Searching for Caleb

11

Lucy Peck had to ride in the suicide seat, beside her husband Two, who was driving. Laura May and Sarah got to sit in back. Lucy had to put up with the hot air rushing in Two’s open window and Mantovani playing much too loudly on the radio. She had to say what roads to take when she couldn’t even fold a map right, much less read it. “Now the next thing is you’re going to turn left, about a quarter-inch after Seven Stone Road. Or, I don’t know. What would a little bitty broken blue line seem to mean?” Her husband set his front teeth together very, very delicately, not a good sign at all. A bumble bee flew in past his nose, causing Lucy to cry out and fling her road map into the air. And meanwhile there sat Laura May and Sarah, protected by layered hats with brown veils, contemplating two separate views peacefully like children being taken for a drive.

It was the sixth of June and they were on their way to Caro Mill, Maryland, to celebrate their father’s ninety-third birthday. Unfortunately his birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, which meant that no one who worked could come along. And Bea was confined to her bed with lower back pain. It was up to them: Lucy and the maiden aunts, and Two, who was now retired. Between them they had loaded the car with presents and fruit, a Thermos of Sanka, Laura May’s needlework, Sarah’s knitting, insect repellent, sunscreen, Bufferin, Gelusil, a Triple-A tour guide, a can of Fix-a-Flat, a fire extinguisher, six emergency flares, and a white banner reading SEND HELP. They had had the Texaco man check the gas, oil, water, brake fluid, transmission fluid, tire pressure, and windshield cleaner. Then Two nosed the car out into traffic and they were on their way, with enough horns honking behind them to remind Lucy of an orchestra tuning up. Young people nowadays were so impatient. Luckily Two was not a man who could be fussed, and he went on driving at his same stately tempo. In his old age he had shrunk somewhat, and was made to seem even smaller by his habit of tipping his head back as he peered through the windshield. His eyes were narrow blue hyphens. His mouth was pulled downward by two ropes in his neck. When he decided to turn left from the right-hand lane he signaled imperiously out the window, still facing front, maintaining his cool Apache profile for Lucy to marvel at while behind them more horns honked. “Kindly check the odometer, Lucy,” was all he said. “I would be interested in knowing our mileage on this trip.”

“Yes, dear.”

Once they hit the open road they were dazzled by too much sunshine and too wide an expanse of fields. It was some time since they had been in the country. (One year ago today, to be exact.) Lucy longed for her wing chair in which she could sit encircled, almost, with the wings working like a mule’s blinders to confine her gaze to the latest historical romance. The upholstery was embroidered in satin-stitch, which she loved to stroke absently as she read. Then in the back yard her Sea Foam roses were just opening; there were going to be more this year than ever before and she was missing one entire day’s worth. And it was so much cooler and greener at home, so shadowy, so thickly treed that when you spoke outdoors your voice came echoing back, clear and close, as if reflected from a vaulted green ceiling not far above your head. Here the sun turned everything pale. Pinkish barns sped past and bleached gray roadbanks, and beige creeks spanned by wooden bridges like dried-up whitening bones. Lucy turned and sought out her sisters-in-law — a double pair of webbed eyes reluctantly drawn to hers. “Really, traveling makes me sad,” Lucy told them. But they didn’t answer (Lucy always said such personal things), so she faced front again.

At Plankhurst there was a very confusing crossroads and she sent Two thirteen miles out of the way before the mistake was realized. “Oh, I’m just so — I just can’t tell you how badly I feel about this,” she said. Two grunted. In the back seat her sisters-in-law gave her disappointed looks that made her want to cry. “I just seem to do everything wrong,” she said. Nobody denied it.

