“That’s a first edition,” I said, heading for the stairs. “Don’t spill on it.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I’m just saying.”
She stuck out her tongue. “Can I use your computer while I’m up here?”
“If you can figure out the password.”
“What’s the password?”
“The password is, ‘You have your own computer.’ ”
“Yeah,” she said, “but Dad has Net Nanny.” “Enjoy the book,” I said.
That night, on patrol, Roger said, “I’d be careful.”
“How do you mean?”
“Brit spends a lot of time at your place,” he said. “You never know.”
The whole conversation had caught me off guard. I said, “You never know what?”
“What people might be thinking.”
We’d run a few kids out of the construction zone at the future site of Spoonbill Circle, and now we were heading back home. The hot weather had held on through Labor Day, and you could still feel summer in the air. But with nightfall came the first tangy threads of autumn.
I forced myself to wait before I spoke again. The problem with waiting was that it gave my annoyance more time to flare, which must have been apparent, because Roger said, “Don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way.”
“What are you saying?”
“I just notice that she’s been spending a lot of time at your place. Sometimes when Sara’s not home.”
“You notice that, huh?”
“Easy, Doc.” He chucked me on the shoulder. “I happened to notice today. That’s all.”
I’d grown tired of Roger chucking me on the shoulder and calling me Doc. “And?”
“Well, listen,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s fair, but in my experience, these are the types of situations where you can run into perception problems.”
“Perception problems.”
“I guess you probably know what I mean.”
I knew what he meant. But now I was angry. “Are you telling me that there’s a perception about Brit Seward coming over to our house?”
“I’m just—”
“I know Michael doesn’t have a perception,” I said. “If Pete and Melody have a perception, I haven’t heard about it from them. Barry Firth wouldn’t be able to keep a perception to himself if you locked him in a closet.” I counted off the residents of Sycamore Court on one hand. By the time I was finished, only my index finger remained. I tilted that remaining finger toward Roger. “Who does that leave?”
He didn’t seem perturbed by the gesture, which part of me already regretted as childish. Another part of me wanted to show him a different finger. As far as Roger seemed concerned, we might have been talking about the weather finally turning cooler.
“Don’t forget Brit,” he said. “She could have a perception.”
“Not through any encouragement from me, she couldn’t.”
“Oh hell, Paul, I know that. Come on, now. That never crossed my mind.”
It did cross your mind, I almost said. It crossed your mind, and then you brought it up, and now we’re talking about it.
I became aware that I’d started walking faster. But Roger hadn’t quickened his pace to keep up. He just kept moving along in his calm, steady stroll, which forced me to slow down or end up a block ahead, talking to myself in the dark. This annoyed me even more.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve known Brit since she was Sofie’s size. If I had a perception I wanted you to be aware of, you’d be aware of it. Believe me.”
I thought up half a dozen responses to that and stopped.
Maybe it was me. Sara had said that I’d begun to annoy easily, and that was probably true.
It annoyed me that the police hadn’t managed to generate any leads on Sara’s attacker in two months’ time. It annoyed me that Barry Firth had blabbed about our pregnancy weeks ago, and that despite our intention to keep the result at least somewhat private, at least until we felt ready to share, everyone in the circle—based on Barry’s inability to keep his trap shut, Michael Sprague’s unwavering dedication to the same task, and Sara’s drinking margaritas at Pete and Melody’s barbecue three weekends earlier—had been able to put two and two together.
On the subject of alcohol consumption, I didn’t like the fact that Roger seemed to know how many beer and wine bottles went out in our recycling tub on garbage day. It annoyed me that he’d been able to spot the increase in number these past few weeks. It annoyed me that he’d found himself concerned enough to make a comment to Sara about it, which she’d conveyed to me.
Of course, everyone meant well. In offering their condolences. In expressing their concerns.
Maybe it all boiled down to the simple fact that Sara and I hadn’t really been Sara and I lately. School had started, our schedules conflicted, and six weeks after losing the baby, we seemed to be operating on different frequencies. For the longest period in our marriage so far, we seemed to be struggling to tune in to each other.
And now this horseshit?
“Hell, forget all that,” Roger said. “There’s more you don’t know, and that’s not your fault.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Between you and me,” he said, “turns out you’re a pretty good alibi.”
“What does that mean?”
While we worked our way back up Sycamore Drive, Roger proceeded to tell me about an instance he happened to be aware of, in which Brit had claimed to be at our place, but had in fact slipped away to Loess Lake in a Mustang convertible with her girlfriend Rachel, her banned bikini, and two seniors from Clark Falls High.
“That’s the first I’ve heard about that,” I said. “Pete and Melody haven’t said a word.”
“That’s because Pete and Melody don’t know about it,” Roger said. “I was coming home from the hardware store, saw Brit get in the car down the hill there. Heard from Melody she’d gone to your place with an armload of books. I waited for the kid to come walking back up the hill four hours later. We had a little chat before she went in for supper.”
He’d waited for her? For four hours? “No kidding.”
“No kidding.”
I chose my next words carefully. Actually, that’s not true. I flat- out asked him what made having a chat with Brit Seward about her behavior his responsibility.
