For a moment, Caddie looked at him with something like interest. He realized he’d touched something in her, however briefly. She feels the same way about diving, he realized. She wants to agree with me but she can’t. She’d lose too much ground.

  “We saw this fish,” he continued, pressing his advantage. “It looked like it was straight out of the mesowhatever era. Like a dinosaur. It had these big eyes and a long tail, and its fins were like wings.”

  “A ratfish,” Caddie said, bored. “We saw two of them the other day, and a bat ray.”

  “Yeah, well, we saw a grompus,” Hudson informed her.

  She regarded him over the top of her book. “A reticulated grompus or a regular one?” she asked him.

  He hesitated. “A regular one, I guess,” he said.

  “Nice try,” said Caddie. “There’s no such thing as a grompus.”

  Hudson grunted. “Well, we saw some other cool things,” he insisted. “A sculpin, or something. It was kind of purplish.”

  Ben, who had been listening to the exchange, said, “I’m going to go take a shower. Then I thought I’d grill some steaks for dinner. How’s that sound?”

  “Great,” said Hudson.

  “Fine,” Caddie added.

  Ben went upstairs, leaving the two of them alone. Caddie continued to be absorbed in her book, and Hudson was tempted to leave her alone. But her attitude was starting to bug him. He didn’t appreciate her sarcasm, and because he knew his staying in the room would annoy her, he decided to stay put. It was childish, he knew, but if she wanted to play games, he was going to give her a run for her money.

  “What are you reading?” he asked, sitting in the chair opposite her.

  Caddie held the book out toward him so that he could read the cover. “Cannery Row,” Hudson read.

  “There was nothing else around,” said Caddie sullenly. “And you all seem to think it’s the best book ever written.”

  “Don’t you?” Hudson said.

  Caddie shrugged. “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t really get the fuss.”

  “A lot of people miss the point,” Hudson told her. He knew the insinuation that she didn’t understand the book would rile her, and he was right.

  “And what would the point be?” she asked, lowering the book and turning the full force of her stare on him.

  “What do you think it is?” he goaded her.

  “That working in a fish factory sucks?” Caddie tried. “Or how about that everyone in Monterey is a total moron?”

  “You’re a smart girl,” Hudson replied. “You can do better than that.”

  Caddie flushed. She just realized that she’s in for a fight, Hudson thought, not without some enjoyment. Let’s see where she goes now.

  “Okay,” Caddie said. “Let me think.” She put her finger to her cheek, parodying the classic contemplative pose. “Is it about the human struggle to find happiness in a world that wants to keep us from it? Oh, or maybe it’s about the beauty of the individual human spirit and the glory of community?”

  Hudson looked at her face, at the narrowed eyes and tight mouth. Her hands clutched the bottom of the book tightly, forcing the pages apart like the wings of a frightened bird. She was a study in anger, beautiful and terrible in her inexplicable rage.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Caddie said. “I read the introduction.” She raised the book to cover her face, leaving him to stare at the cover.

  “What’s your problem?” Hudson heard himself speak, prayed that he had just thought the words. When Caddie dropped the book from her face, he realized with rising alarm that he hadn’t.

  “Excuse me?” Caddie said.

  You started it, Hudson told himself. You might as well finish it. “I want to know what your problem is,” he repeated, striving for a bravado he didn’t feel. “You have this giant chip on your shoulder, and as far as I can tell, there’s no reason for it.”

  Caddie closed the book and set it on the couch beside her. “So now you’re an expert on me?” she asked.

  “I don’t have to be an expert to notice that you’re being a ...” He stopped.

  “A what?” said Caddie. “A brat? A bitch? Why don’t you just say it?” She crossed her arms over her chest and waited, daring Hudson to agree with her.

  “Your father loves you very much,” Hudson said.

  Caddie laughed. “Really?” she said. “I guess you would know what he loves, right?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Hudson asked her.

  The expression on Caddie’s face changed. All of a sudden she looked enormously pleased with herself. She cocked her head, looking at him with an unsettling mixture of excitement and disdain. To Hudson, she looked like a cat about to go in for the kill, watching her prey as its inevitable death dawned on it. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said.

