by Sarah Healy
Needing something to do with my hands, I straightened and picked up the menu. “Okay, Rosie,” I said, a crack in my voice. “Let’s see.” I scanned the choices. “They have ravioli,” I suggested. “And they have grilled cheese.” I looked at Rose.
“Can you get a grilled cheese for me and chicken tenders for Uncle Warren?” she asked. “But with no ketchup.”
“Oh, honey,” I started, with a falling face. “I don’t think Uncle Warren is going to be coming.” I didn’t know how I was going to tell her that Uncle Warren was in trouble. That he had done something bad and was caught.
Then from down the hall, I heard a sound, faint at first but distinct and unmistakable. And my heart gave a sudden thump of recognition as I waited, still and quiet, for the squeak of rubber-soled sneakers on the shiny hard floor to draw closer. I let out a single hopeful breath when I heard my mother’s voice. “It’s right in here,” she said. “Number seven-seven-seven.”
My mother burst into the room. She rushed over to Rose and pulled her against her warm chest. But my eyes stayed on the threshold, waiting, praying I hadn’t been mistaken. Warren, I whispered. As if in response, there came a whistle just before his face leaned in past the doorframe. He looked directly at me, with his small, curious smile, as if we had planned to meet at this very spot, at this very moment. And he hadn’t let me down.
Rose brought her hand over her mouth, her giggles spilling through her fingers like bubbles as she turned to me. “Told you,” she said.
Warren’s body followed his head into the room, where he planted his hands on his hips and looked at Rose. And though his intended expression was probably something close to stern, his innate gentleness belied his furrowed brow.
Standing, I strode over to him. “War,” I said. He was in profile, still facing Rose, and though he didn’t turn, he looked at me from the corner of his eye. Then tucking my head into the crook of his neck, I pulled him into me, feeling the slightness of his frame. “Thank you,” I said.
He emitted his pained-sounding chuckle, the one he used whenever anyone forced him to submit to affection on their terms. “Oh boy,” he said, reaching up and patting my arm. “Okay.”
With my arms still around my brother, I heard my mother’s voice. “They arrested that Zack Castro.”
“What?!” I said, my head shooting up.
Mom was standing at the head of Rose’s bed, her hand resting on its plastic railings. “For the burglaries.”
“But his bike was stolen,” I said, trying to recalibrate what I thought I knew.
Mom shook her head, her face heavy. “No,” she said. “He didn’t. He said it was stolen, but”—she swatted the air in front of her with the back of her hand, then let it drop to her thigh—“he sold it.”
I glanced at Warren, who didn’t move. “And everything else?” I asked my mother. “He took it all?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
I remembered the night Warren had come home with his face cut and bloodied. I remembered the way his hand had hung at his side, clutching his plane. Sometimes after work at night, I fly it in the park. I turned back to my brother. “War, did you see . . . ?”
Warren, still focused on the floor, lifted his chin and let it drop back down. It was his acknowledgment. His admission that the night Zack had beat him up, he’d seen him take something.
“I guess it was Zack and a friend,” said my mother. “After they did what they did to your brother, they figured . . .” She stopped, tightening her lips. They figured they could make it look like it was him.
“Warren,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
With his head cocked to one side, my brother looked at me. We stared at each other until, without answering, he turned and walked slowly over to Rose’s bed and stood beside her. Again, he planted his hand on his hip and tried to look displeased. “You were supposed to come find Uncle Warren,” he said. “I would have taken you to the tree.” Rose’s green eyes looked chastened before she let her head dip down. Then suddenly, she reached up and wrapped her arms around his waist, the force of her embrace causing Warren to wobble a bit. Mechanically, he rubbed the top of her head.
“You know it was your uncle Warren that got you out of that pond, don’t you, Rose?” asked my mother.
“Yeah,” she said. “I called him.” With her face still pressed to Warren’s belly, her words muffled, she took her earlobe between her fingers and pulled. “Like this.”
