Flyer

by J. L. Wilson

  My aunt was a tall woman, taking after my grandfather who was six-foot tall and not my grandmother, who was five-foot tall. Jane’s white hair was still thick and bundled into a fat braid that was wound into a twist at the back of her head. She’d worn her hair that way since I could remember and once I wanted to have such luxurious, waist-long hair myself. I tried it briefly and realized I wasn’t cut out for the maintenance. When I told Jane that, she laughed. “It’s not a matter of style but convenience,” she told me. “I don’t know how else to fix my hair.”

  Even now, with eyesight limited due to macular degeneration, her hair was tidy and neat. I ran a hand through my own cropped style and envied her the ability to keep up appearances. I could hope for so much when I was her age. “Bell told me that reporters would get tired of us and move on to another story in a day or two,” I told her in response to the newspaper she showed me.

  “It’s a great romantic story,” Aunt Jane said, fiddling with her fortune cookie. The remains of the take-out Chinese meal I brought were on the table between us.

  “Romance my foot,” I muttered. “They’re just looking for something about Bell. He’s a big enigma to them.”

  “Tom Bell is a quandary,” she agreed. “He’s a man who appears to be completely at home being alone. Then he finds you again and look what happens. Now he’s a man like any other man, one who apparently wants to have a woman in his life. It’s a great story in what is probably a slow news week.”

  “Bell said the same thing about a slow news week. And he hasn’t found me. I was never lost. It’s all a tempest in a teapot.”

  “But you and he are an item, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not. He’s just feeling nostalgic. Or something.” I crumbled my own fortune cookie and read the inscription. Your true love awaits you. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” I muttered, tearing it up.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. All I meant is that Bell is retiring and he’s at loose ends.”

  “And one of those loose ends is you?” Before I could reply, Jane continued. “Look at it this way. What if you had just met him? What if he was a new person you didn’t know and you were attracted to him? You are attracted to him, aren’t you?” she asked, her thin hands deftly extracting the paper from her cookie.

  “I—I suppose so,” I stammered. The question caught me by surprise. He was Bell. There wasn’t a question of was he attractive. He was Bell.

  “Well, pretend he’s someone you’ve just met. Forget about the money and the fame and all that. Do you like him? Does he have qualities you admire and respect?”

  “Yes,” I said reluctantly. “But there’s the past and—”

  “Forget that,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  The fortune from her cookie landed near me and I picked it up, rolling it into a tight little spiral. “It’s hard to forget,” I said. “He and I have a lot of past together.”

  “Look at it this way. Do you believe in love at first sight? Or something like it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I do. I think some people are meant to be together. I think you and Tom belong together. You’re opposites but you’re so much alike.”

  I smiled at this odd description. “How can that be?”

  “He’s silly in ways you aren’t and you’re silly in ways he isn’t. He’s serious in ways you aren’t and you’re serious in ways he isn’t. You fit together so well. What’s my fortune say?”

  “Hmm?” She had exactly summarized my own evaluation of how Bell and I were alike and different. Was it so obvious?

  “My fortune. What’s it say?” Jane gestured toward the paper I held.

  I unrolled it. “Great things await those you love.” I shredded it and added it to the shreds that were my own fortune.

  “See,” she said triumphantly. “What did I tell you?”

  “Great things could equate to all kinds of things. Not necessarily love.” I considered telling her about Bell handing over the rights to his app, but I decided not to open that can of worms and reinforce her faith in the fortune cookie.

  Jane toyed with the remains of her cookie, breaking off little shards of it. “You said you emptied out your mother’s safety deposit box.”

  I nodded then realized she probably couldn’t see me clearly. “We did. Today.”

  “We?”

  I sighed. “Bell and I.”

  “Did you find the letter?”

  “Yes. Mom said that you’d fill me in.”

  “Let’s go into the living room and sit down.”

  Going into the living room was just a few steps away in her tiny apartment. I picked up the paper plates and disposed of them, then tucked the leftover food into the fridge for her to have some other time. By the time I finished that, Jane was settled into her favorite armchair in the corner of the room near the window. I took a seat on the couch nearby and picked up the box of photographs she had brought out when I arrived. “Are these the pictures you wanted me to go through?”

  “There might be a few in there that could be used for the service. I have a lot of pictures of your mother and father when they were younger.”

  I looked down at one such picture on top of the stack. My parents were a very handsome couple in their youth. Of course, my father didn’t live long enough to get old, having died when he was in his forties, but my mother had retained a fragile prettiness into old age.

  “Your father saw Peter Barry the night he supposedly died,” Aunt Jane said without any preamble or introduction.

  “Where did he see him?”

  “It was your father’s bowling night. He was driving home from the Lanes. He saw Peter Barry walking across a field near the road.” Jane waited expectantly for me to ask the next logical question.

  ‘The Lanes’ were a bowling alley and roller rink on the outskirts of town. They were situated on the same road that led to Jamie Lim’s old farm, the one that Bell was thinking about buying and the farm where we had the graduation party on the night Peter disappeared. “What time did he see him?”

