In All Deep Places

by Susan Meissner

  There were no more headlines after that. Nell was gone. And Belinda was apparently not coming back to get Norah and Kieran’s belongings.

  “I wonder where Belinda is taking Norah and Kieran?” I quietly said to my dad the day before I left for college.

  “They’re going back to San Diego,” Dad said. I looked up from placing a duffel bag in my trunk.

  “She called here today when you were out with your friends, Luke.”

  I stiffened. “She did?”

  My dad nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now. She didn’t leave a number for you to call her back. I guess her mother has a friend there. Norah said it’s temporary.”

  “What else did she say?” I asked, staring at the contents of my trunk but not seeing any of it.

  “She didn’t say hardly anything, Luke. I didn’t even recognize her voice.” My father sounded sad. “She left an address for you, though.”

  Dad reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. On it was a San Diego address.

  I looked at it and hesitated. I was reminded of the other times in my life I had wanted Norah’s address and didn’t have it. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted it after all. But my father’s hand was extended to me and finally I reached for the slip of paper. I said nothing as I took the paper from him and shoved it inside my shirt pocket.

  Later that night, in the barrenness of my bedroom, I sat at my nearly empty desk, staring at the piece of paper that bore Norah’s address. Underneath it was a notecard and envelope that I had taken on impulse from my mother’s desk downstairs.

  The address was my only tie to Norah, and in that moment, it seemed the only tangible proof of our friendship. I stared at the letters and numbers, written in my dad’s very recognizable hand, wondering what I should do. Wondering why it seemed like I only had two choices and that neither one seemed the right one to make. I couldn’t make sense of why I had no desire to write to Norah and yet why I knew I must.

  I pulled a pen from the middle drawer of the desk, one of just a few I had left when I packed the contents of my room. Just say something. Say anything, my nudging conscience whispered. I put the pen to the paper:

  Norah,

  I’m really sorry about what happened to Kieran. And to you. I wish I could change what happened. I wish I could change a lot of things. I’m glad your mom came back for you and that you are going back to California.

  Tell Kieran hello from me. Tell him I am praying for him.

  Luke

  I read what I’d written. Twice. I placed the notecard in the envelope and licked it shut. It felt a little odd writing “Norah Janvik” on the outside of the envelope knowing what I now knew; knowing that she wasn’t a Janvik. Not really. I looked at the spot where my new return address should go and paused, surprised at my desire to leave it blank. I raised his head to my bedroom window and stared for several long minutes at the dark and empty tree house on the other side of the glass. Then I stood up, tucked the slip of paper with Norah’s address into my pants pocket and went downstairs. I took a postage stamp from my mother’s purse and placed it on the envelope.

  I stepped outside into the cooling night and put the envelope in my parents’ mailbox, raising the flag before I walked away.

  The next afternoon as I drove away with my dreams for the future, and as my mother cried and waved, I tried to picture Norah on a sunny, San Diego beach, in front of a cozy hotel, chatting with her guests. I tried to picture Belinda sitting in a lounge chair nearby, reading a novel and drinking iced tea. I tried to picture Kieran sitting in a wheelchair at the surf’s edge, breathing in the salted air and not feeling bitter about his dashed hopes of swimming with whales.

  I tried to picture it.

  But I could not.

  I sped away from Halcyon wishing things were different. I wished Nell had gotten rid of Darrel’s gun the first time it had become an invitation to disaster. I wished Norah hadn’t tried to grab the rifle. I wished the bullet had hit Belinda’s car or a tree or a streetlight. I wished there had been nothing between me and Norah but the simplest of times with no sorrows, no rescues, no kiss. Nothing agonizing or complicated or even breathtaking. But I knew wishes were only for children at birthday parties. This was the real world. And sometimes it was ugly. I would have to find a way to counter the ugliness. I would have to discover a way to create my own happiness, follow my own dreams, and bury the dead things of my childhood as surely as I had helped Kieran bury Tommy.

  I felt in my pocket for the slip of paper with Norah’s address. I withdrew it, keeping one hand on the steering wheel as I unfolded it and stared at the letters and numbers. What possible good could come from writing to her? Kissing her had been foolish enough; perpetuating my physical attraction to her by writing to her would be ten times worse. We had no future together. And our shared past was nothing to keep alive. It was time to end it. We would both be better off. She could move on, I could forget.

  I crumpled the paper into a ball and held it out the car window. A rushing current of air tugged at the wad in my hand. At the moment I was about to let it go, I suddenly withdrew my arm, bringing my hand back in the car, the crumpled paper safe in my closed fist. I reached over to the glove compartment, opened it, and tossed the ball of paper inside. For a split-second, I glanced away from the road and stared at the wad of paper now resting on a folded road atlas of the United States—a recent graduation gift. The little ball of paper looked small, insignificant, and useless sitting there.

  I turned back to the road ahead of me, slamming the compartment shut as the Halcyon city limits fell away behind me.

  Part Three

  Twenty-two

  Luke’s hands fell away from his laptop and he leaned back against the bed pillows, closing his eyes. Téa stirred beside him.

