The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel by Jamie M. Saul

Author:Jamie M. Saul
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780061449727
Publisher: Harpercollins
Published: 2012-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Marian drove me to the nursery, where I’d left my car. Sometime during the drive, I must have asked her what she was doing that night, or maybe I apologized for needing the ride. I doubt that she volunteered that she was having dinner with Buddy’s parents.

“You see,” she said to me, “we’re dealing with people’s lives.”

“Lifetimes, really.”

When we pulled up to my car, Marian handed Laura’s scrapbook to me. “If you like, you can leave it with Remsen when you’re done. It might make things simpler.”

“Simplicity itself,” I said back to her, and got out.

I drove in the direction of town, but I didn’t want to go to Laura’s house and have supper with Simon. I was in no mood to see his face on the other side of the dinner table. Instead, I kept on driving. When I saw a small restaurant just off the road, its yellow lights invitation enough, I pulled into a parking space between two other cars, and went inside.

It was a pleasant dining room, not very large, with the calming sound of dinner conversations. One of those restaurants with an eclectic menu and nothing too adventurous. I hadn’t yet ordered my supper when a woman came over. She had a round face, framed by short, gray hair, and held a black beret in her hand. She said her name was Kate Callahan, that Marian had introduced us at the Bradford House, and if I was eating alone, I was welcome to join her and some of Marian’s friends for supper. One more opportunity to feel close to Marian. And I accepted.

There were two other people at Kate’s table, who must have arrived just before I had; they were still settling in. While Kate invited me to sit down she introduced me to Pamela and Charlie Ballantine. Charlie was Buddy’s younger brother.

There was a resemblance to Buddy, at least from those photographs I’d seen. It occurred to me that Charlie was probably older now than Buddy had been when he died.

I said I was surprised that Buddy had had a sibling. “I’ve been thinking of him as a singular person. The way Marian speaks about him.”

“There were five of us,” Charlie said. His voice was a rich, relaxed tenor. “Two older than Buddy, and two younger. But Buddy was singular.” Charlie had a stronger build than Buddy, like someone who’d gone out for crew in college and still did a little sculling on weekends. When he pulled his chair closer to the table, I saw the swell of his chest against his shirt.

Kate asked if my coming back to town had to do with my being Laura’s executor.

I said, “Only in an indirect way,” and explained with only the slightest details my mission with Simon.

Charlie said, “It’s really very kind of you to do that.” He wanted to know what Simon had been doing all these years, if things had worked out for him.

I said, “You’re the first person who’s asked me that.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

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