Denis Ever After

by Tony Abbott

  Matt is the first to say it. “So. Denis. Anything look familiar? Is this the scene of the crime?”

  I drown and float and drown and float.

  Trey shivers. “It’s horrible to think of a murder being committed in such a beautiful place.”

  Murder? Yes. Everyone knows that. But again I find that the word pinches me as if it’s wrong, or somehow it’s wrong, in a way I don’t know yet. “Sorry. I got nothing—”

  “Matt, Trey?” Mom calls from the porch. She’s wearing short hiking boots, does a happy shuffle on the floorboards. “A quick hike before the sun goes down?”

  I don’t go with them, but instead glide under a stand of oak trees at the edge of a clearing. Closing my eyes to the beauty of it, I go into myself, think about water, and begin to see . . . a face. Except it’s not a face exactly, only a chin, a cheek, an eye. Did I see someone in profile here? If I did, where is the silver? Is it just silver because of Silver Lake? But what about the leaves? There are yellow leaves scattered on the ground all over, but they’re maple leaves, not birch leaves. The dark presence at the corner of my vision could be a bare tree, I suppose, but the image is so straight in my eye, so clean, not a trunk with branches. I don’t know.

  I don’t.

  When the three of them return from the hike, their faces are flushed. The sun has gone. I haven’t moved. Matt waves at me to follow, and I do, at a distance. They go into the lodge’s dining room. There’s another family, a father and two daughters, a mother and a son. They talk like strangers do, comparing notes about summer, towns, schools, holiday plans, whatever. I drift back out. An hour passes, night rolls over the lake. Lamps light the long porches, the boardwalk, the dock. The moon rises. The lake turns silver.

  There are miles and miles of forest and hill and lake and nature here, and no light to bleach the dark. Innumerable stars prick the black velvet. The night thickens and clears, heavies and grows lighter than air. Okay, okay. I died here. I died here. I died here?

  Matt comes out on the porch and when he calls softly for me, I fade back into the trees.

  I don’t want to talk. He goes back inside.

  Standing at the edge of the forest, I take in the flatness of the lake under the moon, and the lodge lit from inside with all the chatting and laughing—I see Trey and Matt through the windows—and I wonder, what difference does it make how I died?

  Maybe I even know the poor soul who did it. What if I pass him each morning at the beach in Port Haven, enjoy the sunshine with him. Or maybe he’s worse off than me and has already faded into Garden Hills, forgotten and dead for real.

  I should tell Matt to give the whole thing up. Just give it up. At the very least Trey needs the space I’m taking. They all do. I’ll go back to GeeGee, hope everyone here forgets me so I can get clean, and climb the hills like I’m supposed to.

  Under the unfriendly trees, I resolve to tell Matt in the morning. I’ll tell him I’m leaving before we even bother to search for any clues. Forget clues. Forget this.

  “And that will be that.”

  Then the leaves rustle under the tall oaks behind me.

  Footsteps crunch among the pine needles.

  Turning, I spy a man picking his way among the rocks at the ragged end of the woods. He disappears and reappears, shifting in the blotchy fabric of his jacket. He steps slowly to the water, his moon-cast shadow a black angle on the sand. Then he stops and stares into the lodge’s windows, stares at Matt and Trey and my parents, and utters an unspeakable curse.

  36

  In Cold Water

  “Matt!” I shout instinctively, not knowing if he’ll hear me inside the lodge. “Matt, get out here!”

  He does hear. He slides quickly and fluidly out the lodge doors onto the porch, careful not to alert the others. Cold has fallen hard. Trey follows closely behind, pausing in the doorframe.

  “It’s the guy who’s been stalking us!” I yell.

  Lumbering, but fast, the man heels it for the trees, then falters abruptly, as if he, too, hears my call. A man is taking shape in my mind, not this man. A gangly man, not this man. This man switches back and heads clumsily for the lodge pier.

  Trey runs up with Matt, both breathing hard. “The stalker followed us here?”

  “I spotted him outside our house, at school, on the road. There he is!”

  The guy flails on the pier, but the motorboat is chained fast, so he slips into a kayak. He tears the tether loose, but Trey, being such a lake person, slides past Matt, grabs the rope, and swings it around a piling to hold the kayak fast.

