The Return of Jonah Gray (19 page)

“I've got to get out of this heat,” my father suddenly announced as Jackie's whimpers continued in the background.

“You want to rest in the car? I'll put the air-conditioning on,” my mother suggested.

“Maybe for a few minutes,” he said.

“Can I help?” Marcus offered.

“He's fine,” Kurt said, waving him off as he and my mother helped Dad away.

Marcus looked back at me. “So,” he said. “What's your complaint?”

“My complaint?”

“Are you sick? Sunburned? Spider bite? Maybe some food poisoning?”

“I'm sorry. This day was supposed to be relaxing.”

“If everyone's doped up by the end of it, it might still be.” He smiled a little and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket.

“I didn't know you smoked,” I said.

“I've got to figure that you don't know most things about me.”

I'd grant him that. “But you're a nurse,” I said.

“So?”

“Aren't you supposed to be healthy?”

“Jacob's an accountant. Isn't he supposed to keep better track of his money? Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you always do it.”

“Fine,” I said.

Marcus lit a cigarette and inhaled. I noticed that he smoked the same brand my mother used to.

“What are your bad habits?” Marcus asked.

“I didn't mean to say it was a bad habit,” I said.

Marcus waved me off. “Over-apologizing, maybe?”

“Not usually, no.”

“Because you're never wrong, I'll bet. Then what?”

I looked around the picnic table. Amid all the turmoil, I'd stayed in the exact same place. “Sitting back and waiting maybe,” I said.

“That's your bad habit?” He flicked his ashes onto a half-eaten plate of potato salad. “Jesus, you could stand to develop a few more. Cigarette?”

I shook my head. “What about riding on the backs of motorcycles?” I suggested.

Marcus nodded. “Speaking of which, I'd better get on the road.”

“When are you coming back to Piedmont? When do you think you'll get started with, you know, Dad?”

“Probably tomorrow or the next day. Why?”

“So I'll see you next week?”

He stubbed out his cigarette. “I guess so.” A few moments later, Marcus had gathered up his things and left.

I, too, had grown tired of Gardner family day. It felt as if we weren't a family so much as a group of isolated individuals in orbits that barely intersected. I turned to Eddie, who'd been sitting at the edge of the picnic table, watching everything. He hadn't yet bounced back from his role in Blake's bloody nose, and after hearing Jackie's bee-stung shrieks, had wound himself into a little ball and looked as if he were willing himself not to cry.

“I see that your mom brought her bike,” I said to him. “You ready for an adventure? Just you and me?” It was a smile worth seeing. I got the kid bundled into the bike trailer and we were off.

I was definitely more in a mood for fields than family. Whenever an intersection presented a clear choice, I veered in the direction that looked more rural. That led us past crops I didn't recognize, past orchards, past fields already stripped of their harvest.

“Are you okay back there?” I called.

Eddie smiled, his little helmet knocking back and forth.

It was a beautiful day, blue sky above and dark gray asphalt below. I sped up and the discrete greens in the fields blurred into one. I ascended a hill, pushing hard to maintain my speed with the trailer behind me, legs pumping, heart racing, lungs burning. It was good to feel something so searing. At the crest, out of breath, I saw a rickety country store and coasted to a stop in front of it. I got off the bike, heaving.

An old man sat in a chair outside. “Can I help you?” he asked.

I nodded, but couldn't speak. I put my hands on my waist and bent down, trying to catch my breath.

“You're outta breath,” the man said. I nodded again and looked up. Behind him, a painted sign revealed the store's name and address. I recognized the zip code as the same one Martina had researched for me. This was Jonah Gray's neck of the woods.

I glanced at the old man, trying to gauge if he looked more like an RV driver or a bow hunter. Mostly, he seemed like the kind of person who'd lend a hand if you ran out of gas or lost your wallet.

“Am I anywhere near Horsehair Road?” I asked, at last able to speak.

“Sure are. You're not but a quarter mile off. What you'll do is keep heading down this here road and you'll see it. On the left.”

“Thanks.”

“You know someone on Horsehair, do you?”

“Gray?” I said, reluctant to offer anything more.

“Oh sure,” he said. “Helluva year. Hope he's feeling better.”

I headed back to the bike.

“What's horsehair?” Eddie asked.

“The name of a street,” I said. “Wave at the nice man, okay?”

The man at the grocery was spot-on. Horsehair Road was barely a quarter of a mile farther. The area looked as if it had begun as a single farm, before being subdivided for a housing development. In the first block stood a number of newer homes, the landscaping still sparse around them. It was the sort of neighborhood that might be pretty, given fifty years and enough rainfall.

I continued down the road. The newer houses sported addresses in the one hundreds, so 530 Horsehair had to be a few blocks more. I pedaled as if I knew where I was going. And I did, sort of. But what business did I have there? It was wildly inappropriate, my father would have been quick to point out, to visit the home of someone I was auditing. And with my nephew as a witness. Yet I kept going, and within a minute or so, the newer development had fallen away, and I found myself at the end of the road, at the edge of a long, gravel driveway that led to an older farmhouse—530 Horsehair.

I glanced at Eddie and wheeled the bike around, retreating a few yards. Then I turned around again. I wasn't sure what I was there to see, but whatever it was lay at the end of the driveway. I had ridden on the back of a motorcycle, for goodness sake. I could do this. Jeffrine could do this. I stopped at the edge of the road and dismounted.

“What are we doing?” Eddie asked.

