In All Deep Places

by Susan Meissner

  “Sure,” I said, withdrawing my hand. I folded the piece of paper and stuck it in the pages of my notebook.

  Norah seemed to relax when her poem was suddenly safe from people who wouldn’t understand why she wrote it. She reached down and picked the little bag up. “Want a cupcake?” she said, opening the bag. “I made them, but they’re pretty good.”

  “Okay.” I reached to take a cupcake from her. “Special occasion or something?”

  “It’s my birthday, “ she said casually. “I’m fourteen today.”

  Something in the way she said it, so nonchalantly, made me pause. “It’s your birthday?” I finally said.

  “Yeah. My mom usually makes the cupcakes…” She stopped mid-sentence and turned her head toward the window opening, looking past the houses on the other side of the street, past the treetops, past the silvery, moonlit Halcyon water tower.

  “Well… happy birthday, Norah,” I said clumsily.

  She turned her head back to me. Her gray eyes were moist. “Thanks.”

  “Did… you get anything?” I couldn’t help asking. I hoped to God she did.

  “Grandma’s still mad at me about the Mexico phone call. She gave me some socks today, but she told me it was ’cause I needed them anyway. My dad gave me a ten-dollar bill. I think I might give it to Grandma to pay for the phone call. Maybe she’ll forget about it then.”

  Several long moments of silence passed between us. I suddenly had an idea.

  “Sometimes I like to imagine things in here, in the tree house.” I was instantly aware I was blushing. No one else knew this about me. Certainly not Matt or Derek. But he continued. “Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend I’m somewhere else. That I am someone else. It gives me ideas for my stories.”

  Norah said nothing. Her gray eyes blinked.

  “It’s a good place for imagining things different than how they are,” I continued.

  Still she said nothing.

  “Want to try it?”

  “Okay,” she said, tentatively.

  “Okay. Close your eyes.”

  She obeyed.

  “Now, picture something you would have liked to have gotten for a birthday present today. Can you picture it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you picture it wrapped up in paper you like?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does the package look like?”

  “Well, it’s… it’s square. The paper is dark blue with silver stars on it. And the bow is made of shining white ribbon that my mom curled with her scissors. She used the whole roll.”

  “You want to open it?” I was unable to keep from smiling. Norah knew how to play my game.

  “Yes!”

  “Okay! Open it.”

  Her hands made movements like she was untying a ribbon and tearing away paper.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s Navajo jewelry,” she answered, eyes still closed. “The turquoise stones are creamy blue, and the silver shines like sunlight. There’s a bracelet. And a necklace. And earrings. And they’re just like the ones my mom saw in a store in Arizona, the ones she said she would buy me if she won a million dollars.”

  “So put them on.”

  And Norah smiled with her eyes closed and placed the imaginary jewelry on herself. She opened her eyes and laughed.

  I snapped off a twig from outside, removed the leaves, and broke it in half. I placed the tiny stick in the middle of her cupcake. “I’ll just light the candle here,” I said.

  I pretended to strike a match and then held the imaginary flame to the pretend candle. “Now make a wish.”

  “Aren’t you going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me?” she said, grinning.

  “If you can picture the flame, you can picture me singing. Now, make a wish and blow out your candle.”

  Norah smiled and took a breath, deciding on her wish. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

  She leaned over and blew air over the tiny stick. I clapped. “Well done.”

  She laughed. “That was fun!” She picked up her cupcake, and then she shook her head as she took the stick out of it. “That was really fun.”

  She paused for a moment, then said, “No wonder.”

  “No wonder, what?” I said, picking up my own cupcake and starting to peel the paper away.

  “No wonder Kieran loves Tommy so much. Pretending makes you happy even if it’s not real.”

  We ate our cupcakes in silence.

  Later that evening as I was getting ready for bed, I told my mother that it had been Norah’s birthday that day. I told her about the cupcakes, the socks, and the ten-dollar bill.

  Four days later, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, my mother invited Norah and Kieran over for supper. She made Mexican food. And served cupcakes for dessert.

  By the end of October, the weather had turned frosty. It was a time of year that I both loved and hated. I liked sledding, playing ice hockey on the outdoor rink with my friends, and waking up to find out school had been cancelled because of snow. But it also meant the end of my evenings in the tree house. By the first part of November, a dusting of snow already covered the ground, and the tree house was officially closed for the winter. At least it was according to my mother. I had never thought a little snow and ice was that big of a problem, but my mother did not allow me to climb out the window once the first snow fell.

  I saw less of Norah and Kieran once the weather changed. With the onset of winter weather—which, in the Midwest, always arrived before the calendar said it should—and the freezing of Goose Pond, Norah began taking her brother to the indoor pool at the high school to satisfy Kieran’s addiction to swimming. They went almost every day after classes were let out. I worked at the Herald after school, so I couldn’t join them, though sometimes Ethan did. My mother began inviting them for Sunday dinner every week, and most Sundays they came. Sometimes Norah and Kieran came with us to church, too. The invitation was always extended to Nell and Darrel as well, but they never came.

