He started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled out onto the highway, heading south toward home.
Never before had he been so emotionally conflicted. He didn’t know what to do next. As he brooded without profit on what course he ought to take, he finally decided he had no choice but to follow Maddison’s lead. She was the author of this play. Sooner than later, she’d say something or do something that would give him direction and lead him closer to the cloistered heart of the mystery.
| 44 |
He had outrun the leading edge of the southbound clouds, and the beetling vehicles on the freeways cast racing shadows stranger than themselves as sunlight slanted through the afternoon, the rays seeming to distort as much as illuminate.
David’s hands-free phone rang as he crossed into Los Angeles, and he activated it with a voice command.
Calista Carlino said, “Sweetheart, I hope I’m not interrupting anything. If I’m interrupting something, call me back whenever.”
“No, nothing. I’m in LA, on the 405, coming home.”
“Do you have an hour to stop by and see me?”
“Of course.” For the first time since heading south, he glanced at the car clock and was surprised to see that it was only 2:29 p.m. He thought he’d spent at least half an hour in the house, more like forty minutes. It should be at least half an hour later than this. Evidently, while he’d brooded about Maddison and what might lie ahead for them, he must have greatly exceeded the speed limit from Goleta. “Depending on traffic, I’ll probably be there around four o’clock. What’s up?”
“I had the most incredible experience this morning. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m consumed by it, and I just don’t know what to make of it.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope.”
“No, no, dear. It was quite wonderful but very strange.”
“You should be a writer, Calista. You certainly know how to set a narrative hook. Give me a hint of what comes next?”
She was silent a moment. Then she said, “We’ve never spoken of the subject, perhaps afraid of sounding frivolous. I’m not sure how I feel about it, really. But you, David—do you believe in ghosts?”
He knew at once that whatever had happened, it had involved Maddison Sutton.
“I don’t disbelieve in them,” he said cautiously. “I have an open mind, though I’ve never seen one. Sounds like I might need a drink to go with this tale of yours.”
“Josefa is here today. She’ll fix you whatever you want, and you’ll find me on the deck.”
“You’re really all right?”
“I’m splendid, dear boy. I’m ebullient!”
“Fourish,” he promised, and they disconnected.
In its determination not to keep still, in its fever, humanity surged south and north across eight or ten lanes of traffic, eager to get to one future or another, as if the future wouldn’t find all of them on its own, minute by fateful minute.
| 45 |
At 4:12 p.m., Josefa Alvarez answered the backstreet door and led David into the kitchen, where he agreed to a glass of cabernet. She was a doll-faced dumpling of a woman, just five feet tall but with a mighty heart. Her sweet appearance and air of perpetual gratitude for the very fact of life seemed to be the truth of her.
As she poured the wine, she reported on Calista. “Our Calie has been in such high spirits all day. She had an unexpected visitor at breakfast, before I came to work, and I swear she hasn’t stopped smiling since.”
“What visitor?”
“That’s the strangest part. You know how open she is about just everything. But not this. She says she’s saving the story for you, and she might never tell anyone else. I’m all cat with my curiosity, but if she never tells me, that’s okay. It’s enough to see her so happy.”
David carried his glass of wine across the dining area and living room, through the open door to the deck overlooking the public promenade that encircled Balboa Island.
The sea itself was swimming, each of the millions of ripples on its surface like a small fish schooling, withdrawing from the harbor as if to follow the sun westward. As the tide slowly went out, the dock pilings appeared taller as more of their length became exposed, and the belayed boats, big and little, rode low beyond the island seawall, beyond the sand that the receding tide had revealed.
Wearing a sapphire-blue kimono with a pattern of white storks in flight, Calista sat at the table, a glass of wine before her.
Although David moved quietly, she heard him and somehow knew that he was not Josefa. She turned her head and favored him with a warm smile, her blind eyes full of refracted sunlight. “Twice in one week. I love it when you’re living on this coast, dear. I wish there wasn’t a New York City.”