  I grab onto the man’s neck and scream. “Ssstoppp!”

  The guy gags. “Okay, okay, okay!”

  “Who are you?” Matt shouts, tugging his phone out and flicking on the flashlight.

  The man’s face goes blue in the light. I see his balloon of a gut and nearly swallow my tongue. “It’s Sandbag!”

  Matt gapes. “You’re Maywell Tibbs!”

  “How in heaven you know my name?”

  “You killed my brother, you—!” Matt spits out a word I’ve never heard him use before.

  “I didn’t!” he says. His beady eyes flicker all around. He knows I’m right there. He can’t see me, but he feels me crowding him and he’s scared. Breathing a foul breath, he lets his shoulders slump and his hands fall to his lap. “I didn’t kill him. Your brother. I knowed it was him, but I didn’t kill him. I never meant to, I just wanted money, then I seen the tag on him.”

  “What tag?” Trey asks.

  “His army tag!”

  “The dog tag he wore?” Matt says. “You stole it off him, then drowned him here and took him to Gettysburg—”

  “Gettysburg! That’s clear across the state. I was never there till following you! I got stopped, too. But I didn’t have my pickup five years ago. I had Jenny, and Jenny never would have made it there. And this lake? I never been here before.”

  “Liar!” Matt spits. “And stop talking like a bad movie. We know you grew up in Lyndora. Melrose said you drowned a dog in a lake. This lake!”

  Something in Maywell Tibbs cracks. He pauses but can’t quite lose his way of speaking. “I never drowned no dog. Any dog. If I told Melrose I did, it was to scare him. I never been here and I never stole your daddy’s dog tag. He is a vet. I seen his tag on your brother.” His eyes flicker in the light of a lazy spray of white sparks. “Stronger than money is brothers in the service. You don’t steal tags.”

  “You’ve been stalking them,” Trey snaps. “We all know it. Why?”

  Maywell thrusts a finger at Matt. “Since I seen you in the band at St. Francis hospice weeks back. My momma, Momma-May, is dying there. I nearly died, too, seeing your face. I thought you would sic the cops on me for taking your brother, until I recollect you never saw me. But I followed you. Then you went to that coaster so I thought you knew.”

  Matt’s hands shake. “What were you going to do, kill me, too?”

  “How? If the daddy of your twin is a vet, so is your daddy a vet. Plus, I tode you, I didn’t kill your brother, I let him go the next morning.”

  “Tuesday? Are we talking about Tuesday? And stop the dumb talk!”

  “Ask him where. If he didn’t kill me, where did he take me?”

  Matt does, and after a few breaths, Maywell says, “Who do you talk to when you need answers? I asked Daddy what to do, and he give me his answer. And what you think he said? ‘Let him go,’ he said. It started to snow right then. But I did. I let him go. . . .”

  It started to snow right then.

  It started to snow.

  Snow.

  And like a rush of frigid air, I see flakes drifting against the gray dark sky, then more flakes among bare trees, falling and falling, and the yellow leaves becoming white on the ground. The dark shape at the edge of my eye is there. The man in camouflage is there. Not this man. Another man. I am suddenly exhausted, sullen.

  “He’s telling the truth,” I say. “White sparks means he’s tellin
g—”

  “Matt! Trey!” It’s Dad, shouting from the lodge porch. “Where are you two?”

  Maywell uses the distraction. He pushes Matt away and jumps out of the kayak. Even with his gut, bigger than I remember it, he’s up the bank and into the woods in a flash.

  Matt jumps after him. “Stop him! He kidnapped and tortured you!”

  “Matt!” Dad yells.

  “Forget him,” I say. “When this is over, tell Dad to call the detective, Sparn. Maywell will pay for what he did. But he didn’t kill me. We don’t need him right now.”

  “Are you guys all right?” Dad huffs, running toward us.

  “Yeah,” says Trey. “Just poking around. Enjoying the night.”

  I hear a truck start up. It drives off. The sound of the engine fades, and it’s just us and the stillness settling over the lake.

