She took the umbrella. “You have to come with me, J.D.,” she said, bossing her brother.
“Nooooo!”
“Go with her, son. We’ll be right behind you.” Jenna rushed on ahead, and John David ran after her and ducked under the umbrella. They laughed, their small buoyant voices filling the woods. His toy gun fired three times.
Walter stepped under my umbrella, and we started up the drive, the tall loblollies on either side of us. I waited for him to speak as the rain drummed on the canopy. The night smelled of wet pine.
“Beth’s packing,” he whispered. “She’s taking the kids away.”
“Where?”
“I told her not to tell me.”
“She knows about—”
“No. She knows the children are in danger. That’s all she needs to know.”
“Stoppit!” John David yelled at his sister.
“Kids!” Walter shouted gruffly. “Behave.”
“Dad, Jenna—”
“I don’t wanna hear it, son.”
I wondered where Walter’s anger toward me had gone.
“Do you really know where he is, Andy?” he whispered.
“I’ve got a possible alias in New England. Now, I can’t be sure until I get there, but I think it’s him.”
“So you’re definitely going?”
“Yeah.”
He stopped and faced me. “You’re going there to kill him? To put him in a hole somewhere, where no one’s ever gonna find him?”
“That’s the plan.”
“And you have no compunctions about killing your own brother?”
“None.”
We started walking again. I had an awful premonition.
“You’ve called the police, haven’t you?” I said.
“What?”
“You told them about Orson.”
“No, Andy.”
“But you’re going to.”
He shook his head.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Come here, Jenna!” Walter hollered. His children turned around and ran back to us, their umbrella so low, I couldn’t see them. Walter took his umbrella from Jenna and lifted it up.
“Jenna, show Uncle Andy the tattoo you got at school.”
Beyond the outskirts of Woodside, on the fringe of the Green Mountains, Walter and I approached the inn. Heading up a long, curving driveway, I saw a large white house perched halfway up the mountain. There was movement on its wraparound porch—empty rocking chairs swaying in a raw breeze.
Walter pulled his Cadillac into the gravel parking lot adjacent to the sallow lawn behind the house. There were only seven other cars, and I felt relieved to be outside of Orson’s town. We’d almost stayed at a motel in downtown Woodside because of its proximity to the college campus, but the risk of running into Orson was too great.
Hauling our suitcases up the front porch steps, we collapsed into a pair of rockers. The mountainside fell away from where we sat for a thousand feet, and the late-afternoon sun shone on the forest of bare trees in the valley below. Naked branches moved with the breeze, and I imagined that three weeks ago the sound of chattering leaves had filled the air. Across the valley, which extended twenty miles west, I could see into New York State, and the grander mountains of the Adirondacks that stood there.
Wood smoke scented the forest, and sitting in the cold, listening and watching, I sensed Walter’s restiveness.
After a moment, he said, “It’s too cold to sit out here. I’ll check us in.” He stood up and lifted his suitcase off the porch. “You just gonna sit there?” he asked, walking toward the door.