Mortal Remains

by Mary Ann Fraser

  “Mr. Lassiter?” said Officer Wells.

  Adam didn’t respond immediately, probably because no one had ever addressed him that way before. “My name is Adam,” he reminded the officers.

  “Okay, Adam, let me get this straight. You never left the property? Is that right? Not to go to school, to a store, to see a doctor?”

  “Never,” said Adam, for the third time.

  “So you’re telling us that your father held you prisoner.”

  “I wasn’t a prisoner. I promised him I wouldn’t leave. There’s a difference.”

  What about the shelter, the chains and shackles? I wanted to ask. What was that laboratory all about, and why didn’t he remember me like I remembered him? Questions flooded my head, but he offered few answers.

  “And you never once thought to break that promise?” asked Officer Rodriguez.

  “That’s what it means to promise,” Adam answered. Score one for him.

  “I understand.” But even from the kitchen, I could hear in the officer’s voice that he understood no more than I did how a father could shut his son away from the world and deny him proper medical care, a formal education, and friends. Why did no one do anything about it? Why didn’t I?

  The father Adam talked about in the early days of our friendship was nothing like the man I later encountered in the orchard. Adam often boasted that his father knew how to do the most amazing and, to my mind, useless things. He could name more than ninety stars, speak multiple languages, recite the periodic table—forward and backward—and grill the perfect Bunsen burner burgers. Sure, he was overprotective and had little time for his family or maintaining their home, but that describes a lot of parents. As time went by, though, I heard more and more about instances of paranoia, unwarranted accusations, and wild threats. Adam always defended him, explaining that it was the stress and long hours of his work—whatever that was—but I witnessed firsthand the frightening changes in his father. Did I say anything to anyone? No. I was too afraid of what he might do to Adam in his increasingly erratic state.

  Well, if the reporters outside had their way, the world would soon know all about Neil Lassiter. A battalion of news vans waited at the ready, their satellite dishes like shields all pointed skyward, their crews like so many foot soldiers prepared to pick off the first person to leave the house.

  “And then the night of the explosion,” Officer Wells continued, “he locked you underground?”

  “Yes.”

  Officer Rodriguez drummed his pen against a notebook. “Did you and your father have an argument that night, son?”

  “I am not your son.”

  “Yes, of course you’re not,” interjected Rachel. “It’s an expression.”

  “Please answer the question,” said Wells.

  I peered through the kitchen door to see Adam sinking back into the sofa. “Yes, we argued, but—”

  “What about?”

  “The usual. My studies, me wanting more freedom.”

  It was Rodriguez’s turn to pitch. “Did you lose your temper? Is that why he shut you down there?”

  “No!” Adam’s outburst did little to convince them, but he’d lost his family, his home, everything that could have mattered to him. I couldn’t listen anymore. I took up the tray loaded with coffee and marched back into the room. “Can’t you see—”

  Adam held up a hand that stopped me mid-step. “You all want to know why Neil Lassiter locked me in the . . .”

  He was searching for a word. Maybe shelter? But that was the wrong word. What had it sheltered him from? An intruder? The world beyond the orchard? This inquisition?

  “The answer is he did it to protect me. He promised to return when it was safe.”

  “Protect you from what?” asked Wells.

  “Not what. Whom.”

  “Okay, from whom?” pushed Wells.

  “Nescio.” Adam cleared his throat, stared at the hole in the rug. “I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Did your father ever physically harm you?”

  Adam shook his head almost imperceptibly. He was obviously covering for Neil. I didn’t get it. If my father locked me in a hole in the ground, I’d want everyone to know. I’d wear my bitterness like a badge. Not him.

  “And your mother?” Wells continued. “How can we contact her?”

  Adam dissolved into the upholstery a bit more and mumbled something in Latin.

  “Come again?” said Wells. “We didn’t catch that.”

  He gave it another go, this time in English. “She left.”

  Wells readied his pen. “And her name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember your own mother’s name?”

  “I have memory issues.”

