Tara turned away in disgust, not bothering to reply.
As she drew, Reggie thought of how, just an hour ago, riding her bike to the diner, she’d seen pictures of Candy plastered all over town, like the lost kids on the back of milk cartons: have you seen me?
The photo showed her heavy eye shadow and candy cane earrings, though they looked more like fishhooks in the blurred image. She smiled out from telephone poles and bulletin boards in her greasy Silver Spoon uniform, and Reggie could still smell the charred meat and onions on her breath.
A little sugar for Candy.
She thought of her mom’s theory, about how everyone was connected by these invisible threads, making this big web. Reggie had a string that went right to Candy. She’d met her once, kissed her cheek. Somehow this made her feel all the more frightened and jittery at Candace’s disappearance.
Tara looked down at Reggie’s drawing, seeing herself in the ketchup bottle. “That’s totally awesome, Reggie,” she squealed. “No one’s ever drawn my picture before. Can I have it?”
Reggie shrugged, looked down at the drawing, and realized she’d given Tara’s reflection the candy cane earrings.
“It’s not really that good,” Reggie said, but Tara folded up the place mat and put it in her bag.
“Please, Reggie,” Tara said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve got more talent in your left pinkie toe than most people have in their whole bodies.”
“Hey, cuz!” came a shout from across the restaurant. Charlie’s cousin Sid was meandering up to their table. His curly hair had a shaggy, just-out-of-bed look. He wore low-slung Levi’s, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and black Converse high-tops. He had two blond girls with him, wearing hippie clothes and reeking of patchouli. One was quite overweight, her belly spilling over the top of her Indian-print wraparound skirt. The other had horrible acne. “How goes it?” Sid asked. His pale blue eyes were bloodshot and glassy, and he had a lopsided smile.
“Good,” Charlie said, running a hand over his own close-cropped hair. “How ’bout with you?”
“Can’t complain,” Sid said, still grinning stupidly.
“Can I ask you something?” Tara said, looking at Sid.
“Shoot.”
“I hear you’re the go-to guy if someone happened to be interested in a certain something.”
One of the girls giggled. She wore a string of red glass beads and little round glasses with pink lenses. Her hair was long and crazy as a nest of snakes. There was a purple feather roach clip dangling from the left side.
“I could be your man. We should talk. My cuz here knows how to reach me. Y’all enjoy your snack.” He loped off, the twin hippies like bookends beside him.
Charlie glared at Tara and shook his head.
“What?” Tara asked. “I thought a little weed might be fun sometime. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, right,” Charlie said. “Just imagine what would happen if my dad got one whiff or found one seed on me—I feel like I’m half a step away from reform school as it is, I don’t need to give him an actual, legitimate reason. ”
“Too bad,” Tara said, keeping her eyes on Sid as he stood in line at the register.
“Sid’s a total waste-oid,” Charlie said, noticing that Tara was still staring at his cousin. “No brain cells left. My dad told me that Uncle Bo’s real pissed because Sid didn’t get into a single college he applied to. He’s gotta go to community college in the fall and take remedial English and shit.”
Tara watched Sid and the girls leave, then turned back to Reggie.
“Your mom must be tripping, Reg,” Tara said, stirring Sweet’N Low into her coffee. She stirred too fast and hard, making the spoon chink against the white ceramic mug and spilling coffee over the edge. “Are she and Candy still friends? How do they even know each other? When’s the last time she saw her?” Sometimes Tara’s sentences reminded Reggie of a bumper car ride—one slamming into the next, pushing it out of the way until the next one came along, faster and more furious.
Reggie shrugged. “I’m not sure. And my mom hasn’t been around the last few days, so I haven’t been able to ask her.”
“Where is she?” Tara asked.
“Don’t know,” Reggie admitted, then, reluctantly, told Charlie and Tara the story of what had happened at the bowling alley—how Vera had taken off with the man in the white shirt and hadn’t come home since. “She’s been doing this play down in New Haven. She’s probably down there, staying with friends.”
