by Bell, David
“Then I guess it’s silly for me to ask if you want to do anything special today?” Janet asked.
“Anything special?”
“For the anniversary of Justin’s death.”
“Have I ever before?” he asked. “Have you?”
Janet shook her head. She hadn’t. Every year, she tried to treat the day like any other day. She tried to live her life, work her job, and raise her daughter.
“Then there’s your answer, I guess,” he said. “What time’s that reporter coming over?”
“I just said. Two o’clock. So, are you going to talk to her?”
He left his dirty dishes on the table. “I’ve got nothing to say to any of them,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
Chapter Two
Ashleigh sent Kevin a text: Where R U?
She waited near the swings, the sun high overhead prickling the back of her neck. It was just eight thirty and already hot enough to send sweat trickling down her back. Ashleigh scuffed her sneakers in the dirt and checked her phone.
No response yet.
Where was he?
She watched the little kids scream and play. They ran around like monkeys, their mouths open, their hair flying. They never tired or stopped. Ashleigh felt something swell in her throat, an emotion she couldn’t identify. She took a deep breath, like she needed to cry, but swallowed back against it, choking it down. She turned away. She couldn’t watch the kids anymore. They looked so vulnerable, so fragile, like little glass creatures.
This is the park, she thought. This is where it happened.
Kevin came out of the trees. She recognized his loping gait, his broad shoulders. He wore his work uniform—black pants and a goofy McDonald’s smock. He’d decided to grow his Afro out over the summer, and it made him seem even taller. Ashleigh took another deep breath, collected herself before Kevin arrived.
“Hey, girl,” he said.
“Thanks for writing back.”
“I got called in.” He pointed at his shirt. “I have to be there at ten.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Kevin shrugged, casual as could be. “I have to earn my keep.”
“Let’s get going then. These kids bug the shit out of me.”
They didn’t talk much. Ashleigh imagined that the parents on the playground—the ones who always came to watch their kids, whether they knew what had happened there twenty-five years ago or not—had noticed the two of them: a tall black boy and a short white girl, walking side by side. She’d known Kevin for three years, ever since the first day of junior high, when they’d sat next to each other in history class. At first she thought he was dumb, maybe even retarded. He was so big, so quiet. Then she noticed the jokes he cracked at the teacher’s expense, his voice so low only she could hear.
“What’s your plan?” he asked.
They came out into the neighborhood that bordered the park. It was opposite where she lived with her mom and grandfather, and a little nicer too. She supposed it was upper middle class as opposed to simply middle class. Bigger houses, nicer cars. A neighborhood where no one got laid off.
They walked past older homes with nice yards. Retirees lived there, old people who spent their days digging in their gardens and sweeping their walks. If a piece of trash ended up in the yard, they’d probably call the police.
“I don’t have one yet,” Ashleigh said.
“You usually have a plan for everything.”
“I don’t for this.”
They reached Hamilton Avenue, a major road dotted with strip malls and gas stations.
Kevin said, “So you’re just going to go up to this dude and say, ‘Hey, what do you know about my dead uncle?’ ”
“Be quiet.”
Ashleigh looked down the road. She saw the bus.
“If I go with you…” Kevin sounded uncertain. “I’m going to be late for work. I’ll get written up.”
“Then don’t go,” she said. “Make hamburgers for strangers. Forget about all those football games I went to with you.”
“Come on, Ash. My dad says if I don’t have a job this summer, he’s going to kick me out of the house.”
“And remember how I helped you proofread your history term paper? Heck, I proofread all of your papers last year.”
“You’re going to throw that back at me?”
“I’ll go alone. The guy’s probably not dangerous.”
“You know how my dad is,” Kevin said. “He’s old-school. He worked his way through college, so he thinks I need to earn my keep.”
The bus pulled up, air brakes exhaling. The diesel stank, burned Ashleigh’s eyes. When the door rattled open, she didn’t even look at Kevin. She just climbed on and dropped her coins into the slot, where they rattled like loose teeth. She moved down the aisle and took a seat, staring out the window and watching the traffic go by.
She picked up movement at the front of the bus, something in her peripheral vision.
“Hey,” the bus driver called.
It was Kevin. He ignored the driver and walked right back to Ashleigh’s seat.
She looked up into Kevin’s face. A cute face, she had to admit. Beautiful eyes. A little puppyish.
“What?” she said, trying to sound mad.
“You really want to do this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Come on, goddamn it,” someone yelled from the back of the bus.
“I have one problem,” Kevin said to her.
“What?”
“Can I borrow fifty cents?” he asked, smiling.
She reached into her pocket and handed him the coins.
Chapter Three
Janet tapped lightly on Ashleigh’s door. Nothing. Then she knocked again, using more force.
“Ash?”
