All the Things You Are
Table of Contents
Cover
Previous titles from Declan Hughes
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Out of Nowhere
Part One: The Night Before
Claire
I’ll Be Seeing You
A Cottage for Sale
Where Are You?
Blame it on my Youth
III Wind
Last Night When We Were Young
Ralph’s Book
What happened was …
Danny
A Couple of Swells
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams
It All Depends on You
Ralph’s Book
What happened was …
Part Two: The Day After
I’m Gonna Live Till I Die
Mountain Greenery
Travellin’ All Alone
One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)
Marry the Man Today
Just Friends
More than You Know
Love Letters
Lonesome Road
Getting Some Fun Out of Life
How Long Has This Been Going On?
I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night
(Love Is) The Tender Trap
Part Three: Halloween Night
Sisters
Willow Weep for Me
Ralph’s Book
What happened was …
I Can Read Between the Lines
There Will Never Be Another You
Why Was I Born?
I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan
My Kind of Town
Part Four: Trick or Treat!
All Alone
It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie
Lost in the Stars
Dancing in the Dark
I’m Beginning to See the Light
Me, Myself and I
When No One Cares
The House I Live In
I’ll Never Be the Same
The Way of the World
All the Things You Are
Previous titles from Declan Hughes
The Ed Loy Series
THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD
THE COLOUR OF BLOOD
THE DYING BREED
ALL THE DEAD VOICES
CITY OF LOST GIRLS
Other titles
ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE *
* available from Severn House
ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE
Declan Hughes
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2014 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA
eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Declan Hughes
The right of Declan Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hughes, Declan, 1963–
All the things you are.
1. Suspense fiction.
I. Title
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8371-1 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-506-3 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-516-1 (ePub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
To Patricia Lucey
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to a number of people who helped me in a variety of ways while I was writing this book. In Madison, Patricia Lucey, Michael Lucey and Tom Colby. In Chicago, Theresa Schwegel and Kevin Lambert. In Dublin and London, Sheila Crowley, John Connolly, Diarmuid O’Hegarty, Alan Glynn and Jessica O’Leary. At home, Kathy, Isobel and Heather.
Out of Nowhere
Sunday, October 23
Danny Brogan burned his future wife’s family to death when he was eleven years old. Whether by accident or design, he’s not entirely sure, or at least that’s what he’s always told himself. It was probably no great surprise that as a result he should develop a morbid fear of fire, nor that this fear should stay with him throughout his life. Fear is a man’s best friend, or so the song goes, and Danny carried his fear of fire, just as he carried his fear of the friends that were with him that night, until it sometimes looked like the twin burdens might overwhelm him.
No one really knew what he had done except his friends Dave and Gene and Ralph, and even they differed on the details, and while they had all promised never to tell, there was always the fear that they might. Not at first, not in the immediate aftermath, the whole city in shock, the church services and processions of mourning, the burial of the dead, the tiny white coffins. Not in the following weeks and months, the surviving child placed in foster care and then with adoptive parents miles away, the burnt-out house demolished and rebuilt until you’d never know there’d been a fire there at all. Not in the years after that, as junior high gave way to the high-school riot of sports and studies and hormones, Brains, Emotions and Muscles vying daily for supremacy, like in the old comic book advertisement. No one ever said a word. It was as if it had never happened, as if their childhoods had never happened, as if memory was no longer necessary. The future was the only game in town: the next exam, the next football game, the next pretty girl. Who cared what happened when they were kids?
It was only later, when they had kids themselves, that things changed. You relive your own childhood when you have children, Danny came to understand. Danny’s elder daughter, Barbara, was the same age now as Danny had been when the fire took place. And once the kids had started coming, that was when the memories began, that was when the questions started, that was when the past became present. And for Danny, that was when the fear took renewed, redoubled hold. That the guys had all drifted apart was perhaps inevitable. After all, how many eleven-year-olds remain friends for the rest of their lives? But it increasingly seemed (even if it was never spoken of) as if the fire at the Bradberry place was the only thing they had left in common.
But Danny Brogan refused to let his fears overwhelm him. He met his fear of fire head on, spouting and sputtering from the gas burners in the kitchen of the bar and grill he owned and ran. And when the season was right and his family clamored for barbecue, Danny met his fear there also, even though the reek of burning charcoal and seared meat sometimes infused his brain with visions and sense memories all the more insidious for being imaginary (for Danny was out cold before the Bradberry fire took hold and had little real recollection of it). They didn’t cook out nearly as often as other families, Danny’s excuse being that it was too much like bringing his work home with him. But the family barbecue can’t be avoided altogether.
