He drove another block, then said, “Any idea how far along?”
“She said about six weeks.” Evangeline reviewed the paperwork. “This has a due date of June ninth. The doctor listened with the Doppler thing and didn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat. I guess that’s normal this early. Sometimes they do an ultrasound to pin down the date, but it’s expensive and she didn’t see the need.”
Evangeline wondered if he realized she’d gotten pregnant right before his son was murdered. Maybe he did, because his face had gone blank. He’d fallen so far back into his mind, was so unseeing of what was before him that she almost grabbed the wheel.
That night they shared another mostly silent meal, another silent cleanup, only this time the silence was uneasy. She had her own inner disturbance, but there was a new disruption in Isaac as well.
On her way to bed, she paused by the stairwell door. A strange notion rose that it wasn’t so much her pregnancy that was troubling him as the removal of the chair. She reached toward the handle, thinking she’d clear up the mystery that lived in this house. But her hand stopped halfway and dropped back to her side.
She had promised Isaac she wouldn’t open the door. For some reason, this was one of the rare promises she felt inclined to keep.
17
Peter would have granted me more leave, but the days had piled one on top of another, over a month now, and already they’d become a wall nearly too high to scale. If I didn’t return on Monday, I probably never would.
Evangeline was to start the same day. She had insisted on checking the box that said “Junior,” though I’d warned her she might be desperately behind. It wasn’t until Sunday evening that she began to fret, asking if the teachers were nice, if they’d give her a break. The next morning, I offered to drive her, but she refused, promising to walk the mile herself. Despite her new outfits, she wore her old jeans and red sweater. As I watched her march down the drive, her new backpack stuffed to bursting, I thought, That’s the last I’ll see of her.
After she disappeared from sight, I managed only a few bites of toast before I grabbed my keys and rushed to my car. I had to find her. Twenty minutes later I pulled into the school’s lot, having followed the most logical route and circled others. There’d been no sign of her. I told myself the girl was gone, that it was for the best, yet a paralysis claimed my arms, left me unable to open the car door.
Jackson Matthews and Wyatt Berg, football teammates, stood outside the school’s front doors, chatting and smiling at the girls, no different from any other day. I’d prepared to feel angry at the living, at the way life refuses to stop for death. But the students were innocents in this. It was the building itself that infuriated me. With its poor ventilation and mold, its crumbling bricks and swollen windowsills, it indicted all of us, practically shouting, All the failed school levies! Such reckless indifference to the well-being of your children! How had we grown so selfish? When had we begun not to care? No wonder children were lost.
I managed to escape my car and push toward those students who had this day and tomorrow and the next before them. Jackson and Wyatt stopped mid-word when I passed, as if I’d caught them in a cruelty. As I entered the building, the bustling, noisy heat of teenagers, the shouts across hallways, the bursts of laughter and banging lockers collected in a wave before me, a concentrated aliveness that threatened to drown me. A few students noticed me and fell silent. Whispers rose and rippled, and there was a general sweeping to the sides.
Opposite the front doors, at the counter of the main office, Peter stood talking to Carol Marsten, the new vice principal. With the atmospheric drop, his head jerked in my direction, and he swung around the counter.
“Isaac!” He had to yell, because I’d dashed down the hall.
When I stopped, he jogged up, his purple tie flopping against his blue dress shirt. He pulled me into an empty classroom, gave me a quizzical look. “Were you running away from me?”
I shrugged, unable to explain myself.
“If I’ve done anything—”
“No. No, you haven’t. I just . . . It’s just that there’s . . . so much.”
“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “So damned much.” He shifted. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Damn it, Isaac, don’t be sorry. That’s the last thing I want. Just talk to me, okay? What’s going on? You wouldn’t see me last week. And this morning, I learn from Carol that you registered a new girl to start today—”
“Is she here?”
His head cocked. “Not that I know of. Didn’t you bring her?”
“She insisted on walking.”
“Is she a niece or something? Anything I can help with?”
Before I could answer, the warning bell rang. “I know you’ve got to go,” he said. “If you get a chance, stop by the office before you head home.”
I said I would try and started down the hall. Dick Nelson, a jovial social studies teacher, patted my shoulder solemnly as he walked by. Someone touched my arm, and I turned to find Connie Swanson, her face more florid and blustery than usual. Though her chemistry classroom adjoined mine, she’d been strangely absent from Daniel’s search parties. Now she blinked back tears and produced a pitiful moan before turning in embarrassment.
As I watched Connie escape, I wondered why someone her age and weight would choose such a short, tight skirt. Strange what’s left behind when all that matters is scraped away.
* * *
—
MY CLASSROOM SEEMED FOREIGN. Mike Fuentes had arranged the desks around the perimeter, left the center empty. Break dancing had made a recent comeback at the school, and I imagined students blaring music, spinning on their heads, Fuentes yelling in frustration. But as I settled at my desk, the center transformed, became a place where—like meetings for worship—its emptiness allowed insights to rise.
