Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (14 page)

“The whole system’s wrong. What do I gotta do to get this money?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t have to come back to church?”

George laughed nervously. “I mean, technically you wouldn’t have to. But you’re certainly welcome.”

“And how much you gonna pay me to go to your church?”

“It’s not like that,” he said. “But . . . a hundred bucks a week. For a limited time. Our funds aren’t exactly infinite. But we hope it helps.”

Arlen scratched an itch on his chest. It was a lot of money that the preacher was offering. He knew he’d be crazy to turn it down. But the idea of owing somebody something . . . of being in somebody’s debt . . . It felt like prison all over again. He didn’t let himself think it through any more before he heard himself reply.

“Well, I thank you for the offer. But I’m afraid it’s not gonna help.”

George’s face went slack with surprise. “Well . . . why? What do you need?”

Arlen couldn’t help but think of his mother, who had encouraged him to go to church with her every Sunday from the time he was a baby to the day they put him away. Some days he’d hated it—the smell of pew wax and old ladies. Everybody always making
such a fuss:
And how’s little Arlen doing in school? Are you being a good boy?

But other days, he’d loved it. The choir singing at the top of their lungs and clapping their hands, the wood of the pew vibrating with the sound of the organ—it made him feel like God was never so close to the people who loved Him as when they were singing. In the back of his mind, Arlen could hear his mother’s voice, speaking to him from her years in the grave. And she wasn’t happy.
This man will help you,
she said.
Don’t be a fool
.

“What do I need?” Arlen took in a deep breath. “What I need’s a job.”

George looked a little surprised, as if Arlen had asked him to procure a hooker instead of a line of work. “I’ll certainly see what I can do. What are you good at?”

“Not a damn thing,” Arlen said.

Will parked in front of his house and pulled open the back of his van, where Lauren’s new dresser was tipped on its side and fastened with nylon straps. A sturdy quilt was folded beneath to keep the wood from being scratched. Lifting the boxy piece of furniture into the van had been no problem, in part because Lauren was stronger than she’d looked like she would be. Will was certain that hauling it out wasn’t going to be a problem either. They worked well together, with none of the bickering, doubt, or uneven laboring that sometimes annoyed Will when he brought in a new picker. When Lauren focused on the job at hand, she was patient, thoughtful, and efficient—as long as she wasn’t on her phone.

“Thanks for letting me store this at your place,” she said. “I’ll pay you to have it shipped up to Albany as soon as I get back.”

“It’s fine.”

Will climbed into the back of the van and began to loosen the
chest of drawers. He tried to give his full focus to the job, but Lauren was standing just a few feet away, framed by the door of the van, her hand on her hip, her shoulders slouched with fatigue, her clothes spotted with dirt and sweat, and the narrow road behind her trailing like a ribbon. He absorbed all he could of her out of the corner of his eye, taking a snapshot in his mind. He liked her this way, slightly more casual and relaxed. So distant from the corporate-America superlawyer who had walked into his shop a few days ago. He wasn’t so arrogant as to think that being with him had changed her. But she made more sense to him now.

“Nice house,” she said. “I like the color. What do you call that? Mushroom?”

“Tan.”

He worked the straps on the chest.

“Owned it long?”

“Six years,” he said.

His house was a work in progress. It fronted a road so narrow and obscure that cars had to pass one at a time. Holsteins grazed behind a barbed-wire fence across the street. He’d bought the old Victorian fixer-upper for next to nothing about two years after he’d opened the antiques shop and started turning a profit.

The house had come a long way since he’d first stepped foot inside. The first floor now had refinished hardwood flooring, custom shelving and lighting, a kitchen full of stainless steel and granite, and a few of Will’s favorite and most prized antiques on display in curio cabinets or on the walls. The first-floor bedroom, bathroom, and laundry were all decked out with the best appliances and most interesting collectibles Will could find. But the upper floors, they weren’t ready for public scrutiny. And they sure as hell weren’t ready for Lauren.

“It’s a big house,” she said. “How many bedrooms?”

“Four on the second floor. One on the first.”

“That’s a lot of bedrooms.”

