. I don’t like this new husband of my mother’s.”
“Why not?” Fish Finlay asked.
“She thinks it’s because my mother didn’t even tell me she was getting married, this time, and one of the girls heard it on a radio gossip program. But that’s not it. It’s what another girl at school told me about him. Her father’s a diplomat in Washington. They’re from the Argentine.”
Fish Finlay concentrated silently on the road.
“This new husband was married before to a cousin of theirs. And she was supposed to have killed herself.”
A sudden sharp chill froze the base of Finlay’s spine.
“Supposed to?”
It came out more casually than he’d dared to hope.
“That’s right. But the family doesn’t think she did. This girl says they know, in fact—that she didn’t kill herself.”
Finlay’s spine was not chilled at the base, it was stone-cold deep up into his cerebrum. “You don’t mean—”
He caught himself. This was fantastic.
“It isn’t me,” she said. She spoke with a literal realism, so clear-eyed and without emotion that it made her seem at once both older and younger than he knew she was. “It’s what the girl told me. She says they knew she didn’t kill herself. She doesn’t know how. It was just things she overheard.”
Dear God . . . she can’t possibly know what she’s saying. He slowed the truck down, his eyes glued to the road.
“She said they fought like tigers to keep her from marrying him. Then when she died, they found out something. This girl isn’t sure what. But they didn’t want a scandal. Or maybe they didn’t have actual legal proof. But they could see he didn’t get anything out of it. And he didn’t . . . not her money, or even her personal stuff. Not even her furs. This girl has a coat of hers. It’s beautiful, but . . .”
She shivered a little, the only sign that she knew the meaning of what she’d said.
Fish slowed down again and looked around at her. There was no ripple on the opaque mask she’d drawn over her face since the naked moment back on the culvert.
“Now look,” he said, as quietly and soberly as he could. “You don’t seriously believe all this, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This girl swears it’s the truth. My mother knows he didn’t get any of her estate. But the story she’s heard is different. I know, because I tried to tell her, in Nassau last winter, when she had me down to meet him. So I shut up. I was afraid, anyway. And he doesn’t like me to begin with . . . any better than I do him.”
“You didn’t tell her—”
“I didn’t even get started, really,” she said calmly. “She cut me off with a lot of corny stuff. He’d told her his story and she believes it. He’s smart.”
“You haven’t told anybody then.”
“No. And I don’t know why I’m telling you, except that I felt so horrible. And I’m glad I did, because you’re probably right. It does sound crazy. You see, I’m not worried about my mother, because she doesn’t have any money to leave anybody. Unless something happens to me, before I’m twenty-two. Or unless she hasn’t told him she just has income,” she added.
As indeed she hasn’t.
“Because she’s funny about money. Terribly generous if it’s something she wants you to have, not five cents if she doesn’t. Like iron. Her last marriage went on the rocks over some fishing tackle. But maybe this one’s smarter.”
The wheeze and rattle of the truck intensified her silence and Fish Finlay’s.
“I was going to tell my stepmother,” she said then. “But she’d have worried. She wouldn’t let me go to Newport now.”
“She’s be right,” Fish said. “You mustn’t go.”
“And mess up Anne’s life still more?” she demanded warmly. “How can you say that? Except that you don’t know, of course. I haven’t explained it very well. No. I’ve got to go. There’s nothing else to do. That’s all there is to it.”
If Fish Finlay couldn’t see it, he couldn’t help hear it in the sudden passionate sincerity of her voice.
They were passing a service station, coming into the small town. She flashed up in the seat. “Oh, heavens, we’re here already! What’ll I do? What’ll I tell them?”
He smiled a little in spite of himself. Suspected murder she could take. This was different.
“Oh, I know!” She flashed around toward him. “Oh . . . would you? Would you sell me a couple of your azaleas? The house proctor has a green thumb. I could tell her I went after them for her. Just one lie would cover it. I don’t want them to call up Anne!”
“Sure,” he said.
“Except that I haven’t any money till next month. Or you could send the bill to the Bank. Mr. Reeves might—”
“Pay me later,” Fish said. “I’ll be back.”
“Oh, wonderful! The brick gate right there. . . .”
He turned the truck in.
“We go left to the service yard.”
Fish shook his head. “You hop out here. I’ll take the trees, and find the old man to plant them.”
He smiled at her and stopped the truck. She was out and around before he was. They met in front of the battered fender. Her eyes were shining as she put her hand out.
“I don’t know how to thank you! Really, thanks ever so much!”
She turned and ran up the lawn toward the quiet mansion on the hill, and stopped, looking back, her eyes like breathless stars, their light transformed instantly to a new and lovelier compassion as she saw him limping back around to the other side.
“Oh . . .” she whispered. “That’s why he’s banished dreams.”
She turned and ran on until she heard the truck rattle to a start. Then she turned and waved. He said he’d be back.
Fish Finlay had forgotten his leg, then and when he found the service yard and helped the old man unload the azaleas, all of them . . . all he had to give for a momentary dream he was sealing up in a heart where dreams were banished. Jennifer Linton was his job.
“She’s not going to Newport.” He said it out loud as he stopped the truck a moment at the end of the service lane. Suspicion was enough, whether the Argentine girl’s story was true or false. The fact that there was that story settled it.
But he couldn’t turn back and go to Dawn Hill Farm now and tell Anne Linton. Not with the passionate conviction of her protest still in his ears. There was plenty of time. Three
