Page 17 of Wrong Mail

There was a time I would have known exactly what to say to a woman like Peggy. I could have taken her apart in front of everyone in about nine seconds. I know how to hear the weakness in a sentence and press on it. I’ve done it to men who spent good money on lawyers, and Peggy Erickson has given me plenty to work with in the last few minutes.

I open my mouth, but the noise wins.

It happens in loud rooms. On terraces with fire and water and eleven overlapping conversations. Anywhere my one good ear has too much to sort through.

The voices smear into each other. The semicircle keeps moving, keeps laughing, and the thread of what I was about to say is gone.

I stand there with my glass and my green dress and say nothing.

"Anyway," Peggy says, releasing me. She turns her body a quarter turn, which is how you're dismissed here. "Do try the octopus."

Julia takes my elbow and steers me away toward the rail. She's furious, which is comforting, because I'm not sure I'm anything.

"She's a snake," Julia whispers. "Say the word and I'll ruin her evening."

"Don't."

"I'd enjoy it."

"I know you would. But let it go.”

"I’d like to let her go, off the edge of a cliff,” Julia says.

We both chuckle.

I drink the wine now. The lake has gone from copper to gunmetal, and the first bats are out over the water. The heat still hasn't broken. Out past the Ericksons' dock, the sky in the west has a hard bruised line along the bottom. Nobody else is looking at it.

Julia is talking. I catch about half of what she says.

Then I get that feeling on the back of my neck, the one I stopped trusting two years ago, the one I have been told is my body doing its best.

I turn around.

He’s standing on the upper terrace by the doors, apart from the others, watching me. A man I’ve never seen before, in a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled, holding a glass he isn’t drinking from. He’s not doing anything a man shouldn’t do at a party. But when I catch him, he doesn’t look away, and something about that turns my stomach over.

Then he smiles, unhurried, as if we’ve known each other for years.

And he lifts his glass to me.

Chapter Six

I've had two days to walk this envelope a quarter mile up the road, and I've spent both of them finding reasons not to.

I told myself I'd go Thursday and then there was the party. I told myself I'd go first thing Friday and then I made coffee, and then a second cup. Eventually I stood in the hall holding the padded envelope, doing nothing at all.

The truth is simpler and I don't enjoy it. I've read every word in here. Twice. I've made notes in a book I keep in a drawer. I've called a records office in Josephine County and left a message under my name, which I haven't done in two years. Now I have to hand this back to a stranger and pretend it was a morning's inconvenience.

So I go before I can stop myself. Out through the gate, up the hot asphalt, past the Werners' hedge and the empty stretch where the cedars close over the road. The shade deepens there, and the temperature drops five degrees. Luna would love this walk. I left her behind. I'm not sure why, and I don't dwell on it.

5216 sits further back from the road than mine does. It's a beautiful house, tucked between 5226 and 5210 with enough cedar on either side to make the neighbors theoretical. The lot runs long and green all the way down to the water, so the back of it looks straight out over Cozy Cove. Like many of the homes along the peninsula, you could stand in that yard and not be seen from anywhere except the lake.

The house has gray shingles, white trim, and a porch swing where Eleanor used to sit. There’s a black Lexus in the drive that I haven’t seen before. It’s immaculate. There are no curtains up at the front windows yet. The grass is freshly cut. Somebody has already put a pot of white flowers by the step, and it stops me, because it's such an ordinary thing, and I hadn't let myself imagine him as ordinary.

Somewhere on the walk up here I decided I'm not going to linger.

Julia was right about one thing. There's no law that says I have to put this into his hands and stand there while he works out what I've done. So I'll ring the bell, prop the envelope against the door, and be halfway down the drive before it opens. If he sees me and wants to talk about it, he can figure out where I live easily enough. It’s cowardly, but it’s also sensible, and I’ve made my peace with being both.

I ring the bell and hear it go somewhere deep in the house.