The Tenderness of Thieves

by Donna Freitas

  My mother turned around up ahead. “Jane?”

  I stood, frozen, a few paces behind her. “Hmm.”

  She walked back and took my hand. “Come on. It’s going to be all right.”

  But the way she said it, her voice flat, even uncertain, said that she was nervous, too. I let my fingers weave through hers and allowed her to lead me to the front door. We didn’t even have to knock. The second our feet hit the stairs of the front porch, the door was opening.

  Dr. O’Connor was standing there. “Jane!”

  Her enthusiasm gave me some strength, I think, because I found myself bounding up the stairs and letting her fold me into a great big hug. “I’m glad to see you,” I said, realizing that the first step of this evening had already been accomplished. I was over the threshold of the O’Connors’ house, inside for the first time in months.

  “We’re so happy to see you.” She released me. To my mother, she said, “Molly, it’s wonderful to see you, too. Thank you for bringing her.”

  My mother leaned in to give Dr. O’Connor a hug. “Martha,” she said, then looked over at me. “We’re happy to be here.”

  I nodded, remembering the other part of the evening. I couldn’t manage to say I was happy about it, so I didn’t.

  “Come in, come in,” Dr. O’Connor said, sweeping us toward the kitchen. “Sam’s setting the table on the screened-in porch. We figured that since there was a nice breeze coming off the waterfront tonight, we could eat alfresco.”

  My mother followed after her. “That sounds lovely.”

  “We’re just going to grill some fish,” she went on, disappearing around the corner.

  I paused next to the grand staircase that led to the second floor, studying the steps, noticing that the rug was gone. Pulled up. The sound of my father’s shoes heavy against the steps—thump, thump, thump—was suddenly loud in my mind, like someone had turned up the volume in my memory. I grabbed the banister, trying to stave off the dizziness that came with all that noise.

  My mother turned back. “Jane? Are you all right?”

  I breathed deep, in and out. “I’m coming.”

  I took one more look at the stairs, this time prepared for the memory, then tore myself away from the banister and headed into the kitchen, wondering if these flashes were going to happen all night.

  Dr. O’Connor was pouring my mother a glass of white wine. “Jane, would you like some soda? Lemonade? Seltzer?” Her tone was extra cheery. Maybe everyone was nervous about tonight.

  “Lemonade, please,” I said, taking a look around and realizing that something was different. The white cabinets were the same, the wooden island in the center of everything was still there, the floors were still the same old oak slats, little round knots dotted here and there.

  “Sam will be happy,” she said, opening the fridge. “He made it fresh today. He knows you like it.” She poured the lemonade into a tall glass.

  I took it from her. “Thanks.” It was the light that had changed. The sun was streaming in over everything, unaffected by the stained glass that used to be set into the walls. “What happened to the windows?” I asked, before I could think better of it.

  Dr. O’Connor’s expression faltered. “Oh. Well. You know, the break-in.”

  My breath was released in a whoosh, like something had sucked it from my lungs.

  “So, Martha,” my mother started to say, wineglass in hand, shifting the subject. “Have you been down to the beach lately? I haven’t seen you.”

  Just then Professor O’Connor peeked his head inside the screen door from the backyard. “Jane! So glad you’re here. Come on outside and help me by the grill. I’ve got a nice surprise for you.”

  “What kind of surprise?” I crossed the kitchen, and he gave me a little side hug, patting my shoulder before releasing me. Tears prickled behind my eyes. Any sort of fatherly gesture seemed to do that to me now. He loped across the grass toward the patio, his strides long and sure, while I followed after him.

  “You’ll just have to see for yourself,” he said.

  We turned the corner. There was someone else there.

  He looked up.

  I halted. “Miles?”

  Miles smiled sheepishly. “Hi, Jane.”

  “Um, what are you doing here?”

  “My fault. It’s my fault,” said Professor O’Connor, putting his hand over his heart like he might be swearing the truth. “I know Miles’s dad, and when I found out you two were friends, I thought you might like having someone else here your own age.”

  I was nodding, trying to agree. “It was nice of you to invite him,” I said.

  “So I did all right?” Professor O’Connor sounded so hopeful. So concerned. So genuine in his effort to make things as comfortable as possible.

  “Yes,” I said, giving him my best smile.

  Miles’s face lit up at this.

  Professor O’Connor turned around to tend to the grill, and I gave Miles an annoyed look and shook my head. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. “Let me help you,” I said, approaching Professor O’Connor at the grill. I picked up a spatula and peeked underneath the edge of the fish. Striped bass, fresh from the wharf, I was certain.

  Miles joined us. “I could use a lesson in cooking up the local catch.”

  This inspired Professor O’Connor to launch into a detailed explanation of how to pick out the freshest fish—look for the glassiest eyes at the market—how to salt it, among other step-by-step advice, while I looked on. As I listened to their exchange, I wondered if maybe Miles’s presence would be a good distraction from the conversation turning to other things. Maybe he would save me from having to go upstairs and relive the worst night of my life.