  Norah and Kieran were speechless with wonder when the first real snowstorm blanketed Halcyon in bridal white. Neither of them had ever seen that much snow before, and their amazement amused me. The day of that first big November snowfall instead of going swimming, they joined Ethan and I after school on the snow-covered hills at the Halcyon Golf Course for their first experience with sledding. Half an hour into their fun, when Ethan and Norah were taking their turns on the sledding run, Kieran turned to me and said under his breath, “Tommy really likes the snow!”

  I turned to him, noticing he was making a circle of perfectly formed footprints in the mini-drift under his booted feet. It had been a couple weeks since I had been alone with Kieran, and not much headway had been made—since then or before then—with regard to Tommy. Norah had told me that her brother was becoming more secretive about Tommy, which was both good and bad. It was good in that his new teacher hadn’t seemed to notice anything strange about Kieran other than that he was a bit behind academically. It was bad in that Norah’s brother was still firmly attached to his imaginary friend—attached to the point he felt he had to protect Tommy from being discovered by the grown-ups. Kieran apparently feared for Tommy’s safety.

  I watched him for a few seconds, swallowed, and then casually called his name.

  “Yeah?” Kieran answered, still plodding around in the snow.

  “I don’t see any of Tommy’s footprints.”

  He stopped but didn’t look up. There was a long pause.

  “He has magic snow boots so they don’t show,” he finally said, but he sounded unsure of himself, like he, too, was troubled that his friend made no prints in the snow.

  “Too bad,” I said, looking away nonchalantly. “Making footprints is fun.”

  Kieran said nothing more, and neither did I. Ethan and Norah returned then with the sleds so we could have a turn.

  I didn’t say anything to Norah that day, but I was pretty sure there was no way I was going to pry
Tommy out of her brother’s hands before Christmas. No way at all.

  A few days later, basketball season began. my schedule got a little more complicated. In addition to schoolwork, basketball practice, and working at the paper, I operated the sound board for my mother’s fall play rehearsals and then the performances in mid-November. Despite my full days, though, I found himself especially looking forward to playing basketball, more so than in years past. First, I was now on the varsity squad, and second, Norah and Kieran had said they would come to all my home games. I’d been working on my three-point shot, and my coach was very pleased with my averages. I was making eighty percent of my attempts during practices. I was looking forward to impressing Norah with a tie-breaking, game-saving three-pointer. I was certain it would happen sometime during the season.

  Life was busy but I felt content. Sure of things. In control.

  But Norah and Kieran only made it to one home game. Four days before Thanksgiving, on a Monday night that showered most of Iowa with an unpleasant mixture of ice and freezing rain, Darrel Janvik got into a fight with another man at a bar in Carrow. Both were drunk. Both were angry. Both should have listened to the advice of friends and other patrons who told them to “just let it go.”

  But Darrel had followed the other man, who had insulted him, out to the parking lot. He’d staggered over to his truck—the camper shell had long since been sold—and taken out his hunting rifle and waved it around, telling the man if he didn’t learn to shut up, he, Darrel, was going to give him “shutting-up lessons.” The man had reeled over toward Darrel, shouting curses and challenging him to go ahead and try it. Darrel had raised the barrel of the rifle, and the other man had reached down into his boot and pulled out a knife. When Darrel had laughed and cocked the rifle his opponent had lunged at him—and as he yelled, “bang!” the other man threw himself at him and knocked him to the ground. As he fell, his attacker had plunged the blade into Darrel’s chest, slicing through skin and muscle and arteries. Darrel had landed with a thud on the icy parking lot, and the skin above his right eye had torn away in a ragged gash. The man fell next to him, the rifle in Darrel’s hand cracking him over the head.

  “I can’t see,” Darrel had mumbled as he raised a shaking hand to the wound on his forehead. Someone ran into the bar to call for an ambulance.

  By the time it arrived to whisk Darrel Janvik away to the hospital, he had bled to death.

  Fourteen

  I was asleep when a pair of sheriff’s deputies drove quietly down Seventh Avenue shortly after midnight on the night of the ice storm. So were my mom and Ethan. Only Dad, who was up getting a drink of water, saw the squad car stop at Nell’s house. He watched from the kitchen window as the deputies got out of the car, walked up to the house, and knocked. Nell was still up; my dad said later that he could see the blue glow of her television screen. She had only been home for half an hour from her shift at the paint factory.

  My dad said he’d shaken his head in parental sympathy. Nell’s trouble-making son was probably in jail, and the deputies were telling her what it was he’d done this time. Dad sipped his water and wondered why she hadn’t just gotten a phone call, why the deputies had driven over on a night like this one. He set his cup in the sink and turned off the light, preparing to go back up to bed. But then he saw the lights in one of Nell’s upstairs windows come on. He waited and watched for what seemed like a long time. Maybe five minutes later, the deputies came out of the house, and so did Nell, bundled in a coat and hat. Behind her trailed Norah and Kieran, their pajama pants visible underneath their heavy jackets. They all quickly got into the squad car, and the car drove off.

  “What in the world…?” Dad whispered to the kitchen curtains.

  He left the kitchen and started back up the stairs, wondering what Darrel had done that required his children to be roused from their beds at midnight on a school night.

