In All Deep Places

by Susan Meissner

  “Good night, Mom.”

  She closed his door, and I turned back to the letter I was writing to Norah. I knew I wouldn’t be able to send it. I had no idea what her address was and there was no way I was going to ask Nell for it. I wasn’t even sure I wanted Norah to see it. It was filled with all the things I wanted to do when I was free of Halcyon. And since she was part of my life in Halcyon, it meant I would be free of her, too.

  No—even if I had the address I knew I wouldn’t send it.

  Spring arrived early that year. Halcyon’s tulips burst through the chocolate-brown ground the third week in March, blooming the first part of April in showy wonder. Basketball season had given way to baseball, and though I had not played in my freshman year, the coach was anxious to fill his bench, and he let me join the varsity team based on my impressive work on the basketball court. There had to be something that crossed over onto the diamond, even if it was just determination and a good eye. I joined for rather selfish reasons, though I shared them with no one. First, Matt was pretty much out of my life now. Two, Patti Carmichael was starting to make me nervous with her constant watching. If I left school the same time she did, I usually ended up walking with her or riding my bike next to hers. Baseball practice took care of that. Three, staying busy made the time pass more quickly.

  In all that time there were no more letters from Norah. Some days I could forget about her and Kieran. But as the weather got warmer and people spent more time outdoors, I saw Nell more often, and whenever I did, I could not help but think of Norah.

  It wasn’t that I ever spoke to Nell or was closer to her than several yards, but seeing her hardened face reminded me of what her life was like. And that Norah was wrapped up in the middle of it whether she liked it or not. It seemed to me Nell had changed a great deal with the murder of her second and only remaining child. She became someone who didn’t need garden shoes and who would never have thought to hang a wind chime from her porch, because things like homegrown vegetables and music held no interest for someone like her. She stopped bowling. It seemed the only time she went out was to work her shift at the paint factory. I rarely saw her in town. I wondered if maybe Nell drove to Carrow to get her groceries to avoid having to see people she knew. Or maybe she just didn’t buy groceries anymore. Maybe she fed on her grief and anger and had no need of food.

  One Saturday in early April, my father came to me at the breakfast table and told me that when he was finished with his scrambled eggs, he wanted me to come outside. We were going to take down Nell’s storm windows. I cringed.

  Ten minutes later we stood outside Nell’s ghastly green house while my dad climbed an extension ladder and handed me the storm windows one by one.

  “Does she even know we’re doing this?” I asked my dad as we stacked the panes in Nell’s garage.

  “Mom called her,” Dad replied. “She knows. And though she won’t say it, I know she’s grateful, Luke. If she hadn’t wanted us to do it, she would have said so. You know she always makes clear what she doesn’t want.”

  “You got that right,” I mumbled.

  “Luke,” my father said gently, but with authority.

  I turned to look at him.

  “Even Nell needs to be reminded, from time to time, how wonderful a roasting turkey smells.” Then he turned to go back outside.

  On the last day of school, a Friday and the thirtieth day of May, I turned sixteen. That afternoon Dad took me to Carrow, where I passed my driving test with a near-perfect score. Two weeks later I flew to South Dakota to spend a month with my grandparents. Then my parents and Ethan drove to South Dakota to pick me up and spend the traditional seven days’ vacation.

  I was lying in my grandfather’s hammock when my family arrived on a hot, early July day. My grandmother had just brought me a glass of lemonade, and I was making notes for a story I was concocting about an undercover agent for the government who could see into the future. I saw the family Buick pull into the driveway, and I sat up as Ethan and my parents got out. I stretched and lazily got to my feet, pretending like I wasn’t anxious to see my family, though in truth I was.

  “Luke!” My mother came to me and wrapped me in her arms. “We’ve missed you! Phone calls just aren’t the same!

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, returning her hug.

  “Luke, how’s it going?” Dad slapped me on the back, giving me a manly, one-armed embrace.

  “Good.”