Two hours out of Baltimore they began to encounter signs for Caro Mill, although still it seemed they were in the depths of the country. The only buildings were farmhouses, widely scattered, and occasionally a little grocery store patched with soft drink ads. Then they swooped over a hill and there was the town all spread out before them, a clutter of untidy buildings. They had traveled this Main Street annually for years, although each time in a different location. They had passed this very Woolworth’s, diner, pizza parlor, fabric store displaying dingy bolts of cloth turning gray along the creases. Still, Lucy sat up straighter and began perking the lace at the neck of her dress. Two pressed his thin white hair flat against his head, and in back there were rustles and whispers. “Oh, I do hope Father likes the—” “Remind me to ask Father if he wouldn’t care to—” But Duncan was the one Lucy thought of, not her father-in-law at all. It was for Duncan she had bought this hat (only wouldn’t he think the wooden cherries were — old-ladyish, maybe?) and put on these coins of rouge and her eighteen-hour girdle and the Sunday pearls. (Only come to think of it, hadn’t he always laughed at the family’s fondness for pearls?) She twisted her rings. “Perhaps he won’t be home,” she said.

“Who?” Two asked, although of course he knew.

“It is a working day. Though Justine said he comes home for lunch. But perhaps he won’t. I mean, one time—”

One time when they visited he had gone fishing with a friend. A plumber or something. Another time he had wandered around the house all afternoon wearing earphones on a very long cord, following a baseball game. You could only grasp the depth of the insult when you remembered that Duncan did not like sports and would prefer to do almost anything but listen to a game. “One time—” she said, but Two’s voice cracked across hers like a whip.

“Leave it,” he said. “What’d you do with Justine’s letter?”

“Letter?”

“Her letter, Lucy. Telling us how to get to their house.”

“Oh. Oh, why I—”

She remembered suddenly that she had left the letter at home on the dining room buffet, but she didn’t want to say so. “Why, someplace here,” she said, riffling through her pocketbook. Two let out a long puff of air. He slowed and beckoned from the window, startling a fat lady standing on the median line. “Pardon me,” he said. “We are looking for Watchmaker Street. For twenty-one Watchmaker Street.”

“Oh, Justine,” the lady said.

Everyone flinched. Justine’s name was always bandied about so. Like common property.

“Why, you just turn left at the next light,” she said, “go two blocks and turn left again. That’s Watchmaker Street.”

“Thank you.”

He rolled the window all the way up.

Now they were silent, concentrating on the view, wondering what sort of house they were headed for. Hoping, just this once, for something really fine. But no. Of course: there it was, a flimsy, no-account little place. Tacked to the screen was what appeared to be a magazine ad for traveler’s checks. YOU ARE FAR, FAR FROM HOME, it said, IN UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY . . . But then out flew Justine, barefoot, glowing, in a dress with a lopsided hem. “Uncle Two!” she cried. “Aunt Lucy! You got here!” She hugged them — some of them twice over. She called for her grandfather, who naturally couldn’t hear. She showed Laura May and Sarah up the rickety steps and into the house to find him, and then she ran out again to help Two and Lucy unload the trunk. “Duncan will be here in a minute,” she said. “He’s coming for lunch. Oh look! This is Aunt Bea’s gift, I know the wrapping. Will you look at that bow?” But then she dropped it. Fortunately it was not breakable. Lucy had often wondered: was accident-proneness catching? Justine had been such a careful little girl. “I wrote and asked Meg to come too but they’re having final exams,” Justine said. “It seems to me these birthday parties get smaller every year. She sent her love to all of you.”

“Oh, bless her heart,” Lucy said. “Well, some of these things are her wedding presents. Did we tell you we’re giving her your great-grandma’s silver?”

Not a one of them was tactless enough to comment on Meg’s manner of marrying.

“Now,” said Two. “Tell me straight. How’s Duncan’s business going?”

“Oh, fine, Uncle Two. Just fine.”

“What is it again? Jewelry?”

But then Grandfather Peck came down the steps, bending in an odd flimsy way at the knees, and he had to be greeted and fussed over. Lucy kissed his bristly white cheek, Two shook his hand. “Happy birthday!” Lucy shouted.

