by Lisa Unger
Finley always thought her name was a living symbol of how badly her parents got along, even in the early days. Her given name was Emily Finley Montgomery; her mother had insisted on naming her after Finley’s deceased Aunt Emily. Phil was totally against it, something about the cyclical nature of existence and One Hundred Years of Solitude—bad juju. There was a big fight, which ended in the compromise that they’d give their baby both names and let her choose when she was old enough. Finley was three when she made her choice. She didn’t want to be named after a dead person.
Same deal with Alfie; Amanda wanted to name her son after her father; Phil wanted Max—because it was a cool name. Both children bore Amanda’s last name; she’d kept her last name in the marriage and felt her children should have it, too. Another thing that drove Phil crazy.
“After I carried them in my body for nine months, delivered them naturally, and breast-fed for a year—why in the world would they get your last name? Because of some anachronistic idea of paternal lineage? Grow up, Philip.”
Control, control, control. That was Amanda’s thing.
If she misses me, Finley thought (with a little twinge of guilt), it’s only that I’ve escaped her grasp. Of course, that wasn’t quite true or entirely fair, but Finley didn’t want to think about her mother right now.
She stuffed her phone in her jacket pocket and walked up the drive to Cooper’s office as a golden patina of early afternoon light broke through gunmetal clouds. The house had a bright red door with a gold knocker, an autumn wreath. On the stoop sat a chaos of brightly colored ceramic pots.
She walked past the home, following a discreet sign tucked in the shrubbery that read: JONES COOPER PRIVATE INVESTIGATION. A small structure, which looked to be adjacent to the larger house, had two doors—glossy black with brushed nickel handles. The one on the left read MAGGIE COOPER, FAMILY AND ADOLESCENT THERAPIST.
Finley had been to enough therapy that she suppressed a shudder. Endless hours on couches, Dad stone-faced, Mom crying, therapists who thought they were dealing with a standard-issue troubled child, not even realizing how far out of their depth they really were. That feeling of being totally misunderstood by every adult around her had stayed with her.
She knocked on the other door, and after a few seconds Jones Cooper opened it for her and she stepped inside. There was a small foyer, with desk and chair that looked as if they had never been used—a spot for a secretary or an assistant. She followed Jones through another door, into a room that was nearly blinding in its blandness. White walls, beige carpet, desk, computer, phone, and couch—that was all, a totally utilitarian space.
“Ever think about decorating?” she asked. He motioned toward the couch and she sat.
She thought she saw the shade of a smile, but it was quickly gone, as if it hadn’t been there at all. He pointed to a picture of his wife and son that sat on his desk in a simple wood frame. “I’ve got that.”
“It’s all just kind of, I don’t know, beige.”
“It works,” he said, with a shrug. “I haven’t had any complaints until now.”
She nodded, looking at the carpet, which was not beige but dove gray, out the window, everywhere but at him.
“I guess you’re not here to talk about my decorating skills,” he said. “Or lack thereof.”
What was she doing here?
“I’m not like my grandmother,” said Finley abruptly. She realized that she was wringing her hands and tried to stop, tucking them beneath her.
“Okay,” he said.
He leaned back in the chair behind his desk, put his hands behind his head, fanning his arms out like the wings of a cobra. He had her in that stare. Not unkind, but seeing everything. Note to self: Don’t bother bullshitting Jones Cooper.
“But I want to help you, I think,” she said without meaning to. She hadn’t even meant to come here. “Can I try?”
He tilted his head slightly to the right. Had she expected him to seem happier about it? Like relieved or something?
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But remember we’re dealing with a family here, people experiencing the worst possible case scenario. We can’t afford any false leads—or false hope. This is not a game.”
She hadn’t really thought about that part of things. It—this thing, whatever it was—had always been about her and whoever was hanging around. She’d never had to consider the component of the living looking for answers. It added a layer of pressure she hadn’t considered. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. She thought about just getting up and walking out. Instead, she stayed seated.
“So how do you work with my grandmother?”
Jones leaned forward on his desk and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. She’d Googled him once and read a slew of articles about him, seen photos from when he was young—a jock, hometown heartthrob, lacrosse star turned local cop, until a scandal from his past caused him to retire. He’d kept secrets that came back at him—those consequences he was so worried about. In the old pictures, he’d been handsome, beautiful even. She could still see it in him, though he had deep wrinkles around his eyes, a fuller face.
“It’s been different every time,” he said. “The first time she came to me. A couple of times I went to her. But I do the real legwork, as if I’m working alone. If she comes up with something, we talk. There’s a lot of talking.”
Finley kind of liked that Jones Cooper was a reluctant believer, though she couldn’t say why.
“But you deal with the client, right?” asked Finley.
“Right,” he said. “And I was very clear with Mrs. Gleason that there were no guarantees. I told her that Eloise can’t always help. But, of course, in a case like this, expectations and desperation levels are high.”
“Yeah.”
