In Things Unseen

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  “You know about the accident?”

  Hope nodded.

  “I don’t understand. I thought. . .we were the only ones.”

  “The only ones?”

  “The only ones who remembered.”

  Hope seemed taken aback.

  “His mother told me no one else knew.” Milton’s mind was reeling now. “It was just the four of us. Her and her husband, me and. . . .” An idea occurred to him. “Wait. The teacher. Are you the boy’s teacher?”

  “You mean Laura Carrillo?”

  Milton nodded, realizing that this was indeed the name Diane Edwards had given him for Adrian’s teacher: Laura Carrillo. Not Allison Hope. Suddenly he was able to recall seeing news video of Carrillo at the boy’s funeral. She was a willowy brunette, not this blonde with rounded hips and light eyes.

  Now Milton was afraid.

  * * *

  Michael was almost out of the parking lot when he saw the woman sitting in Weisman’s booth.

  His work bag had toppled over in the car’s backseat as he steered the Acura toward the nearest exit, spilling sheets of music to the floor. Having stopped to prop the bag up again, he’d caught sight of the pair through the sedan’s rear window. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but he didn’t think he knew the woman, and he doubted Weisman did. There was something almost predatory about the way she was leaning across the table toward the old man, as if she were trying to sell him something he didn’t want to buy.

  Michael re-parked the car, lowered the windows to let some air in, and said to Adrian, “Stay here, son. Daddy will be right back.”

  * * *

  Allison’s heart was in her stomach. Weisman was flipping the script she’d had in her head, saying things that didn’t align with anything rational. He was supposed to be talking about the “accident” in Lakeridge Park like it was part of a plot, not an actual event. Insinuating Laura Carrillo remembered it made him sound more like a dupe to Diane and Michael Edwards’s hoax than an active participant in it.

  “Mr. Weisman, what do you remember about the accident? Tell me, please.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said. And I do know about it. But only part of it, and I was hoping to learn the rest from you.”

  The old man still seemed confused.

  “How did it happen? Did something distract you, or were you going too fast, maybe?” Another thought came to her: “Were you drunk?”

  “No! I lost control of the car! My foot slipped. The boy was on the slide. Why—”

  “Who are you?” someone said before Weisman could go on.

  Michael Edwards had come back.

  Allison didn’t answer.

  “She said her name was Allison Hope,” Weisman said. “She knows about the accident.”

  “No. She doesn’t,” Edwards said, glaring at Allison. “She doesn’t know anything.” He turned to Weisman. “She’s a reporter, Milton. She’s writing a story about Adrian’s teacher.”

  Weisman’s face fell. “A reporter?”

  “He’s right. I am a reporter,” Allison admitted. “Or a journalist, to be more precise. And I am writing a story about Laura Carrillo. But—”

  “We don’t care about the but,” Edwards said. “We’ve got nothing to say to you. Get the hell out of here and leave us alone.” He reached for her arm, intending to lift her out of the booth, but Allison pulled away.

  “Waitaminute! All I’m trying to do is follow up on a statement I got from Ms. Carrillo this morning.”

  “Statement? What statement?”

  “She claims you and your wife have been trying to convince her your son’s been raised from the dead. That you and Mr. Weisman here are all working together to pawn some kind of phony miracle off on the public.” She turned. “Is that true, Mr. Weisman?”

  “No. No! It’s not a phony—”

  “It’s all right, Milton,” Edwards said. “I’ll handle this.” To Allison, he said, “Laura Carrillo’s a fine teacher, Ms. Hope, but it’s obvious she’s not well. These things you say she’s told you about us are completely ridiculous. Insulting, in fact.”

  “I see. And she’s chosen to say these insulting things about the four of you because of what, exactly, Mr. Edwards? Help me to understand, please.”

  “I wish I could. But I can’t. I barely know the woman.”

  “And yet she knows your friend Mr. Weisman here.”

  “Milton is a friend. He and my father grew up together in Trenton. We brought him along to an open house at the school last year and Laura met him then. Why she’s decided to involve him in this perverse fantasy of hers is beyond me. I’ll ask you again: Go away and leave us in peace. Mr. Weisman and I have nothing else to say to you.”

  Allison didn’t budge. “I don’t get it. If Ms. Carrillo’s story is as devoid of fact as you say it is, why are you all so reluctant to comment on it? What are you people so afraid I’ll find out?”

  This time, when Edwards reached for her, Allison couldn’t evade his grasp. He pulled her from the booth, stood her up so he could bring his face to within an inch of her own. “We aren’t afraid of anything. We just don’t want to help you destroy a good teacher’s career, publishing a piece of ‘journalism’ full of lies and nonsense.”

  Allison jerked her arm free, suddenly aware she’d become the house entertainment. Even the cook behind the order window stood stock still, watching her exchange with Edwards. She dug a pair of business cards from her purse. “I’m not looking to destroy anybody’s career. I’m just trying to report the truth. If either of you would like to help me do that, I’d love to talk to you further.”

  She offered a card to Weisman, who took it because he clearly didn’t know what else to do. The other she held out to Edwards until his refusal to even acknowledge it made the gesture a waste of her time.