Warren emitted one of his laughs and sat on the edge of Rose’s bed, his body barely making a depression on the mattress. He looked at Rose for a moment, his lips curved into a small, quizzical smile, then reached for a photocopied list of movies that were available. “Let’s see,” he said, as he scanned the titles. Warren, it seemed, was ready to move on from news of thefts and arrests, from talk of brave deeds and almost-magic rescues.
Over Warren’s hunched frame, my eyes found my mother’s. Mom only smiled before looking back at her son. “Do they have Goonies?” she asked. Warren’s brow gathered as his fingertip ran back over the columns. “You used to love that movie,” said my mother, leaning in to see the list better.
And when it came—the brisk knock-knock on the door—I assumed it was the nurse with the apple-colored lips come to take Rose’s temperature and blood pressure. But the polite smile that was ready on my lips dropped away as I turned to watch the door push open, and Detective Dunn emerged. My mother rose, her legs straightening as if they were being slowly inflated, and her gaze did not leave the detective’s face. I looked at my mother. Why is he here? Wasn’t this supposed to be over?
“I’m sorry to bother you all,” he said, his already red face seeming to brighten slightly. “But I heard about what happened.” He nodded toward Rose and Warren on the bed. “And I was in the neighborhood.” He looked at my brother’s back. “Hero of the day, huh, Warren?”
And though Warren tried to fight it, tried to hide it, I saw his chest fill, his lips curve into a smile. Detective Dunn stepped forward and gave him a locker-room slap on the back. “So, I wanted to thank you,” he said. He paused for a moment and seemed to consider my brother’s form, the bumps of vertebrae visible through his shirt, the way one shoulder rose higher than the other. “For your cooperation.”
“Warren,” I said. “You were helping the police?”
He nodded once, seeming pleased by my surprise. I turned toward the detective. “I thought Warren was a suspect.”
From the look on Detective Dunn’s face as his gaze dropped away, I realized that that was the whole idea. “With petty stuff like this,” he said, “the Castro kid just needed to think he was in the clear long enough to get caught.”
I looked at my mother for further explanation. “They found Gina Loost’s watch in Zack’s room,” she said. “And there were a bunch of those coins in one of the basketball sneakers in his closet.”
The detective allowed himself a chuckle. “I think next he was going to try for collectible spoons.”
“But what about that frame?” I asked, not yet clear on how the thefts that had loomed so large over King’s Knoll had deflated in importance to that of a precinct joke. “The one that you found in my mother’s house?”
Mom answered for Detective Dunn. “Zack put it there,” she said. “Bill Kotch saw him.”
“Did you know about all this?” I asked, wondering if I was the only Parsons who hadn’t been aware that Warren was working with the police and not against them. But Mom shook her head. Had Warren given her any information, she wouldn’t have been able to contain it. She wouldn’t have been able to resist riding it out, waving it like a flag, all in his defense.
“So Warren was bait?” I asked the detective. “Zack put him in the hospital a few weeks ago. Was that part of the plan, too?”
“No, no, no,” said Detective Dunn, seeking to clarify. “We n
ever put Warren in any danger. Warren and I only spoke after the assault. When I came to the house.” He gestured toward me. “You remember.”
I looked at Warren. Though his back was still turned toward us, he appeared to be entirely, though not altogether happily, attuned to our conversation. With his civic responsibility fulfilled, Warren seemed ready to be rid of Detective Dunn.
It was Rose who provided him with the opportunity. “Uncle Warren,” she whined, “let’s watch something.”
Detective Dunn took that as his cue. “I’ll leave you folks alone,” he said, backing toward the hallway. To him, the investigation had been a nuisance, a trifling matter attended to between more serious cases. Attended to at all because of phone calls from the likes of Beth Castro. The detective had done his duty and done it well and was now ready to be finished with King’s Knoll.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
He gave me a nod. “Take care,” he said. Then he shut the door behind him.
