Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

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СКАЧАТЬ the heels of that thought, she felt it start in her throat, and then behind her eyes. She’d found herself close to tears.

      Now she and Mac lay on lounge chairs at the pool, watching Katie paddle in the shallow end, her water wings bright glints of inflatable pink plastic against the turquoise. A brilliantly colored wall of bougainvillea shielded the pool from the walkway. There were other people sunbathing on towels, but Grace didn’t get the sense that anybody was actively listening. It was only the two of them side by side, and the quiet sounds of Katie paddling and singing a small, tuneless song.

      “I talked to my folks.”

      “And?” She reached for her lemonade and drank.

      “They were wondering if I could take Katie back to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. They live about an hour away. They could drive in.”

      “You mean, by herself?” Grace kept her voice steady, but the panic was rising.

      “Well, me.”

      “That’s in less than two weeks.”

      He was silent.

      It hadn’t occurred to her until just that moment that maybe rehabilitating herself with Mac would be the least of her worries. The image of grandparents, bewildered and furious at having had a grandchild withheld, suddenly rose in her mind. It was another prick threatening the bubbly bliss of Grace’s imagined life.

      “She’s barely five years old. I thought we were going to try trips, the three of us.”

      “This is sort of one.”

      “You flew out. I wasn’t expecting you.”

      “I wasn’t going to meet Katie while I was in the hospital, Grace.

      We agreed. I didn’t want to scare her. You’d told me any time I was ready was fine with you.”

      “Yeah, well, people usually call first, but maybe that’s me.”

      He started to speak and stopped. This wasn’t going the way she’d envisioned.

      “She’s got a whole other side of the family, Grace, she’s never met.”

      “She’s got plenty of relatives she hasn’t met on my side either, she can start with those; I barely know them myself, we can start together.”

      She stopped. It was exactly what she’d done all day; promised herself she wouldn’t do again.

      “I found us a therapist. Elise Lithgow.”

      She sucked in a breath.

      Mac scribbled a phone number on a napkin next to his Coke and passed it to her. Grace glanced at it. It was a Mission Hills prefix.

      “She wants to meet both of us separately first, to see if we’re each comfortable with her, so if it’s not a good match, I’m open to something else, Grace, if you’ve got another idea.”

      Grace shook her head. Katie grabbed the side of the pool and kicked. She was wearing pink nail polish on her toenails and every so often the color winked in the water.

      “Grace, when you stopped me last night—slowed me down so I could think through what I was doing—I realized something. You were right.”

      “No, no, I wasn’t. Do over. Let’s do a do-over.”

      “Let’s just do it right.” He looked at Katie and hesitated. “When I was in the hospital I worked with a Realtor. I bought a place near your house; with the market sliding, everything’s available. It’s a condo in the Rondolet. Right around the corner.”

      “I know where it is.”

      It stood on Shelter Island, an enormous round building with views on one side of the San Diego Yacht Club.

      “It’s far from perfect right now; it’s packed with an old person’s furniture—I bought the place from an elderly woman moving into a nursing facility—but it’s a place, and it means Katie will have her own bedroom when she visits.”

      It sunk in. He had planned this. The whole time he was in the hospital, while she sat by the edge of his bed. While they talked about how the light fell on San Diego harbor and the exact timbre of their daughter’s laugh. He’d been working with a Realtor.

      “Lots of kids wind up going between two houses. It’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing, either.”

      Dissolving into sparkly bits! The big candy-colored house with the granite counters and the security gate. Evaporating into air! The three of them climbing, skipping the stairs to some phantom life where Mommy and Daddy lived in the same bedroom and Katie was down the hall and everybody ran in slo-mo in fields of daisies like some personal hygiene commercial. Fragmenting into pieces! The dream of laughing around the kitchen table ha ha ha and having the only silences be good ones, not the lethal kind that took years of explaining and apologies and therapy to sort out.

      Gone, gone, gone, not ever having to work at it, and never, ever having to say she was sorry.

      She started to say, Right! Say it with conviction and nonchalance and stopped, straightening in her lawn chair.

      A Royal Bahamas policeman was bicycling to a stop outside the gate leading to the pool, and even before he scanned the sunbathers and locked eyes with her, she knew he’d come for her.

       FOUR

      They walked the beach. Pink sand foamed into a burst of white, the waves a dark green flattening into a purple so deep it looked inked. On the horizon a sailboat stood motionless.

      Grace cut him a look. He was slightly built, very black, his gray shirt and shorts still crisp despite the humidity. He was wearing sandals. His name on the tag read epsten and when he spoke his voice was a deep baritone. “Thaddeus Bartholomew. Does the name mean anything to you?”

      Grace shook her head.

      He glanced around. No one was close enough to hear. A man in a leg cast and crutches limped away from them down the beach, his wife walking ahead, holding a cooler and a blanket. The wife never turned to check on him, striding briskly away from her husband as if he was paying for something not quite current in the marriage account. She seemed to be picking the least steady ground, the softest sand. He followed, a resigned slant to his shoulders, his wedding ring a dull flash against sunburned fingers.

      “You received the message from FBI Special Agent Peter Descanso.” Epsten peered at Grace, his eyes bright.

      “I’m on vacation.”

      “Yes. With your daughter and her father.”

      Grace shot him a look of surprise.

      He said mildly, “Not all white people look the same, but those two do.”

      “She has my color eyes,” СКАЧАТЬ