“How’s the what?”

“Happy birthday!”

He looked at her for a moment, considering. “Oh, very well, thank you,” he said finally.

“You don’t have to shout, Aunt Lucy,” Justine told her. “Only narrow in. You know what I mean?”

“Oh yes,” said Lucy, although she didn’t. They went through this on every visit.

Once they were inside the house, there was the usual difficulty in knowing what to say about it. Certainly some comment seemed called for. But the rooms were small and dark. The windows were curtained only by great tangles of plants all merging and mingling and sending long runners clear across the floor. There were not nearly enough places to sit. In one of the little back bedrooms, Lucy was horrified to glimpse an absolutely bare, rust-stained mattress, striped blue and white. It reminded her of the time her church group had toured a flophouse for their social service project. “Justine, dear heart,” she said, “have we interrupted your bedmaking?”

“My what? Oh no, I’m going to run the sheets down to the laundromat this evening.”

“Perhaps I could help you put the fresh ones on.”

“But I don’t have any others,” Justine said.

Lucy sat down very suddenly on a chrome-legged chair that had been dragged out of the kitchen.

Grandfather Peck never would open his presents until after lunch. He had them taken to the table, and meanwhile he and Two settled themselves in the living room and discussed business affairs. Since both of them were retired, it was a vague, wistful, second-hand sort of discussion. “Dan I believe is very much involved with that Kingham matter,” Two said. “You remember Kingham.”

“Oh yes. What was that again?”

“Well, let’s see, I’m not quite . . . but he says it’s moving just fine.”

“Fine, is it.”

Perhaps Two should not have retired just yet. But he would feel better when his brothers joined him — Dan in two years, Marcus the year after that. (Sixty-eight was the age they had agreed upon.) Then Claude and Richard could run things on their own. There was no point in working yourself straight into the grave. Still, Two seemed bored and listless as he sat sunk in a corner of the threadbare couch. His father nodded opposite him. His father was so aged that he had reached a saturation point; no new wrinkles had been added in years. He looked not much different from the way he had at seventy. Not much different from Two, as a matter of fact. They might have been brothers. This was how they all ended up, then: arriving at some sort of barrier and sitting down to wait for death, joined eventually by others who had started out later. In the end, the quarter-century that divided their generations amounted to nothing and was swept away. Lucy passed a hand over her own wispy, corrugated forehead. She looked at Two, a handsome man whom she had determined to call Justin back when they were courting, but finally she had given in and called him what his family did. They won, as they always had. Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.

But just as she felt herself sinking into a marsh of despair, she heard Duncan’s light quick step across the porch. She saw him fling the screen door open — such a tall boy, or man rather, with his eyes lit from within and that awning of fair hair flopping over his high, pure, untouched forehead. She rose and smoothed her skirt down and held her purse more tightly to her stomach. “Duncan, darling,” she said. His kiss was as hurried as ever, brief and light as a raindrop, but she felt her heart floating softly upward and she was certain that this time everything was going to go wonderfully.

For lunch Justine served baked ham, potatoes, and snap beans. Everyone was pleasantly surprised. “Why, Justine,” said Two, “this is excellent. This ham is very tasty.”

“Oh, Grandfather did that.”

“Hmm?”

They stared at her. She seemed perfectly serious. Her grandfather was absorbed in salting his beans and could not be contacted.

For dessert they had a layer cake with nine large candles on it and three small ones. Lucy watched closely while it was sliced. “Is it a mix, dear?” she asked.

“Oh, no.”

“You made it from scratch?”

“Grandfather made it.”

This time, he looked up. He gave them a shy, crooked smile and then lowered his white eyelashes. “Why, Father Peck!” Lucy said.

“I did the ham too,” he said. “She tell you that?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Also the potatoes. I baked them first, you see, then scooped them out . . . found it in Fannie Farmer. Some people call them potato boats.”

Two looked at his watch.

