He was sitting alone in the kitchen when Danny came in carrying a tray of empty glasses and dishes. “Boy, those folks sure ate a lot.”
“Death tends to give you an appetite.”
Danny, setting the dishes carefully onto the counter by the sink, looked at Robert and said, “Is that a kind-of joke?”
“Kind of.”
“Just checking.”
Robert smiled. He liked Danny a lot. If ever there was a man more dedicated to make a good home for his family, Robert had not met him.
“So,” said Danny, “how’re your back and shoulders doing?”
“Mostly it’s my arms and hands. I’m surprised I can unbend my fingers.”
“Tell me about it. And I still got chores to do around here later. Lynn likes her house in order.”
“That was some pretty hard work, wasn’t it?” asked Robert, trying very hard not to think about the fact that they were having a conversation about something that had not happened.
At least, according to Rael, in this sad-assed place called chronos-world.
“Yeah,” said Danny, “but it felt like the right thing to do, you know? Hell, I gotta tell you, Rob, that I didn’t think you’d have it in you to do something like that but, man, I had a hard time keeping up with you.”
“Coming from someone who’s worked construction for the last ten years, I’ll consider that a compliment.”
“I mean it. I figured a guy like you—y’know, who works a lot at desks and computers—I figured you’d be sort of a softie when it came to manual labor but—whew!—was I wrong.”
So, here they were, discussing their labors at the grave. And if they were talking about something that had never happened as if it had happened, then did it take such an Einsteinian leap of the imagination to believe that something like the break-in, which had happened, now hadn’t?
“You okay?” asked Danny.
“Wh-what? Oh, sorry—wandered off the highway there for a minute. Yeah, I’m okay. Well, no, not really, but...,” Robert sighed. “Please tell me you know what I’m trying to say so I can stop trying to say it.”
“I’m with you, pal.”
“That helps, Danny. Thank you.”
“No problem. You want a beer, or maybe some Irish Creme? I got a bottle stashed away for special occasions.”
“Thanks, but no—I’m driving, remember?”
Danny’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. “Shit. I mean, I was hoping you’d stay here tonight. I know Eric’d love it, and we’d love to have you.”
“I appreciate it, but I already told Lynn I have to start getting used to the house being empty, you know? And I can’t think of a better time to do it, can you?”
“Guess not.” Danny started rinsing the dishes in the sink, then stopped abruptly when something occurred to him. “Ah, hell, I almost forgot—an old friend of yours stopped by but you were off someplace—anyway, she said she couldn’t stay but she left her business card.” He dried his hands, then took the card from his shirt pocket and gave it to Robert.
Amelia Wilder Modeling Agency
For When The Picture Has To Be Pretty
Robert stared at the card, read the phone number below the caption, then absent-mindedly turned it over. Written on the back, in handwriting eerily similar to Denise’s, was: May 21, 1978. Not such a pretty picture.
Something else in the darkness of Robert’s memory stirred but did not awaken. That date. There was something about that date. He’d been in high school then, readying to graduate like all the other seniors, and something had happened...but what?
He glanced up at Danny—who was rinsing the rest of the dishes—then slipped the card into his pocket next to the note Amy had given him at the cemetery.
He thought about everything Rael had said to him about time and home and losing the way back to his heart, and decided that he had to do something to prove to himself that either the world as he knew it was shifting into something unrecognizable or that he was suffering some kind of mental breakdown.
Just move the angle of the camera a little to the left of normal before snapping the picture, and when the photo is developed there is nothing in it that you know as real.
There are worlds within worlds that you walk through every day.
There was only one thing he could do to find the answer.
* * *
He was only a few blocks away from the house when he suddenly craved a cigarette. He checked the pack in his coat pocket and discovered that he was out, so he took the next side street and pulled into the first convenience market he found.
He decided to buy three cans of pink salmon (two for the cats, one for himself) and a quart of buttermilk. For some reason, the cats liked buttermilk for a treat rather than regular milk. He was almost ready to check out when he suddenly had the overwhelming desire to bake some cookies, of all things, so he picked up another quart of buttermilk, some eggs, flour, chocolate chips (for some reason, they just had to be chocolate-chip cookies) then, while standing at the counter and waiting as the clerk found a carton of his brand and then began scanning the purchases into the register, he heard a voice cry out, “Robert? Robert Londrigan?” There was a combination of surprise, sadness, shock, and glee in the voice. Robert turned around, saw the woman coming through the door toward him, and said, “Debra? Debra Jamison?”
“Robert!” she cried again, throwing her arms around him and squeezing. “My God, how long has it been? Seven, eight years?”
“Closer to ten, I think.”
He had dated Debra for a little less than a year before she broke it off. Two months later, he’d met Amy Wilder while covering a local beauty pageant.
