Willow had been too but remained quiet. He was about to turn on 32 Mile Road but Lydia told him to stay on North Avenue.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s not too far now,” she said.
Soon they were passing the canopies of tall trees that stood like stoic guards along the ingress of an ancient castle. The leaves had already begun to change. Banks of wildflowers beckoned from a thousand entrances to the forest. “There,” she said, pointing to a dirt road. “Slow down or you’re going to miss it!”
He did, and had to back up. They drove awhile before she told him to stop. “This is it. We’ll need to walk from here.” She climbed into the backseat and stripped off her uniform, changing into the hiking clothes that she’d packed in her duffel. She left the car, jogged in place and then started up the trail. He was still sitting at the wheel, lost, when she called to him. “We can say goodbye here, or you can follow me.”
He got out and set after her. It was a rail trail and he felt that was apt. The defunct tracks of a ghostly train came in and out of view, covered over by dirt and clumps of hop clover and spectral Indian pipe. Willow grew winded and a few times she waited for him to catch up. He idly wondered if he would be able to find his way out. He had a fleeting thought that it might be better if he didn’t.
She stopped on a high ridge, staring out at the pastureland below and the world at large. Willow knew she was doing as the Guide’s epilogue suggested—thanking “that big, beautiful Blue Earth, the Mother Earth who nurtured you and those you loved, and to whom you returned for your moment of balance. You must thank Her before you take your final leave.” When he reached her, he bent over to catch his breath. She let him, before asking if he’d say the Lord’s Prayer with her, like at the end of their Meetings.
After Amen, she made her final remarks.
“I want to thank Maya and Troy. What beautiful little beings they were—so loved, by so many!—I wish them well on their journey. And how can I thank Lydia Molloy? Such a good woman, such a strong and smart woman. The world will miss her . . . and Daniel the Lionhearted! Deputy Daniel Doheny, I thank you on my brother Troy’s behalf. Daniel had such anguish in his life but now he’s free. My brother thanks Lydia too! We were both so honored.” Willow saw tears in her eyes and had the somewhat clinical thought, How is it that the dead can cry? She turned to him and took his hands. “And I want to thank you, Willow Wylde, for supporting us, and walking us through every step of the way. My Porter! How lucky we were, and how lucky are the children who are coming! Father! Father! Goodbye—”
And just like that she ran up the hill to seek the gully where months ago she had lain.
3.
He wanted to make love but Dixie wasn’t having it.
Her excuse was a horrible migraine that started in the morning. She looked like she had a bad headache—he didn’t think it was connected to not having invited her to Daniel’s memorial, but who knew. When he asked if she wanted to sleep alone, she said no, she wanted company. At least that was a good thing. He got a cold rag and draped it across her eyes, then drew a hot tub for himself.
He was confident in his decision to resign from the Cold Case Task Force. He would tell Owen tomorrow, in person. That was something he wasn’t looking forward to, but he knew the sheriff would understand. He hoped the meteoric success of his brief tenure would assuage any disappointment. Willow thought about what he was going to say—he’d thank him profusely for having given him the opportunity and then haul out the “I’m too old for this” trope. He was prepared for the sheriff to try to dissuade him by countering with a bonus or steep raise; in light of recent events, the county’s vote for an infusion of funding to the unit was a fait accompli. He would promise to stay on and train a replacement.
As for his duties as Porter, he was done with those too.
His decision was partly triggered by Lydia’s crisis of faith. On that last journey together, she had voiced her doubts about the essential validity of the moment of balance. Willow had been having those same heretical thoughts himself. Listening to her, he was reminded of something that Renata, his Buddhist friend, once told him about the Wheel of the Dharma. The idea was to be free of the Wheel—not to take on another body or some other incarnation, but to reach a state of no-yearning and no-craving, to escape the dogma of justice and retribution, to go beyond hatred, even beyond love. Would the Eakinses be forgiven? Could they be? He didn’t know the answer but sensed it was irrelevant: there could be no freedom until there were no longer any questions. The truth is that he didn’t want to exchange one task force for another, which is what Annie’s program seemed to be: just another job with standards, protocols and endgames—Spec Ops from the Unknown. He remembered that time at Penn Station when he asked about becoming a porter. The man corrected him by saying they called them service attendants now. The little scene wasn’t too far off the mark, because that’s just what Willow felt like—a drunk with delusions of supernatural grandeur, applying for a gig whose name he couldn’t get right.
As he soaked, he reread the note from Annie that the sentry gave him at the funeral home. She included a Wordsworth poem (he’d googled it earlier) about a man who encounters a strange little cottage girl. When he asks if she has brothers and sisters, she declares, “We are seven,” even though two are dead—“two of us in the churchyard lie.” When the man says that if two siblings have departed, then she only has four, the girl insists he’s wrong.
