by Bell, David
“Don’t go anywhere, Dad. Promise?”
He brought his hands together, intertwined the fingers and moved them around. They tangled up like knotted roots. The pressure he exerted by squeezing his fingers together looked painful and almost made Janet wince.
“What am I going to do anyway?” he said. “I couldn’t protect Justin from him back then. I couldn’t keep my wife away from him. I couldn’t protect you from…”
“From boys?”
“From a boy,” he said.
“And we have Ashleigh because of it.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve had to absorb a lot. And accept a lot. It’s not easy for me, with you moving in. I know you had to move in when I lost my job, but it’s not easy for me.” He sighed. “Just do me a favor.”
“What?”
“I know you love that Michael Bower, and I know he’s back in town. Maybe for good. Just promise me something. Promise me that if you have to be with that guy, if you love him and want to be with him, promise me he’s a better man than his father. Can you promise me that?”
“Michael’s gone, Dad. He’s gone, and I don’t think he’s ever coming back to Dove Point.”
Chapter Fifty-two
The noise brought Janet out of her shallow sleep. In her dreams, she saw the faces of Michael and Justin. But it was the noise—something faint, something distant—that woke her.
“Ashleigh?”
She thought someone had knocked on her bedroom door. She never kept the door locked, a habit left over from Ashleigh’s childhood, when Janet felt she always needed to be within reach of her daughter. Janet rose from the bed, pushing the covers away. She walked to the door and pulled it open. The darkened hallway was quiet. The entire house was still. Janet moved down the carpeted hall to the door of Ashleigh’s room. She listened outside until she heard faint, regular breathing sounds.
Had it been her dad?
No, Janet decided. He wouldn’t come to the door, knock, and then disappear. A dream. She concluded it was a dream.
But when she returned to her room and slipped back beneath the covers, the noise came again. A light ticking against the windowpane. Janet moved quickly. She tossed the drapes aside and lifted the window. The thick darkness prevented her from seeing anything. Not even shapes or figures. But then she caught a glimpse, a movement at the edge of the yard. A light-colored fabric darted and then disappeared.
Janet wanted to call out, but didn’t want to wake everyone else in the house.
Steven Kollman was in jail.
It could be only one person. Janet dressed and set out to follow him.
The park was quiet.
Janet hoped, as she approached, that she would find Michael waiting in one of the public areas—a picnic shelter or the jungle gym. Tall sodium arc lights lit portions of the park, some attempt by the police to keep unsavory elements away after dark, and in their hazy glow Janet saw no sign of Michael, no sign of another soul. The absence of any other people set Janet even further on edge. She didn’t expect anyone to be in the park, and when they weren’t there, she felt even more alone. She knew where Michael would be waiting. Back in the woods at the scene of Justin’s murder. All she needed to do was turn around and go back to her house. If he really wanted to see her or needed to see her, he could knock on the door in daylight. But he would not do that.
Janet couldn’t deny the fundamental truth—she couldn’t walk away and risk not seeing him again. Her dad was right: knowing certain things about certain people didn’t change Janet’s feelings about them. Janet wondered if she was going into the woods to prove that her feelings about Michael hadn’t changed—or to make sure they did.
Janet moved down the path. The humid night stuck to her skin. As she walked, she listened for Michael, but she heard nothing except herself. Every step she took seemed magnified. The rustling of the leaves and branches she passed sounded like the shifting of tectonic plates. While she walked, Janet thought of home, of Ashleigh and her dad. She hadn’t left a note, hadn’t told them she’d gone out of the house. With Steven in jail and Ray in custody, they should be safe. Then she had to ask herself, were they safer than she was?
Janet passed the pond. In the darkness, something plunked into the water. Janet gasped, raised her hand to her chest. Was it just a fish? A turtle? She looked ahead in the darkness. The opening to the clearing came into view. Janet approached slowly, squinting into the night, trying to make out a shape or a human figure. Anything, really.
“Michael?”
She listened. She thought she heard breathing.
“Michael? It’s me. I can’t see you.”
“Over here.”
His voiced sounded faint, a little worn and cracked.
“Where?”
“Keep coming,” he said.
Janet entered the clearing and still didn’t see him. “Michael, I can’t—”
“Over here,” he said.
He sounded insistent. She tracked the sound of his voice and went through the clearing and out the other side where the vegetation grew thicker and denser. Several yards off the clearing, she made out Michael’s figure, his white shirt glowing in the darkness.
He sat on the ground, Indian-style. The shirt hung open at his throat, and his olive-colored pants blended into the darkness, appearing to become one with the earth. Janet let her eyes take him in. He looked tired, ragged. He breathed heavily, as if he’d just run a distance, even though he looked to have been sitting in that same spot for quite a while.
“What’s wrong, Michael?”
“You talked to Steven, didn’t you? You had to. I know he’s in the jail. He must have told you and the police what I said to him in that bar.”