“The cake is what is known as a war cake,” said the grandfather. “It makes do with considerably less butter and eggs than we would normally use, you see. After all, we’re living in reduced circumstances.”

He seemed to savor the last two words: reduced circumstances. Lucy thought they sounded smugly technical, like devaluated currency or municipal bonds. For a very brief moment she wondered if he didn’t almost enjoy this life — these dismal houses, weird friends, separations from the family, this moving about and fortune telling. If he weren’t almost proud of the queer situations he found himself in. But then Sarah said, “Remember Grandma’s orange peel cake?” and his face became suddenly thin and lost.

“Oh. Oh yes,” he said.

“She used to mix it secretly in the pantry. Remember? She said she would give the recipe to Sulie but Sulie says she never did. Although of course we can’t be too sure of that.”

“I wonder what was in it,” Justine said dreamily, and she paused so long with her knife in mid-air that Two grew impatient.

“Come on,” he said. He looked at his watch again. “It’s one thirty-two. Do you always have dinner so late?”

“Mostly we don’t have dinner at all,” Justine said.

“I ask because last year we ate around noon. Dessert was served shortly before one.”

“Was it?”

“The year before that, we ate even earlier.”

“Did we?”

“Is this a new hobby of yours?” Duncan asked Two. “Are you planning to graph us?”

“To — no. No, it’s just a little matter of timing, you understand. I thought the presents would be opened by one o’clock. Maybe we could do them before dessert.”

“But I had counted on enjoying my cake,” the grandfather said.

He and Two stared at each other, a pair of old, cross men. “This is a matter of timing, Father,” Two told him.

“Of what?”

“Timing!”

“Speak up.”

Two groaned.

“The worst of it is,” Lucy whispered to Justine, “now Two is growing a teensy bit deaf himself.”

“I most certainly am not,” Two said.

“Sorry, dear.”

Two picked up a small flat package. “From Sarah,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

Two’s father took the package and turned it over. How many times had Lucy watched him painfully untie a bow, peel off the Scotch tape, remove the paper and fold it carefully for future use before he would look to see what he had been given? Year after year he received this cascade of shirts and socks and monogrammed handkerchiefs, all in glossy white boxes and handsome paper, tied with loopy satin bows. To each gift he said, “Why, thank you. Thank you very much,” after which he replaced it in its box. Probably none of these things would ever be used. Except, of course, Justine’s: a crumpled white sack of horehound drops that honestly seemed to delight him, although that had been her gift for as long as anyone could remember. “Can you figure it out?” he said. “Stuff’s practically impossible to find any more but every year she manages. Expensive, too. Justine makes do with Luden’s cough drops but I fail to see the resemblance myself.” He popped a lozenge in his mouth and passed the sack around. Only Justine took one. Nobody else could stand them. “Last chance till next year,” he told Lucy, flooding her with his pharmaceutical breath. Lucy shook her head.

Duncan of course gave nothing at all, and would never allow Justine to pencil his name beside hers on the sack of horehound drops. He didn’t believe in celebrating birthdays. He would give presents any time, to anyone, sudden surprising touching presents, but not when the rules said he was supposed to. And this year there was no gift from Meg either. Lucy was watching. No so much as a tie clasp or a bureau top organizer. She felt a brief surge of wicked joy: now Duncan himself knew the pain of having an ungrateful child. Perhaps he had thought, when Meg eloped, So this is what it feels like! This is what my parents have had to put up with all my life! But then she was ashamed of herself, and she felt truly sorry that her granddaughter had somehow forgotten such an important occasion.

