The Home Place: A Novel Read online

  “Show us the meaning of haste!” Alma murmurs with a smile in her cold cheeks.

  The backlit eastern sky is dove-colored this morning. Too wrong, those mountains to the east. They confuse everything for Alma, turn the sky upside down. She crosses the Fremont Bridge, watching a few hardy rowers paddle out from the docks with quick warm-up strokes, matches the Zen of her rhythm to theirs, and examines the angle and acceleration of the blades with a knowledgeable eye. On the far side of Lake Union she heads downtown, spinning through the quiet with occasional smells of baking, coffee, and exhaust, relishing the speed and the cold in her hands and feet, breathing in the sense of purpose she feels every time she approaches the glass and steel towers of the city. In these buildings there is work enough to keep her out of trouble, to stop her from reliving past mistakes.

  Alma secures her bike in a locker and strides into the gym, where the Latina attendant greets her by name—enunciating the Spanish word with relish—and hands her a thick white towel. She showers and changes into clothes waiting in her gym locker. Everything is here: makeup, jewelry, shoes, freshly dry-cleaned clothes. There is no official reason to dress formally—there will be no clients to see—but the habit is fully formed. She has an image to project, as does the firm of Presley, Moi and Torvalds. Alma sighs and rubs her right temple as she enters the elevator block of her office building and the sun breaks over the hills of Bellevue. An obsessive-compulsive lawyer is a productive lawyer. She checks the elegant gold watch she’s traded for her training watch: 7:53 A.M.

  Her cell phone starts to play a Cajun waltz—Jean-Marc’s idea of a joke—as Alma crosses the threshold of her office, sipping the Starbucks that the firm provides. There are three coffee shops within a block of the office, but Alma will not pay for what she can have for free. Her great-grandparents saw the topsoil blow away and the livestock starve, and finally sold everything—even the pump head from the homestead—to make ends meet in town. They saved tinfoil when the world wars had been over for years. Her parents never bought another car until the old one could hardly be sold for scrap. Even now, with far more money than time, Alma can scarcely bring herself to buy something that isn’t on sale. After nearly two years together, Jean-Marc has learned to take care of that. He tips the doorman, orders the fine wines, buys the first-class seats. She would never.

  Alma drops the phone on her desk and taps the speaker button with one finger while automatically switching on the computer, juggling her coffee from hand to hand. “Good morning—Alma Terrebonne.”

  “This is Detective Ray Curtis of the Billings Police Department,” a reluctant voice answers.

  “Billings? You’re calling from Billings?” She snatches up the phone and clicks off the speaker.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry to call so early on a Sunday, Ms. Terrebonne.”

  “Has something happened?” Alma stands clutching the phone to her ear, holding her breath.

  “I’m afraid I’m calling with bad news. There’s been a death here in town. I think the woman may be your sister—Vicky Terrebonne?”

  “Yes.” Alma exhales and sits down hard, grabbing at the arm of the ergonomic chair as it rolls away from her swaying center of gravity. Coffee splashes onto her hand and wrist and she swears, trying to shake it off. “Vicky’s my little sister. What happened?” This cannot be. She will not believe it until they show her a body.

  “Well, it—To tell you the truth, it looks like a bad fall and exposure, but we have to investigate it as a homicide since it was an unattended death. The coroner will do an autopsy. I’m sorry, I would have called someone local but we’ve got Brittany here and she had your business card on her. It’s the best contact I have right now. I’m so sorry to break the news to you this way.”

  Detective Curtis’s voice is soft, contrite, and marked with the soft-shoe rhythms of a native Crow speaker. Ka-hay. Sho’o Daa’ Chi, Alma thinks, the greeting all she remembers of the language that floats unseen through the city like water in the irrigation ditches, dust underfoot, ever present, barely acknowledged.

  “Brittany was there? She saw what happened?” Alma pushes up her sleeve to wince at the light burn.

  “No, not really. Well, she—” Detective Curtis’s voice gets higher and, if this is possible, even more uncomfortable. “She saw the body, yes.”

  “So you’re sure it’s Vicky?”

