This Secret Thing

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  When Matteo first disappeared last spring, Nico saw his brother everywhere. He was a face in every crowd, the driver in the car next to him at the red light, the busboy at the table across the restaurant. More than once, he’d called his brother’s name aloud, startling his wife, her back going ramrod straight, her mouth an O of surprise.

  At first, Karen was patient, kind about it. But as the months went on, and he got more, rather than less, obsessed with his brother’s absence, her sympathy dried up, curling and shriveling like a dead flower. They started to fight about it, snipey, snippy words exchanged with increasing frequency and fervor. She said he needed to face reality, to accept that it was likely that Matteo wasn’t coming back. He hated her for saying it, though he knew she was only voicing what everyone else was thinking. But he couldn’t forgive her for it, and he responded by staying away more often—always in the name of the case. For her part, Karen seemed to stop noticing he was gone.

  It had taken surprisingly little time for his marriage to become a casualty of Matteo’s disappearance. By the time Nico had left their home, his leaving had merely been a formality. He’d felt next to nothing as he’d packed his things, only letting himself shed tears that night when he’d said goodnight to his children over the phone and laid his head on a flat pillow in a cheap efficiency hotel that rented by the week. Still, it didn’t change the fact that before he drifted off, he gazed at the unfamiliar ceiling and asked aloud the same question he’d been asking for months: Where are you, Brother?

  Before he went to Norah Ramsey’s door, Nico reached for his phone to check for any texts he’d missed while driving, but all he’d missed was a notification from his family’s security system. Though he no longer lived there, he still tracked his family’s comings and goings, their average moments on ordinary days. That was, after all, what he missed most. He could watch his son carry a soccer ball outside to kick it around. He could watch as his daughter rushed out the door to school carrying the coffee she insisted on drinking in spite of Nico’s protestations. He could watch as his wife retrieved packages from the porch. But there were other moments he’d seen lately, ones that were not average or ordinary, ones that involved his wife and daughter that increasingly concerned him. But how to bring it up when that would mean admitting how he’d come upon the information? He could hear Karen now: You’re spying on us?

  He decided not to click on the notification just yet, no sense seeing something he could do nothing about. He looked through the remnants of dead bugs and bird poop on his windshield, staring at Norah Ramsey’s house and thinking instead of the thing he could do something about. Inside that house, he was convinced, were answers about his brother. Answers he’d yet to find. It was clear to him: find Matteo, fix his family.

  He tucked the phone into the clip on his belt and got out of the car. He paused for a moment, debating whether to go around back, where he could possibly see something new and revelatory going on in the kitchen. Or maintain a sense of decorum by going to the front door like any other visitor. Though he felt a claim on the house, a right to access it, the people inside knew nothing about that. He had to be careful with Norah Ramsey’s mother. Though she claimed to be estranged from her daughter, she could be lying. People lie all the time. He thought again of the notification on his phone. Even the people you thought you could trust. Nico didn’t trust Norah Ramsey’s mother. Fair or not, by being related to Norah, her scruples were questionable as far as he was concerned.

  He knocked on the door, and the sound of a dog barking surprised him. Norah Ramsey didn’t have a dog. Other than a daughter, from what he’d learned, Norah Ramsey had no attachments whatsoever. She seemed impervious to connection, maybe incapable of it. Nico guessed that in her line of work, this trait came in handy. He listened to footsteps approaching and thought about the people in Norah Ramsey’s life. He made a note to take a stab at Norah’s ex-husband, the kid’s father. Perhaps he’d talk about her. Perhaps he had guilty knowledge he didn’t know was guilty knowledge.

  The door opened to reveal a slightly older version of Norah Ramsey. Two words flashed through his mind: teen pregnancy. He wondered just how much older than her daughter Polly Cartwright could be. It couldn’t have been much. Always inclined to conduct an interview, he had to stop himself from asking. Instead he just said, “You must be Polly.”

