In All Deep Places

by Susan Meissner

She looked across the expanse of water and wrinkled her nose, then turned to Matt. “Are you a sore loser?”

  Matt s grin doubled. “Are you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I haven’t lost a swimming race yet.”

  Matt laughed. “This will be great! Luke, you tell us when to go!”

  I frowned. Beside me Derek was laughing.

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I said.

  “Norah can beat him with her eyes closed!” Kieran piped up.

  “We’ll start right here,” Matt said, stepping over to ankle-deep water. “Tell us when to go, Luke!”

  Norah followed Matt casually and stood by him. She leaned forward, ready to spring when Luke gave the word.

  “See you on the other side,” Matt said, winking at her.

  “Eventually,” she said, not looking at him.

  Derek laughed, threw the inner tube into the water, and paddled out to watch the event.

  I sighed. “On your mark. Get set. Go!”

  The two plunged into the water.

  Kieran began to jump up and down and cheer for his sister. Ethan joined him. I stood at the shoreline with my arms folded across my chest, watching. Norah was as graceful as a dancer in the water. And fast. She was already several strokes ahead of Matt. It would take them several minutes to reach the other side. Derek continued to paddle after them in the inner tube, and Ethan swam out to meet them coming back.

  Kieran continued to yell and cheer, even when it was obvious Norah was going to win. She reached the opposite side. They were too far away to hear distinctly, but Luke thought he could hear Matt laughing. He didn’t seem to mind losing to Norah. Kieran whooped and hollered, jumping up and down in the water.

  “I told you she would win!” he was saying, but it didn’t appear that he was talking to me. “Guess you lost that bet, now, didn’t you!”

  I looked more closely at Kieran splashing in the water.

  “Guess you’ll listen to me next time!” he continued.

  The kid appeared to be talking to himself. In a really weird way.

  Kieran plunged into the water to join Ethan, who was treading water near Derek at the halfway mark. But as Kieran swam away I heard him say just under his breath, “Don’t go so fast. Wait for me.”

  Again, Kieran was talking to no one. It sent a chill down my spine despite the summer heat.

  We left the swimming hole at five, coming back into town just as fathers all up and down the streets of Halcyon started pulling out bags of charcoal for their grills and mothers started flattening ground beef into hamburger patties. Matt and Derek waved goodbye when they reached the corner of Tulip Street and Seventh Avenue, particularly interested in making sure Norah waved back. When Ethan and I and the Janviks arrived back at my house, Kieran parked the bike he’d used next to Ethan’s new one.

  “Thanks for taking us.” Norah lowered the kickstand on my mother’s bike.

  “Sure.”

  “Can we go again sometime?” Kieran asked.

  “Um, yeah,” I answered.

  We walked out of the garage, and Norah seemed to linger for a moment. The tree that separated the two houses towered above us. Norah glanced over at Ethan and Kieran, who were talking together about something they had seen on TV. She looked quickly back at me and raised her eyes to the tree house.

  She raised her pointer finger almost imperceptibly toward the sky. It was the invitation to join me in the tree house—only this time she was extending it instead of me.

  “Tonight. After ten o’clock,” she whispered.

  I nodded, and she walked away.

  Ten

  I was restless that evening knowing that I had an up-coming meeting with a “foxy chick” in my tree house. My parents were thankfully distracted with their Sunday school preparations, but Ethan kept coming in and out of my room for one thing or another. First he wanted to borrow a Creedence Clearwater Revival record. Then he wanted to play cards. But I kept shooing him away. I passed the evening trying to read The Two Towers, eating malt balls, and watching the clock.

  Finally, a few minutes before ten, my mother knocked on my door to tell me good night.

  “Good night, Mom,” I said through the closed door and then I listened for the sound of her bedroom door closing.

  At five minutes after ten, I opened my window wide, slid the screen up, and climbed out. I scooted quickly across the branch but almost fell off when I reached the tree house.

  Norah was sitting there, waiting for me. I had an excellent view of the tree’s trunk and the steps that were nailed to it. I couldn’t believe I’d missed seeing her climb them.

  “How long have you been here?” I said softly, pulling myself inside and trying to mask my surprise at finding her there.

  “A few minutes,” she said. She was sitting with her knees up to her chest, her arms around them in a tight embrace. Her eyes were like gray wool—very out of place for a summer evening.

  “How… how did you get in?” I stammered.

  “Same as you. I climbed out a window. Then I walked across the garage roof.”

  I couldn’t hide my shock. The tree limb outside my window was wide, sturdy, and strategically placed. The limb near the bedroom window where Norah was staying was narrower and was several inches away from the edge of Nell’s garage roof.

  “If my mom knew how you got in here, she’d have a fit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s… it’s not very safe.”

  Norah looked over her shoulder to the route she’d taken—the narrow branch, the sloping roof, her open window. “I didn’t have any trouble.”

  She turned back around.

  “Did you tell your parents what you heard last night?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Good,” she said. “’Cause it’s not true.”

  “None of it?”

  She looked away and then looked back. “Some of it is, and some of it isn’t.”