  “Memory issues? Hmm,” said Rodriguez.

  “There was . . . an incident. It left my memory impaired.”

  So maybe I hadn’t been so easily forgotten. I’d say this for him: impaired memory or not, he was no dummy. All his answers so far had been carefully measured. No obvious lies, only spare truths. But couldn’t he see how that made him appear less credible? And it didn’t help that he was worming deeper and deeper into the corner of the sofa with every question.

  There was a pounding at the front door. Startled, Adam bolted to his feet. When he saw that no one else had moved, he eased back down but didn’t fully settle. I wondered when he had last heard someone knock at a door.

  “I’ll get it,” offered Evan.

  “Better if I handle this,” said Dad. A moment later there was a harsh exchange of words, followed by “Can’t you leave the boy alone?” and the slamming of the door. “Damn reporters,” swore my father.

  Hoping to deflate the mounting tension in the room, I cleared my throat. “Coffee?” I offered a cup and saucer to my father.

  “Guests first,” he corrected.

  Why did he always have to point out my failings in front of people? I gave a napkin and a cup to each of the officers, my embarrassment as plain as the hitch in my step. Adam blinked mechanically as he took a cup. “Careful, it’s hot,” I warned.

  He gulped down a mouthful, then spewed the scalding liquid into the saucer. It was his turn to be embarrassed, but if he was, he hid it well.

  I could take a lesson from this guy.

  The officers allowed Adam a brief moment to recover, and then it was back to the grilling. Mostly he shrugged, nodded, or gazed vacantly at the stained-glass transom above the door to the display room.

  Dad and Evan stood shoulder to shoulder, both clearly baffled by this stranger wedged into our sofa but also hanging on his every word. At least Nana Jo was a bit subtler, although not by much. She pretended to read her Fine Woodworking magazine, her head gophering up from behind the pages at every interesting scrap of new information.

  Meanwhile Rachel fussed over Adam. “Another snickerdoodle? How about a pillow for your back? Is the glare from the window too much?” She always did have a soft spot for strays, which is why, Dad says, she swooped into our lives. According to him, she put the “home” in McCrae Family Funeral Home.

  I still wondered why Adam’s father made him promise never to leave the property. More puzzling was why Adam would keep such a promise. When we were kids he often talked about leaving, so once he was old enough to legally be on his own, what possessed him to stay? If it were me, I’d have gone over the wall at the first chance.

  “Nervous, Mr. Lassiter?” Wells indicated the shredded napkin in Adam’s hand.

  “Of course he’s nervous,” I said, offering Adam a fresh napkin. “You’re interrogating him like he’s done something wrong. He’s the victim here.”

  “Lily, please,” said Rachel with a pacifying smile. “The officers are just doing their job. Why don’t you bring over that plate of cookies from the buffet?”

  As if that’s all I was good for.

  “No need,” Wells said, slapping his notebook closed. “I think we have enough for now.” He rose from his chair
and shook hands with my parents. When he came to Adam, he said, “I gotta say, you’re lucky these folks found you when they did. It’s a bit of a miracle. I’m going to ask you again: Are you sure you don’t want us to take you to the hospital?”

  Adam ignored Wells’s offered hand. “No hospital.” He could not have said it more firmly.

  “Well, you’re over eighteen. It’s not like we can make you go. Can you at least tell us where we can drop you off?”

  Adam had no answer.

  Rachel placed a hand on his shoulder. He flinched and she quickly retracted it. “Sorry. I only meant to ask if you have any other family. Grandparents? An aunt? An uncle?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you’ll stay here,” declared Nana Jo, hammering her fist like a gavel on the chair arm, as if the decision was never Adam’s to make. From what I’d heard so far, I imagined that was nothing new to him. Dad looked skeptical but wasn’t willing to throw the boy onto the street—not in front of the cops, anyway—and no one says no to Nana Jo.

  The detectives were at the door when Adam stopped them. “When can I see him?”

  “Your father?” asked Wells.

  Adam nodded.

