read it and shrugged, as if it meant nothing to her. The waiter brought the milk shakes and set them on the table, and Betsy dug into hers with the long milkshake spoon.

“Do you know what this is, Betsy?”

“My mother wrote it.”

“Yes, she did. She wrote this so that if anything happened to her, I would become your mother. I know I couldn’t become your real mother, but I would be your adopted mother. Do you know why she wanted me to be your adoptive mother?”

“I guess.”

“Because I helped raise you. I knew how to cook for you and how to sew your clothes and help you with your homework. She knew that I love you. Are you listening to me? Slow down for a moment.”

Betsy put the spoon down and looked out the window again. This was apparently hard for her. The poor child was at loose ends. She had been sent away with a man she hardly knew and stuck away in an attic. This was the first time, probably, that she had been out of the house. It had taken someone from halfway across the continent to buy the poor girl a milk shake! “I showed you this because I wanted you to know what your mother wanted for you. Phil is a fine man, from what I know about him, but your mother wanted you to live with me, Betsy. It was important to me that you knew that.” She folded the will and put it back in her purse.

“Are you listening to what I’m saying to you?” she asked after a moment.

Betsy nodded.

“Your Uncle Phil is a young man, Betsy. That’s something you’ll come to understand. And young men have … interests, I guess I would say. He and I talked about that this morning. He’s a little worried about taking care of you. He doesn’t feel … adequate. I guess I can tell you that, because you’re old enough to cope with it, and because your mother wanted what’s best for you. That’s why she wrote this. What I’m trying to say is that Phil and I came to a kind of agreement about the will, and about his needing his space. We agreed to do something called shared custody. Do you know what that means?”

“My best friend had that,” Betsy said.

“Well good for her, because that’s the best way for a child to have a mother and a father both. I’m
so
happy you understand, because you and I will be spending some time together starting right now. I didn’t drive all the way out to California just to take you shopping, you know. I’ve got some of your clothes from home, and of course the things we bought today. We’ll be staying at my hotel tonight, and your Uncle Phil will join us in the morning. I promised him that I’d watch over you while you got used to the whole idea of it. He was busy tomorrow morning, but he’s going to try to squeeze us in. We’ll make all our plans then. We have
so
much to discuss, Betsy, that I can hardly tell you. I think this is
simply
wonderful.” She shook her head sincerely, watching Betsy’s face, which hadn’t really changed expression.

“Why did you tell Uncle Phil that I stole the inkwell?” Betsy asked suddenly.

The question took Mrs. Darwin by surprise, especially the cheeky tone of it. She mastered her anger, though. “I
never
said you’d stolen it,” she said. “Is
that
what he told you?”

“You told him it was your inkwell, and that maybe I had it.”

“Honestly, child, I thought you
might
have it.
Do
you have it?”

Betsy shook her head.

“Well …” Mrs. Darwin sighed heavily. “Do you know what I think? I think we got off on the wrong foot with this. I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the honest-to-goodness truth. We both know that the inkwell belonged to your mother.
I
know that because she showed it to me once. She let me hold it, Betsy. And what she told me, was that if anything ever happened to her, and I became your adopted mother, I was to take care of it for you. It’s much too … much too dangerous for a child to possess. When I was organizing your mother’s things, I searched for it, and it wasn’t where it had been. Something else had been put into her drawer to replace it, as if someone was trying to play a trick.” She waited for a moment to let this sink in. “
Did
you take it?” she asked. “You can tell me, child. I’m not an ogre. This … this inkwell is what’s causing the trouble between us, isn’t it? We’ve got to get it out in the open now. We’ve got to make things plain if we’re going to be a family again. So you can tell me, was it you who took it from your mother’s drawer?”

“Yes,” Betsy pulled her milk-shake glass out of the way so that the waiter could set down the lunch plates.

“Well!
That
clears the air. I’m sorry if Phil mistakenly thought that I said it belonged to me. If I had known he would tell you that, I would have asked you myself. This whole thing has been a grand mistake. You brought it along with you from Austin, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Now I know it’s safe! I’ve been
so
worried.
Aren’t
these delicious hamburgers? Ketchup?”

“Uh-huh.” Betsy dumped ketchup onto her fries and then sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

“Well,” Mrs. Darwin said. “
What
a beautiful day! And so the inkwell is safe at Phil’s house?”

“No.”

“You have it with you? You don’t carry it around, do you? You’ll lose it that way.”

“Usually in my book bag.”

Mrs. Darwin glanced at the book bag, which lay on the seat next to Betsy. The three stuffed animals were crammed into it, with their heads sticking out. “You have it with your friends in the bag?”

“I don’t have it now. I think someone stole it.”

“
Who
stole it? Betsy, let’s not start this up again. …”

“No, it’s true. Someone took it.”

“Do you know who it was? If you do, tell me, and we’ll get it straight back. Who was it?”

“That lady. Elizabeth.” Betsy pointed across the street, at the antiques shop again. A woman stood in the doorway now, watching the traffic circle the plaza.

