by John Searles
“Knocking?” Lynch said.
“Yes,” I told him. “It was you. You had come for your daughter.”
“But what—”
“The church,” I said, cutting him off.
Just then, the guard announced, “Time’s up.” From somewhere in the prison came a loud buzzing sound. I could hear the rumble of footsteps outside the walls of that room where we sat.
“The church!” I said. “Finish telling me about the church!”
The guard came up behind Lynch and put his hand on the man’s arm, all but lifting him from the chair. When he was standing, Albert leaned forward and told me, “Your father gave me the same excuse he did that day I showed up knocking on your door. Demons had driven her away. He apologized. Oh, believe me, he apologized. I told him I didn’t buy it. I had wanted to come earlier in the summer, but every time I called, he insisted that he and your mother wanted—needed—to keep Abigail longer in order to help her. And I just let him fleece me, sending money and apparently giving him one more story to tell in his lectures.”
“The church,” I said again. “Stick to the church.”
“He said all the same things that night, but I still didn’t believe him. And then your mother came inside. Your mother—she was different, Sylvie. You should know that much by now. Maybe she and your father were a team, but they were not the same. Somehow, and I’ll never know exactly how, she managed to calm me down. She sat with me in a pew. She prayed with me while your father lingered in the shadows by the altar. And then I saw the person I had become: a man wielding a gun, making idle threats, looking for his daughter who had never wanted to be with him in the first place.”
“So what did you do?”
“I tossed down my gun and fled the church through the front doors. I got in my van and drove toward the highway, faster than I should have in the snow. And then I stopped at that Texaco, where I saw that old man in the restroom and helped rescue his wife’s dogs out in the parking lot. That’s the truth, Sylvie. So help me, that’s the truth.”
As the guard pulled him back toward that door where he had entered, toward the sound of all those footsteps, I sat watching, thinking of that song my mother used to hum and trying my best to sense the truth inside him the way she believed I could. The moment the door clanged shut, Rummel and I were left in a vacuum of quiet. He approached and put his hand on my shoulder again. I stared down at his heavy black shoes a moment before getting up. The two of us were led by another guard back the way we came, through the series of doors and gates, until we were outside in the car.
As we drove away, I stared at all the barbed wire and thought of Dereck telling me to keep my fingers off the fence that first day we met in the field. For all I knew, he was slaughtering turkeys at that very moment, since Thanksgiving was only a few days away now.
“Are you okay?” the detective asked.
“Yes,” I told him.
“You know, Sylvie, when you work long enough doing what I do, you begin to develop a sixth sense about people and whether or not they are guilty. But I’ve learned that no matter my feelings, I have to put them aside and look at the evidence and listen to the testimony. So that conversation in there, you shouldn’t let it sway you too much one way or another. The facts are the facts.”
“I understand,” I said. And then at last I told him, “But I didn’t see Mr. Lynch that night in the church.”
The car wheels spinning on the pavement. The wind whistling through Rummel’s partially opened window. The crackling static of his police radio. Those were the only sounds for some time. “Are you sure?” the detective asked finally.
“I’m sure,” I said. “So what now?”
“We need to talk to Louise Hock. Like I told you, Lynch will be released. Since it’s gotten so late in the day, all that’s going to have to happen tomorrow. If you like, I can pick you up myself first thing in the morning.”
That was the plan we made. And when he dropped me off at home, my gaze went to the empty front step. Emily Sanino was likely all done with those gifts, for a while anyway. Rose’s truck was gone, and that yellow glow from the basement window shone even in the daylight.
Inside, I went to my parents’ room where the red light on the answering machine was blinking away. I ignored it for the time being and went about finding my father’s old cassette player tucked in his nightstand with an empty prescription container, and oddly, a wrench wrapped in a towel. I put that aside and, from my pocket, pulled the cassette tape that had been in Rummel’s car. Since it was evidence, I figured he wouldn’t let me keep it overnight. That’s why I’d slipped it from the recorder when he let me back in the car at the prison and went around to the other side. Now, I popped in the tape and pressed Play. For a moment, there was nothing but static, and I thought perhaps this side of the tape had become warped after so long. But just as I was about to hit Fast Forward, a voice came alive in the room. Not my father’s, but Heekin’s. I turned the volume as loud as it could go.
HEEKIN: As I’ve been writing the book, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with some discrepancies in your narrative.
MY FATHER: (woozy-voiced) You are beginning to sound like my brother and some of our other critics. I thought you had become a friend, Sam.
HEEKIN: I am a friend. But I am also trying to do a job here. My job is to report the truth.
MY FATHER: The truth is that a lot of the people who come to us are lost causes.
HEEKIN: Lost causes?
