by Richard Cox
“It was fun digging the ball out of the cup,” Bradie said.
Adam looked back at her.
“After my hole-in-one, it was fun digging the ball out of the cup.”
They entered Tanglewood and a few turns later were on Shady Lane.
“Where are we going, Daddy?”
“We’re going home.”
“But we don’t live in Tanglewood, we live in Canyon Trails!”
He passed by the offending house, and stared hard at it, and remembered how this place had looked many years before, when the houses were new, when the neighborhood was still being built.
“You’re right, Honey. Daddy was just playing another game to see if you were paying attention.”
“I’m paying attention. But I think Daddy was off in La-La Land. The place you go when you’re crazy.”
“What?” he asked her. “What did you say?”
Her smile was brighter than the sun. Her innocence knew no bounds. “I said, ‘The name of this street is Shady!’”
68
The difference between fiction and reality had never been more aptly demonstrated, Alicia reasoned, than in her experience with David Clark.
It didn’t surprise her that he turned out to be an overconfident, misogynistic jerk. She assumed any billionaire might see the world and the humans who populated it as mere playthings at his disposal. But David had arrived in Wichita Falls with such a self-assured, well-groomed manner about him—even his supermodel girlfriend was positioned as a natural extension of himself—that Alicia had not been ashamed to feel awed in his presence. She’d even been flattered by the attention he paid her. Had Jonathan not already demonstrated interest, had he not reinforced that interest when he kissed her in the car, maybe Alicia would have been more open to David’s advances. After all, he could with a snap of his fingers turn her wildest dreams into reality. Promote her from the bleakness of Wichita Falls to the sunny luxury of California. Fund better medical treatment for her mother, grant retirement to her father, and end the grind of customer phone calls that were for eight hours every weekday the bane of her existence. No matter where a woman fell on the spectrum of feminism, the allure of such a pampered, easy life was difficult to ignore.
As long as you weren’t disgusted by the man providing such a life.
She had sent the wrong message to David by agreeing to have a drink with him, that was for sure. But in the end she was glad how things had turned out, because now she could see the darkness that lay behind David’s golden façade. He was a man in serious need of therapy.
The three of them were in David’s rented BMW. Jonathan sat in the passenger seat and Alicia had taken the back. So far she had avoided much conversation with David, partly because he wouldn’t make eye contact with her but mostly because of Jonathan’s fascination with Thomas Phillips, the thirteen-year-old kid who was not only Todd’s son but one of his students.
“So the mother has lived at the same address for six years,” he said, “but her kid enrolls at my school like three weeks ago? Why?”
“Maybe Thomas lived with his grandparents,” Alicia said. “Or was in foster care. Maybe he only just moved back in with his mom.”
“That’s awfully convenient timing. Two weeks before all this shit goes down.”
“Obviously it’s related,” David said.
“Related how?” asked Jonathan.
“Let’s say the kid lived with someone else, like he and the mother didn’t get along. Then he goes back to live with her, like against his will, so he acts out.”
“So you think the kid is the one who’s been attacking us?”
“I don’t know. But you’re right. The timing is too convenient for it not to be related.”
Alicia wanted David to be wrong. Just on principle she hoped his guesses were miles off the mark.
“All this is speculation,” she said. “Let’s just get there and talk to someone and see what we can find out.”
The plan was to visit Thomas’ mother, Christine Phillips, first. Later in the day, if necessary, they would visit Pete Willis, who was Todd’s father. Alicia couldn’t imagine why any of these people would want to talk to a bunch of strangers, but at this point there were no other options available except sit around and do nothing. The longer Detective Gholson took to solve his arson case, the less likely it became that Alicia’s insurance claim would ever be settled. Also, a more pragmatic and vengeful side of her wanted to see someone pay for what had been done to her house and her life.
“There,” Jonathan said, pointing out the passenger window. He was using his phone to direct them to the correct address. “That house there.”
A white Ford Focus stood in the driveway. So someone was home.
“Have we decided what we’re going to say?” she asked Jonathan.
“I think it depends on what happens when we knock on the door. For all we know, Todd could live there, too. If it’s just her and the kid, we’ll ask if she’s willing to talk to us.”
They stepped out of the car and approached the front door. Alicia walked beside Jonathan and David lagged behind them. They reached the porch and rang the bell.
Alicia could hear rustling sounds behind the door and then it opened just a crack. A woman’s face looked out at them. She was very thin. Her green eyes looked exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept in days.
“Hello?”
“Christine Phillips?” Jonathan asked.
“Yes, that’s me. Who are you?”
“My name is Jonathan Crane. These are my friends, Alicia Ulbrecht and David Clark. This might seem a little odd to you, but we wondered if we might ask you a few questions about Todd Willis. He lived here in Wichita Falls when he was younger and we were friends with him.”
Not much of the woman’s face was visible through the crack in the door, but Alicia could nonetheless detect alarm in her reaction.
“Excuse me? How did you even—”
“We talked to Todd’s mother,” David said, and Alicia wished he would keep his mouth shut. He sounded like he was half asleep. And possibly drunk. “She told us about your encounter with him. About your son.”