  But then, after Miles was directed inside to retrieve a platter from the kitchen, Professor O’Connor turned to me and said, “I think it’s great that you’re here, Jane. I know this is hard, but it will be good if you can remember something. And good to get it over with, too. We’ve missed you.”

  I just nodded. Apparently, no distraction would be big enough.

  • • •

  “Are you really sure about that guy?” Miles asked after the plates had been cleared and my mother, Professor O’Connor, and Dr. O’Connor had retreated to the patio for another glass of wine in the cool evening air. Miles and I were in the kitchen, rinsing off the dishes.

  “And again,” I said, watching the sink bubble up with suds. I turned off the faucet. “By ‘that guy,’ you mean Handel? My boyfriend?” Calling Handel my boyfriend out loud was a thrill. It made me feel brazen.

  Miles sighed. “Yes.”

  “What would I have to be unsure about?” I handed Miles a dish to dry.

  “I heard that his friends—” Miles paused, absently wiping the dish with a towel. He set it down on the stack of already dry plates. “Well, that they’re not such good guys.”

  I handed him a bowl, still dripping with water. “That doesn’t mean anything for Handel.”

  Miles’s expression was skeptical. “But doesn’t it?”

  “Handel is good to me.” I stared into the sink. I was so tired all of a sudden, and there was so much left to clean. I should have listened to the O’Connors and left it for them to do tomorrow. But I’d insisted. “That’s all that matters.”

  Miles set the bowl on the counter. “His family has quite a reputation.”

  I walked to the other side of the kitchen island, away from the remaining mess. I was shaking my head, frustrated with Miles’s line of questioning. I placed my hand on the woodblock to steady myself. “You’re not my mother.”

  Miles followed after me, reached out and placed his hand over mine. “I’m not trying to be. I don’t want to be.”

  I slipped it out from under his. Turned my back to him. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he as
ked.

  I crossed my arms. “That I can’t give you what you want.” I shifted uncomfortably. Turned my attention from Miles to the tall cabinets, the fridge, the blue-checked pot holder hanging on the wall. Everything looked so new. “I’m taken. That’s not going to change anytime soon.”

  Miles shrugged. A bit of the gleam I was used to seeing in his eyes made an appearance, but his face remained serious. “You never know,” he said. “It might.”

  Anger flared inside me. “I think I know better than you.”

  Miles’s mouth was set into a straight line. “I don’t trust that guy, Jane.”

  “Well, I do,” I said.

  “I can see that.”

  The way Miles looked at me in that moment was so intense, so much that I wondered if he knew something I didn’t. Before I could ask, the O’Connors and my mother came into the kitchen.

  It was time for me to go upstairs and do what I came to do.

  • • •

  “I want to go alone,” I said.

  Before anyone could protest, I walked away, left the kitchen and went to the grand staircase that led up to the professor’s library. I felt like a ghost moving through the rooms, hovering over the floor but not quite touching it, thin enough to pass through walls if I wanted to. I slipped off my flip-flops before going up the stairs, not wanting to make a sound, my bare feet against wooden slats slippery with the humidity of summer. There was a sharp creak, and I stopped.

  “Jane?” My mother sounded so nervous. So worried.

  Everyone gathered on the first floor in the foyer. They looked up at me. All anxious eyes.

  “Let me do this,” I said, and continued to the next stair and the next, until I’d reached the second-floor landing. I could already see into the library, the door ajar, a tiny sliver of light shining through it from the sun that was still high in the evening sky. I took another few steps, put my hand on the door, and gently pushed it open, the slow groan of it swinging wide the only sound other than my breath.

  I closed my eyes to stop the next image.

  The air was tingly with anticipation. I almost felt like I was tiptoeing through a fairy wood and not the professor’s house, barefoot, exploring and peering about like there might be magic around the corner and not memories of horror and death.

  I took another breath.

  Opened my eyes again.

  And the image I knew was coming, the inevitable one, well, there it was.

  My father.

  His body on the floor. Mangled and bloody.

  I gasped. Shut my eyes to it.

  “Jane?” My mother called up. “You don’t have to do this by yourself.”

  “I’m okay,” I called back.

  But was I?

  I tried to breathe. Gripped the wood around the doorway for support.

  “There is nothing here that can hurt me now,” I whispered, trying to reassure myself, trying to will my eyes to see. There was no one here but me, and a whole crowd of people who cared about me just downstairs. No robbers. No bad men.

  But then, did those men, those boys, need to be here to hurt me? Hadn’t they changed my life in a way that left me with a hurt that would last for all my days no matter where I was or what I was doing? An IV of hurt that fell into me, drop by drop, continuously?

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  The O’Connors thought coming here not only might help my memory but might be healing. It might help me sort through what happened and begin to move on.

  “Okay, Jane,” I said, and forced my eyes open. “You can do this.”

  Suddenly the events of that night in February and today mingled like two movie reels laid on top of each other and played at once, projected together onto the scene in front of me.