“He told me that you wanted him to get me thinking about the murder again,” Janet said. “He said that you told him about Ray, and you wanted Steven to come to me and get me to think Ray did it. Why did you do that, Michael?”
“I wanted him punished.”
“You’re getting your wish, aren’t you?” Janet said. “I talked to Detective Stynes, and he has Ray at the police station. He was hoping for a confession so it can all be over with.” Then Janet thought to add, “And he says they’re not really worried about pressing charges against you. I guess if you beat the crap out of a murderer they don’t worry about charging you for it.”
Michael didn’t look up.
“Do you understand what you did to me? To my family? You got our hopes up. That guy came to the house, and I…I thought he was Justin.”
“I didn’t make you think that.”
“But you set it in motion. I thought everything was going to be different. And that man, Steven, he could have been dangerous. How was I to know what he intended? We’re supposed to be friends, Michael. We’re supposed to care for each other after all these years.”
“What do you remember from that day, Janet?” he asked.
The question took Janet off guard. His voice sounded flat, wooden. It came out with a rasp, as though the words had passed through barbed wire.
“Your dad killed Justin,” she said. “Isn’t that what we’ve all found out?”
He didn’t answer.
“Michael? What is it?”
He still didn’t lift his eyes. He started to speak, stopped, and then said, “I heard my parents argue that morning. I could tell by the way they were fighting that it was different than other fights they’d had. They seemed like they meant it, like they were building up to something final. You know?”
“They were. Your dad was leaving your mom to be with mine.”
“I know,” he said. “They said one name over and over before they sent me out of the house. Can you guess what name they said?”
It took Janet a moment, but then she said it: “Justin.”
“Yes,” he said. “Justin. That name over and over. And it made me mad, Janet. Angry. I understood, at that time, that somehow Justin was the cause of what was going wrong between my parents. It
just seemed that way to me.” He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “It makes sense now, knowing what we do about the DNA test. Why else would they be fighting about a four-year-old boy?”
“And?”
“So I was angry. Angry about Justin, even though I didn’t know why. And then he ran off into the woods and wouldn’t come back, when I came back here and told him he had to go back to the park with us…and he wouldn’t—I…”
Janet’s breathing shortened. She found herself struggling for air, as though something thicker than the surrounding humidity had been placed across her nose and mouth. She was choking.
“Michael…”
“He wouldn’t go back to the park, Janet. And his name, it was in my head.”
Janet opened her mouth. The words were slow to come.
“What did you do to him?”
He hesitated. “I pushed him. Shoved him. I took hold of his shirt with both of my hands and I shoved him down to the ground. This spot right here. I shoved him as hard as I could, and he hit his head on a rock.” Michael reached out and patted a stone, one that was half sunken into the ground. “It might be this rock right here for all I know. It might very well be.” He leaned back. “I could tell he was hurt. It knocked him right out, although there wasn’t any blood. Not that I could see anyway. I didn’t know what to do, Janet. I knew I’d get in trouble. I was scared.”
“What did you do?” Janet asked. Her words came out steady, but she felt the world turning beneath her, a great shifting of the ground beneath her feet. She thought she might topple over to the side.
“I wanted to run. I was going to. I guess I was hoping no one knew what I’d done, although, of course, they would have. But then—”
“Ray showed up.”
Michael nodded. “He was just there, all of a sudden. My dad. He stood over me—and Justin. It was like he knew what I’d done, and he came out to find me. I don’t know why he was there in the woods that day. It was like magic.”
“He was on his way to our house.”
“He told me to leave. He told me that he would take care of it, that it was an accident, but we couldn’t tell anyone, ever, what happened in the woods that day. So I left. I just left and went back to the playground.”
“And after that he told you to never mention being in the woods that day?”
“I don’t remember all of this clearly,” he said, his voice rising. “Remember that first night I saw you in the coffee shop? I told you about going to therapy and trying to remember things. I’ve been working on that for years, and some of it isn’t clear. Is it clear for you?”
“No.”
“See?” He threw out his hands. See? “I could only remember bits and pieces. I thought I remembered my dad here. For a number of years, I remembered that and came to believe it was true. That’s why I told you that in the coffee shop. I wasn’t lying to you.”
“Why is this coming back now?” Janet asked. “Why are you saying these things?”
“I was angry, Janet. So angry. When I went to therapy and they asked me to remember that day, that’s what I felt. Not fear. Not sadness, really. Anger. Just anger. And it was always directed at Justin. Just Justin. And I didn’t understand why. I knew he ran off that day. I knew I was mad at him about that, but it didn’t explain the level of anger I felt sometimes. Gut-churning anger. It boiled just below the surface of my mind. I even thought it might be a form of grief, you know? I was mad at him for dying maybe. Does that make sense?”
“I understand.”
“But it was too strong for that. And it wouldn’t go away.”
“How do you know what really happened?”
It took Michael a long time to go on. Janet waited, her arms folded across her chest. Her eyes were completely acclimated to the dark, and she watched Michael, trying to be patient, trying to let him tell the story at his own pace.
