A Hole in the Universe by Mary Mcgarry Morris Page B

flames through the birch logs in the fireplace. Gas, Dennis explained to his startled brother. “See this? She loved this.” With the touch of another button, skylights slid open like enormous eyes onto the starry night. Dennis had been a wonderful son. Gordon used to enjoy reading his mother’s letters filled with the details of his brother’s accomplishments and acquisitions. He couldn’t bear to read the ones written when she was depressed and struggling to understand how such a horrible thing could have happened. What had she done wrong? she would ask. How had she failed him? What could she have done differently? She’d tried her best, loved her two boys, raised them both the same, hadn’t he known that?
    The watermelon bag thumped against his thigh. Just when he was sure he was lost, he came upon the black-and-gold DEARBORN COUNTRY CLUB sign and remembered that Dennis’s house overlooked the sixteenth hole. Dearborn was cooler than Collerton, he noted, entering the deepening shade of linden and maple trees. He kept looking behind him. The stillness seemed unnatural. There weren’t any sidewalks, but then there weren’t any people or even cars going by.
    He was halfway up Dennis’s long front walk when the sprinkler system sputtered on, hissing out long watery arcs that swayed back and forth over him. He stepped back and waited for the spray to pass, then ran in a crouch, only to be drenched in the next wave. Head down, he clutched the cake box to his chest and darted off to one side to catch the lull. He started to run, then everything stopped with an eerie silence. The round black sprinkler heads retracted, disappearing like periscopes into the thick wet grass. Pollen-swirled water ran down the walk into the road.
    “Gordon!” Lisa called from the French doors above. “Oh, you’re all wet!” She was laughing. Water dripped down his face and arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Come on,” she coaxed, gesturing him closer. “It’s all right. I turned it off.” She started to laugh again, then apologized as she led him into the big square kitchen. “But you just looked so . . . so helpless out there. Oh, Gordon.” She threw her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’m just so happy and nervous, and I don’t know what else, but it’s just so wonderful to . . . to have you here!”
    “It’s wonderful to be here.” He moved back stiffly.
    She wanted him to change into something of Dennis’s. He patted himself off with a dish towel and insisted he was fine. Dennis wasn’t home yet, she said. Gordon felt panicky. He had never talked to her alone before. Pale ale, Harrington’s newest, she said, taking a beer from the refrigerator. Her family owned the Harrington Brewery in Collerton. Before becoming Dennis’s father-in-law, Mr. Harrington had been his patient, then his golf partner. The friendship had cooled, however, with Dennis’s growing attention to Lisa, ten years younger and just out of college. Socializing with the brother of a notorious killer had been a bit of a hoot for the boozy, handsome Harringtons, but mixing bloodlines was the last thing they had ever imagined for their only child.
    “How is it?” she asked with his first sip.
    “Good,” he lied.
    “It’s even lighter than the one last time,” she said.
    He sat on a stool at the long green-granite counter separating the kitchen from what Dennis had called the great room. At Fortley they called the day lounge the big room, though he had never known why, since it could hold only ten or fifteen men at a time. He had to be careful; the half bottle of beer he’d had his first night here had gone right to his head. He didn’t even really like the taste. Lisa was making room in the refrigerator for the watermelon. He wished she’d open the cake box. He had remembered her saying once that chocolate cake with raspberry filling was her favorite dessert. Dennis found it strange that he could recall such random facts. It came from