Dan Young's house was a large, comfortable rambler surrounded on the back and sides by towering redwoods that made it seem miniature in comparison. Located on a large piece of property at the end of a wooded road, the four-bedroom dwelling appeared secluded from neighboring homes.
As they made their way up the front walk, Maria studied the illuminated shrubbery. Weeds had sprung up among the rock roses and the rhododendrons. One of the azaleas was dead and another appeared on its last legs. There was a splendid dogwood in the middle of the front yard. It had probably been Tess who took care of the gardening, she surmised.
The back door opened into the family room and the kitchen. They walked in and Dan tossed his hat like a Frisbee. It sailed about five feet onto a prong of a large coatrack.
She glanced at him. "Impressive."
Dan nodded at a large dark-haired woman. "I discovered her," Dan said with his arms flung wide in Pepacita's direction. "The all-purpose live-in mother."
The big woman turned from whatever she was cooking. ''I get more buenos than most wives.'' Her lively dark brown eyes appraised Maria with obvious curiosity.
Maria smiled and shook Pepacita's hand.
''You and Dan look like you fell on hard times?'' Pepacita asked.
Maria smoothed her tattered and stained clothing.
"I must look awful."
"I told her we would pull some of Tess's clothes out of the closet," Dan said.
"Ah, comprendo. I will see what I can find."
"We're dying of hunger. How about something to gnaw on while we wait for dinner?"
Pepacita nodded and whisked out some smoked salmon; then as fast as any chef, she sliced a couple of hothouse-ripened tomatoes and garnished them with crumbled Feta cheese. Dan disappeared for a couple of minutes and reappeared in jeans.
Each taking a plate, they moved to the couch, where Dan sat at one end and Maria the other. After a few genuine compliments about the house, Maria turned earnest.
"So what do we do with these documents?"
''For the moment keep it in your purse,'' Dan said. ''We'll figure out where to put it after dinner."
"I need to use your phone. I've got to call my mom and my boyfriend. Late as it is, they'll think I died."
"Right there," Dan said, pointing to the phone in the family room.
Her mother was easy. In that special tone that said "I'm really tied up," Maria told her mother that she would call her in the morning.
"Hey, you," she said to Ross, glancing at Dan out of the comer of her eye. Thankfully, he rose to leave but not without a little knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. She recalled liking his mustache. She knew she looked uncomfortable and tried not to. Can't pull it off.
Dan disappeared down the hall.
"I got hung up. It was a real adventure."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't sound so worried. I'm sorry I didn't call. I'm just fine. I was out in the woods and I ended up in an industry laboratory and it's a very long story. I can't tell you now. It would take too long. I'll call you first thing tomorrow."
"You're at the Palmer Inn?"
"No, I'm staying with some friends."
"Do I know them?"
"It's a lady named Pepacita, and a fellow named Dan Young."
"Why do I know that name?"
"Sometimes he handles environmental cases. Ross, I know this is really going to sound strange to you, but you have to trust me here. He's the lawyer for Otran Enterprises."
"That Dan Young? Why the hell would you-"
"Calm down. It's one night. There are a lot of people here and there is a good reason."
"Does this Dan Young know what I don't get to know?"
"Don't say it like that. It's attorney-client privilege for him too."
"Oh great, some industry asshole…"
"Wait, wait, I can see this is going to be a thing. I will get permission from Patty to tell you ninety percent of this. Hey, I don't even know all of it. Dan Young's not telling me what I'd like to know."
"When can we talk?"
"Tomorrow. I promise." She hung up.
Not so mysteriously, Dan reappeared.
"Do you always eavesdrop?"
"Only when vital national-security interests are at stake." His eyes were bright, but he betrayed only a hint of a smile.
"I'm not laughing."
"Well then, I guess I won't, either. Hey, Pepacita, how are we doing on the clothes?"
"I will show Maria to the clothing and the shower. Nate's in his room. Supposedly in bed, but probably reading under the covers with a flashlight."
"Excuse me, I'm going to check on my son," said Dan.
"Surely."
The kitchen was redolent with the aroma of home cooking, of spices simmering slowly on long, lazy afternoons-garlic, cloves, onions: a potpourri of smells. Pans of all sizes hung on a wrought-iron frame suspended above the island stove. Racks laden with a wide assortment of spices perched in long rows behind the cooktop. A chopping block of oak alongside the stove in the kitchen's center bore years' worth of stains.
Maria could also make out a faint musty odor among the kitchen smells-understandable, since the house sat like a mushroom in the shade of the monster trees. Her eyes swept the family room's casual, wood-walled interior, spying a lariat and a green sweater on an antique hardwood rack. The sweater had patches on each elbow. It was old, well-maintained, and comfortable looking. That about summed this place up. For one brief moment she fantasized about what it might be like to live here-with Dan.
