Fortune's Hand (41 page)

Julie was clearly shaken. Ellen had been thinking during the whole of this long evening how cruel it was that now, after almost a year of slow, uphill recovery, another blow had struck her valiant daughter.

For valiant she was. Even this little apartment was witness to her effort. The newspapers, magazines, and textbooks in tidy piles on tables and floor revealed one side of her; the clean white curtains, the tiny shelf of copper-bottomed pots, and the well-polished silver frame around Robb's photograph revealed another. Both showed a personality that suffered under grief and was still not crushed by it. This, though, must be the worst for her.

“None of it fits the picture of Dad,” Julie murmured. “He was the last man in the world to do—to do such things. To perjure himself—” Her tears, which had first flowed three hours ago and had gradually been quenched, now filled her eyes again. She wiped them angrily.

“This was a human tragedy. He wasn't a criminal,” Philip said.

Julie turned to her mother. “It must be even stranger for you. You knew him better than I did. You were his wife.”

“Yes. Yes I was, and I loved him, Julie. In a way, I loved him even when we were doing badly together, something you never knew about. And I can still love
the memory of him … I see that you're looking at Philip. You're surprised that I'm saying this in front of him.”

“You see,” Philip added, “it's possible to love two people in different ways at different times. There is an overlapping. I can still say I love my first wife, or the memory of her, even though I blame her terribly for her stubborn insistence on going out into the storm that killed our child.” And he added, “Even though I now adore your mother.”

Julie gave a faint smile. “If you're telling me to keep on loving Dad, you don't need to. How can I forget him?” The rocker, the “old lady's chair,” creaked in the quiet as she moved it. Then she said, “I suppose I owe Andrew an apology.”

When no one replied, she said, “I suppose I could write him a letter.” Then, remembering, she went on, “But Eddy said nobody knows where he is except that he's gone north somewhere.”

“If I know Eddy, he'll put his mind to it. He'll find Andrew,” said Ellen.

“M
y goodness,” Lily said. “I can't remember when I saw you last, Andrew. Can you remember when it was?”

“Let's see. I was fifteen when Mom married again and we moved to England. Dad died when I was nine and after that we left Marchfield.”

The two were having coffee in the Blairs' kitchen. She was enjoying conversation with this interesting, obviously very bright young man.

“By then I had left it, too, so you were quite a little boy the last time we met,” she said. “It's your mother who's kept up the friendship. She writes long letters to my mother about old times in Marchfield. Maybe she's a little homesick, do you think? I suppose I should be ashamed of myself not doing anything except Christmas cards. Of course, I didn't know her for very long.”

“That's all the more reason for me to thank you for storing my books.”

“No problem at all. As soon as
my
mother heard from
you
about the sudden change you're making, and your troubles with the apartment lease, and your worries about your books, she got this idea.” Lily laughed. “Leave it to Emma Webster, everybody says. A problem-solver if there ever was one! She got right on the phone and demanded our attic.”

“I hope my mother didn't
ask
for it!”

“Of course she didn't, I've just told you. But we're pleased to do it. Think nothing of it, Andrew.”

“It's a great relief, Mrs. Blair. I didn't want to store them in a warehouse. Here I feel they're safe. They're my dearest possessions, all I own. Books my dad owned—he was a collector—and every book I've bought through the years. I guess you'd say I'm a collector, too.”

She didn't know why she felt what she was feeling; a strain of sadness in the young man's quiet, otherwise unremarkable manner.

“So where are you going? Chicago?”

“Temporarily, perhaps. There's a chance of a job there, I think.”

“Just pulling up stakes and leaving Rufus Max? I should imagine that's a highly desirable job.”

It was a few moments before he replied. His long gaze, lingering on the greenery beyond the window, now emphasized the sadness.

“Yes, if that's what you want to make of your life,” he said then. “Max is a keen observer of the local scene, practically a detective, and I certainly respect him. But I got tired of it all, investigations of banking fraud and
political scandals and baffling suicides—all of it. I hope eventually to travel abroad and get a look at world affairs. Just vanish for a while.”

