Shades of Simon Gray

by Joyce McDonald

  Liz had been so excited by this unexpected find that she’d spent the following Saturday gravitating back and forth between the county library and the historical society looking for other errors in the account of the execution. But so far that was all she had to go on. That, and Lucinda Alderman’s journal, which she had yet to finish reading.

  Somehow she couldn’t imagine Mrs. Rosen being impressed by something so insignificant as a discrepancy in a date. Still, if that much was questionable, Liz wondered, what other facts might have gotten changed or distorted over thousands of verbal retellings?

  Liz ran her fingers through Pandora’s soft fur as she swallowed the last of her coffee. Given the sticky weather, iced tea would have made more sense. But she was afraid tea wouldn’t pack enough of a caffeine jolt to keep her awake. The heat in the room didn’t help. It made her drowsy.

  She got up, pulled the oscillating fan from her closet, set it on the desk near the window, and plugged it in. For a few minutes she stood in front of the fan, letting the cool air chill her sweating skin. Then she reached for her backpack and pulled out Lucinda Alderman’s journal.

  She flopped on her bed, stomach down, and had begun to flip through the pages when a sudden motion caught her attention. Across the room a large black feather danced recklessly in front of the fan, finally coming to rest on the page of her open book. Liz stared at the feather, then glanced up at the window. The screen was down. She looked at the sleeping Pandora.

  Pandora opened one eye, stretched, and rested her chin on her paws. If she was the guilty party, she didn’t look the least bit contrite. But it was unlikely the cat would have gone after any of the crows. Liz had watched her hide under the front porch whenever the birds took over the trees in her yard. They were, after all, as big as Pandora.

  Liz blew the feather from the page and went back to looking for entries made in 1798. Unfortunately, Lucinda wasn’t consistent with her entries. Some had dates, others did not. As she read through the pages Liz discovered that Lucinda was the wife of a farmer, Joseph Alderman, and the mother of their four children. From what Liz could tell, the woman was not much older than twenty-five at the time she began the journal.

  In between sipping two more cups of coffee and scarfing down half a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, Liz skimmed through boring accounts of Lucinda’s daily chores, household records, and descriptions of her children’s antics. About a third of the way through the journal, when Liz was just about to pack it in and begin writing her paper on the only discrepancy she had—the date of the execution—she stumbled upon Jessup Wildemere’s name.

  My husband, Joseph, has brought home a most comely and well educated young man who goes by the name of Jessup Wildemere, and who hails from New York. He tells us his father’s estate is on the Hudson and that he is going to Philadelphia to seek his fortune. My Joseph has enlisted the young man’s help this spring. We have welcomed Master Jessup into our home as he is in need of employment if he is to continue his journey south.

  Liz stared at the page. Comely? Well educated? Young? This was not at all how she had imagined Jessup Wildemere, the filthy, murderous drifter of legend. Surely there was a mix-up somewhere. Surely Lucinda Alderman wasn’t talking about the same man?

  Pandora hopped on the bed and curled into a furry ball on Liz’s back. Liz glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It was two in the morning. Maybe she was hallucinating? Maybe she was half asleep and dreaming. She rolled over—sending Pandora sliding—and looked up at the ceiling light. The glare hurt her eyes. No, she was definitely awake.

  Liz’s heart had begun to race, and not just from the sugar and caffeine. She couldn’t believe her luck. Just when she had all but given up, here it was, the very thing she had been searching for. Lucinda Alderman’s account showed more than just a little discrepancy in the character of Jessup Wildemere as he appeared in local stories.

  No matter how long it took her to wade through Lucinda’s tedious prose and barely legible handwriting, Liz was determined to stick with it. Somewhere in this long-forgotten piece of domestic scribbling there had to be some mention of Cornelius Dobbler’s murder and the subsequent execution of Jessup Wildemere. Liz was counting on it.