  Jane nodded, pleased that I asked the right question. “I’m not exactly sure. This is all speculation, you understand. I wasn’t here then. Your mother called me when you were injured and I came out here to help. Your parents spent most of the time at the hospital with you and with Tom, and I made sure the boys got to school and got fed.”

  I didn’t remember any of that. My hospital stay after our car accident was a hazy blur in my memory. “If it’s all speculation, why bring up the past?”

  “Your mother came to me several years ago. She was going through your father’s belongings and she found one of those notebooks he kept. He wrote something that made your mother wonder if Peter went to the river, the way the police insisted he did.”

  I thought of the Inspiration Spirals, now with Bell. “Mom copied a bunch of notebook pages and had them in that little chest she kept on her dresser.”

  “Those must be the pages she was talking about.”

  I was shaking my head before Jane finished speaking. “I looked through them. I didn’t see anything from that night.”

  Jane tapped the arm of her chair, lips pursed in thought. She looked like a regal bird of prey, trying to decide where next to cast her gaze and search for an unsuspecting meal. “I think your father talked to Sylvia Barry. That was the impression your mother gave me. Remember, everything was sort of crazy then. You’d been in an accident and were in the hospital and your parents were in a tizzy about that. Your father wasn’t sure what to do. If he went to the authorities and claimed Peter was still alive, how could he prove it? Then when the body was found, he decided he must have been mistaken. I think he was trying to protect you. I think he didn’t want rock any boats.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I snapped, angry that I was being cast as a cause for my father’s concern. “If Dad knew something, he should have gone to the police, not to Sylvia.”

  “He was already ill, Wendy. O
r at least, he wasn’t fully well. Back then, men didn’t go to the doctor unless there was something obviously wrong. He was tired, with bouts of dizziness and nausea.”

  She was right. Dad was sick for years before his throat cancer was finally diagnosed.

  “And he was worried, I suppose. Your parents were never very financially secure and it wore on him.”

  She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. Dad was a lawyer but he didn’t have wealthy clients. As cruel as it sounds, it may have been fortunate that my brother John didn’t want to go to college and that my brother Mike died when he did. Otherwise my parents would have had three kids in college, a monetary burden that would have overwhelmed them.

  “He went to Sylvia Barry a day after Peter disappeared, thinking he could ease her mind. Remember, as far as anyone knew, Peter had run away. It took a day or two before the police thought he might have gone to the river. Instead of being relieved, she put the blame squarely on you and on Tom Bell.” Jane shook her head disapprovingly. “Your father loved Tom Bell as much as he loved his own children. He and Tom were kindred souls. That’s why he never said anything more about it.”

  “It all depends on what time Dad saw Peter,” I said slowly. “I think Peter and I argued right when it was getting dark. I remember seeing him silhouetted in the window at the barn. The sun was setting, and all I saw was his outline.” Then he jumped. I ran to the window to look out, but Bell called my name and I went to the ladder instead, scrambling down out of the loft to meet him. I never saw Peter again.

  “Your parents always hoped you and Tom would settle down together.”

  Jane’s quiet statement drew my thoughts away from the past to the here and now. How odd it would be if my parents’ hope would come true years later. “They never said anything to me about it,” I said, sifting through the photographs in the box.

  “They didn’t want to influence you. They loved Tom. He was special to them, more than the others. Your mother never liked Peter. She said he was sly. He was too self-centered.” Jane waved one graceful hand as though dismissing Peter. “I didn’t know him or the others very well, but I got to know Tom when you were injured.”

  Mom was right in her assessment of Peter. He was the center of his world and the rest of us were satellites that revolved around him. I looked at the picture on top of the others in the box. It was me, Bell, Peter, and his girlfriend, Tina. My brothers and their girlfriends were off to one side. We all wore shorts and the boys were bare-chested. Tina and I wore halter tops, our shoulders brown from the sun. We were grouped around a kiddie pool in the back yard, our feet in the pool.

  “Our beach,” I whispered. “Dad put in a big sand box and we put that wading pool smack in the middle. Dad called it our private beach.”

  “They wanted to give you so much but they just couldn’t. I suppose all parents feel that way, but your parents pretty much raised Tom and Peter, too. It was a strain on them, financially.”

  I set the photo aside in the “Me” stack, not the “Mom” stack. “They did fine. We didn’t miss being richer.” The clock ticked loudly on the bookcase, checking off the seconds. I was suspended in time, somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Behind me was childhood, when Bell was a friend and life was simple. Ahead of me was adulthood, with Mom and Dad gone and Bell—

  I raised my head and stared, unseeing, at a picture on the wall. Bell had always been there. He was a part of my life since my earliest childhood. I think I always loved him. Back when I first met him, I was only eight years old and I had a terrible crush on him.

  As we both got older, that crush evolved into something more lasting, until he became a fixture in my life. He was mercurial and changeable, and yet he was always constant in his unfailing devotion to my family and to me. He was always in my life until we parted when I was in college.