“Suicides?” Lily was curious. “You investigated suicides?”

“Not often, fortunately. Just important ones. Like that lawyer, Robb MacDaniel, for instance.”

Really, she ought to drop the subject. But she was somehow unable to, and she pressed it, saying vaguely, “Yes, he was a prominent man, wasn't he?”

“Yes, that he was. But you'd never know it when you met him. He had a way of showing real interest in you when he talked to you. I've thought—of course I knew him very slightly—that perhaps all his troubles had softened him, the divorce, the retarded child, the financial crash—” His voice died away with a note almost mournful.

You knew him more than slightly, Lily thought, and wondered.

“His death was a real loss.”

Why was he telling her all this?

“He was an exceptional human being, Mrs. Blair.”

This young man was now making her uncomfortable. She was relieved when he pushed his cup away, rose, and began to depart.

“I've a long drive back and I'm flying out first thing in the morning, so will you excuse me?”

The proper good-bye, the repeated thanks, the cordial regards to Dr. Blair, who was at work, and the farewell wave as Andrew's aged little car started, all
these took the expected few minutes, after which Lily returned to the kitchen.

Washing the cups at the sink, she thought how odd it was that recently, after all these years, Robb had come back out of the blue. The confusion within herself was odd, too. There were so many pictures floating past her eyes that she seemed to be turning pages in an album: Robb in a stiff new suit at the high school prom (he had given her a corsage of rosebuds), Robb in the neighbor's hayloft (it had rained, and they had lain there all one afternoon), Robb in all his moods, in all his brave youth.…

How could he have ended that way? Destroyed by his own bullet, as the newspaper so graphically, so unnecessarily described it? Lily didn't know. Memory, pity, sorrow—all went swirling without comprehension.

The only sound that came through the open window was the intermittent cluck of the hens, Walter's precious hens. She must go right now to replenish their water. Dear Walter! Out of all that old, old pain this love, this joy had come to her! How to explain it except perhaps to say quite simply that it was the hand of fortune?

And she went outside into the green and drowsy afternoon.

Eddy, as expected, had put his mind to his job. In a matter of weeks, by canvassing the neighborhood where Andrew had lived, he found someone who still had an address in an old notebook. Andrew had once given it to be used in case of an accident so that certain
people down in the southernmost part of the state might tactfully notify his mother in England.

The very next day after receiving the information, Julie's letter lay on the table beside the telephone. It was a long letter, but not too long, because having once begun, it hastened to the point: She had said awful things, perhaps unforgivable things, so he might not want to forgive her; she had been dreadfully unhappy about her father, but about him also; she understood that his actions had been justified, even kind; she wondered whether, in this long year's time, he had found someone else, but she prayed not because she loved him; even in her first anger, she had not really stopped loving him, and she knew that now.

This letter, already sealed and stamped, lacked only an address. So with her heart in her mouth, as the saying goes, she picked up the telephone and made the call.

A man answered. Yes, he was Walter Blair. Yes, he knew something about Andrew Harrison. And who was she? A friend of Andrew's? A very close friend? But then surely he would have given his address to a very close friend. So it was a most important personal matter? That might well be true, but Andrew Harrison had left strict instructions not to give out any information about him. The fact was that Andrew Harrison had had enough to do with newspaper scandal and wanted no more of it. This was not newspaper scandal? But she was giving no proof of that. He did not mean to be rude, but pleading would do no good. He was sorry, and that was that.

* * *

“It's a pity,” Ellen said when Julie reported the conversation. “Of course we can't count on your getting back together with Andrew, but at least if you knew where he was, you could find out, one way or the other, and make peace with yourself.”

“Maybe,” Philip suggested, “you ought to go directly to the Blair house, just ring the doorbell and try your luck. When he sees you in person, Julie, he may relent.”

