Hanging by a Thread

by Sophie Littlefield

  I felt like I had no control over my own emotions lately. Worse, I felt like something else—my gift, or else the inanimate objects that brought it out—was in charge of me rather than the other way around.

  Ever since I’d touched the jacket, I’d gotten deeper and deeper into a situation that I had nothing to do with. At every step I unearthed secrets about people they would do anything to keep hidden. And I had yet to find any reason for them not to stay hidden, since nothing would ever bring Dillon or Amanda back.

  Until today. If Rachel was right, she was truly in danger. She could escape for the time being, but she would never really be safe here as long as Mr. Granger’s rage fueled his desire for vengeance. And how could a parent ever let go of their grief over the loss of a child? Mrs. Stavros had basically stopped living. Mr. Granger had chosen rage instead. Neither choice offered much solace, but who was I to judge?

  Sitting at the kitchen table, picking at some leftover pizza I’d found in the fridge, I went back and forth. Either Amanda’s death was unrelated to Dillon’s, and she’d been taken by a stranger who was walking free somewhere … or what? Or Amanda had been killed by Mr. Granger. And maybe that had been enough to satisfy his desire for vengeance. But Winston was a small town, and Rachel was one of its stars. Everyone knew her and everyone liked her—teachers, kids from school, parents—and girls like that are far from invisible. When she marched in the homecoming parade in the fall with the cheer squad, would Mr. Granger be watching? When the local paper ran an article about the philanthropy club’s beach cleanup day, would Mr. Granger read about its president? When he was at the Dell Market picking up a few things for dinner, would he see Rachel with a group of kids buying sodas?

  And how long would it be until his rage boiled over and he decided he couldn’t stand to see Rachel happy anymore, when his son was dead?

  Maybe that was why the jacket had found me. Maybe I was being asked not just to understand what had happened, but to prevent Mr. Granger from hurting Rachel. If I could somehow help her prove what Mr. Granger had done, he would be locked up and Rachel would be safe.

  An idea was forming on the edges of my mind, a plan for doing just that. I was far from ready, but as I pushed the cold pizza crust around on my plate, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from wondering. Thinking.

  Planning.

  The jacket was safe in its hiding place in the cellar. There might be evidence on it—something to tie it to Mr. Granger. Of course, I’d touched it too, but I couldn’t do anything about that now. There must have been dozens of fingerprints on it.

  Scraping my plate into the trash, I washed up the dishes and then, almost like I’d been meaning to all along, I found myself standing on my porch looking out at the ocean and texting Jack.

  “Are you sure this is okay?” I asked as Jack led me to a bench two doors down from the veterinary offices. He was wearing a light blue scrub shirt over his jeans, and there were some questionable stains on it. Even so, he still managed to look amazing. His hair was doing this thing where it was falling in his eyes on one side, and the more he pushed it back, the more it fell forward again.

  “Yeah, I can clean cages anytime. Besides, you heard Arthur.”

  Jack’s uncle Arthur had practically pushed us out the door, telling Jack to take as long a break as he wanted. Arthur wasn’t what I expected. Yes, I could kind of tell he was sick; he was thin and he wore a skullcap over his bald head that made him look more like a rock star than anything else. He had a huge smile, and I could see glints of gold on his back teeth, like a happy pirate, what with the cap and all. Shaking my hand enthusiastically, he told me I was always welcome and made a joke about offering me something to eat but that all they had was pet treats.

  It was hard not to like Arthur. I could totally see why Nana and he got along. All around the office were posters for animal causes. I even thought I saw a couple flyers for Nana’s loggerhead turtle rescue group.

  And Jack seemed different around him. Not more talkative, but less … grim. Less volatile. Calmer.

  “So. What’s going on, Clare?” he asked as we walked out of the office.

  “I … need your help. With something. A … thing I need to do.”

  “You got it.”

  If he hadn’t answered like that—instantly, no questions asked, no gotta-check-my-calendar, I might not have had the guts to tell him everything. I probably would have gotten even more tongue-tied and ended up asking a lot of dumb questions about anything else. But when I didn’t answer for a minute, Jack put out his fingers, touching my cheek and turning my face so I had to look at him. He didn’t smile.

