Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (9 page)

Arlen had decided that the way to break out of the antiques
shop was
not
to talk himself out of it, but rather to simply not talk himself into it in the first place. He’d been clinging to the idea that going outside would take great courage, and determination, and precise timing. But as it turned out, all it had taken was the realization that he’d run out of beer. He needed another beer more than he needed another episode of
The Price Is Right
. He wished he’d known earlier that escape was just an easy shift of mind.

He turned right heading out of the shop. The streetscape gave him a strange feeling of being out-of-body. Stoplights changed from red to green, morning glories in window boxes swayed slightly in
a nearly imperceptible breeze, the traffic roared, and pedestrians passed by with such indifference that Arlen wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if it had turned out they could go right through him. It made no sense, how mindlessly everyone went about their business, as if his walking down the street was entirely normal, when in fact it was anything but. Didn’t they realize Arlen Fieldstone was walking among them? Convicted murderer who hadn’t murdered? He didn’t know what he’d been hoping would happen when he left the shop. But it wasn’t this. It wasn’t
nothing
.

When they let him out of prison, a guard had driven him to the public parking lot in a dingy gray van that smelled like cigarette ash. The door to the van slid open—a roar in his ears—and then a wall of a thousand television cameras pointed at him like some kind of firing squad. He climbed down from his seat and paused a moment before he put his foot on the pavement—there were no fences, no bolted doors, no shatterproof plastic panes, no bars.

What now?
the reporters had asked.
Are you going to sue somebody? Are you going to find your ex-wife? What was it like to be in prison when you didn’t do anything wrong?

Arlen had just smiled a little and waved, and it took him a while to realize that one of the faces in the crowd was familiar—was Will. The closest thing to kin he had left. Will’s expression was grave; he
stepped forward out of the tangle of wires and lenses and microphones and pulled Arlen into a long, tight hug. Flashes snapped.

At that moment, Arlen understood what it was to belong fully to himself and only himself. Freedom was the taste of the sky on his tongue. Anything had been possible. Anything. He was free. What more did he need?

Now he walked past the shops on the block—the nail salons with painted windows, the take-out restaurants with their menus posted on their doors, the boutiques of old clothes made trendy again. He forgot about the beer. He walked and walked, and soon he didn’t know where he was. All the streets were unfamiliar. All the streets looked the same. And yet, there was no begrudging guard to tell him what to do or where to go next. No cameraman asking for an interview. No senators or congressmen promising to help him make a new life.

Arlen had to jump to avoid a car when a stoplight turned green. Sweat made constellations on the front of his gray T-shirt. No one cared. And he didn’t either. He didn’t think about the antiques shop, his promise to Will that he would watch it, the fact that he’d left the door unlocked.

He had no idea where he was or where he was going or why no one gave a crap. And there was something safe in the feeling of total indifference, so that nothing and no one mattered. He thought,
Maybe
not caring
is what it means to be a free man.

Lauren had never wanted a shower more in her life than when Will pulled his old beast of a car up to the curb in front of the antiques shop. Her shorts were sticking to the backs of her legs. Her hair was damp with sweat. She had the same hot and sticky feeling she’d had as a kid after a long day of playing in the ocean surf. She’d almost fallen asleep on the ride home.

“Looks like you got some color,” he said.

She touched her face; her skin felt hot. “Maybe.”

“What do you think of picking? Ready to quit your day job?”

“Not exactly. But it was fine. Interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“I learned things,” she said. She glanced at him across the cab of the car. His face was brightened by a streetlight. “You’re like a walking Wikipedia.”

“Walking Wiki—
what
?”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

He looked at her, straight-faced and with dire gravity. She started laughing, and he did too. She leaned back against her seat, caught off guard by Will’s teasing. She liked him—when he wasn’t busy hating her.

When her laughter faded, he pulled the key from the ignition. His voice was low and smooth. “Why don’t you come inside with me?”

A fiber of heat snaked through her, a longing that was entirely unexpected and entirely sexual. Her muscles tightened; her skin flushed.

Will went on. “Arlen’s inside.”

Arlen
. “Oh. Of course.” The heat that had been coursing through her hardened into ice, and her heart did a slow roll that made her touch her chest. She took in a deep breath.

“You okay?”

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re nervous. You’re really nervous.”

“Of course I am,” she said, more curtly than she’d meant to. He scooted closer to her across the long bench seat and put his arm on the backrest. He wasn’t crowding her, but he was closer. He smelled like a long afternoon in the sun. And to her complete shock, she—who liked men who regularly used hair product and cologne—wanted to press her face against him and breathe in.

“Arlen’s a good man,” Will said. “I’ve known him since we were just boys.”

“Did you grow up around here?” she asked, to distract herself.

“No.” He laughed. “You ever been out to cow country?”

She smiled slightly.

“That’s a big city compared to where I lived.”

“So Albany must be—”

“The Kingdom of Oz,” he said.