“Listen, Doc, it’s not my place to be talking about it. But if you didn’t know, Pete and Melody… well. They’ve been having a little rough patch here lately.”
“Oh?” I thought of the night I’d overheard Roger talking to Pete, out on the deck at the country club. I didn’t mention it. “That’s too bad.”
“Brit’s a hell of a kid, but I’ll tell you what. College prep smarts and that centerfold body and only thirteen years to know what to do with it all. That’s a hell of a combination.” He shook his head. “Point is, she’s not making it any easier on ‘em, all this running around. So we had a chat. One less thing for Pete and Mel to worry about.”
We climbed the hill in silence. “Well,” I finally said. “I guess it takes a village.”
Roger stayed quiet for a moment. The moment passed. He flicked the ember from the end of his cigar, dropped the dead butt in his vest pocket, and said, “Careful, Doc.”
We walked home without saying another word.
17.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, our front doorbell rang. When I answered, I found Roger standing on our stoop in a light jacket, khaki trousers, and hiking shoes.
Sara had gone for a run with Melody Seward. I’d just gotten a pot of coffee going. Roger had one hand in his jacket pocket, a steel thermal mug in the other.
“Morning,” he said.
“Roger.”
“Doc, I believe I owe you an apology.”
After coming home the night before, I’d ranted to Sara for half an hour. She’d listened patiently, nodded along, and finally suggested that perhaps I was overreacting.
Maybe s
he’d been right. Either way, I didn’t have the energy for a snit with a neighbor.
“Listen, forget it.” I waved my hand. “I guess I’m a little touchy lately. Sara would tell you the same. No hard feelings.”
“Well, I didn’t like the way we left things. Wanted to come by and tell you that before the sun got too high.”
“Come on in.”
“Actually, I was just heading out for a walk,” he said. “Thought I’d see if you’d mind keeping me company.”
I was still in the sweatpants and T-shirt I’d slept in, and I didn’t much feel like walking anywhere. On the other hand, I had a stack of student essays to grade before class on Monday, and I was already thinking of ways to avoid diving in. And Roger seemed to be hoping I’d agree.
So I threw on a pair of jeans, sneakers, and an old Dixson sweatshirt. On the way out of the house, I stopped in the kitchen long enough to fill a carry- along mug of my own.
Roger and I walked a short way down Sycamore Drive, chatting about the temperature. It was the first true fall morning so far. The air was crisp and misty, and the lawns all twinkled with dew. Halfway down the hill, Roger cut across a patch of empty ground. “Scenic route. Follow me.” We crossed through a border of sumac and wildgrass and entered the nature preserve. Roger picked up a trampled deer path in the forest floor. “Here we go.”
A hundred feet into the woods, the trees gathered in around us, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Occasional slivers of blue sky peeked in through the gaps in the whispering canopy high over our heads. The air smelled rich and musty; threads of steam leaked from our coffee mugs. The legs of my jeans were soaked from walking through the tall wet grass at the border, and I was glad I’d put on the sweatshirt. “When is tick season again?”
Roger chuckled. “It opens up here in a bit.”
I ducked a branch and followed along.
“This was actually Omaha country back when,” he said as we walked. “The Ponca were mostly on the other side of the river.”
“No kidding. Omaha Heights, huh?”
“Guess somebody forgot to do their homework when they named the place.” Roger winked and glanced over his shoulder, in the general direction of Ponca Heights behind us. “Or, hell. Maybe they just thought it sounded better. Big root sticking up here. Watch your step.”
We walked in silence for a while, listening to the early-morning chatter of the birds, the creak and sigh of the treetops above, the sound of our feet crunching along through last year’s leaf litter.
Though it was only September, I already missed fall back home. A New England autumn is like an explosion; by comparison, autumn in Clark Falls arrived quietly, in muted shades. If you didn’t pay attention, you might not even notice the season changing in front of your eyes.
I began to wonder, the farther Roger and I walked into the woods, if the leaves would change before we made it home. The trail was narrow, too narrow to take side by side through the thicker timber. At some point I’d begun to notice that tree limbs had been pruned back in spots; the scarred ends of the branches had dried and gone brown. That was the first time I realized that we weren’t on a deer path. I’d already started to suspect that we weren’t on a casual morning walk, either.
Meanwhile, I’d worked up a sweat. My coffee was gone, and I was getting tired of carrying the empty mug. Though all the neighborhood patrolling had improved my fitness over the past few weeks, the hilly terrain inside the refuge had me breathing through the mouth.
“You okay back there, Doc?”
“Shipshape,” I said. “How far does this go, anyway?”
“Not much farther. There’s a good spot to turn around up ahead.”
In a few minutes, we climbed a rise and emerged into a small clearing ringed with gnarly oaks and tall, slender birch trees, their white bark peeling like old paper.
“End of the line,” he said.
“You might have to carry me back.”
“We’ll catch a breather here.”
Ten or twelve feet away from where we stood, there grew a head- high stand of stalky, fernlike foliage, dotted with purple spots, scattered with clumps of small white flowers. Roger saw me looking and said, “Hemlock.”