  “The coroner will be contacting you to make arrangements. Again, we’re sorry for your loss, Mr. Lassiter. Mr. McCrae, Mrs. McCrae. We’ll be in touch.” The two officers squared their shoulders, stepped outside, and were immediately besieged by the press.

  Dad rushed to turn the dead bolt, waited for Nana Jo and Evan to step out of the room, and gave a final glance at Adam, who had burrowed back into the sofa. “He can stay until other arrangements can be made. No more than a couple days, hear me?” Rachel and I nodded. He retreated to the office.

  As I gathered the coffee cups, assorted spoons, and tray, another neighbor from down the way called inquiring about all the commotion this afternoon. Nana Jo gave her the now stock abbreviated version. Meanwhile, Rachel unfolded the sofa much to Adam’s bewilderment. “You can sleep here,” she said, then sent me upstairs to fetch fresh linens and toiletries.

  By the time I returned, Adam was spread eagle across the sleeper sofa, counting z’s. I set my armload onto the coffee table, careful not to wake him. It was a wasted effort. He was out cold.

  Alone with him for the first time, I couldn’t resist a long, hard look. I studied his hands, his bony hips and ribs. It was not often that a body made me blush, but his did. Still, something about him nagged at me, something I couldn’t put a finger on. Having worked intimately on so many bodies these past couple months, I’d learned to spot the details that made each person distinctive, because it was often my job to decide what got covered and what got preserved. There was the crooked nose of the barfly brawler, the model’s signature mole, the tipped shoulders of a professional bowler. So what was it about Adam that had me so unsettled? It was not the dirt caked under his nails, nor his ratty hair and threadbare clothes. I’d seen worse. No, it was something more subtle.

  It took me a moment more and then I had it—symmetry. His right side was a perfect mirror to his left, something I’d never seen before.

  Satisfied that I’d solved at least one mystery out of so many, I headed up to my room to finish a shroud for the Nguyen family service tomorrow before turning in. It took much longer than expected because Mal called, insisting on a status report. I shared what little more I’d learned about Adam: he’d never stepped foot beyond the orchard before today—that he remembered—and his father supposedly locked him in the shelter the night of the fire to protect him from someone, though who he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say.

  “But that laboratory was set up so someone could live down there,” she pointed out. “At least for a while.”

  “Good thing, too, because without those provisions, Adam wouldn’t have survived as long as he did.”

  “I thought I’d bring Aslyn and Vega by tomorrow. They really want meet him.”

  “You told them about Adam?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “Mal, you saw what he’s been through, and with the press and the police here all day, the last thing he needs is more people drilling him with questions.” Besides, they were her friends—not mine. Not that I was jealous. She’d always been the social one. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I returned to my stitching, but the floss knotted and twisted along with the thoughts weaving through my head. I gave up and shoved the shroud aside. Hours later, in the dark, I was staring at the macabre dance of moon shadows across my bedroom walls. The ceiling fan wobbled ominously overhead. Or was it the world around it that spun off-kilter? When a parent could lock away his child and no one noticed, it was hard to say. But fate had a way of evening the score. Neil Lassiter certainly got what he deserved—in spades. And if Adam hadn’t been holed up fifty feet underground, he’d probably have ended up in the morgue, laid out in a drawer right beside his father instead of asleep in our living room. I tried to fool myself into believing that my silence all those years ultimately saved him. It was a tough sell.

  I rolled onto my stomach, punched my pillow, and told myself to forget him and go to sleep. It was no use. My mind was stitched to thoughts of Adam Lassiter. A glass of milk was the cure, and, for all my trouble, I planned to make it chocolate with an ice-cream cone chaser.

  I tiptoed down the back stairs, keeping to the outside edges of the treads to avoid any creaks that might wake our guest. Muffled voices spilled from the kitchen.

  “ . . . rumors the boy died,” Rachel was saying. “No one had seen him in years. Child Protective Services investigated but was told he was visiting relatives.”

