The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(45)
Three will die.
So what about the third dot? Isaac had suggested in his letter that there was nothing to be done about it, that fate could not be stopped. Still, Hazel desperately needed to see the date and time on that final sticker. But when she tried to peel off Sybil’s dot to reveal the one beneath, she couldn’t pull them apart. She would end up tearing them both, so on instinct, she took both dots from the wall for safekeeping until a solution presented itself.
She turned back to the computer, the events of the previous night drifting back to her like some distant historical event, as if Sybil’s fall had opened up a rip in time and separated Hazel forever from that night with Alex. Yet it seemed more urgent than ever that she get into her grandfather’s computer. But if Alex couldn’t crack it in the course of an entire night, how could she? She took one last look at the map. There were, of course, other dots scattered around the city, scribbled with future dates and times, but what could she do? The knowledge of other deaths would only distract her from her task of protecting the family, of making sure no one stayed in Beachwood Canyon.
That same night, the shock of Sybil’s death and the grim revelation of the map were complicated by another, lesser disaster: a water main had ruptured that day in Pioneer Square directly beneath her store. Chet called to inform her that although her merchandise was still dry, her store had gotten the worst of it. They would need to shut the doors indefinitely.
“Seriously, this may be one of the worst Pioneer Square floods since the eighteen hundreds,” he told her. “Do you want me to wait for you?”
“No, just shut it down. Put a fun sign in the window.”
“When are you back?”
“Way things are going, maybe never.”
After a delicate pause, he informed her that he was writing a piece about the flood for Seattle Weekly, for which he was a stringer.
“I hate to ask, but do you have a quote for me?”
She had, in fact, hired Chet after he’d interviewed her for a somewhat embarrassing portrait in the weekly, titled “Amazon Warrior: Young Book Dealer Defends Lost Art of Reading,” though the more accurate title would have been: “Impulsive Woman Defends Own Laziness, Amasses Staggering Debt, Repeatedly Drowns in Water-Themed Nightmares.”
At last, she said, “Just because you love books doesn’t mean you should sell them,” and hung up.
There were mounting bills she couldn’t pay. On the morning of the service, Hazel received a package from Chet stuffed with them. He also enclosed a list of particularly impatient callers, one of whom he dubbed “Mr. Persistent.” The man had called several times in her absence but refused to leave his name or the company he represented. There was also a note:
Dear Ms. Hazel Severy,
I wish to connect with you on an important matter. Since you have not yet contacted me, I leave you my temporary stateside number. I look forward to speaking very soon.
Regards,
L. F. Richardson
626-344-9592
These bill collectors were certainly getting clever. There was that initialed name evoking someone of refinement, plus an attempt at the offhand, as if he were dashing off a message to a friend of a friend. As Hazel folded up the note, she refused to entertain the idea of Isaac’s estate coming to her rescue, and besides, despite Fritz’s best efforts, her grandfather’s wealth was tied up entirely in the house. After everything was sold off, paid off, and distributed, she sort of doubted there would be much left. Hazel took the note to Goldie’s office, fed it into the shredder, and hurried to iron her funeral outfit, which had been sitting crumpled at the bottom of her suitcase.
Toward the end of the service, as Jane, Philip, and Jack were kneeling down to scoop up handfuls of dirt, Hazel glanced up the hill in the direction of Isaac’s headstone. The unusually heavy marine layer gave one the impression of peering through gauze, but through the gray, she spied a tall man in a dark coat standing above Isaac’s plot. Only his back was visible, his legs shrouded in mist and his bowed head concealed behind an upturned collar. She knew it was Isaac’s grave because of a curious topiary that stood a few feet to the left of his headstone: a shrub that had reminded her of a mushroom cloud. Seconds later, the man turned, revealing an almost regal, aquiline profile, and stared in the direction of their gathering. He stood motionless for some time, though whether he was studying them or merely taking in the atmosphere, she couldn’t tell.
At the sound of dirt hitting metal, Hazel turned back to the service in time to see Sybil’s parents letting handfuls of earth fall dully over the box containing their daughter’s remains. When Hazel looked back toward the man a second later, she could just make out his hunched form as he walked off swiftly into the haze.
*
The reception at Philip and Jane’s Pasadena home was quiet and small. Hazel spent much of the time loitering near the piano in the front room, examining framed photographs of Sybil that had been arranged in a formation of unbroken loveliness. As she took in the pictorial record of Sybil’s youth and adulthood—both remarkably absent of any awkwardness or skin disturbances—Hazel’s mind persisted in re-creating her cousin’s fatal fall. Poor Sybil, murdered by gravity. The weakest of all universal forces, wasn’t it? She imagined Sybil moving across the lawn, eyes half closed, stepping to the edge of the concrete flight, reaching out for a nonexistent handrail, encountering only air. She loses her balance, topples . . . Hazel replayed the scene several times, with minor variations. But there was a second scenario, still lacking in definition, now asserting itself: a scene connected to the dots on Isaac’s map. How the map knew that tragedy would strike in the middle of the night at the exact latitude and longitude of Beachwood Canyon’s Durand Drive, she could only guess, but the third dot on the map was inserting itself into Hazel’s mind with increasing menace.