by David Bell
“She wanted to drink tonight,” Adam said. “All this stuff with the police coming around and asking questions about her, about her daughter—it pushed her to the edge. Teena was at that house where that other girl was taken advantage of.” Adam shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “She didn’t know we knew each other, but when she found out, she said she wanted me to talk to you, to explain how tough this is on her. And Teena.”
Bill pointed past Adam in the direction of the house. “That girl might know something. She needs to spill it all to the police.”
Adam nodded, his face still eager. His eyes full of sympathy and concern. “I’m sorry, Bill. But I don’t think this is the way you want to go about this. You need to head on out of here and leave this family alone.”
Bill took a step forward. He pointed at Adam’s chest with his index finger. “You need to find out for me. You know them, and she clearly trusts you. Do this for me.”
“Bill—”
“Just do it. Just goddamn do it for me, Adam. Okay?”
Bill realized he was shouting, the sound of his voice echoing off the house behind Adam and coming back through the quiet night like a clap of thunder. Adam took a step back, as though the force of Bill’s voice had struck him like a blow. He’d probably never seen Bill that way.
“That girl, Teena—she’s naive, Bill. I don’t think she’d hurt anybody. She needs a father figure, and I think I’m the closest thing she has.” He leaned closer, and his voice took on a slightly emotional edge. “Maybe I see it as a chance to help another kid.”
Bill understood what Adam meant—a chance to make up for the lost time with his son. “Good,” Bill said. “That’s good. All the better to find out if she knows anything else. If she looks up to you and . . . likes you or whatever, you can just find out what she knows. You know what the cops say—anything can help.”
“Okay, Bill,” he said, his voice slipping into a placating tone as though he were speaking to an unstable mental patient. “I’ll do what I can.”
Bill stood on the lawn, looking at the ground, his heart racing again. He wanted to say something else to Adam. Not an apology exactly, but an explanation, some sense of the jumbled chaos in his mind and heart. But nothing coherent formed. And nothing came out.
Adam simply started backing away, heading for the house. He left Bill out on the lawn alone, the cold wind shaking the trees and stinging Bill’s cheeks.
Bill watched Adam go inside, a brief shaft of warm yellow light slicing across the lawn before the door cut it off.
Bill’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He wished he could ignore it, but he didn’t want to miss anything important.
Instead, he saw Paige’s name on the ID screen. When he answered, turning and walking toward the car, his sister’s voice sounded panicked. Shaky.
“Where are you?” she asked without offering any greeting.
“I’m coming home.”
“Are you home yet? Like, in the driveway?”
“No, I’m not.” A cold tension rose in Bill, a surging fear. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a car in the driveway,” Paige said. “It’s just sitting there. It’s been sitting there for a few minutes. It has its lights on.”
“Are the doors locked?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Bill drove down his street, expecting to see a car still in front of his house, but when he came close, he saw an empty driveway. Every light, inside and out, seemed to be blazing, making the house look festive, like a big party was just about to begin. He wondered what the neighbors would think of that, the man with the dead wife and the dead daughter pretending to be the Jay Gatsby of Jakesville, Kentucky.
Bill didn’t bother to put the car in the garage. He stopped in the back of the house, his headlights momentarily sweeping across Adam’s immaculate yard, and jumped out, rushing inside. Paige greeted him at the back door, undoing the lock as he approached and then locking the door behind him.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did you figure out who it was?”
“I probably overreacted,” she said, although she didn’t appear calm or at ease. “When you left the house, you told me to keep everything locked, and I did. I know whoever did this to Summer and Haley is still out there, and who knows what they intend to do to anybody else?”
“So, did someone come to the house?” Bill asked, looking around and taking in every detail of their surroundings in case the boogeyman was inside, ready to leap from behind a piece of furniture.
“No. Nothing happened.” Paige walked into the kitchen. A glass of red wine sat on the counter, and next to the wine Bill saw a large carving knife, something Julia bought years earlier and which had not been used since she died. “But this car . . . I was sitting in the living room, trying to read. I’ve been watching so much TV lately, my mind is turning to mush, and you had those Louis L’Amour novels on the shelf out there, the ones that belonged to Dad.”
“Sure.”
“So I started reading, and I noticed a car going by the house really slowly. I thought maybe it was a cop, keeping an eye on things. But there were no lights on top or anything. And then I thought maybe it was you, coming home.”
“Maybe it was a pizza guy looking for an address.”
“I thought of that. But they went up the street that way, and then they came back down again.” Paige pointed in each direction, and Bill saw her hand tremble as she did. “And then it came again and basically stopped in front of the house.” She paused and caught her breath. She reached over and took a long gulp of wine. “This feels so good.”
“So they stopped in front of the house,” Bill said. “You know, Paige, you were always a little jumpy. Remember you used to come into my room whenever you heard a strange noise in the house or watched a scary movie. You slept with the lights on until you were twelve.”
