The news thumps her like a gust of wind. A ringing in her ears. Jamie goes on, “It was in the newspapers. I thought you might have seen. Not long after his release, he was driving from the ranch to Kalispell, alone, and it seems someone knew enough to be lying in wait. It was a rifle shot from a distance.”
She finds she is bracing against the table, grasping its edge. She makes herself let go, gulps from her beer. “When?”
“Just last week. Caleb said everyone thinks Sadler did it, since he and Barclay’s sister had gotten used to being rulers of the realm. The police don’t seem very interested in investigating, and I don’t know how much there is to investigate, anyway. No one saw anything. Sadler seems to have an alibi. According to the newspaper, Barclay died a pauper. On paper anyway. You were mentioned in the article but not by name, probably Sadler’s doing. It just said no one knew where his wife had gone. There was a will, but I guess you weren’t in it.”
Marian’s hand shakes as she sinks her spoon into the soup, watches the viscous yellow liquid flow over its sides. What is this feeling? It’s too strong to be identified, the way heat and cold can both burn. Shock, she supposes. She lifts the spoon, spilling some. The soup sears her mouth. Jamie pats her knee under the table, doesn’t say anything. She wipes her cheeks with a napkin, shakes her head. “No more of that,” she says, meaning the tears.
Barclay will never show up in Alaska. He’ll never show up anywhere. She had burned his last letter unopened. But what could it have said? Should she have written back to his first letter, told him she would forgive him only if he forgot her, left her alone forever? Would that have changed anything? Did she want anything changed? Can you mourn and rejoice at the same time?
“Why would they need to kill him?” she says, her throat rough, burned from the soup. “Everything was in their names already.” She wonders if Sadler and Kate loved each other. Had they always? She had never seen any signs, though maybe that’s what Kate had meant when she said she wasn’t just an old maid. She decides she doesn’t care. They are no more consequential than characters in a book read long ago. They will not come looking for her.
“I don’t know,” Jamie says. “I don’t know how any of it works.”
“You said a rifle shot? Just one? And Barclay was driving—he hadn’t stopped the car?”
“I think so.”
“Sadler wasn’t a good shot.”
“Maybe he got lucky.”
“Sadler wouldn’t have wanted to plan on luck.”
They stare at each other, wondering.
The waitress brings a plate of noodles with pork, a bowl of green beans in sauce. Carefully, Marian says, “When Caleb came to see me in Alaska, I told him some things about Barclay. Things I hadn’t told anyone. He was angry.”
They look at each other for another long moment. Jamie says, “We shouldn’t think this way. We shouldn’t go down this road.”
“I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I always thought I’d see him again. I thought there was some reckoning still to come.”
“I know.”
“I used to think I would never feel free of him unless he agreed to free me.”
“I know.”
“Sometimes I still feel that way.”
“You are free. You have been for a long time. You’re feeling the shock.”
“I meant what I said. I am glad he’s dead.”
“I’m glad he’s dead, too. Will you tell me what you told Caleb?”
“Maybe later. I need another drink first.”
“In Vancouver,” he says, “some men came to my apartment in the middle of the night once and roughed me up. They kept demanding I tell them where ‘she’ had gone. I assumed they were Barclay’s goons trying to find you, but they were actually different goons looking for a different woman. It was farcical. Like something that would happen to Wallace, having so many goons after you that you lose track.” He laughs.
Marian is horrified. “Is that why you left Vancouver?”
“Partly. And two women in a row had hurt my feelings.”
“Tell me.”
After dinner, he leads her some blocks to a bar he likes. Cold mist hangs in the air. A few of his Boar Bristle friends will meet them later. A streetcar rattles past, hats and newspaper tops filling the windows. He says, “Do you think you’ll ever marry again?”
“No.”
“I thought maybe you and Caleb, someday.”