The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.
“How many are you, then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”
“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”
He sunk the note in the bathwater, watching the ink run together.
STATION TO STATION
1.
It went better than he thought.
Then why did he feel worse when it was done?
He wondered if bailing from the task force was a blunder. Yet each time he had such doubts, the detective realized it was a symptom of his general confusion—a mélange of money worries combined with a shudder of foreboding. The awkward part came at the end, when Owen gave him the Look—the one Willow knew he’d be getting from friends and family over the next few weeks and months, even years—the one that said, Hope you stay sober! The Look had nuances akin to regional accents. In the sheriff’s, he heard this one: Bet you’ve already started—you probably never stopped. Prolly faked your piss test too.
He painted over the mural of the train with primer, praying the blank space might lend itself to a new chapter. But resigning from Cold Case was one thing; resigning from Annie’s Meetings was something else. When he first joined AA, hadn’t his sponsor suggested not making any big moves for at least a year? Don’t try to quit smoking. Don’t get married. Don’t quit your day job. Drama and instability always got you drunk.
Suddenly, he became wary. What if walking out on his Portership duties delivered the coup de grâce?
* * *
• • •
The same group was there, the ones he had met at his inaugural Meeting. There were no new landl
ords and he was certain that was a direct result of his no longer dreaming about the train. Willow was still the Porter, nominally anyway, and came to understand that he was the portal as well—without his soothing of the fresh arrivals in their cabins, without his instructions to carefully memorize the Meeting’s locale, it was impossible for the children to cross over.
Everyone seemed to be doing just fine. No one really needed the proactive hand-holding that Troy and Maya had required. “Grounded and purposeful” was how Annie had described the fresh batch of immigrants, attributing their simple, clear-eyed confidence to Willow’s “healing” presence. He maintained decorum, answering their questions and orienting them, with the help of the Guide, in how they should behave in the world. (It felt like he was teaching basic English to foreign exchange students.) Occasionally, when they grew agitated, he soothed them as a father would. Without much help, it looked as if one of them, a delivery driver for Amazon, was already getting close to her moment of balance. Willow was gratified and thought maybe that was all that was required of him—to sit there with his healing presence like a factotum, a figurehead, a straw boss. At the end of each Meeting, Bumble the sentry said, “Damn good, Porter. Damn good job.”
But what did he know?
I’ll ride it out till they’re done . . . one by one they’ll have their moments of balance—and when I’m the last man standing, I’ll burn the Guides and close up shop. “End of an era,” he said aloud. Annie’s words about the Eskimo still haunted and burned—“I pray that it won’t be a child”—but now he had an ace in the hole. The detective was in the process of extricating himself from her world, and when he finally did, her cryptic rules and morbid prognostications would no longer apply.
* * *
• • •
Dixie had been distancing herself and that troubled him, especially since he couldn’t be certain that his impressions reflected reality. Willow theorized it was entirely possible that everything he was going through, everything he’d been through, had grossly distorted the way he perceived the world. But he needed to stay cool. He didn’t want to crowd her; it was too soon to have a “conversation.” Though maybe not having a conversation was distancing her further.
In his struggle to identify the source of her detachment, he kept circling back to Daniel’s funeral. He’d been through it a hundred times. It would have been impossible to ask her to accompany him—it was Lydia’s day, a day of goodbyes—yet more and more the rebuff presented itself as the fatal blow. Women were a riddle that could never be solved by the brick and mortar reasoning of men. In an instant, the consequences of large or trivial actions wrought by male rationale could handcuff love and prefigure its death. In its natural fealty to forgiveness and renewal, the beaten heart of a woman often resuscitated with more devotion than ever. But there came a time—an unpredictable time, cunning, baffling and powerful!—when the heart would not return. The worst thing about love dying in a woman was her ability to stay. It had happened to Willow once before; the woman stayed and it was like living with a ghost. She still smiled, still cooked, still managed to be “fun.” He played along, in childish hopes that her mood would pass, because the truth hurt too much. He couldn’t admit to himself that it was over until one afternoon he heard her crying behind the bathroom door.
He refused to let that happen with Dixie.
The perfect panacea was the Sunday barbecue at Owen and Adelaide’s. He was deliberately casual about the invite, hoping she would appreciate what a big deal it was that he’d asked. He told her that his daughter and grandson were coming, the implication being that the party wouldn’t just be their coming-out, but Dixie’s unapologetic introduction to his world—his warts and errors, loyalties and elisions. It was only after she said that she’d love to go that he realized what a number it would have done on him if she had declined.