  He looked down at his wife’s sleeping body, her hair against the pillow, her form curled into an “S” next to him. It was a little after one o’clock in the morning and he had been writing for three hours, unable to pull himself away from the manuscript. The memories had been tumbling out of him almost faster than he could write them. And now he had written all he could. All that he knew.

  Téa turned over and cuddled next to him, draping an arm across his knees. When she and the girls arrived in Halcyon two weeks ago, he was buried deep in responsibilities; the paper, his father’s recovery, and the writing of his memoir. But he was surprised at the relief and peace he felt when his family arrived the day before the Wooden Shoes Festival. Téa and the girls were exhausted from the long drive across several states, but they were as glad to see him as he was to see them. It had been a long six weeks of separation and so much had happened.

  His father had made remarkable progress in rehab in that amount of time. Jack Foxbourne had regained some control over the right side of his body and was now walking, though unsteadily and with considerable effort, using a walker. He was able to produce sentences, though he had to squeeze the words out as if they were too large for the size of his mouth. His frustration was obvious, but so was his determination. The doctors were already discussing his release from the rehabilitation center. And with those discussions came other, less joyous talks.

  Luke’s father knew before his mother that he would not be returning to the paper. When Jack and Luke sat down with her and tried to discuss putting it up for sale, she left the room in anger. When she came back an hour later she told them it was not the time to talk about it. Jack eventually convinced her, with dogged determination in his unwieldy voice, that it was time to think about what was best for Luke and his family. And at this, MaryAnn finally relented. Luke contacted a newspaper broker the next day. Four days later, the publisher of the Carrow newspaper called him. The meeting to discuss the sale had gone well. It had been held in the staff meeting room at the rehabilitation center and ended with handshakes and an intent to buy.

  Once the paper was pried loose from MaryAnn’s heart
and head, it was surprisingly easy for her to discuss with Luke the sale of the house in Halcyon and the move to join Luke and Téa in Connecticut. Jack and MaryAnn had stayed in the guest cottage often when they visited. It was the perfect solution to the problem of Jack requiring a one-level home and MaryAnn’s need for assistance with Jack at just a moment’s notice. With the newspaper sold, there was no compelling need for Jack and MaryAnn to stay in Halcyon. And having her granddaughters playing on the floor by her feet while they discussed this plan also soothed the ache of having to say goodbye to so many things.

  Téa and the girls had been a huge help in getting the house ready to sell and helping his mother choose what to keep and what to leave behind. And though he was nearly a month past his July I deadline, Luke was feeling a sense of calm for the first time in two months. The worst of his dad’s troubles were behind them, he would soon be out from underneath the weight of the newspaper, he had a nearly complete manuscript to show Alan and he even had some answers to his own private questions.

  But he knew the manuscript was not finished.

  And he knew there were still questions that begged for answers.

  Luke pressed the save button on his laptop and closed the program. He turned off the computer, clicked it shut, and set it on the bedside table next to his parents’ bed. His mother had insisted he and Téa sleep in the master bedroom after she gave up the little apartment in Cedar Falls. Marissa and Noelle slept in Luke’s old room and his mother had taken over Ethan’s old bedroom. Luke leaned back against the pillow again, contemplating his next move. Instinctively he had reached down to caress Téa’s arm across his legs. He was both surprised and relieved that she had so enthusiastically encouraged him in his current writing project. Téa knew a few things about his teenage experiences with the Janvik family, but as Luke never wished to totally relive those days, he had never said much more than a few sentences here and there.

  Téa had been reading the manuscript as he printed out the pages to proof and had told him it was a story that surely needed telling even though so much of it was sad.

  “I do hope there’s a happy ending in store, though,” she had told him the day before when she handed back to him the latest pages. She had just read the part about the tornado. He hadn’t yet written about Kieran getting shot, but she knew it was coming. But Luke appreciated Téa’s insight that the story couldn’t just be about despair. It had to be about hope, too, or there was no point in telling it. Which is why he knew the story wasn’t finished.

  Luke’s touch on Téa’s arm awakened her and she looked up at him.

  “Done for tonight?” she mumbled.

  “I am as done as I can be,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

  “Then you’re finished?” she said raising her head.

  “No.”

  She waited for him to explain.

  “I need to know how it ends, Téa.” He moved his fingers through her hair.

  She blinked as she digested his words. “You re going to try and contact her.” It was not a question.

  “I have to. I can’t write the ending if I don’t.”

  “I suppose you can’t.”

  “I can’t end it here, with the last little bit I know,” he said. “And I want to give you that happy ending.”

  She smiled, but then the smile faded. “But what if there isn’t one.” She lowered her head and laid it on his chest.

  “But I control the story somewhat,” Luke said. “I’m in it. I can do what I can to make the ending a good one.” And as Luke said this, he saw himself at eighteen, tossing Norah’s address into his glove compartment, seeing it from time to time over the next few years, then oddly one day not seeing it—and being inwardly glad he no longer knew where it was. Losing the address had eased away the guilt over never looking at it again. Never sending Norah another letter. A wave of subtle remorse now swept over him. “I think maybe I should do what I can,” he added.