Next to last came Laura May’s gift: needlework, as usual. This year a family tree, embroidered on natural linen with a wooden frame. “Why, thank you,” said her father. “Thank you very much.” But instead of setting it back down, he held it in both hands and looked at it for a long, silent moment. A diamond shape, that was what it was. Lucy had never noticed before. Justin alone began it and Meg alone ended it. In between there was a sudden glorious spread of children, but what had they come to? Nothing. Claude, Esther, the twins, and Richard stood alone, unmarried, without descendants. (Laura May had tactfully left off all record of Sally’s divorce and Richard’s annulment.) Only Duncan on the far left, son of the oldest child, and Justine on her far right, daughter of the youngest child, were connected by a V-shaped line that spilled out their single offspring at the bottom of the diamond. There was no room for anyone below Meg’s name. Lucy shook her head. “But,” said Justine, “maybe Meg will have six children and things will start all over again!”

Maybe so. Lucy pictured the diamond shape endlessly repeated, like the design on the border of a blanket. But the thought failed to cheer her up.

Then came the last gift, the largest, a gigantic cube two feet square. The card was the largest too. It had to be. Birthday greetings and many happy returns from your sons Justin II, Daniel Jr., and Marcus.

“Well now,” said Grandfather Peck.

Two began chuckling. The wrapping was a joke.

First the striped paper, then a large white box. A slightly smaller box inside, then fleur-de-lis paper covering another box, then another, another . . .

Grandfather Peck grew bewildered. Mountains of ribbon and tissue rose around him. “What’s all this?” he kept asking. “What’s . . . I don’t understand.”

“Keep going,” Two said.

He and his brothers had spent an entire evening working on the wrapping. Ordinarily they were not humorous men, but while fitting cartons inside cartons on Lucy’s dining room table they had chortled like schoolboys, and Lucy had had to smile. She smiled now, seeing Two’s face all squeezed together to keep the laughter in. “Go on, go on,” he kept saying.

A hatbox, containing a shoebox, containing a stationery box, containing a playing card box, containing a matchbox. And finally the gift itself, wrapped in white paper. Two was laughing so hard that the corners of his eyes were damp. “It’s a joke,” he explained to Duncan. “See?”

“Typical,” said Duncan.

“No, see? They did it at this office party, when Dan’s secretary got married. They wrapped a little tiny present in a great big box, funniest thing you ever saw.”

“It would be funnier if they had wrapped a great big present in a little tiny box,” said Duncan.

“No, see—”

Grandfather Peck removed the Scotch tape from the minute rectangle of paper. He opened the paper carefully, but for once did not fold it and set it aside. Perhaps because it was too small. Perhaps because he was too shocked: his present was a single calling card.

“ ‘Worth and Everjohn, Inc.,’ ” he read out. “ ‘Your Local Domestic Investigation Agency. 19 Main Street, Caro Mill, Maryland. Why Stay in Doubt? Call Us and Find Out. All Reports in Strictest . . . ’ ” He looked up at Two. “I don’t quite understand,” he said.

But instead of answering Two rose and left the room. They heard him open the front screen door. “All right now!” he shouted.

The man he brought back with him looked like Abe Lincoln, even to the narrow border of beard along his jawline. He wore a black suit, a very starched white shirt, and a string tie. Probably he was in his thirties, but his weary, hungry expression made him seem older. Runlets of sweat streaked his temples. There was a pulse in the hollow of one cheek. “Sorry to have kept you out there so long,” Two was saying. “I know you must be hot.”

“Oh, I didn’t have nothing else to do.”

“Father, this is Mr. Eli Everjohn,” Two said.

Mr. Everjohn held out his hand, which seemed to have an unusual number of bones in it. Grandfather Peck peered into his face. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“Your birthday present, Father.”

“Oh, naturally,” Duncan said to no one. “I’m surprised they didn’t gift-wrap the man himself.”

“Well, they thought of it,” Lucy told him.

“Father, Mr. Everjohn’s a detective,” said Two.

“Yes?”

“He tracks people down.”

“Yes, of course,” said Grandfather Peck. He waited patiently, ready to smile as soon as he saw the point.

“He’s going to track Uncle Caleb for you.”

“How’s that?”