  In the morning, while we ate our Wheaties, we all found out.

  Royce Harkin, Halcyon’s chief of police and a personal friend, came by our house a few minutes after seven. The storm had passed, and a glistening infant sunrise was making the ice-covered tree limbs and electrical lines twinkle and shine like strands of white Christmas lights.

  My mom welcomed Royce into the kitchen, took his hat and coat, and poured him a cup of coffee.

  “What’s up, Royce?” my dad asked, moving the pages of the Des Moines Register so Harkin could sit down.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid. There’s an arraignment at the county courthouse at two o’clock this afternoon, and I wanted you to hear from me what it’s about rather than from your fax machine or the coffee gang, seein’ as you’re Nell’s neighbor and all.”

  My dad said nothing, and Mom took a chair as she waited to hear what horrible crime had been committed. Darrel must have really done it this time.

  Royce took a breath. “Look, Darrel Janvik was killed last night.”

  No one said a word for several seconds.

  “What?” Dad managed to say.

  “There was a fight in the parking lot at The Eight Ball last night sometime before midnight. Darrel was drunk, and so was this other guy. Darrel got his hunting rifle out of his truck and was waving it around in the parking lot, making threats. He and this other guy got into a tussle. The guy had a knife. Several witnesses say Darrel was just waving it around. But the fact is, he had the gun and was making threats with it. The guy came at Darrel with the knife and stabbed him. He bled to death before help could get to him.”

  “Oh, dear Jesus,” my mother whispered.

  “The other guy’s not from around here, and he’s got a record. And he was already in violation of his parole just by being in Carrow last night. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets off with a self-defense plea. The lousiest public defender in the world could probably get him off.”

  “Nell…” Mom said. “And the kids…”

  “No one else was hurt?” My dad rose from his chair and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He had to get going. A murder was a rare occurrence in the county. The last one had been years earlier. As sad as the news was, it was front-page material. And today was press day.

  “No, no one else was hurt. And there were half-a-dozen witnesses. They’re all listed on the police report.” The police chief took another gulp of his coffee and rose from his chair, too.

  “Where’s Nell? And the kids?” Mom asked, the third one to rise from the table.

  “The kids are in foster care at the moment. Nell’s in bad shape. She stayed the night at the hospital.”

  Tears began to form in Mom’s eyes and slip down her cheeks. “Royce,” she said, “can’t those kids stay with us until Nell…” but she did not finish.

  The lines around Royce’s face softened when he saw her tears. “MaryAnn, you know that isn’t up to me,” he said gently. “The county will take good care of them.”

  “But why can’t they stay with people they already know? Do they know what has happened to their dad?”

  “Well, I guess…”

  “I don’t see why they can’t stay with us! Couldn’t they stay with us, Jack?” she pleaded.

  My dad wrapped a scarf around his neck, preparing to leave. “Hon, of course I wouldn’t mind if they did, but it’s not our decision to make. The folks at Social Services don’t know us.”

  “Well, where are they? Do you know where they are, Royce?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,. I know they’re with a licensed foster family in Carrow, but I don’t know which one. I am sure whoever the family is, they will take good care of those kids.”

  Mom shook her head and rubbed her tears away.

  “Has anyone called Nell’s sister in Minnesota?” she said angrily. “Has anyone tried to reach the kids’ mother in Mexico?”

  My dad handed Royce his hat and coat. “MaryAnn…” he began.

  “Well, has anyone?”

  The chief shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Dad walked over t
o my mom and touched her shoulder. “Let the county take care of this. They’ll do the right thing. And when Nell comes home, you can be the neighbor and friend she’s going to need, okay?”

  Her cheeks were wet again, but she nodded her head.

  The three of us said nothing as my dad and the police chief stepped out into the icy morning air. Then Ethan broke the silence.

  “Nell’s kids are both dead,” he said. “First Kenny and now Darrel. Her kids are both dead.”

  I didn’t care about Darrel. Not one bit. But Norah and Kieran…

  “How long will Norah and Kieran be gone?” I asked, knowing my mother couldn’t know.

  “I’m not sure, Luke.”

  “Do they know? About Darrel?”

  She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  Several quiet seconds fell about us.

  “Do you guys want to stay home from school today?” my mom finally asked.

  “No,” I said quickly, getting to my feet. I didn’t want to stay at home. I didn’t want to be here where there were no answers. I didn’t want to be stuck in my room looking out my window at that hellish house next door.

  “I guess I don’t either,” Ethan said, getting to his feet.

  Mom sighed. “Okay. Well, we’d better get going then. But… if you guys change your mind, just ask to come down to my room, okay? We can leave if we change our minds, okay?”

  I was aware of my mother’s eyes on me as I left the kitchen and headed upstairs to brush my teeth. I wanted her to look away from me. I did not want to be watched.

  Dad had scrambled to change his front page for the Tuesday-morning print run. He’d called the printer and gotten a later print time, sending up a hastily assembled front-page galley just before noon that included coverage of the stabbing death of Darrel Janvik. When I arrived at the newspaper office after school later that afternoon, Dad had just returned from Carrow and the arraignment of Darrel’s killer.