The knob gave as she turned. Janet stepped into the darkened room and saw that Ashleigh was already gone, so she pushed the door open all the way. It wasn’t unusual for Ashleigh to leave the house early. Not unusual at all. She’d be with Kevin most likely, or sitting at the library thumbing through books and magazines. Kevin. Ashleigh didn’t bring him around much anymore, not since they’d moved in with Bill. But the two spent all their time together. Janet tried not to pry, tried not to be a nosy mother, but she wondered sometimes. Did her moody daughter have a boyfriend? That at least was a normal concern for a mother to have, worrying about her daughter’s dating life. The other things Janet worried about were a product of her own childhood, and they made her heart flutter…
It’s okay, she told herself. It’s okay to let her out of the house. She’s not a child—she’s fifteen. She won’t get taken and it’ll be okay.
Janet reminded herself to breathe. She’d half entertained the notion of taking Ashleigh out to lunch or shopping, something to break the usual routine and mark the importance of the day. But Ashleigh was living her life, just the way Janet wanted her to. Why burden her or anyone else?
Janet turned her attention to the things in the room. She had to give Ashleigh credit for something else—the girl knew how to keep order. No teenage mess in that room. The bed was made, the closet closed. Janet went over and opened the blinds. The light fell across a neat row of photographs on the shelf above Ashleigh’s bed. The photos were all familiar. Janet and Ashleigh at a school awards ceremony. A portrait of Janet’s mother—high school graduation?—the grandmother Ashleigh never knew. And on the end, facing the light, the last portrait of Justin ever taken, the one that ran in the newspaper and on TV during the summer he disappeared. Janet picked the photo up, ran her hand across the dust-free glass.
Janet had once asked Ashleigh why she kept a portrait of her dead uncle above her bed. The girl just shrugged.
“It’s the past,” she said. “Our past. And isn’t the past always with us?”
Janet shivered. Out of the mouths of babes…
She went to get dressed for work.
Janet had begun working at Cronin College fourteen years earlier. She’d start
ed in the mailroom just after high school, sorting packages alongside work-study college students from all over the country. Ashleigh was a year old then. Janet didn’t think she could work, raise a baby, and attend college, but she took the job at Cronin with an eye toward bigger things. She knew—knew—her daughter would go to college someday, and employees of the college received a huge tuition break. Janet even planned on getting a degree herself and had taken classes over the years as she worked her way from the mail processing center to the copy and print center to the chemistry department and finally to her current position working for the dean as office manager, overseeing a staff of five. She loved her job. She loved supporting herself and her daughter with her own work. She even enjoyed knowing that her job and salary helped her dad hold on to her childhood home.
But she didn’t love her job the day the story about Dante Rogers ran in the paper.
As soon as Janet walked into the office, she knew everyone had read about it. Nobody said anything—at least not right away. But she could tell by the looks on their faces. Her coworkers smiled at her, but they weren’t happy smiles. They were forced, toothless, the heads cocked to the side a little, the lips pressed tight. Oh, you poor thing, the smiles said. The tragedy. You were there that day…
You were supposed to be watching him…
In the break room during lunch, Madeline Hamilton, the office’s resident busybody, approached Janet, sitting down next to her and casually removing a soggy sandwich from a plastic bag. Madeline had known Janet’s mother, had landed the job in the dean’s office with Janet’s help. Janet knew Madeline’s interest wasn’t casual, and Janet even found herself happy to see the older woman cozying up next to her. She hoped someone would break the tension, pop the black balloon that seemed to be hovering over her head.
“So,” Madeline said, drawing out the O, her tiny mouth formed into a similar, circular shape. Madeline didn’t bite into her food. She raised her right hand and fussed with the pile of bright red hair on the top of her head. “Crazy day for you, huh?”
“Do you want to ask me something about the story?” Janet said.
Madeline took a bite of the sandwich and gestured with her free hand. “If you need someone to talk to…,” she said, the free hand floating in the air, a heavy, fleshy butterfly. “I’ve always thought of you as family. And I know today’s that awful anniversary. Are you going to the cemetery or anything?”
Janet shook her head. She had a Diet Coke and a bag of pretzels in front of her. She’d eaten two pretzels and barely touched the drink. “They’re interviewing me today.”
“Oh, really,” Madeline said. She wiped her mouth and set the food aside, shifting to all-business mode. “But you read that story? The one today?”
“Yes.”
“Can you believe he’s still here in Dove Point? Just living here? Among all of us?”
“Where is he supposed to go?” Janet asked.
“I’d think he’d want to live anywhere but here.”
“His parents are dead. He lived with his aunt…back then. But she’s dead, too.”
“See,” Madeline said. “No ties here. He could just pick up and move anywhere.”
“You make it sound so glamorous. He’s an ex-con. What’s he going to do? Besides, I don’t think he’s going to hurt anybody.”
“He’s already killed two people,” Madeline said. “First Justin and then your mother. She’d still be with us if not for the grief.”
Janet didn’t disagree. Her mother never recovered from her brother’s death. Diabetes-related complications, they’d written on the death certificate nearly eighteen years ago. Janet knew the truth—her mother had died of a broken heart. But Janet just couldn’t summon the same anger toward Dante Rogers that everybody else did.
“Don’t you feel sorry for him?” Janet asked. “Even a little? He looks so pathetic, so empty.”