  The call came just before dawn on Friday. Devin heard the phone but rolled over to face the basement wall. Her mother would answer it. There was a phone by her parents’ bed. Still, Devin found herself listening for her mother’s footsteps overhead. In her heart she knew this call was about her grandmother.

  The basement door squeaked open. The light came on and Devin heard someone coming down the steps. A moment later her mother’s shadow stretched across the room. She gave Devin a gentle shake and signaled her to follow.

  They stood in the middle of the kitchen, Devin in a T-shirt and bikini briefs, her mother in a summer nightgown with tiny yellow roses. They kept their voices low so as not to wake the others.

  “That was the hospital,” her mother said. She reached over to brush Devin’s tangled hair away from her face. “I need you to watch the kids. You can call Mrs. Needham after seven and ask if she’d mind coming over to stay with your granddad so the rest of you can go to school. And ask her if she’d mind taking care of the kids when they get home this afternoon.” Mrs. Needham, a retired beautician who lived across the street with her eldest son, Vincent, sometimes baby-sat for the McCaffertys in emergencies. Devin had a sinking feeling that this was going to be one of those emergencies.

  She began to shiver. She felt cold all over, although it was suffocatingly warm in the small house. How could her mother even think of sending her to school when Gram was so sick? “What did they say? Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’s in a coma. Dr. Chu said Gram had a number of small seizures last night shortly before it happened.”

  “Dad …,” Devin said, her voice trailing off like a stifled sob. Darrell McCafferty was on the road, hauling a truckload of hair spray, cartons and cartons of it, to a distribution center in Newark. Devin squinted at the clock on the stove. Right about now her father was probably sleeping at a rest stop somewhere on I-80 outside of Chicago.

  “I know,” her mother said.

  She knew her mother was thinking the same thing. Her father’s mother might be dying, and he was on the road somewhere. At the moment he had no idea of what was going on back in Bellehaven. “I want to go with you,” she told her mother.

  “Devin, I need you to be here right now. There’s no one else to watch the kids and Granddad. I don’t want to call Mrs. Needham this early.” She could hear the unspoken “I’m sorry” in her mother’s voice.

  “What if she’s dying, Mom?” Tears trembled on Devin’s eyelashes. “I want to be there with her.”

  Mrs. McCafferty circled her arms around her daughter. “Honey, your gram’s one tough lady. She’s not going to give up without a fight.” She leaned back and smiled. “And neither are we.”

  Devin showed up at the hospital less than a half hour after Mrs. Needham arrived. If her mother was angry about her cutting school, she never said a word. She only nodded, then left Devin alone with her grandmother for her ten-minute visit while she went down to the cafeteria for coffee.

  Standing beside her grandmother’s bed, watching the lines blip across the monitor, Devin thought of Simon, a few doors down. Her grandmother was still able to breathe on her own and so, unlike Simon, didn’t have a respirator. But the curtain was drawn over the window and another curtain covered the glass wall, shutting out the glare of the fluorescent lights in the main room of the ICU, just as they did in Simon’s room. One of the nurses had explained to her that the purpose of keeping the room dim was so the light wouldn’t damage her grandmother’s eyes if she suddenly came out of the coma after a long period.

  When Devin’s ten minutes were up, she left her grandmother’s room and, since no one was watching her, slipped into Simon’s. He was still pale, but the swelling in his lips had gone down. The fading bruises had a faint yellowish cast.


  She took his limp hand in hers. She wondered if people in comas were in an actual place, a kind of limbo in a different dimension. Maybe it was childish, but she liked to think her grandmother and Simon were together, and that maybe they would help each other find their way back.

  Anyone walking down Main Street in Bellehaven late that afternoon would have thought they had stumbled upon a ghost town. Not a single person ventured onto the streets. All was still, except for a few scraps of discarded paper and dead leaves, caught in a playful breeze, shuffling back and forth over sidewalks sticky with bird droppings from the crows. A few of the shops along Main Street sported Closed signs on their doors, although with several news crews and the team from NIH in town, most of the merchants were willing to keep their stores open, West Nile virus or no West Nile virus.