  “Clare—it’s me. Tell me what you need.”

  I shivered, both from his touch and from the way he always looked right into my eyes, as though nothing he found there could disappoint him.

  I started with what Rachel had told me and then I told him what I needed to do. People drove in and out of the office parking lot, hurrying into the dry cleaners and the phone store and the bakery. A few people came with cat carriers and dogs on leashes, but none of them paid us any attention at all, and when I was done Jack just nodded, wrapping his hand around mine.

  “So.” I took a deep breath, not looking at him. “I wouldn’t blame you if you thought I ought to be locked up or something.”

  “The Grangers will be over at the festival all day. I’ll pick you up around noon, okay?”

  Of course I said yes. Sharing my fears with Jack, knowing that he was willing to help, even if I was wrong, even if I was crazy, made it better already. I walked back into the clinic with him—he’d bought his uncle a cookie, despite the fact that Arthur probably wouldn’t eat it—and said good-bye. I promised Arthur I would come back again soon, give my love to my grandmother, and let him know the minute I talked my mom into a pet so he could discuss her options with her.

  As I left, I felt a kind of hope that I wasn’t sure was warranted. After all, we were about to do something really risky—maybe even stupid. And yet, when I biked away from the shopping center, I felt more sure than I had in a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “WHAT’S THIS?” I ASKED AS I got into Jack’s truck the next day. I’d promised my mom I’d meet her at the festival in the afternoon and we could walk around together. No matter what we found, this expedition wasn’t going to take that long.

  On the seat was a brown bag, the top rolled over like a lunch sack, but when I picked it up it was heavy and made a clanking sound.

  Jack shot me a look. “Breaking and entering one-oh-one. I looked it up on the Internet.”

  “Oh, no …” I opened the bag and looked in: a thin strip of metal, a screwdriver, a file, some wire. “Are you sure—I mean, with, you know—”

  “My police record?” Jack asked. “Yeah. Wouldn’t look good. So, let’s not get caught, okay?”

  He sounded calm; only the slightest edge to his voice gave any hint that he had any concerns about what we were going to do. I felt guilty already, asking him to come with me, but I hadn’t thought about what would happen if we got caught. I guess I was thinking I would just make up some story on the spot. Maybe I’d be believable, maybe I wouldn’t, but the odds were that as a good kid who’d never been in any kind of trouble before, I’d be able to fake my way out of it.

  But Jack? Not so much. He’d been accused of things a lot worse than sneaking into a stranger’s house, and I would guess that the detective he’d told me about, the one who seemed so disappointed not to be able to pin Amanda’s disappearance on him, would be more than happy to have something else to focus on.

  “Look, Jack—maybe I should do this alone. I mean, it’s not all that complicated. I’ll just make sure no one’s home and then I’ll only need about a half hour. You could wait for me a few blocks away.”

  “No.” Jack was already shaking his head before I finished speaking. “No way I’m letting you go in there alone.”

  “But if I make sure no one’s home, nothing c
an happen,” I pointed out, reasonably.

  Jack’s stormy glare told me otherwise. “No. I’m coming with you or I’m turning around and taking you home.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it again. Jack’s determination made me feel safe.

  He parked on a street parallel to the Grangers’, in front of a house that was under construction. I was new to the whole wrong-side-of-the-law thing, and as Jack and I walked, I tried to channel my nervousness into acting normal. When I touched his hand he wrapped it around mine.

  “Just walk around the side like we belong here,” he said. “We could be watering her plants or taking care of her cat.”

  We didn’t see anyone in the streets. Everyone was probably down at the festival, along with the hundreds of out-of-towners who’d come for the day. I followed Jack down a walkway on the side of the tidy ranch house, toward a wooden gate, and Jack dug into his pocket and pulled out some plastic gloves.

  “Put these on,” he said. “It’s just in case, worst-case scenario, the Grangers think they’ve had a break-in—the cops won’t find our prints.”

