• • •
Grady,
I saw a ghost. No, really. She opened age-old wounds. I called to tell you about her. Still not answering your phone? Pick up when I call. It could be a life or death situation … like Virginia Pullman!
Vixen Virginia, back here in Tilford Lake. Said she was in town to visit a dear friend. Was it Gert? Did she stop by your place? Do tell, but not in front of Carol. Her face was beet red when I said I ran into Virginia. She started asking a heap of heated questions. Where did I see her? How long did we talk? Was anyone else there with us? When is she leaving? Did you do anything I should know about, Felix? Did you?
It’s painful here. Carol told me to “talk to the hand.” Have you heard that one? She picked it up from our granddaughter. I found out talking to the hand does NOT mean I should talk to the hand. Tried that and got nothing back, now Carol’s giving me the silent treatment. Thought she’d be over it by now.
I should’ve made an about-face when I saw Virginia at the bank. Does she still have an account up this way? Odd, isn’t it? She hasn’t lived here for years. Guess that’s beside the point. I’m digging myself into a deeper hole thinking about her.
Then again, how can I not think about my past? You tell me. You know the story. That sneaky woman showed up one night just days before the prom, waiting for me in my parents’ backyard. I know you’ve heard it, but let me get it off my chest one last time. It’s eating me alive. That dirty, lousy, fink of a woman.
Virginia was waiting by the trashcans next to the garage. Hadn’t a clue she was there. I went out back to haul the cans to the front for morning pickup, and she blinded me with a flashlight. Scared the bejesus out of me. After I blinked the white spots away, I saw her waving the light across her breasts. Topless! She was taunting me topless, Grady! Nearly ruined my life. I swear I didn’t touch her. Didn’t matter, though. I was guilty. Guilty of cracking a smile, couldn’t help myself.
She said not to tell a soul I’d turned her down. Fine with me. It would’ve ended right there if it weren’t for that weasel next door, Nicky Turner. He saw me handing her her blouse. Rumors spread like a lit wick of dynamite. Then Carol heard and came stomping over to toss her prom dress in my face. She said I’d broken her heart. I was seventeen, first time I’d seen a woman in the flesh, and it was the wrong one! Always stays with a man, doesn’t it? What a drag it had to be Virginia. Was I the only one who didn’t have a crush on her?
By the way, thanks for talking me down from the high school roof after Carol told me to go to hell. What a week that was. You had started your maintenance job, the first day, I recall, came out carrying a broken chair to the dumpster. You looked up and shook your head, said, “Felix, you jump, and I’ll be the one who has to clean up your guts, and they don’t pay me enough to shovel innards off the sidewalk.”
Ha! Your morbid sense of humor, I almost rolled off the roof laughing.
Virginia hasn’t changed, by the way. She said her husband is the pilot of Air Force One. Same as in grammar school when she said she took her parents’ private jet to the North Pole to visit Santa, and in middle school when she told everyone she was spending the weekend with her Aunt Jayne. Jayne Mansfield.
Lies! Lonesome woman, wouldn’t you say? No family. No ring on her finger. All that money couldn’t buy her a husband. She’ll say anything to make her life more interesting than it actually is, a pure attention seeker.
Sorry to tell it like it is. Best to keep this between us and not mention my words to Gert. She’d defend Virginia from sunup to sundown. I remember she lived in the Pullman guesthouse when she was a tot. Her mom was their cook. Is that why she always liked Virginia? She’s a good woman, Grady. I love Gert. Loyal like my Carol. Don’t want to cause a rift between the four of us by saying anything to upset her. Maybe Virginia even took to Gert as the sister she never had. Is it why she’s out this way? Does she know Gert’s cancer came back?
Wish we could help. Money’s tight, but we can whip up a nice meal to bring over. Gert like barbeque meatballs made in the crock? Let us know. We’ll stop by soon and try to cheer her up.
Be well, my friend.
Let’s all be well.
Felix
• • •
On the way outside to meet Brad, a black squirrel barks a short, sharp kuk and twitches its tail for me to stay back. Trapped in the metal bird feeder on the front porch, the mischievous little thief gorged on half the seed.