  This was how Main Street appeared when Devin, on her way back to town from the bus stop, decided to pass right by the turnoff that led to her street and keep on going. She was acutely aware of the sound of her footsteps as she walked past the shops, past Chrissie’s Deli, Garden Creations, Flynn’s Liquors, and the Auto Spa, and past the scattered antiques and craft shops with names like The Country Goose, where her mother worked part-time. She crossed at the only intersection in town that had a traffic light, although no cars were in sight, and kept on going until the shops became a few small houses, their front porches only inches from the sidewalk. Ahead was the bridge that connected New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

  When she was almost to the guardhouse by the bridge, she changed course and headed down a dirt road. A heavy metal chain stretched across the entrance to the road. A sign warned No Trespassing. But Devin knew this was the quickest way to get down to the river, and that was where she was headed.

  Her mother had decided to stay on at the hospital until visiting hours were over, even though she could only visit her mother-in-law for ten minutes each hour. Devin knew she should go straight home and help Mrs. Needham cook dinner for the kids, knew she was being horribly selfish. But so much weighed on her right now, and she had a splitting headache. The pressure pounded on the inside of her skull. The thought of being trapped in a house full of screaming kids was worse than some medieval torture. She needed to be alone.

  For the next hour she sat on a large flat rock by the river’s edge, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the birds. Every so often she opened her eyes and shaded them with her hand to watch goldfinches dart overhead at top speed, somehow navigating their way through a complex tangle of tree branches while still in flight. Even the most skilled pilot could never achieve such a feat.

  Watching the birds helped to calm her. They also made her think of Simon—the time the two of them had returned from the mall where Simon had helped her pick out a CD for Kyle’s birthday. It had been early evening and they’d parked her mother’s car by the boat ramp so they could walk along the river. Something she and Kyle never did. A simple walk would have been far too passive an activity for Kyle, who preferred more challenging undertakings, productive endeavors that would score points with college admissions directors. Anything else was a waste of time.

  She and Simon had come to this place, this same rock, just in time to watch the sun begin its descent behind the trees. Less than fifty feet away stood an old black birch, its uppermost branches bare and dying. The rest of the tree still had its leaves. As the two of them watched, a flock of goldfinches landed on the bare branches. The birds spread their wings to catch the sunlight. Their bodies flickered bright yellow, like enormous fireflies, as they lifted a few feet off the branches, then settled back down. When the sun touched the top of the tree, right before it sank into the woods, the tree looked as if it were ablaze with a crown of gold.

  Sitting side by side, neither of them spoke or took their eyes from the tree, but Devin felt as if all the shimmering light from the tree had somehow transferred itself to her body.

  Now, as she stared up at the evening sky, she wasn’t in the least surprised to see that it was black with crows. They settled on the branches, leaving no room for the more timid birds. She wished the goldfinches would light up the birch tree again. But that wasn’t going to happen. Some things weren’t meant to happen twice. At least not in the same way.

  But what about people? They sometimes got second chances, didn’t they? She had no idea why she was thinking this, except that it seemed important that Simon and her grandmother have a second chance. And maybe she wanted one for herself, too, although she scarcely dared to hope.

  How did you manage that—a second chance? Did you bargain with the gods, with the supernatural forces? Make deals with the Furies? With … them? Because Devin suddenly realized she was willing to do just that—strike a bargain. She wanted to set things right again. She wanted Simon and her grandmother to have a second chance.

  She was so lost in thought, she did not notice it had begun to snow black feathers until she glanced down and saw that a small puddle of them had formed in her lap. She sighed and glared up at the crows.