  Everything was the same here and yet it was different.

  There was my stack of books by the reading nook, piled high, like no one had ever touched them. Like no one had come in and brutally knocked them to the ground. The cushions were propped and inviting someone to sit, to gaze outside the wood-paned windows out toward the wharf. The professor’s desk was righted again, scattered with papers and work and use. The shelves were packed with papers like always.

  But the lamps were different. The vases were different. The little glass sculpture of two fish, intertwined, playful in the surf was gone. Gone, too, was the great crystal bowl the professor used to have on his desk, where he’d kept pennies and keys and other loose paraphernalia.

  Then I noticed the spot on the floor. If I hadn’t known where to look, if it hadn’t been the last place I’d seen my father’s body, I wouldn’t have realized. The boards had been sanded down and re-stained to match the rich brown color of the rest. I could barely make out the faint outline of the work, but when I focused on that place, when I allowed the memory of my lifeless father to emerge from where I kept it buried, it floated up to the surface of my mind like a buoy, and his outline became as stark as police tape around a body. Whoever had restored this room had done their work well, and had almost erased the terrible memory from this house. But only almost.

  It’s strange, I thought now, how houses have memories just like people do. I wondered if this house was ready to share its memories with me.

  I went and sat in the nook. In the same position as that night when they came for me. Feet curled up, book in my lap, my head bent over the words.

  I waited for those movie reels to merge with each other.

  I waited for the reel from that night to take precedence.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  The images came at me in great flashes. Everything was blurry, though, messy and out of order. The voices and the crashing, so much noise. The arm around my neck, the male body pressed against my back, taut and strong, the knife at my throat, the knife slicing across my skin. The second male body, new voices, so many male voices all at once amid the destruction. The surprise, the terrible surprise of the intruders at finding the house occupied.

  Good girl. Good girl. Be a good girl.

  This said to me so many times and by two different people.

  My father’s footsteps, his voice saying Jane and my voice saying Daddy as though from another girl who wasn’t me.

  But something else was niggling at my brain, trying to push its way up like an animal in the sea, trying to swim to the surface of my mind and fill all my senses, a memory, a new one, wanting air. Wanting me to help it rise, to remember it, to see it for what it was.

  A smell. Faint. Ugly.

  Sweet and rot. Sweet and rotten. Rotting.

  It returned to me, filling the space around me, wanting to enter my lungs, and I nearly had it, it was so close, I was so close—

  “Jane!” my mother said from the doorway, rushing in.

  The spell was broken.

  The scent, the memory of it faded away.

  Retracted itself from my senses.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer,” she said. “Are you all right? Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  I looked at her standing there, the dust in the air illuminated by the last rays of daylight. It gave her a strange halo, as though she were an angel.

  I raised my head. “I’m okay.” Swung my feet down to the floor. Tried not to be frustrated that my mother interrupted when I’d gotten so close to something, a new detail. A possible lead. Or something. “I really am.” I stood. “But I didn’t remember anything new.” I sighed. “Not really.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, pulling me into the halo with her arms. “One step at a time.”

  “I guess so,” I said, trying to be proud of myself for taking this first step of coming here, wondering what I missed with that memory, my mind a fishing pole reaching down into its depths, trying to hook it and pull it up, but unable to find it. “Do you think we could go ho
me? I’m tired.”

  “Of course we can. Of course. We’ll go right now.”

  I followed her out of the room and back downstairs, once again a girl ghost floating just above the ground, a little numb, the air tingling with something more like relief this time instead of anticipation. The memory would come when it was ready, all of it, bright and clear as the ocean on a calm summer’s day. I told myself this as my mother and I said our good-byes, as we made our way out the door and the last rays of sun disappeared from the sky.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT Miles was there?” I said to the girls.

  We were sitting on the seawall by the beach during the late afternoon. Legs dangling over the edge of it on the ocean side, barefoot. Bikini tops and jean shorts. People watching and neighbor watching and boy watching, of course.

  “Miles must really like you,” Bridget said.

  Tammy snorted. “Or be totally stupid since he knows you’re with Handel.”

  “I think he means well,” I said, surprised to be defending him. But there was always something so sincere in Miles’s eyes when he spoke to me. “Maybe if Handel wasn’t in the picture, Miles and I would’ve gone out.” This statement surprised me even more than the one before, though it was probably true.

  “You’ve got to give the boy credit,” Michaela said, twirling a lock of her long dark hair around her finger and then letting it go. “He’s obviously not giving up, and he’s a nice guy who’s going places. Probably the same college-type places as you,” she added, though her words were drowned out by the sizzle and crackle of fireworks.

  The Fourth of July was tomorrow, and some members of the town were already setting off firecrackers, planting Roman candles in the sand before running away to watch the show. The snaps the children were crushing underfoot on the sidewalk provided a steady stream of pops amid the occasional loud boom.

  I leaned forward to look past Bridget’s place on the wall. “Well, he certainly doesn’t think Handel and I are going to last,” I answered Michaela.