Honestly Dearest, You're Dead

Twelve

The next morning, I drew bigger circles on Fizzy’s map of Michigan, then used the Internet to hunt towns even farther out from Rambling, where Carolina might have rented a lockbox. As I’d done before, I sent out e-mails inquiring about a Louise Thomas, but this time I slid in the nugget that Louise might have used the name Carolina Dare. I was hoping that the bankers would check for that name as well. It didn’t go well, sliding or otherwise. Nobody got back to me.

Even Aggert sensed the futility of it. “There’s too many towns.”

I didn’t tell him I was only doing it mornings, and then only because I wasn’t ready for the guilt of giving up on Louise entirely.

Reynolds didn’t answer any of the messages I left on his cell phone. I didn’t fault him. He was a watchman, and even watching nothing takes time. Besides, I had asked him to chase down a coat and a pack of cigarettes-the thinnest of threads. Most likely, he figured that Mrs. Sturrow, having emptied Carolina’s kitchen of canned goods, would have thought nothing of grabbing a winter coat, and that I was no longer clutching at even whole straws.

It was futile all the way around.

Afternoons, I tried to rest my head and worked on finishing the cabinets in the second-floor kitchen. It felt good to be back touching stains and varnishes, sanding papers and rags. The vapors were dizzying, harsh in my nostrils and at the back of my throat, but there was a rhythmic repetition to it, and the certainty that, at the end of the afternoon, something tangible would result from my efforts.

Amanda and I had dinner downtown several times. Our old once-a-week caution was gone; we were moving faster now, becoming surer that this time we could make it work.

Gradually, as I came up dry phoning banks-by now as far away as Detroit and Lansing, impossible distances from Rambling-I came to accept that the life of Carolina Dare was going to disappear like water spilled on hot sand.

The day was warm enough to caulk in a new piece of glass to replace the one that had so offended the pigeon, and the plywood that had so offended the lizard, Elvis. I was up on the ladder, swaying like long johns on a clothesline, when the postman came.

“Mail again today, Dek,” he called up. I suspected he was genuinely pleased that I was beginning to receive mail. For well over a year, I must have been the only person on his route who didn’t receive even junk mail. I hadn’t blamed that entirely on my reduced circumstances; I doubted Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom launched catalogues at many people with Rivertown zip codes, since neither Neiman nor Nordstrom offered muscatel, switchblades, or auto alarm disablers.

I chanced a look down. He was feeding thick tan envelopes into the curved-top box. “Where are they from?”

He pulled a couple back. “Smith’s Secretarial, in Florida, forwarded to here from Woodton, Michigan.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d stop soon enough. By now, Charles must have received my made-up columns.

“Oops,” he went on. “One of the postmarks is old.” He shrugged and pushed the envelopes back into the mailbox. “It happens,” he said, looking up. “Stuff gets set aside for one reason or another until someone thinks to send it on.”

He started across the lawn to city hall, a happy man with a secure job, and I went back to glazing the window. I was in a hurry to give the putty some setting time in the sunlight before evening dropped the temperature.

Thirty minutes later, as I beaded in the last of the glazing compound, an engine revved down below. I recognized the accent of the exhaust. It was German. Very carefully, so as not to excite the ladder, I turned around just enough to see Leo, bright in orange, lemon, and chartreuse, and topped like a sherbet sundae with a purple pom-pom, behind the wheel of his top-down Porsche Roadster. Gracing the passenger’s seat, half a head taller, was the beautiful Endora, Leo’s love, model stylish in dark leather and faux fur.

“Go away,” I called. “I’m doing honest work.”

He revved the engine again, this time louder, more insistent.

I maneuvered to get a better look. Leo was holding up a tabloid newspaper, and grinning so widely that his teeth seemed to split his pale, narrow head in two. The headline was big, but I was too high up to make it out. “Give me a minute,” I called down, then turned back to the final bit of glazing. I smoothed out the last few inches of putty against the window and descended as though I were tiptoeing on Twinkies. Safe at last at the bottom, I approached his car, rubbing the glazing compound off my hands.

I could read the bold tabloid headline from fifteen feet away.

“SHE’S BACK!”

Unkind thoughts of an editor with the dimmest bulb in New Jersey flashed through my head.

“No,” I said to the world.

“Yes,” Leo laughed above the low, tuned rumble of the Porsche.

Endora smiled, but it was with sympathy. She handed me another copy of the paper, something called the Northway. “We saw it in an organic food store up in Wisconsin. Leo said we had to turn around, bring it right to you.”