“So wait . . . ,” Tara said, setting down her coffee so hard it sloshed over the side. “This guy in the white shirt your mom took off with, he drove a tan car?” Her voice turned high and squeaky like a dog toy.
“Yeah,” Reggie said. “So?”
“Hello! Tan car, Reg. Like the guy that picked up Candace Jacques! The guy who might have killed Andrea McFerlin! What if your mom was picked up by a serial killer?”
“Jeez-us!” Charlie yelped, slamming the bottle of ketchup down. “I don’t get it, Tara. How is it that your mind goes to the most messed-up places so quickly?”
“I’m just connecting the dots. It’s not my fault that you don’t like the picture that shows up.”
“But they don’t connect!” Charlie snapped, rubbing his temples as if he was getting a headache. “You’re assuming all kinds of shit, jumping to conclusions based on nothing! I hope you’re not paying any attention to this, Reg.”
Reggie shook her head, to say, of course not. She picked at the fries that Charlie had dumped too much ketchup on, suddenly not feeling very hungry at all. She wiped her hands on a paper napkin, leaving red smeary fingerprints.
“REGGIE?” GEORGE SAID WHEN he opened the door. He squinted at her through his glasses like he was trying to decide if it was really her. At last he smiled warmly. “What a nice surprise. You rode your bike all this way?” He looked past Reggie at her Peugeot, resting on the grass. “Do you have a headlight or something?”
“Reflectors,” Reggie said.
“Well, if you’re going to be riding around in the dark, we’ll have to get you some decent lights for the bike. Come on in.”
Reggie followed George through the doorway of his little ranch house and into the kitchen. It was small and dark with fake wood paneling. The countertops were white Formica, scrubbed until they gleamed. George had a small table with four chairs with a fake Tiffany lamp hanging above it. The shelf behind them was lined with wooden duck decoys and bowling trophies.
Reggie liked the way the rows of ducks watched her, as they did each time she came to George for advice or help with homework. Her mother wasn’t exactly the help-with-homework type, and whenever she asked Lorraine, her aunt told her to go to the library and look things up herself. So she came to George’s kitchen table whenever she had a particularly tricky assignment or a test she was sure she’d fail. He had a way of breaking things down into tiny pieces that made even the hardest tasks seem manageable.
“Want a Coke?”
Reggie nodded.
“I was just finishing up a project downstairs,” he said, handing her a can of soda from the fridge. “Want to see?” His eyes were all lit up, the way they got when he was hard at work on one of his decoys.
“Sure.” She followed George down the painted steps into the basement. Fluorescent light fixtures hung from chains on the ceiling, illuminating George’s workshop. He had a table saw, a jigsaw, a drill press, and a huge workbench with various clamps and vises attached to it. The Peg-Board wall behind the workbench was neatly hung with tools, each tool’s place carefully outlined with yellow paint.
Reggie loved George’s workshop. She loved the neatness, the rows of tools, the idea that you could just follow a pattern and plans and end up with a duck or a dresser. “There’s a right tool for every job,” George would say when he asked her to hand him things: a -inch wrench, a no. 2 Phillips head screwdriver, a -inch nail set.
“This is the latest,” George said, holding up a nearly finished duck carvi
ng. His gouges and chisels were lined up beside it. “A female mallard. Everyone always does the males because they’re so flashy with their green heads, but I thought a female might be nice. She can keep the males I’ve got upstairs company.” He gave Reggie a wink.
“It’s great,” Reggie said, meaning it. She thought it was amazing that George could take a simple block of wood and find a duck inside it.
“What’s this?” Reggie said, looking at a set of plans on the bench.
“A surprise for Lorraine. I thought I’d make her a cabinet to hold all her fishing rods. Don’t say anything, huh?”
“Of course not,” Reggie said, her eyes still on the plans, trying to understand what part she was looking at.
“Your mother know where you are?” George asked.
Reggie shook her head.
“Maybe we ought to call her.”
“She’s not home. That’s kind of why I’m here.”