“I got a good deal. And it’s not too big.”

He pushed the dresser toward the back bumper. All day, he’d been aware of a tension between them—a slight frustration, a block that kept him from fully relaxing around her. He didn’t like that her phone rang once an hour, and she always dropped whatever she was doing—or whatever she was holding in her hand—to move out of earshot and take the call. Occasionally, he got the feeling that even when she was standing next to him, she was apart from him, not fully present in the place where she was.

She had him edgy and twisted up—more now than when she’d simply been the face who looked out at him, unseeing, from the television screen. More than once he’d caught himself looking at her breasts, which were small and high, and unmanageably intriguing. In another life, she might have been a gymnast, and at one point Will had actually found himself wondering how flexible she was—a thought that led to other speculations and an immediate need to remove himself temporarily from her company.

He shimmied the chest into a better position to lower it.

He told himself: a quick lay was not on the table. Or the bed. Or the kitchen floor. He liked Lauren: he admired her strength, her determination, and even—he had to admit it—her sense of right and wrong. But when he tried to see himself through her eyes, even he had to look down.

“Ready?” he asked.

She flexed her arms hero-style. “Bring it on.”

He pushed the dresser to the edge of the van, then balanced it and tipped it carefully down. She grabbed the bottom lip with both hands, and a moment later, he heard her hissing and saying, “Ow!” under her breath.

“What happened? Catch a finger?”

“No.” She let the corner of the dresser down onto the ground.
He saw her glance at her hand, then drop it fast. “Nothing. Just a pinch.”

He hopped out of the van. “Let’s see.” She didn’t move. “Come on.”

She rolled her eyes and extended her hand, knuckles down and palm open to the sky. He took it and held it closer to his face. A dozen or more little brown splinters peppered her skin like freckles.

“When did this happen?”

“When I grabbed that falling board back at Abbott’s.”

“Doesn’t look good,” he said.

“No?”

“I think we’ll need to amputate. It’s the only way.”

She laughed.

“No, really,” he said. “I’ve got an old Civil War medic’s kit out back. Long as you don’t mind the rust.”

“No gangrene for me today, thanks.”

Will watched her draw her hand to her belly; she stiffened when her palm brushed her shirt. He ran a hand through his hair, looked at the door to his house. He didn’t want to invite her inside. He was afraid to have her in his home, among his things. He’d taken great, exhaustive pains to make his house inviting for guests—but still. He didn’t want Lauren, who saw everything, poking around.

But he also didn’t want her to suffer longer than she needed to or get an infection. He steeled himself.

“Come on,” he said. “I got tweezers inside.”

“I can do it myself. When I get home.”

“Aren’t you right-handed?”

“Damn. I guess so.” She looked at her open right hand. “I can get Maisie to help later tonight. I’m sure I can keep from passing out with pain until then.”

Will looked her over: Her tight clothes that she probably wore to the gym but which had served her well at the old farm today.
Her skin that was tanner now than when they’d met. Her legs that were deceptively long despite her short stature. He shook his head at himself. He was as red-blooded as any man; privacy or not, he actually wanted to invite Lauren inside.

“Let’s just do it now,” he said.

Lauren waited in the kitchen while Will bustled about his house to collect the things he needed to operate. And though she knew she shouldn’t, she couldn’t help but look at the African masks, jade tea set, and vintage metal Coke signs on the walls. Will’s taste was impeccable: his counters and appliances were practical with a sleek modern edge, but his love of whim and charm rescued the room from overly modern severity. Will’s house was so neat and tidy and organized, so much the opposite of what she’d seen at the antiques store, that it was almost more like a showroom than a home.

She wandered through the kitchen door and into the living room. She saw a wooden square the size of two doors nailed directly to the wall with fat iron spikes. It drew her attention—the whole room had been arranged to direct the eye toward it. She stepped closer and understood what she was looking at: dozens of keys, keys of all shapes and sizes, hanging from brass brads in the wooden board.

“You like it?” Will asked.

She didn’t turn, but she could feel him approaching her. He stopped just behind her shoulder, looking with her at the collection of keys.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. She lifted her hand, then hesitated. “May I . . . ?”