  “Oh, Jack, do you really—”

  “I’m in the system,” he said quietly. “You’ve never been printed, but I have. If they get a match—”

  I slipped on the gloves. On the other side of the gate was a walkway leading to a neatly mowed backyard edged in empty flower beds. Everything was tidy, but there were no signs that anyone had been enjoying the patio. The furniture was covered and the grill looked untouched.

  “Sliding glass door,” Jack said, scanning the back of the house, “and that window’s open. We can get in that way. But before we try …”

  I followed him around the other side to where a door led into the garage. Jack tried the knob; it opened easily.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “And what do you want to bet …”

  The garage was lined with exercise equipment and gardening tools, golf clubs and sports gear, all of it neatly stored but dusty from lack of use. Jack tried the door to the house.

  Open.

  Inside he shut the door behind us, very carefully. The kitchen was dim, the blinds over the sink lowered, blocking out natural light. An African violet sat on the windowsill, along with bottles of prescription medication and a china figurine of a boy in a baseball uniform taking a swing. A pot of cooking utensils shared counter space with a set of canisters and an empty drying rack: no evidence of a recent meal. A newspaper lay unopened on the kitchen table.

  The house, as carefully maintained as it was, felt sad. I knew I was probably projecting my own feelings, but as I looked around the sparse living room beyond the kitchen, the drapes shut tight so that only a few bars of sun slanted across the sofas and the entertainment center, I got the feeling that the people who lived here weren’t really living anymore. That they were just marking time, going to work and coming home and getting up to try to get through another day. It wasn’t like Mrs. Stavros’s home, where everything would have disintegrated even more if she didn’t have friends or family checking in on her, where grief and longing were as dense as perfume in the air. Here, it seemed as though Mr. and Mrs. Granger were just going through the motions.

  And then I saw the pictures.

  I’d missed them at first because it was so dark in the house, but as my eyes adjusted to the dimness I saw that every frame on the wall, the shelves, the coffee tables, the entertainment center—every one of them held photos of a boy, from infancy to age ten. Dillon. There had to be a couple dozen of them, some of them studio shots in nice frames, many more baseball portraits and team photos. Candid shots covered the refrigerator and were tucked into the corners of cabinets.

  And there—in plain black frames lining the hallway—were the newspaper articles. “Local Boy Lost to Cliffs Accident.” “Seacliff Road’s Deadly Twist Takes Another.” “Winston Mourns One Lost Too Soon.”

  Two of the three articles featured the same picture—Dillon, laughing, in his baseball uniform—and the third showed Mr. and Mrs. Granger lighting a candle at a remembrance service. Mrs. Granger looked surprisingly young and pretty, despite the terrible grief in her eyes. She had attractive features, thick brown hair down past her shoulders, and her husband—his face completely blank, as though he were feeling nothing at all—stood slightly to the side.

  “It’s like a tomb in here,” Jack said softly, coming up behind me.

  “Let’s find their room.” I led Jack down the hall past a formal living room, where the only decorations were pictures of Dillon and a signed baseball in an acrylic display case, arranged around a crystal candy dish. We passed a bathroom that smelled like bleach, and a bedroom I assumed was meant for guests, with its bare, plain furniture and bed made up with extra pillows and a folded throw.

  Jack opened a door that had been left closed and I knew immediately that it was Dillon’s room. Everything was as it must have been the day he died—there were baseball cleats on the floor along with a wadded pair of slider pants. Textbooks and papers littered his desk. The bed had been made, a stuffed lion with a loopy yarn mane sitting on top of the pillow.

  If the rest of the house was sad, this room was downright haunting. It was like the shadow of Dillon was still here in every corner, and of course that must have been why his parents kept the room like this. I wondered if Mrs. Granger came in here and just stood in the middle of the room, not touching anything, remembering the many times she had tucked him in at night, toweled him off from a bath, helped him pick up his toys, read him a book. I wondered if the room would still be like this next month, next year.

  I turned away. “I’ll be down the hall,” I said.

