Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [62]
“I need to do this right away.”
“I’ll go with you,” John said.
“No.” I didn’t want my brother there. Didn’t want him to see me grieve. I needed to make my pilgrimage in private.
Luis seemed to understand. “I’ll get somebody who knows the place to guide you. Andrés, my neighbor. You meet him in front of my building at first light, he’ll take you there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just be there.” Abrego turned and walked toward his Dodge, raising a hand in sad farewell.
“I’ll drive,” I said to John and held out my hand for the keys.
“You sure you want to?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, gave them to me, and went around to the passenger’s side.
I drove carefully, concentrating on each movement, keeping my mind off anything else. If I could deliver him to Lemon Grove and get to the privacy of my father’s house, I’d be all right. When I let him off in his driveway, he hesitated, then came around to my window. Leaned in and kissed me on the forehead—a gesture rarely offered in my family.
“You need anything at all, call me.”
“Okay.”
“Call me tomorrow anyway.”
“Okay.”
“Kid …” He paused, face twisting with effort.
“What?”
“I love you. Don’t forget that.” Then he hurried off, hunched with embarrassment.
“I love you too, big brother,” I whispered.
I turned the Scout and headed for Mission Hills.
* * *
The big house had never seemed so empty. I moved through its dust-dulled rooms, touching well-remembered objects and thinking of happier, more simple times. As I wandered, the atmosphere became oppressive; now I had to deal not only with my memories but also with my ghosts. Ghosts of Hy and me.
The first time I met him, when he told me his somewhat peculiar name: “Heino Ripinsky,” he said, and I started to smile. “Don’t laugh,” he told me, leveling his index finger like a gun. “Don’t you dare laugh!”
A night last fall when we drifted in a rowboat on Tufa Lake and I confided fears and dark urges that I’d never so much as hinted at to a single living person. He understood and didn’t condemn me, because he had often fallen victim to them himself.
A morning when we parted in silence at Oakland Airport. I thought our fragile rapport had been destroyed, but he called after me as I walked away. “Glad you didn’t say good-bye,” he told me, “because it hasn’t even begun for us yet.”
Now it had ended for good. I wondered how long it would be before someone told the florist to quit delivering my weekly rose.
Stop it, I told myself. Stop it! You can’t afford this kind of self-indulgence.
I went to the family room, threw the sliding door open, and went outside. The sky was overcast again, filmy clouds backlit by the moon. Quiet in the canyon, quiet in the surrounding houses. Quiet as death.
I crossed to the fence at the canyon’s edge, pushed through the creaky gate, felt with my foot for the first of the stone steps built into the slope. Climbed down slowly, bracing myself with my hand on the sturdy vegetation. At the bottom I paused, peering through the darkness until I spotted the oak that held the remains of our treehouse. I groped toward it, stumbling over rocks and logs.
The platform of the house was still there, and I was now tall enough to climb up without the aid of the long-gone rope ladder. I grabbed a limb, swung my legs onto it, then scooted over to the platform. It was just large enough for me to lie on my back, staring through the spreading branches at the sky.
And more ghosts crowded into my mind.…
The look on Hy’s face when I stepped into his house the night I finally returned to Tufa Lake: incredulity, dissolving to delight, turning to a smug I-always-knew-you-would.
We’d made love for the first time that night—Hy’s voice so rough, his hands so gentle, his body—
No! I couldn’t afford that particular ghost.
Better to remember some of the bad times: My frustration and anger at his closed-face refusal to discuss his past. The way he would spot the slightest trace of phoniness or pretense in me and tease me mercilessly until