  I waited.

  “My mom didn’t kill anybody,” she said defensively, as if she were in a courtroom and not a tree house.

  “Well, your dad said she was charged with being an accessory. That’s different.”

  “It’s not different to me. She didn’t kill anybody.”

  Again, I waited.

  “And it’s not true she left Kieran and me. She didn’t leave us. She was getting things ready for us. We were going to move to Mexico with her and Marco. We were going to have our own place. I was going to have my own room. In a house. On the beach. We weren’t going to have to live in that camper anymore.”

  “You… you were living in the camper?”

  “Kieran and I have been living in that camper for two years.”

  I was silent.

  “I didn’t know she’d come back for us,” Norah continued. “My dad took us to some friends in Riverside one weekend because he said he had to go away for a few days. I think that’s when Mom came back for us. But he never told Kieran and me. Then she went back to Mexico. And something bad happened. Some cop got killed. But she didn’t do it.”

  “What about… the drugs?” I said softly. I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “heroin” in front of her. I wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Norah looked down at her feet.

  “That part is mostly true.” She wouldn’t look at me. “But she can’t help it. She can’t help it. She loves Kieran and me. Please don’t tell anyone,” she whispered, still looking at her feet.

  “I won’t,” I whispered back.

  “Don’t tell Matt or Derek. And please don’t tell your parents.”

  “I won’t tell Matt or Derek,” I said, but I couldn’t make the other promise. I wanted to, but something kept me from it.

  “Or your parents,” she said, looking up at me.

  “Or my parents,” I finally said. I decided I would break the promise only if I had no other choice.

  “Thanks,” she said softly, but she
made no move to leave.

  “I… I might need to ask you to help me,” she continued, looking away again.

  I blinked. “Help you what?”

  “I need to find out where my mother is. Which jail she’s in, if she even is in jail.”

  “I don’t see how I can help you. I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.”

  “But your dad works at a newspaper. He must know how to find out if someone is in jail.”

  “But you said you didn’t want me to tell my parents,” I said.

  “I don’t.”

  She wanted me to get information from my dad without making him wonder why I was asking. It would be like being a spy. It intimidated me and thrilled me at the same time.

  “I guess I can try,” I said.

  “She was in Baja California when this happened. It happened last month or maybe the month before—I’m not sure.”

  “Okay.”

  “My mom’s last name is Hickler. She and my dad… well, they never got married.”

  “Okay,” I said again.

  “So you won’t tell anyone?”

  “Well, I’m going to try not to.”

  “What? What does that mean?” she said, unhooking her arms from her knees.

  “It means if my dad gets suspicious and starts asking me questions, I’m not going to lie to him.”

  “Why not?”

  I paused. Yes—why not?

  Because I simply knew I would not.

  “Because my dad can always tell when I am lying,” I answered. “My mom can, too. I’m not good at it. And I don’t like doing it.”

  She looked irritated but said nothing.

  “Besides, what difference will it make if my parents find out, Norah?” I continued. “They’re not the kind of people to think badly of someone just because of something their parents did.”

  “My mother didn’t do anything!”

  “Or didn’t do!” I said quickly. “Look, I’m not saying I’ll tell them, I’m just saying, if they ask I’m not going to lie for you!”

  She let her knees drop so she now sat Indian-style. Her arms and hands lay limp in her lap.

  “You should never have eavesdropped,” she said coolly.

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping! I was already in the tree house when your dad and grandma came outside. I couldn’t help hearing what they said. Besides, I wasn’t the one eavesdropping. You were.”

  She stared at me for a few minutes. “You would have done it, too, if you were me.”

  I had to admit she was right. It was true I didn’t like lying to my parents, but I wasn’t above listening to their conversations when I wasn’t supposed to. Especially when the conversation was about me. Was a difference?

  We were silent for a few moments. Then I remembered something that had been bothering me, something that had been tugging at me since we’d come back from the swimming hole.

  “Norah… is Kieran okay?”

  Her gray eyes widened a little. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is he, you know, mentally okay?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  She seemed angry but not surprised.

  “Well, he was, like, talking to himself at the swimming hole today,” I said. “It was a little, I don’t know, weird.”

  She seemed to be breathing a little fast as she looked at me and formulated an answer.

  “Kieran is fine, okay?” she said evenly. “You leave him alone.”

  Leave him alone?

  “What?” I said.

  “I said, leave him alone.”

  “What are you talking about?” I was thoroughly perplexed.

  Norah’s angry features softened a little, and her steel-gray eyes seemed to mist over the tiniest bit. “Please just leave him alone,” she said—she pleaded.

  “Is he okay?” I said again. I wanted an answer. I wanted the truth.

  “He’ll be fine. He… he just needs some time.”

  “Time for what?”

  Norah looked away in disgust, then whipped her head back around. “Time to get used to things the way they are right now! So leave him alone about it, okay?”

  “So who was he talking to?” I said, not quite ready to acquiesce.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” Norah said simply, after a momentary pause. “It’s none of your business.”