MY FATHER: Yes. I guess you could even say they’re not all there. Crazy even. You know how I first started? By placing an ad in the back of a newspaper. “Help for the Haunted” it read then offered our services. Tell me, what sort of sane person answers an ad like that?
HEEKIN: So what are you saying?
MY FATHER: I’m saying write the book, make it appropriately scary and you’ll have done your job. That’s what people want, isn’t it?
Heekin cleared his throat, and I had the sense this conversation had gone in a direction that left him flustered. He rambled and sputtered the way he did when he was nervous until there was a loud click and the tape went silent. And then, a moment later:
HEEKIN: Can I ask about your children?
MY FATHER: Sure.
MY MOTHER: I’d rather you not.
MY FATHER: My wife likes to keep our work and home life separate.
HEEKIN: And you don’t?
MY FATHER: These things have a way of melding. Besides, I said you could ask, I did not say we would answer.
HEEKIN: Well, then. Allow me to try. What do your daughters make of what you two do?
MY FATHER: We don’t talk too much about it.
His voice sounded clear, not at all woozy, and I realized the tape had cut to another conversation from some other time when my mother was present.
HEEKIN: And do you find, Mrs. Mason, that either of your daughters shares your gift?
MY MOTHER: I do, but let’s leave it at that.
HEEKIN: So they are accepting?
MY FATHER: As much as any children are accepting of their parents. (Laugh) I guess what I am trying to say is that we are like any other parents. We are trying to raise our daughters with good Christian values in a world that is increasingly secular. It is not easy with all the immorality out there. Take our daughter, Rose—
MY MOTHER: That’s enough, Sylvester. We don’t need to go into
that.
MY FATHER: (after a pause) My wife is right. See how much I need her to keep me in line? I guess I’ll just say we’ve had more than our share of trouble with Rose. My wife and I have done a lot of praying that she will come around to our values again.
HEEKIN: Values?
MY MOTHER: I think we’ve gone as far as I feel comfortable on this topic. If you don’t mind I’d like to conclude the interview for the day. Thank you very much.
This time when the tape went silent it stayed that way. A dull, empty hum filled my parents’ bedroom. I sat there watching the wheels of the recorder spin round and round until I heard the sound of an engine and screechy music moving closer down the lane and coming to a stop in our driveway.
Instead of looking out the window, I went to the answering machine and pressed Play. “Sylvie, it’s Sam Heekin. After you left that message last night, I did some digging. I uncovered some things you should know about. Call me right away.” While that played, I pulled the newspaper article Dereck had given me from my pocket and stared at that picture again, my father’s words about values ringing in my mind.
Rose had yet to walk through the front door, so I slipped down the hall to her room. Quickly, I slid open her nightstand and dug out that laminated prayer card she had saved. Clutching it, I went down the hall to our parents’ room again and picked up the phone on their nightstand.
“Saint Julia’s Home for Girls,” a man’s voice answered after I dialed the number on the back of that card.
It felt like ages since I’d made those survey calls, but I summoned that grown-up voice I used to interview all those people. “Hello,” I told the man on the other end. “I’m looking for a school for my daughter.”
I waited for a moment to see if he would ask how old I was. But he did not. “Well, this isn’t exactly a school. You know that, don’t you?’
“Yes. My daughter, um, she needs a place to go to”—I paused, remembering my father’s long-ago words—“to get her head right. I assume that’s the sort of situation you treat there.”
“Yes. We treat young women who have developed a sexual confusion. One that goes against the teachings of the Bible,” he told me. “But you should know we have rules. Once you sign your daughter into our care, you entrust her well-being with us. Our treatment is quite serious and not to be taken lightly. One of the first things we require is that no one from the outside have contact for the first thirty days of admission—”
The door opened and closed downstairs, and I slammed down the phone. Rose’s feet came pounding up the steps. She rounded the corner and stopped when she saw me there, sitting on the edge of our mother’s bed. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
I lifted that torn newspaper article, showing it to her the way I had been tempted to do for days. “Who is this in the picture with you?”
“What picture?”
I stood, walked closer to her out in the hallway. “This picture. It was taken after you came home from being sent away. After the accident where Dereck lost his fingers. Who is that with you?”
Rose made a show of squinting at the photo, but I had the sense she wasn’t really looking. “I don’t know. I have too much on my mind for your egghead crap today, Sylvie. I’ve signed up for GED classes and I have homework to do. You, more than anyone, should be able to sympathize with that.”
“Franky?” I said.
“Who?” my sister asked, but I could hear a knowing quality in her voice.
“Frances? Frances Sanino, the daughter of Emily and Nick Sanino?”
Rose’s face took on a stunned look, as though she’d been slapped, a look she quickly tried to conceal, pinching her lips together and sucking in a breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Yes, you do. Because her mother has been the one leaving food here on the steps. And I know why you didn’t want us to eat it. It wasn’t because you thought it was poisoned. It was because you were saving it for someone else. Franky.”