This end of the house, with its tongue-and-groove pine-board walls and angled low ceilings, had the feel of a cottage. The adjoining family room was chock-full to bursting with books, photos, and memorabilia-every square inch of shelf and wall space was utilized. The bookcases were meticulously constructed, with an eye toward matching the walls- obviously built for someone who treasured their contents. She went exploring. Her eye skimmed over the collection, fascinated by its breadth and depth: Thoreau, Melville, Kipling, as well as a host of modern writers. Given the dust patterns, it looked like he kept the classics but didn't read them much. Maybe they were Tess's.
And there was lots more: the dog-eared pages of a Rutherford novel, The Forest; nearby a spy thriller; the fat copy of a Thomas Jefferson biography facedown on the desk- frankly, a surprise; a book of Ansel Adams photographs; three original oil landscapes on the wall by a painter whose signature was indiscernible, along with figure drawings and lithographs by other artists; the CD titles in the neat stack of plastic cases, mostly rock, Bob Dylan, a little opera, more light opera, and a smattering of country-western; the magazines on the coffee table: Time, Newsweek, U.S. News amp; World Report, People, a publication by the Audubon Society; an antique Queen Anne table that might be a skillful reproduction; a spreadsheet of professional football teams and their game scores atop it; and the chair where he sat and drank beer, judging from all the caps in the nearby wastebasket. Front and center on the little table where he parked his beer was a 9"xl2" photo of Tess.
The man was apparently a 49ers fan. She hadn't been to a game in years but she still watched them on television. When she did, she thought about her father, and if she'd had a couple glasses of Chenin Blanc, she cried. For a split second she smiled at how much she used to like football-how she analyzed plays with her father. There was loneliness in the memory, so she shrugged it off.
Maria found the personal stuff: the photos, family shots, Nate Young in every imaginable activity, smiling, laughing, a father engaged with his son. But many included a beautiful brown-eyed woman.
From the coffee table, beside another picture of Tess, she picked up a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. Inside the cover, there was an inscription:
To Tess: With the love in my heart taxing my mind for expression, please accept these words of another as a tribute to my devotion.
For some reason the words shocked her. The cowboy expressed his feelings. And judging from the reading material, he was not all belt buckles and boots. In fact, the real Dan Young came in a very odd and misleading package.
Below Dan's inscription in the Shakespeare was Tess's reply:
My dearest: Your words are more to me than a lifetime of spring mornings, because they have only you as their source. I accept this book of verse only as a supplement.
She considered the closet full of clothes-hadn't it been at least two years since the accident? Thoughts of the beautiful brown-eyed Tess, a stranger in most ways, familiar in a few, ignited in Maria a real sense of the pain Dan kept hidden under his deadpan humor, his relaxed shit-kicker affect. She guessed that Dan had not yet made the transition to life without Tess.
Dan had left his camera on the coffee table. It was a late model Nikon and she knew how to use it. Again a sixth sense told her she should not have the documents in only one location. She pulled both the photo and the documents from her purse and placed them on the coffee table. Picking up the camera, she turned it on, then turned on the flash and used the auto focus and electronic light meter with flash function to take a series of quick pictures. She'd tell Dan when he came back.
After putting the pictures once again securely in her purse, she went back to the photo albums. Not certain what she was looking for, she kept flipping pictures until she found Dan in bathing trunks, carrying a younger Nate on his back. A heavy-muscled hunk, Dan was very well proportioned, broad-shouldered, with a near washboard stomach and muscle tone everywhere. Not quite that trim now, but almost.
"What are you looking at?"
Maria closed the album and turned around, not sure what to say. Next to Dan stood a pajama-clad boy who looked about nine.
"Well, you're a handsome guy, Nate," she said. She saw Dan's bone structure etched in the boy's lean face. "I'm afraid I was spying-looking at pictures of you and your father."
"And my mother?"
"Yes. And your mother. She's beautiful."
"Nate, this is Ms. Fischer. Ms. Fischer, this is my very inquisitive son."
Nathaniel's freckled cheeks broke into a smile. "Hi," he offered.
Attentive brown eyes looked up at her from under a reddish-brown mop of hair that sported a slightly unruly cowlick. She noticed Dan subtly attempting to smooth it.
"Ms. Fischer will be staying with us tonight."
"Well, we haven't discussed-" She thought better of bothering with an argument. If she felt the need, she would simply ask for a ride. The man was a force.
The phone rang. Pepacita glanced knowingly at Dan. ''She doesn't call this late," Dan said.