  She nodded, distracted as she pushed the dog, a large muddy-brown mutt of indiscriminate origin, out of the way of the door with her foot and scolded him. “Down, Barney.”

  He flashed his badge. “I’m Nico Rinaldi. We spoke on the phone a few days ago.”

  Polly nodded again, this time pushing the insistent dog out of the way with a bit more force. “I know who you are,” she said, her tone not friendly.

  “I just wanted to come by and make sure the two of you are getting settled in OK.” He gave her his kindest smile, the one he reserved for women, children, and the very guilty. “I told my guys to try to tidy up. Hope they didn’t leave you with too much of a mess.”

  Polly furrowed her brow. “If that was cleaned up, I’d hate to see what messy was.” She leaned against the door, creating a bigger opening from her weight pushing against it. The dog saw his moment and bolted between them, right out the open door. He bounded down the porch steps and loped across the front yard, his longish ears flying behind him like pigtails. Stunned for a moment, both Nico and Polly just watched him go.

  Polly came to her senses and turned toward the stairs behind her. “Violet!” she yelled, already sounding right at home in the role of caretaker. She looked back at Nico and waved her hand in a shooing motion. “Why are you just standing there?” she hollered at him. Violet came to the top of the stairs and Polly hollered again, “Barney got out! You’ve got to come help us catch him!”

  Us? Nico thought. He started to argue, but when he saw the urgency on Polly’s face, he didn’t think taking the time to debate whether dog chasing fell under his job description was in his own best interest. He just turned and ran in the direction the dog had gone. Perhaps, he thought as he ran, his efforts would ingratiate him with Polly, make Violet see him less as a threat and more as a friend.

  “Officer!” he heard Polly call from somewhere behind him.

  “Detective,” he muttered the correction through gritted teeth and stopped running.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see her gesturing to his right. He assumed she meant for him to turn back in that direction so he pivoted right and obeyed. He tried to recall the dog’s name as he ran back toward Norah Ramsey’s house. In his mind’s eye he saw Polly nudging the dog with her foot. She’d said his name. He replayed the scene in his head again, saw her mouth forming the name: Barney, like Fife, the hapless cop from Mayberry—the very thing he didn’t want to be, but felt increasingly like, the longer his brother stayed missing.

  He continued running until he reached the house directly across the street from Norah Ramsey’s. He knew the house, recalled what had happened there back in the spring. It hadn’t been his case, but it had been the talk of the town for a while, the nightmare of every parent. He and Karen had shuddered together, thinking that was the worst thing imaginable. Then Matteo had disappeared.

  “Barney!” he called. He was out of breath from running, which made it harder to raise his voice loud enough to be heard. Huffing and puffing, he put his hands on either side of his mouth and called again. “Barney!” He looked from left to right, hoping for a glimpse of brown fur flying free. But everything was still. He turned and saw Polly and Violet approaching with matching worried expressions.

  “You see him?” Polly asked as they caught up to him. Beside her, Violet made eye contact with him, not bothering to repress her sneer.

  “No,” he admitted. “He just took off,” he added, sounding lame. Norah’s kid had a way of making him feel inadequate. She looked at him like she knew something about him that no one else knew. It unnerved him. He pretended to scan the horizon, but really it was just a wa
y to get out from under her gaze.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have opened the door to you,” Polly said, looking at Nico like it was his fault the dog had made a break for it.

  Violet spoke up, her voice quavering. “How’s he going to know how to get back? He doesn’t know his way around here yet.”

  Polly patted Violet’s shoulder. “He’s a dog, honey. They’ve got better smellers than we do. He’ll sniff his way home.”

  A cartoonish vision filled Nico’s mind: himself on all fours, sniffing out the path his brother had taken, finding him with his nose. He bit back a sad smile as the image faded, the flash of childish hope fading with it. “Want to split up and search?” he asked.

  “Over here!” a voice answered before Polly or Violet could.