She was surprised when he took her hand—not to hold it, but to press the tips of his middle and ring fingers to the inside of her wrist. Such a light touch—and startlingly intimate. She wasn’t surprised that Will was easy about touching her; after watching him all day, she could tell he was comfortable in his own skin. She briefly considered drawing her arm away, setting boundaries, but she found she didn’t want to. The ribbon of attraction that had formed within her now curled on itself like a twist of smoke hanging in the air. Curiosity compelled her to sit still, apart from him except for the press of his fingertips on her wrist.

“Your heartbeat,” he said. “What did the doctors say was wrong?”

She stared with intense focus at his hands, the circles of dirt under his nails, the whitish-gray scars set here and there on tanned skin. She rarely liked to acknowledge weakness, but there was something about Will that made her feel safe. “I’ve had episodes of irregular heartbeat. Palpitations. It’s . . . it’s a little scary when it happens. Like your heart is an alarm clock going off—like time’s running out.”

“They don’t have drugs to help?”

“They have lots of drugs,” she said, thinking of Jonah and the endless medications he was on, the medications for his medications; she did not want to start down that road. The pressure of Will’s fingers on her skin shifted, and heat rose within her. When
she spoke, she made sure her voice was even. “This is just a . . . a stress thing. I can get it under control on my own.”

“What if you can’t?”

“I can,” she said.

Will brushed the slightly raised cord of a tendon with his thumb. “It’s getting faster.”

When she looked up at his face, there was no way to describe what she felt except the word
collision
. The impact of one thing and another. In the streetlight, Will’s eyes were an indefinable shade of green gray that she wanted so much to name but that eluded her even as she looked directly at him. Her face flushed. She knew with certainty that he was attracted to her. She drew her hand away.

“Let’s go in,” she said.

From the back of the pickup Will retrieved a box of their picks, and then she followed him into the antiques shop. She had a good view of his body as he walked. He was fit and trim, dressed in work clothes but not quite as rumpled as he’d been on Belle Isle. At one point during the afternoon, he’d lifted the bottom hem of his shirt to blot his face with the fabric, and she’d seen the strong, coarse muscles of his stomach and chest, the slight shading of dark hair. She’d had to look away.

Of course, she knew enough about herself to recognize what this was.
Rebounding
. Things had fallen apart with Edward only a month ago, and she’d done her best not to spend that month wallowing. Now here was Will—attractive and enthralling in the way that an overgrown garden could be enthralling: a tangle of thorny roses, a weedy flower bed, stems putting down roots on rock. Everything Will was, was the opposite of Edward. Lauren needed to watch herself and take care.

“Ladies first,” Will said, pushing open the shop door with one hand. Inside, he went to the counter and set down the box of things
that he’d come away with today—a glass vase, a jump rope, a cast-iron horse. The old phone was still in the truck.

“Arlen?” Will called.

Lauren held her breath, coaching herself. This was what she’d come to do. To see Arlen. To throw herself at the mercy of his forgiveness. To confess to and face fully what she had done—and, maybe, be absolved.

There was no answer.

“Did you tell him I’d be here?” she asked.

“He knew you were coming with me today.”

Lauren frowned. She caught Will’s eye—the slight apology there—and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was.

“I’ll just check upstairs,” Will said.

Lauren held her breath as Will ducked into a room that must have been an office; then she heard the sound of his feet climbing stairs. She looked around at Will’s collected treasures. Some things stuck out from the heap: an original box of Crayola crayons. A folksy painting of a cow. A birdcage. A bell. Above her head, she heard Will’s boots thump the floor.

When he came back, he didn’t need to speak for her to know that Arlen wasn’t here. What worried her was Will’s reaction. He was trying to appear calm but the set of his shoulders had shifted incrementally. He leaned forward, just a little, when he walked. He didn’t so much as glance at her. He walked to the counter, reached underneath, and pulled out a gray tin box with a flimsy lock on the front. Will popped the box open. It was empty.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Will said. “He’s gone.”

Arlen hadn’t wanted to meet the woman who would one day be his wife—not at first—though he’d heard all about her.
A sweet girl,
his mother had told him as she stirred big pots of peanut soup on the stove in her house.
And you need to get yourself a girl, Arlen. I won’t always be around to keep you in line.

Arlen found that the best way to get his mother off the subject of this Eula person was to not respond, to let his mother just burn herself out. With each new description, Eula became more beautiful, more intelligent, more generous, more everything. She was a good cook, and Arlen’s mother wanted a girl who would cook for him since he’d never so much as lifted a finger to butter bread. Eula had ambition too—she was a senior in high school and she made top marks, especially in her computer classes. Plus, she towed the line when it came to religion; she was the daughter of a deacon at his mother’s church. Arlen, who had to listen to his mother’s monologues about the endless talents of Eula Oates while he was scarfing down dinner, sometimes asked polite questions,
sometimes changed the subject, and sometimes told his mother, flat out,
No
.