The Unquiet Dead (16 page)

“Chris wanted us,” Cassidy protested. “He made room for us. He said it was our home.”

“I want you more, honey. Your home will always be with me.”

Dennis Blessant sighed and Rachel could well imagine his thoughts. He was a handsome, well-dressed man whose careless appeal had suffered more than the usual depredations of middle age. His sandy hair was graying, and there was an air of general fatigue about him that she attributed to the divorce, along with the custody battle—although she marveled at the thought of a man for whom responsibility and family meant everything. A man who chose the company of his daughters. To Dennis Blessant, fatherhood was a source of ceaseless fulfillment—not an affliction, which was all Rachel knew of the matter.

If Drayton had indeed been planning to marry Dennis Blessant's ex-wife, Dennis's freedom had been close at hand. Any financial strain caused by Melanie's tactics also would have ended. Rachel puzzled over the custody decision: How had Melanie done it? Had her plea for her children been sincere and well-reasoned? Or had her exaggerated femininity done more to sway the family court judge than any show of saccharine devotion? Leaving Dennis Blessant and his daughters shattered and undone.

They seemed in no hurry to leave their father, leaning against his car, warming their legs against the hood.

“Is that boy still hanging around you, Had?”

Hadley grinned. “Marco, Dad. And yes, he is. I'll bring him with us next time, if that's cool.”

“Bring him,” Dennis said, his hands relaxed in his pockets. “Just make sure he knows I carry a gun.”

Both girls laughed, and again Rachel wondered at Dennis Blessant. He looked at his girls as if they were the only things that mattered in the universe; moon, sun, and stars combined in one celestial profusion.

And then Melanie Blessant descended on them from a considerably less elevated plane, the screen door slamming shut behind her.

“Your time is up, Dennis,” she said, weaving her way toward them. “You're not allowed to overstay, so I want you gone right now.”

Whatever the very real loathing on Dennis Blessant's face gave away, he responded mildly enough. “All right, girls. I'll see you next weekend, then.”

“
Not
next weekend, Dennis,” Melanie contradicted sharply. “It's every other weekend, as you very well know. Don't try to mess with the custody arrangement or I'll have you back in court by the morning.
And
I'll be making a motion for the adjustment of child support.”

“Still torn up over Drayton, I see.”

He would have been wiser to resist, thought Rachel. Those were words to light the tinderbox of Melanie's temper.

“Mel,” Hadley interrupted before her mother could go off. “Cass and I are at a museum dinner next weekend. Dad's taking us there and picking us up. We'll be back on Sunday, we talked about this.”

Melanie fiddled with the string of her midriff-baring tank top. The temperature was starting to cool off, a fact that didn't appear to have registered on her decision to reveal nearly as much flesh as her outfit concealed. Sugary pink lip gloss and a skin-tight pair of cutoffs completed her ensemble.

How grateful their father must be that his daughters had chosen not to emulate their mother's style of dress.

“I'm sick to death of that museum,” Melanie said. “That used-up librarian wanted Chrissie's money and she invented that museum to get it. I knew what she was from the moment I met her.”

Hadley made no effort to hide her contempt. “I'm sure she knows what you are too.”

“Don't you dare take that tone with me, Hadley! I knew why she was sniffing after Chrissie, but her pathetic little plan failed. He didn't leave her a dime. Everything comes to me.” Her face beamed with gratification. “I'm the only beneficiary of Chris's life insurance policies.”

“I'm very glad to hear that,” Dennis answered. “It should make all the difference to your spousal support.”

“You bastard,” she hissed at him. Then she rounded on the girls. “You're not going to any party and if he tries to take you, I'll call the police, don't you think I won't!”

Hadley shoved her sister toward the house. “Get inside, Cass. You don't need to hear this.” She turned on her mother. “I'd have thought you'd prefer us to go with Dad than Riv. Your choice, either way.”

“I knew this was about that boy!”