“See, Dan and Mark and I pooled together and hired him. We thought, why not get this thing settled? I mean determine, once and for all, that Uncle Caleb is . . . I mean you’re not getting anywhere, Father. Now we’ll spare no expense. We’ve picked a man who’s located here so that you can keep tabs, help out in any way that’s needed, and no matter how long it takes we’re prepared to foot the bill. Understand? That’s our little gift to you. Happy birthday.”

His father stared at him.

“Didn’t you hear?” Two asked.

“But I don’t . . . ”

Mr. Everjohn’s hand remained outstretched, motionless. You would think that he went through this every day.

“I don’t believe I require any assistance, thank you just the same,” Grandfather Peck told him.

“But Father! It’s your birthday present.”

“Then it’s his to refuse,” Duncan said.

“Stay out of this, Duncan.”

Duncan rose and came around the table. He shook Mr. Everjohn’s hand. “I believe,” he said, “that my grandfather likes to track his own people.”

“Certainly, for fifteen years!” Two shouted.

But he was not a shouting man. Even his sisters, fluttering their hands toward their ears, couldn’t hold it against him. This was all Duncan’s doing, some germ he spread. “Two, dear,” Lucy told him, and right away he lowered his voice.

“Oh,” he said, “don’t think I don’t know why you’ve let him live here, Duncan. You like to see this happening, your grandfather chasing rainbows on the Greyhound bus line. But consider him, for once. At the present rate, how long will it be before he’s successful?”

“Forever, probably,” Duncan said. “But at least he’s happier than most other Pecks I know.”

Everyone looked at the grandfather. He stared blandly back, not giving away a thing.

“And I doubt if success is what we want here,” said Duncan. “What would you do with Caleb now? Where would you fit him in? In the end you’d just have to let him run on, like a fox after a foxhunt.”

“Oh, was he a sportsman?” Mr. Everjohn asked.

“What? I don’t know. No.”

“Of course not,” said Two.

Mr. Everjohn took a spiral notebook from his shirt pocket. He uncapped a Bic pen and wrote something down. In the sudden silence Justine said, “Maybe you’d like a seat.”

“What for?” Duncan asked. “He’s not staying.”

And his grandfather said, “Yes, actually Justine and I—”

“That’s just what we’re trying to spare you,” Two told him. “These endless, fruitless searches, wandering about the country like a pair of — let a professional do it.” He turned to Duncan. “As for what to do with Caleb,” he said, speaking very low and fast, “I seriously doubt that that problem will arise. If you follow me.”

“What, do you imagine he’s dead?”

Two gave his father a sidelong glance.

“You can’t stand to think he’s alive and well and staying away on purpose,” Duncan said. “Can you? But he’s a Peck and he’s not even ninety, barely in his prime. I’ll bet you a bottle of bourbon he’s sitting in an old folks’ home this very minute watching The Dating Game.”

Grandfather Peck slammed a hand down on the table. Everybody stared.

“I’ve stood a lot from you, Duncan,” he said, “but not this. I do not have a brother in an old folks’ home.”

If he had spoken to Lucy that way she would have crumbled and died, but Duncan only raised his eyebrows. (And though she blushed for him, she felt a little thrill that nothing these Pecks could do would ever really touch him.)

“Mr. Everjohn,” said the grandfather, “I’ll tell you all I know, and then you get to work. I am not a drinking man but I want to collect a bottle of bourbon from my grandson here.”

Then he stood up and led Mr. Everjohn to the living room. Two went with them but the others stayed in the kitchen, gazing down at their slices of cake, which no one had the appetite for. Lucy tore her napkin to shreds and wondered where the Gelusil was. Sarah fanned herself with a sheaf of folded wrapping paper. Justine was chewing on a birthday candle and Laura May had picked up the family tree to admire her own embroidery. Only Duncan, circling the table aimlessly, seemed to have any energy left. He whistled something unfamiliar. He touched a strand of Justine’s hair as he passed. He looked over Laura May’s shoulder at the family tree. “Has it occurred to you,” he asked her, “that someone somewhere may still be searching for Justin?”