“Sorry for him?” Madeline fanned herself with both hands. She looked like she was choking. “Sorry? For a killer? He better hope he doesn’t come my way or cross my path. I can’t be held responsible.”
Janet checked the clock. She needed to get back to her desk. The dean’s office didn’t rest in the summer, despite the shorter hours. In fact, summer brought more work. Annual reports, budgets, faculty travel arrangements. But she wasn’t ready to go back.
“Do you ever wonder?” Janet said. She knew her voice sounded dreamy, distracted. She didn’t know what she wanted to say. She didn’t know if she should even give voice to her thoughts.
“Wonder what?” Madeline asked.
“The way he maintains his innocence, even after all this time. He has no reason to. He’s already done his time.”
“Remember what was lost,” Madeline said. “Your mother never had the life she wanted because of that man. And neither did you. You’ve been without a mother for eighteen years because of that man.”
“I’ll see you later, Madeline.”
“You call me and tell me how it went when you’re finished.”
Janet left without agreeing to make the call.
But Janet didn’t go back to work. She took the back stairs down to the parking lot. She stepped out into the hot day, felt the wave of humidity wash over her. The trees just beyond the parking lot were a rich summer green and the traffic on Mason Street just off campus hummed back and forth, the steady rhythm of Dove Point’s life. When she needed a break from work, a moment alone or a moment to think, she came to the back of the building. No one else ever went there unless they were coming or going from their cars. Janet knew she could steal a quiet moment.
She noticed the man almost immediately. He stood by a parked car, watching her as she stepped outside. The man was tall and lean like a runner. He looked to be the same age as Janet, and despite the heat, he wore jeans and a long-sleeve button-down shirt. Even though about two hundred feet separated them, Janet could sense the piercing nature of his eyes. Was he a faculty member, perhaps someone newly hired she had never met? She thought of turning away, of simply stepping back inside Wilson Hall and going back to work, but something about the man’s posture and the way he held his head looked familiar to her. She had seen this man before—hadn’t she?—but not for a long time.
And then he raised his hand and made a waving gesture, beckoning her to him.
Chapter Four
The bus carried them five miles west and let them out near an abandoned shopping mall. As the bus pulled away, Ashleigh pointed and walked forward, Kevin following. Ashleigh had printed a map the night before and studied it enough so that she wouldn’t need to refer to it again. They were still on Hamilton Avenue but took the first right and headed north for a few blocks, back into a run-down neighborhood, one her grandfather would call “hillbilly.”
Kevin hadn’t said much on the ride over. He’d left her to her thoughts, one of the reasons she liked him so much. He’d heard it all before, listened to her stories and plans, patiently and without judgment. He knew what these trips meant to her—“her escapades,” he called them—and went along with her as both companion and protector.
Ashleigh found the street she wanted—Lemongrass—and turned left. The apartment complex came into sight, a series of gray buildings with little landscaping or color to break up the monotony. Even the cars in the parking lot looked dingy and old, their fenders rusting, their mufflers sagging. She stopped, and Kevin stopped beside her.
“Well?” he said.
She shrugged. Her heart rate had picked up and she felt a tingling down the length of her arms, the mixture of excitement and fear she always felt on these escapades. But it was even greater this time.
This is really it, she thought.
“We’re going to have to look at mailboxes or just knock on doors,” she said.
And hope.
“Okay,” Kevin said. “But if I’m doing all this, you need to be writing the history paper for me.”
Ashleigh didn’t move. She stayed rooted to the spot, her
feet like concrete.
“Well, boss?” Kevin said. “What do you say?”
Ashleigh had had one glimpse of this person, one fleeting look at a face on a darkened porch. Like a picked scab, she’d kept it alive and fresh, a fixed point around which the last few months of her life had revolved—the man who’d shown up one night claiming to know something about the murder of her long-dead uncle Justin. Claiming that Dante Rogers was not guilty…
She took a deep breath and shivered.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Three months earlier, the man had come to their house in the middle of the night.
Ashleigh didn’t know if the sound of his knocking had stirred her, or if her mother’s voice had brought her out of sleep. But she’d woken up. She’d gone down the stairs, wearing a long T-shirt that hung below her knees, and stood in the darkness of the hallway, listening to the muffled voices from the front porch. The night was cold. She shivered.
Her mother cried.
Most of the words her mom spoke were indistinct, coming as they were between choked, halting breaths. But Ashleigh understood the important ones. The ones she never forgot.
“Justin,” her mother said, over and over again. “Are you sure? How do I know this isn’t a joke? Tell me what you know—tell me right now.”
And when Ashleigh heard that name spoken and her mother’s pleading, she too began to cry. Her chin puckered, and hot tears fell down her face.
She saw the man through the open door.
He wore his blond hair short, almost a buzz cut. The scruff on his face tried to make a beard, and in the bright shine of the porch light, Ashleigh saw dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept well in weeks. He seemed gaunt, undernourished.
“No, no,” the man said, his voice husky. “I can’t stay. I have to go. But don’t call the police. Don’t get them involved.”
“But why?” her mom asked.
“Soon,” he said, backing away. “You’ll know it all soon. I promise.”