The Things We Keep(38)

From nowhere, Angus appears. He steals around me, positioning himself between me and the woman. The woman looks startled, but only for a moment. She starts to walk around Angus, but he blocks her way.

“Actually, it’s not nearly enough, after what she’s done!” she yells over his shoulder. “Do you know who this is?” she asks Angus.

I glance at Andrea, who is still watching. She whispers something to the other woman and I curse myself for coming to Houlihan’s. What was I thinking?

“Yes, I know who she is,” Angus says quietly. “She’s a woman, trying to get on with her job, cooking for the elderly. You’ve just assaulted her, which is a crime, and you’ve damaged this produce, which will cost the store money, unless you pay for it.”

“I’m not going to pay for it,” the woman says, but some of the heat has gone from her voice. Tears build in her eyes. “The only person who should have to pay is this bitch.” The woman stabs her finger in my direction, but that appears to be all she has left. She abandons her cart and scurries out of the store via a side door.

Immediately the bustle of the store resumes: a hushed voice, the roll of shopping cart wheels on linoleum. Andrea watches for another moment, then disappears, too.

I look at my upturned basket. A single egg rolls free, and by the look of the yellow spray around the edge of the carton, it’s the sole survivor. I squat, bundling it all back into the basket. My cheek radiates with heat, like a nasty sunburn. The ringing continues in my ear.

Angus squats beside me. “My truck is out front.” He tucks a set of keys into my palm. “Go. I’ll take care of this.”

I shake my head, blinking against tears. “I … I have to finish the shopping.”

“I’ll finish it.”

“But … I don’t have a list.”

I used to pride myself on never having a list. I found them creatively stifling, I’d tell people. What if I planned to make French onion soup but then saw some impossibly delightful-looking artichokes? Now the thought seems as frivolous as it does ridiculous.

Angus is looking at me. His face is a stark contrast to mine. Calm. In control. “I’ll finish it,” he says again.

This time I don’t protest. I can feed the residents hot dogs and frozen peas for a week, if that’s what it comes to.

With his keys in my hand, I leave via the front door. Angus’s truck, blessedly, is right out front. I recognize it from outside Rosalind House. I let myself in the passenger door and slide onto the vinyl, locking the door behind me.

*

I don’t remember driving to pick up Clem from school the day Richard told me he was going to jail. I don’t remember parking the car or walking through the gates or greeting any of the other mothers. But I do remember Clem’s smile when she saw me. And I remember thinking: I wonder when I will see Clem smile like that again.

The drive home had been filled with her usual random, fluttery chatter. I answered the odd question, made the odd ooh or ahh but my mind was miles away. I didn’t have any intention of telling her what Richard had done. Richard would have to do that. The twenty or so minutes I’d taken to pick up Clem solidified my shock into something cold and hard. Richard hadn’t just betrayed his investors; he’d betrayed us as well.

A truck was blocking the driveway when we got home. I’d ordered some plants for my new garden bed and some ornamental stones. Ornamental stones! How ridiculous it seemed to have ordered ornamental stones. The tradespeople who swarmed the house probably wouldn’t get paid for the work they were doing. The ornamental stones would have to go back. The decent thing to do, I realized, would be to go around tapping them on the shoulder right now, telling them to stop work and go be with their families, but my cowardice, it turned out, was stronger than my righteousness.

Inside, I went straight to the kitchen and was surprised to find Richard wasn’t there. After what he’d told me, the idea that he could get up and move around freely seemed preposterous somehow. But his barstool was empty, swiveled to the left as though he’d got off in a hurry. I put some shortbread and cut-up fruit on a plate for Clem and then went looking for him.

“Richard!” I called. I wandered back through the house, across the parquetry floor Richard had insisted we have, past the paintings he’d ostentatiously bought at auction. “Richard?” I knocked on the door to his study. Somehow the fact that he went in there, into that place where he’d caused all this trouble, felt like more of a betrayal. “Are you in there?”

There was no answer, so I barged inside, angry now. How dare he ignore me after the bombshell he just dropped! I took two steps into the room, and that’s when I stopped. Dead.

*

Angus’s truck is remarkably clean. It has one of those little plastic bags hanging from the glove compartment for rubbish. Like so many things about Angus, it isn’t what I expected.

It’s a short but uncomfortable drive home. Though it’s warm, rainclouds curl in the gray sky, threatening but not delivering. Part of me yearns for the rain to start streaming down, a gray blanket to disappear into. The shopping bags, filled with Lord-knows-what, are in the back. Once he loaded them in, Angus got into the truck without so much as a word, and started driving.

About halfway home, I feel the need to say something. “I appreciate you stepping in like that, Angus.”