Ollie steps out and tilts his head in curiosity. “Pudgy rodent. Look at him, Olls. He ate half the food in the feeder. Now he’s too fat to get out.” Ollie barks. “I know, buddy. The metal cage was supposed to be squirrel-proof.” A second bark, loud and friendly. “What?” His rump sways as Brad’s patrol car comes up the drive. “Yep, there’s your friend. He said he was stopping by.”
Nate steps outside with my granddad’s letter in his hand. He’s wearing only a small bath towel around his waist and unlaced boots with no socks. He leans over and plants a kiss on my lips. After I stare stupidly at the skimpy towel, I force myself to look away and into his eyes.
“Your granddad’s letters are gold.” He hands it to me. “Any thoughts about Virginia?”
“Yeah. The note she gave me might have something to do with my granddad.” I take it out of my pocket and show it to him.
He reads it and hands it back. “She’s not sorry for what?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Could be the situation he wrote about in his letter.”
Brad steps out of his car and gives a wave that I don’t return. He stops on the bottom step of the porch before quietly making his way up the stairs.
“Watch for ice, Brad.”
He takes off his hat and pats his sandy blond hair into place. “Anyone else here?” His eyes sweep the open doorway.
“Joss and Jim are out getting food.”
“Any guests?”
“My guest is missing. I told you that yesterday. Virginia Pullman. Remember? Her car is under that pile of snow.” I point to the mound next to my Cherokee. “And my other guests left when you pulled your gun in the lobby.”
Nate cups my shoulder and draws me closer, either a dominant show of power over Brad, or to offer emotional support. Surprising such a simple gesture makes me feel loved.
“Just doing my job.”
“By provoking a fight with phony flyers?”
“They were real.”
“The cases were solved.” I cross my arms. “It doesn’t matter. What happened to Eli? Where is he now? What did the detective say?”
“Eli’s at the station in the evidence room. Chief threw a fit when he found out we moved him from the cellar.”
“Tell him I made you do it.”
He snickers. “You kidding me? That’d be even worse.”
Our heads turn to the swinging bird feeder. The caged squirrel sends out another kuk and swats its tail, disturbed by Ollie sitting below him.
“I’ll let you out in a second.” I turn back to Brad. “What did the detective say?”
“Nothing, yet. She arrived when I was on my way out.”
“Oh.” My shoulders fall.
“Chief called in a few more people. He sent me out to meet them at the property.” He looks down, shuffles his feet. “I thought I’d stop by to see how you’re doing first. Need anything?”
“Yeah, I need you to find Virginia.”
Nate taps the letter. “An attention seeker,” he reminds me.
“I know.” I uncross my arms. “Find her. She didn’t go far without her car. She can barely walk. And in this snow…”
“Yep.” He puts his hat back on. “That all?”
I step forward. “No, that’s not all. Tell me why Connor hit you.”
“Trivial kid stuff. Water under the bridge.”
“Brad.” I take his arm and soften my voice. “Please? I always remember Connor as a caring big brother. Now I’m picturing him as a bu
lly. What happened?” Brad blinks at my hand on his arm. His cheeks flush pink. “Please,” I repeat.
He lifts his head and focuses on Nate. I watch him contemplate telling me about the fight, but I know he won’t with Nate within earshot.
I glance over my shoulder. “Nate, there’s a pair of pliers in the cabinet in the laundry room. Can you get them for me? I need to twist off the wire on the feeder door to set the squirrel free.”
“Yep.” He holds the ridge of the tucked towel at his waist and walks inside.
“Well done,” Brad says.
“We’ve got a minute. Now talk. Was the fight about Eli?”
“No, Shelly.”
“Your sister?”
“I caught them kissing in the woods.”
“What?” My jaw drops.
“Connor’s hand was fumbling under her shirt. It hurt to see that, you know?” He twists his fingers, breathing faster.
