Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (11 page)

From his room in Rhinebeck, Jonah seemed to enjoy reading the latest complaints against Lauren and what she’d done. He liked to laugh at the letters to the editor—to poke fun at bad spelling, at illogical arguments, at the zany and bombastic things people said when they had an audience. To Jonah, the letter writers were ignorant, spouting off like fountains in the town square—knowledge without comprehension. He flipped through the latest diatribes with the same kind of joy as when he played Skeeball at the shore.

Lauren, on the other hand, had no fondness for seeing herself lambasted from coast to coast. Before she’d fled Albany for Richmond, her colleagues and bosses had seemed to be wondering if she was a liability, if there was something about her that they’d failed to see. Her promotion was in jeopardy. So was her reputation as an expert and a professional. What company would hire a
firm where she worked—she who had sent an innocent man to prison? She’d held her head up as best she could—until Sunday night, when she’d decided to make the trip to Virginia. She didn’t consider it running away from the problem, but toward it. And when Jonah found new clippings that mentioned her name, she’d said,
Yes, read them to me
, if only to prove to herself that she was strong enough to hear.

“Look at it this way,” Jonah said. “Have your book sales spiked?”

Lauren was embarrassed to admit they probably had.

“Controversy sells,” he said.

“I’m not exactly interested in selling Arlen’s controversy.”

“You haven’t thought of doing a book about the trial?” Jonah asked, incredulous. “You’re smack in the middle of one of the greatest legal controversies of the decade, and nobody’s offered you a book deal?”

“Oh, they’ve called,” Lauren said. “But I’ve ignored them.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Probably.” She scrolled to the next page on her search engine, scanning for her name. She sat on Maisie’s spare bed, leaning back on a pillow, her computer on her lap.

“I think you should write another book,” Jonah said. “People need to know what happened. Plus, you can donate a portion of the money or something like that.”

“It’s not my story to tell.”

“You can’t protect him, Laure. You do know that, right?”

Lauren stretched her neck to the side, working out tension. When she and Jonah were young, they’d had a dog that went missing, and all that long night, Lauren had suffered the strange sense of having misplaced herself, so that her thoughts kept flying out to the marshes, out to the stands of oak and elm, to the edge of the river where the train tracks rusted under electric wires, to all the
places her lost dog could roam. She had the same sense about Arlen now—that half her mind was here, obsessing at her computer, and half was out there with him haunting the town. She hadn’t realized he was so volatile—leaving and taking Will’s cash. She told Maisie:
If the doorbell rings tonight, don’t answer it. It’s for me.

“Can you stand to hear one more?” Jonah asked merrily. “You’ll like this one.”

“Where’s it from?”

“
The New York Times
.”

“Okay.” She braced herself. “Let’s have it.”

He read, “ ‘Dear Editor: Everyone is pointing at Lauren Matthews for Arlen Fieldstone’s wrongful conviction. But here’s the truth: She’s not a cop, so she didn’t gather evidence. All she could do was interpret it for the jury. If you want to blame someone for Arlen’s mistreatment, blame the jury that convicted him. Blame the cops who botched the evidence. Blame a weak defense. But don’t blame Lauren Matthews for doing her job.’ ”

“Wow,” Lauren said after a moment. Editorials in support of her were so few and far between. She wanted to keep this one, to read it again when she was feeling down. “Oh. That’s . . . Will you save it for me?”

“Of course I will.”

“Who wrote it?”

He laughed. “Do you have to ask?”

It took a moment before the truth set in. “You did.”

“Yep. And they published it too.”

Lauren smiled and relaxed into her pillows. “Thank you, Jonah.”

“Anytime,” he said.

Later that night—so late that the commercials on the television had switched to advertising nine-hundred numbers and singles
party lines—the ringing of Will’s phone smashed the silence of his dark house, and his heart jumped into his throat.

He sat up on the couch—he hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep—and he groped for the receiver among pillows and cushions. His hands were clumsy, and his brain, too, seemed to be tripping over itself. He thought:
Was it the police? Had Arlen gone again?

But when he pressed
talk
, he heard only the soft sound of Lauren’s voice, saying his name like a question. “Will?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Hey. What’s going on?”

“Shoot. I woke you up. I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t bother denying it. With her, there was no reason to lie. “You’re up late for an early bird.”

“I couldn’t sleep. I was worrying about Arlen.”

Will turned down the TV show he’d been half watching while he nodded off—a middle-aged couple was renovating a converted barn—and he shifted the phone from one ear to the other. “We found him.”

“Where?”

“Jackson Ward. They were gonna arrest him for public drunkenness.”

“Oh no.”

“But they didn’t arrest him. The guy let me take him back to the apartment. No harm, no foul.”

“You were good to do that.”

“Naw.”

She paused a moment. “You and Arlen are really close.”

“We were,” Will said. “And—yeah—I guess we still are.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“You know I don’t remember?” Will laughed. “He’s one of those people that you’ve known for so long that you can’t remember meeting them. He moved to town when we were both thirteen. And I don’t recall introducing myself. It was more like he was always just there.”

“I’m glad he has you. Not everybody would do what you’ve done.”

“Well, I knew he wasn’t guilty,” Will said.

For a while, there was nothing on the other end of the line, so that Will nearly wondered if he’d lost the connection. The dark of the living room and the hiss of the phone line gave Will a sense of intense intimacy: there was Lauren’s voice, and his, and nothing more. Pervert that he was, he had the urge to ask her what she was wearing. Not that he needed it to be sweet scraps of ribbon and lace—he couldn’t quite picture Lauren in girly and frivolous lingerie—but he wanted to be able to see her, wherever she was, to know what she looked like when she wasn’t looking at him.