“Shut up,” Rose said. “Shut the hell up, Sylvie. You think it’s easy for me? Do you? All I wanted was to be free of this place, and now I’m stuck here taking care of you. And what do I get in return? Nothing but a bunch of ungrateful back talk. I’m sick of it. So I’m going to my room. If I were you, I’d steer clear of me for the night, because now you’ve put me in a mood.”
“I know!” I screamed at her. “I figured it all out!”
“You didn’t figure anything out,” Rose said. “You are crazy. You told the police and the reporters and everyone else that you saw Albert Lynch that night. And it turned out you were wrong, because that old couple came forward. Now you are waving some newspaper article around and getting ready to make God knows what new accusation. You think you are so smart, Sylvie, but you are dumb. Really, really dumb.”
“You can say that all you want,” I told her, stepping past her and starting down the stairs. “But I’m about to prove you wrong.”
“Where are you going?”
I did not answer as I made my way to the first floor, then cut through the living room toward the door that led to the basement. The entire time Rose was right behind me. When I pulled open that door and stared down into the shadowy darkness below, lit only by that yellow glow, she stepped in front of me and said just one word: “No.”
“Yes,” I told her. “Now move.”
Rose lifted her hands and shoved me. I stumbled back, losing my balance and falling. The newspaper article slipped from my hands, landing in the space between us. I stared at my sister’s sneakers on her small feet, thinking of that day in the truck when I crawled around, scraping for the money I’d earned only to end up with loose change.
All our lives together, Rose won every fight with her words and with her might. Never once did I stand a chance. But now as my hands began to shake, as my heart banged in my chest, I stood and reached up and, with everything I had in me, I shoved her back. In an instant, she lost her footing and stumbled toward those stairs. For a moment, it seemed like we could stop what came next. She reached her hand out, and I grabbed for it, because I hadn’t meant for this to happen. But our hands didn’t catch one another in time, and so she tumbled backward down the stairs.
After Rose hit the cement floor with a great crash, a thick silence followed. I thought of that cassette tape when my parents’ voices had stopped, those tiny wheels spinning round and round as their words echoed in my mind: I guess what I am trying to say is that we are like any other parents. We are trying to raise our daughters with good Christian values in a world that is increasingly secular. A feeling of shame, a feeling of pure horror, filled me up at the realization of what I’d done. Useless as it sounded, I spoke to her down in the basement. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m so so sorry.”
My sister did not respond, and the dread that this could be more grave an accident than I first understood took hold. I pounded down the steps to where she lay, her right leg bent in the most unnatural position. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Please tell me you are okay.”
“It’s my leg,” she said, and I heard in her voice that she was crying, releasing the kind of exhausted sobs I’d never heard from Rose before. “You did something to my leg.”
Those flyers on the bulletin board at the police station—in my panic, they came back to me. Hadn’t one advised never to move a person in the event of an accident? Get help—that was always the advice. I was about to go back upstairs to
the phone and do just that when Rose spoke through her tears, “Remember that rule they always used to say?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Mom and Dad. The rule that we could always tell them whatever we were thinking or feeling, and they would do their best to understand. Do you remember that, Sylvie?”
“Yes,” I told her. “But let’s not—”
“It wasn’t true,” Rose said. “It wasn’t true.”
I didn’t want to talk about any of that now, but even so, I heard myself asking, “What do you mean?”
“When I was fourteen, I first told them. They encouraged it, after all, always repeating that dumb rule. But when I said I felt different from other girls, you know what they did? They acted like it was some sort of fucking possession. They prayed over me like one of those supposedly haunted people who came here in need of their help. And they told me to keep my feelings a secret. The more it didn’t change, though, the more they prayed. I tried to give them the daughter they wanted. I tried to be more like you. I brought all those boys home. But it didn’t work. So they sent me away to that home where I was supposed to get better. And you know what? I did get better. I met Franky.
“Even though Franky’s parents had sent her there too, she already knew the place was a joke. She made me realize there was nothing wrong with the way I felt.” Rose’s words sputtered out as her crying grew stronger. “ ‘Her coming was my hope each day,’ ” she said in a broken voice, “ ‘her parting was my pain; the chance that did her steps delay. Was ice in every vein.’ ”
“Rose, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But we’ve got to get—”
“Those are the words from that book you used to underline. Jane Eyre. I remember it, because it’s how I felt about Franky. And anyway, we planned to get out of there and save money and find some way to live a normal life together in time. But when I got home, I’d already been replaced by Abigail. So I gave up trying. And the fights with Mom and Dad—Dad, in particular—got worse. And so one night I’m out. And who do I run into but Albert Lynch?”