Brad’s the jealous type over women and men. He’d not only feel betrayed by Connor, but anxious that he might lose him. In high school, Brad fell a year behind in French and was put in the same class as me. He had a crush on a girl who sat next to him. But when the girl’s boyfriend stopped by the classroom to surprise her with flowers, Brad clawed his desk, crumpled his papers with one hand, and broke his pencil with the other. His jealousy is over the top. Another reason women don’t like him.
“So you hit Connor over it, and he punched you back?”
He shakes his head. “Connor never hit me, Salem.”
I look down at him suspiciously, squinting in the bright sunlight. He seems embarrassed, and I’m embarrassed for him. “Your sister clocked you and Connor took the fall so no one would find out. Is that it?”
“Well,” he says, resting his arm on the porch railing in a humiliated stance, stooped over, head down, “that’s right. The dorky, fat, wedgie kid got beat up by his sister, and his best friend saw it all.”
A total sadness I’ve never felt for Brad falls over me. And it’s not a feeling I want to have for him. It makes me wonder if Connor hung out with him because he genuinely liked him, or because he pitied him like I do now. I told Brad that wasn’t the case, but now I just don’t know. A dreary thought to digest. It might even be true of my granddad’s friendship with Grady, and why Gert and Virginia were friends.
“Connor was my friend, not hers. And to see the two of them like that.” He rubs his hand up and down the railing. “She kept her tongue swirling in Connor’s mouth even when I threw a rock at her.”
I snort. “You threw a rock at your sister? No wonder she punched you.”
“I missed.”
“Of course.”
“On purpose.”
“Uh-huh.”
He turns around and heads for his car. “Shelly hit me because I said I was going to tell our dad.” His voice has a hard edge to it. “He’d ground her for it. We were just kids. She shouldn’t have been making out at that age.”
“Ah.” I nod. That’s why people don’t feel sorry for Brad for long. He’s nothing but a big baby. “You’re not a kid anymore, Brad. You don’t have to throw a fit and storm off.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he says.
Nate stands tall behind me. “Need any help?”
“Nah. He’s leaving.”
“Don’t you dare tell anyone, Salem. Not a word.” Brad points at me but he’s quick to retract his hand, a stunned reaction to his own words. Awareness has sunk in. He shouldn’t be acting this way with everything else that’s going on, or at all. “Sorry,” he says, his head turning to the side as if he got slapped. I pity him again.
Nate begins twisting the wire off the feeder. The distressed squirrel shouts out an alarm call, chattering and flicking its tail. Ollie growls at it, and I offer scratches behind his ears until he simmers down.
“Almost got it?” I ask.
“A few more turns,” Nate says.
“Keep me updated every hour about Eli,” I call out to Brad. “And find Virginia for me.”
“Bradley.” Doreen’s high-pitched voice enters through his walkie. “Bradley, you there?”
“I’m here, Doreen.”
“Bradley?”
“Doreen, go ’head.” He puts his arm on the roof of his patrol car and rests his forehead on his sleeve.
“Chief is coming in.”
“He’s on vacation. Tell him we got everything under control.”
“Bradley.”
He exhales. “What, Doreen?”
“He wants you back at the station. He said, pronto.”
Nate opens the door of the feeder and steps back. “Got it.”
“Cool.” I pull Ollie inside and close the door to the lodge so the agitated squirrel can hightail it out of here.
Brad scratches his forehead with his thumb before he’s back on the walkie. “I’m supposed to meet people at the Murphy property.”
The walkie clicks but her voice dies under static. Nate and I stare at Brad, listening in on the conversation.
“Can you repeat that?” He straightens his back.
“Chief is coming in.”
“No, what you said after that.”
“It’s not the little Whitfield boy.”
I walk to the edge of the porch and wrap my arm around the post. The squirrel jumps out of the feeder and dashes through the front yard, rejoicing in its freedom. It bolts past Brad at lightning speed, bounding from tree to tree through the glittering snow.
“Come again?” Brad asks, looking up at me.
“The detective said they’re animal bones pieced together to look like a child’s skeleton. She left here laughing up a storm.”