"Of course she does," Pepacita replied, picking up. "He's right here," she said warmly-with none of the bite of a moment before.
"Well, what grade are you in, Nate?" Maria asked, curious about the call but not wanting the boy to feel left out.
"Can I tell you in a minute?" Nate said. "My dad's really getting good at this."
"It's OK, sis. It's no trouble," Dan was saying. "Now look at the light for me." A pause. "OK and it's red, right?" A pause. "So stay right there in your bedroom. Nobody can get in that house if the light is red." A longer pause.
"I understand. It's a windy night. Have you got the cassette in?" A pause.
"Turn it on." A pause. "Now, you know I can be there in four minutes on my motorcycle. Four minutes!" A pause. "At eighty miles an hour I can." A pause. "I'm just kidding, sis.'' A pause.''OK, I'm sorry for exaggerating. Six minutes tops.
"Are you doing the tape now? Let's hear the breathing. Come on." A pause.
"I'm calling you back in thirty minutes to see how you're doing." A pause. "OK." A pause. "No, it's no problem. I'm up anyway." Dan hung up and looked at Maria.
"It's my sister, Katie. She has panic attacks. Having kind of a bad week."
"Every week's a bad week," Nate said.
Dan smiled and ruffled the boy's hair.
"It's the middle of the night, muchacha y muchachos," Pepacita said. Maria could feel that Pepacita wanted her to stay.
"You're right. Nate, my man, what say I go tell you the story about the time I scared off a grizzly bear?"
"Really?" Nate said. Maria supposed it was a story that never got old for Nate.
Dan chuckled. "Really."
''Ms. Fischer could take a shower and change clothes and then we'll have a midnight dinner."
"That sounds great," Maria said.
The shower was luxurious. A large head poured water down into a spacious Jacuzzi tub set within an ornate three-walled tile enclosure. It had a striking floral shower curtain with rose and blue. In seconds she felt drowsy and lost track of time as the water relaxed her. Leaning forward, she let the liquid heat roll down the back of her neck. Then for some reason she came to with a start and looked to the side. She was almost certain she had seen the bathroom door closing. But it was locked. Perhaps it was Pepacita. Couldn't have been Dan. But she thought she saw a hand. And it didn't seem like it was Pepacita's. After trying to reconstruct the fleeting memory, she realized that she was so tired she could be imagining things.
Although she sensed he would not spy on her, and tried to convince herself it couldn't have been Dan, it still unnerved her. Then she decided he might have forgotten something. He was such an independent type maybe he would do something uncouth like grab something out of the bathroom on impulse. Then she thought about it and remembered him putting his arm around her when the car was dangling. She remembered the firm security of it. If he did open the door, he meant her no harm and no disrespect. If it actually happened and it was him, he had a reason. But what would justify that?
Too tired to make an issue of it, or to figure it out, she went back to her reverie, content that if anyone was present they were gone now. When she was out and dried, Pepacita passed her everything she needed, including a pair of jeans and a blouse that fit perfectly. Even the bra was her size. She made her way from the bathroom back to the kitchen, where she saw Pepacita setting the chicken piccata on plates and neatly arranging the vegetables.
"I'll be right back." Once again Pepacita disappeared down the hallway.
Nate came wandering in. Maria walked to the table for one more bite of smoked salmon, when there was a noise at the back door. In an instant the house became pitch black. Then came a crash so forceful she thought it an explosion; black turned to bright whiteness, a giant sheet of flame burned into her face, leaving sparkles of light dancing in front of her eyes. As she fell to the floor, it felt as though someone had violently clapped their hands over her ears. Her body hit the oak flooring and rolled. There was no pain. She tried to remember where Nate was.
"Call an ambulance." She heard a faraway voice, and as soon as she heard it, her head exploded in a throbbing ache. "Call an ambulance."
She shook herself, struggling to regain her senses, trying to see something other than sparklers. She remembered standing in the family room. Now she was lying flat on the floor. Sounds seemed to travel down a long tunnel. Trying to touch the fingers of her right hand to those of her left, she felt-if she could make the contact-as though she would be able to put together her memory of standing in the room and the current certainty that she was now on the floor. Nothing connected.
She heard herself say aloud: "Where's Nate?"
"He's right here. He was farther back. He's shook up, but I think he'll be OK. That's more than I can say for the bastards who did this."
She saw a strange oblong head looking down at her. It was very fuzzy and indistinct and there were still myriad points of light in front of her eyes. "My head hurts."
"I know." Dan's hand smoothed her brow. Clasping his hand in hers felt good.
His face began to come into focus. Then Nate's. Dan had his arm around him and was holding him to his chest. Nate was looking a little bewildered, but then his dad gently shook him and he smiled.
