Read Online New England White by Stephen L. Carter - Free Book Online Page B

was working on it still. Julia kept a copy in her office cabinet, in what she privately called the Vanessa File, along with the photo of Gina Joule that used to grace her daughter’s dresser. Lynn Klein did not know—nobody did, outside the family and Dr. Brady—that now and then Vanessa and Gina sat down for little chats.
    (III)
    T HE HOUSE WAS TWO STORIES HIGH , boxy and blue-shingled, on a sunny side street. Hedges were neatly trimmed, but the faded flower boxes on the front step sat empty. Half a dozen cars jammed the curb, dominated by a wounded truck that sat exhausted in the driveway. The large black dog dozing on the cracked concrete of the walk looked too old to do much guarding. Pretty curtains hung in the windows, and Julia had an instinct that they were homemade. Seth Zant sat on the top step with a Pepsi in his hand, watching Julia squeeze into the last remaining parking spot. She wondered what gift he held in store.
    “You made it,” said Seth. “Good.”
    “Of course we did.”
    He gave Vanessa a long look. “Bet you have to beat the boys off with a stick.”
    The teenager colored and dropped her eyes and could not get a syllable out. Julia squeezed her daughter’s frozen hand and answered for her. “We try to be as gentle on them as we can. We only bring out the stick in emergencies.”
    Not too funny, but Seth laughed anyway, to tell them both he got the point.
    The gathering was the sort that Lemaster handled brilliantly, Julia poorly, and Vanessa not at all, for the teen stayed mostly in the corner next to the punch bowl until one of the endless train of relatives dragged her into the kitchen and pressed her into service refreshing the platters of fried fish and fried chicken and barbecued ribs heaped on the dining room table. Seth Zant also did his share of dragging. Instead of passing along whatever he had invited Julia to collect, he introduced her to various people as “the great love of Kellen’s life” or “the one who got away,” until, unable to bear any more, she begged him to stop. So instead he sat her on the sofa like the guest of honor and let the others take turns sitting beside her and saying pretty much what Seth had, preceding it always with “So, Julia, I hear you were…” Everyone had a Kellen story to share.
    A hefty churchwoman named Ellie, who grew up with Kellen and sounded like she might have had a considerable crush on him, described an inquisitive, impatient kid who got into lots of fights, even with children a whole lot bigger than he was, because, Julia, he had such a good heart, always going around looking to protect the weak. He did the Lord’s work, Julia, no matter what mischief he got up to once he went North. Julia nodded politely. An ancient man called Old Tim told how, back in high school, Kellen even faced down a fella with a knife who was bothering a girl at a party. “He was just in high school, Kellen, a skinny little ninth-grader, but he almost killed a man that night, and never lost a minute’s sleep over it.”
    Tell her the rest, said Ellie.
    Oh, and he also got the girl. That was Kellen, Old Tim explained, while various relatives, Vanessa helping, cleared the dinner dishes and presented the lemon meringue pie and homemade ice cream, which Julia’s better angels failed to persuade her to decline. “That’s why men do most stupid things,” Old Tim said, twinkling. He put aside his empty pie plate and patted his ample gut. “To impress some girl.”
    “I think it was brave,” said Ellie, and Julia wondered if she had been the girl. But another part of her remembered other fights Kellen had picked during their year and a half together in Manhattan, usually with bigger men, bars he had been thrown out of, nightclubs that had banned him. She remembered how one particular battle ended with her standing terrified over the gurney in the emergency room at Saint Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital in midtown Manhattan while a tut-tutting Indian doctor