Floating Staircase(37)

In the kitchen something sizzled, and I could smell the coffee overpercolating.

Veronica didn’t say a word. She just pivoted, barefooted, and practically floated like a ghost out of the room and into the kitchen.

I held my breath and heard the coffeepot rattle and cupboards opening and closing, their hinges just as vocal as the screen door’s. In her absence I scanned the rest of the room. The whole place had the smell, the feeling, of someone who’d lost a child: that closed-off-from-the-world stagnancy, like uncharged batteries. But there was something else, too . . . something that took me more than just a few seconds to work out. And then I suddenly knew what it was. There was a complete lack of any personal effects. No photos, no magazines, no books, no bric-a-brac. The only thing in the entire room that didn’t serve a strictly functional purpose was the television, which was muted and tuned to QVC.

Veronica returned, cupping a mug of steaming black coffee between her hands like a nun carrying the Holy Eucharist. Wordlessly, she extended it to me.

“Thank you,” I said, aware that I was talking just a hair above a whisper. As if to speak any louder would send this fragile creature scurrying for cover.

“Do you want something from me?” she said. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No. I told you, I just wanted to bring back some of Elijah’s things.”

She cringed at the sound of his name.

“I haven’t gotten rid of anything,” I went on. “All that stuff is still in the basement. My wife wants me to get rid of it, but I came to make sure you didn’t want it back.”

“I don’t want to talk about that stuff.”

“Okay.”

Somewhere out in the front yard I could hear a vehicle approaching. Veronica whipped her head toward the door. The engine died and I heard a car door slam. When she turned to me, she looked like someone who’d just witnessed a horrible car accident.

“Is that David?” I said. “Your brother?”

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s not good that you’re here.” She grabbed the coffee cup from me, sloshing thick brown sludge onto my hand and scorching the skin. “You shouldn’t be here.”

The front door opened. I hadn’t realized just how gloomy the house was until the sun broke in like the finger of God. I winced. The figure that paused in the doorframe was hulking and broad-shouldered, the silhouette of a lumberjack or a walking cement truck.

I nodded once compendiously in the man’s immediate direction.

David Dentman entered the house, allowing the screen door to slam against the frame behind him. He was light skinned and broad featured, with sandy-colored hair and very clear, somber eyes, the color of which I’d never seen. He wore a chambray work shirt cuffed to the elbows, exposing a pair of sunburned arms that could have been pythons sliding into his sleeves. “What’s this?” he asked no one in particular.

“My name’s Travis Glasgow,” I said, stumbling over my words. I was sweating profusely, only partially due to the fever I knew was working its way through me. “My wife and I moved into your old house in Westlake.”

“Glasgow,” he repeated, tasting the name. One of his big catcher’s mitt hands disappeared behind his back to dig around in the rear pocket of his dungarees.

For one heart-stopping second I was sure he was going to produce a knife and take a swing at my face. Instead, he fished out a worn leather wallet nearly as thick as a paperback novel and tossed it on the table beside the cardboard box.

“House belonged to my father,” he said matter-of-factly. Same as his sister had. “There something I can help you with, Mr. Glasgow? You come all this way from Westlake?”

“I was just bringing by some things.”

Dentman swiveled around to the cardboard box. He seemed to recognize it immediately.

Perhaps he had been the one to pack up the boy’s belongings after his death. Too easily I could picture those immense, steel-banded arms cramming those boxes full of stuffed animals. The image should have been comical, but thinking of it now while standing in this house, I found it utterly terrifying.

“You a cop?”

“Do I look like a cop?”

“Strohman send you here?”

“Who’s Strohman?”

Dentman advanced toward the box, popped open the lid, and peered inside. He chewed on his lower lip as he did so. The dim light in the house struck him then in just the right fashion, causing the sheen of beard stubble at his chin and neck to glitter briefly. Disinterestedly, he faced me. “The cops send you out here?”

“Of course not. I found that stuff in the basement and thought I’d bring it by. I guess that was a mistake,” I added after swallowing what felt like a chunk of granite.

“You bought the house as is.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The house. Bank should have told you. Anything in there’s yours now, not ours.”

“You misunderstand. I’m not here to complain. I just wanted to—”

“Glasgow’s a cop,” he said. “I know that name.”

“I’m not a cop. You’re thinking of Adam Glasgow who lived across the street from you. He’s a cop and he’s my brother.”