Excerpt Three

East of Niece
Chapter Three

By Randye Lordon

I decided not to wait for an invitation and instead joined them at the door, which was still wide open.

"Vickie," I said halfway to the door. "Is everything all right?"

Before she could get a word out, the man behind her said, "I was just explaining to Miss Bradshaw that I need to speak with her boyfriend..."

"And you are?"

"The name is Porter. Eugene Porter. I work with the American embassy. And you are?"

"I'm Vickie's aunt. Is everything all right?" I asked in one breath as I stepped beside her and put my hand on her shoulder.

His face, not an unattractive grouping of parts, was unreadable. However, I assumed it didn't bode well that a government representative had taken the time to come see Gavin without having called first. Unless, of course, that was what life overseas was like -- diplomats just dropping in every now and then to keep their community intact.

He offered a stiff smile, which he quickly recanted, "As I was explaining to Miss Bradshaw, I'm not at liberty to discuss my business with anyone other than Mr. Mason or an immediate member of his family. Protocol is such that -- "

"I am!" Vickie exclaimed, interrupting him.

"I beg your pardon?" Mr. Porter focused his green eyes on Vickie with the patient indulgence of a man accustomed to smiling without ever really listening.

"I am an immediate family member. Gavin's my husband. Is he all right?"

"Husband?" I couldn't help it. My surprise was so great, it ejected the word right out of my mouth. This, of course, made Mr. Porter squint from Vickie to me and back again.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly, his gaze finally coming to rest on Vickie's pretty face. "As I understood it, you and Mr. Mason live together -- "

"Wait a minute." Vickie turned and ran into the back end of the apartment, returning several seconds later with a fistful of papers. "Here," she said as she shoved the pages at Mr. Porter. "We were married last week," she said, avoiding eye contact with me.

He pulled a pair of reading glasses from his inside pocket, read the pages carefully, and took a deep breath. "May I come in?" he asked softly.

After Leslie joined us in the courtyard, Mr. Eugene Porter explained that there had been a terrible accident.

"Gavin!" Vickie's hands shot up to her chest as if in spasm.

"No, no, not Gavin," he quickly tried to reassure her. His voice was gentle and calm, and I wondered how one masters that sort of distanced yet comforting tone. "However, his parents -- "

"Oh my God. Are they all right?" Vickie gathered the fabric of her shirt into her fists.

Eugene Porter scraped his bottom teeth against his upper lip and glanced at me. "I'm afraid not, Miss -- Mrs. Mason. The Masons were involved in a car accident this afternoon." He paused as she stared uncomprehendingly into his warm eyes. "I am terribly sorry to inform you that neither of them survived."

"What?" She practically whispered. "A car accident where? How?" Vickie was shaking, and both Porter and I suggested she sit. Leslie, who had joined us moments before, went to get tissues.

"It was on the Moyenne Corniche, just east of Nice. Apparently, they were coming from Monaco, where they were staying."

Leslie returned just as he said this. Our eyes were like steel and a magnet. It was, we knew, the accident we had seen en route to Menton. The accident we had talked about with the kind of lightheartedness that comes only from fear. I knew that she was reliving our brush with their death as vividly as I was.

"If it's any consolation, they didn't suffer." His face reflected a man who was absolutely certain of what he was saying. I, however, firmly believe that anyone who makes a statement like that is full of beans. How could he know if the Masons had or had not suffered? I imagined that the last several moments of their lives had felt like an eternity and that in that time those two people suffered tremendously. Furthermore, I saw the scene. The Masons had to have known that they were about to hit the guardrail, which meant that they had enough time to panic, to know that their lives were about to end, or certainly life as they had known it.

"Oh my God," Vickie whispered as she brought her hands to her mouth and looked down at her feet. "I can't believe this. I talked to them just last night; they were so excited about this trip. I knew they had to be late for a reason. What am I going to tell Gavin?" she asked me directly.

"You should know that we are here to help you in any way we can. I know how difficult this is, but you are not alone." Porter leaned forward as he spoke, his eyes filled with what looked like genuine concern for the stranger who sat shaking before him. He graced me with a pained smile, one that implied an intimacy between us, one that can happen only when strangers are brought together in catastrophe.

"We passed the accident coming in from Nice," I said.

"You did?" Porter and Vickie said simultaneously. Mr. Porter shook his head and added, "Dreadful."

"Yes, it was." Though I was looking at Vickie, all I could see was the accident. I turned to Porter. "That accident was hours ago. May I ask why you waited until now to contact the family?"

He flushed ever so slightly and cleared his throat. "Given the location of the accident, recovery took longer than you might expect."

"And the Masons have been positively identified?" I asked, knowing that it is usually family members or friends who, for legal reasons, need to ID bodies.

"Yes. They were both carrying their passports. There was no mistaking them."

I nodded and mumbled, "I don't recall seeing any ski marks."

Vickie shook her head. "What does that mean?"

"Skid marks would mean that they tried to stop," Leslie explained.

I asked Vickie, "Honey, do you know if Mr. Mason had a heart condition?"

"No. He didn't. I mean, not that I know of. From what I understand, he was in great shape. But that doesn't mean anything, does it?"

Porter stayed another thirty minutes, waiting for Gavin and answering our question as best as he could. As far as an investigation was concerned, he assured us that whenever an American citizen dies abroad, there is an inquiry. "Undoubtedly, the Monaco police will take the greatest care. However" -- he paused and then continued as gently as a mother soothing a scraped knee -- "your aunt may be right; he might have had a seizure of some sort. Although I'm inclined to believe that, in all likelihood, the Masons didn't understand these roads, were going faster than they should have, and lost control of the car. It happens." The diplomat offered another one of his ersatz smiles. Within moments, he excused himself and was gone, leaving his card should we need him.

After Porter left, the enormous question loomed silently over all of us: Where the hell was Gavin? I knew that if he were my boyf -- husband (it was impossible to think that Vickie had actually gotten married without having told any of us) -- I would have been besides myself at that very moment, filled with both fear and anger. Vickie was amazingly self-controlled. Almost too controlled.

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