  Téa was silent for a moment. “But Luke, what if you can’t do it? I mean, you can’t change the past.”

  Luke stroked the back of her head. “No, I can’t. But the future hasn’t been touched yet. It’s a blank page, to use a trite metaphor. I can have a hand in what will be written there. I think there’s unfinished business between Norah and me.”

  “Unfinished business?” Worry lined her face.

  “Things I should have told her when I had the chance.”

  “Like what?”

  Luke stroked her back. “Like this world where we live out our days is not all there is. This is not as good as it gets. Remember a couple months ago, before all this happened and when I was stuck on my Red Herring manuscript and couldn’t write anything? Remember I said I felt like I had lost my edge—that even though I had everything, I still felt incomplete?”

  “Yes,” Téa said tentatively.

  “I think that’s how it is supposed to be, Téa. I’m not supposed to find all my contentment here, in this time and place. None of us are. We’re all created to long for heaven. It’s wired into us. And it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. That’s what gets us through the hard times. Knowing there’s more.”

  “I suppose you will want to go see her if you find her,” Téa said, after a long pause. “Alone?”

  Luke paused before answering. “It’s not that I want to go alone. I’d much rather have you with me. But I don’t know what’s in store for me. I think it would be best if you didn’t come. Besides, with the movers coming in a couple days, Mom’s going to need your help. If I wasn’t so late already with this manuscript I would hold off on going until later, but I need to finish it. I need to give Alan something.”

  “I know you do,” she said, looking up at him. “And I know even more that you need to know how it ends.”

  He looked down at her, grateful for Téa’s sensitivity. She understood him completely.

  “So where will you start looking for her?” she said.

  “Where I left off,” Luke said, turning to switch off the reading lamp on the table next to him. “Right here. In Halcyon.”

  Luke’s mother was pulling out the contents of a kitchen cupboard when Luke came downstairs the following morning.

  “I guess I won’t need all this Tupperware at the cottage,” she said blandly. “Does Téa want some of this?”

  Luke took a seat at the kitchen table and smiled. “She’s got a cupboard of her own filled with it, Mom.”

  “Oh, well,” MaryAnn sighed. “I’m sure Goodwill will take them.”

  She reached back into the cupboard and withdrew several ice cube trays.

  “Mom,” Luke began, “Would you happen to know where Norah and Kieran ended up after Belinda left with them?”

  MaryAnn’s torso was half in and half out of the cupboard. Her body froze as the question fell from Luke’s lips. She then slowly backed out and turned to look at him. She flicked away a stray gray hair from above her eyes. “What brings this up?” his mother said with a laugh. But it was a nervous laugh. She found nothing humorous in his question; that was obvious.

  Luke wondered how much he should tell her. She didn’t know what he was working on when he sat for hours on end at his laptop. She just knew it was his latest manuscript. And he was late with it.

  “I just need to know, Mom. I’ve been going over in my mind all that happened here, trying to make sense of it. I feel like I just buried everything when I left Halcyon. And I’m thinking now I made a mistake.”

  “No, you didn’t,” MaryAnn said quickly.

  “Mom,” Luke said, ignoring her rebuttal, “I need to know where they ended up.”

  MaryAnn blinked and swallowed. “Why?” she whispered.

  “I want to know where Norah and Kieran are. I want to try and contact them. I think I should, Mom. I think maybe I was wrong to just break off the friendship the way I did. It doesn’t feel right.”

  His mother sat back against the door of the cupboard, looking suddenly weary.

  “Pleas
e just leave it be,” she said, scarcely audible.

  Luke stared at her. It was like he was seventeen again and she was trying to keep him from danger. Trying to protect him from getting hurt, from getting lost in the Janvik abyss.

  “I just want to talk to them,” he said, reassuringly. “I don’t see the harm in that.”

  “Please just leave it be,” his mother said again, louder this time.

  Luke could tell she knew something that he did not.

  “Mom, what is it?”

  His mother looked long into his face before answering. “Luke, please just let this go. Don’t go poking around in stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with you anymore.”

  “Why not? That was ages ago. What’s the big deal?”

  His mother rose slowly to her feet, walked the few steps over to the kitchen table and sat down across from Luke. Her eyes were communicating something to him; he could feel it, sense it. Something had happened after Belinda took her children back to California. Something bad. And his mother knew what it was. Luke could feel something beginning to gnaw at the edge of his emotions. It was a strange mixture of dread and understanding. He waited for her to tell him.

  Finally she spoke. “Luke… Kieran died last year,” she said softly, not daring to look at him. Two of the five words she spoke ricocheted across Luke’s mind like darts.

  Kieran. Died.

  “What?” he exclaimed.

  MaryAnn shook her head, obviously unhappy with how the morning was turning out. “He drowned. In the ocean.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know this?”

  “Because she buried him here! She—” but his mother broke off.

  “She? Belinda? Belinda buried him here?”

  “No, not Belinda. Norah did. Belinda’s been dead for a few years. Drug overdose. All that money, and that’s all she could think to do with it!”

  “What money? They don’t have any money!” Luke stiffened. “Mom, how do you know all this?”