Debra. Always so anxious to please everyone else that she often forgot to take care of her own needs and wound up resenting everyone because she was so unhappy. Robert had tried to make her see that, to understand that as long as she put others’ feelings first and her own second, she would always feel alone and unappreciated because most people were selfish, and it never occurred to them to thank anyone for the little kindnesses, the brief acts of thoughtfulness or compassion they received. She tried to change, he had to give her credit for that, but Debra Jamison would always be the type of person whose need to feel kind outweighed everything else, even her own peace of mind.
She smiled at him and touched his cheek. “I heard all about what happened to you on the news. Oh, Robert, I’m so sorry for everything. Was she wonderful? I’ll bet she was wonderful.”
“She was a gift,” said Robert. “And I didn’t appreciate that as much as I should have.”
Debra came very close to touching his nose splint, then quickly withdrew her hand. “You look tired.”
“The funeral was earlier today.”
“Boy, the years don’t treat us well sometimes, do they?”
“They seem to have been generous to you. My God, you haven’t changed a bit.”
It wasn’t just something nice to say to a lover you haven’t seen in a decade, nor was it his way of trying to keep the conversation pleasant: Debra Jamison had not changed one bit since the last time he’d seen her; same curly, light brown hair (which had, it seemed, the exact same amount of gray in it that had been there ten years ago), same freckles, same pouty lips...and, like Amy Wilder, a face that was oddly free of age’s wrinkles. Sure, maybe some of this might be the result of hair coloring or plastic surgery, but Robert could sense, somehow, that there had been no cosmetic tune-ups done here.
It was as if both Amy and Debra had simply been frozen in time...or at least, made somehow immune to its ravages.
“You look...wonderful,” he whispered to her.
She grinned and kissed his cheek. “You always knew the right thing to say to make my day.”
“I...uh, look, Debra, it’s great to see you again, but I’ve had kind of a long day and—”
She held up her hand. “Say no more. Are you in the book?”
“No, the number’s unlisted...but
here,” he took out his pen and scrawled his number on the back of his receipt and gave it to her. “Please call me sometime?” Why he asked this he didn’t know; their breakup had been quiet but nonetheless painful...still, he’d always considered her a friend. Or maybe he was just being courteous and trying to get the hell away from this reminder of his life before Denise.
“I will see you again, Robert,” said Debra and then, excusing herself, scurried down the aisle to find whatever she had come for.
Robert put his bag of goodies in the back seat of his car and drove out of the parking lot, casting one quick glance back to see if he could get another look at Debra. Unable to spot her, he turned his attention to the road and the rest of the trip home.
Had he been able to see Debra as he drove away, he would have noticed a certain blankness cover her features as she watched him leave. It looked as if something not unlike the soul had been quickly and quietly removed from within her. Her eyes emptied of their sparkle, and her face became unnaturally still. If it weren’t for the movement of her breathing and the blinking of her eyes, she could easily have been mistaken for a mannequin.
Chapter 6
Robert almost tripped over the package when he unlocked the front door—it was already getting dark and he’d forgotten to leave the porch light on. Cursing under his breath, he picked it up, shoved it inside the bag of groceries, and let himself inside.
The first thing that registered was how cold the house had become. Checking his watch, Robert estimated he’d been gone six, perhaps seven hours. He could have sworn that the furnace was running when he’d left, but even if that weren’t the case, the place should not have been this cold.
He checked the thermostat. The furnace was on. He could feel heat coming through a nearby vent in the floor.
He picked up the bag, went into the kitchen, turned on the lights—
—and saw broken glass on the floor.
Someone had smashed one of lower window panes in the back door.
Later, Robert would think it odd that he hadn’t panicked at that moment; it was almost as if he’d been expecting something like this.
He was very calm, at least at the beginning. He carefully set the sack of groceries on the kitchen counter, buttoned his coat against the breeze through the broken window, and walked slowly toward the door—noting as he did that small clumps of water and dirty snow formed a trail across the kitchen tile. It wasn’t surprising that some of the snow hadn’t melted, not with the kitchen being this cold; and that’s when his mind became two separate entities for a little while. He could almost imagine two small cartoon versions of himself—one dressed in white, with angel’s wings, sitting on his left shoulder, while the other, adorned in garish red and holding a pitchfork, sat on his right.
The thing to do, said Angel-Left, is turn around, leave, and call Bill Emerson.
Nah, said Devil-Right, you want to know, so keep going, go ‘head, take a look.
The thing to do was leave.
So, naturally, he kept going.
The screen door had been propped open with one of the larger stones from Denise’s garden. The cracked remains of a small clay flower pot lay next to the stone.
See there? said Devil-Right. They propped open the back door, then covered their fist with the flower pot to break the glass.
Which is exactly why we should leave, said Angel-Left, more out of duty than any real conviction or hope that anyone was going to listen.