“Yes,” Hadley drawled. “That same boy you slobber over every time he comes by. Could your top be any lower, Mel? Or your shorts any tighter?”

“You're just jealous of what I have. And really, who could blame you?”

Dennis's “Don't you talk to my daughter that way” overlapped Hadley's “Isn't that a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Mel dear?”

And then Melanie slapped her.

Dennis grabbed her wrist.

The entire family was oblivious to Rachel across the street in her car. She knew she should intervene, just as she knew that intervention would cut short the family's revelations. She hesitated, her hand on the door handle.

“Don't, Dad. Once the will is read and those policies are paid out, she'll clear out of our lives for good. And if she takes you to court, ask the judge what happened to the money you gave her for our laptops.”

He was torn, Rachel realized. He didn't want his daughter to talk about her mother this way. Especially when everything she said was true.

Spittle gathered in the corners of Melanie's mouth. “It was never about the money with me and Chrissie,” she spat at them. “I loved him! I loved him and she can't stand that because no one will ever love her the way that Chrissie loved me.”

“I hope not,” Hadley said, her face deadly serious. “I wouldn't want a man who called me a whore every time he climaxed.”

Melanie gaped at her, thunderstruck.

“What? You didn't think we heard you those nights you made us stay over? And obviously you liked it or why else would you put up with it? I have a hell of a lot more self-respect than that.”

Melanie's nails bit into Hadley's arm.

“I want you out of my house right now!”

Hadley stood her ground, picking off her mother's fingers one by one. “Can't,” she said without humor. “Custody arrangement, remember? How else will you get your money?” She stepped between her parents, urging her father back into his car. “You'd better go, Dad. Cass and I have a shift at Ringsong anyway. We'll see you again on Friday.”

She turned to her mother, her tone derisive. “And I don't think you're going to be a problem, are you, Mel? Otherwise, I might have to tell Dad the real reason Chris wanted us to move in with him. In case you thought I didn't know.”

She kissed her father calmly and walked to the door to talk to her sister.

Only Rachel noticed that her hands were shaking at her sides.

 

16.

The National Library of Sarajevo is burning.

A radio broadcast instructed Muslims to put white ribbons around their arms, go outside, form columns and head towards the main square.

He was in love, he decided, with the house. It wasn't a museum to him. It was a place of restful beauty, a space that his layered identities could lay claim to as home. He waited for Mink in the second courtyard reached through a colonnade of Andalusian arches, its tiled fountain at play beneath a stately turret. The white stripe of the Bluffs broke off from the darkness, the lake a gleaming shadow beneath them. Stars and sky stretched above, a timeless motif on an illimitable canvas.

The green coins of Andalusia extolled the courtyard's virtues.

He sat still and calm between the palms and orange trees, waiting for the woman whose presence breathed life into all.

When she came, it was as if she detached herself from shadow, bringing with her a pale and rarefied light. After a moment of fancy, he realized she held a candle between her hands. She placed it on the table beside him, sliding easily onto his lounger, tucking her delicate feet beneath her. It had been like this between them from the start: a hushed and glowing intimacy, where if he wished, he could reach out and unclasp the golden knot of her hair or lay his hand upon hers, upheaval in so simple a gesture.

“Esa,” she said. “You've been enchanted by Andalusia.”

“Or by the woman who breathed it into being.”

She brushed his words aside. “Look what I've brought you.” She placed a dish of fresh dates in his hand.

He knew he should rise, find another seat, place some distance between them, but Mink was as sweetly scented as her garden. It was its own magic, that and the soft words that painted for him a distant civilization, a time of grace and elegance, a grand achievement.

The Library of Cordoba.

Of course a librarian would cherish such a memory.

“Paper was the beginning of it all. From Baghdad it was shipped to all the capitals of Islam. It was a competition of knowledge—who could build the grandest library, fill it with the most books—who would read and translate and comment. They were experts at classification. Such a catalogue they had—the thought of it makes me envious.”

“Those words transformed the world.”

