Familiar Spirit

“Sweetheart,” said Pete. Beverly evaded his arms and ran from the room. The bedroom door slammed. Pete stood up, nearly overturning his chair, and disappeared down the hall without looking at Sarah. She heard the door open and close again quietly, and she was alone.

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning they were as polite and indifferent to one another as strangers. Tension hummed beneath every word and gesture, and none of them dared break the surface.

Instead of lingering to talk, as she usually did on mornings when she didn’t have an early class, Beverly was brisk and efficient, out the door after only half a cup of coffee. Pete hurried after her as if afraid of being alone with Sarah.

Sarah had no appetite for breakfast. When the Mar­chants had gone, she made herself a cup of tea and sat watching the steam rise from the cup. She told herself that it would pass. Beverly would listen to her, and understand, and the wounds would quickly heal. Their friendship would survive. It was very hard, now, to be so alone, but the misunderstanding—the hurt in Beverly’s eyes and the guilt in Pete’s—was not the worst of it. Much worse was Pete’s defection, his disbelief and retreat to the role of rational, uninvolved observer. She understood, recalling her own initial refusals, that he had found forgetting to be the simplest way of coping with his experience, but understanding made it no easier to bear. She felt abandoned.

She pushed her untasted tea away and stood up. Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t change anything. She had something to do, and she might as well do it now.

During the night, lying awake and brooding, Sarah had realized that the cellar was not the only possible hiding place for Jade’s statue. The image of the two red-brick chimneys, chimneys without fireplaces, had leaped vividly to mind. The fireplaces which had been there in Nancy Owens’ day must still exist beneath sheetrock and plaster. There might have been a loose brick, or a hidden ledge within the chimney, where a small carved figure might have been hidden away. There was also, she reflected, that built-in cabinet in the dining room, and the drawer where she had found the old photograph. But it was the image of the fireplace that drew her.

She would need tools to smash through the wall to the old fireplace. Brian had tools.

Sarah was nervous and excited as she left the Marchants’ apartment, but less with the thought of the battle ahead of her than with the prospect of seeing Brian again.

The morning was bright, clear, and warm, the promise of more heat in the air. The chill of the previous week was gone as if it had never been, and it was summer once more. It would be another hot Halloween, Sarah thought, remembering the year past. She and Brian had gone to a costume party held at a house out on the lake. The heavier, more elaborate costumes were early sacrifices to the heat, and around midnight there had been a mass exodus into the water. Sarah could still almost feel the cold water and the soft night air on her naked skin. She remembered how she and Brian had teased each other, playing like dolphins in the water, and later dragging an air mattress up the rocky slope into the woods, where they had played other games.

Why think of that now? And why did she feel so ridiculously hopeful, like a woman going to meet her lover? Melanie would probably be there, Sarah told herself, being deliberately cruel. Melanie would be lying late abed with Brian, as she had used to do.

But Brian’s truck was parked alone. He answered the door a brief while after she knocked, such a familiar sight in his old red plaid bathrobe, his hair still tousled from bed, that Sarah wanted to kiss him. She bit her lip.

A smile spread across his face, slow and sweet. “Hello,” he said softly, sounding pleased.

She smiled back in spite of herself. “Hello.”

“Come in? Have some coffee?”

“I came to borrow some tools.”

“Oh, O.K., fine. But coffee first?”

“If it’s made.”

“It always is.”

The look they exchanged felt almost like old times. He turned, and Sarah followed him up the stairs. So close behind him, she caught a whiff of his unwashed, sleepy, morning smell, and tenderness surged up in her like sickness. She wanted to grab him and hold on for dear life. She wanted things to be normal and ordinary again.

“Sit down,” Brian said. “I’ll just be a minute.” They were both aware of the awkwardness of this game of host and guest. Sarah remembered their first date, the first time she had come to this apartment. She looked around at the walls, at the familiar Utrillo street scene, and at a print she hadn’t seen before: kittens on a rug. Her mouth quirked in a condescending smile. Melanie, of course.