by Tom Bouman
I hadn’t heard about Shelly’s life other than what Terry Ceallaigh had told me. She’d moved away after the divorce. The most recent home I’d known her to have was a rented apartment in Binghamton. Last I’d seen her was in a car outside the Bray horse farm here in Wild Thyme, the farm her husband got to keep, along with the kids.
I worked up the courage to travel the length of the bar and say hello to Shel, but by then she wasn’t to be found, and it was time to start the show.
Over the past couple years, the Country Slippers evolved a way of playing where we’d begin with a wordless tune, say, “Billy in the Lowground.” But if the spirit moved us, we’d stretch it out, or remove one piece and sister it on over here, until, hey, it’s not “Billy,” but “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” which we’d sing not too well, then ease back into “Billy.” It kept the sets fluid—pools and rills. And the band had to listen to each other too. We couldn’t sit back and think about life’s little ironies while playing a tune the same way every time, because there was no same way. This came first from an understanding between fiddle and banjo, and an ear for the unstruck chord. All the while, I looked for Shelly and didn’t see her.
After the show was over, and by the time we’d packed up our instruments and hauled the PA back to the closet, business was sparse enough that the bartender had left his post for a minute to smoke his vape out on the porch. He handed me an envelope full of small bills. “How’d it go?”
“Fine,” I said. “You?”
“Good. Good crowd tonight. Good.”
I walked out to my truck, not drunk, but buzzing from a few beers and unburdened of nervous energy. Footsteps followed me as I walked to my truck.
“Henry,” Shelly said, her voice snagging me from behind, unmistakable and urgent.
“I thought I saw you in there.”
“Got a minute?”
“Uh, how long of a minute? I’ve got to get home, my wife …”
“I heard. Congratulations. Can we?” she said, gesturing toward my truck. Inside the cab, she tucked one foot underneath a thigh and turned to me. There was vodka and cranberry on her breath, and the cab soon filled with the sweet smell. Shelly was always athletic and that hadn’t changed; her jeans fit like a radio country song. When we’d had our thing, I’d mostly known her face brightened by mischief. Now worry seemed to bring her down. Still, I admit my heart raced to be close to her again, and I half thought our conversation would end with a suggestion I’d have a hard time refusing. “Carrianne said you asked after me.”
I shrugged and didn’t answer.
“I’m fine,” she said. “We’re fine. I’m here because I know something about the man Terry found.”
“Oh?” I began looking for an out.
“I’ve been trying to get the kids back. Looking into Josh’s past. You know he’d been in some trouble when he was a boy. Setting fires, shoplifting, he said. Not to hurt anyone, just a kid acting out. So he claimed. But I got thinking, how much do I really know? So I’ve been sending out FOIL requests, with nobody telling me anything. Finally I reach a woman in the attorney general’s office who’ll listen. I talked to her on the phone. She—”
“I can’t really talk about this.” I could hear people leaving the bar, car doors opening and shutting, engines, laughter. “I can’t be out here with you like this. It’s a small town.”
“Okay, but can I—this lawyer, unofficially she told me, find some dirt, some leverage, improve the situation with the kids outside of the courts. Carl was who she suggested. A private investigator. I was the one who hired him.”
I took this information and turned it in the light. The woman in the AG’s office must have been Allie DeCosta. Why she hadn’t shared this with me on the phone, I could only guess. Eventually I said, “Are you safe?”
“He doesn’t know I’m in town. Henry, I’ve been living with this and trying to figure out what’s right, trying not to ruin my kids’ lives. If Josh did it …”
“It doesn’t look good, but you don’t know anything. Not for sure. Why would he want to kill anybody?” I didn’t think him above it, but I wanted to hear her answer.
“He has his reasons,” she said. There was truth in her eyes, and a plea. “State police have been by to ask me questions. I didn’t tell them all I know. If I tell you, can you protect me?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
She leaned back, away from me. “I need to think,” she said. She reached for the door handle.
“Shel—”
“Yes?” she said.
“Come see me at the station tomorrow.”