“Think how little we know of such marvels. How little we appreciate those moments of history where differences were glories yet to be discovered, synthesizing a greater creation. This tribalism we worship now is an ugly thing.”

“Tribalism?” he questioned.

“Patriotism, nationalism,” she said impatiently. “Call it what you wish. Mine the only flag, mine the only way. All else is inferior, trample it underfoot. Despise it, detest it.”

“We've come some distance since then,” he suggested. He wasn't sure that he wanted to talk. He was here because of Christopher Drayton, but he thought that what he wanted was for Mink to sit at her table, quietly intent, turning the pages of her manuscripts in her hands. And he would do no more than absorb the luxuries of Andalusia and watch.

“Have we?” she asked him. Her hands did what he had longed to do, unraveling the gold coil of hair, letting it slip down to caress her shoulders as gently as a folio of wind. “You're an adherent of Islam, yes, Esa? Your name,” she said, with the curve of a smile. “It declares it for you. So, what of the Ground Zero mosque?”

“A volatile situation.”

“Indeed. And what of Murfreesboro, Tennessee? And all the other places where your people are unwelcome. Welcome to live, just. But not to worship or declare their way of faith.”

“There's fear and ignorance everywhere. It's not exclusively practiced against Muslims. Look at Rwanda. Or Nazi Germany. Or the barriers Hispanic immigrants face.”

“Or the Inquisition,” she finished. “The culture of power versus the power of culture. One side consistently loses.”

“We've a kind of Andalusia in this country,” he teased, hoping to lighten her mood.

“Yes,” she said seriously. “That's very true, but less true I think across the border. Inquisitions, pogroms, genocides—those are endpoints. Demonizing, fear, the passing of laws of exclusion, the burning of libraries—these are beginnings. Historians are vigilant as to beginnings. Too often we fail.”

“I wouldn't have thought that was their calling,” he said. “I imagine them lost in ancient worlds like the palace of the Alhambra or Madinat az-Zahra.”

“It's dangerous to be so comfortable—to live in the past alone.”

“Isn't that what museums are? Halls of the past?”

“Reminders,” she said, reaching for a date from his hand. “Of things that could be, if we dared to dream a little differently. If we opened ourselves up.”

“You've made this very personal.” He gestured at the great room beyond the colonnade.

“I suppose I like to imagine this time of Muslim princes whose Jewish viziers conducted dialogues with Christian monarchs, reliant upon one another, influenced by one another, respecting one another. The Convivencia. In love with language, learning—what shouldn't I admire?”

He laid his hand on hers.

“Shall we talk about Drayton?” he said gently. “I would like to understand his attraction to the museum.”

“You've just praised it yourself. Why wouldn't Christopher have felt the same? He was an educated man.”

Khattak hesitated. He'd been coming to the museum for more than a week, finding excuses to stop by and linger beneath the palms, attracted by something he couldn't name. His heritage was neither Arab nor Hispanic, yet he laid claim to the intertwined identities of the civilization of Islam.

He should have asked much more about Drayton. And yet somehow, in her presence, all other thoughts eluded him. There was the material of who she was and the hope of what he still wished to discover. A feeling he hadn't known since the loss of his wife.

Her pale blue gaze challenged him. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Is it possible that Christopher Drayton wasn't who you thought he was?”

“What do you mean? Not a friend or advocate?”

“That.” He lowered his voice so that Hadley and Cassidy, at work in the great room, wouldn't overhear. “But more than that. Did you ever have reason to suspect that Drayton might have another identity?”

Her hand smoothed over a palm leaf. “Is that why you're investigating his death?” She thought a moment. “Was he a bigamist?”

“Nothing like that. You've no reason to doubt he was who he said he was? A man who'd made money from businesses he owned in Italy and was prepared to spend it on the museum?”

“I didn't know about Italy,” she said slowly. “I thought he was a man with a somewhat forceful personality who was searching for a way to put his mark on the world.”

“Wouldn't such a man have had his own ideas?”

Mink pleated her hands against the bark of the palm.