And here it is, the last of the season, on a clear and bright October day, the leaves turning, the air still mild but with a bite, a cold adm
onitory finger warning of frost, and more, to come. Halloween’s just a week away now. The lanterns have been lit and the pumpkins carved. In the windows hang curtains of black net, watermarked with spiders and skulls and witches in flight. And everyone’s here, in the rolling backyard, vampires, werewolves, spooks and ghouls, and their kids, and their dogs. Everyone’s here. The turn of the year. The harsh Wisconsin winter looming, but for now, the air still mild, just, as fall’s cold blaze flickers along the apple trees heavy with fruit at the foot of the garden and out across the wall and spreads like, yes, like wild fire through the forests of the neighboring Arboretum.
As the afternoon wears on, and the beers take hold (cocktails for Danny and his noisier friends, brandy Old Fashioneds, the local favorite), as the flames twist and turn, wrestling with the shimmering light, as the charcoal smoke stains the haze inky black, reality seems momentarily suspended. Talk gets heated, wild and reckless, painted cheeks flush and masked eyes glitter, and fleetingly, anything seems possible: someone else’s wife, someone else’s life! All are called to the masquerade! Louder music, wilder women, stronger wine!
And speaking of wilder women, there goes Karen Cassidy, Danny’s indispensable chief bartender, teetering about on six-inch heels, part of a customized Catwoman costume that sees her blonde hair lacquered and coiffed into two pointy kitty ears, the heels-and-ears combination hauling her five feet in height perilously close to six. Day-to-day, Karen (apart from dressing like a finalist in a Dolly Parton lookalike contest) is dependably level-headed and smart, not to mention hard as nails, but once she’s had a drink, or in this case, five brandy Old Fashioneds and half a bottle of chardonnay, well, there she goes! Danny once had to shut himself in the janitor’s closet at a staff party because Karen wouldn’t take no for an answer (she never remembers anything the following day, and woe betide anyone who challenges her).
Karen demands that eleven-year-old Barbara put ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC on the sound system at full volume, that it be turned up to eleven, and that everyone dance to it out on the deck, no stop-outs or dissenters. Having had her eye for a good hour or more on one of Claire’s theater friends, Simon, who is dapper and handsome and charming and dressed in a (big clue this) sailor suit, there she goes, big time, her Catwoman tail shaking, her arms around his neck, his face snug in her cleavage, and there they go together, stumbling off the deck and toppling into the herb garden, and there they lie, thrashing among bushes and low trees, bruised in thyme and sage and bay. ‘That’s what I call a bouquet garni,’ Simon’s boyfriend, Todd, says.
It’s then that Danny sees it. Flames have erupted suddenly from the barbecue, hot fat crackles and spits, and Danny has turned away from the commotion, away from the house. As he rakes the embers and banks down the fire, it’s then that Danny sees – through the smoke, through the apple trees, through the wrought-iron bars of the old garden gate that leads to the Arboretum – the unmistakeable figure of Death. The Angel of Death in his black cowl, faceless and strange, scythe in one hand, the other raised in greeting, or rebuke, and then lowered to try the handle of the gate. For a split second, through the smoke, through the trees, Danny thinks it is Death, come to claim him. Then he sees the letter P scrawled on Death’s chest – P for Pestilence, P for Plague – and he realizes it must be one of his old friends: Dave Ricks, or Gene Peterson, or Ralph Cowley. The Four Horsemen, that’s what they were, or at least, that’s what they became, the Halloween they were eleven years old, the Halloween that changed everything. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
It’s then that Danny leaves the party and walks down past the apple trees to the gate, to his old friend, unseen, he thinks, by everyone. He’s only gone a couple of steps when he stops and turns back to the fire. Through the haze he sees his wife, Claire, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as Simon struggles vainly to free himself from Karen’s horizontal attentions, and Barbara, pulling cartoon faces to indicate her embarrassment and disbelief, but unable quite to hide her excitement, and eight-year-old Irene, who is making her own fun, rolling around on the lawn with Mr Smith, the Brogans’ springer spaniel. He sees his family. This is what is at stake, he thinks, this is what he could not bear to lose, and he stows the eight-inch Sabatier knife he used to carve the meat deep in the pocket of his butcher’s apron. He turns and walks down through the drifting smoke, through the falling light, beneath the aching branches of the apple trees to the old gate, unobserved, or so he thinks, and out into the Arboretum to meet the Angel of Death, who knows everything Danny wishes he could forget.