"Those guys must have thought it was the Fourth of July, Nate."
"What blew up?" Nate said.
"On TV they call them stun grenades. And I'd say Ms. Fischer here was certainly stunned."
"My chest hurts-my purse."
"It's on the floor over there."
"Is the photo there? The papers?"
''Could you hand it to me?'' Dan said to a frantic Pepacita, who was studying Nate.
"Are they there?" Maria asked anxiously. "I'm scared," Nate said. She could see Dan still holding him close.
Dan shuffled through the purse with his free hand. "Gone," he said. "They wanted them so bad they came right in after them."
Finally Maria managed, with Dan's help, to sit up.
"This is a home, for God's sake," Dan said.
"Well, they didn't get what they wanted."
"What?" Dan said.
"I'll tell you later," she said. "I can see both your faces now. What a relief."
"Tell me now."
''OK, OK. I took pictures of the pages with your camera.''
"Brilliant. The ambulance will be here in a minute."
"Call it off unless Nate needs it. I'm not really hurt, just disoriented."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Nate, how are you doin'?"
"Fine, Dad," the boy said, obviously trying to be brave.
''We're going to the emergency room. If nothing is wrong, then they'll release you," Dan said.
"What if the police start asking questions?"
"You may be right about that." He paused. "I suppose we could take you in the car. We shouldn't say anything to the authorities if we can help it until we talk to the clients."
"All they did was steal back what we took from them."
"This was different and you know it."
"Our theft's different from theirs?"
"We aren't like them." Dan hugged Nate to his side. "Not a bit."
Pepacita canceled the ambulance. Dan, Maria, Pepacita, and Nate drove to the emergency room with the camera in hand, and by the time they arrived, Maria claimed she felt "almost normal." Nate, although frightened, was not physically injured. Not wanting to argue any more, Dan acceded and they pulled away from the emergency-room door.
"Let's pack some stuff and go to the Palmer Inn. The door is broken; furniture has burn marks; one window is broken," Dan said as they drove.
"You know there's that logging conference in town," Maria said. "There won't be a decent room left. And it's three o'clock in the morning."
When they got back to the house, Pepacita looked dubious and sighed. Dan studied Nate.
"I'm OK," Nate said.
"Let's all sleep in the living room, like camping," Maria said. Dan paused as if it was a bit of a stretch. "It's at the other end of the house. They didn't come in there."
"Yeah," Nate said. "We could even put up the tent."
Dan smiled at Pepacita and took her aside. They talked, but Maria couldn't hear.
Then Dan came back to Maria. "We were just saying, maybe if we closed off this part of the house and all got in the tent, it would seem different enough for Nate."
"I'm not scared anymore, Dad."
"Uh-huh," Dan said. "OK, we'll try the tent. But, Nate, if you can't sleep, we're going to the Palmer Inn." Dan turned to Maria. "My wife had a heavy flannel nightgown she used to wear with stretch pants. What it lacks in looks, I was told it makes up for in comfort."
"That sounds great," Maria said. It took her about two minutes in the bathroom to change.
They moved the couches and chairs in the living room back to the walls, then put the tent in the middle of the room, tying off the lines to the furniture. It was a good-sized cabin-style tent. Dan and Maria blew up four air mattresses.
"I'm too old and fat for this," Pepacita announced after surveying the situation. "I think I'll sleep in bed."
"OK," Dan said.
"Don't let the bedbugs bite," Nate said. After the three of them were in their already-too-hot sleeping bags, the lights were out, and Maria was almost asleep, she was slightly startled to feel Dan's hand cupped over her ear.
"This is unusual."
"Not as unusual as what's going on out there in the woods," she whispered back.
David Dun
At The Edge
"What did you see when you were in the tree?"
''I'm worried Nate will hear you," Maria said. ''I imagine he's pretty keyed up."
"He's out like a light."
"Let's talk in the morning."
"I'm curious."
"Well, it seems like I saw a big green something snaking through the forest."
"A what?"
"I just remember green and round and, like, translucent. Like a giant garden hose winding through the trees."
"You're not going to tell me it looked alive, are you?"
"I don't know what I saw, except it was green. It seemed a block or two long."
"They're probably hiding the Loch Ness monster."
She yawned and turned over.
"Hey, did you hear that?" Nate said in a suddenly alert voice.
"It's the wind in the trees. They creak," Dan said.
"Pretty scary night tonight," Nate said.
"Yeah."
"Are you gonna go out on dates with Ms. Fischer?"
"No, I'm not."
There was silence for a while.
"I won't rub it in," she whispered.
"Thanks," Dan said.