September Song

by Jeanie Freeman-Harper

  Sheriff Clayton leaned back in his chair and studied his old friend Lucas : “Don't look at me that way, man. It's been seventeen years since the boy died. Take a look down in basement in the storage area where they kept evidence down through the years. It's hard to find anything from that far back. Since that flood back a few years ago, we're lucky we have anything. “

  “You don't want to rock the boat, do you?”

  “Come now, Lucas. How long have I known you...since we were in diapers? Trust me. I could try to help you to resolve this situation...but you have to give me something more than this.”

  Lucas slapped his hands on the arms of the chair and bolted to his feet. “ So let me get this straight... you will reopen the file based on reports from the Walkers as long as it leads away from Tommy. Worried about re-election? Everyone knows the Walkers control this town? ”

  “Lucas, you know better than that.”

  Clayton paused, tapped his fingers on his desk and decided to fess up: “It does happen to be true that Thomas Walker Sr. came to see me today, and he brought Tommy with him. They both had a lot to say about Bradley Caldwell. They say he had that teenage jealousy thing going on back in '96, because of your daughter and Ethan. They also told me about his display of a violent nature in public...at Ruby's Diner they say. Brad did attack Tommy, and you know it. Fifty people could attest to that...you included."

  “He did hit him, and he did break his nose. Did anyone tell you why? Why don't you ask the man himself? Look here...I’ve known Brad all his life. He's mild mannered, but he's not a pushover. A man does stand up for himself. Haven’t you and I done so when the situation called for it?"

  “Well, yes.”

  “Does that make us violent in nature?”

  “Okay. I'm bringing Brad in, and he can speak on his own behalf...but, as things stand now, Brad's the only person of interest in a case that, quite frankly, I hate to reopen. Listen to me, Lucas. Ethan wrote in his journal than he no longer cared about living! What does that tell you?”

  “Isn’t it your job to reopen ... if something new is presented... if the cause of death was not known? Are you allowing Thomas Walker Sr. to back you and me off, because you're thinking ahead to re-election?”

  Clayton slammed his fist on his desk and leaned forward: “Sheriff McMillan's job and the county medical examiner's job, were done seventeen years ago! I trust that they did their jobs. You won't get information from them. McMillan has Alzheimer disease now, and his deputy from 1996 is dead.” Clayton threw up his hands in mock frustration, and his tone softened: “As hard as it is for you and Georgia Abernathy to accept, the boy probably took his own life. If he did not, then I would say there is more pointing toward Brad than anyone else. Now...do you really want to open that can of worms? What if the Walkers' accusations about Brad are right? What then?”

  “Truth is all I want...wherever it leads...just one last ditch effort to find out what happened...for my daughter and for Grace Abernathy.”

  “Lucas, if and when you can bring me something more than an old broken necklace...perhaps the missing links with DNA. I will hold onto this, however. Give me something more to tie it to Ethan and Tommy. Apparently, they found no footprints or indication of a second person that day, and DNA forensics was not so good back then.”

  “Do you not realize how it probably happened?” Lucas asked. “Ethan tied his boat at that pier on a routine basis and went out in it very early, every morning in summer? Anyone who knew him would know where and when to find him, and someone did! Most likely, he was leaning over to untie, when someone walked from the grass onto the pier behind him and caught him off guard. There probably were no discernible footprints on the pier that day. The weather was dry.”

  “Anything is possible, but what difference does it make? I repeat. There wasn't enough evidence to call it one way or another. We're a village of two thousand people. We don’t have a cold case detective.”

  “So in the meantime, old man Walker has your ear, doesn't he? It's all about politics in a small town. I thought you were above it, Clay. What happened to you? I never thought you would sell out, you know? You might as well sell your soul to the devil.”

  “Well, I guess that just about wraps up this conversation, Lucas. Sorry you feel that way.”

