“I keep thinking maybe he’ll just walk in the door one day,” she said. “That the rig went down, but somehow Ely clung onto some part of it, and maybe he got picked up by some ship somewhere, without any ID, and maybe he lost his memory, like in that Matt Damon movie, you know the one? But then Ely gets his memory back, and he comes home.” She dug a tissue from her jeans pocket, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “But I know it’s not going to happen. I know that. But I miss him.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Ely, he was always there for me. He protected me. He watched out for me. No one does that for me now. I just, I just wanted to be protected from something, to have someone doing the protecting…”
“So you made up that story, so I…”
Joan tried to look at me but she couldn’t. “It felt so nice, you know?” Her face crumpled and more tears trickled. “Knowing you were there? That I could call on you?”
“You can call on me,” I said. “For something real.”
“And the other thing is, I wanted to look after someone. Ely, he looked out for me, but I looked out for him, too. And now, after what you’ve gone through, you need that. You need someone to look after you. I thought… I thought I could do that for you. And the other thing I said, about the money that’s coming, that’s true, I swear to God. I’ve got a big settlement coming.”
I was about to take a couple of steps closer to her, but held my distance. This had the feeling of something that could go very wrong very quickly if I allowed it to.
“Joan,” I said gently, “you’re a good person. A kind person.”
“I noticed you didn’t say ‘woman.’ ”
“You’re that, no question,” I said. “But… I don’t want this. It’s not just with you, but with anyone. I’m not ready. I’m a long, long way from ready. I don’t have any idea when that will be. The only thing I care about now, the only thing I’m looking after now, is my girl.”
“Sure,” Joan said. “I get that.”
We both stood there another moment. Finally, Joan said, “I’m going to go, okay?”
“Sure.”
She started for the door.
“Joan,” I said.
She stopped, and there was this ever-so-slightly hopeful look on her face, that maybe I’d reconsidered, that I wanted to deal with my loneliness and loss and grief the same way she did, that I would hold her in my arms, take her upstairs, and in the morning, she would make me breakfast just the way she did for Ely.
“The key,” I said.
She blinked. “Oh yeah, okay.” She fished it out of her pocket, placed it on the kitchen table, and left.
How many other times, I wondered, had Joan let herself into the house when I wasn’t here, and what might she have been up to?
I also wondered, for a moment, if she’d be interested in a business teacher I knew.
As I ate the cheese and crackers and drank the beer, I tried to get my head around the other events of this day.
Sommer’s visit. The sixty-two thousand dollars Belinda had wanted Sheila to deliver to him. The crappy electrical parts that had caused the fire in the house I’d been building. The showdown with Theo Stamos. Finding the knockoff parts in the back of Doug Pinder’s truck.
My head was spinning. There was so much information-and at the same time, so little-that I didn’t know how to process it. My fatigue level didn’t help. There had been too many sleepless nights.
I finished my beer and picked up the phone. Before I crashed, I needed to be sure Kelly was okay.
I speed-dialed her cell number. It rang twice before she answered.
“Hi, Daddy. I was just about to go to bed and was hoping it was you.”
“How’s it going, sweetheart?”
“Okay. Kind of boring. Grandma’s wondering if we should drive to Boston for something to do. At first I wanted to go but I really just want to come home. I thought maybe if I came here I wouldn’t be so sad but Grandma is sad so it’s kind of hard not to be. But she says there’s a big aquarium there. It’s like the Googleheim. You know, the museum where you start up at the top floor and you keep going around and around until you get to the first floor? The aquarium is like that. It’s this big tank and you start at the top and keep going until you get to the bottom.”
“Sounds like fun. Is she there? Your grandmother?”
“Hang on.”
Some fumbling. “Yes, Glen.”
“Hi. Everything okay?”
“Everything is fine. Is there something you wanted?”
“I just wanted to be sure Kelly was okay.”
“She is. I guess she told you we’re talking about whether to take a trip.”
“Boston.”
“But I don’t know if I’m up to it.”
“Just let me know what you decide,” I said. Fiona passed the phone back to Kelly so I could say good night.
A second later, the phone rang. I picked up without glancing at the caller ID. “Hello?”
“Glen?” A man.
“Who’s this?”
“Glen, it’s George Morton. I wonder if you might be able to meet me for a drink.”
He was waiting for me in a booth at a place over in Devon. It was a bit down-market for George, but maybe he wanted a place he thought would suit me.