  The quiet doesn’t last. The door bangs behind us as Mom storms out of the lodge, holding a folder in her hands. I know instantly what it is, Matt does too. His police file.

  “You tricked me!” she shouts, brushing past Trey, who stands openmouthed, staring at Matt. “You two tricked me—again.”

  “Tricked you? How?” Dad is puzzled. “Bonnie, calm down. What are you talking about?”

  “The police file,” Mom says, shaking it at him. “I found it in Matt’s things. This is all about Denis, I know it. That’s the only reason we’re at this lake. You’re searching and digging for clues about Denis. You cooked this up together. And I fell for it!”

  “Bonnie, I don’t know what this is about, but for me it’s just a weekend. Like Matt said. It’s beautiful here.”

  “Mom—” Matt starts, but she continues in a very quiet voice that is hard as iron.

  “I don’t know if I can stay, Gary.”

  “Where? Here?”

  “With you!” she said. “I don’t think I can. I’ve already called a car to pick me up. I’m going home. You keep doing this, and it’s killing us. More than that, you can’t drag Matt through this hell.”

  Matt inches toward Trey, pleading with his eyes. “Mom, you have this all wrong—”

  Dad puts his hand up to Matt. In the silver glow of the moon, he gives Mom an almost casual expression, a look as still as hers is angry. “You know, as far as I know, this has nothing at all to do with Denis, but you think I’m dragging Matt through hell? Well, it’s where we live now.”

  “No, Gary. It’s where you live. You’ve lived there for five years. Heck, since your father first hit you, you’ve been in hell. The rest of us don’t have to live there. The rest of us can leave the past in the past. You could leave all that behind, too. You could, but you don’t want to. You love it, the death and blood, the leg, the girl, all of it . . .”

  The girl? What girl?

  To Dad, the hugeness of how she’s wrong is too big to fight, to answer in any way he knows, especially not on the lakeshore, with Trey right there. All three of us know that Dad is clueless about Silver Lake, but he just takes it, not knowing what words to come out with. Mom thinks his silence means he expects her to leave. It doesn’t mean that at all. But Mom thinks it does.

  She breathes for almost a minute in the silence of the night, trembling from head to toe.

  “This is it. I can’t take it anymore. I wake up each morning already crushed by the day ahead, and here we are on a sick chase after something that isn’t there. The police are done with it. I’m done with it. Only you aren’t. Denis is gone. Gone, gone.”

  She throws the police file down, its contents sliding out on the ground, the photos catching the moonlight. Faltering back to the lodge, she manages to enter and disappear without a sound.

  Matt watches her, then turns. “Dad, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. This is all my fault—”

  Dad stands there out of breath. “No, it’s not. It’s not.” He’s black in the moon shadows. Trey hovers nearby, waiting for something to happen without knowing what that might be. I shouldn’t be sensing anything as strongly as I am now, and I know it’s reckless, but there’s a heaviness growing in me, weighing me. I’m doing something no one I know has done, staying here so long, going so deep, clinging so close to my twin brother, that I’m . . . I don’t even know what the word is.

  “Should we go to her?” Matt whispers. “Say it’s my fault, and that I’m so sorry?”

  “Not yet.” Dad rocks like he did at the battlefield, stinging with the revelation that Mom wakes already crushed by the day ahead. “Let her cool down. I need to talk with you. Trey, sorry . . .”

  “I’ll see you inside,” Trey replies, then runs to gather up the contents of the file.

  Dad works his way to the shoreline, Matt by his side. As much as I don’t want to, I follow them. The idea of secrets makes me sick. What will Dad say? Could there possibly be any more pain still hidden?

  They wander along the beach. I wait, Matt waits quietly. Dad says nothing. In their minds they run over Mom’s outburst, which wasn’t even an outburst, but seemed deadly logical.

  Because, of course, she’s right. This has to end. Dad and Matt have to give up scratching and scraping and digging for answers, because the noise is killing our family. A solution has to be found—or not found—but my life has really got to end.

  Dad finally stops by the water, a half mile from the lodge. His look is faraway. I can’t tell whether he’s about to shut down or get mystical. When he speaks, it’s as if to himself.

  “I didn’t tell you everything that happened the day my father died.”