Later, we would learn that Detective Dunn had it mostly all sorted out by the time he first spoke with Warren. After all, Zack mowed the lawns of many of the homes in the neighborhood. He had access to garages and, in the case of the Doogans, had found the house key that they kept under the fake rock near their deck. Really, he would have been the obvious suspect had Warren not been a more appealing one. But it was Bill Kotch’s cooperation that helped the detective get his warrants.
Bill had trouble sleeping. Fresh air and exercise! his doctor had told him, so during the day, he would take to his bike, going round and round the neighborhood, hoping to tire both his mind and his body. It seldom worked. And Bill would find himself standing outside and breathing in the sharp night air, hoping not to wake Carol. That’s what he was doing the night he saw Zack go into my mother’s garage. When he saw him come out with less rather than more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Reckoning
A fter Warren and Mom left the hospital, after they gave me the bag that they had brought for Rose and me containing dry clothes and my wallet, after they promised that they would stop at the store and get Gordo his senior formula dog food, and that they would give him two cups at six o’clock, after Rose and I watched endless episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, I sat in the chair in Rose’s room, eating the hummus and carrots that had accompanied her dinner, and listening to the sounds of the family in the room next door. They were the happy, unintelligible murmurs of a father and a mother and two children. Every once in a while, there was laughter, clear and distinct. Every once in a while, the door would open and footsteps would pass in the hallway.
Rose had woken and eaten her dinner, then fallen asleep again by the time I again picked up the phone in her room, dialing zero for the hospital operator.
“Hi, I’m trying to make a call,” I said, my credit card in hand.
My father answered on the first ring. I supposed that there was something about calling from a hospital that got people to pay attention.
“Stewart Parsons.” His greeting was alert and ready, tinged with concern.
“Dad, it’s Jenna.”
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “What’s wrong? Why are you at Hewn?”
“Listen, Dad,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice increasing in gravity. I could hear him shutting a door. “Have there been any developments with Warren?”
I took a deep, steadying breath, but my words still came out sounding sodden with emotion. “You could say that.”
“What happened?”
Maybe I savored for a moment the fact that my father was assuming the worst. Maybe I wanted to make him wait. To let him think that Warren was guilty and had been caught. Maybe I wanted him to regret everything that he was thinking about Warren and have to take it all back. Just like I did.
“Warren saved Rose’s life,” I finally said.
“What?!”
“She fell in the pond in the park and she could have drowned. But Warren saved her life.” And from that dim little room, humming with the breath of the hospital, with its machines and generators, I said, “Mine, too, really.” I hadn’t known it was true until that moment.
“You know, Mom really needs more support from you,” I said.
There was bitterness in my father’s voice when he spoke again. “Jenna, I’ve been supporting your mother for twenty years.”
I pictured Mom, her hand on Warren’s back as she walked him into the auditorium for our high school graduation, into the restaurant for our grandfather’s retirement party, into the church for his funeral. I pictured Mom with her hand on Warren’s back as she walked him into Hewn Memorial, bleeding and hurt. “I don’t mean financially, Dad.”
In reply, I heard only my father’s breath.
“They arrested a kid down the street for the thefts. Warren didn’t have anything to do with them,” I said. Then I added, a concession to his cooperation, “He actually helped the police in their investigation.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, without thinking first.
“No, Dad. I’m not kidding.”
I watched the tidy lines of advancing white headlights and≈retreating red taillights. “You know, Warren’s your son, too.”
His cracked voice came through the line. “I know.”
“I realize that he’s not who you wanted him to be, but . . .” I paused, remembering the look on Warren’s face when I came home, on that very first night all those weeks ago. “He’s actually amazing.”
“I know,” Dad said again.
“No, you don’t, Dad. But I really hope you will.”
And then I told him that I loved him. And then I said good night.