“Sure,” he said, and to prove the point, he reached out and slipped one of the prettier keys from its nail. He placed it in her hand. It was a fat black skeleton key, the top shaped like a four-leaf
clover. “I found this one when I was cleaning out an old funeral home.”

“Some good luck,” she said.

He chuckled.

She reached out and ran her fingers along the bottoms of the keys, so they tinkled a little like muted bells. Her hand stopped at a particularly long key with chunky teeth and a fat handle. “What about this one?”

“I don’t know what it’s to,” Will said. “I bought it off a guy who picks old shipwrecks as a hobby. He said this came from a wreck at the bottom of Lake Champlain. Probably from the Revolutionary War. But I can’t know for certain.”

“Oh wow,” she said, and she touched it gently. “How long have you been collecting keys?”

“Here was my first,” he said, lifting a small skeleton key from the corner of the board. “I found it in the attic of my mother’s old house. It’s nothing fancy. Just your basic skeleton. But it just . . . I don’t know . . . I had to keep it.”

“God—you’re right. I never thought about it before. These are beautiful.”

He smiled. “Careful. It’s easy to fall in love with them.”

“And you have no idea what any of them go to? What they open?”

“The usual things. Doors. Cabinets. Jewelry boxes. Safes.”

“But you don’t know anything specific about
these
keys.”

“For the most part, no.” He reached out to touch one. “Every one of them has a story. I just don’t know what any of them are.”

She turned away from the board to look at him. She wanted to touch him, to lay her palm against his face. Will collected keys because they were beautiful and they meant something to him. Each key had a purpose. They gave privacy: they locked people out of rooms. They gave punishment: they locked people in.

“Pick one,” he said.

She looked at him, disbelieving.

“Pick one. It’s yours.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t.”

“Really,” he said.

She looked over the keys on the wall, all of them beautiful in their own ways. A rush of greed swept over her. But she didn’t reach out her hand. “Thanks,” she said. “But—”

“You don’t have to decide now.”

She bit the corner of her lip, trying to convey her apology with her eyes.

“Come on,” he said. “The ER bills by the minute. And the operating table is ready to go.”

He led her back to the kitchen. They sat together at the wooden table, where he had set down a plate, ice cube, paper towel, and tweezers.

“Ready?”

Her heart skipped—not the big and terrible gurgling she’d felt sometimes over the last few days, but instead a quieter kind of tremor. She’d never done well with needles or stitches. It wasn’t pain that made her nervous, but the sense of not being able to control it. “Could you . . . um . . . ?”

“What?”

“Would you mind coming to sit next to me instead of across from me? I don’t want to see what you’re doing.”

“No problem,” he said, and he slid his chair close to hers. Even after the day’s work, his scent appealed to her—something soapy not quite masking the smells of earth, sunshine, and barn.

She slipped her right hand across her body and he took it. He pressed the ice cube into her palm—the cold stung. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes closed. She sat as still as possible. His shoulder touched hers.

“Okay?” he asked.

She opened her eyes. “Fine,” she said lightly.

He laughed. “You had your eyes closed. I haven’t even done anything to you yet.”

“Just tell me you’re as good at surgery as you are at antiques.”

“This? Surgery?” He moved the ice a bit lower in the valley of her palm. “This is nothing.”

“Oh, so you do this kind of thing all the time,” she said. She wanted to keep him talking, to train her mind away from his closeness and heat.

“I’ve patched up my fair share of injuries. Sprained ankles. Hornet stings. I even delivered a baby once.”

“No way.”

He nodded, moved the ice again. “Scout’s honor. It was a little girl.”

She glanced over at their hands, hers resting in his, the faint sheen of water from melting ice. As he told her the story of delivering the baby, she let herself look at him. His hair had been sun-lightened and kissed with the slightest undertones of strawberry. His eyes were the most unusual shade she’d ever seen. They were the kind of gray-green that could go unnoticed in casual conversation, but when she looked at them—really looked—their color was shimmery, elusive, the color of a river on an overcast day.