  Nico looked up to see a teenage kid standing on the driveway, gripping two excited dogs by their collars, one on either side of him. They were taking turns trying to leap onto the other, nearly knocking down the sturdy, stocky kid with the force of their jumps.

  “I’ve got him!” the kid said. But Nico didn’t know how long that would be true as both dogs strained against the boy’s grip. He wanted to get the dog back inside Norah Ramsey’s house, bid them all goodbye, get back in his car, and view the alert from his security camera, checking on his family the only way he still could.

  The three of them hurried over to the boy and the dogs. Polly had smartly brought Barney’s leash and quickly snapped it onto his collar, chastising him all the while. “Bad dog, Barney,” she said. “Bad dog.” Once the leash was secure, she tugged him over to her side and commanded him to sit, which he did, looking penitent even as he kept his eyes on the other dog, who followed Barney’s lead and sat by his master’s feet, too. For a moment there was just the sound of the dogs panting in unison, like a pair of obscene callers. “Sorry about that,” Polly said to the kid. “I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t get out like that again.”

  The boy, who avoided meeting Nico’s eyes, looked at Violet. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I, um, I mean, I d-don’t,” Violet stammered a response, looking pained.

  Polly wrapped an arm around Violet’s shoulder proprietarily. “I’m her grandmother. I’m staying with her for a while. Barney is my dog. He’s anxious to learn his way around here, I guess. Make new friends.” She laughed, and they all seemed to relax. The situation was contained, the crisis avoided. For now.

  The boy leaned forward and patted Barney’s contrite head. “Nice to meet you, Barney,” he said. He looked at Violet again. “He’s welcome to visit Chipper here anytime. Chipper loves to play with other dogs, and there’s not many around here.”

  “That’s a nice offer,” Polly said. “Isn’t that a nice offer, Violet?”

  Violet, looking like she’d rather die than speak again, simply nodded and ducked out from under her grandmother’s arm.

  “I’m Polly Cartwright. And you are?”

  “Micah,” said the boy, his voice lowering as he added, “Berg,” as if he were ashamed to say it. And Nico knew why. Last spring the kid had thrown a party—pretty de rigueur teenage stuff: parents out of town, kids drinking and trashing his house until the neighbors complained and the cops busted up the party in the wee hours. A typical house party until Micah had made a 911 call in the morning to report that he’d discovered his girlfriend, Olivia Ames, unconscious and unresponsive.

  When the emergency responders arrived, they found that the girl was dead and had likely been dead since around the time the cops had appeared the night before. The news of the girl’s death quickly spread and, along with it, outrage. People said that Micah had waited to call on purpose. They said he’d known she was unconscious when the cops arrived but had been afraid to lead them to her, protecting himself and securing her fate at the same time. Worst of all, before she slipped into unconsciousness, she’d texted a few friends one ominous line: Micah did this. Everyone conjectured what her cryptic text had meant. Most agreed with the theory that he’d been complicit in getting her to drink enough to kill herself and that, before she’d lost consciousness, she realized it and texted her friends.

  Just last year, this kid had been a high school hero, sporting his handsome good looks with the kind of swagger that comes from being the total package and knowing it. They’d called him Ice Berg in testament to his prowess as a hockey player. He’d eschewed the more traditional sports to pursue hockey with the kind of vigor usually reserved for lobbyists and addicts. He was good at it, built for it, with enough attitude to compensate for any lack he had. But the party and Olivia’s death had changed all that.

  Now he spent most of his time alone, blamed by both his peers and their parents for Olivia’s young life cut short. Though charges had never been filed, rumors circulated that they still could be. The kid’s parents had gotten him a lawyer, and the DA was still sniffing around, looking to make an example of Micah Berg. In the meantime, the kid lived in a sort of self-imposed exile, waiting for the hammer to fall. Nico, for his part, didn’t know what to believe about the kid. But looking at him in the flesh, he didn’t look like a monster. He just looked like a boy who’d taken on more than he could handle. Nico knew the feeling.