Paige made a disgusted sound deep in her throat. “Really, Bill? You want to bring that up?” She pointed to the front of the house. “The car sat there for a long time, its lights on. The engine running. And then it turned into the driveway. And it just sat there. I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt like someone was in that car, and they were . . . I don’t know . . . watching me. Aggressively. That’s what it felt like.”
Bill lifted his hand to his head and scratched. He believed his sister. Yes, he remembered her as the scared kid, the one who had a tendency to leave the bathroom door open while she sat on the toilet because she wanted the rest of the family to be able to reach her if a monster jumped out of the closet. But he still believed her. He just didn’t know what it meant.
“Do you want me to call the police?” he asked. “I can.”
“And tell them what? Your sister is afraid of a car?”
“It could be a gawker,” Bill said. “Someone who heard about the story and just wants to see where a murder victim lived.”
Paige’s face scrunched with disgust. “Really, Bill? You think that?”
“What else can I think?” he said. He pulled the refrigerator door open and took out a bottle of beer, something cheap with a twist-off cap. “So many weird things are happening.”
When he turned around from the refrigerator, the beer bottle lifted to his mouth, he saw Paige studying him. He knew what was coming next.
“Where exactly were you tonight, Bill?” she asked. “What ‘errand’ were you running?”
Bill carried the bottle to the kitchen table with him and sat down. He looked up at Paige, who remained standing, her body leaning back against the counter. “I don’t know. I started out driving to the cemetery. It just bugs me that she’s buried there, with flowers and things intended for someone else piled on top of the grave. I know it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, it was closed.” He swallowed some of the
beer. “So I drove to the Everetts’ house.”
“Why did you do that?”
“It turned out to be a good thing.” He told her about running into Adam and his friendship with Jillian Everett. “It’s a stroke of luck, and maybe it will help us understand what’s going on.”
For a brief moment, Bill felt satisfied with himself. Despite the stabbing, nearly continuous heartache he’d been feeling for the past day, he took comfort in the knowledge that he’d done something productive, something that might move them all a step closer to knowing what happened to Summer. And why.
But then he saw the look on Paige’s face. Her hand held the stem of her wineglass, but she didn’t lift it. She stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I just think you have to accept that this could all take a while,” she said. “It’s early, and I really believe the police will solve this and hold someone accountable. I think they usually do.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Bill. I don’t mean to be a downer, but we have to be patient.”
Bill picked at the label on his beer bottle. It flaked beneath his touch, coming off in pieces that stuck to his finger rather than peeling away from the glass in one smooth, continuous sheet.
“That’s very hard for me.”
But when he looked up at his sister, he saw she was looking somewhere else. Her head was turned toward the front of the house, looking through the archway that led from the kitchen to the living room, her hand setting the wineglass on the counter and then lifting and pressing her palm against her chest.
“Bill?” she said. “Outside. It’s the car again.”
Bill didn’t even think. He sprang up from the table and moved quickly through the archway and to the front door. As he moved, he caught a glimpse of the car through the window, headlights and taillights sliding past in the darkness. Bill fumbled with the locks and leaped out onto the stoop, running across the yard to the street.
He heard Paige call his name behind him but kept going. The car was new and silver, a four-door sedan with bright headlights.
Bill lifted his hand and shouted. “Hey!”
A figure sat behind the wheel, the gender indistinct in the darkness, and before Bill was anywhere close to the street, the vehicle accelerated, its engine revving like a deep-throated monster, and sped away, leaving Bill to watch it go, unable to catch even a piece of the license plate number.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Bill was surrounded by empty caskets.
The soft light and cloying piped-in organ music gave him the sense he’d walked onto the set of a foreign film, something surreal and absurd that wouldn’t make sense to him even if it were in his own language.
Paige walked beside him, inspecting the caskets like she was picking out a new car. She touched the handles, felt the pillows, ran her hand over every surface, and inspected the interiors as though searching for the tiniest defect.
When Julia died, Bill rushed through this process. He felt pulled in more directions than he could count. He made certain that Summer’s needs were his highest priority. He didn’t know what else to do. So he came through the Winter and Sons showroom that day, his mind reeling like the survivor of a natural disaster, and pointed to and bought the first decent-looking thing he saw.
He didn’t want to rush with Summer. He stopped next to a copper-colored casket, the lid heavy, the handles on the side like door knockers on a cathedral. It looked sturdy, eternal, the kind of object that spoke of permanence.
“This looks pretty good,” he said.
Paige came up beside him. “Not very feminine.”
“I’m not buying a pink one. Summer wasn’t into ruffles and bows.”
“Sure, you’re right. It looks good.” She then spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Are you going to be able to afford this? Remember Mom’s and Dad’s funerals? They were each close to ten grand.”