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. He looked confused. “We're exploring,” I told him. “Didn't I promise you an adventure?”

“Is it safe to get out?”

There were no cars visible, either along Horsehair Road or in the driveway of the farmhouse. “I think it's safe,” I told him.

Eddie picked his way out of the trailer and stood beside me. I clicked down the kickstand and tucked the bike beside the mailbox.

“Do you want to take your helmet off?” I asked, but Eddie shook his head. “Maybe that's best,” I said.

He gazed into the field of corn that lined the road. I pulled out my cell phone.

“Who're you calling?” Eddie asked.

“Just…someone,” I said. I dialed the phone number for the
Stockton Star
and requested Jonah Gray's extension. I knew from reading his Web site that he often worked Sundays, preparing for Monday's paper.

“Jonah Gray,” he answered.

I hung up. He was at work. That was all I needed to know.

“Your friend wasn't home?” Eddie asked.

“Nope, not home.” I offered Eddie my hand and we stepped onto the driveway, toward the house. The corn, on either side at shoulder level, waved in the light breeze.

“Where are we going?” Eddie asked.

“Just down a ways,” I said. I squeezed his hand. The trust he had in me made me want to cry. Of course, I wouldn't have brought him there had I thought that any harm would come of it. Whatever Jonah Gray's issues were—with his stock sales or gardening—I felt certain he posed no danger to small children. Indeed, he had devoted a whole section of his site to poisonous plant identification.

At the end of the drive, the corn petered out, and a scrappy, slightly uneven yard spread up to the farmhouse. Between the drive and the yard sat a thick stump, maybe two feet high. I wondered if that was all that remained of the sixty-five-year-old black oak that Jonah had declared lost a year earlier. Off the front of the house, a wide porch extended, with a bench swing and an American flag that fell limply from a wall-mounted pole. The place looked as if it had seen a lot of living, not all of it easy.

“What are we looking for?” Eddie asked me.

I didn't answer. I didn't know how to explain it to him, or what I would say were Mrs. Gray to spot us poking around her lawn. I concentrated on walking as though I belonged there.

I noticed Eddie frowning.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“It's boring. There're no toys,” he said.

He was right. I looked around the lawn and porch, and saw that nothing on it pointed to the life of a child. I knew that Jonah had claimed an Ethan Gray as his dependent. But given how recently Jonah had married, I realized that Ethan was likely an infant, not yet old enough to enjoy an outdoor jungle gym or soccer goal. I wondered why he never mentioned a son on his Web site.

“What's that?” Eddie asked, lurching toward the back of the house.

I liked that he believed that I knew where I was going. He tugged me around the side of the farmhouse, past the huge stump and back toward an area out of sight from the driveway. Behind the house, the lawn grew more lush, with a flagstone walkway and bird feeders strung between a pair of tall trees. At the edge of the lawn stood a shiny glass-walled greenhouse.

Eddie ran up to it and peered through the windows. “At the zoo, they had a place like this for butterflies,” he said. Then he pushed away from the glass and wiped his hands. “It's just plants,” he said, not trying to hide his disappointment.

“Plants can be cool, too,” I said.

He shrugged, no longer as willing to believe me.

“Did you know that the oldest living thing on earth is a plant? Well, a tree. Right here in California.”

“No way.”

“It's true. There are bristlecone pines in the White Mountains that are four and a half thousand years old. That's like forty-five centuries. That's like dinosaur old.”

“That's old,” Eddie said.

“In a way, plants are like very quiet, green animals.”

“Like a snake?”

“Sure. A vine is like a snake, right?”

“But snakes move.”

“Yes, but, well, you like bananas, right?”

“I like bananas.”

“Some banana trees can grow an inch a day. It's true. The farmers who grow them swear that they can hear them creaking and stretching.”

“Scary,” Eddie said. “How come you know so much about plants?”

“I don't, actually. But I've been reading a lot about them recently.”

I wished I could identify what was growing inside the greenhouse. Through the glass I saw rows of hanging ferns, flowers as big as grapefruits, spiny cacti, thorny palm trees, slick-looking leaves in the shape of hearts, trees that looked like miniature willows, trays of moss and grass and what appeared to be water lilies. There were bags labeled Potting Soil and bags labeled Loam and Mulch and Peat and Sand. There were gardening gloves and trowels and pruning shears and little rakes. It looked like a magician's storehouse.

“Hello there,” a man said.

I jumped at the voice and wheeled around, searching for its source.

An older man headed toward us, down the path alongside the house. He limped and listed a bit to the left. Eddie immediately took my hand and tucked in behind me.

“Hello,” I said. I wasn't sure what to do next. I was obviously trespassing. Front yards were one thing. Backyards were something else entirely.

I figured I could outrun the man, should it come to that—but I was loath to panic Eddie, and I had to assume that carrying a five-year-old would slow me down. As I stood there, considering my escape path, I noticed that the old man hadn't demanded to know what I was doing there.

“I haven't seen,” he said, then got stuck on the word. “Seen, seen.” He seemed to be struggling to pick the right one. “You. In years.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're a Potter girl,” he said.

“This is my aunt,” Eddie said.

“No, I'm…” I started to say but petered off. The man was too old to be Jonah Gray, but that didn't mean that I wanted to explain myself. “We were biking and we got a little lost,” I said. “Then we saw the greenhouse.”

“We're lost?” Eddie whispered.

“You live…you live there. Across that field,” the man insisted, pointing through the corn.