  “Nice to meet you, Micah,” said Polly, oblivious to his history. “This is Violet, but I’m sure you already know that. You two must go to the same school? And you’re neighbors, to boot!” Polly seemed to possess an unflappable cheeriness that her daughter, based on his many interviews with the now incarcerated Norah Ramsey, did not. Nico guessed that Polly would be a lot easier to crack than her daughter would be.

  “We’re in different grades, Polly,” Violet said, sounding miserable. “I’m a sophomore. He’s a senior.” She looked at Micah. “Thanks,” she said to him. “For your help.”

  She mumbled something about having to study and started walking back in the direction of her house. Nico couldn’t get a bead on whether she was just uneasy around this older boy, or if perhaps she, like the others, held him responsible for what had happened. Nico looked at the boy and wondered if the story he’d told—and stuck to—was true or not. He’d said that he had had no idea Olivia was there, only discovering her body when, hungover, he went to try to clean up the next morning. She’d been in the guest room, curled on a narrow strip of floor between the bed and the window. A cursory glance of the room would’ve revealed nothing. She was out of sight except to someone trying to walk every inch of the house and survey the extent of the damage, the amount of work ahead to clean it up.

  He’d said that earlier that night, she’d told him she was leaving with someone else, that they’d fought, and she’d left angry. Micah claimed he never saw her again after that, that he’d gotten drunk and passed out, waking late the next morning to find the real nightmare beginning.

  “I just wish I could take it all back,” he’d said. Some took that statement as an admission of guilt. But Nico, for his own reasons, understood how someone completely innocent of wrongdoing could still wish they could take words and actions back, could undo what had been done.

  He stuck out his hand to the kid. “Thanks,” he said, and waited for Micah to reciprocate, waited for the moment he could look him squarely in the eye. Maybe if Micah would look him in the eye, he could somehow know whether the kid was guilty or not. Maybe Nico could get back the mojo he seemed to have lost—that sense of knowing the right thing, of trusting his gut. Had he ever had that? If not, he’d certainly thought he had. Nico missed the days when he’d had it all but, of course, hadn’t known it. And wasn’t that the human condition? Like this kid’s, his life had changed profoundly and irreversibly last spring. Like this kid, he was still trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

  Micah Berg gripped Nico’s hand. Though the kid gave it a good, strong shake, he didn’t quite look him in the eye. Instead his gaze took in the expanse of Nico’s face with a sweeping glance before releasing his grip and reaching down to scratch his dog’s head. “Good boy,” the kid said
to the dog. “You’re a good boy.”

  Nico decided not to attach too much meaning to the exchange. He bid both Polly and Micah goodbye and trudged back to his car, feeling sadder than before he’d arrived. He wished he hadn’t dropped by in the first place, wished he’d never gotten involved with these people, or this place.

  Polly

  Polly dragged her belligerent dog back into the house, made sure to shut the door securely behind her, and unclipped Barney’s leash from his collar. He sank down and rested his chin on his paws in that way he had that he knew would work on her anytime he’d been naughty.

  “Typical male,” she said to him. “Guilty as sin, but thinking you can weasel your way out of it by looking cute.”

  She rolled her eyes and walked away. Sometimes walking away was the best thing to do.

  She’d walked away from Calvin, but he wasn’t letting her go so easy. She wasn’t stupid: she knew it was her money and not her he was pursuing. She’d ignored a call from him just as that cop had rung the doorbell. It was the call she’d been expecting since she’d backed out of her driveway with her dog beside her, the back seat loaded with her belongings and a bag full of money. It had taken longer than she had expected, but he had called. She could feel the silence between them breaking like glass shattering.

  She’d had to will her heart to calm down enough to open the door to the cop and appear serene and composed. It was almost a godsend that Barney had bolted when he did, effectively ending the cop’s attempt at banter. She wondered what he’d been getting at with his concerned act. How dare he stand there and pretend like he cared, when he was the one who had hauled her daughter to jail, took her granddaughter’s mother from her?