  Cheeks burning, Allison walked out.

  In the parking lot en route to her car, she glanced over at Adrian, sitting behind the open windows of his father’s sedan, and for a moment she entertained the idea of approaching him. But she quickly extinguished the thought, figuring she had tried Michael Edwards’s patience enough for one day.

  * * *

  Michael watched Hope go to her car and drive off. As he’d expected, she’d given Adrian a look as she passed, but that was all. Which was good. If she’d taken two steps toward his son, in the state she’d left him in, Michael didn’t know how far he would have spun out of control.

  Milton Weisman was still sitting there in the booth, clearly afraid to move a muscle. His eyes had tracked Hope’s departure, too, but unlike Michael, Weisman didn’t seem to have noticed she was gone. His gaze remained fixed on the parking lot.

  “Are you all right?” Michael asked.

  Weisman’s head snapped around. “What?”

  “I asked if you’re okay. You look pretty shaken up.”

  “She told me she knew. I thought. . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter now. Stay here a moment, will you? Please.”

  The old man nodded and Michael hurried out to the car. His son was engrossed in drawing a picture, making use of the pad of paper and crayons Michael always kept in the Acura to occupy him in a pinch. From all appearances, Adrian was as aware of the scene his father had caused in the restaurant as he would have been had Michael locked him up in the trunk.

  Michael slipped behind the wheel but left the door ajar. “How are you doing, A? You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Adrian nodded without looking up.

  “I have to talk to Milton again for just a few more minutes. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Great. I’ll be right back.” He waited for the boy to look his way but it wasn’t going to happen. Giving up, he kissed his son on the top of the head and caught a good look at the drawing
that was monopolizing all his attention. “Who’s that?”

  “Who’s what?”

  It was a portrait of a little girl, her brown face bloated and features—eyes, mouth, pigtailed hair—blown all out of proportion, the way details often were in the work of seven-year-old artists.

  “The girl you’re drawing. Friend of yours?”

  Adrian just shrugged and kept sketching away.

  Michael wanted to question the boy further, but Milton Weisman was waiting for him. With some hesitation, he climbed out of the car and went back into the restaurant.

  * * *

  Milton didn’t want to wait for Adrian’s father to return. He wanted to go home. His mouth felt dry in that old, familiar way and his mind was a cage filled with butterflies and bees. He needed time alone to clear it, to determine if he’d said anything to this woman Allison Hope that would prove to have terrible consequences. He stared at her business card and, before he could find the nerve to place it in his pocket and flee, Michael Edwards returned to take his seat across from him in the booth.

  “I need to know what you told that reporter, Mr. Weisman,” Edwards said. His voice made the gravity of the matter impossible to miss. “What did she ask you and how did you answer? Try to remember, please.”

  “I didn’t tell her anything.” Milton tried to reassemble the conversation in his head. “She knew who we were. She knew our names. She knew where the accident happened, and when. I said. . . .” What he’d said came to Milton then, but he couldn’t make himself confess to it.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I thought we were the only ones who remembered. You and your wife. The boy’s teacher and me.”

  “You used that word? ‘Remembered’?”

  Milton nodded. And there it was: his grave error.

  Edwards turned his head to one side, likely suppressing an expletive, and Milton rushed to defend himself. “What else was I supposed to think? If she knew all the rest—”

  “No, Mr. Weisman. She didn’t know anything. She was only repeating what Laura Carrillo told her.”

  “The teacher?”

  “Yes, the teacher. You heard what Hope said. Laura thinks this is all some kind of hoax Diane and I are trying to pull off, and that you’re a part of it somehow. It’s crazy, but to her, I guess, it makes more sense than the truth. If Adrian weren’t my son, I’d probably feel much the same.”

  Milton knew he was right. Edwards’s wife had told Milton at the park that she had warned the teacher to keep quiet, just as she’d warned Milton, but clearly Carrillo hadn’t listened.

  “So what do we do now?” Milton asked. “Now that this woman does know everything, thanks to me—”

  “Now we do what we were always going to do: nothing. So you used the word remembered. What of it? That doesn’t prove a thing. Hope still only has Laura Carrillo’s word for what really happened and I think it’s a safe bet she doesn’t believe her. Even now.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Listen. None of what Laura told her can be proven. None of it. So all Hope’s got right now is the story of a teacher who’s suffering massive delusions about one of her students, his parents, and you, and as long as this is the last time you or I or Diane speak to her, that’s all she’s ever going to have. Right?”

  He held his hand out for Hope’s business card.

  Milton thought it over, nodded, and gave Edwards the card.

  Adrian’s father glanced out the window at his son, still sitting alone in the car.

  “I have to go. Are you sure you’re all right? Would you like us to drop you somewhere?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “If Hope comes back—”

  “I won’t say a word to her. Not another word.” He’d said it so that Edwards would have no doubt.

  “Good-bye, then, Mr. Weisman. Milton.” Adrian’s father held out his hand one more time, smiling with unexpected warmth, and Milton shook it. “This should probably be the last time we see each other. Hope’s likely to be watching us all now, and the more she sees us together, the more reason she’ll have to believe Laura might not be as crazy as she sounds.”