Apart from Daniel’s memorial, I hadn’t been to meeting since my son’s death. I understood the burden I presented. What do you say to the parent of a murdered child? How do you behave? People’s fear of hurting me caused them pain and confusion, and their suffering added to mine. I wanted to spare Friends my presence. Besides, what was left for me there? Certainly not Divine connection. God had reduced me to rubble, had stolen Katherine and my son. God, it seemed, had taken even the girl and the promise of her baby.
No, I would not be seeking that God, the one who even now taunted me with students who straggled in, who mocked me with a morning light that fell over the room like glowing rain, that lit the large veins of my hands, full and pulsing, as they rested on the desk. Not the God who delighted in this Divine torment, this nagging, insistent whisper: I have left you with nothing, but you are alive, alive, alive.
You are alive. You must come to grips with that.
18
When Evangeline left for that first day at Port Furlong High, she hadn’t decided to go. She hadn’t decided not to go either. Her feet started out the right way, but halfway there they detoured up a trail, wound her around the lake, and planted her on a viewpoint overlooking the school.
She shrugged off her pack and perched on a rock. She’d fled here dozens of times the past spring when she wanted to escape her mother. Back then, nearly everything about the woman nauseated Evangeline—her skin-peeling gaze, the writhing disgust of her lips, her jiggling flab in too-tight tees. Evangeline had sat in this very spot and chiseled all that disdain into a sharp stone she lodged beneath her heart, enjoying how it rubbed her raw and angry with each rhythmic beat. And now, if she could find its jagged edge, lean into its lacerating power, she might again believe in the joy of a motherless existence, she might be able to stand and move toward a new life. But the stone was gone. All that was left was a boggy tender spot, a deep and permanent bruise.
The bell rang below. Last-minute dashes were made. How strange that her legs refused to
take her. She had begged to go to school, fought with her mother, threatened to register on her own. Viv said she knew what happened in parking lots during lunch hours and after school, said she wasn’t going to have “a whore for a daughter.” Viv would leave if it came down to that. Evangeline had obeyed, and what good had it done? Her mother took off anyway. As for having a whore for a daughter, perhaps her mother had created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The sun continued to rise in a cold, empty sky. Why was returning to school so hard? Her mother had moved every couple of years, and Evangeline had always managed to fit in before. Maybe it had to do with hiding these past months, cowering out of sight as if she were something obscene. But it was deeper than that, a sense of floundering, as if she’d lost the anchoring that a mother—no matter how lousy—provides, that allowed a girl to swim into new territory without worry of being washed out to sea.
She told herself she had the man, Isaac. He acted more like a mother than Viv ever had. He’d been plenty pissed when she snuck out those first nights. But even that third time, when he lectured her about the need for simple courtesy—whatever that meant—he assembled a plate of mashed potatoes and baked chicken. He shoved it at her as if angry, but when she dug in like the famished girl she was, she could see he was pleased.
And every morning he was in the kitchen with his fruit and oatmeal, or eggs and toast, his insistence she add extra layers of warmth, as if she were a delicate girl who needed care. She liked that, being thought of as delicate. Not that she was. Not that she wanted to be. Hell no. But to have someone worry about her, suspect she had been and could be hurt, to think it mattered . . . well, it felt like someone wrapping a coat around her shoulders when she hadn’t known she was cold.
Still, Isaac’s kindness was a mystery whose cost she couldn’t figure. If life had taught her anything, it was that nothing came for free. She refused to think of the two boys and the guilt she had buried, what it would mean if Isaac found out. But it lived in her, burrowed deep into her bones, so cold it nearly rattled her teeth.
Everything these days made her afraid: people who might have seen her, kids she didn’t yet know, classes and tests and projects she’d missed. The totality of time seemed a danger, whether the secrets of her past or the threats of the future. Mostly she was afraid of Isaac, of all she had recently received and that could now be lost.
It was seeing herself this way—as a quivering puddle of fear—that made her command herself to stand and get her ass to school, tell her body she would be in charge of it from then on. And finally her body obeyed, taking her down the hill, around the lake, through the parking lot, and right through the old building’s front doors.
To hell with being afraid. That would be her motto from now on.
19
At noon, I saw her. She disappeared into the lunchroom with her storm of red hair. A sudden bright sensation lit me. When I peered in, she was sitting alone at a corner table, and I fought an urge to introduce her around. Fortunately, a couple of the kinder girls, ones who rarely got invited to the dances, joined her.
“Checking on your girl?”
I twisted to find Peter at my side. “I suppose I was,” I said, catching my breath. “Wasn’t sure she was going to make it, honestly.”
“She almost didn’t. Carol said she showed up around ten.”
“Ten?”
“Pretty damned hard walking into a new school. Had to be all the harder once she delayed.” He scanned the lunchroom. “Where’s she sitting? I was out when she arrived.”