  Lucas leaned over, hands on desk and peered into Clayton's eyes: “I'll find that missing piece to the puzzle. It's there somewhere just waiting to be discovered...and when I do, you'll choke on it, because it will be a bitter pill to swallow. Furthermore, I'll go just as high as I must to see the case reopened.”

  Clayton was no longer amused:“Go on home and cool off, Lucas.I don't want to see your face in here again until you have more to show me.”

  When Lucas got home, he could not wait to hear from Emma. He needed to hear his daughter's voice, but she had not called. So he took the initiative and called her. He figured his day was shot any way, so if she had upsetting news to give him, he wanted to get it over with.

  “What's going on up there, Emma? Your mother called yesterday to tell me to prepare for a summer wedding. What have you not told me?”

  “Dad, I can't talk about it right now.”

  “Your Mother's there with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, think you can you tell me how your art show went? Did you sell your paintings?”

  “It was a success. Almost sold everything. I wish you had been here to share it with me. What I really want to know is how are you...and how is Brad and Mutt Junior? I read the Cobblers Cove Courier online this morning. It said there may be an inquiry into Ethan's death, if they find just cause. It said they might begin questioning people. Please tell me if Brad is in trouble, because of Tommy's mouth. I want to help.”

  “First of all, your big overgrown pup is happy and healthy. As for Brad...I don’t know for sure. Sheriff Clayton's not really interested in what I have to say. Now Thomas Walker Sr. has intervened. The entire family's pointing a finger at Brad and raising just enough suspicion to reflect it away from Tommy. There's only one reason they would want to do such a rotten, underhanded thing. And that's probably more than I should have said. I'm debating how much to tell Georgia. She seems to be in a fragile state.”

  “I can imagine. But don't spare me anything. I'm not a little girl any more, Dad. I don't want you to hold back on anything, okay?”

  “What can you do?”

  “I don't know yet, but I'm feeling stronger every day. Maybe that total recall will finally come through, and I'll have that missing piece you talked about. Whatever happens here, I hope to see you soon.”

  “I hope so too. You are missed. Brad dropped by just to see if you had called me.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously, and that mutt of a dog just mopes around on the porch without you here.”

  “And what about you, Dad?”

  “Your Daddy is ready for you to hightail it home.”

  After finally talking to his daughter, Lucas felt even more uneasy. There was too much left unsaid. He decided he needed a breather, so he went down to sit on the bench by the lake. Sometimes the solitude helped to sort things out. The air was fresh, cool, and clean, and he took in the welcome fragrance of burning leaves. He looked out to the far bank where the hardwoods were turning color and counted the little cabins, nestled among the pines, dotting the shoreline. Each unit was connected to wooden piers jutting out like fingers into Moon Lake.

  He could see the isolated log cabin at the very end, almost disguised by a thick stand of trees. It was “their cabin”—his and Ruby's. They had spent the previous two days just getting away from it all. Yet in a sense, he knew it was more like hiding out from wagging tongues and prying eyes. That was something they had gone to great lengths to do ever since Grace left him. He once blamed Grace for the failure of the marriage and thus rationalized his relationship with Ruby. Still he could no longer live with things as they were. Ruby deserved better than that.

/>   And then there was Emma who apparently had found her niche in Boston and her future husband as well. Lucas' stomach turned at the thought of losing his daughter again. His blood pressure spiked at the thought of Benjamin Winfield becoming his son-in-law; he sensed something sinister about the man. Emma had said, when she left, she would come back home. Yet he knew a woman could be swayed when she was thousands of miles away, in a world more glamorous that the one she left behind.

  Soon his thoughts were interrupted by the slamming of a car door up on the driveway in front of the house. He looked up to see Georgia Abernathy making her way down the path toward him. It was unlike her to make this, a second trip, reclusive as she was. She seemed to be a woman on a mission, and he knew exactly what her obsession was and what it had always been.Nothing mattered but the lost son taken from her in such a mind-numbing manner: without the certainty of a known cause, without a final goodbye.