  “Know what?” said Hudson.

  Caddie’s voice was barely a whisper. “He has a crush on you,” she said.

  Hudson knitted his brow. “Who does?” he said, having no idea what she was talking about.

  “Him,” Caddie said, nodding toward the stairway.

  The meaning of her words suddenly became clear. “Ben?” he said.

  Caddie nodded. “It’s so obvious,” she said.

  Hudson’s thoughts were spinning. He found it impossible to think clearly. What was Caddie saying? Finally he blurted, “That’s ridiculous. You father isn’t gay.”

  “Maybe not,” Caddie said. “But he’s crushing on you, big boy, so you’d better deal with it.”

  Hudson was stunned. He’d never even considered the possibility. Ben? A crush on him? No, that wasn’t it. “We’re just friends,” he said. He looked at Caddie. She was shaking her head. “Just friends,” Hudson repeated.

  “You just keep believing that,” Caddie said.

  “That’s why you’re shutting him out again?” asked Hudson. “Because you think he and I ... Because you think he ...”

  Caddie shook her head. “You just walk in and he ...” she began, but didn’t continue. Hudson saw that her eyes were becoming damp. “I’m his daughter,” she said, her voice shaking.

  It was too much. He couldn’t think. Ben had a—thing—for him? Even if it wasn’t true, Caddie thought that it was, and that was what mattered.

  “You should see how he looks at you,” Caddie was saying. Tears had begun to roll down her face, although Hudson could tell she was trying her hardest to hold them back. “His whole face lights up,” she said. “And you,” she went on, waving a hand at Hudson. “You don’t even see it.”

  “I—” Hudson began.

  “Don’t say it’s not true,” Caddie interrupted. “You know it is.”

  Hudson started again to protest. At the same time, his thoughts were rushing backward, replaying his times together with Ben. Like a movie rewinding, images flashed in his head: he and Ben laughing, him reaching for the buttons on Ben’s shirt, Ben’s eyes looking into his underwater. How had he not seen what was happening? With a sudden, gut-wrenching realization, as if the force of the evidence had landed a blow to his stomach and driven all breath from him, he saw that Caddie was right.

  He stood up. “I have to go,” he said, not looking at Caddie. “Tell your father I’m sorry.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Eleanor Mintz lived in a small Victorian house in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. Situated on the winding road that followed the coastline of Pacific Grove, it looked out on the ocean with an unobstructed view that made the property, Hudson knew, worth more than he could even imagine. As he walked to the front door up the narrow path bordered on both sides by lavender, he saw the door open, and a small, gray-haired woman stepped out. She looked over Hudson’s head to the sea beyond. When her eyes came finally to rest on him, she was smiling.

  “You must be Hudson,” she said.

  “Mrs. Mintz,” said Hudson.

  She showed him into her house. Keeping with the Victorian look, it was decorated in outdated, but perfectly preserved, furnishings. Hudson eyed the overlarge sofa with its high carved back, the wallpaper patterned in William Morris roses and an excess of flourishes. On a stand beside the fireplace, a seated black china cat dipped its paw into a large glass bowl in which a goldfish swam in tight circles.

  “It was a nice surprise to get your call last night,” Hudson said as he was shown into the living room.

  “Well, Helen told me what you’re doing, and she thought I might be of some assistance. I don’t know how, but I told her that I’d try.”

  Hudson sat on the edge of a chair, feeling as if he were becoming part of a museum installation. Drawing rooms of the nineteenth century, he thought. And in the next gallery, dresses of the American first ladies. Eleanor Mintz took another chair. She folded her small hands neatly in the lap of her blue dress. Behind her, looking over her shoulder like a trusted sentry, a portrait of a white-haired, mustachioed man in black, eyed Hudson suspiciously. Her husband? Hudson mused, then noted the facial resemblance. No, her father.

