LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 10

      When I was a hundred yards short of the gate I started to slow down, and eventually let the car roll to a halt. For the last ten minutes of the drive it had felt as if I was shaking, gently and invisibly at first – but growing in intensity until I had to grip the wheel hard to stay in control. As soon as the noise of the engine died away, I was still. When I was sure the shaking wasn't going to start again, I opened the door and got out.

      I was now fifteen minutes northeast of Black Ridge. I'd taken the Sheffer road, climbing gradually higher, then turned off onto the country road which doubled back up into the mountains. A few miles from here it all but ran out, narrowing to a perennially muddy track under the aegis of the forestry management service. I walked up to the padlocked gate and stood looking over it, up the driveway.

      Was this enough?

      Over the last two years I had many times imagined being where I now stood, but in those morbid daydreams the gate had always been open and I had been there by prior arrangement. I had been possessed, too, of a keen sense of rightness, of a meaningful deed being undertaken. As is so often the case, life had failed to mirror fantasy.

      I took out my phone. I knew the house number, assuming it had not been changed. Perhaps …

      I turned at the sound of a car coming down the road, slowing as it approached. It was a spruce-looking SUV of the light and elegant type owned by people who have no genuine need for a rugged vehicle, but know their lifestyle requires accessorizing.

      It stopped a few yards past me and the driver's side window whirred down to reveal a cheerful-looking man in his fifties.

      ‘Bob let you down?’

      ‘Excuse me?’

      The man smiled. ‘He's a super realtor, don't get me wrong. Sold us our place – we're up the road a mile? Moved over from Black Ridge a year ago and Bob was great with, you know, the process. But timekeeping really isn't his core field of excellence.’

      ‘No big deal,’ I said. ‘I'm only here on a whim.’

      The man nodded as though he understood all about that kind of thing, though he looked like someone who last acted on a whim around five or six years ago, most likely a statistically sound whim concerning moving non-critical cash reserves from one low-risk portfolio to another.

      ‘Had a look at that property ourselves, in fact,’ he said. ‘Not quite big enough for us, but beautiful. Has direct access to Murdo Pond. But I'm sure Bob told you that already.’

      ‘It's been on the market that long?’

      ‘You don't know?’ he said, sticking his elbow out of the window to settle into what he was about to say. He was wearing a thick black sweater with roll-neck, and looked like he'd never been cold in his life. ‘Okay, I'm sure Bob would be getting around to telling you, he's very straightforward, but it's actually been mainly empty a couple-three years now. There was kind of a thing that happened, apparently, and some new people moved in for a while, didn't take to it, and they're still trying to shift the place two years later.’ He winked. ‘So I'm saying Bob's likely to have a little wriggle room over the price – though you didn't hear that from me.’

      ‘What kind of thing?’

      ‘Pardon me?’

      ‘What kind of thing happened? Before the current owners bought the house?’

      ‘Well,’ the guy said. He hesitated, perhaps suspecting he'd said too much and was in danger of compromising his acquaintanceship with Bob-the-realtor, with whom he doubtless exchanged banter once in a while at the grocery market in Sheffer; but also knowing that he couldn't back out now without looking rude. ‘Basically, somebody died. A kid. A young kid.’

      I nodded, not understanding why I'd pushed myself into having this conversation. ‘Really.’

      ‘Uh-huh. And, you know, from what I gather … nobody's too clear on what actually happened. I don't believe anyone in the family got charged with anything, but, well… I heard the kid was a strong swimmer but still somehow drowned, you know, with no one else but the parents around, and you've got to ask questions in those circumstances, right?’

      ‘Yeah,’ I said, tightly. ‘I guess people do.’

      ‘But it's three years ago. And a house is a house and that one's as close to a solid investment as you're going to find in this market – they're not making any more lakes, after all. And it's not like you're scared of ghosts, right?’

      ‘No,’ I said, and smiled broadly.

      Something must have been wrong with the way I did it, however, because the guy pulled his arm back inside the car.

      ‘Little insider information never does any harm,’ he said, defensively. ‘But you didn't—’

      ‘—hear it from you. Got it.’

      ‘Okay, well, nice meeting you.’

      ‘You too. By the way, one of your tail-lights is out. You might want to get that fixed.’

      ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, with a final, curious look at me, and then his window purred back up.

      I stood and watched as he drove away. When he had gone around the corner and out of sight I walked back to the gate and climbed over it.

      I wondered, as I walked up the driveway, whether I'd ever done this before. You don't, as a matter of course. You're driving, naturally, hence the name. And so I hadn't noticed the way it went steadily uphill during the five minutes it took to walk from the gate. When I turned the final bend, however, the view was abruptly almost too familiar, like a scene from a dream I'd had only the night before.

      Except things were different.

      The grass around the house had grown very long indeed, and the birch trees on the far side seemed to have gotten closer, the alder and dogwood amongst them thicker. I walked down the slope to the centre of the lawn, wet grass swishing against my jeans, and then turned toward the house.

      It looked like it was asleep. All the windows had been boarded over, and had large stickers warning about the alarm system. Assuming the absent owners had, unlike Ted, kept up the payments, I knew that a break in the house's windows, or disturbance to the contacts of any of the doors, would alert a security company over in Cle Elum. It would be a long way for vandals to come, anyhow. A long way for anyone.

      I stood staring up at the triangular silhouette the house made against the trees and fading sky, and my chest suddenly hitched, and my neck tightened, until the tendons stood out like painful cords.

      I did not really want to go any closer to the house, but nonetheless I walked toward the steps on the far side of the encompassing deck. Having come this way, I did not wish to find myself back in Oregon wishing I had gone a few more yards. It was foolish, especially as we had lived in the house for three months after the event, but as I trudged up the steps I almost believed I could feel the air move past me, as a younger man ran down the steps in the other direction, looking for his boy. It was a breeze, of course, and nothing more.

      I walked slowly back to the other end of the deck, peering at the boarded-over windows and

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