“I couldn’t wait to see your face,” Leo said, all teeth and lips.

I turned to the page listed in the index. Big letters shrieked next to the crossword puzzle: HONESTLY, DEARESTS, I’M BACK.

The uncomprehending Charles had chosen two of my most offensive responses, the ones I’d fired at the middle-aged former virgin, whom I’d advised to get a swing set; and to the college kid with the carrot-worshipping roommate, whom I’d told to eat the offending vegetable deity.

“I’m so clever,” I said.

“So we’ve read,” Leo replied, laughing.

Endora reached to touch my forearm.

“Would you like to come in?” I managed.

“Too cold in there,” Leo said from the cockpit of his top-down convertible. He made an exaggerated leering face, a wolf in neon clothing, at Endora. “We make our own heat, don’t we, darling?”

Endora shook her head, smiling at me apologetically. “Drive away, Leo. Let Dek savor his new fame privately.”

I stood by the curb long after they’d pulled away, rereading my juvenile responses, word by unthinking word. Incredibly, it was all there, unedited. In New Jersey, an inmate had taken over the print shop in the asylum and was firing out columns to grocery store tabloids.

It was only after I’d gone inside and reread the inane snippets a dozen times that I remembered the ladder I’d left leaning against the turret, and it was only after I took it down that I remembered to bring in the mail.

There were five of the thick manila envelopes. The most recent had been mailed from Florida just three days before. I slit it open.

This time, the white envelope mixed in with the reader mail was addressed to Carolina!; the exclamation point was the tipoff that big news was inside. The note read, “Carolina! Many, many apologies! Wonderful! Your readers are going to just love your more wickedly upbeat tone! Will use the old swinger (clever you, clever me) and the carrot-worshipper right away, and then the others in upcoming weeks. But not the one about me, HA, HA. Send more, ASAP! All Forgiven. Best, Charles.”

God, but the man was a fool.

I worked my way backward, by postmark date. The previous three tan envelopes must have been sent from New Jersey before Charles had received my envelope; they contained reader letters only. Apparently, Charles had given up on Carolina by then and hadn’t bothered to dash off any more notes. No wonder he’d sounded so absolutely giddy in his letter about my columns! I didn’t open the reader envelopes inside; I’d read enough earlier to know what they contained.

The last large envelope was the one the postman had noticed. It had been postmarked the last day of the previous year, some ten weeks before. It, too, was filled with the usual unopened reader envelopes, but there was another envelope in there, larger and much thicker than the rest. It had been addressed, in what looked like a woman’s compact script, to Honestly Dearest at the same New Jersey address as all the other reader mail.

I looked again at the postmark: December 31.

Then I noticed its origin: West Haven, Michigan. And its return address: H. D., care of the Woodton post office.

An envelope mailed from West Haven to New Jersey, forwarded to Florida, to be forwarded, almost full circle, back to Michigan again, to Woodton.

No one would have known to do that, except Carolina herself.

My hands shook as I ripped at the gummed flap. At first, the contents appeared to be the usual batch of reader envelopes. As I pulled them out, though, I saw that they had already been opened.

There were five envelopes, two hand addressed, three typewritten, all mailed to Honestly Dearest in New Jersey. The oldest had been mailed in January of the year before. The most recent had been mailed the past November 22.

There were also about a dozen Honestly Dearest columns in the envelope, cut from newspapers and paper-clipped together. The oldest column, like the oldest envelope, went back to the beginning of the previous year.

There was one additional letter, without an envelope. It had been penned on a wide-ruled sheet of notebook paper, then folded a number of times, until it must have formed a small cube.

I called Aggert. He answered on the second ring.

“This is Elstrom. Did you mail anything to Louise Thomas’s New Jersey address a couple of months ago?”

“That newspaper she worked for?” He sounded tired. “I didn’t know about New Jersey two months ago. You’re the one who told me about that.”

“I just got more of her mail. Most of it is recent, the same kinds of reader letters and column copies sent by her editor. But one envelope is different. It was mailed from West Haven the day after she came to see you. I was wondering if she left something behind that you then sent on to her New Jersey address.”

“What’s in that envelope again?” He spoke quickly, alert now.

“Old letters, all opened, and copies of old newspaper columns. I haven’t read through them yet.”

“I’d like to see them, too.”

“I’ll send you copies,” I said and hung up.

I looked at the hand-addressed large tan envelope again and realized I was looking at Carolina’s own handwriting.

Reader letters and newspaper columns, mailed to get them away from her cottage.

Sent from herself, to herself.

For me to read.