“I came back here after I lost my job. I moved back to Dove Point, and I started coming out here.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I had a therapist who said that sometimes long-dormant or repressed memories come back if the person is placed in a situation similar to the original event. Maybe they return to the exact place where the memory was formed or maybe they experience a similar, intense emotion. So I came back here after I returned to town. And I felt it when I was here. The anger. The confusion, I guess.”
“Then?”
Michael didn’t answer.
“Then, Michael? What changed?”
“That night…the night I went to Dad’s house.”
“You lost control.”
“I wanted to kill him, Janet. I wanted to—to choke the life out of him. I can’t remember being that mad any other time…”
“Except?”
“My dad told me. He told me what happened that day in the woods. He told me I killed Justin. And that’s when I went after my dad. I would have killed him too if you hadn’t come into the house and called my name.”
Chapter Fifty-three
“I thought it was Ray all this time,” Michael said. “I really did. And here he was getting remarried and moving on with his life. He wanted to act like what happened in these woods didn’t happen. That we could all just go on with our lives and be happy.” Michael’s voice caught. “He was going to have a new wife and pretend like I wasn’t his son anymore. I wanted him to know it wasn’t that easy to just leave the past behind.”
A chill passed up Janet’s back. “You really thought he didn’t want you to be his son?”
“He cut me off, Janet. He cut me off.”
Janet paced back and forth. Something welled inside her, a hot mixture of anger and grief. “My God, Michael. You killed Justin. You killed him.”
“An accident—”
“All these years. A man went to jail. All these years…we didn’t know. We didn’t do anything. I thought…”
“Janet.”
Janet bent double at the waist, as though racked by a sharp pain. She felt sick, nauseated. She stayed like that, hands on knees, breathing deeply, trying to regain her equilibrium. She didn’t know how long she remained in that position before she was able to straighten up again. Her sides hurt.
“Oh, Michael.”
It was all she could say.
“Janet, it was an accident.”
Janet took a couple of steps closer to Michael. She worked up to it. She didn’t know if she could bring herself to do it, to reach out to him. The man who killed her brother. But he was Michael, too. Always Michael. Always the boy she knew and loved. She knelt down next to him and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“What do you want to do now?” she asked.
He took a moment to answer, then said, “I came to say good-bye. I wanted you to know all of this before I left, but I need to go.”
Janet took her hand away. “Go?”
“I have to,” he said. “Ray’s talking to the police right now. Whose hide do you think he’s going to save? Mine or his? It’s his fault this happened, Janet. All of it. Do you think your mother instigated the affair? Do you think she started it?”
Janet stood up. “Michael, you have to tell the police. Let’s call Detective Stynes and clear this up. An innocent man went to jail.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You were seven years old. You didn’t mean it. We’ll tell Stynes, and they’ll work it out. You have to face what happened.”
Michael shook his head. His eyes were on the forest floor, the intensity of his shaking growing. It looked mechanical and regimented. “I won’t go to jail, Janet,” he said. “Not even a little bit. I’ve had a taste of that before.”
“You have?”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not for something Ray did.”
“You did it, Michael. Yes, Ray is to blame. He should have helped you. He’s to blame as well. He manipulated us, told us not to tell the whole truth about that day. But you have to come clean.”
Michael buried his head in his hands. He rubbed
his hands over his face, then spoke in a muffled voice. “Let me go, Janet. I’m just going to leave. You can get out of here and make it back to your life and your kid and even your dad. You have your job and your benefits and the whole thing. Right? I don’t have any of that. I have to go. Just get out of here, and come tomorrow, I’ll be gone.”
“Gone for good?” Janet asked.
Michael lowered his hands. He didn’t speak, but he nodded.
They didn’t touch or hug. Janet just turned and walked back up the path, out of the clearing and the woods.
Chapter Fifty-four
Janet saw figures coming down the path, at least five of them. She thought she recognized something familiar about the one in front, something about the way he walked with his shoulders a little slumped. They all came closer to her, and despite the darkness and isolation of the woods, she didn’t feel afraid.
“Janet?”
“Detective Stynes?” she asked.
“Are you okay?”
Behind Stynes stood four uniformed officers, their thick frames looking like solid blocks in the dark night.
“I’m okay,” Janet said.
“Are you alone?” Stynes asked.
Janet didn’t hesitate. “Michael Bower is back there.”
Stynes turned to the uniformed officers and made a gesture with his hand. Without saying anything else, the four of them moved past Janet in the darkness, heading down the path toward Michael. She turned and watch them go, almost wishing she could stop them. But they had to do what they had to do. And Michael had to face his past.
“Janet?” Stynes said. “Is there something wrong?”
She turned back to the detective. “How did you know where I was?”
“Ashleigh called me,” he said. “She woke up and saw you weren’t in the house, so she got worried. She thought something happened to you.”
“How did you know to find me here?” Janet asked.