“I knew it.” Nate grins.
“Yes!” I grin wider than him.
Brad rubs his forehead. “Chief … is he fuming? Is that why he’s coming in?” There’s no answer. “Doreen?” He drums his fingers on the hood, suddenly stops and holds them flat. “Fuck.” He hurls his car door open and drops heavily into the front seat. After multiple smacks of the wheel, he starts the engine, puts the car in reverse, and backs out of the long driveway, not bothering to take the time to say goodbye.
“Bye, Brad!” I beam.
“It’s not him,” Nate says, his mouth close to my ear. “It’s not him, Salem.”
I turn and grab him by the nape of the neck and look steadily into his eyes. A flush climbs up my chest and burns into my cheeks. My life just did a complete 180 in a matter of seconds. All traces of the punishing night have washed away. I slip my hand under his towel, and he stifles a groan against my lips.
“Let’s go inside and celebrate,” I whisper.
He sets his forehead to mine, his dimple awakening next to his full lips. “Yes, let’s do that.” His voice is deeper than usual, thick with want. He runs his fingers across my waist, then casually reaches for the door handle. “We’re going to take this one slow.”
twenty-one
Unlike my nightmares, there’s no need to tear through the forest on a frantic search for Eli. Pines no longer grow denser and darker as I continue to wend my way closer to Grady’s. The ground is no longer littered with dead branches but glazed in an expanse of blinding white.
Chickadees take flight from ice-rimmed branches. Their rapid departure creates plummeting mini-snowballs, specking Joss and Nate’s dark coats. Far ahead, Jim leaves a single line of prints for us to follow. The slap of his snowshoes, offbeat and low-pitched to ours, conjures up a memory of the last time my family used the shoes for a winter hike—the Christmas before my dad and Connor died—the shoes a gift to the family from my mom. She led the way that evening. We followed her to the eastern side of the property, out of the trees and through the field dotted with bird feeders, past two sparrows Connor called by name, and over to the lake to enjoy the sunset. Vibrant pinks, purples, yellows, and oranges, skated over the partially frozen water. For once Connor didn’t give us a lesson on the season�
��s sunsets and why they’re more beautiful in the winter. Now I wish he had.
I set off on a short jog, twenty, thirty, forty feet, wasted in nothing flat from lack of exercise. My lungs burn with each breath. Embarrassed, I keep my back turned to Nate and Joss, waiting for them next to a young red pine.
Rime ice on the windward side of the tree begs to be poked. I prod the spiky crystals, splay my hand on the needles, and carry out a two-finger piano run along a low branch. It dips from the tension, a whirlwind of excess snow kicked up in my face. I wave it away then sidle between two branches to the fresh snow stuck to the trunk, soft enough to finger two hearts, a house, and my name … the same imagery I’d sketch into the playground sand with a stick. It’s a silly activity, but one that makes my whole face smile.
The forest returning to my childhood kingdom, harmless and unblemished, is precisely what I need today. Finding Eli, then to learn it was a fake skeleton of a boy pieced together from animal bones, and now the renewed hope … it’s all too much to process. I’m still sorting through my feelings of why my reaction was surprisingly tame. I cried but didn’t wake with the same devastating thoughts boring into me that I couldn’t go on without him. Not like the experience with the rest of my family. Not how it was when my mom died, and a freight train roared in and crushed me. Not how my deep and deafening cries for my dad and Connor swallowed the forest life whole. Not like any of that.
“Hey, ho. You get out of breath from fucking all morning?” Joss teases. She’s amused that Nate and I just had sex, going as far as to make the juvenile “finger in the hole” gesture. I elbow her side to get her to stop. “What?” She grabs my coat, stumbles, and wobbles on my mom’s snowshoes like an unsteady drunk. “Why’d you take off?”
“No reason.”
“Sure, sounds believable. No reason to run full speed ahead until you almost have a heart attack. No reason at all.” She continues to steady herself on my arm as we walk alongside an impenetrable thorn thicket.
The Release of Secrets_Littlest Sparrow Gone Page 18