  She got to her feet, brushed the feathers from her clothes, and picked them out of her hair. Then, before she left, she made a deal. She shouted up to the crows that they could darn well make themselves useful and take a message back to “them,” tell “them” she would trade her future at Cornell, or any of the schools where she had been accepted under false pretenses, for the lives of Simon and her grandmother. The crows fell silent. Devin had the eerie feeling they were actually listening. One of them lifted off a branch and flew toward the sunset.

  Devin’s laugh began as a timid giggle, then swelled to a deep gut-bursting belly laugh. She felt lighter than she’d ever imagined possible, so light she had to look down to make sure she was still wearing shoes. She brushed a few feathers from her shoulders, then headed back up the slope toward town.

  When she came through the back door a short time later, Devin found Mrs. Needham spooning out canned ravioli for Devin’s six siblings. Mrs. Needham was wearing Mr. McCafferty’s barbecue apron. Her gray hair was perfectly coifed and her fingernails manicured to within an inch of their lives. After forty-five years as a beautician you didn’t exactly go to seed overnight.

  Mrs. Needham looked up as Devin came through the door. She let the empty pan drop in the sink with a clatter and frowned at Devin as if to say, You’re too late.

  Devin felt guilty about leaving Mrs. Needham holding the bag. “I’ll take care of the dishes when everyone’s done,” she said as she headed down the hall to her room.

  The first thing she did was to sit down at her desk and begin to compose letters of regret to Cornell, Middlebury, and Lafayette. Monday she would take the bus to the community college and pick up an application. And in between she would go right on praying there was still time to undo what she had done.

  Roger Garvey poured himself a cup of coffee and sat on the corner of Debra Santino’s desk, grinning. The lieutenant couldn’t for the life of her figure out what he was so happy about. They still didn’t have any solid leads on the breach of security at Bellehaven High. Not one of Simon’s friends had revealed a single incriminating piece of evidence during her interrogation on Tuesday, although it hadn’t escaped her attention that Devin McCafferty had grown increasingly agitated and defensive before the interview was over. It could be she was hiding something. Debra planned to follow up on that, perhaps come at the girl with a different line of questioning.

  Roger was rapping his knuckles on her desk. It was nine o’clock on a Friday night and they were still at work. She’d already called home and told Steve to order pizza for him and the girls and to save a few slices for her. Roger, she knew, had a hot date. He’d been talking about it all week. So he was the last person she expected to see sitting on her desk, looking as if he’d just won the state lottery.

  “You want to hear a funny story?” he asked.

  Debra figured, what the heck, it had been a long day. She could use a good laugh. “Sure.”

  “It looks like that computer tea
cher, George McCabe, has been visiting porn sites on the school’s time.”

  Caught off guard, the lieutenant let out a throaty “Ha!” She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re kidding! So … what? You think he’s filling in his free period with a little entertainment instead of grading papers?”

  Roger ran his hand through his dark, neatly trimmed hair and took a swallow of lukewarm coffee. He had deep dimples that made him look boyish. “Actually, I think it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Really?” Debra wondered what else Roger had found on the data they had downloaded from the school server two weeks earlier.

  “Yeah. I sort of doubt he was able to log on to several sites at one time. I mean, he could, using several computers in the school lab. But what would be the point?”

  Debra shifted her gaze away from Roger and stared across the room, thinking. “So you’re saying whoever got hold of his password was using it for more than academic gain?”

  Roger was grinning again. “Okay, here’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re talking about the same kids you’ve been questioning. We could be. Or maybe there’s more than one group involved.”

  Debra rubbed her forehead as if she had a pounding headache. “You’ve lost me.”

  “The log from the server shows McCabe, or someone, was tied in to multiple sites, all porn sites, at the same time. Multiple sites show up dozens of times under his account. It looks like six, seven, sometimes even more people, were accessing different sites all at the same time, and almost always between three and five in the afternoon.” He paused and waited for the lieutenant’s reaction.

  She stared back at him, frowning.

  “I think maybe McCabe was letting them do it,” he said finally.

  “You mean he gave some of the students his password?”

  “You got it.”

  “But why?”