  “Okay. I’m going to look around in here.”

  The Grangers’ master bedroom was as bland as the rest of the house, with beige carpet and drapes and bed linens. A man’s cargo shorts and polo shirt were draped over an armchair, and I guessed that Mr. Granger changed into casual clothes when he came home from work, leaving them on the chair when he went to bed. I thought of how angry he always seemed, and about the man he put in the hospital, and wondered if he took his anger out on Mrs. Granger too, maybe even here in this soulless room.

  There were so many emotions in my head already, and I knew that I had to clear my mind if I was going to be able to do what I came here for. Enough procrastinating. I went to the closet—it was a large walk-in space separated down the middle into his and hers—and stripped off my gloves, stuffing them into my pocket, since I could only read clothes when I touched them with my bare skin. I started with the golf shirts in a neat row on the top, reaching for a gray one.

  Holding the fabric lightly between my fingertips, I closed my eyes. I concentrated on opening myself to Mr. Granger’s memories, but there was nothing. I moved slowly down the closet bar through the rest of his shirts, gently touching them and letting them fall back in place, but they were nothing but ordinary cotton and synthetic fabric.

  I resented being here, resented the vision that had seized me when I touched the denim jacket, resented its insistence that I find out what happened. It wasn’t a job I had asked for. It wasn’t one I was well qualified for. I had never even met Amanda—but now I felt like I was connected to her, like she had chosen me.

  At some point I had gone through all the shirts and moved on to the pants and shorts. None of this was what I needed. There were no visions at all. Whatever Mr. Granger had worn when he punched the dad from the other team, or threatened the referees and got himself ejected from games, he no longer owned. And if he’d gotten rid of all the clothes Amanda had worn, why would he keep what he was wearing? If he had any sense at all he would have disposed of those first, in case there was some sort of evidence on them. I didn’t know anything about forensics besides what I saw on TV, but they were always finding a fiber or a hair or something and solving crimes with them. Odds were that Mr. Granger was smart enough to throw the clothes away.

  “Anything?” It was Jack, standing in the entry to the
closet.

  “No … not yet. Listen, I’m going to see if he’s got anything in the guest bedroom closet. Can you go through the dresser drawers in here and see if there are any T-shirts, I don’t know, maybe something that looks a little older?”

  Jack put his hand on my shoulder as I passed, turning me toward him; I looked into his eyes and knew he was worried about me.

  “Are you doing all right?” he asked softly.

  I forced a smile. “Yes, fine. There’s nothing here. It’s just clothes.”

  Jack nodded and let me go. I hadn’t told him the entire truth—that even without the visions, the experience of being in the Grangers’ home was difficult. Even if I was imagining the emotions that seemed to weigh down the sad rooms, my imagination was powerful and my feelings real.

  In the hall I had a new thought—What about the coat closet? The weather along the coast could be chilly even in the middle of summer. Especially at night. The locals rarely went anywhere without a windbreaker or jacket, and everyone loved to make fun of the tourists shivering outside the Frosty Top on cool summer nights, eating their ice cream with goose bumps covering their arms.

  The coat closet was jammed, and I reached for the hangers, meaning to push all the garments to one side so I could go through them one by one. But as my fingers brushed against the different fabrics, I was suddenly hit by a ferocious, body-slamming jolt.

  It was like with Amanda’s jacket, except … sharper, somehow, and bitter. As my hand roved back, settling on the coat that had provoked me, it was bitterness that filled my mind, my gut, my senses. It was the taste in my mouth, like poison, like … vengeance.

  And I knew I’d found the one when my fingers brushed against slick, vinyl-coated fabric that flamed with energy. Carefully I lifted the hanger from the rack, not touching the fabric, my heart pounding. It was a knee-length raincoat, constructed from a cotton or polyester blend that had been coated to make it waterproof. It was red, with a stitched-on belt and big silver-tone buttons, and it had a bit of flare below the waist. A nice coat, one that would have cost more because of the details but that was timeless, the sort of thing my mom would buy if it came in a boring gray.