The 'Geisters Read Online Free Page A

interviewed.
    So they sat down to a meal of lamb and collard that Ann and Michael had prepared together, with a bottle of Rickhardt’s cab franc, and as the sunlight climbed the bricks of Michael’s east wall, Ian genially put Ann through her paces.
    “You are an orphan?” he asked as he poured wine into their glasses.
    Deep breath: “My parents died when I was fourteen.”
    “Car accident, I understand.”
    “Yes. I was very lucky. But my mother and father didn’t survive.”
    Rickhardt made a sympathetic noise as he sat back down. He gave her a look that said,
Go on. . . .
    “My brother—”
    “—Philip.”
    “—it was Christmas.”
    “Michael was telling me. You two were very close, I understand?”
    “I don’t think of him in the past tense. Philip survived.”
    Ian nodded. “But not whole.” He took a sip of his wine. “That’s very hard, Ann. I’m sorry. And you’ve really been on your own since then.”
    She sipped at her own wine. It
was
really very good.
    “No one’s really on their own,” she said.
    “That’s not always true,” he said. “But it’s lucky you haven’t been. And now you’ve met Michael, and that’s fine. You two are getting married.”
    Needless to say, when Rickhardt arrived, he’d demanded to see the ring Michael had bought her and Ann obliged: a two carat emerald-cut diamond, set in a smooth band of platinum. Yes, they were getting married.
    “I think marriage is good,” he went on. “Good for Michael, good for you. I wish my wife could be here. She’d like you.”
    Michael nodded.
    “What’s her name?”
    “Susan,” he said.
    “Sorry she couldn’t come,” said Ann. “I’d love to meet her.”
    Rickhardt made a small smile and sipped his wine. “You’re young,” he said. “How young?”
    Another sip of wine, all around.
    “Twenty-six,” she said.
    He nodded. “Michael’s ten years older. Practically an old man. That doesn’t bother you?”
    Michael met her eye and smiled a little, shook his head, and Ann said: “Horrifies me, actually,” and Rickhardt laughed.
    “She’s not in it for the money,” said Michael, and stage-whispered: “Don’t worry.
She’s loaded.
”
    They didn’t really talk about money after that, although Rickhardt did ask her about her job at Krenk & Partners. He knew more than a little about them; Alex Krenk himself had joined forces with him in the 1990s, on an office development in Vancouver that had gotten some attention. Rickhardt had hired Krenk on various projects off and on since. They’d been asked to bid on designs for the restaurant and retail structures at his vineyard but had fallen short.
    He told this story with clear expectation that Ann might jump in, but it was difficult. She was junior enough at the firm that she had no real knowledge about the Vancouver development; she’d helped out on some of the design for the vineyard, though, and she mentioned that. Rickhardt managed to say something nice about the bid, but facts were facts: the bid had fallen short. Ann attributed his words to a belated attempt at basic good manners.
    There had been no mistaking when he’d finished his interview with Ann. He asked her a question about the type of care Philip was getting, but he clearly wasn’t interested. Halfway through her answer, he was refilling his glass.
    She was in the middle of a sentence when he looked up, right past her, and asked Michael, “Hey, do you remember Villier?”
    Michael frowned, snapped his fingers, and said, “John Villier? From Montreal? Of course! What’s he up to?” And so they launched into a long, context-free reminiscence about a trip the three of them had taken somewhere, some time ago, involving a seaplane and a great deal of liquor.
    After Rickhardt left, they fought.
    “He’s a jerk,” Ann said. They were standing on the narrow balcony where it overlooked the reclaimed industrial lands of the city’s east end. Across the street, patrons from a café built from