  “Well, she hasn’t been positively identified. We’ll need an adult to come in and do that. Her wallet was still on her, but the best piece of ID she had was an old library card, and those just have a signature on the back.”

  “So this could be a mistake. It might not be Vicky.”

  A pause and a sigh in Billings. “Yes, ma’am, there’s always that possibility, until she’s been positively ID’d.”

  “Is Brittany there with you?” Alma dabs at the spilled coffee with a pad of sticky notes. She glances out the door for her assistant, who of course isn’t there.

  “With me? No. She’s down the hall with the social worker. She doesn’t want to talk to us.” At least that explains why Alma’s business card is the best contact they have. It’s been generations since Billings was the sort of small town where everybody knows each other.

  “Who found the body?” Alma follows up, her lawyer’s instincts kicking in. She wants to interrogate Curtis, find out everything he knows, get to the detail that proves that this is all a mistake.

  “Somebody drove by early on their way to work and called it in. She’d been partying at a house up the street with a whole crowd of the usual suspects. Your sister had a list of priors, you know. Three DUI convictions and an assault charge that was dropped. These folks she was with—we’re holding two of them on outstanding warrants, to give you an idea.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, nothing all that surprising. Possession, distribution, simple assault—bar fight—driving with a suspended license. I could pick up half the county for that. But in the right circumstances I think any one of them could cross the line. They’re a rough bunch. The tenant, a”—the shuffle of a notepad comes through the phone, then the detective continues—“Garfield Kozinsky—looks like he’d been dealing too. All I’m saying is, we’re carrying out a complete investigation, ma’am. We’ll find out what happened to your sister.”

  “I see.” Alma is braced on the very edge of her chair, one hand on the phone, one hand clenched on her desk, feet planted. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  “I need names of any family members or friends who might have been in touch with her recently, people who would know about her life. And the social worker needs to know who we should call for—your niece, I assume? She won’t give us any names. All we have is this one thing she said to the patrol officer about how she ‘called and nobody came.’ ”

  “You can call our aunt and uncle, Walt and Helen Terrebonne.” Alma reels off the number. “Or our brother, Pete Terrebonne. He owns a coffeehouse called the Itching Post, up by MSU-B.”

  “Oh, sure. Nice place.” Detective Curtis’s voice moves a few steps back down the octave.

  “There’s our grandma Maddie Terrebonne, and then all kinds of cousins and shirttail relations. I don’t know who Vicky might’ve been in touch with lately. We weren’t what you’d call . . . close. Other than what the rest of the family told me, I don’t know much about her life the last few years.”

  Throat clearing. A gulp and hiss like a man drinking hot coffee too fast. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Me? Oh, it would have been . . .” Alma pauses and stares up at the glossy green volumes of American Jurisprudence at the top of her bookcase. She hadn’t expected a police interrogation about her most recent abandonment of her sister. The picture is coming into focus: Brittany alone in the police station, the family dithering as they do until chaos reigns. Alma will have to go. She will have to handle this, whatever this is. “Nearly five years ago, when our grandpa died. But we hardly talked then.”

  “I see.
If you don’t mind, I may call you again if I need to ask more questions about the family.”

  “Okay. But I’ll be there. I’ll catch the next flight. May I talk to Brittany, please?”

  “Hang on, I’ll go get her.” There’s a long pause, then Curtis’s distant voice. “Here she is.”

  Silence fills the line.

  “Brittany? Are you there?”

  Nothing.

  “It’s me, honey. Are you okay?” Alma tries again, leaning forward as if Brittany were there in front of her. “Are you there? Brittany, listen to me. I’ll be on the next flight. You have the police take you to Great-Grandma’s or Pete’s house and I’ll be there as soon as I can. Okay?”

  Another moment passes and Curtis is back.

  “She hasn’t said anything since right after the patrol officer found her,” he explains. “She gave him her name and said something about how she’d called people and nobody came, and then she just clammed up. The social worker says she won’t say a word.”

  “Have you spoken to anyone else in the family? Do you know where she tried to call?”

  “No, I don’t. And I haven’t spoken to anyone else. Thought I’d start with you since Brittany had your business card with her.”