  I had been searching for a replacement, all these years. I’d been looking for someone who was a friend as well as a lover. I never found anyone. The knowledge washed over me.

  “The police didn’t want to call it a suicide. Sylvia insisted on that. When the body was found, she went into a tailspin.”

  Once again, I was pulled back to the present and my thoughts dissipated, all but a vague feeling of rightness. I had discovered an essential truth. I filed it away for later evaluation.

  “You can see how it must have looked to someone who didn’t know the people involved very well,” Jane said. “Sylvia said that you and Bell teased and bullied poor Peter.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “Your parents were, oh, I guess they were naive. Your father hesitated. And Sylvia made sure he knew what might happen to you if he went to the police.”

  “I was in the hospital. I didn’t know any of this was happening.”

  “I didn’t find out some of it until years later. By then it was all blown over. It was all called an accident. You went off to college, Tom Bell was in college, your father was dying, and your mother was—she was—” Jane sighed. “She had too much to deal with.”

  I looked down at the next photo on the stack. It was a grainy color print of me and Bell. I sat cross-legged in the open trunk of a car, his coat around my shoulders. He stood nearby, laughing, with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His hair was thick and long, falling into his eyes. It was Homecoming at college. I remembered it. We spent a party weekend at his apartment. It was the first time I was at a real college event and I loved every minute of it.

  “And now we’re revisiting it,” I said. “It’s all coming back to haunt us. Why?”

  “Haunt? No, not that. It’s come back to awaken us, maybe.” She regarded me, her head tilted to one side so she could catch a glimpse of me through her damaged dark blue eyes. “What really happened that night?”

  “Peter and I argued and he jumped out the barn window. That’s all I know. You should talk to Bell. He’s convinced Peter didn’t die.”

  “You see.” Jane pounced, reinforcing my image of a bird of prey. “What if your father had proof that Peter didn’t die that night?”

  “He didn’t have proof.” I quickly sorted more of the photographs. I looked at one of my father and mother, so young and carefree.

  “But—”

  “I’ll send Bell over to talk to you.” I picked up the two stacks of photos, leaving the rest in the box. “You guys can talk conspiracy theories to your hearts’ content.” That reminded me of something Bell had said. “You said someone visited Mom the day she had her stroke. Do you know who it was?”

  Jane tapped the chair arm again, her eyes narrowed in thought. “She just said it was an old friend who came to call. I assumed it was Tom Bell because he often visited her. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” I knew it after the fact, but Jane didn’t need to know that.

  “When I called her again, she didn’t feel well. I took her to the hospital and they discovered she had a heart attack. That night she had her stroke and…” Jane’s voice trailed away.

  I was reminded, once again, that my mother’s death affected many more people than just me. My mother was Jane’s only remaining relative, too. Their other sibling, my uncle, had died five years earlier in a car accident. “Mom’s illness came as a shock to me, too.”

  Jane waved away my sympathetic murmuring. “I talked to Tom later and he said that it wasn’t him. So who visited her?”

  “Bell thinks somebody caused her stroke,” I said dismissively. “For heaven’s sake, how could somebody do that? I mean, Mom had a heart attack then she had the stroke when she was in the hospital.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Jane fumbled in the little cloth organizer with pockets slung over the chair arm. “I did some research about various poisons. If somebody visited her and they poisoned her, it might look like a heart attack and it would later cause a stroke. There are several different things that can be used to do that.”

  I stared at her, open-mouthed. “How did you do research?” I finally managed to as
k. “You can barely see the television set, much less a book.”

  “I know how to dial a phone number,” she retorted. “And I know the phone number of the public library. There are people there who are paid to do research.”

  I almost groaned. Holy crapola, what would the librarian think?

  As though reading my mind, Jane said, “I told her I was in a book club and we were arguing about a plot point that was too vague in the book we were reading. I asked her if she could find out if there’s an easily accessible poison that could cause a heart attack and/or a stroke.” Jane smiled triumphantly at me.

  “And did she?”

  “She did indeed.” Jane flourished a piece of paper. “You just take that to Tom Bell and see what he thinks.”

  I set the box of photos on the couch and crossed the room to take the paper, adding it to the two sets of photos I was taking with me. I glanced at the handwriting, loopy and large, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it said. “I’ll have Bell give you a call if he has any questions.”

  “You sound doubtful, but you shouldn’t be. Peter Barry was a sly, conniving sort of boy. That’s what your mother said. You listen to what Tom Bell says.”

  I bent over and kissed Jane’s cheek. “I’ll give this to Bell and we’ll see what he can make of it. If anybody can figure it out, he can. The cousins are coming in tomorrow. We’ll all get together for dinner, okay?”

  Jane sighed resignedly. “David’s children are so noisy. Are they bringing along any of their spawn?”

  I laughed. “I doubt it. The younger generation isn’t much interested in family.”

  “Well, that’s something at least. Call me tomorrow and let me know what time to be ready. Are your father’s relatives coming, too?” She stood and walked with me to the door.