  Milton nodded again, though with less conviction this time.

  Suddenly, he felt very alone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  FLO WASN’T ANSWERING her phone, so Allison went out to UW Bothell to try to catch her in her office. She wasn’t going home to wait hours for Flo to show up today. The encounter she’d had with Michael Edwards and Milton Weisman was too important not to share with her partner immediately, Flo’s indifference be damned.

  Allison’s piece was starting to shapeshift in ways she had never expected, and she needed Flo’s help putting it in some kind of reasonable order. Everyone she spoke to about Carrillo’s classroom meltdown offered one contradiction after another, each more confounding and incredible than the last, and Allison was getting lost in the mix. What she had initially thought was a simple but intriguing saga of a young woman falling victim to the pressures and imperfections of the American educational system had become a mess of a mystery, tinged with elements of religious fanaticism and fraud. Carrillo was deeply disturbed, without a doubt, but the evidence was mounting that not everything she’d told Allison could be written off as paranoia. Michael Edwards and Milton Weisman had proven that much.

  Remembered, Weisman had said. “The only ones who remembered.”

  Why had he used that word?

  If Weisman wasn’t who Carrillo said he was—an accessory to some as-yet motiveless, dead-child scam—who the hell was he? Judging from the way he’d behaved at the restaurant, frightened and disoriented one minute, angry and defensive the next, Allison would have guessed he was a guilt-ridden old man who had in fact lost control of his car and killed a seven-year-old boy last spring. And not somebody merely portraying such a person, either.

  As for Edwards, he and his wife were definitely hiding something they didn’t want Allison to know about. But what? By Carrillo’s account, the answer was the faked death of their son, but that didn’t add up for any number of reasons, the most obvious being that no one other than Carrillo—and Weisman?—had any recollection of Adrian Edwards being missing or dead. Even if everyone at Yesler was faking ignorance, paid off by Michael Edwards to do so as Carrillo had theorized, it was impossible to imagine how Edwards hoped to profit from a death he was now adamant had never occurred. Insurance fraud didn’t function so ass-backwards.

  Flo might not know the answer to these conundrums, or any of the others Allison was struggling to unravel, but she could probably point Allison in the right direction to answer them on her own.

  Flo’s office was on the second floor of Founders Hall, a postmodern stack of red brick and dark glass nestled deep in the southwestern corner of the campus. Allison was far from a regular visitor, but she’d been there enough times to know how to find the room she was looking for without having to ask for help. On her way from the distant lot where she’d parked, she tried to call her partner one last time, feeling obligated to warn her she was coming, but again, Flo didn’t answer. Allison assumed she was with a student, this being within the boundaries of time Flo set aside every Thursday for such meetings.

  But Flo wasn’t in when Allison reached her office. Allison knocked three times, called out her name, and received nothing but silence. According to the small sign beside her door, Flo was indeed supposed to be there for her students, though only for another ten minutes.

  “Damn.”

  Allison turned away and started back down the hall, barely aware of the handful of students passing her on both sides. She was at the stairs when a peal of laughter stopped her cold. It had come from within an office there at the end of the hall, and though it was a flavor of laughter Allison hadn’t heard from her partner in some time, she recognized it as Flo’s just the same.

&n
bsp; She went to the door. The plaque beside it read PROF. PATRICIA AVERSON. Allison leaned in close, too caught up to give any thought to discretion, and heard two voices, Flo’s and a younger female’s, both enjoying the punchline of a seemingly risqué joke. Her throat suddenly dry, Allison let the pair exchange another word or two before she put her fist to the door and knocked.

  “Yes?”

  Allison cracked the door, saw Averson sitting behind a desk, and Flo sitting on the corner of it beside her. Averson—presumably—was a petite brunette, with almond skin and short, wavy hair, who looked to be in her early thirties.

  “Ally?” Flo got to her feet, too flustered not to show it.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. But I heard your voice as I was leaving and. . . .” Allison tried to think of the best way to end the sentence. “And I had something important to talk to you about. Forgive me.”

  She turned to leave.

  “No, no! Patti and I were just trading a little department gossip, that’s all. Come on in.”

  Allison stopped, but could take no more than a half step back into the room.

  “Patti, this is my partner, Allison Hope,” Flo said.

  “Very nice to meet you,” Averson said, smiling with teeth far too perfect for Allison’s tastes.

  “It’s a pleasure,” Allison said, fooling no one.

  “And Ally, this is Patricia Averson. Professor Averson teaches geomicrobiology here at UDub, among other things. She was just telling me about something one of our more misogynistic male colleagues said to her this morning. Unreal.”

  An awkward silence chose this moment to rear its ugly head, but Flo turned to Averson to make short work of it. “I’ll have to get the rest of the story from you later. It sounds like a good one.”

  “It is,” Averson said. To Allison: “Goodbye.”

  “Bye.”

  Flo ushered Allison out of the room and down the hall toward her office. “You should have called ahead, Ally. I still have a few minutes to give you if you want them, but if I’d known you were coming—”