  The picture comes to Alma again of her niece huddled in Ray Curtis’s office, the Sunday morning quiet of the police station around them. Brittany is so small. Alma tosses the soggy notepad in the trash and covers her eyes. She can imagine Brittany’s feet not quite reaching the floor as she sits lost in the well of a big chair. And then, before she can help it, she is overcome by memories. Arcs of sweeping floodlit luminescence split the darkness. Alma is pinned down. Somewhere a child is crying.

  She uncovers her eyes abruptly. The recirculated office air smells stale and stifling. If she could only get a breath of fresh air, things would be better. You can never get a breath of really fresh air in this town. She refocuses on the phone to mumble an inarticulate goodbye, then hangs up and begins to dial numbers starting in 406. Right away she gets Helen, who almost doesn’t let Alma get the words out—found a body, they say they think it’s Vicky—before broadcasting a horrified shriek down the clear fiber-optic line. Alma holds the phone away from her ear until Helen’s exclamations quiet down.

  “Brittany’s at the police station,” Alma begins again. “Do you think you could—”

  “At the police station! I have to get down there.” And the line goes dead. Alma rolls her eyes and dials her grandmother Maddie.

  “Oh, honey,” Maddie clucks. “You’d never call me so early on a Sunday unless something was wrong. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Grandma. It’s not me, it’s—”

  “Vicky.” Maddie’s voice is resigned, heavy.

  “Did somebody already call you?”

  “No. I just know that if there’s going to be trouble with any of you kids, it’s going to be her. Is she in the hospital?”

  “Are you sitting down, Grandma?” Alma asks. Maddie walks with a cane. Falling is a serious consideration.

  “I’m in my chair,” Maddie answers, her voice growing hesitant. “What is it?”

  And Alma tells. Then there is silence on the line, so much that Alma grows fearful.

  “Grandma? Are you okay?”

  “I’m here,” Maddie whispers. “You’re coming, then?”

  “I’m coming,” Alma confirms. “Can I stay with you for a few days?”

  “Of course, as long as you want to,” Maddie says, then holds Alma on the line to give her specific instructions about the funeral, as if she’s been reflecting on such things. Nobody in the family but Alma will be willing and able to afford a funeral, and not for a moment will Alma consider shirking this final duty to her sister.

  “You’re gonna stay awhile, aren’t you, honey?” Maddie asks in the same nonnegotiating voice Alma has heard her use to order around ranch hands. “We’re all gonna need each other at a time like this. Brittany’s gonna need you. You can take a few weeks off work, can’t you?” Arguing with Maddie Terrebonne’s gentle suggestions is generally about as fruitful as cultivating a cactus garden in Seattle.

  “I guess I can stay the week, Grandma, but that’s all. I already told Brittany I’d come out, but I’m in the middle of something big here and I can’t afford to be gone. Maybe I can come back over the summer if things lighten up a little.” Maddie makes a contrary little noise to indicate that the issue is not settled, then leads the conversation into what Alma would like to eat, where Brittany is, who will fetch her things, all the details that Maddie likes to know and manage. After talking for longer than she’d normally allow anyone to detain her, Alma gets Maddie off the phone.

  Alma pushes another button to get her assistant’s home number. Amanda takes several rings to answer. “Alma—yes—what can I do for you?” Half-asleep but unsurprised. Alma rushes into the next of so many awful, necessary words, explaining as succinctly as possible.

  “Oh my God.” Amanda’s voice switches to professional like a computer screen lighting. “I’m so sorry. Don’t worry about anything. I have your whole schedule on my phone, so I can reschedule everything right away.”

  “You’re the best. Thank you. I knew I could count on you. I’ll call you every day and keep tabs on e-mail. Whatever you do, don’t let Duncan into my office. I’ll lock the door behind me. Anything they need, I can e-mail, but I do not want him having access to my hard drive. Unplug it and hide it if you have to.”

  “Done.” Alma knows that Amanda will take care of the spoken and unspoken issues. She’ll keep Alma’s work schedule ticking along, report in regularly, and stand like a perky, well-groomed watchdog over her client files and computer. The generous bonuses are worth it for someone who understands loyalty.