  “Well, as Helen probably told you, I’m doing research on Steinbeck’s novels,” Hudson said. “I’m particularly interested in the influence Ed Ricketts had on him.”

  The woman nodded slightly. “That’s been covered in great detail,” she said. “Is there anything more to say?”

  Hudson was taken aback. He hadn’t expected to have his work questioned by this woman who looked more like somebody’s grandmother than an academic. But, he reminded himself, she might yet have some useful information. “You’re right,” he said calmly. “There has been a lot written about their relationship. But, as I’m sure you know, there’s always something new to say.” He smiled at her warmly, hoping to disarm her.

  “I doubt it,” she said firmly. “But you can ask me what you like.”

  Hudson opened his briefcase and took out a pad and pen. Clearly, he had read Eleanor Mintz incorrectly. Your honor, I’d like permission to treat Mrs. Mintz as a hostile witness, he thought as he decided on his first question. He could see that the woman would not suffer foolishness, and he didn’t want to give her reason to send him packing.

  “Can you tell me what your relationship to John Steinbeck was?” he asked, feeling like the opposing attorney in a courtroom drama.

  “I was his assistant of sorts after he returned to Pacific Grove in 1948,” said Eleanor. “He was researching what would come to be East of Eden. I was working at The Californian as a copygirl at the time. One day he came in looking for some back issues of the paper, and I was assigned to help him. I guess he took to me, and he asked if I would like to work for him on a part-time basis.”

  Hudson, very much familiar with the writing of East of Eden, knew that Steinbeck had relied heavily on articles from The Californian for background information for his celebrated novel. He tried to imagine the stiff, reserved woman seated across from him handling those papers, clipping and organizing the materials for Steinbeck to look at later. Had she enjoyed it? Had she had any idea what she was helping to create? Or had it all just been, as she put it, a part-time job?

  “How long did you work for him?” he asked her.

  “Three years,” she answered instantly, offering no further information.

  Hudson wrote this down, although he would never look at the notes again. He wanted Eleanor Mintz to think he was deeply interested in the details of her employment. When he looked at her face, however, he saw that she was as uninterested in them as he was. To her they were dry facts, presented to him like biscuits on a plate.

  “Did you do anything besides help him with research?” he inquired, hoping for any little thing that would take their conversation in a new, more fertile, direction.

  “I organized,” said Eleanor. “I was a very good organizer.”

  Looking around the dust-free room, not a thing out of place, Hudson had no doubt that this was true. Most of the things in Eleanor Mintz’s house, he imagined, had not moved from their positions in half a century or more. He was beginning to wonder if perhaps somewhere she had the stuffed body of the man in the portrait, still dressed in his black suit, his moustache waxed and combed.

  “He was very careless with his manuscripts,” Eleanor said, surprising him. She sounded exasperated, as if she were speaking about a particularly untidy child. “He could never remember where he’d put them,” she said.

  “And you kept them organized?” asked Hudson.

  She nodded. “I always put them each in their own box,” she said proudly. “If it weren’t for me, they would probably have just disappeared.”

  Good for you, Hudson thought. Truthfully, if it wasn’t for people like Eleanor Mintz, things like original manuscripts and letters really would most likely end up in landfills. It was a peculiar trait of authors that they seemed to be determined to throw away things that people might be interested in later. They put every outfit Liberace ever wore in a museum, he thought, but no one knows where the manuscript for Anna Karenina is.

  “Do you know if Steinbeck worked on any novels during that time that he never published?” he asked casually.

  Eleanor shook her head. “He published nearly everything he ever started,” she said. “I can think of only a handful of times that he began a project and abandoned it, and even then it was usually after only a few pages had been written.”

  It was time, Hudson decided, to ask the question he’d been waiting to ask of someone who might have the answer. Eleanor Mintz, this tight-lipped librarian of a woman, was not the person he had envisioned would hold the key to solving the mystery, but she seemed to be his best chance. He hesitated only a moment before asking, “Did you ever see a manuscript for a novel called Changing Tides?”

  “Steinbeck never published a book by that name,” she said.