  How well he could relate. For many years, his own daughter had been lost to him as well—not through death, but lost just the same. She had been unable to bear the sight of Moon Lake for all those years. She had finally come home to him in September. And now she was gone again. He and Georgia Abernathy had lived with a shared tragedy.

  He rose to greet her, and as she came near him, he could see the fatigue around her eyes and the uncertainty in her steps. His heart broke for her. He knew it had taken courage for her to venture out again, and he knew what had driven her to do it.

  “What have you come to ask me, Georgia?” He motioned for her to sit on the bench beside him.

  “I've heard you were at the sheriff's office today, Lucas. I wondered if there's anything you can tell me.” She looked at him with pleading eyes that pinned upon him the last vestige of hope in the search for truth.

  Lucas sorted his words carefully: “I've been thinking if I should say anything at all...but the truth is we have nothing yet, except that Tommy Walker is trying to implicate Brad in everything that has happened, from Ethan's death to Emma's narrow escapes upon two occasions. They’re trying to convince Clayton to build a case against Brad.”

  “You and I know that doesn't make sense,” she snapped. “If the Walkers are that intent on pointing fingers at an innocent man, that tells me everything I need to know.”

  There came upon Georgia's face the look of desperation and sorrow so deep that Lucas had to avert his eyes while she continued:

  “Lucas I'm telling you, that man is unfit to be around my grandson. I've watched in secret. I know how he treats the boy. He never wanted that child because he's Ethan's. First Tommy takes Ethan's life...”

  “Now we don’t know that with a certainty, Georgia.”

  “ ..and then he tries to ruin Ethan's son's life. As God is my witness, I will not have it.”

  “Georgia, try not to dwell on it. You'll make yourself sick. It's not over. Wait and see what tomorrow may bring.”

  She turned to face him. “Wait? You want me to wait and see? I've waited seventeen years for the truth, Lucas. I don’t have to wait any longer. Now at last I know the truth...with or without any investigation...with or without that final evidence you keep hoping for. Hope is a very small comfort on a cold, lonely night, Lucas. I should know.”

  Lucas slumped forward, head down and hands clasped. There was nothing more to say. All he could hope for now was for Emma to come home. She was all he had left, the one bright spot that made life bearable.

  “God bless you Georgia,” he said aloud, although he knew she didn't hear. Her face was set in granite as she made her way back up the path. Feeling suddenly old and disillusioned, Lucas watched his onetime high school sweetheart leave, seeing her through the watercolor aura of long ago, seeing them both in the long ago youth and vibrancy. He watched until he could no longer make out her form in the gathering darkness.

  He choked on the tears he dared not shed.

  18: Missing Links

  The exquisitely cut solitaire sparkled brilliantly in the bright morning sun. Grace and Emma admired it, while having their brunch at the sidewalk table outside Boston Bistro. Grace was in an exuberant, almost giddy mood. After all, she really believed everything was going just the way she wanted, just this once. “You must call your father, and give him the good news,” she said.

  “Not yet, Mother. You have to remember, I’ve not accepted Ben’s proposal. He asked me to keep the ring for a few days, hoping it would begin to feel right, I suppose...hoping it would sway me. Frankly, I went along with it, because I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the entire restaurant last night. He should never have proposed in front of everyone.” Emma could almost Grace’s tension building. “So I will let him down gently. I certainly wouldn’t make a public spectacle of something this serious…in the way he did me in public.”

  Emma looked at the ring one last time and then placed it inside her purse—along with the fading hope of ever becoming a bride.

  Grace said nothing. She figured, at this point, the more she pushed, the less favorable the outcome would be. In her mind, it was akin to watching a blind person teetering on the edge of a cliff and startling them by shouting “jump back.” You could never guess which way she would jump. So Grace changed the subject altogether: “Your museum show last night was superb. I’m very pleased and very proud. I know your father will be as well. Maybe you can call him, and at least let him know that much?”.

