Episodul 13 · The Name Beside His

The next afternoon, Maxim left Soles at the botanical garden’s public entrance and went to collect the truck. They had agreed on the arrangement before leaving home. Soles would return the photographs, speak to Krista and wait at the café until Maxim came back.

It was irritating how much agreement an ordinary afternoon now required.

Krista was waiting beside the entrance with an empty frame under her arm. She looked at his hand, then moved to his right when he asked her to.

— This side is better, he said.

— Since yesterday?

— Yes.

She nodded, without trying to make the answer smaller.

He handed her the envelope. She checked the prints against the loan sheet and put them away.

— They’re all there, he said.

— I know. I still have to sign for them.

They walked toward the café. He kept away from the pavilion path, remembering that she had work to return to. At an outside table, Krista set the frame against the wall and asked what had happened after Kerr reached the truck.

Soles gave her the short version. Twice she asked him to distinguish what he had seen from what Maxim had told him afterward. He found that harder with the gunshot than with anything else.

— You don’t believe me?

— I believe you couldn’t hear. I want to know which part you could see.

He looked at her for a moment, then started that part again.

The waiter brought water. Krista waited until he had gone.

— There is something else I can tell you about Kerr. I wasn’t certain it mattered when you first asked.

Soles put down his glass.

— What?

— A conversation outside the committee office. I was hanging photographs. One man said to Serren, “You vouched for Kerr too. I haven’t forgotten.”

— Serren?

— He’s on the committee. The other man asked him about somebody new, then brought up Kerr. Serren took him inside and shut the door.

He pictured Kerr being invited into a room rather than watched from a truck. Somebody had known him well enough to put a name beside his.

— When was this?

She gave him the date. He reached for his phone, clumsy with the bandage, and she waited while he found the note.

— You remember the date of a conversation?

— I remember the delivery label I was taking off a frame when they started arguing. It was the day the printers sent the wrong size.

— Useful mistake.

— For you. I spent the afternoon cutting backing boards.

She told him which words she was certain of. Everything beyond the closed office door remained beyond it.

— Would you tell the investigator?

— Yes. Send him my number.

Soles wrote the message before another question could crowd it out. He included her exact account and asked him to contact her directly.

— Can we speak to Serren?

— We can ask. But first I’d like to check something we can actually point to.

She explained how members were admitted. Someone already inside recommended the applicant, and a committee recorded its decision. The club also kept albums from its dinners and annual ball.

— I have permission to use photographs for the exhibition, she said. I can ask the archivist whether he’ll let us look at the relevant albums together. A decision about a member may need separate permission.

— You’re already doing enough.

— I haven’t offered to steal them.

The edge in his own voice embarrassed him. She had given him a possible route; he had heard a delay.

— Sorry. Ask him. Please.

Krista took out her phone. While she wrote, Soles looked at the frame leaning against the wall. A small piece of cardboard held one corner square.

— You need the backing cut again?

She followed his eyes.

— The replacement is worse than the damaged one. I’m considering hanging the invoice.

— That corner won’t hold with the photograph in it.

— I had noticed.

— I can show you a fixing that will. You could fit it yourself.

She looked at the bandage before he could promise more.

— That version of help I might accept.

They finished the water. Krista had to return to the pavilion, and he had promised to stay at the café. When she left, he sent Maxim the location instead of following her to ask one more question.

The reply came from the workshop.

Still here. They want a statement about the door. Apparently I damaged it with my face.

Soles laughed once, carefully, and ordered his cousin a coffee.

That night, at home, he told Maxim before closing his eyes.

— I’m going to try the garden again. If you speak and I don’t answer, touch my shoulder.

— And if you start climbing a tree?

— Stop me before I embarrass the family.

Maxim pulled a chair close enough to reach him.

Soles sat with both feet on the floor. He pictured the narrow leaf he had touched before, the grain of the little stone beside it. Cold bark met his hand.

He stood beneath the tree.

The soldier’s plant was still there. Light filled its narrow leaves, and the man beyond them stood with his head lowered. Soles stayed on the path. Yesterday, beside the truck, that same certainty had entered his legs and hands. He wanted to ask whether the soldier had felt the gun too.

There was no answer to a question he had not spoken.

Pressure settled on his shoulder. The tree vanished, and Maxim’s hand was on his shirt.

— You were holding your breath.

Soles drew air in too quickly. He had not noticed the kitchen disappearing, or his cousin trying his name before touching him.

— How long?

— Less than a minute. Long enough to worry me.

He kept his eyes open until they went to bed. Later, with the house quiet and the pillow supporting his chest, he finally let himself drift. He was beneath the tree again when he became aware of standing.

A second light lay farther along the roots.

Soles approached it slowly. The plant had broader leaves, curving back toward a central stem. Yesterday he might have walked through it. Now one leaf caught against his sleeve.

Soles knelt to read the stone.

Decimus.

He touched the edge of the leaf.