The Hour Before Dark by Douglas Clegg Page A

could think to say was Joe Grogan’s “It’s the damnedest thing.”
    “I keep meaning to come by and pay my respects,” she said, next touching my wrist, lightly. “But with Christmas coming up, and the business—well, my time is never my own.”
    After we did the small talk of small towns, MontiLee turned away. She sashayed to the other side of the street, heading toward her really office. The row of shop fronts seemed dead now. Christmas lights were strung up, blinking even in daylight. At the end of Main Street, the small memorial park, with the one great fir tree, lit up.
    Christmas was around the corner.
    The year was nearly over.
    I stood there, watching her go, remembering all these things I ought not to have shoved from my brain: a woman’s touch. It made me think of another woman. The woman I just could not forget. Pola Croder.
    All women I found attractive had made me think of Pola. I was beginning to suspect that even Beth, back in Washington, knew that my interest in her might’ve had something to do with her vague resemblance to Pola. Ho wonder she had distanced herself from me so easily; I had not been much of a prospect.
    I walked by Croder-Sharp-Callahan, and casually looked through the glass, but could not bring myself to go inside. I wanted to see Pola, but I did not know what I would say to her if I saw her. My pulse quickened a bit, thinking of her, and I knew I was doomed to replay the goodness and richness of a high school romance in my head until the end of my days.
    Still, she had come by the house after my father’s death.
    She still cared, and I still cared, and I kept hoping that one of my father’s famous quotes, stolen no doubt from others, would be true: that the universe rewards belief.
    I still believed that love couldn’t die. Down in my toes I believed it. Even with the bad things in life, even with murder and sorrow, I believed that love just couldn’t die if it was real between two people.
    And I knew I was a doomed fool to believe it.
    After picking up some eggs and bread at the local grocer’s, where, thankfully, no one talked to me, I went by the old store my father had run.
    The storefront was smaller than I’d remembered. The closed for the holidays sign was in the window, and when I peered through the windows, it looked as if nothing had changed since I’d been eighteen.

     
    3
     
    Back home an hour or so later, I caught Bruno peeling back some old wallpaper in the dining room that was never used.
    “Look at this,” he said. “Three layers of wallpaper under here. This must’ve been Great-Grandma Raglan’s pattern.” He pointed out a dulled rose pattern. “About 1905,” he said. “Or 1904. Boston. I’m willing to bet it cost a pretty penny then.”
    “Brooke’s gonna shit when she sees you tearing at the wallpaper,” I said.
    “It’s amazing how old this house is. Think of all the things. Our rooms have been painted over so much,” he said. “I scratched at my bedroom door and—get this—it’s really made of glass.”
    “Glass? It’s wood.”
    “No,” he chuckled. “People have been painting over it so much, the center of that door is a thick oval of glass. And it’s etched. I bet there are little treasures around here like that. Last night I was going through the shelves at the back of my old closet, and I found a small pantry behind it.”
    “Full of treasures?”
    “No,” he said. “Nothing, really. A couple of little ceramic salt and pepper shakers and a naked doll with its head cracked. Probably Granny’s.”
    Bruno apparently had taken to picking at parts of the house—looking through cabinets, finding the old secret staircase—a narrow child-sized staircase that led from the laundry room—through a cabinet door—down to one of the kitchen cabinets on the first floor. As kids, we used to play hide and seek in it, and our father would raise unholy hell when we leapt out of the kitchen cabinet while he was cooking supper. Bruno