Smart House by Kate Wilhelm

attainable, and suddenly began to believe he could have it. Like a mountain peak,” she added, and looked from Charlie to Constance. “You know, he climbs mountains. I mean, almost obsessively.” Charlie nodded. “Sometimes I get the feeling that he’s climbing a mountain all the time, even if he’s on level ground just like the rest of us. I wouldn’t want to get in his way. He’d push anyone out of his way, and if you fell over the side, tough.”
    “Even Gary?”
    She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Gary was at the peak already, urging him on, encouraging him. He was the role model, the goal. Probably no one admired him more than Harry did.”
    “Poor Gary,” Constance murmured, when Beth lapsed into silence again. “Didn’t anyone care for him as a person?”
    Beth flushed and ducked her head, watched her spoon whip the coffee in her cup into a whirlpool. “Maddie did, of course, and I did, a long time ago. Jake cared for him.”
    The vortex in her cup spun higher and higher until it reached the rim and sloshed over the side in a torrent. She was remembering the day of Gary’s funeral. They had all gone back to Maddie’s house to find it full of people, curious people, friends, strangers, some malicious, some caring, some huddled, held together by whispers, some wanting to touch, to pat, soothe, feel. She had fled upstairs to Maddie’s tiny office where she stood with her back to the room, head bowed, both hands pressed hard against the door as if the mourners might follow and try to gain admittance.
    She stiffened at a touch on her shoulder, spun around, and found herself being gathered into the arms of Jake Kluge. He held her and stroked her hair as if she were a child, and she had been overcome by guilt, guilt at not feeling bereaved, at not suffering, at not caring; guilt that she was alive and Gary dead and maybe she was even glad he was dead; guilt because she did not know what she should be feeling and was as empty as the guests downstairs, as cold as ice. Jake murmured nonsense words and she wept, not for Gary, but for herself and the ruins of her life. The guilt doubled, redoubled, until she shoved Jake away, unable to bear his touch. He was wearing his glasses, so thick they distorted his pale eyes but did not hide the reddened eyelids. His very real grief made her more ashamed.
    She had run from him, all the way out of the house, to her car, had driven for hours. After that, when he called, she had listened to his voice on her machine and turned it off, turned him off. She had understood that he wanted to share her grief, assuage their mutual grief, and she had none, unless for the girl she had been ages ago.
    She looked up from the mess in her saucer, and now on the tabletop as well, and put her spoon down. “They’ll be wondering where I am,” she said quietly. “We should go now.”
    When they drove back to Smart House, Charlie had Beth show him where she had stopped to wait at the massive bronze gates, which were standing open now. He drove on, and waited for her to go through the motions she had gone through the day of her arrival. He looked for the camera eyes just as she had done that day, and with as much effect. They were hidden too well.
    He rang the bell then and the four clear notes of the Bellringer Company sounded. Seconds later the ornate door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped aside.
    “This is Mr. Meiklejohn and Ms. Leidl,” Beth said. “Mrs. Ramos.”
    She was a handsome, sturdily built woman, graying hair in a soft chignon, no makeup, no jewelry, not even a watch. Charlie remembered that she and her husband had been on a long-distance call from a few minutes after eleven until nearly eleven-thirty the night of the deaths. Mrs. Ramos was a new grandmother. She inclined her head fractionally. “I will show you to your room. Do you have bags? If you will please leave your car keys, we will bring up your bags and park the car in the garage. Mr. Sweetwater