  “Hey!” Ethan said. “Whose hammock?”

  “Grandpa’s. I helped him put it up.”

  “Grandma and Grandpa inside?” Dad said as they began walking toward the house.

  “Yep. Things the same at home?”

  “Pretty much,” his mother said as they walked.

  “I got a new skateboard,” Ethan interjected. “And Patti Carmichael’s dog had puppies. Mrs. Liekfisch’s cat died. And Norah and Kieran are back.”

  I whipped my head around. “They are?”

  “Yep,” Ethan said, running ahead.

  I searched my parents’ faces for confirmation. My mother’s face was expressionless. I turned to my dad. “Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “For good?”

  My father kept walking toward the house. “I don’t know. I didn’t actually talk to them or Nell. Ethan saw Kieran for a few minutes when we were loading up the car to leave.”

  “Oh.”

  I looked at his mother but her eyes were trained on the steps of the porch as she climbed them. “Can we talk about this later?” she said. Her hand reached for the doorknob, and she went into the house without waiting for an answer.

  I spent the next seven days relishing my final week in South Dakota one moment and anxious to get home the next. Even the camping trip to Custer State Park, one of my favorite places, failed to completely hold my interest. I didn’t know why it was so important to see Norah and Kieran, but it made me restless to picture them, especially Norah, in Halcyon, probably swimming in Goose Pond, perhaps with Matt and Derek. That thought alone annoyed me.

  When the vacation was finally over, the drive home had never seemed so boring and monotonous. We pulled into Halcyon around nine-thirty at night. I could see lights on in the Janvik house, but I had no intention of going over there and ringing the doorbell. I helped my dad unload the car, stealing multiple glances at Nell’s front windows, wondering if a face might appear through the curtains. But it did not happen.

  I took my suitcase up to my room, opened it, and began to unpack, needing something to do. Usually I let it lie open in my bedroom for several days after the family vacation until my mother would nearly explode in frustration and demand that I unpack it and put it away. I had nearly emptied it when it occurred to me that maybe Norah would come to the tree house that night. If she had noticed that our car had pulled up into the driveway, maybe she would try to sneak over and say hello. I looked at my wristwatch. It was a few minutes before ten o’clock, the usual meeting time. I walked over to the window, raised the glass and the screen, and climbed out. I inched along the massive branch and ducked inside the tree house.

  There seemed to be a dark shape in the corner.

  “Norah?” I whispered.

  But there was no answer.

  I bent down and switched on the camping lantern. The dark shape was just my old beanbag chair. She wasn’t there. I crawled over to the beanbag and eased myself into it, inwardly chiding myself for imagining Norah would suddenly decide to climb into the tree house after having been away for seven months.

  I leaned my head back and gazed up at the stars through the window opening. They were shimmering in the heavy velvet sky. Wisps of cloud fell about the moonlight like illuminated gauze. The songs of crickets and bullfrogs began to lull me, and I started to relax. Then the sound of a motorcycle broke the music of the evening. The sound got closer until it was right below me. I sat up and looked out the opening. In a pool of amber light cast by the streetlight, I saw Norah climb off the back of the
motorcycle. Her arms had been around the driver’s waist. The driver turned as she got off, and I saw his face. It was Matt.

  A thin bolt of anger, or something like it, coursed through my body.

  What was she doing with Matt?

  “’Bye!” Norah was saying.

  “See ya,” Matt called out, and then his cycle bolted down the street like, as Mrs. Liekfisch was fond of saying, a bat out of hell.

  Norah began to walk up the path to Nell’s front door. I made no move to silently retreat from the opening. I continued to stare at her. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of my head as she got closer to the tree house, or perhaps she was just suddenly aware she was being watched. She stopped and looked up.

  “Luke!” she said, and her voice sounded bright. “You’re home! Did you get home today?”

  “Yeah. A little while ago,” I answered, purposely keeping my voice as toneless as possible.

  She took two steps toward me. “Kieran and I are here for a while.”