Finley felt the weight of it all. According to Eloise, Finley was some kind of natural. But she didn’t disappear into visions like Eloise did, or actually communicate with the dead like Agatha Cross. Although she sort of did both of those things. But there wasn’t a whole lot of cohesion to what she experienced. Like in this case, she had the squeak-clink, the Little Bird, and the change purse in her pocket that gave her nothing.
Still, she had come here to see Jones not entirely of her own free will. She had been on her way to class when she stopped by his home instead.
“You’re growing into your abilities,” Eloise had said. “Be patient. Be mindful.”
These were two items that were not exactly high on Finley’s list of personal strengths. Anyway, what if Agatha and Eloise were wrong? What if her abilities never truly blossomed? What if she had to live this half life, the dead all around her, no way to ever know what they wanted? The thought of it filled her with a shuddering dread.
“So where were you going?” she asked. She felt her phone buzz in her pocket, but she resisted the urge to take it out and look at it. Too millennial in front of Jones; he was sure to disapprove.
“How did you know I was going somewhere?” Jones asked.
“You’re wearing your jacket,” she said. “I can hear your keys in your pocket. You’re holding your hat.”
Jones Cooper smiled, a rare thing. “I like observant better than psychic.”
“Maybe I’m both.” She knew it sounded like the statement of confidence. But really she just wasn’t sure.
He stood. “Don’t you have class?”
“I missed it already,” she said, rising as well. “Take me with you.”
She could feel reluctance in his silence.
“You’re heading somewhere relating to the case, right?”
He looked longingly at the door, obviously preferring to go alone. Why he agreed to take her along, she wasn’t sure. But he gave her a nod and held the door for her. She followed him down the path and climbed into the passenger seat of his maroon SUV without another word between them.
*
“About a year ago, the family rented this cabin,” said Jones. They had been driving for a while down a long ru
ral road, studded with mailboxes but no homes visible from the street.
“Destination is in point five miles on your right,” said the navigation computer.
He turned off the road and they drove another few minutes up a dark, rocky drive before they reached the clearing, a pretty log cabin coming into view.
“This is a rental property,” said Jones. “But since the Gleason girl went missing, the owner hasn’t had many takers. It was a crime scene for a while, after which there was a bit of stigma attached to the place. Then the season ended.”
He brought the vehicle to a stop, and they climbed out. Was there a new chill in the air, a sudden drop in temperature? Finley zipped up her leather jacket, digging her hands deep into her pockets. She hated the cold and was already grieving warm air and long days and the sound of crickets.
“I read the police report,” Jones went on. “I still have connections at The Hollows PD. No physical evidence was recovered here.”
She looked at the swing hanging from the tree; it swayed listlessly in the breeze. A short red plank attached to a blue-and-white rope.
What do you think? Did Daddy do good? She heard and she didn’t hear it. It was a whisper in the leaves, an echo.
“What are we looking for?” asked Finley.
“We’ll know it if we see it.”
They broke apart, Jones to the left, Finley to the right. She walked around the narrow side yard and into the back, where a sturdy wooden playhouse dwelled in the shade of trees. Adjacent was a slide, and a ladder leading up to a roofed surface. It reminded her that she and Alfie had always wanted a tree house. Their dad always promised to build one, but he never did.
On a wide deck there was a picnic table, frayed lounge chairs, a covered barbeque. A path led down to the lake that glittered gold and copper in the afternoon sun. She walked toward the water, then out to the edge of the dock. All around, as far as she could see were trees and mountains off in the distance. These lake properties backed up against The Hollows Wood, a state park that sat on over a thousand acres.
Then she heard something, faint and sweet.
At first she thought it was the squeak-clink but quickly realized that it was the call of a bird. Lilting, twisting notes lifting joyfully into the air. She remembered the birdsong she’d heard online just the night before and looked around for it, the little fluff of white, black, and red, the rose-breasted grosbeak. But she didn’t see anything. It was too late in the season, wasn’t it?
Finley moved in the direction of the sound, away from the house, along the perimeter of the lake until she came to a trailhead. Wildflowers were still blooming around the wooden post that marked the opening with a sign that included a map. The trail, about two miles long, looped back to the entrance, an easy hike. There was a list of birds and plants one might see, a warning to bring water and a cell phone.
There he was, perched on top of the sign, a little black, red, and white ball of bird, puffed up proudly, with an ash-colored beak. As Finley approached, he flew off with an alarmed squeak, alighting in a branch above her. He looked down accusingly. Don’t go far, Little Bird. Stay where Daddy can see you. It was an echo on the air, something uttered long ago.
Finley stared at the bird, wondering. If she’d come here yesterday, before hearing the squeak-clink, which caused her to research the sound and finally discover the call of this bird, would his song have caught her attention? She asked herself her favorite question: What would Carl Jung say? He’d say that when there was a series of acausal events—the squeak-clink, the appearance now of the bird she’d read about online—that there must be a cause, even if that cause wasn’t explainable by science. Jung never discounted the rarity, the anomalous occurrence; he embraced it, explored it. He knew that science didn’t have all the answers to the true nature of the universe.
“They took this trail,” said Jones coming up behind her. She didn’t startle; she’d heard him approach.
