“Minutes,” Jimmy said. “Yes? Is it still you?”
“I see now that it could be,” Mason said. “I like your place.” He leaned forward and put his hand on the bed. “You got my letter, my one letter.”
“I did, and you got mine.”
“I didn’t say it all right in there.”
“That book upset you.”
“It did, but I loved it. I didn’t want you to blur what had happened. It was all simple to me: Matt was at fault.”
“It was a novel,” Jimmy said. “I know what you’re saying.”
“No, it’s a good book,” Mason said. “I think I was angry because I didn’t write it.”
“And you know I didn’t really have a choice,” Jimmy said.
“I know. There were many days when I wanted to talk to you about the books, all of them.”
Mason had read all of Jimmy Brand’s books and had some of his feature writing printed off the Internet in his office. He’d followed Jimmy’s career, at first because he had the same vague ache to write that all lawyers have, but then simply to see which way Jimmy was going to use the moments they’d shared in his stories. They were good books, and Mason had noted the reviews and awards, but he hadn’t read the books the way America had. He’d read them to see Jimmy’s take on the life they’d known. Only two of the books, both novels, centered on their hometown. One was actually set in New York and had flashbacks to a little town in Montana, which Mason knew to be Oakpine. The other was a rites-of-passage book, Jimmy’s first novel, and it used street names and places, and it captured and delivered a feeling of growing up in Oakpine like nothing Mason had ever known before.
“They’re all good books,” Mason told his friend. “More than books to me.”
“Thanks, Mason.”
“Reservoir taught me an important lesson.”
“Uh-oh.”
“It did. It showed me that I didn’t know how to read. That book made me crazy, because you—”
“Because it’s a novel.”
“Exactly. It’s a novel and I was there, and I got pulled into a story I know pretty well, and when it turned, it threw me out on my ear. I know exactly what you were doing.”
“Maybe you do know how to read. I’m glad to see you. How have you been?
Mason let the question rise and fall. “I don’t know,” he said. “Being honest, I don’t know.”
“Good,” Jimmy said. “It’s no help knowing. I can still see your real face in the years.”
“That old face,” Mason said. “And I can see you. It feels like I saw you last week.”
“I still owe you for the Trail’s End, the room rate.”
“I’ve been worried about the money.”
“Last week,” Jimmy said. “That must be what thirty years is. I am so glad to see you again.”
• • •
Mason stayed at the Ralstons’ house on Oakpine Mountain for two nights while the paint at his place dried, and the second night in the thick early dusk, Kathleen Gunderson took him down to the care center. He’d been having a drink with Craig and Marci in their glassy kitchen, watching the lights of the town come on below them. Craig and Mason had already laid out their new campaign: treat and seal the floors, rebuild the basement stairs, install a banister and seven new windows, refurbish the fireplace, check the boiler. Mason rattled the ice in his scotch, gratified to have these things before him.