“Maybe.” She left.
I called Sheriff Dally at home, had to call twice before he’d pick up. I told him that Shelly had hired Carl Dentry to look at her ex.
“Yeah,” Dally said, “we knew that. It was at the investigators’ request we keep you away from the Bray part of the case,” he said. “For obvious reasons. You’ve got a personal connection; let’s not pretend.”
“So he fuckin did it. Why hasn’t he been hauled in and charged?”
“There’s nothing on him,” Dally said, tired. “His alibi is good. He’d had the kids down at his parents’ place in Wilkes-Barre all weekend.”
“Check his phone—”
“Henry—”
“—and his emails. Apps, whatever.”
“It’s being done. That kind of thing takes time. Henry, think about how we found Carl. That Bray, he’s a chilly son of a bitch, but would he have done all that?”
We hung up and I drove away. Home, I rinsed off in the shower and slipped into bed beside Miss Julie, who was snoring. My mind was racing, but an hour or two later, I must have fallen asleep myself.
THE NEXT DAY, Shelly never showed. I could only guess what she had to tell me. I took a deep breath and placed a call to Allie DeCosta’s office at the AG; she didn’t answer, of course, and I didn’t leave a message. I decided I couldn’t wait forever, and I went out into the field, which got me nowhere.
Every Thursday night, Miss Julie and I took a class in Binghamton called Mindful Baby. It was in the basement of St. Pat’s on the West Side. There were four other couples in there with us, more or less pregnant than we were, but all due in spring. We sat cross-legged on the floor without shoes; three weeks of this and I never remembered to wear good socks. A doula led us through visualizations and breathing exercises, and showed us movies about natural birth and breastfeeding and how to swaddle your baby. We practiced on dolls. At first I hadn’t wanted to go; my people had raised babies for generations, resulting in me. I had turned out fine. But it was important to Miss Julie and so it was important to me.
Last week we’d been given homework to come up with a secret list of things you were grateful to your partner for. I had written mine out and brought it folded in my pocket. I was distracted by the Dentry matter, so it was a good thing I had my notes. The room fell a little extra silent as I fished my list out of my shirt pocket. Julie tucked some hair behind her ear and looked amused. “Um,” I said, mad that I had to put our business in the street. “You are a great baker. You make me laugh. And that isn’t easy,” I added. “You put up with my moods. You listen. You are secure in your, um, self. I’m sorry …”
“No, keep going,” said our teacher.
“You don’t let things get you down,” I said. I put the list away and looked at my wife. “You are like the sun. To me. Like sun on water. In summertime? Like when we got married. That’s how I feel. I don’t know how I got so lucky. For our kid to have you as a mom … well.” I looked around the room, abashed.
For that speech, I got a kiss on the cheek.
“I never knew that you were always what I needed until you came along,” she said. Here, she told the story of when she first knew I was interested, when I picked her wild mushrooms, and called her up later that night in a panic to make sure they weren’t poisonous. It was funny and sweet the way she told it, but I’d almost had a heart attack over those
chickens-of-the-woods. “You’ll always do right by me. You are strong, inside and out. I know it was hard for you to take a risk on me, and on fatherhood, and I’m grateful. The world is full of people, but there aren’t a lot of guys like you for girls like me. There aren’t a lot of fathers like you. You are a total weirdo. I love you.”
Miss Julie’s appetite had returned, and we picked up a pizza with sausage and spicy peppers on the way home.
Back at the cottage, there were two police cars parked on the shoulder. One was the sheriff’s, and the other an unmarked blue sedan I guessed correctly was a PSP vehicle. Miss Julie stiffened and said, “How about a break for once?”
“I’ll get rid of them.”
Julie had no intention of sharing our dinner, and hustled it inside without saying hello. I met the sheriff and Collyer and Garcia in the yard.
“Sorry to intrude,” Dally said.
“The wife says I can’t ask you in.” We all shook hands.
“We may need to take a look inside,” Collyer said.