“What?”
“Same stuff they used on Socrates, if you believe the story.”
“No kidding.”
“Didn’t used to grow here,” Roger said. “Showed up one spring a few years ago. Gets thicker every year now.”
He stood there with his coffee mug in one hand, the other in his jacket pocket, the same as he’d looked standing on our front stoop an hour earlier. Except for a little sweat- darkened area along the edges of his hairline, you’d never know we’d just trudged a mile and a half through heavy timber.
“Look there. Don’t touch.”
I saw where he pointed: woody vines growing close to the ground, winding in and out of the hemlock stand. Waxy green leaves, some tinged red at the tips.
“Know what that is?”
I smiled. “Afraid I wouldn’t have made much of a Boy Scout.”
“Poison ivy.” He made a circular gesture around his head. “You can walk a mile in any direction without running into that stuff again. Just seems to grow right here for some reason. Funny.”
His gaze seemed distant. I felt a tingle in my bowels. By then I thought I knew where we were standing. Standing here felt uncomfortable.
“Roger,” I said.
“They found my boy there.” He raised his mug to his lips, nodding toward the hemlock grove. “Ten years in April. He was a bookworm too. Not like Brit, but he did always like to read. The other day I thought, you know, he might have been in one of Doc’s classes over there on campus now.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“The search came right through here,” he said. “They figured, whoever took Brandon… they figured he must have still had him then. Had him somewhere. Figured he brought him here later. After.”
“Roger,” I said. “I don’t—”
“One theory went that he might have made himself part of the search,” Roger said. “He could have dropped Brandon’s backpack in here on purpose. Gotten things started in a direction. Joined the volunteers so he’d know which areas had been cleared off the grid already. He could have doubled back later, used the search tracks to hide his own.” He shrugged. “That was one theory. There were others. None of those ever checked out either.”
Normally, I don’t go in for capital- letter ideas like Good and Evil. As my students approach their critical essays on classroom reading assignments, I tell them that reliance on absolutes is—generally speaking—the wrong tool for the job.
This makes it difficult to describe what I felt standing next to Roger, gazing at the plot of overgrown soil that had once held the body of his murdered son. All I can say is that it was clear and sunny that day, but my memory of that clearing is black and overcast.
“They say if you leave it alone, it’ll eventually take over the whole area.” Roger took a sip of his coffee and nodded at the hemlock grove. “Gets thicker every year.”
We didn’t say much on the long walk back. After we’d finally left Roger’s well- worn footpath to Brandon Mallory’s original grave site—after we’d waded back through the boundary of sumac and wildgrass, and crossed the ground back to Sycamore Drive—Roger finally said, “I guess it probably seems like I stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong sometimes,” he said. “Maybe it’s true.”
“Listen, Roger—”
“The fact is, when it comes to our little circle, I don’t much think in terms of ‘neighbors.’ ” He opened his mug and tossed the last of his coffee onto the ground. “Pete and Melody, Barry and Trish, all the kids. Michael. Now you and Sara. This might come out sounding dramatic, Doc, but I think of you folks more as family.”
I closed my mouth and said nothing.
“My son was taken in broad daylight.” He hooked a pinky finger through the handle of his mu
g and walked along with his hands in his trouser pockets. The sun seemed to be turning the clock backward now, from autumn back to summer. “Middle of a school week, plenty of folks around. But nobody remembered seeing a thing.
“Hell, I know what it’s like,” he said. “You get tied up in your own life. Got your own job, your own bills, your own lawn to mow. You get a promotion. Build that nice house in Spoonbill Circle.” He tipped his head back, gesturing down the hill. “Get the kids into the school district.”
We walked.
“More people show up with the same idea. All of them living their lives. Neighborhood gets bigger, starts to spread out. Pretty soon you’re nodding to the folks next door when you get the paper in the morning and you don’t even know who lives across the street. Next thing you know, you’re living in a great big maze. Turn left instead of right one day, you could end up lost in your own subdivision.”
Don’t, I thought. I saw where he was going. I didn’t want him to go there. Not like this.
But Roger had something to say, and he’d been waiting all this time to say it. So I stayed quiet and let him.
“Maybe if we all mind each other’s business a little, what happened to Brandon won’t happen to Brit Seward,” he said. “Or little Sofie, God forbid. Or Jordan or Jake. Maybe what happened to you and Sara at your place won’t happen to anyone down the hill.”
Was I being unfair?
“Maybe some of these other things you hear about happening other places… maybe they won’t happen quite as often around here.”
Wasn’t there at least a small part of me that understood? Even agreed, to a point?
“Or maybe we can’t change a thing,” Roger said. “But it seems like we can sure as hell try.”
Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s house is ablaze. The ancient poet Horace was said to have written that line. I know because it’s printed on the inside cover of the Ponca Heights Neighborhood Directory, which we kept in a drawer in the kitchen. It’s also printed on the business card Roger had given us in case we ever needed to contact him at his Safer Places office. It was the organization’s motto. The Safer Places version of Always Be Prepared.
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