Episode 121 · The Call from the Garden

Krista drove. Maxim sat in the back with his leg stretched along the seat and his face turned toward the window, Tesa beside him with the cracked cast held to her chest. Soles sat in front and could not remember when he had decided that. He kept one hand on his rib and watched Krista’s hands on the wheel.

The notebook rested in her lap. When she changed gears, she took her hand off it, then put it back right away, gently.

Before leaving Varren’s street, they had stopped beside Maxim’s truck. Soles had fetched the crowbar for him to lean on; it now lay against the rear seat. No one spoke until the first traffic light.

— You’ve got blood on your shirt, Tesa said.

— It’s mine.

— I know it’s yours. I’m telling you so you won’t be surprised when the investigator looks at you.

Maxim made a sound that might have been a laugh if his leg had not hurt.

— He’s going to be surprised anyway, he said. I would be.

The investigator was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, his coat on his shoulders as it had been that morning, except now he no longer looked as though he was preparing to leave. He looked at them one by one: Tesa’s cast, cracked along the edge; Maxim, climbing the steps with one hand on the railing and the crowbar from the truck used as a cane; the dried blood on Soles’s lip. He looked at Krista last, because she was holding something with both hands.

— Second time today, he said. Get inside before someone upstairs sees you.

The office was just as cold. Kerr’s pages still lay on the desk beneath a glass paperweight, their edges aligned. Krista placed the notebook beside them, open to the page Soles had marked, then stepped back and did not touch it again.

The investigator did not sit. He leaned over the notebook with his hands behind his back, without touching it.

The writing was small and heavily pressed, in pencil. Shifts, times, weights. At the bottom of the page, on a line written harder than the rest, the same hand had noted, without accusation: Varren, S.’s client, came looking for me at the port. Asked about shifts. I told him.

The investigator read the line twice. Then he lifted the paperweight from the pages, pulled Kerr’s first sheet beside the notebook, and looked at them for a while side by side, comparing the two.

— He must not be alone when he finds them, he read quietly from Kerr’s page.

No one said anything. Soles stared at the empty desk by the window. He knew the sentence by heart. He did not want to hear it a second time, and he had heard it.

— First thing tomorrow I’m asking for a warrant, the investigator said. For the house and for him. Until then, stay home. All four of you, in the same house if possible. And do not go anywhere on foot after anyone.

— You told us that once before, Tesa said.

— And did you listen?

— No.

— Then I’m saying it again.

He looked at Soles. His gaze dropped, without hurry, to the place beneath his coat where the blade sat, then returned to his face. He asked nothing. Soles was grateful and did not know how to show it.

Maxim refused emergency care twice. The third time, Krista told him she would take him, it would take an hour, and if he did not go, she would take him anyway, back seat and all. The doctor on duty wrapped his ankle in an elastic bandage, told him it was a bad sprain, not a fracture, and that he was not to put weight on it for a week. Maxim said he understood. He walked out of the room on it.

That evening they gathered at Soles’s because the dogs were there.

Lucky was limping too, with his spoon splint, and when he saw Maxim’s bandage he came over, sniffed his leg for a long time, and lay down against him on the couch, pressed close. Mina settled in front of the front door with her muzzle toward the threshold and did not move again.

Krista made soup from whatever she found in the cupboards. Tesa sat in the chair with its back to the wall, facing the door, the way she always did. No one turned on the television. No one said Varren’s name. The name was in the kitchen anyway, between them, like a fifth mug no one had put on the table.

Around nine, Soles got up to wash the dishes. This time Krista let him.

He turned on the water and kept his hands beneath it longer than necessary. In the window above the sink he could see the kitchen behind him, lit up: Maxim with his eyes closed, Tesa with hers open, Krista wiping the same plate for the third time. The last two months were all there in the glass, and Varren had been in every one of them. Bread torn by hand. Mugs found at once in someone else’s cupboard. The crust given to him without asking. All true.

That was the part he could not put anywhere. Not the lies. The truths.

The phone vibrated on the sill.

The name on the screen was first in the call list, as it had been for months. Soles shut off the faucet. Behind him, Tesa had already stood, without making a sound.

He answered.

— You left the gate open, Varren said.

It was his voice. Warm, unhurried, with that smile you could hear even over the phone. Soles gripped the edge of the sink with his free hand and said nothing.

— And the bench raised. You made it lift easily, with one finger. I remembered that. I never thought you’d be the one to lift it.

— Where are you?

— Where it’s quiet. You know the place.

Soles knew it. The warm water at the far end of the old garden, beside the riverbed, where it came out of the ground without asking anyone.

— Bring it, Varren said. Not for me. For what comes after it. You saw today that they don’t stop. They won’t stop at your house, or Maxim’s, or hers. You know that better than I do.

Soles looked at the window. In the kitchen reflected in the glass, Krista had set the plate down.

— The investigator has the notebook, Soles said.

The silence at the other end lasted one moment. No longer than it needed to. Then Varren drew a deep breath through his nose. He sounded relieved.

— Then we have one night, he said. No more. Come. And bring them with you.

— Why?

— Because I don’t want you to be alone.

The line went dead.