George set the duck back down on the workbench and gave Reggie a questioning look.
“She hasn’t been back since she took off with that guy at the bowling alley.”
George ran his hand through his hair. “That’s not exactly unusual, is it? I mean, you know your mother and men—”
“No,” Reggie admitted, cutting him off. “It’s not unusual. But something’s been bugging me. The guy in the white shirt, the one she left with, he drove a tan car. I saw them pulling out of the parking lot in it.”
“And?”
“And that waitress that disappeared, Candace Jacques, she was picked up by a guy in a tan car, too.”
George smiled gently. “So you rode out here on your bike at ten o’clock at night to say you think your mother may have been kidnapped?”
“Kind of.” She looked down at her can of soda in her hand. This was exactly the kind of situation she depended on George for. The kind where she needed a normal grown-up to do and say the normal grown-up thing.
“Reg,” George said, lowering himself so that she made eye contact with him. “Now, it’s true that I didn’t see your mother leave with the man from the bowling alley, but I’m more than sure that she went willingly. He probably reminded her of some movie star or something. Trust me, your mother’s fine. She can take care of herself. She’ll come back home when she’s ready. You know how she is.”
Reggie twirled the Coke can in her hand.
“Right?” George said.
“Right,” Reggie agreed, feeling better.
“Hey, how about you help me get started on that fishing cabinet? I can call Lorraine so she doesn’t worry, tell her we’re working on something, and that I’ll bring you home in an hour or so. How does that sound?”
Reggie nodded enthusiastically and George reached for the plans.
“We can rough-cut the lumber tonight. I got some nice oak. See, look at this,” he said, pointing at one of the drawings. “Dovetail joinery. Beautiful, isn’t it? It’ll be a little tricky to get all the cuts right, but it’ll be worth it, don’t you think?”
Reggie nodded, feeling her body relax—all the craziness of the tan car, missing waitress, and hand in a milk carton faded away as she studied the neat drawing showing a close-up of the little trapezoidal shapes that would fit like puzzle pieces, binding the walls of the cabinet together tightly, perfectly almost, no need for nails or screws.
Chapter 11
October 16, 2010
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
THE SMOKE BILLOWED OUT of the open door behind Lorraine.
“Call the fire department,” Reggie instructed, holding her cell phone out to her aunt. Lorraine looked at the phone like it was a laser gun. Her face was carved by wrinkles and her hair was completely white—except in the places where it was singed at the ends. She had a slight stoop, shoulders hunched and neck stretched out, reminding Reggie of an elderly turtle.
The last time Reggie had seen Lorraine was when Lorraine and George had come to Reggie’s graduation from RISD. Since then, Lorraine had called every week but never pushed Reggie to come home for a visit. Reggie was always careful to talk about how busy she was, plans she had to travel out of the country. She never dreamed of inviting her aunt up to visit her, and Lorraine never hinted that she wanted an invitation. Reggie knew from her weekly calls that Lorraine had retired from the elementary school a few years ago, and now spent a lot of her free time volunteering at the Brighton Falls Historical Society.
“Just dial 9-1-1 and push the call button,” Reggie said, placing the phone carefully in her aunt’s bony hands. Lorraine began tentatively pressing buttons. Reggie ran around to the back of the truck and grabbed the fire extinguisher clamped in beside her toolbox.
Wielding the heavy red extinguisher, she stopped at the passenger window. “Stay in the car, Mom. Don’t get out. Do not come inside. Okay?”
Vera gave her a nervous smile. “Did he beat us here?” she asked.
“Who?” Reggie asked.
“Old Scratch.”
Reggie stiffened, eyes focused on the doorway where the smoke reached out, beckoning her, daring her to come inside. “I don’t think so, Mom. But I’m gonna go check it out.”
Lorraine was giving the address to the 911 dispatcher. She held the phone in front of her face and away from her mouth like she was using a walkie-talkie.
Reggie took a deep breath of clean air and headed up the stone steps, looked through the open door and into the smoke. She couldn’t see flames or even tell where the fire was.
