He paused for a long moment, then picked up a pencil and a piece of paper and scribbled something.
Again, I felt at a loss for words. I wondered whether everyone who spoke to Hugh wound up feeling like a reluctant psychiatrist. I wished I could channel Luz, to know what to say or do. But then, I guessed this was why Luz didn’t pursue a career in therapy, preferring instead to teach. She said she didn’t like hearing people’s problems. Luckily, she made an exception for her best friend.
“Anyway . . . ,” Hugh said at long last, putting down his pen and turning back to the pile of snapshots. He gave me another handful, a series of photos taken on a fishing trip, he and his father and Ray standing together, wearing matching plaid hunting jackets. “The reason I asked to talk with you is that I understand you do specialized renovations?”
“I do, yes. That’s my business, Turner Construction. We do historic restoration, that sort of thing.”
“I’ve kept the house preserved, just as it was when we lived there. When . . . it happened. At first, of course, I was just a kid; the house was kept in a trust for me and Linda. We didn’t need the money—between life insurance and my uncle, Linda and I were fine. And then . . . Linda was slipping away, and in a way, the house seemed like our last concrete connection. She signed over her power of attorney to me and didn’t seem to care what I did with the place, but I wanted to keep it. I’m not sure why. . . . A part of me thought I could keep it enshrined and perhaps work out what happened. If I could only mature enough, learn enough, understand the world enough, I might be able to figure it out. Figure it all out.”
There was that far-off look again.
“And have you?” I asked at last, after it seemed he wasn’t talking anymore.
He shook his head. “But no matter how many times I go through there, no matter how I cast my mind back, it makes no sense. My father had taken a large life insurance policy out on himself and my mother not long before, but . . . his didn’t pay out, of course. Suicide isn’t compensated. Luckily for Linda and me, being murdered is covered, so we collected on our mother’s policy. It’s possible he meant to kill her in order to collect, and took the same policy out on himself to avert suspicion, but things got out of hand. Maybe killing his own daughter pushed him over the edge, so he wound up killing himself.” Hugh shrugged. “He shot himself in the chest before killing himself with a shot to the head. Maybe he meant to graze himself, make it look like he’d been injured in the attack as well, but the muzzle slipped. Maybe . . .”
It seemed Hugh had thought everything through. Probably at three in the morning, when he was supposed to be sleeping. I wasn’t surprised—it was hard for me to stop thinking about any of the deaths I had encountered recently, and I was only tangentially involved with any of the victims. I could only imagine that if it happened to your family, especially as a child, you would roll it over in your mind persistently, doggedly, unconsciously, like a tongue worrying a sore tooth. Perhaps you would ponder the senselessness of something like this until quite literally losing your senses.
Could that be what had happened with Linda? Hugh may be a poet laureate, but he was obviously fragile. It didn’t seem like it would take much to push the poor man over the brink into entirely losing touch with reality.
“Oh, here’s something else you should see.” He went to a bookshelf and pulled down a white screen. Then he crossed to the opposite corner and turned on the movie camera I had noticed when I first walked in.
Bluish images flickered on the screen. I recognized young Hugh and Linda, playing with their father in the surf on Ocean Beach. I recognized the locale by the distinctive Seal Rock and the Cliff House restaurant in the background, jutting out into the Pacific.
“Old home movies?”
He nodded, eyes fixed on the playful images. “Wait a moment; the next sequence was filmed inside the house. You can get a sense for it by watching carefully.”
As promised, moments later the scene shifted. It was a holiday of some sort, a large dinner on the table, a nicely dressed group gathered around the table.
“Would you be willing to give me a bid on redoing the house?”
“But, Hugh, I don’t understand why you would want to have anything to do with it, after . . . after what happened.”
“Don’t you see? I have no choice. That house defined me, made me what I am today.”
“But . . .” It wasn’t my place to make this observation—I barely knew the man. And I knew that uninvited advice was just about the most exasperating thing to experience. But I couldn’t help myself. “Wouldn’t it be better to not let it define you anymore? You’re a brilliant success as a poet; couldn’t you just enjoy that about yourself?”