She was still waiting to feel something, to have some kind of experience. But there was nothing, just the slightest buzz of unease, a tickle really at the back of her consciousness. This wasn’t going to work; she should have known. Nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to; she was going to let everyone down, just like she always did.
“Merri Gleason watched them walk off together,” he said. He turned and pointed back at the bay window that had taken on the gold of the sun.
She listened as he recounted what she’d already read online. A young man had stopped Wolf Gleason about a mile down the trail, pretending to be lost. While they spoke, someone hiding in the trees shot Gleason in the leg. He fell off the path, down the slope. The children had gone up ahead but came running back at the sound of gunfire. Gleason’s son was shot; the girl was taken. It was four hours and near dusk already before the ranger came looking for them.
“Local and state police were out here three days looking. Dogs. Choppers,” said Jones. He walked as he talked, looking everywhere—down on the ground, up into the sky, farther up the path. “The whole thing. Ten miles north through the trees. I was one of the volunteers.”
He shook his head, looking back at her. She dug her hands deeper into her pocket, feeling useless, searching for warmth.
“There must have been a vehicle waiting,” he said. “They could have been long gone by the time anyone started looking.”
He took out his flashlight, and they stepped onto the trail, started walking. They walked for a while, Finley clutching the girl’s change purse in her hand. Jones moved up ahead of her just a bit, now shining his flashlight about, though he really didn’t need it, the sky still held a little light. What was he looking for? She was about to ask.
It happened just like that, as if she had stepped through a doorway. Suddenly the sun was brighter, and she was moving fast, breathless. Up ahead, a man old, skeletal but strong, his face a jagged mountain, yanked a screaming girl by the arm up the path. He was dragging her as she kicked and fought like a wild animal.
“I swear to you,” he said through gritted teeth, yanking her hard. “I’ll kill you, you little brat.”
He had a rifle strapped around his back. “Then I’ll go back and kill your family.”
The girl quieted for a moment, whimpering. But then she dropped her weight to the ground. She was tiny, with a wild mass of blonde hair.
“Daaaaadddddyyyyyy,” she shrieked, desperate, panicked. The sound cut through Finley, sharp, serrated. “Daaaadddddyyyyy.”
The old man delivered a hard blow to her face, and the girl opened her mouth wide in a silent wail of pain and misery.
Finley was there, but she wasn’t there. She moved to stop the man, but she had no body, no will. She was just an observer. The helplessness of it was excruciating. She’s a child. Let her go! The words were loud, but she had no voice to speak them.
“Go back and finish it,” the man growled at someone Finley couldn’t see. He expertly removed a hunting knife from a sheath at his waist and handed it over, never losing his grip on the child who thrashed and shrieked.
“I don’t want to, Poppa.” It was a young voice, but thick and slow.
“Do it.”
Finley felt a churn of petulant anger, a sullen resistance, but also the cold finger of fear poking into her belly. Then she was moving back down the path away from the man and the girl. A disembodiment, a floating.
Up ahead, a boy, towheaded and slender, lay on the path, his expression blank and glassy, a great stain of blood on the thigh of his khaki pants, his shattered glasses next to him on the path.
“No,” he whispered. “Bring her back. Mommy.”
She wanted to go to him, to comfort him somehow. He was so young and so frightened, in pain. She ached with it. Do something for him!
“Leave him alone,” called a distant voice. At the edge of the path, she looked down at the man twisted, down on the slope off the path, his face obscured by the trees. He tried to claw his way back. Moving so slowly, grunting with effort.<
br />
“Where’s my daughter?” he managed. “Where is she?”
There was a blade in a young man’s hand. Was Finley in him? Beside him? Finley didn’t know. She could see his dirty, calloused fingers wrapped around the black handle, as if they were her own. Not a man’s hand, a boy’s thick, soft fingers. Oh, God, thought Finley. I don’t want to watch this. I don’t want to be in this.
You can look away, Eloise had said of her own visions. But if you do, you risk missing what you’re there to see and you’ll have to go back again and again until you figure out what you missed.
But whoever Finley was in (or near, or above, or what?) just sat down on the edge of the path, watching. He lay the knife down beside him. The little boy on the path closed his eyes after a time; he stopped whispering. The man on the hill stopped struggling, lay still. Do something!
But there was nothing she could do.
What do you see? Finley tried to quiet the roil of panic and anger, and be present. What do you see? The black-handled hunting knife. It’s late afternoon, the sun golden and low in the sky. She could still hear the girl screaming distantly, which meant that she and the old man were on foot. The man on the slope didn’t look like the pictures she’d seen of Wolf Gleason, but it was hard to tell.
Then Finley heard it, the sweet song of the rose-breasted grosbeak. It was quiet except for that, and the wind in the leaves.
His thoughts and feelings were hers. He liked to be alone in the woods, liked nothing better. He didn’t want to hunt like Poppa. He didn’t like to watch the light drain from things that never hurt anyone, that flicker of pain and terrible fear just before the end, the convulsion of life leaving. Where did they go? He had so many questions and never any answers. The world was such a confusing place and there was so much pain.