  “So I heard.”

  She took another step toward me.

  The closer she got, the more I could see she had changed in the seven months she’d been gone. She was taller, and she had filled out in the places where a girl’s body becomes a woman’s.

  “Can I come up?”

  I swallowed. “If you want.”

  She walked to the tree and disappeared from view. I could hear her climbing up. Then her head poked through the opening in the floor, and she clambered inside.

  “So you were in South Dakota at your grandparents’?” she asked as she swung her legs in.

  “Yep.”

  I watched her settle into a cross-legged position. Her now womanlike face stared back at him. She seemed to be waiting for me to say more.

  “Aunt Eleanor went on a cruise,” she said when I did not speak up.

  “Oh.”

  An awkward pause followed.

  “Grandma came up to get us.”

  “So you’re only staying for a little while?” The question fell from my lips before I had time to consider if it mattered to me.

  “I don’t know. Grandma hasn’t said. Sometimes she acts like she’s glad to have us back, and other times it’s like she can’t stand us. She’s different… I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll catch her looking at Kieran and it almost looks like she wants him. Like she loves him. And then the next minute she’s yelling at him. It’s weird.”

  I said nothing. That didn’t seem weird to me. It seemed like good ol’ Nell. Impossible to please.

  “Living with Aunt Eleanor hasn’t been all that bad,” Norah said, moving on. “I mean, it’s not the greatest, but she takes us places like the zoo and museums and stuff. I think she really misses her grandkids. They live in Nevada. She hardly ever sees them.”

  I knew it was my turn to say something, but all I could think of to say was, What were you doing on the back of Matt’s motorcycle? I didn’t know if I was angry, jealous, or concerned. Or maybe a crazy combination of all three.

  “Luke, are you mad at me?” she said, giving me exactly what I needed—an opportunity to find out.

  “What were you doing with Matt?”

  “What?”

  When I repeated the question, I felt the warm rush of embarrassment creep across my face. I knew how I sounded. I sounded like I was the wounded boyfriend. I told myself I was neither. Not wounded. Not the boyfriend.

  “He gave me a ride home,” she said plainly, studying my face.

  “A ride home?”

  “Yeah.”

  I wanted to ask, From where? But I felt silly even thinking it. That’s what a parent would ask.

  “He invited me to one of his friend’s houses. Grandma said I could go if I was home by ten.”

  “You went to one of his friend’s houses? And Nell let you go?” I said, feeling angry all over again.

  “Well, yeah.” Norah frowned in confusion. “Luke, are you and Matt, like, mad at each other or something?”

  I turned my head to consider my answer without having to look at her. It wasn’t that I was mad at Matt; I just didn’t have that much in common with him anymore. The things that Matt liked to do with his free time reminded me too much of Darrel Janvik and all the things he had liked to do. I didn’t want to end up like Darrel Janvik. I didn’t want Norah to end up like Darrel Janvik. I found myself wondering for the first time if it truly was possible to break the curse. If Norah could grow up and be a Janvik without acting like one. If it were going to happen, she’d have to stay clear of people like Matt.

  “He and I just don’t like the same things anymore, Norah.”

  “Like what things?”

  “Well, he likes to go to drinking parties, he likes to smoke pot, he likes to skip school, he likes to get into trouble,” I answered. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here in Halcyon. I don’t want to have to work the line in the paint factory because I’ve got no other options. And I don’t want the highlight of my week to be drowning my paycheck in beer at The Eight Ball in Carrow.”

  I had not meant for my explanation to sound like a sad commentary on the demise of Darrel Janvik, but there it was. “And that’s where Matt is headed,” I continued. “I don’t want to hang out with people like that.”

  Her gray eyes held my gaze. They looked like metal in the mix of moonglow and lantern light. I wondered if she was seeing in her mind the lifeless body of her hopeless father, lying in a pool of blood and wasted opportunities.

  “Do you think I’m like that?” she asked.