I stiffened. Dally was smiling but there was tension in it. “I thought you and Julie were living up where Medbh Brennan used to be. We went up there, your whole family was home except you. Sorry. Glad to see your parents again.”
“I’m sure they were glad too,” I said.
Dally nodded. “Your sister says to call her,” he said.
“Okay, thanks for the message. Is that all?”
Garcia cleared his throat and said, “It’s about Shelly Bray.”
And I knew. “What happened?”
“When did you last see her?”
From that moment on, I measured my responses. “She reached out to me last night.”
“Why?”
“You know why,” I said. “She had information on Dentry.”
“How, by phone, email?”
“She was at the High-Thyme—at the bar.” I turned to Dally. “Sheriff, I called you right after—”
“That was about when?” Garcia said.
“I’m a little fuzzy on that. I wasn’t on duty. It would’ve been around midnight? Phone records would tell you.”
Collyer took over. “So you’d been drinking. Anyone see you?”
“Everyone saw me. What does that mean?”
“Did anyone see you leave? Easy. You know we’ve got to do this.”
“I don’t know that you’ve got to do anything. People saw me there because I was playing in the band. My wife can tell you I came straight home, if it comes to that. She was home.” But I didn’t convince myself or the detectives. “What happened?”
Dally said, “Ms. Bray was found dead in her car near the old Ravine exit off 81.”
I knew the place. It was a few counties south of Holebrook. The commonwealth had blocked the exit off with a couple concrete dividers, but there was room on the side of the road to get by. The off-ramp was cracked and scattered with rubble. It sloped up, and then dropped straight down and curved into the woods. The exit, and that road, was not supposed to be in use.
“Dead how?”
“That’s the question,” said Garcia.
“Well, did she crash? What was she doing?”
“Also good questions. A one-car MVA is possible.”
“What was her tox?”
“Mr. Farrell, we’re getting a little sidetracked—”
“It’s ‘Henry.’ But if you can’t say that, it’s ‘Officer.’ ” I thought of Miss Julie and the baby the size of a wild peach, waiting, and how easily things could be taken away in our civilized world.
“Just tell us what you know,” Collyer said. “Take a deep breath. You’re a citizen in this. You said it yourself, you were off-duty when you met her.”
“How did you know I talked to her in the first place?”
“You were seen.”
“All right,” I said. “So why’d you have to ask?” They had either been to the tavern, spoken to someone who had been there the night before, or both. The bartender had been out on the porch.
“And you left about the same time?” said Garcia.
“Yes. Listen, I thought you’d be here on the Dentry murder.”
“We are. And now Ms. Bray, unfortunately.”
“She said she had information to give me. I told her see me at the station. So …”
“Any idea about the nature of that information?”
“No.”
“You had been involved with Ms. Bray, though?”
I closed my eyes and began to panic. “Some time back. I hadn’t seen her in at least a year. I was surprised when she showed up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, I just was.”
The other men left a silence for the rest of the answer I didn’t give.
“All right. Thank you for your cooperation, Officer,” said Garcia. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Relax, okay?”
“Right,” I said.
Garcia and Collyer got in their sedan and drove away. As Sheriff Dally was about to do the same, he reminded me to call sister Mag. “I think we spooked her,” he said.
Inside, I struggled to seem calm. Julie knew not to ask me about work unless I volunteered, so I hoped that I wouldn’t have to make up another lie. I needed time to figure out the right thing to say.
I HAVE TO turn now to earlier events. Some of what I learned, I was told not that very moment, but a few weeks after. Some of it I learned years later, on the purest blue winter day of negative five, with hilltop trees frozen white from root to overstory, and snow squeaking under our boots, too cold a day for any game to move. Some of it I know because I’ve been to the places myself. Some of it, it is fair to say I don’t know for a fact, and could be drawing from my own life as a boy very like Ryan Conkins, circling back years to follow this story forward to its end.
