Cruel World(27)

He started walking again, his hand shaking as he shut the light off and returned it to his pocket. The drive bent, and on the corner, Mallory’s house came into view on the right. It was a narrow two-story painted a deep shade of red. There were no trees blocking it from the drive. The lawn, always lush and well maintained in the summer, was a mess of dead grass and fallen branches. Mallory said she’d picked that particular house because she was a snoop and always had to see who was coming and going.

He didn’t pause, the forlorn look of the housekeeper’s home driving him onward. The first arc of lightning lit the sky and he counted the seconds until he heard thunder. Seven. The storm was getting closer. Quinn picked up his pace and in another minute turned off the main drive onto the narrow trail that led to Foster’s house. The trees were very close on either side, their bases nestled in brambles of dead blackberry and wild raspberry vines. The path turned hard to the left and opened into a wide clearing.

Foster’s house was log construction, chalet-style, its interlocking corners sticking out past the rest of the structure. Beneath its highest peak, a large picture window looked out onto the cleared grounds. Foster had sat with him many times over the years in the loft behind the window, gazing out at the snow-covered ground or the burning beauty of fall leaves ready to drop. He’d told stories of his younger days in the Navy, tales of huge ships and massive guns that could lob shells at targets a mile away. Quinn had listened in rapt silence, sipping at the bitter cocoa the older man always made him, too polite to ever say he couldn’t stand the taste.

Quinn realized he’d stopped at the edge of the yard, his eyes locked on the house. He moved quickly across the clearing and mounted the steps, a sudden panic overtaking him as he reached for the doorknob. The door would be locked, and he would have to go back to the main house to look for a spare set of keys before returning here…in the dark. But when he grasped the knob, the door swung inward, the smell of stained logs and old food meeting him as he stepped inside. As he closed the door, he turned on the flashlight causing the darkness and shadows to break apart and flee the halogen beam.

Foster wasn’t as neat a bachelor as Graham. Blankets were flung over the back of the leather couch, untidy stacks of magazines covered the coffee table, and clothes hung from the bannister running up to the second floor. Quinn shone the light into the kitchen, illuminating a pile of dishes in the sink, food dried on each one. He moved to the stairway and climbed the steps, shining the light ahead of him.

The second floor of the house opened into the loft, its picture window looking out onto the yard and trees beyond. Wind whistled in the eaves and found cracks to hiss through. The storm was here, fat underbellies of clouds almost skimming the tallest trees in the forest. Quinn crossed the loft and entered Foster’s office through an open archway. The room wasn’t large and contained a small desk and rolling chair. A computer sat on the desk’s top and a file system was fastened to the wall holding various bills and receipts.

He sat at the desk, standing the light on end before opening the first drawer. Inside were rubber-banded stacks of photographs, curled and faded with time. Quinn shuffled through them, spotting Foster as a much younger man in several of them. In one particular picture, Foster held a smiling little boy in one arm, his other around a plump woman with a kind face. They were all squinting as if the sun were behind the photographer. On the picture’s back Robert, Myra, and Fred was written in looping script. Quinn placed the picture back amongst the others. He’d never known Foster had had a family. They’d never been in any of the stories the older man had told while sitting in the loft.

The next drawer held rows of hanging file folders, their sides bulging with paperwork. Lightning raced through the sky again outside the office window, igniting everything inside the house in a fluorescent white. He counted to five before the thunder crashed this time, the sound like massive waves hammering the coast below the cliffs.

In the second-to-last folder, he found the generator’s manual. He paged through it, the word ‘troubleshooting’ standing out in bold print. Maybe he could even get the generator fired up tonight if he hurried. Quinn closed the manual and grabbed the flashlight from the desktop. Outside, the first lashings of rain fell, streaking the glass in silver rivers that shone in the halogen’s glow. Stepping into the loft he paused, shining the light over the places that he and Foster had sat. Ghosts of memories trailing to him through the years were replaced with the image of the man sitting behind the wheel of his truck, waiting for Mallory to leave the house for the last time. Leave him for the last time. And there had been no goodbye.