PART ONE
The Night Before
Claire
I’ll Be Seeing You
Sunday, October 30
Walking through Madison Airport always makes Claire feel like she has stepped back in time. It’s partly the compact scale of the terminal building and partly the absence of crowds, but mostly it’s the muzak: delirious, string-drenched arrangements of melancholy old standards that seep into her brain and make her mysteriously nostalgic for the time before she was born: ‘Laura’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’ and now ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ In all the old familiar places, she thinks, the lyrics second nature to her. Outside, she almost expects to see the old familiar places as they had been in the early sixties: cars with tail fins and women wearing swing skirts and men in trilbies and those narrow-lapeled FBI suits. Meanwhile, her perfect sitcom family awaits, just like in The Dick Van Dyke Show or I Love Lucy. Hey honey, I’m home!
She feels this way each time, and each time it almost makes her laugh. Almost, but not quite, because deep down she knows the suburban life she is living with her husband and children and dog is not too different from what she supposes it must have been like for her parents. Sure, she has a job teaching drama a dozen or so hours a week, but that’s not what she does. Day to day, Danny goes out to work and Claire ferries the girls to school and to soccer practice, to opthalmologist and orthodontist, to swim meet and sleepover; she buys the groceries and cooks the meals; she makes sure the carpets are clean and the linen is fresh and there are flowers in the hall and a fire in the grate. Or at least, that the heating is on. Like the wife in the Mary Chapin Carpenter song, she drives all day. When she was in sixth grade she remembers scoffing in homeroom when her friends were sharing their plans for the future and Pattie Greer said she wanted to be a housewife. No way was Claire Taylor ever going to settle for that. Now Pattie Greer is Patricia Price of Butler Price and Stone, and Claire Taylor is Claire Taylor, homemaker. She has kept her name, but in pretty much every other respect, has she settled?
Well, maybe, but, you know, whatever, she thinks, almost says; she certainly rolls her eyes, and actually manages an audible laugh, which she quickly stifles, as she is standing alone by the baggage carousel and doesn’t want to look like a crazy lady. Or does she? Maybe she doesn’t care what she looks like today. (Which is probably just as well, since the accumulator hangover she is running after a week of late nights and tequila shooters and other stuff she doesn’t even want to think about has brought her skin out in blotches and crimped her hair to an attractive straw-like consistency.)
A week ago, flying out to Chicago, she cared. A week ago, the muzak was just another nail in her mid-life coffin, ‘All The Things You Are’ at check-in an ironic requiem for the life she had once planned for herself: a life on the stage, a life in the theater, a life devoted to creativity and self-expression (she had used exactly those words in the painfully earnest journal she kept at university). All The Things She’s Not.
She had given that life a shot. In her twenties, she auditioned for every theater company in Chicago, graduating from walk-ons to one- and two-line speaking parts to small but significant character roles. Then she formed her own company with Paul Casey, her director boyfriend, so she could play the leads she wasn’t being offered. She even directed some of the plays herself, working for peanuts, waiting tables and tending bar when she wasn’t handing out flyers and designing posters. She had worked at it
. And not without success. One year, their company was tipped to be the next Steppenwolf. Not, admittedly, in the Tribune or the Sun-Times was this brave opinion ventured, but in the kind of entertainment free-sheet drinkers use as a supplementary beer mat or bar towel. Still, it was said. And they always got good reviews in the press, or at least, if not always, they got reviewed as if they were just as good as anyone else. If not quite as good as Steppenwolf.
Yes, she had worked at it. Tugging her bag towards the exit doors and out to a waiting line of taxis, she allows herself a rueful smile that maybe aims for justified pride and lands on woulda-shoulda-coulda. ‘Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference,’ she murmurs to herself, not that she ever played Ophelia. Too old now, and when you get older, rue is rue and regret is regret, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference how you wear it. You’ve just got to fight every day to make sure it doesn’t end up wearing you.
She had worked at it. It hadn’t worked out. Or maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough, hadn’t given it her best shot. Maybe she didn’t have a best shot to give. No, that wasn’t true. Easier sometimes if it had been, if she simply hadn’t been good enough. But she had the talent, everyone agreed, if not quite the luck. She had been beaten to the punch so many times for the bigger parts – down to the last two for Laura in The Glass Menagerie at the Goodman and Viola in Twelfth Night at the Shakespeare, and two callbacks for Mary in Juno and the Paycock at Steppenwolf itself. There was a cartoon in the New Yorker where an actor hangs up the phone and says to his friends, ‘My agent says it’s down to two – me and the guy they’re going to give it to.’ Paul Casey got it framed and gave it to her as a birthday present. Halfway through the second bottle of wine, she stopped seeing the funny side and broke it over his head and they ended up in the emergency room. That had been a big night. The relationship – and the company – didn’t last much longer.