He would buy her that ring—today. Desperate times required desperate measures. He wanted to marry this girl. He didn’t know how Dixie would feel about that but it was worth the risk. Maybe she’d come back to him from wherever it was she had gone.
He would ask her to be his wife and it would be the proposal of a good man, a vulnerable man, a battered and loving man who wanted her above all else.
2.
It was a spectacular day. The windswept sky ruffled the meadow that abutted the yard, its cool breezes and sporadic gusts cueing the grasses and leaves to shimmer in applause of the sun. The Caplans’ home in Armada was close enough to where Lydia had left the world that Willow felt her presence with an adhesion of sadness and sacred delight.
Willow had prepped the crew that he was bringing “a gal I’ve been seeing,” and to his relief, Dixie was treated with great warmth. She rallied, reveling in the mixed company. Maybe some old-fashioned socializing was all that was needed—that’s right. We never go anywhere, see anyone . . . get too insular and the soil starts to dry up. Add a little sun, water and burgers and we’re good to go. As she spoke to various members of the tribe, Dixie made sure to find his eye, smiling that sly, coyote smile. It was the best medicine for both of them.
He was thrilled to see Larkin. His grandson had already had his first surgery (wielding an aluminum tripod cane with a superhero’s panache), with another scheduled not too far off. Their daughter ran the whole saga down to Addie a few days before coming to the barbecue, and Mom was chill when Pace informed that Dad was helping on the financial side. Adelaide even took Willow aside at the party and thanked him for making that happen. “I’m glad she has a father she can turn to.” Her flattery was of course accompanied by the Look, appreciably more withering than Owen’s: You better not start drinking, because your daughter really needs you now. Don’t you dare leave her again! Addie’s Look had layers to it and a measure of oomph, due to a bonus subtext of betrayal—when she learned he was quitting Cold Case, she was sorely pissed. Adelaide took it personally, finally admitting what Willow already knew: it was she who had promoted him to her husband for the job in the first place.
Pace cornered him at the edge of the yard.
“We haven’t talked about Troy and Maya.”
He nodded and said, “It was heavy.”
“I can’t even imagine. It’s so weird that you were the one who found their killer.”
“Well it wasn’t just me, babe. I had a lot of help.”
“Dad, you don’t need to be so humble.”
“It’s true. We had some amazing people working on that.”
“The one who died . . .”
“Daniel. Yeah. Daniel Doheny. Brilliant.”
“It’s so awful how he died. Those motherfucking Eakinses! I still can’t even believe it.”
“Oh, believe it. Believe it.”
“I loved those kids so much.”
“And they loved you. They told me they did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not told me,” he amended, with a throat-clear. “I mean, it was obvious. Are you going to go to the memorial?”
“When is it?”
“I want to say the twenty-eighth?”
“We’ll see,” she said ambivalently. “I’d love to but Larkin may have a doctor thingie that day.”
“I know Ronnie and Elaine would love to see you.”
He could tell she wasn’t up for it, and respected that.
“I should call them,” she said, chastising herself. “Poor Elaine! Mom said that you went to see them?”
“I did.”
“How are they? I mean, now. How are they doing?”
“Better. I think they’re better.”
“When they disappeared . . . I never really talked to you about it. It was like—like nothing made sense anymore. That’s when I got into drugs, I mean heavily. I couldn’t handle it.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“There wasn’t anything you could hav
e done, Dad. I was totally shut off. And it’s okay. Sometimes shit just gets fixed by itself—or not. I had to go through what I had to go through.”
“Glad you made it out the other side, kid,” he said, aware that he was echoing Roy Eakins’s words to him about Grundy. They hugged. When she responded with “I’m glad we all did,” he thought he detected the Look: I still need you so don’t go and do something stupid now that you don’t have a fucking job. Maybe he was just reading into it.
“The one who died—” she said again.
“Deputy Doheny.”
“Owen said that his girlfriend disappeared? The other cop?”
“She did. Lydia Molloy.”
“What happened?”
“We still don’t know. She’s AWOL. The media doesn’t know that yet, by the way.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Personally? I think she was so busted up about Danny that she may have . . . gone off somewhere to self-harm.”
“Oh my God. It’s like some horrible Greek tragedy, right? Someone needs to make a movie about it.”
“Too soon,” he said, with a smile.
“Who do you think should play you?”
“Well, I love Tommy Lee Jones.”
“Tommy Lee Jones is like a hundred years old.”
“Bradley Cooper? It’s been said there’s a very close resemblance.”
A Guide for Murdered Children Page 36