I pointed in her direction, but a group of kids blocked his view. Peter stepped a few feet into the room, making a point to glance first in the opposite direction, not wanting to single her out. He conveyed a kind intelligence in everything he did. He knew every student and every clique in the school, who composed the core of each group and who were the hangers-on. He could spot those rare students who blended across multiple cliques and those who struggled to land in any group for long.
Evangeline sat sideways to the door. When Peter saw her, his face spasmed as if stung. It was a small matter. I’d likely not thought more about it, but he was somber when he stepped out.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Sure.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, how exactly do you know this girl? Is she related to you?”
“No. Why? Do you know her? You seem . . . surprised.”
“I’ve seen her before.”
“When?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, what’d you say your connection is?”
“None, really. Rufus found her in the middle of the night. About a week ago. She was under that old plum tree. It was freezing out there.”
“She showed up at your place?” He sounded alarmed.
“Said she was homeless. She’s been staying in the guest room.”
I caught what seemed an involuntary flick of his eyes in her direction. “Know anything else about her?” he asked. “Where she’s from. Anything like that?”
“What’s going on? Why all these questions?”
“I’ll explain in a minute. But please. If you could tell me what you know.”
“All right. The short version is her mother died and she ended up alone in Poulsbo. She hopped a bus here a few days before she landed at my place.”
He shook his head. “That’s not good. Not good at all.”
“What’s not good?”
“That she’s lying to you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” I said, unable to restrain my irritation.
He glanced at his watch. “Look. I’m really sorry. This is a little complicated, and right now the Harrisons are waiting in my office. They need to berate me about our AP World History book. Apparently it’s anti-American.” He raised his brows as if hoping for commiseration. Finding none, he said, “When’s your free period?”
“Two fifteen.”
“I’ll clear my schedule. Come then.”
* * *
—
PETER WAS RIGHT. The girl had invented parts of her story. She hadn’t been raised in Ohio. I was certain of that. But teenagers often try on different histories, especially those attempting escape. I couldn’t imagine what had Peter so worried.
At two fifteen, I arrived at his office, hoping the meeting wouldn’t last long. I wanted to be home to greet Evangeline after her first day. Even before she’d lost her mother, the girl had clearly been on her own. When I’d reminded her to keep me informed of her whereabouts, she’d acted confused. “I don’t get it,” she said. “It’s not like you’re my parent or anything. No one is going to blame you if something happens to me.” She couldn’t fathom an adult interested in anything other than their own legal cover.
Peter flipped around from his computer when I knocked, motioned to the small table where he held meetings.
“How’d things go with the Harrisons?” I asked.
His face went blank, then he smiled and shook his head. “I had to promise I’d raise their concerns with the school board.”
“Will you?”
“Hell no.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said.
He didn’t laugh. I doubt he even heard, preoccupied as he was checking his door to make sure it had clicked shut. He poured me a glass of water and sat opposite me. “Tell me,” he said. “How was your day?”
He genuinely wanted to know, but I could feel his distraction, his need to get to the girl. Or maybe it was my own urgency that made the room hiss as if with static. “It was fine. Well, no, a little rough, actually, but the kids were great. It’ll just take a while.”
“Yes,” he said, his hands rubbing the table in tight circles. His eyes caught the motion and he made them stop.
I took a sip of water, waiting.
“The girl,” he said, his finge
rs twitching. “It worries me that she ended up at your place.”
“I can tell.” I aimed for a teasing tone, but he didn’t smile.
“I’m not very good at hiding things from you, am I?”
“One of your best qualities.”
He leaned forward. “All right then, bear with me. This girl, she told you she got in town a few days before you found her, right?”
I nodded.
“Any chance she’d visited here before?”
“Maybe, but she made it sound like this was her first time.”
His brows furrowed. “See now, that’s what’s not making sense, because I saw her in early September.”
“September? Where?”
“Out Coleman Way, by the paper mill.”
“Doing what?”
“Getting out of a truck.”
“That doesn’t sound so dire.”
“It was late, after nine thirty at the edge of town.”
Did he think she was involved in criminal activity? “I’m sorry to be dense, but I’m not—”
“I’m worried about you. Don’t you see? This girl shows up at your house. It’s not easy to find. You have to go way up the drive to even see it. Why your place?”
“She was hoping for shelter. Thought it was the park.”
He pressed back in his chair. “Do you believe her?”
I started to argue but stopped, let out a breath, deflating. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe when it comes to her.”
He pressed his lips together, gathering strength it seemed, and said, “There’s something more. . . . The truck she got out of? It was Jonah’s. Daniel got out too.”
“What? When?”
“A few days before the murder.”
“And you saw this how?” The man was speaking nonsense.
He heard my disbelief, my anger, and said, “I know this is hard.”
I wanted to shout that he knew nothing of losing a child.
What Comes After Page 8