You have one minute to grab what you can. What do you choose?
Had her early morning dream been trying to warn her, to prepare her for this very moment?
And if she got inside and discovered the house was burning and that there was no way to stop it, what would she choose to save? She wasn’t at all sure there was anything of hers left inside.
One way to find out.
She reached up and touched the hourglass necklace hidden under her shirt for luck, then pulled the pin on the extinguisher. She put the nozzle in her left hand and held the lever with her right, then stepped through the door. Behind her, sirens had started in the distance.
Hurry, she heard Tara say in her ear. You’re running out of time.
Even through the thick haze of smoke, Reggie could see the entryway and hall were exactly the same as they had been the day she’d left for college. There was a worn Oriental rug, coat hooks, a simple Shaker-style bench with a mirror above, and the grandfather clock, which seemed to have stopped altogether. To her left, against the wall, was the stairway leading up to the bedrooms. Straight ahead was the hallway that led to the living room, dining room, and kitchen. The source of the smoke was somewhere back there.
She blinked and coughed as she moved forward, but the smoke played tricks on her. She walked into a wall, sure the hall was right in front of her. She turned and looked at her image in the mirror above the bench—it wavered, seeming to grow large, then small; then she disappeared altogether. It was as if she’d stepped into a nightmare fun house.
Maybe, she thought, for half an irrational second, it was just Monique’s Wish getting back at her, punishing her for abandoning it so easily. If buildings held memories, had souls, didn’t it stand to reason that they could get angry, too?
She felt her way along the wall in front of her until she got to the hallway and caught a hint of movement up ahead.
Was there someone in the house with her? A wispy body moving through the smoke, beckoning, This way.
“Hello?” she called out, feeling silly when she heard her own voice. Of course there was no one there.
She heard her mother’s voice in her head: Did he beat us here? Old Scratch.
Holding the fire extinguisher in front of her, Reggie headed down the hallway. The smoke stung her eyes and burned her throat, but she continued on, promising herself she’d turn back if things got too bad.
She turned left into the kitchen, where the teasing lick of flames caught her eye.
Comp
ared to the smoke, the actual fire wasn’t all that impressive. A pan on the back burner of the stove was lit up, the flames shooting up the wall. Reggie aimed the fire extinguisher and squeezed the lever, sweeping over the flames. The fire sputtered and sighed; in less than a minute the flames were gone.
The big cast-iron pan was full of white foam and oil. Reggie could just make out three blackened trout peeking through the mess. Their heads and tails were still attached, the way Lorraine always liked to cook them, no part wasted. Reggie pulled the chain to start the vent fan on the wall near the stove and threw open the window above the sink. The sirens were louder now—a ladder truck and police car were coming up the driveway.
She stumbled through the kitchen, bumping against the old round table and chairs, and into the dining room to open those windows. They were the original wooden sash windows her grandfather had installed, and they had always stuck terribly. She had to pound one with her fist to get it to budge at all. The glazing didn’t hold—an entire pane of glass fell out, breaking against her arm, giving her a good gash just above her wrist, before shattering on the pine-board floor.
“Shit,” she hissed, inspecting the damage.
“Hello?” a voice called from the open front door.
Reggie got to the front hall just as a group of firemen were coming in.
“Fire’s out,” she said.
“Mind if we take a look?” said a young man who looked like a little kid playing dress-up in his oversize coat, hat, and boots.
Reggie led them into the kitchen, where they inspected the charred remains of fish and the blackened wall. Satisfied, the little parade made their way back out of the house where an older fireman was talking with the police officer in the yard.
“Fire’s out, Chief,” reported one of the men. “Flare-up from a pan of oil on the stove. The lady got it with an extinguisher.”
“Oil gets hot like that, it’s gonna ignite,” the chief said to Reggie sagely. She nodded and caught him looking at her arm. Blood had seeped through her shirtsleeve.
“I’m fine,” she told him before he could say anything. “Just a little scratch. We’ll be more careful while we’re cooking. Thanks for coming out.”
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