  “You want me to ask questions for you and keep secrets for you and lie for you and leave your brother alone for you—and now you tell me it’s none of my business?” I was starting to get a little peeved.

  “I never should have trusted you,” she said, shaking her head.

  I was about to say, “You got that right,” but before I could, she looked up at me. Her expression had changed from irritation to fear. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t say anything to anyone about Kieran. If the adults find out, they might… they might send him away,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

  “Why?” I was whispering also. “Why would they want to do that?”

  Norah wiped her cheeks, swallowing hard. “Because… well, Kieran has this imaginary friend. He’s had him the last year or so. He calls him Tommy. It used to not be so bad, but ever since Mom left, he’s been talking to Tommy more and more. He really thinks he’s real.”

  I felt the hairs on his neck come to attention.

  “I’ve tried to get him to stop, but he gets all frantic when I talk like there is no Tommy,” she continued. “His teacher at his school in San Diego was starting to get worried about him. She called my dad to talk to him about it just after Easter. She wanted Kieran to see a child psychologist because he was acting strange in class. I don’t think she knew about Tommy, but I think she was getting close to finding out. I heard my dad talking to one of his friends about the call. He said the teacher told him sometimes kids like Kieran need to go to special places to get well. That sometimes kids like Kieran get sent away.”

  I wanted to say, perhaps that was exactly what Kieran needed, but I didn’t. “So you’re just going to let him keep doing this?”

  Norah shook her head. “He just needs some time! If he gets sent away… he won’t make it! He won’t…” But she didn’t continue. Fresh tears started to slide down her cheeks.

  As I sat there, watching Norah trying to staunch the flow of tears, I felt oddly and suddenly drawn to her pain. I didn’t know why. But I slowly began to be aware that a sense of loyalty for Norah and for Kieran was swelling inside me. I wondered, as I felt it growing, if it was God himself talking to me, arousing in me the desire to protect them from further harm. Or perhaps it was just the growing awareness of my own physical and mental attraction to Norah. I didn’t know. I only knew I felt like I had been handed a responsibility—a responsibility to protect and defend.

  “I won’t tell anyone about Kieran,” I said softly.

  Norah raised her head to look at him.

  “And you weren’t wrong to trust me,” I added. “I’m going to try to help you.”

  The following day, we came home after church and eating lunch at the Golden Griddle in Carrow to find a note taped to our front door:

  I hope you don’t mind that we borrowed two bikes to ride down to the swimming hole. Kieran just had to go swimming today. I’m sorry if you really do mind. We will bring the bikes back this afternoon.

  Thanks, Norah Janvik

  My mother thought it was quite nice that Norah had left such a nicely worded, grammatically correct note. I thought it was strange that those two were going swimming. Again. Didn’t they enjoy doing anything else?

  “Maybe we should invite them all over for supper tonight,” my mom said as she stepped into the house with the note in her hand.

  “Nell, too?” Ethan said, grimacing.

  “I seriously doubt Nell would accept the invitation since she never has before,” my dad said as he followed us inside.

  “Well, I can ask, can’t I?” my mom said.
r />   “Do you want to go down to the swimming hole and meet them there?” Ethan said to me.

  I was irked that deep down I really did.

  “No,” I replied. “Matt and I are playing baseball with friends this afternoon.”

  “Well, I’m going to go.”

  I had been looking forward to playing baseball, but now I was slightly resentful of Ethan’s preparations to head to the swimming hole. I felt a crazy need to protect Norah and Kieran from even my own brother.

  I ended up having a lackluster game, striking out more than once, and dropping a fly ball that any other time I would have been able to catch. But I was distracted by thoughts of who might be at the supper table that night and perhaps sharing a meal with Darrel Janvik, a man I sort of wanted to punch in the face.

  When I arrived home just before five, I was surprised to see that Norah and Kieran were at the house, standing in the kitchen with Ethan and my mother. I tried not to look too stunned.

  “Luke, there you are,” my mother said when I came into the kitchen. “Can you go get another leaf for the dining-room table? Norah and Kieran are joining us for supper tonight.”

  “Sure,” I said, making eye contact with Norah but saying nothing.

  As I went down the hall, I heard Kieran ask my mother what she was making. Ethan said she was making a lemon-meringue pie, which was his favorite. I opened the hall closet, grabbed the table leaf, and carried it into the dining room, leaning it against a wall. Norah eyed me as I walked past. I stepped back into the kitchen to ask Ethan to help me put the leaf in.

  “Hey! You have her!” Kieran was saying in a cheerful, excited voice.

  “What’s that?” My mother turned to him with a yellow box of Argo cornstarch in her hand.

  I looked at Norah, but she was looking at the box in my mother’s hand.

  “You have her, too! My grandma has that same box in her cupboard! That’s my mom!” Kieran exclaimed.

  “What?” Mom said, smiling but obviously confused.

  I kept my eye on Norah, but she wouldn’t look at me. What in the world was Kieran talking about?

  “That’s my mom! That lady!” Kieran said. “See?” He pointed to the dark-haired woman with a body made of an ear of corn on the front of the box of cornstarch.