  Images of Norah caring patiently for Kieran, of her deflecting Nell’s and Darrel’s constant verbal abuse, of her tireless efforts to locate her mother floated across my mind. She was not like them. She was not like Nell and Darrel and Matt. But she could be. Anybody could be. All you had to do is want it. I did not think she wanted it.

  “No,” I said gently. “I don’t.”

  She seemed to visibly relax. “You think I should stay away from Matt?”

  “Matt and I have been friends since kindergarten, and I’ll probably always think of him as my friend, but I don’t think he’s safe to be around.”

  “Then I won’t hang out with him anymore,” she said firmly. “I don’t want to stay in Halcyon either. I want to go back to San Diego when I grow up. Maybe I can run a little hotel on the beach, and Kieran can work at Sea World like he’s always wanted. And our mom can live with us. If she were happy, I don’t think she’d do drugs. And if she lived with Kieran and me on the beach, she’d be happy. I got a letter from her. Did I tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “She’s hoping to get out early, in two more years instead of four. She didn’t know a cop had been killed. That guy she was with never told her he’d shot a cop. I told you she couldn’t have had anything to do with killing anybody.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this.

  “She’s doing everything they say and hasn’t caused any trouble, except for one little fight, and that wasn’t her fault either. When she gets out, she’s going to come for us. Kieran is so excited. He keeps a box of Argo cornstarch by his bed. At first, Aunt Eleanor had a fit when she found her cornstarch in his room. I think she thought he was eating it or something. But then I told her Kieran just likes looking at the lady on the front ’cause she looks like our mom. She bought him his own box.”

  At the mention of Kieran’s name and Argo cornstarch, I immediately thought of Tommy I must have betrayed where my thoughts went because a look of uneasiness fell across Norah’s face. It was like she could sense what I was about to ask next.

  “So does Kieran still think Tommy is real?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, attempting to sound nonchalant.

  “Sometimes?”

  “He only talks to Tommy when he’s having a really bad day. Most of his days are good.”

  “So he still thinks he’s real?”

  She stiffened. “It’s not as bad as it was in the beginning. He�
��s way better!”

  “Yeah, but Norah—Kieran’s, what, eight, nine?” I said. “Don’t you think he’s getting a little old for this?”

  She leaned forward, and her voice took on a defensive edge. “So what if right now Kieran still needs Tommy from time to time. Look at everything he’s lost! His home, his parents! There’s nothing constant in his life except me and…”

  “And Tommy,” I finished her sentence when she would not.

  “It’s not as bad as it was in the beginning,” she repeated. “Don’t make a big deal about this, Luke. He’ll be fine. When Mom comes back for us, he’ll be fine. It’s none of your business anyway!”

  Her words stung as if she had slapped me. How could she say it was none of my business? She’d begged me for help with her brother last summer! She’d insisted I was the one best suited to ease Tommy out of Kieran’s grasp.

  “I’m sorry!” Norah suddenly whimpered. “I’m really sorry! I shouldn’t have said that, Luke.” She reached out and touched my knee. Her hand was warm and soft. Then she drew it away.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her we had had a deal and it was way past Christmas. But I looked into her troubled eyes and at the hand that had touched me. I didn’t say it.

  “I’m not going to say anything to anyone,” I finally said. “Even though I probably should. You probably should.”

  “He’s going to be all right. He will,” she assured me. “I promise I won’t let him live this way forever. Just for right now. And I still think maybe, in time, he’ll listen to you, Luke. Maybe there’s still a chance you could help him.”

  “I don’t know, Norah. I’m not a psychologist.”

  “He doesn’t need a psychologist! He just needs someone who understands him and who he can look up to.”

  I wasn’t sure I did understand Kieran, so I said nothing.

  “You know, sometimes I’m a little jealous that when things are really tough and he feels alone, Kieran has Tommy to talk to.”

  I felt a curious and scary compulsion, thanks to years of Sunday-school lessons, to remind her that no one is truly ever alone.