“Lauren,” he said, “Arlen didn’t disappear because of you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m worried that taking me out with you today set him off.”

“If it did, that’s not all bad.”

“How do you figure?”

“We got him to leave the building.”

“Leave the . . . Lauren’s voice was soft with astonishment. “Oh. I didn’t realize . . . ”

Will put his feet up on the coffee table. The flickering light of the television licked between his bare toes. “He had to do something to get himself back into the world. It was probably like his first day of high school all over again—except a thousand times more intense.”

“I probably would have gotten a little drunk for that too,” Lauren said.

“See? That’s why I think having you in the picture isn’t such a bad thing. Even if you piss Arlen off, at least he’s engaging. He can direct all that energy toward something, instead of bottling it all up.”

“You don’t think he’s dangerous, do you?”

Will let his eyelids fall shut in the semidarkness. He could picture Lauren’s wide-set eyes, big eyes that seemed to always be taking in everything at once but that also seemed to obscure her. She favored clothes that were rugged, serious—so that there was something slightly combative in her carpenter’s shorts and sneakers, something challenging even when she wore a dress. She was a strong woman—physically and emotionally too. She seemed to thrive under pressure. But some part of him wondered if she was more vulnerable—more human—than she made herself out to be.

“You’re safe,” Will said. “Arlen’s angry. But he’s not violent.”

Lauren sighed. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I should have just left him alone.”

“Whether you were here or not, Lauren Matthews, you wouldn’t have left us alone.”

“Us?”

“Either of us,” he said, not caring—for the space of a moment—if she knew how she’d fascinated him over the years. “Better you’re here now, and we can help Arlen deal with this once and for all, than have waited until it was too late. If anything, I’m glad you’re here. And even though he doesn’t know it yet, Arlen will be glad too.”

When she spoke again, he could hear the smile in her voice. “There’s not too many in the world like you.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys,” he said, and inwardly he thrilled. Lauren, who had once looked out of the television set at him with her unseeing eyes, saw him now. At least a little bit. He liked her more than he had just eighteen hours ago.

Something about the late hour, the darkness, and not being able to see her made him brave. “How come you’re not married? I figured buying a mansion and popping out a couple of kids would have been on your to-do list.”

“Who says they’re not?”

“But you’re single.”

“I’m considering my options.”

“It must be hard,” Will said, thinking to himself. “To see every little last secret a person carries around. I don’t know how you could be with someone if you were always trying to get into their head.”

“It can be difficult,” she said, her words clipped.

“You probably spend five minutes on a date and already know whether or not you’re going to stay for dessert.”

“Sometimes.”

“But other times . . . ?”

“Other times I
can’t
see anything. I’m completely obtuse . . . ”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons.” She laughed a little, and Will found himself savoring the sound. “Expectation. Chemistry. Stubbornness. And—and love. Love blinds a person. Knocks out all reason. All the people-reading I do, and I’m completely illiterate when it comes to love.”

“Are you in love with someone?” he heard himself ask.

She took in a breath, hard and fast, as if she wasn’t sure of when she might get to breathe again. Now he could picture her. She would be in a small room in her friend’s house, with the streetlight shining in through the blinds and the air conditioner humming. She would be leaning back against her pillows, her pretty legs stretched before her and crossed at the ankles, bare except for flimsy cotton shorts.

When she didn’t answer, he knew. She was in love with someone. And whoever he was, he probably didn’t deserve it. Silence so thick didn’t happen when a woman was confident that the man she loved was in love with her too.

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“I should go.”

“Sure. No problem,” he said lightly. “I’ll pick you up around noon or so tomorrow. Okay?”

“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.

When the sun rose again on Thursday morning, Lauren was awake and ready to greet it, but she’d just barely beaten it to the punch. With the first light in the sky, she headed outdoors for a brisk walk to clear her mind. She had no idea where she was headed, but she had her cell phone on her and she didn’t think she would get lost. As she walked down Monument Avenue, figures of Confederate heroes and modern scholars looked down their noses at her from their perches. She turned, guessing she was headed south and west, until she found herself in a cramped little area of boutiques and eateries. As owners lifted metal grates and set out chairs and flowers, shop after shop seemed to open its eyes.

With brick as far as the eye could see, Richmond steamed and sweltered, a giant kiln with its denizens baking inside. Heat like that—it did something to people. Even now, in the relative cool before the morning, the pace of life was slower—cats ambling across empty roads, clouds rolling across the sky, even the streetlights seemed to yawn long and yellow before brightening to green.
A person could get used to this,
Lauren thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken four days off in a row.

Her phone rang in her pocket and she reached for it. To her surprise, she felt an unexpected pang of annoyance. Usually, she welcomed her ringing phone. No matter what she was doing, a phone call was never an interruption—but right now, at this moment, the ringing startled her like an alarm.

She glanced down at the number and saw that it was not work, but it was her assistant’s home number. She picked up quickly.

“Rizzi? Everything okay?”

“Hi, Lauren.”

“What’s going on?”

“I only got a minute,” Rizzi said. “I’m trying to get the kids off to school and then get myself to the office, but I wanted to check in with you.”

“You’re calling me from home.”

“I didn’t want anyone to overhear me at work.”

Lauren was walking faster now. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“When do you think you’re coming back?” Rizzi asked.

“As soon as I can. I’m trying. Things are . . . complicated. Why?”

“Well, they’re getting complicated here too. Bryce has really started bitching about having to take on your case with Dautel Pharmaceuticals.”

“It’s a difficult case. I’m sure he is.”