Twenty-Seven Bones

6

“Pearl and I had just split up,” said Holly. “She had a chance to be an executive chef at a fancy ski resort in Banff, and I wasn’t about to move to Canada-I hate cold, I hate snow. That’s why I moved from New York to California in the first place. So I had this whole big house to myself. The plan, of course, was that I was going to wrap up Laurel’s affairs and bring the kids back to Big Sur with me.” Holly threw up her hands and laughed. “So much for plans.”

She and Pender were sitting on a split log at the very top of the clearing, the only vantage point in the Core from which to view the short but spectacular tropical sunset in its entirety. Holly was in the process of telling Pender her life story-a development that had come as a complete surprise to her. All she’d intended to do was keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t steal any of Andy’s stuff.

But the big bulvon was surprisingly graceful on his Hush Puppies as he explored the A-frame, meticulous about replacing every tchatchke and objet he picked up, including Andy’s bong, remarkably perceptive in his running monologue, and nowhere near as dumb as he looked-but then, he couldn’t have been, could he? Not and breathe.

He was looking for anything to indicate what Andy was up to before he left, Pender told her. What was the last thing he did, did he appear to have packed, did he leave any perishables around? And most importantly in a search like this one, Pender had added, he was looking for the hardest thing to find: what wasn’t there that should have been.

C. B. Dawson, Arena’s ex-girlfriend, would probably be able to answer that last question when she returned from her latest rain forest trek, Holly informed Pender. But she was able to tell him that if the unopened carton of Half amp; Half in the knee-high refrigerator, the new loaf of store-bought bread, and the ripe bananas were any indication, Andy didn’t appear to have been planning an extended absence.

How Holly segued from there to telling Pender her life story was something she wasn’t quite clear on. (The beauty part of an affective interview, Pender used to tell his students, was that if it was done right, the interviewee never even had to know it was taking place.)

“But you did know about Marley’s…condition before you moved down,” he prompted her. He didn’t want to use the term handicap or disability, lest she go off on him again.

“Yes-and I’d seen pictures. But it was still a shock, seeing him in person for the first time. That’s why I’m so sorry for tearing into you yesterday-I know what a…disconcerting experience it can be.”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Pender. “I expect better of myself.”

“Oh.” No arguing with that. “Anyway, I knew Dawnie would be okay in Big Sur-she’d be okay anywhere. But to take Marley away from St. Luke, where everybody’s known him since birth, where his handicap is hardly even noticed anymore, where he knows all the kids and they all know him-not to mention the fact that he almost never has to wear shoes here-for him wearing shoes is like us wearing boxing gloves. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Did you ever look into prosthetics?”

“Just long enough to find out how much they cost.”

“How much?”

“For what he’d need, between thirty and fifty thousand dollars apiece.”

Pender whistled low. “That’s a lot of massages.”

“Tell me about it,” said Holly, as the setting sun lit up the rain tree in the meadow on the other side of the lane like a great pink Japanese lantern.