She considered the proposal. “That makes sense, I guess. Still, though I'm not known to be particularly shy”—and she smiled—“I'll feel uncomfortable appearing at somebody's house right out of the blue.”

“But it just might work,” Ellen urged. “And if it doesn't, all you'll have lost is a day's journey, and we'll try some other way.”

Her state of mind as Julie took the wheel of Ellen's little car, that never-aging jewel, was reflective. She had a sense of moving back through personal history, past the office where Dad had reigned behind his desk, past the columned courthouse where he had made his impressive pleadings, then around the familiar park toward Andrew's street, and finally onto the highway, the straight road south.

Harvest had barely begun. Wherever country met town, the roadside stands were crammed with corn and fruit and zinnias, bringing to mind the farm that Dad, when she was a child, had used to describe so vividly that she had been able to imagine herself living there, too. A sign announcing the distance to Marchfield gave
her such a startle that the car slowed down. Was it perhaps at this intersection that the dreadful accident had happened? If not for that, Dad said, he would no doubt have spent the rest of his life in one of these quiet towns with its long main street, the war memorial, and its consolidated high school.

Then, almost surely, his story would not have ended as it had. Then she, Julie MacDaniel, would not exist. Hardly a tragedy for the world, she thought wryly, but rather a loss for me.

Her mood, as she progressed, was variable. It was hopeful; certainly she would convince Mr. Blair that she was not a reporter and that she really deserved to have Andrew's address. Her mood was depressed; she would obtain the address only to find that Andy had lost interest in her; indeed, he had already found somebody else.

There was an intimidating aspect to all this flat space around her. When the land is so level, Dad told her, that you can see the horizon in an unimpeded circle, then you can actually, in your body, feel Galileo's truth that the earth is a ball revolving around the sun. The concept, though drastic, was uncomfortable on this particular morning. Already insecure, she did not need to feel herself riding a huge ball through the infinite sky. She needed to stand on something solid.

Some miles later, shortly past noon, the town of Canterbury proclaimed its existence on Main Street's shop fronts: Canterbury Market, Canterbury Shoe Repair, and Canterbury Post Office. There she stopped to ask where Walter Blair lived.

The place was not far off. Suddenly convinced that this was after all a foolish undertaking, she wished it were farther. Now here it was, a large, plain house, neither rich nor poor, but well kept and comfortable under live oaks in an extensive yard. On the front door there was a doctor's sign: WALTER BLAIR, M.D. Bravely, she mounted the few steps and rang the bell.

The door was opened promptly. Julie's thoughts scattered between her own uncertainty and a humorous impression that, with his pepper-and-salt hair and conservative smile, this man could perfectly play the part of a country doctor.

“The office entrance is on the side of the house,” he said pleasantly.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't look—”

“And my hours start at two.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, but you see I'm not … I haven't come as a patient. It's a personal matter. You may remember, we spoke on the telephone about Andrew Harrison's address? I thought perhaps if we could talk face-to-face—”

The doctor was astonished. “You've come all this distance to ask me again? It means that much to you?”

“Yes, I—” A lump was forming in her throat. For heaven's sake, buck up, she scolded herself. “Yes, we, we were very fond of each other, you see, and then something happened—”

He looked at her. A small smile crept to his eyes. “All right. Come in,” he said.

She had no sense of the room except that it had windows
and chairs. Invited to sit down, she took a hard, straight-backed chair at the wall.

“I didn't get your name, Miss—”

“Julie MacDaniel.”

“And you're sure you're not employed by a newspaper? Because for some reason that Andrew did not explain, he was, as I told you, determined about that.”

“I'm a graduate student, not employed by anybody. Believe me.”

“Well, you do look honest.”

“I am honest, Doctor.”

“Shall I take a chance that young Andrew won't come back and shoot me?” He paused. “All right. I'll take the chance. I've got the address upstairs. He's someplace in Illinois.”