Summer Cool

17

"Come on in, Jack."

The boxes were gone from the front hallway; the garbage-men had come, just as she had said. The house was as clean as ever.

She led him to the kitchen, put a cup of coffee in front of him. She wouldn't look at him, but busied herself at the sink, washing dinner dishes.

The girls were home, watching television in the playroom. Paine heard them alternately laughing and snapping at each other, normal siblings fighting over everything in sight. They came out to see him when he arrived, Mary saying, "Hi, Uncle Jack," shyly and then hiding behind her sister Melissa, who said, "Hi." They looked a lot like their mother, both of them, and Melissa had her mother's straight stare. She looked with it at Paine and it told him she wanted to know where her father was. She looked at her mother at the sink, then turned, and left the room.

"Melissa's having a bit of a hard time," Terry said.

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her her father was gone and wasn't coming back."

"Is that all?"

"It happens all the time," Terry said. "It happened to one of her girlfriends in school last year."

She had turned back to her dishes, refusing to look straight at him.

"I need to talk about Bobby," Paine said.

"Go ahead."

"About his time in the marines."

He could tell that memories were swirling through her, the way she changed the way she was standing, the way she put a wet dish into the drying rack absently.

"What about it?" she said.

"Do you have any records, any pictures?"

"No. He didn't keep anything except his discharge papers."

"Letters?"

A pause. "I threw them out."

"Did he talk about it a lot?"

"No." She let the dish she was washing settle into soapy water, then turned, drying her hands on a dish towel. She looked at Paine now. "He never talked about it, Jack."

"Never?"

"Did he ever talk to you about it, Jack?"

She waited for him to see her point, and he nodded. "I was sixteen when I met him, and he was just going in. He was there four years. In the beginning, his letters used to tell me where he was, what he was doing, his friends, things like that. Then after a while, he stopped talking about it altogether and just talked about coming home. Especially the last two years."

"Didn't you think that was strange?"

"No, Jack, I didn't. I wanted him home. I didn't want to hear about the war. Nobody did."

"Did he ever mention Jim Coleman in his letters?" She shook her head.

"Any other names you can remember?"

"A couple of guys in the beginning. Then nobody."

She turned back to the sink, closing the conversation; then she turned back, looking at him.

"Look, Jack, about yesterday in your office-"

"Forget it, Terry."

Her gaze didn't waver. "No. I don't want to forget it. I did it because I wanted to."

Paine looked at her, watched the battle on her face, the decision being made there.

"I want you to know he's gone for me, Jack. He's dead. And if what I did means anything to you, I want you to know it's all right. We can take it from there. I know how hard it would be, but I don't care. It will take time, but I don't care about that, either. The girls would be all right, after awhile." She turned back to her dishes. "I know how bad things have been for you, too. I know what you've gone through. There was a time when I almost hated you, because the two miscarriages came while Bobby was helping you out, when he was the only one on the force who stuck his neck out for you. I was wrong. Most of that, the tension, was Bobby, the way he did things. He doesn't back down from anything. I just want you to know it would be all right. I think I could come to love you, Jack."

Paine looked at his coffee; he looked up to see Melissa standing in the doorway, staring at him. She had the eyes of her mother, and she didn't smile.

He opened his mouth to say something, but once again Melissa looked at her mother and then turned and was gone. Somewhere in the back of the house the television set was snapped off in midsentence.

Paine got up and said quietly, "I've got to go, Terry."