  “I will...soon,” said Emma.

  Grace finished her latte. “I’m off to a boutique two doors down. Care to come along?”

  “I think I’ll just sit here for awhile and maybe read a little. It’s so beautiful outside today.”

  “Then I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

  It was exactly the kind of day to lazily lounge outside—one of those magical autumn days when the sun pierces through the East Coast chill, without a cloud to mar the bright blue sky. Couples strolled by and smiled, and the entire city seemed in the kind of euphoric celebration of mid-October. So different from September. One never knew what that month would bring.

  Emma read the first paragraph of her paperback three times, realized she hadn't a clue what she had just read and decided her mind was too fractured to focus on the written word. Her thoughts kept wandering back to Texas where her heart had stayed. She never knew she would miss the deep fragrant woodlands and the lake breezes. She never knew how much she would miss a cowboy who drove a tractor to her house. She smiled when she thought of Bradley Caldwell.

  Then the thought came to her that Brad was being placed in the middle of something he didn’t deserve, accused of something he did not do. She desperately wanted to talk to him but was unsure if he would be responsive. He had not even hugged her goodbye at the airport. Regardless, she picked up her cell and called, but there was no answer. His voice mail came on, but she decided not to leave a message. What exactly would she say? The timing always seemed to be wrong between the two of them. She hoped it would be he there waiting at the airport when she was finally able to come home. She longed to see the warmth in his eyes and the slow smile that lit up his entire face.

  Suddenly dark clouds pushed by a rising wind appeared from nowhere, unexpected and without warning. A swirling gust picked up the paperback novel from the bistro table and blew it to the curb.

  That was when she saw the man, loping across the street toward the book whose pages were shuffling in the wind. It was the piano player from the party the night before. She barely recognized him without the tux. He was dressed in a turtleneck and dark khakis, but there was no mistaking the strange eyes: brooding one moment, merry the next and set in a finely etched face. With her book in hand, he strode toward her with eyes focused and unblinking, as if she were the only person in a crowd of sidewalk diners, as if he were on the most significant of missions.

  “Would this be yours?” he asked and handed her the book. The sparkle in his eyes told her he already knew the answer.

  “Yes. Thank you. I have no clue where that wi
nd came from.”

  “The wind is a mysterious force, is it not? Look who it has blown in. Would it be an intrusion if I sat with you?”

  “Of course you may. I recognized you from last night, but I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

  “You can just call me Piano Man,” he said.

  “Mr. Piano Man it is. I know you couldn’t know, but the song you sang last night...the one about September...has meaning for me. It’s ironic that you played it at my celebration party. Such an odd coincidence.”

  “There are no coincidences. I am here for a specific reason. This was no chance encounter. The song was requested by Ethan. “

  “Are you playing some weird joke? You can not have known him, and Ethan could not have requested that song. Ethan is dead...and how do you know his name any way?”

  “I have gifts, Emma. I am what might be called a messenger...a medium, if you prefer.”

  Emma’s hands shook hard enough to cause her spill the contents of her cup, but her voice remained controlled as she wiped up the mess: “Not to say I am a believer, but what exactly does Ethan want me to know?”

  “He is giving you permission to love again. Beyond that, he wants to give you the missing links to the questions concerning his death. He tried to come through to you many times over the years, but you placed walls around your heart and mind.”

  “I find this incredible, but I see you believe in yourself and what you are saying.” Emma dabbed at her eyes with a paper napkin after fumbling in her tote for a Kleenex.

  Where is Brad’s eternal handkerchief when I need it. Where is his strong shoulder?

  “Ethan wants you to have the answers you so desperately need,” Piano Man continued. “One that will set you free and another to help one you deeply care about. You must let down your guard. You must finally come to terms with what happened and open your mind to accept anything that is there. Truth is always truth, and delaying it, denying it or ignoring it won't change it. Are you truly prepared to open yourself to it?”