  After a few more messages for colleagues, Alma books her flight to Billings. She hopes not to be able to get out until later in the day, but there’s an early flight and just enough time to cab home and get down to Sea-Tac. There’s work waiting, but there’s no helping it.

  The final call, to Jean-Marc, wakes him too. “I can go with you if you want,” he offers. “It sounds . . . complicated.” Jean-Marc Lacasse is Québécois de souche, old stock, and in any discussion involving emotion he tends to revert to Anglicized versions of French words, before code-switching entirely back to the mother tongue, the musical language of Molière. Compliqué, she hears him thinking. Bouleversant. The French meanings well up in his words, more foreign for the flawless mid-Atlantic English in which Jean-Marc pronounces them. The language is largely lost to the Terrebonnes, for as much as they carry it with them as a marker of ancestry. Part of Jean-Marc’s appeal is the concrete link to those roots—the coureurs des bois, the voyageurs, the Métis—that hardwire her into centuries of North American history so bitter and complicated it borders on Middle Eastern.

  “No, you can’t afford to be out of town right now, not with the Parker deal going through. Think of the bonus you’ll get for that,” she reassures Jean-Marc. He’s a Pacific Rim investment banker, fluent in Mandarin and conversational in Japanese. His bonuses shock Alma deeply. All those zeros, for what? She’s never told him how the open-throttle flow of cash disturbs her, seems almost an insult to the kind of labor she was reared to understand as earning a living. She just lifts the champagne flute and swallows it all silently.

  “I’ll take you to Kaua’i for a few days when it’s all over. First-class.”

  “That sounds fantastic,” she enthuses. There will never be time for such a trip, but it’s a nice thing for him to say, a warm fantasy to carry with her on this direct flight to cold reality.

  “Are you sure you don’t need me? You’ll get sucked in. I am very useful in chaotic situations. I’ll arrange everything in twenty-four hours and you won’t have to muddle with the grandmother.” Muddling—a very halfway English, Jean-Marc thing to say. He uses it to mean something like fussing, as Alma understands him.

  “No, really, Jean-Marc, it’s better for m
e to do it myself. It’s going to be complicated enough without you giving my lunatic family the Art of War treatment. I’ll be back to pack a bag. I’m going to have to be there most of a week. No way Grandma will let me get away with less, and we’ll have to figure out what to do for Brittany.”

  “Very well. But if it becomes war, you know whom to call.”

  “I hear you.” Alma feels the shadow of the moment in which she should tell Jean-Marc that she loves him. It passes and is gone. He doesn’t say it because he knows she won’t. “I’ll see you soon,” she says and hangs up.

  Gathering papers and her laptop in a bag with the firm’s logo, Alma lets her eyes fall for a moment on the view she rarely notices. To the southeast, lit by impeccably clear morning light, Mount Rainier reveals herself in her true form: Tahoma, the mountain that was God. Alma inhales at the sight and pauses. The snowy flanks of Tahoma evoke Billings, the magnificent Absaroka-Beartooth range, and chilly afternoons when she, Pete, and Vicky flew down the slopes of Pioneer Park. Vicky was never satisfied with the safe runs that flattened out toward the playground equipment. She wanted the steep, dangerous lines on the western side, angling toward the creek. Alma recalls bailing from the back of a sled more than once while Vicky held on, shrieking and laughing, as she soared off the bank and splashed down in icy water. Vicky would clamber up undeterred, wet and muddy, ready to ride again, and Alma would have to go all bossy and march her home, bundled in Alma’s coat, to forestall hypothermia. Alma hasn’t thought of those days in years.

  In the distance is the faint peal of church bells. How many years has it been since she last slipped into the cushioned pews of First Congregational Church in Billings, where her parents and grandparents once stood to sing the good old hymns, shoulder to shoulder, now thank we all our God? Who is there now, mouthing the joyful joyfuls and passing the collection plate, standing in the shadow of that fearful father God who takes and takes, thy will be done? Alma can still envision the massed troops, row after row of stalwart old Protestant ladies descended from New England families gone west, the Masons, the Eastern Star Worthy Matrons, the deacons, the choir, her grandmother’s side of the family, the old Yankees’ great-grandchildren who still fill the pews, as if bound by their ancestors’ habits and vows.