  “This would be an unpublished manuscript,” said Hudson.

  Eleanor shook her head. “As I said, he wrote nothing that wasn’t eventually published.”

  “You’re certain?” Hudson said.

  “I would remember that,” said Eleanor, as if he’d suggested that her faculties might not be intact. “I thought you were researching the influence of Ricketts on Steinbeck’s work,” she continued.

  She’s being defensive, Hudson thought. She’s upset that I asked her the question. He glanced at Eleanor Mintz and saw that her hands were tightly clutched in her lap. She’s afraid, Hudson realized.

  “I am researching their relationship,” Hudson said, choosing the last word deliberately. “I think this manuscript, the one I mentioned, might be something Steinbeck worked on shortly after Ricketts’s death.”

  “No,” said Eleanor. “Nothing by that name exists.”

  “I’ve read the manuscript,” Hudson said. He opened his briefcase and removed the copy of the manuscript. He held it up so she could see it but did not hand it to her.

  Eleanor looked at the papers. “That’s not possible,” she said. “I ...”

  Hudson waited, holding his breath. Eleanor Mintz seemed suddenly shaken, as if some powerful force had swept through her ordered house and rearranged the rooms. Her hands moved like dying fish in her lap, and her eyes looked at something far away. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said faintly. “I don’t feel well.”

  She stood up, putting her hand on the back of the chair. Hudson returned the papers to his briefcase. When he clicked it shut, he saw the old woman start, as if he’d fired a shot at her. He stood and faced her. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “If you do think of anything else, I would appreciate it if you would call me.”

  “Of course,” Eleanor said. She didn’t offer to show him out, so Hudson walked alone to the door and opened it. He gave one final look back. Eleanor hadn’t moved from her spot by the chair. She was as still and stiff as a clock or a vase, as if she were waiting for someone to come along and dust her.

  Hudson shut the door and went down the path to the sidewalk. The windows of the house, empty and dark, watched him as he walked to his car. He got in and started the engine. Was Eleanor Mintz on the phone with Helen Guerneyser? he wondered. Or with Edgar Macready? Were all of them guarding a secret they found too awful to even comprehend? No, not Helen, he thought. Helen wasn’t hiding anything. But the others, they were. Either that or they didn’t want to accept what they suspected—or knew—to be true. Either way, they were going to be of no help to him.

  He put the car into gear and pulled away from the house. As he drove, he worried that he hadn’t handled Eleanor Mintz in the right way. Perhaps if he’d taken his time, he could have gotten her to open up. No way, he reassured himself. That woman is shut tighter than George Bush’s sphincter. She wouldn’t have talked about the manuscript if he’d spent a year with her.

  It’s still possible she doesn’t know anything about it, said his other voice, the one that most often made him feel like he should just give up on his search. Maybe you just don’t want to admit it.

  He shook his head. He wasn’t wrong. He’d seen the way Eleanor Mintz had reacted to seeing the copy of the manuscript. Why would she do that if she wasn’t afraid of it? And why would she be afraid of it if she didn’t know that it was more than just an unfinished story? She knows it’s about them, he told his inner critic.

  But you still don’t have proof. This time the voice was Paul’s. It wasn’t accusatory, just sad. He sounded tired, as if whatever force kept him alive in Hudson’s mind was growing weaker and weaker, as if he might soon flicker out altogether.

  “I don’t know that there’s proof!” Hudson cried.

  He looked in the rearview mirror, and for a moment he saw Paul’s face looking back at him. The eyes were dull, dead, the mouth slack and the skin ashen. Hudson felt his heart cease beating. The blare of a car horn jumped it to life again, and he swerved just in time to avoid a collision with an SUV. When he looked in the mirror again, he saw only his own face.

  “What are you doing?” he asked himself.

  Ahead of him was a turnoff. He took it, pulling the car onto a narrow strip of sand that served as a makeshift parking lot for tourists wanting a view of the ocean. He turned the engine off, grabbed the briefcase from the seat beside him, and opened it. He took up the manuscript and got out of the car, taking it with him.