For a long time the woman didn’t answer. Alicia expected at any minute she would slam the door on them and the interview would be over.
Instead, she said, “I don’t really know much about Todd. I met him in Austin and we had a brief affair that produced my son. I don’t understand what you want.”
“Ms. Phillips,” Alicia said. “We are very sorry to bother you about this. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t want to talk to strangers, either. But all three of us have suffered terribly from crimes that have been going on in town the past few days. Both Jonathan and I lost our homes to arson, and David’s father was killed in another fire that was related. We believe all these things are connected to Todd Willis somehow. Even the smallest thing you could tell us about him might help us better understand what’s happening.”
“If that’s the case,” the woman said, “why aren’t the cops here instead of you?”
“Government bureaucracy,” David croaked. “Takes them forever to do anything.”
The woman seemed amused by this.
“If we could just ask five minutes of your time,” Alicia said.
“Oh, all right,” Christine Phillips said. “Come in if you must. But only for a minute.”
It was an old house and the first thing Alicia noticed about it, aside from the creaking hardwood floors and low ceilings, was the drone of a window air conditioning unit.
“Sorry it’s not cooler in here,” Christine said. “A/C can’t keep up with this kind of heat.”
She led them to a living area and invited them to sit. Alicia was startled at how thin she was, how fragile she seemed.
“So what do you want to know, exactly?”
Jonathan spoke first. “The most important thing is to find out if you’ve seen Todd lately.”
“No, I haven’t. As you probably know, I di
dn’t tell him about his son for a long time. Till the boy was ten years old. After that, Todd came to see us and said he wanted to be a father, but that didn’t work out. I knew it wouldn’t. You can’t count on a man to hang around. Especially not a guitar player. Which is why I was so hesitant to tell Todd about his kid in the first place.”
“Do you mind explaining to us what happened exactly?” Alicia asked.
“Oh, it’s not any kind of surprise. Todd was excited to be a father when he showed up, but his son was understandably guarded with him. The kid met a couple of the guys I dated over the years and neither cared much for him. He didn’t expect Todd to be different. But for a while he was. From what I could tell, Todd really tried to bond with the little guy. But then he got back on the drugs and everything went to shit.”
Alicia noticed Christine was intentionally not using her son’s name. It was the sort of thing any mother might do to protect the privacy of her child.
“What sorts of drugs?” David asked.
“I don’t know. I never caught him using. But he started looking like shit all the time, slept in too late, lost the job he had working in the oilfield.”
“Mrs. Willis said you met Todd when he was onstage in Austin,” Jonathan said. “Did he ever play around here?”
“No. He said he gave up on music. Which was unfortunate because his son is gifted in that way, too. I bought him one of those nice computerized keyboards, and he can play it like you wouldn’t believe. I could see him growing up to become a famous singer.”
Jonathan and David exchanged glances then, very obviously, and Christine noticed.
“What?” she asked them. “You think I’m exaggerating?”
“No,” David said. His voice was unsteady, unlike his usual confident tone, and Alicia again had the feeling he might be drunk. “If Thomas is anything like his father, he’s nothing short of a child prodigy.”
“How do you know my son’s name?” Christine asked. “I never told Cassandra that.”
Alicia couldn’t believe it. David was too sharp to have made such a stupid mistake. Had he not been paying attention at all?
“We did a little research,” David said. “And besides, Thomas is a student of Jonathan’s. He knows all about our past. How do you explain that?”
“Ms. Phillips,” Alicia said. “Christine. Please excuse—”
“Are you here to ask about Todd or my son?”
“Both,” David said. “Your son may know why my dad is dead, why someone is systematically attacking us and—”
“You need to leave,” Christine said. She wobbled as she stood and pointed at David, at all of them. “I let you into my house and you have the nerve to accuse my son—”
She stopped then and her eyes saw something over Alicia’s shoulder. They all turned to follow her gaze. A teenage boy was standing where the hallway met the living room.
“Thomas,” she said in a quiet voice. “Go back to your room. These people were just leaving.”
The kid didn’t appear to hear her. He looked at the three of them and a strange smile spread across his face.
“Hi, Mr. Crane,” he said. “I didn’t know you made house calls. Is this like a parent-teacher conference?”
Alicia looked at Jonathan and then back at Christine. Time seemed to slow down and then stop completely. Something was terribly wrong here. The fear in the woman’s eyes was unmistakable, and the confident way Thomas was looking at them made him seem anything like a thirteen-year-old kid.
“Thomas,” Jonathan said. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“You leave my son alone,” Christine hissed at him. “Get out of my house. Now.”
“Mom, it’s okay. I told you they were confused. They just want to understand what’s happening to them.”
Alicia was struggling to believe what was happening. This scene, this moment, seemed to reinforce everything Jonathan and David had been asking her to believe. Thomas’ behavior was eerily similar to their description of Todd Willis as a child. And what might that mean? That Todd had passed on some implausible quality of himself to his son, specifically the ability to see the world in an impossible way?