My mouth was dry and so I gently opened Rose’s door and, shutting it behind me, walked to the little kitchen in the hallway where nurses filled cups of apple juice and parents microwaved their coffee. Blinking against the permanent artificial day of the fluorescent lights, I pulled a foam cup from a sleeve and filled it with ice from an enormous machine that spat frozen shards with such force that my cup overflowedin just three seconds. Then, opening the fridge, I pulled out a carton of cranberry juice cocktail and poured myself a glass.
I was slugging it down as I walked back to Rose’s room, the bottom of the cup lifted past my chin, when I saw Bobby coming toward me from the opposite end of the hallway. My pace slowed and his eyes met mine. In his hands were two plastic clamshell containers, each containing a sandwich. He was still in his scrubs and the skin beneath his eyes looked like the shadowed portion of a half-moon. His chin was darkened with stubble and his body seemed to be bearing a weight greater than his own. We both stopped, almost simultaneously, in front of Rose’s door.
“Hey,” I said, my eyes already wet, my voice shaking.
“I figured you were probably hungry,” he said, lifting the sandwiches.
“Bobby, thank you,” I said. I swallowed and started again. “For what you did for Rose.”
He tilted his head back down the hall. “Do you want to go somewhere . . . and talk?” he asked.
I hesitated, glancing at Rose’s door.
“After the day she’s had, she’ll sleep till noon,” he said. “And if she does wake up, the nurses are here. A lot of parents go home at night.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding.
After Bobby asked me his clinical questions about Rose’s recovery, we were mostly silent as we walked. He led me through the hospital’s narrow corridors. “It’s just over here,” he said, pointing to a wide doorway above which hung silver letters. VINCENT C. SMITH ATRIUM.
I followed Bobby into the space, its soaring glass walls revealing the night outside. Around the room were banks of slender trees. It’s bamboo, Warren would say. Which is actually a member of the grass family.
“This is beautiful,” I
said, looking at the stars and moon visible beyond the clear ceiling.
“Yeah,” said Bobby. He seemed leached of energy. “No one ever comes in here at night.” In front of a love seat was a low coffee table scattered with faded old magazines. He lifted his chin toward it. “Do you want to sit?”
We each took a place on the small couch and Bobby lifted the sandwich containers, peering into them. “They’re both turkey,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s great,” I said, trying to be cheerful.
He slid one to me and then opened his own only to stare down at the dismal little meal, the white bread sliding off a limp leaf of iceberg lettuce.
“Bobby,” I started awkwardly, “I’m sorry I haven’t called.” He didn’t move. He sat there with his forearms resting on his knees. “I just want you to know that it’s not because I didn’t . . . really want there to be something between us.” I took a breath. Bobby was listening. He wasn’t going to say a word until I had finished. “I know I haven’t told you much about Duncan, but he left when I was seven and a half months pregnant with Rose. He moved to Japan. And it wasn’t like we were going to try and stay together or try to work it out. He just left.” I felt my face redden, my eyes rim with tears. “And it was hard.” I was going sentence by sentence, thought by thought, trying to move them past my lips one at a time. “And so when you said you were going to California, I just . . .” I stopped. Then, seeing his expression soften, I began again. “I thought it would be better, you know? For you, too.”
Bobby’s whole body seemed to exhale and he slung his arm around my back. “Come here,” he said. He leaned into the sofa and I angled my body into his, feeling its solidity, its mass. “You could have told me,” he said.
“I know. I should have,” I said, curling my arm across his chest.
After a minute or two of silence, I felt him grow stone still with thought. “You know, I don’t really want to go to California.” I kept my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “Mia and I . . . ,” he started, his words tapping into a vein that was painful and deep. “We split up because she was having an affair.” He let that sit there for a moment. “She wanted out of our marriage so badly she said that I could have custody of Gabby. But now she’s remarried and pregnant. And I got a call from her lawyer saying that she wants to talk about the custody arrangement.”