Robert blinked—poof!—and the cartoon versions of himself were gone.
He flipped the second of two light switches by the back door. The first switch turned on the lights in the kitchen; the second turned on not only the back-porch light, but also a set of three lights in the ground around the periphery of the garden. He remembered the afternoon Denise and he had installed the lights, how happy they’d been when the things actually worked because neither of them were exactly gifted in the home-improvement department. But they’d done it Denise’s way—following the enclosed instructions to the letter, even when it seemed to Robert that some of the steps were superfluous—and, three hours and forty-five minutes after opening the box, success!
Denise had been smug—proud of him for being such a “good little helper,” but smug, nonetheless.
“Now if I get the urge to plant something at ten p.m., I can,” she’d said.
“Why would you want to be working in your garden at that hour?”
“You don’t have a green thumb. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I think I have a green enough thumb.”
She’d laughed. “Are you kidding? I’ve seen rhododendrons commit suicide rather than have you tend to them.”
Robert’s gaze lifted to the three low beams of light that shone into her garden. Those ought to be brighter, he thought. I gotta remember to get new bulbs.
He reached down and gripped the door knob.
Locked.
Huh.
He turned and looked at the cats, both of whom were on the counter where they knew they weren’t allowed, investigating the bag of groceries.
“Why would someone break into a house and then lock the door behind them?”
The cats stopped what they were doing and looked at him: You don’t actually think we’re capable of answering that, do you?
It seemed to him that the cats should have been skittish as hell; someone had broken in not too long ago.
So they either had nerves of steel or didn’t have the brains God gave a toenail.
Robert shook his head and looked back outside.
His hand reached over to flip the second switch again.
Then froze.
He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “What the—”
His eyes widened. He unlocked the door, flung it open, kicked aside the flower pot, and stormed into the back yard. Halfway between the house and the garden, he turned for another look at the stone holding open the screen door.
“Oh, shit....”
It was the flagstone he’d used to cover Emily’s grave.
He sprinted the rest of the way to the garden, falling on his knees and skidding the last two feet through snow and scattered clumps of dirt.
Reaching to the nearest garden light, he turned the fixture toward him, then down.
Though it was weak, the light was strong enough to show him what he needed to know.
Emily’s grave had been violated. All around the hole were clumps of dirt mixed with snow and mulch.
Robert leaned back and covered his mouth with one of his hands.
Easy, pal, easy....
Taking a couple of deep breaths, he steadied himself, adjusted the light so it pointed directly into the opened grave, and got down on hands and knees for a closer look.
Something wasn’t right. The earth at the top of the grave was scattered all around, but down about three, four inches, it looked almost as if the soil had been—
—no. Don’t go there.
He looked again.
Blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked again.
About four inches down the direction of the earth...changed. Where the top three inches or so were scattered about just as they would have been if someone had dug it up, everything below had the bowed shape of soil that had been pulled down and in from underneath—like that ground hog’s nest he’d discovered a few months after they’d first moved here.
He thrust his arms into the hole, pulling out the earth with his hands until he gripped the shoe box.
Even before he pulled it to the surface, Robert’s hands found the large hole in the lid.
“No animal,” he whispered. “No animal did this.”
He pulled the box out of the grave and brushed the earth from its lid and saw the hole.
Only a small portion of the tear bent outward; the rest of it was pulled down inside the box.
He gripped the edge of the lid but did not lift it.
His mouth was suddenly dry and his stomach was churning and dam
ned if he didn’t feel like his bowels were going to give out—he always reacted this way when he was frightened, everything went right down into his gut—
—and if he didn’t open the lid he wouldn’t have to know. As long as the lid was closed it could go either way. If he decided her body was still in there, it was and that was that: bury it again, replace the stone, mop up the glass and snow and puddles in the house and fix the window and everything could be just like it was.
Removing the lid would destroy any possibility.
The smart thing to do was leave it alone.
So he removed the lid and saw the dirt covering the soft white towel in which he’d wrapped her.
He brushed that dirt aside, then took a corner of the towel between his thumb and forefinger to pull it back—
—and realized that it had already been pulled back.
He set down the box.
Swallowed once. Very hard.
Then turned his gaze toward the house.
He saw his own footprints clearly in the snow.
Why hadn’t he noticed the others before?
Because they’re so small, came the answer, though whether from Devil-Right or Angel-Left he couldn’t tell and didn’t care.
Just outside the small circle of rocks that marked the garden’s edge, small indentations in the snow formed a trail that led to the back porch.
Go home, Willy, so you can find what should be waiting there.
Robert turned the nearest garden light out toward the yard, careful to point its beam downward.
He began to crawl alongside the indentations—which, now that he looked closer, he saw were a series of small hand prints followed by a pair of smooth skids.
In Silent Graves Page 15