  It wasn’t an unusual discussion for our house, or a particularly private one. I was just glad they weren’t ripping into each other. Lately even their Hallmark marriage had felt the stress of keeping a failing business afloat.

  “Any chance you could be mistaken?” asked my father. “I mean, Lassiter’s a common enough name.”

  Did he say Lassiter? I pushed open the door. My parents were on opposing sides of the kitchen island, picking at roast chicken leftovers.

  “Who are you talking about?” I asked. I’d never told them about meeting Adam in the orchard after school. Like everyone else in town, Dad heard all the dark rumors surrounding the old Lassiter place and forbade me from going anywhere near it. So, after the accident, I pretended I had amnesia, told them I had no idea how I’d ended up broken and bleeding amid row upon row of walnut trees.

  “Oh, Rachel remembers a neighbor telling her something about a boy who went missing a few years back. She thinks the last name was Lassiter,” Dad explained.

  Adam told me he was an only child, and his parents would never have sent him to visit relatives, not when he wasn’t even allowed to leave the property. Maybe he’d been restricted to the house, or worse, locked in the fallout shelter, for much of that time. Or maybe he’d run away for a spell? He’d certainly talked enough about wanting to. “I don’t remember hearing anything about a missing kid,” I said.

  “It was that summer we sent you to camp,” said Rachel. “Right after your father and I got married.”

  That I remembered. I was thirteen, fresh out of leg braces, and someone thought it would be a riot to push me into a patch of poison oak during a scavenger hunt. It worked. They all got a good laugh. Me? Not so much. I spent the rest of my summer alone in a bunkhouse, caked in calamine lotion. The camp had wanted to ship me home, but my parents insisted I stay. They said I would itch no matter where I was, and I could use the time to make a few friends. Instead I made more scars.

  “If the rumor was true, wouldn’t the police who were here today have known something about it?” I asked.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? No, most likely it’s just more neighborhood gossip,” grumbled Dad. He waved his piece of chicken at me. “Care for a drumstick?”

  “Thanks, but I prefer the ice cream variety.” I pried the freezer open and stuck in my face to fill my lungs with frosty
air before grabbing a frozen cone.

  “Can’t sleep?” asked Rachel.

  “Too hot.” I peeled the paper from the cone and nipped off the bottom, as usual. “Dad, I thought you said you were going to get the air conditioner fixed.”

  “Can’t afford it. I’ll take another look at it tomorrow, right after I pull together the papers for the bank.”

  “The bank?” I repeated, fearing the worst.

  “For preapproval. Crenshaw and Madsen Crematorium might be coming up for sale. Bill mentioned to me at Rotary last week that he and his partner are thinking of retiring soon. I ran through the numbers, and if we can get an offer in before the news becomes public, we might have a shot at buying them out, assuming we get the right price . . . and a loan.”

  A deal like that was exactly what we needed to resuscitate our business. Ever since our biggest competitor, Eternal Memorial Services, Inc., had metastasized its way into town, it had been a cancer to our business with no sign of remission. As it was, Jim Sturbridge, owner of EMS, had already bought out the other family-owned mortuaries and tried more than once to do the same to us.

  Rachel huffed and shoved what was left of the chicken carcass into the trash. “Cameron, how can we possibly afford to buy a crematorium when we’re already struggling?” She dropped the trash lid and stomped from the room.

  “Heat’s gotten to her,” Dad said, and chased after her.

  “Goodnight,” I said to no one.

  I switched off all the lights, save the one over the range, and plunked down on a chair beside the open window to nurse my ice-cream cone and throw back a tall, cold glass of chocolate nirvana. The sudden revving of distant engines and screeching of tires announced that street racers were at it again. I set down my glass and waited to hear a squeal of brakes and crunching of metal, but it thankfully never came. The night settled back into the cadenced lullaby of crickets and swamp coolers.

  The next thing I knew, someone was whispering in my ear. “Lily?”

  I lifted my head and opened my eyes. “Adam. Wha—what are you—?”

  He shrank back. “I was thirsty and saw the light on. Is this where you sleep?”