“Why on
earth
would this Elizabeth woman have stolen our inkwell?”

“She wanted it, I guess.”

Mrs. Darwin looked across the street again. The woman in the doorway turned and walked back in, and with a shock of recognition, Mrs. Darwin knew who she was—the chippie whom Phil had been talking to outside his house yesterday afternoon. That damned Phil Ainsworth! She should have known that he’d be up to some kind of monkey business. He wasn’t satisfied to take Betsy. He wasn’t satisfied to take Betsy’s money. He had to take Betsy’s possessions too, him and his lowlife women. What the hell
was
his game here? She was damned well going to find out.

“Finish your lunch,” Mrs. Darwin said to Betsy. “We’re going antique shopping.”

IT WAS WELL
past noon and Appleton hadn't yet arrived at the store. Elizabeth had opened up at ten, the regular time, and had spent nearly three hours fretting, going out onto the sidewalk, watching for his arrival. They’d had exactly two customers all morning. The bones and crystal lay in an old leather satchel, which now sat on the office floor.

Yesterday evening, by the time she had gotten to the plaza, the shop had been closed up tight. She had driven past his house, past the local eateries, waited outside the store for an hour, but he hadn’t returned. Finally she had gone back out to Phil’s and had another look around, half-expecting to find the old man himself out there. She had managed to confirm a few suspicions, including getting a look at Phil’s houseguest, who was very pretty, about her own age. She had climbed her first tree, too, and found a hidden treasure, and had managed to rip the hell out of her blouse in the process. Appleton could buy her a new one. Ten new ones.

She leaned on the counter, making up her mind what to do if he simply
never
came back. But then he appeared at the door, nodded at her as he made his way into the office. “What news?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for an answer. He sat down at the desk and opened the drawer, taking out his box of trinkets. Irritated, she stepped across and locked the shop door. She wanted a piece of his time—no interruptions. She went into the office and picked up the satchel, which he looked at over the top of his glasses, a gesture that she loathed.

“I found
this
,” she said, angling the open satchel toward him, watching for a reaction. Inside the suitcase the bones lay in a heap, the beads scattered among them. The crystal lay among the bones, glowing faintly like a cloud-veiled moon. He stared at it for a moment and then went back to his trinkets, shaking his head slightly, as if he were disappointed in her somehow. “Is that all?” he asked.

“
All
? Yes,” she said. “That’s all. Isn’t that enough for one right now? I would have thought you’d find this interesting.” She fought to keep her voice level, to sound vaguely hurt instead of annoyed.

There was the sound of rattling from the desktop now, and she saw that the trinkets on top were agitated as if by an earthquake. All of them were illuminated as if a light shown through them, and there was a faint aura now around the open mouth of the satchel. The rest of the items on the desk—the jeweler’s loupe, the tweezers, a coffee mug—lay still. Again she felt a pressure in her ears and heard the low rush of seashell sound. Appleton reached across and shut the satchel with both hands. The trinkets lay still again, the light having gone out of them.

“What do you think?” she said. “Honestly.”

“What do I think about what?” he asked her calmly.

“Well … You saw the crystal.”

“The crystal is quite valueless to me. I assume it was with the exhumed bones. I really wish you hadn’t taken it, Elizabeth. The bones, any of it.”

“Why?”

“Because, my dear, I wanted to be subtle. This kind of senseless theft puts everyone at risk. And why on earth would you want such a thing as this?”

“Why would
I
want it? I thought we could offer it for sale,” she said. “I’m happy to take a percentage.” She held her hands out in a gesture of resignation.

“A percentage of what?”

“You sold that trinket for over a thousand dollars,” she said, trying hard to keep any show of anger out of her voice.

“My usual customers would hardly be interested in this. You might try inquiring at Capistrano, at the mission. There was a time when the church offered a bounty on these objects, although I don’t believe they’ve done any business along those lines for a number of years. It’s been such a long time since any have turned up. He began clearing the top of the desk, laying the trinkets and instruments into a lidless cigar box, which he set on the floor.

“You really don’t understand, do you? You’ve never quite grasped what it is I want.”

“Are you the only one that’s allowed to want something? I don’t mean to sound greedy, and I understand that you’re interested in your daughter and all, but I’ve got myself to think about.”

“Of course,” he said after a moment. “You’ve got yourself to think about. Here, let’s take a look at your crystal.” He smiled at her now in a fatherly way. He opened the suitcase again and reached inside, picking the crystal up bare-handed and holding it in his palm. She waited for him to react, but he still simply smiled, hefting the crystal once and then laying it on the desktop. He bent over and picked up the doorstop that lay beside the office door, a cast-iron hedgehog the size of a grapefruit. Before she could react, he raised the heavy weight and brought it down on the crystal, smashing it into fragments. The glow went out of it, and the pieces of crystal lay there inert, like dull green pieces of old bottle glass. “There,” he said. “Now it’s a dead issue.” He laughed at his own joke.