  Matt tenses, like at Gettysburg. He knows something bad is coming.

  “You probably heard Mom say there was a girl, right? There was. On the bus. Third grade. She died in the crash, too. Thrown. A window shattered, and, well, whatever. She died.”

  Matt’s knees nearly buckle. “Dad . . .”

  “It was one holy mess that day, and the real reason I served time after I left the hospital. The parents sued everyone. My father’s estate, which was a joke, there was nothing, the junky house. Then they somehow proved the bus driver had had blackouts, so they sued the city. They were destroyed. Gabby’s parents. That was her name. Gabby Tornillo.”

  Matt eyes me, then looks down. His feet are planted in the sand, his face is drained of color. “Dad, I’m so sorry.” It strikes me that Matt is hearing things kids aren’t usually told. Dad so badly needs to have someone to tell, someone who loves him and says so.

  “That time, that whole thing, was the worst in my life. That’s why . . .” Dad jams his eyes shut, squeezing tears down his cheeks, which he quickly wipes. “You know that’s why . . .”

  “Matt, bring him back. Don’t push it. He’s remembering horrible stuff.”

  But it’s not over for Matt. “Dad? That’s why what?”

  “Don’t you get it? That’s why Denis was taken from us. Taken from you. Because of the girl. Because of what I did. The horrible thing I did—”

  “Dad! No! No. That doesn’t make sense! Dad, no.”

  At exactly that moment, I hear a frantic whisper from the suite inside the lodge. It’s Mom. She calls in a way I haven’t heard in so long.

  “Denis . . . Denis . . .”

  Wrenching myself away from my brother and father on the shore, I fly back to the lodge. “Mom?”

  I find her in the room, leaning over the edge of the bed like a slumped S. On the floor next to her is her bag, packed and bulging. She’s staring into space.

  “Mom. Matt and Dad are on their way back. Mommy, I love you, don’t leave.”

  She checks the time on her phone, throws it in her bag.

  “Mom, stay. Please stay. Matt needs you. I’ll go away the instant we finish this, I promise. They’ll be back in a few minutes. Mommy, stay!” I stand in the moonlight from the window. There should be enough light to see me if she wants to. “Mom, I’m here, I’m right here. Mom, it’s Denis. Mom!”

  All of a sudden a scent of oranges overpowers me. I whirl around, and there is GeeGee, teetering
in the corner, her face a mask of white, with a thin red line down the center. Her eyes are black and slightly offset. They glint in the light. Her mouth twists painfully.

  “Tell them!” she cries thickly. “He was there! Tell them!”

  “GeeGee? You can’t be here!” I step to her, but she jerks toward my mother.

  “Someone please tell them. I can’t help anymore. But someone must!”

  “You can’t be here! It’s too dangerous!”

  She turns to me, and a look of horror flashes in her eyes. Her chest convulses, she staggers back. I go to embrace her, when she thrusts her hands to her face and shrieks at the top of her lungs. The cries of Melrose Tibbs rush back to me, and I wrap her heaving shoulders in my arms.

  “GeeGee, stop! Stop this! I’m taking you back! Don’t do this. I love you. I remember you!”

  And her wail loses its breath in a ragged cry. Her quaking limbs calm under my touch. She releases her hands from her face, and though she is crying, sobbing, the line of red down her face whitens, her cheeks draw subtle color into them, she turns her eyes up to me.

  “De . . . Denis . . . ?”

  “I’m taking you home now. Come with me.”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Still holding my great-grandmother tightly in my arms, I turn to my mother.

  “Stay, just a few minutes more, Mom, please!”

  I shout these words as I reach one hand to her, hoping she’ll feel even the barest touch. But she puts her fingers right through where I am and lifts the window shade. A car with its lights on is in the parking lot, waiting for her. She picks up her bag.

  “Tell them!” GeeGee cries to her. But it’s too late.

  “Good-bye,” Mom whispers to the empty room that isn’t empty at all. She walks out the door, and the room collapses into dead space.

  Not five minutes after the car peels away, Matt runs in the room. “Mom?”

  “She left,” I say. “She didn’t want to go. But she couldn’t wait. Sorry, I have to take GeeGee home.”