By four o’clock Two still hadn’t made a move to go. And he was the one who hated night driving! He said he had to get everything straight with the detective first. Lucy could tell he was beginning to regret his choice, not that there was much choice in a town like Caro Mill. This Mr. Everjohn was turning out to be a little peculiar. The more peculiar he got the grimmer Two’s face grew, and the gayer Duncan’s. Justine became downright hospitable and offered Mr. Everjohn root beer and birthday cake. By now they were all in the living room, the aunts in a row on the couch and the others in kitchen chairs, having been lured there one after another by the goings-on. Grandfather Peck was giving Mr. Everjohn the names of every classmate Uncle Caleb had ever had. Every teacher, friend, and business associate. Where did he get them all? Then Uncle Caleb’s church, school, barber, tailor, doctor, tavern . . . she had never known a Peck to frequent a tavern. But Mr. Everjohn did not look surprised. He continued filling his spiral notebook, scribbling away at unexpected moments for unexplainable lengths of time. He requested and pocketed the grandfather’s treasured photo, saying he would have a copy made, but why, when it was half a century out of date? He listened to a recital of the entire attendance sheet of a vacation Bible school that had opened, and closed forever, in the summer of 1893. Whole strings of names were allowed to slip by, but then he would pounce on one and fill two pages. What was he writing? Lucy sat up very straight, but she couldn’t see into his lap.

Now another peculiar thing was, how a man of business could spare so many hours. Naturally a detective was not like a lawyer or anything, but still you would think he had appointments and commitments. Mr. Everjohn seemed ready to give the Pecks the rest of his life. He sat without fidgeting, keeping his sharp knees clamped together and his elbows close to his body. One trouser leg was rucked up to show a shin like a stick of timber. He wrote with his pen held so awkwardly that it made Lucy’s hand ache. When he asked questions, they were always the least likely. For instance, he wanted to know Uncle Caleb’s smoking habits, the name of his childhood nursemaid, his mother’s birthday, and his preference in shoes. He asked about Laura’s reading matter and Justin’s will, about religious beliefs and shipping schedules. The stranger the questions, the more excited Grandfather Peck became. It was like going to the doctor for a headache and having him examine your toenails. What undreamed-of things he must know! Even when Mr. Everjohn asked about Margaret Rose, Grandfather Peck barely flinched. “Of course, that’s something I never think about,” he said. “I’ve forgotten her entirely.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Everjohn. When he opened his mouth like that, his face became impossibly long and his cheeks sank in.

“Anyway, she left before Caleb did,” said the grandfather.

“Now where was it she went to?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“Washington,” said the grandfather.

“Oh yes.”

“She got a job. But she died.”

“What kind of job?”

“There’s not much point in going into this,” the grandfather said.

“I got to know anyway, Mr. Peck.”

“Uh, she laundered money.”

“Money.”

“She worked for the U.S. Treasury. She washed old bills.”

Mr. Everjohn’s deep, bruised-looking eyes searched mournfully around the room.

“It’s perfectly possible,” Duncan told him. “They used to wash them and coat them with rosin. For crispness. In the past they weren’t so quick to throw things away. They had a machine that—”

“I see,” said Mr. Everjohn. “Cause of death?”

“Boardinghouse fire,” said Grandfather Peck.

“She lived in a boardinghouse?”

“Her parents wouldn’t let her stay with them, you see. In those days women were expected to be better behaved. They tried to make her come back to Baltimore. Her father wrote and told me.”

“Now. You sure she really died.”

“They buried her, didn’t they?”

“I was thinking maybe that was where your brother went to: Washington. Maybe the two of them. You ever consider that?”

Lucy had. But Grandfather Peck was merely impatient. “If he were such a scoundrel, why would I be looking for him?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Everjohn, and he seemed perfectly satisfied. He slipped the notebook and pencil back into his pocket. “Well, I think I got something here to start on.”