“The City of Jakesville is paying for the burial.”
“Sure. But what about everything else? You said work was putting the squeeze on you.”
“I have some money saved. Life insurance money from Julia. It was supposed to pay for Summer to go to college.”
“Well, if you need any help.”
“Paige—”
“Kyle got promoted. I guess I didn’t tell you with everything going on. So if you need for us to—”
“It’s fine, Paige. I can pay for it.”
She reached up and patted his arm, letting the conversation about money go.
Bill turned around. Todd Winter stood off to the side, his hands folded in front of his waist, his dark suit and youthful good looks making him seem more like a Hollywood leading man on the way to a premiere than an undertaker in a small Kentucky town.
“We’d like to take this one,” Bill said.
Todd Winter glided over, his shiny black shoes making almost no noise against the carpet. He nodded his agreement with the choice and said, “It’s one of our finest models. Airtight. Watertight. Guaranteed.”
Bill hadn’t eaten anything all day, and his stomach did a flip as he listened to Todd’s litany of the casket’s features. He didn’t want to think of why a casket needed to be airtight or watertight. He didn’t want to think about the pressure of the dirt and the rain and the years that would stretch out into infinity.
“Is there anything else we need to take care of?” Bill asked, hoping to be finished with the conversation.
Todd Winter looked suitably grim and serious. “Not right now. You brought the clothing over with you, and we’ve already been given the location of the plot. We could discuss headstone options today, if you’re up to it, or we could address that another time.”
The room seemed close and confining. They were in the basement, and as Bill looked around, he saw no windows or doors, no means of escape. The weather remained cool, and the heat in the funeral home suddenly felt oppressive, so much so that Bill removed his coat. A trickle of sweat ran down his side, from his armpit to his waist.
“I think that’s all I want to do today,” he said.
“I understand. I’ll get the paperwork started,” Todd said.
Paige examined Bill, her face moving closer to his, her eyes magnified by her glasses. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re starting to look a little pale.”
“Just warm,” he said. “I’ll feel better outside.”
They all started toward the door together, toward the stairs that led back above ground and out to the living, breathing world. But before they exited, Bill stopped to ask Todd a last question.
“Do you know when they’re going to take care of the . . . What did you call it?”
“Disinterment.”
“Yeah, that. When is that happening?”
“Right now, I believe,” Todd said. “This morning.”
“Right now,” Bill said, repeating the words. He wished he’d gone to the cemetery to watch. He would have if he’d known, even though he doubted they’d let him anywhere close to where the men were working. He just hated the thought of Summer being so alone, tended by strangers again. For one moment, he was thankful for the sealed, airtight casket. It would protect her from prying eyes the way Haley wasn’t protected in the hospital. “And then what happens?”
“Summer will be brought back here,” Todd said. “We’ll handle the preparations. We’ve scheduled the visitation for two days from now, as you requested.” He paused for a moment. “Do you still wish to see Summer before the casket is sealed? I know we’re going to have it closed for the viewing when your friends and family are here.”
Bill heard the sliver of doubt in Todd Winter’s voice, the same sliver he’d been hearing from Paige over the previous twenty-four hours. No one was saying it directly to him, but the implied message was clear: Are you sure you want to see your daughter this way? Are you sure you’re up to it?
“I do,” Bill said. “You’re going to see her, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” Todd said. “I’ll be here during the entire process.”
“Then I’m going to see her too.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Bill wasn’t hungry for lunch.
He sat at the table with Paige across from him, each of them with a steaming plate of baked ziti in front of them. Someone had dropped it off the day before, one of the neighbors whom Bill barely knew. He’d let Paige handle the meeting and greeting of well-wishers and casserole bakers, telling her to claim he simply wasn’t up to talking to anyone.
As Bill pushed the food around on his plate, he wondered, in all seriousness, how long he could ride that excuse out. Did he ever have to go back to talking to people?
“I guess they’re running the obituary for Summer in the paper tomorrow,” Paige said.
Bill noticed that the grief, the stress, hadn’t cooled his sister’s appetite. She talked between bites, and he realized how very right his parents had been about her and her zest for life. For everything in life.
“Yes,” he said. “For any one of Jakesville’s twenty thousand citizens who’ve been living under a rock for the last few days.”
“It will probably be as crowded as Haley’s funeral.”
“Maybe. Candy’s lived here her whole life. She knows everybody. People might be tired of hearing about it by now. Or maybe they’ll be morbidly attracted to it. Who knows?”
Paige forked her food with precise movements, her face set in concentration. Bill could tell she had something else to say.
“What?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Since when did you get shy? You want to ask me—or tell me—something else.”
Paige set her fork down. “I was wondering if you’d given any more thought to the church. Or do you still want to just go from the funeral home to the cemetery and skip having a mass?”