Black Evening

With Brian Roth's sister. The deaths of his wife and son – the rules he'd learned from attending the grief meetings of The Compassionate Friends – had taught him that you had to do your best to offer consolation. Compassion was the greatest virtue.

But when he finally stopped at Ida Roth's home, a modest trailer in a row of other trailers on the outskirts of Bosworth, he didn't get an answer after he knocked on her flimsy metal door. Of course, Grady thought. The undertaker. The cemetery. The double funeral. Ida has terrible arrangements to make. She'll be in a daze. I wish I'd been able to get here in time to help her.

To Grady's surprise, the woman next door came over and told him where Ida had gone. But his surprise wasn't caused by the gossipy woman's knowledge of Ida's schedule. What surprised him was Ida's destination. He thanked the neighbor, avoided her questions, and drove to where he'd been directed.

Five minutes away to the restaurant-tavern that Brian and Betsy had owned and where Grady found Ida Roth sternly directing waitresses while she guarded the cash register behind the bar.

The customers, mostly factory workers who regularly stopped by for a couple of beers after their shift was over, eyed Grady's uniform as he sat at the counter. Whenever he came in to say hello, he was usually off-duty and in civilian clothes. For him to be wearing his uniform made this visit official, the narrowed eyes that studied him seemed to say, and the somberness of those narrowed eyes suggested as well that word had gotten around about what had happened to Brian and Betsy.

Grady took off his policeman's cap, wished that the jukebox playing Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" weren't so loud -

– and who the hell had been morbid enough to choose that tune? -

– then studied Ida's gaunt, determined features.

Brian's only and older sibling, she was in her early fifties, but she looked sixty, partly because her hair was completely gray and she combed it back severely into a bun, thus emphasizing the wrinkles in her forehead and around her eyes, and partly as well because her persistent nervousness made her so thin that her cheeks looked hollow, but mostly because her pursed lips made her expression constantly dour.

"Ida," Grady said, "when some people tell you this, you've got every right to feel bitter. The automatic reaction is to think 'bullshit, get out of here, leave me alone.' But you know that I've been where you are now, a year ago when my wife and son were killed. You know that I'm an expert in what I'm talking about, that these aren't empty words. I understand what you're feeling. With all my heart, I'm sorry about Brian and Betsy."

Ida glowered, jerked her face toward a waitress, blurted "Table five's still waiting for that pitcher of beer," and scowled at Grady while pressing her hand on the cash register. "Sorry? Let me tell you something. Brian shut me out after his children died. We visited. We spent time together. But things between us were never the same. For the past ten years, it's been like we weren't blood kin. Like" – Ida's facial expression became skeletal – "like there was some kind of barrier between us. I resented that, being made to feel like a stranger. I tried all I could to be friendly to him. As far as I'm concerned, a part of Brian died a long time ago. What he did to Betsy and himself was wrong. But it might be the best thing that could have happened."

"I don't understand." Grady leaned closer, trying hard to ignore Roy Orbison's mournful song and the stares from the silent, intense factory workers.

"It's no secret," Ida said. "You know. The whole town knows. My husband divorced me eight years ago. After we were married, I kept having miscarriages, so we never had children. It aged me. How I hate that young secretary he ran off with. All I got from the settlement, from the greedy lawyers, from the God-damned divorce judge, is the rickety trailer I'm forced to shiver in when the weather gets cold. You're sorry? Well, let me tell you, right now as much as I hurt, I'm not sorry. Brian had it all, and I had nothing! When he shut me out… The best thing he ever did for me was to shoot himself. Now this tavern's mine. Finally I've got something."

Grady felt shocked. "Ida, you don't mean that."

"The hell I don't! Brian treated me like an outcast. I earned this tavern. I deserve it. When they open the will" – Ida's stern expression became calculating – "if there's any justice… Brian promised me. In spite of the distance he kept from me, he said he'd take care of me. This tavern's mine. And I bet you could use a drink." She stiffened her hand on the cash register.

"Thanks, Ida. I'd like to, but I can't. I'm on duty." Grady lowered his gaze and dejectedly studied his hat. "Maybe another time."

"No time's better than now. This is happy hour. If you can't be happy, at least drown your sorrow. Call this a wake. It's two drinks for the price of one."

"Not while I'm in uniform. But please remember, I do share your grief."

Ida didn't listen, again barking orders toward a waitress.

Disturbed, Grady picked up his cap and stood from the stool at the bar. A professional instinct made him pause. "Ida."

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

"I apologize, but I need information. Where Brian… Where Betsy was… What do you know about where it happened?"

"Not a hell of a lot."

"But you must know something. You knew enough to go out there."

"There?" Ida thickened her voice. "There? I was there only once. But I felt so shut out… so unwelcome… so bitter… Believe me, I made a point of remembering how to get there."

"Go over that again. Why do you think he made you feel unwelcome?"

"That place was…" Ida furrowed her already severely pinched forehead. "His retreat. His wall against the world." Her scowl increased. "I remember when he bought that hollow. His children had been dead five months. The summer had turned to fall. It was hunting season. Brian's friends made an effort to try to distract him. 'Come on, let's hunt some rabbits, some grouse,' they told him. 'You can't just sit around all day.' He was practically dragged from his bedroom." While Ida continued to keep her left hand rigidly on the cash register, she pointed her right hand toward the ceiling above the tavern, indicating where Brian and Betsy had lived. "So Brian… he had no energy… if it weren't for me, the tavern would have gone to hell… he shuffled his feet and went along. And the next day, when he came back, I couldn't believe the change in him. He was filled with energy. He'd found some land he wanted to buy, he said. He was… Frantic? That doesn't describe it. He kept jabbering about a hollow in the mountains. He'd wandered into it. He absolutely had to own it."

Ida gave more commands to her waitresses and swung her dour gaze toward Grady. "I figured Brian must have had a nervous breakdown. I told him he couldn't afford a second property. But he wouldn't listen. He insisted he had to buy it. So despite my warning, he used this tavern as – what do they call it? – collateral. He convinced the bank to loan him money, found whoever owned that hollow, and bought the damned thing. That's the begi

"The next thing I heard – it didn't come from him; it was gossip from customers in the tavern – was he'd arranged with a contractor to put in a swimming pool out there, some buildings, a barbecue pit, and… The next year when construction was finished, he invited me out there to see the grand opening.

"I admit the place looked impressive. I figured Brian was getting over his loss, adjusting to the deaths of his children. But after he, Betsy, and I and their friends – and my fucking, soon-to-be, ex-husband – had a barbecue, Brian took me aside. He pointed toward the woods, toward the pool, toward the buildings, and he asked me… I remember his voice was low, hushed, the way people talk in church.