Chapter 11 - The Reckoning of Candace
By Wednesday afternoon, the rain had returned, but the temperature had crawled up into the low forties—that gray, miserable Knoxville thaw that turns the roads into salt-streaked sludge.
I was at the Black Oak Ridge house alone.
I had spent four hours in the master bedroom, stripping the gray paint off Martha’s cherry dresser with mineral spirits and a bronze-wool pad. The lavender perfume smell was finally gone, replaced by the sharp, honest bite of turpentine and raw wood.
Through the front windows, I saw a yellow Knox County taxi crawl up the driveway.
It didn't come fast. It picked its way through the potholes like an old hound that knew it was trespassing.
The taxi stopped by the porch.
The door opened, and Candace got out.
She wasn't wearing the cashmere sweater. She was wearing an oversized trench coat that had road grime along the hem, and her hair was pulled back into a hasty, messy ponytail that showed three inches of dark roots she hadn't touched up.
She didn't have her bags. She just had her purse, held against her ribs like a shield.
I walked to the front door, pushed the screen open, and stood on the porch with my wool sleeves rolled to the elbows, the smell of mineral spirits still on my hands.
She climbed the three steps slowly. Her high-heeled boots made a dull, wet *thunk-thunk* on the decking.
She stopped six feet away.
“Trey isn't here, Candace,” I said.
“I know where he is,” she said. Her voice was flat, empty of that high-pitched theatrical rage she’d had on Thanksgiving. “He’s down in bay three at the shop. I went there first.”
“Then you know he’s working,” I said.
“He wouldn't even look at me,” she whispered. Her lips were cracked, pale from the wind. “He was covered in grease, Arthur. His hands were black. He looked like... he looked like one of your hired hands.”
“He is one of my hired hands,” I said. “He makes seventeen dollars an hour. Same as Dave Keller did when he started. Minus fifteen percent for court restitution.”
Candace looked past me, into the hallway where the floorboards were still clean and bare.
“Stuart’s house is gone,” she said.
“I heard,” I said.
“The bank put the notice on the door yesterday morning. Connie’s staying with her sister in Johnson City. They don't have enough room for me.”
She took a half-step forward. Her eyes were wide, dark, and hollowed-out.
“Arthur,” she said, and for the first time in five years, she didn't use that patronizing tone she used for the help. She sounded like a beggar at an intersection. “I have sixteen hundred dollars in a checking account that’s about to be seized by the state. I don't have a car. I don't have an apartment. I don't have anywhere to go.”
“You’ve got your family, Candace,” I told her.
“My family is broke!” she cried, her voice cracking into that old shrillness for half a second before collapsing back into despair. “Stuart lied to me! He told me the company was solvent! He told me Trey was going to be the managing director!”
“Stuart didn't forge those checks, Candace,” I said. “Your husband did. But he didn't do it because he wanted the money. He did it because every time he came home, you told him he was an embarrassment because he smelled like two-stroke oil instead of an executive suite.”
Candace swallowed. Her throat moved with difficulty.
“I was trying to make something out of him,” she said.
“You were trying to hollow him out so you could wear his skin into the country club,” I said.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a small white envelope Thomas Sterling had prepared that morning, and held it out toward her.
She looked at it like it might be an explosive.
“What is that?”
“That’s three thousand dollars from my personal savings account,” I said. “It’s not company money. It’s not Trey’s money. It’s mine.”
She looked up at my face, confused, her fingers hesitating before they touched the paper.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because Martha would have told me not to let a stray dog freeze in my driveway,” I said. “That three thousand gets you a first-month deposit on a one-bedroom apartment in Alcoa, and it gets you two weeks of groceries at the Save-A-Lot while you look for a job.”
Her fingers closed around the envelope.
“And Trey?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Trey has a lawyer,” I said. “Thomas is handling his appearance before the grand jury next week. The diversion program will keep him out of prison if he makes restitution on every dime he took from the equipment account.”
I looked down at her hands—the French tips were chipped now, the gold band on her left ring finger loose against her knuckle.
“He’s not coming to Alcoa, Candace,” I said.
She looked down at the white envelope in her fist.
Tears were running down her face now, real tears that didn't care about mascara or lighting or who was sitting at the head of the table.
She turned around without saying thank you.
She walked down the steps, her heels sinking half an inch into the wet gravel, and got back into the back seat of the yellow cab.
The taxi driver put it in reverse, backed down the long turnaround, and disappeared through the hemlocks toward the main road.
May you like
I stood on the porch until the sound of the four-cylinder engine died completely away.
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