Here’s what: One morning, Ryan had ridden the bus to school just as he had done since his mother enrolled him at the Theodore Roosevelt Middle School. He had his lunch, a watch, and a map. He was new and it was early in the year, so they hadn’t caught on to him yet, and didn’t seem to care about calling home or going after him. That was coming. But, he thought, let them catch me first.
All families fought. All fathers made you feel small, said things like “stupid hurts” and shook you by the back of the neck. Mothers were disappointed and secretly unforgiving. Sisters were embarrassed for living. It hadn’t occurred to Ryan to be unhappy about that; that was the way things were, and if he ever thought about it, he was glad to have his family. But he couldn’t take it for granted that his father would be around, or Brit, either, the best friend he had. And he thought about that. He thought about what had happened at the wedding and the spot they were all in now. It was like a hole in a pair of jeans. Small at first, but bigger every day. At what point did you say, this hole is too big, can we patch it? Or, I can’t wear these anymore, I got to throw them out, can I have a new pair.
Ryan was moving out of one world and into another. His parents were weaker than he’d known and couldn’t be trusted. Which meant all so-called adults who had tried to tell him about the world might have been wrong, or they might have been every one of them agreeing to the same lie. A lie that contained ten thousand little lies: The things you learned in school would be useful one day. Anyone can be anything if he tries hard enough.
No, he was on his own. This new world was confusing and he wanted to change the way it felt, but didn’t know how. So he got angry, and changed himself instead. He couldn’t be angry around his mother or his grandparents, especially not Grandfather, and he couldn’t stand to stay at school, which would mean that the new world was real, and what he was hiding under his anger might break out.
The other day in math he’d been lost in thought and hadn’t done the work, and the guy teaching the class had asked him a question. Ryan gave a shrug, was met with a glare, and the teacher wrote something down about him in his notes for that class. This morning, in an English class of thirty kids, where they
took turns reading passages aloud from busted-up textbooks full of stories—books that the students at Teddy Roosevelt covered in brown paper to keep them alive another year—Ryan began to moo. He didn’t know why at first, and when the sweet, large, older woman who taught the class asked him, he merely shrugged and said, “Moo.” Seeing the look on her face hurt, but he got what he wanted: a referral to the vice principal’s office. Ryan’s last time there, the VP had asked him if everything was all right at home. Asked him things about his home. This had made Ryan furious. He’d had to swallow that. Instead of going there again, he simply took his bag from his locker and walked out the door and into the hills.
School was on a hilltop just north of Fitzmorris. Wild Thyme was about eight miles north of that, which if he went quickly and as the crow flew would take him two, two and a half hours. It was a country place with enough cover to get him within sight of his uncle Henry’s farmhouse on the hill. At first he’d fretted that he’d get caught, or that he’d get lost. Once he realized that it didn’t matter, he enjoyed himself crossing enemy lines, waiting for silence before he crept across roads, slipping beyond the sight of a house into the forest behind, unseen. Sometimes stopping to watch people, or climbing up a silo ladder. When he got back to Aunt Medbh’s house, he waited in the woods until he heard the bus drive by, and then appeared on the driveway and refused to talk all afternoon and night. With his baby sister vacuuming up attention, nobody asked much of him.
On his third day playing hooky, he walked along a straight clearing in the woods that was covered in soft new grass and old straw. Sections of a light green pipeline rose out of the ground like a creature. At one point he tried turning a wheel on the pipe, but wasn’t quite strong enough. Above him and around him, the trees were mostly still dark green, with a red or orange burst to catch his eye every twenty feet, and a sky the cleanest blue that drew him up on his tiptoes to look into it. At his feet: moss, wintergreen, the femur of a deer, roots. Once, crossing a dirt road, he had to move deeper into the woods to avoid men standing and talking by two white pickup trucks. In the middle of a golden field with no building or road in sight, he lazed, eating his lunch with the crickets all around him. For some time he peered closely at the petals of wildflowers and let beetles and ants crawl onto his hands. These were all things he didn’t get to see or do in the courtyard of the development where they lived in North Carolina, where the air was warmer and thicker, and there was no place to go where someone hadn’t been before and left trash.