“We certainly appreciate your making a housecall, Mr. Everjohn,” Two said.

“Why, that’s all right.”

“I never expected to take so much of your time, but of course I am fully prepared to—”

“Think nothing of it,” Mr. Everjohn said. “To be honest, this town don’t keep a man very busy.” He felt beneath his chair for his hat and then rose, unfolding foot by foot. With a hat on he looked more like Lincoln than ever. The crown was even slightly squared, the brim oddly curved. “There’s so little call for us, me and my partner have to shadow each other’s wives for practice,” he said.

“Really,” said Two.

“Women’s lives are right dull, I’ve found. My partner’s wife goes to one store for toothpaste and another for mouthwash, just to get herself two outings.”

“Well, I know you have to be getting back,” said Two.

“Now my wife takes lessons. She will sign up for anything. You wouldn’t believe the places Joe has got to follow her to.”

“May I expect your bill on a monthly basis?”

“Pet grooming. Exotic dance. Kung-fu. Stretch-’n-Sew.”

“Oh, Eli!” cried Justine, making one of her shocking leaps to a first-name friendship. “Won’t you take your wife a piece of birthday cake?”

“She’s on this diet,” Mr. Everjohn said gloomily. “She goes to Weight Watchers and Slenderella, and every Thursday from two to four she’s got her this class in low-carbohydrate food preparation.” He shook Justine’s hand too hard. “I’ll keep in touch,” he told her.

“Well, drop in any time. Grandfather will want to hear.”

“And thank you again for your patience,” Two said.

But the minute Mr. Everjohn was out the door, Two collapsed in his chair. “I knew we should have used a Baltimore man,” he told Lucy.

“Well, there, dear.”

“I must have the names of twenty good detectives back home. But no, Marcus said it had to be a Caro Mill fellow. That way Father could handle things, he said. Otherwise we’d be the ones to—”

‘Well, I thought he was very nice,” Justine said, returning from the front door.

“If you children would live in a civilized area, Justine—”

“Caro Mill is civilized.”

Two turned to Duncan, who was playing with what looked to be an auto part over by the window. “You need to come back to Baltimore, boy,” he said. “What’s stopping you? Jobs? You know there’s lots to do in a law office that wouldn’t take a degree. Your cousins could fix you up. Quick mind like yours, there’s lots to—”

“Thanks anyway,” Duncan said.

“Do Justine good. See there? She’s looking a little tired.”

Lucy glanced over at her. Why, she was. It was true. Now that she was not running or laughing or talking too much, her face seemed strained and pale. Blame Meg, that’s who. Children! She shifted her gaze to Duncan, an aging little boy. Secretly her favorite son, and she had always imagined what a fine man he would be once he was grown and mellowed. But that had never happened. He was preserved forever as he had been at ten, reckless and inconsiderate, not kind at all, not even willing to make allowance for other people’s weaknesses. He had needed a good strong wife to settle him down and round his sharp edges, but he hadn’t got one. Only Justine. Was Justine the way she was deliberately? Had she just flat out decided one day that she would refuse to take responsibility, that Duncan could go caroming straight to hell taking wife and daughter along before she would say a word? Something made Lucy speak up suddenly, when she hadn’t even known she was going to. “Oh,” she said, “if only poor dear Caroline could have been with us today!”

The look Duncan gave her was as cold and hard as glass, but Lucy felt her little triumph warming all her bones when she saw how still Justine grew.

By the time they were back in the car it was very nearly twilight. Even so, Lucy took the preaddressed envelope out of her purse and unfolded a sheet of stationery and wrote, as Two had taught her to:

She placed the note in the envelope and sealed it. “Whenever you notice a mailbox, Two . . . ” she said, but then she trailed off, bleakly tapping the letter against her purse. Two moved his lips as he drove. In back, Laura May and Sarah sat side by side beneath veiled brown hats and looked out the windows at their separate views.