“Thomas,” Jonathan said. “You’re right. We are confused. Is there anything you can tell us? Is your father acting out against us?”
“I haven’t seen him since he left,” Thomas said. “He went to visit my grandpa in Windthorst and no one ever heard from him again. I think he’s dead.”
“In class on Thursday, you asked me some funny questions. You already knew what was going on, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” Thomas said. “I know all kinds of cool stuff.”
The kid looked at David then, as if he were going to say something else, but didn’t.
“Then tell us what’s going on,” Jonathan said. “We’ve lost our homes, David’s dad is dead, our friend Bobby is dead. . . .”
“Your homes were lost anyway. The whole city is lost. This story is coming to an end.”
Alicia had forgotten about Christine, but now the woman approached them.
“I want you out of my house. I didn’t ask for any of this and I want you out.”
“Thomas,” Jonathan said. “Tell us something.”
David stood and Alicia followed her. Jonathan didn’t seem ready to leave.
“Check the weather forecast,” Thomas said. “The American weather models have it wrong but the European one is spot on. It’s all there for anyone to see.”
“Get out,” Christine said. “Get out or I’m calling the cops.”
Jonathan finally stood up. David seemed unsteady on his feet and was looking at Thomas in a way that made Alicia uncomfortable. The three of them walked toward the door.
“Don’t ever come back here,” Christine said to them. “I didn’t ask for this. Todd is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and now so are you people.”
“Christine,” Alicia said. “I know you’re upset, but we’re victims the same as you. We—”
Thomas was still in the living room, and when Christine answered she lowered her voice, apparently so he wouldn’t hear her.
“Go see Todd’s father in Windthorst,” she said. “He knows the answers to the questions you’re asking. I can’t tell you anything.”
She glared at them, and in her eyes Alicia saw overwhelming weariness.
“Thomas won’t let me.”
69
“What the hell?” Alicia said. They were back in the car and David was pulling away from the house. “What the hell is going on in that house?”
“I’m telling you,” Jonathan said, “that kid has known everything from the beginning. And this isn’t just about us. You heard what he said about the whole city being lost.”
“He’s just posturing,” David said.
“Are you out of your mind?” Alicia shot back. “That kid is clearly a carbon copy of his father, who, according to you guys, knew things about the world no one should be able to know.”
“Sure, he’s a lot like Todd,” David said. “But he’s not some all-knowing Oracle. Let’s be realistic.”
“Be realistic? Are you drunk? What part of any of this is realistic?”
David shot her a withering look but didn’t respond.
“Should we call Detective Gholson?” Jonathan asked. “Tell him about Thomas and his mom?”
“Tell him what?” David replied. “That a thirteen-year-old kid just threatened the whole city of Wichita Falls?”
“He may be the one sending the emails,” Jonathan pointed out. “It would be a lead of some kind.”
“He has no probable cause to show up here,” David said. “Maybe when we’re done in Windthorst, we could share with Gholson what we know. Do you even trust him?”
“I think he wants to understand what’s going on as bad as we do, but he’s missing information we could provide. If we’re not going to talk to him now, I say we do it after Windthorst for sure.”
“So we’re
headed there now?” Alicia asked.
“It’s twenty minutes away,” David told her.
70
Windthorst, Texas sat on U.S. Highway 281 about twenty miles south of Wichita Falls. It had been settled a little more than a hundred years ago by German Catholic immigrants, who erected a church reminiscent of the homeland on the county’s highest point—a building that on a clear day could be seen from miles away. It was still a charming little place—a smattering of homes and barns, Holstein cows, the huge church—perfect, Jonathan thought, if your goal in life was to carve an existence out of the land like the immigrants who settled the town in the 1890s.
The drive from Wichita Falls had been tense and quiet. Alicia and David seemed perturbed with each other, especially when she made the comment about David being drunk, and Jonathan wondered again if something had happened with them the night before. But the evidence didn’t support it. Alicia was behaving normally and seemed well-rested, whereas David was clearly suffering from an epic hangover. Jonathan didn’t think this would be the case if they had spent the night together. At least he hoped it wouldn’t.
He was looking at his iPhone map and watching the road.
“It’s just up ahead,” he told them. “On the right-hand side. It should be one of these houses. Yeah, I think this is it.”
David stopped the car in front of a small house with tan bricks and brown siding. There was a decorative windmill in the front yard, a green Jeep Cherokee in the driveway. And just a few feet away, close enough that Jonathan could nearly reach out and touch it, stood a shiny black mailbox. Metal block letters spelled out a single word.
WILLIS.
Jonathan began to feel a sense of inevitability, as if the scene about to unfold had been scripted to happen in just this way. In a sense it had, because the three of them had taken proactive measures to arrange a meeting with Todd’s father. But what Jonathan really felt was some external source of determination, as if their arrival here was not only decided for them but inescapable. That in order for the seconds to continue advancing, the three of them were required to meet with Pete Willis and learn what he knew about Todd. The surreal thing was how the fantastical nature of what he expected to happen did not jibe with the remote location of this small town or the unassuming house that stood before them.