A River of Silence

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  Stunned, Kendra didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure if he was mocking her. “How did you know?”

  He set her hands, palms down, on her knees. “I have my ways.”

  “I know you think I’m rebelling against my upbringing, but it’s more than that. Mostly it’s me feeling like I can make a difference. Maybe save someone who might otherwise not be saved.” She stopped, knowing she sounded like a bad advertisement for the Peace Corps. “It’s idealistic. But I feel like I have to do it. Like it’s who I am.” She swallowed and waited for him to laugh.

  He licked his bottom lip, then bit off a shred of chapped skin. “So do it. I know how much it costs to give up a piece of yourself for someone else.”

  Searching his face, she wondered if her father might have once had a different dream for his own life—if her grandfather demanded more than her father wanted to give. She looked for something he left unsaid, but found only his usual poise and composure. Time to move on, she thought, grateful for that glimpse into her father’s heart. “If you knew my plans all along, why the party?” She cocked her head. “Why make it so hard for me?”

  He smiled sadly. “Decisions this important shouldn’t be easy. The party was my closing argument. If it didn’t convince you, I’d rest my case.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The day after the funeral, Dana returned to the house she shared with Bryce. Leaving Scott in the car with Reggie, she packed clothing into a large suitcase, then filled a box with Scott’s toys.

  Bryce stepped into the boys’ bedroom. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to be alone now,” she said, her gaze planted on Skyler’s empty crib. “Reggie will keep Scott. He’ll come over for the rest of our things later.”

  Bryce felt a softness toward her and a deep regret for all the pain of losing Skyler. She was barely more than a child herself. “Who will take care of Scotty while Reggie works?”

  “His father and stepmother have agreed to help out.”

  Bryce touched her shoulder. “You said she doesn’t like kids.”

  She shrugged.

  “But I don’t understand,” Bryce said. “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll stay with Angela for a little while. After that…I don’t know.” She shook her head. Her long hair swayed from side to side and Bryce grazed it lightly with his fingertips before she jerked away.

  “You’re welcome to stay here, you know that, don’t you?”

  “It’s no use,” she said. “It was wrong from the start, over before it even began. We both know that. I’ve been reading it in the cards for months and I should have listened.” Her gaze darted nervously around the bedroom and once again landed on Skyler’s crib.

  There was nothing more terrible than to face that crib scattered with stuffed animals and toys, the blue plaid blanket with the frayed satin binding he loved to press against his face.

  Bryce closed his eyes. Skyler was there again, awake and standing up in the crib. He wore his funny crooked smile that sank a dimple into his left cheek—just like the one on his mother’s face. It was an all-too-brief instant of perfect grace, a time when Bryce understood there would be no day in any future year when he could look at a small child without the warmth and weight of his love for Skyler closing in around his heart.

  He opened his eyes and tried one last time. “You’re wrong. It was good at first. And it can be good again. We need each other more than ever now. I’ll be going back to work soon. We’ll save our money and buy a new house.” No matter how upset he’d been with her immature behavior, Bryce never wanted to play a part in smashing her world.

  “No,” she said. “Scott is better off with Reggie. I know Tilly thinks I’m a sorry excuse for a mother. And she’s right.”

  “You’re not to blame for Skyler’s death,” Bryce said. “If anyone is, it’s me. I’m the one you should blame.”

  “Reggie wants Scott out of your house. He’s his father and he has rights.” She picked up the suitcase and walked away. Bryce followed with the box of Scott’s toys. Halfway to the car, she turned and faced him again. “Please. Try to understand. I got to get my life together, for Scotty’s sake.”

  Bryce loaded the box into the trunk of Reggie’s car, then turned and walked back inside. He didn’t want to give Reggie the satisfaction of seeing him stand in the driveway and watch as they drove away.

  Once inside, he felt like an intruder, a burglar roaming around his own house. He landed, without thinking about it, back in Scott and Skyler’s bedroom. He kept expecting Skyler to toddle down the hallway. He closed the closet door. Behind it, in the bedroom’s corner, a tiny red sneaker with a knotted lace paralyzed him. He clutched the small canvas shoe in the palm of his hand. For a long moment, he couldn’t move. The pain was unmerciful.

  Bryce was once so sure love was stronger than any obstacle. But for the third time in his life, it seemed flimsy when measured against what was lost. Whatever future possibilities he might have invented with Dana and the boys had been recalled, and the truth of his empty life stood before him.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, Radhauser paced the surgical waiting room at Rogue Valley Medical Center while Gracie had her mastectomy. He glanced at his watch. 11 a.m. Gracie had been in surgery for four hours.

  Before they wheeled her away, their gazes locked for a moment. And everything in their years together seemed precariously balanced. Their happiness a kind of arrogance, an abundance they took for granted before her diagnosis.

  He checked in at the desk. “Has there been any word?”

  The volunteer, an older woman with gray hair and a kind face, was dressed in a pink and white smock. “Dr. McCarthy will come out and talk to you once your wife is in recovery. It shouldn’t be long now.”

  Radhauser sat in one of the uncomfortable vinyl chairs lined up against the wall and picked up a newspaper, the comic section. He read, but couldn’t find anything funny. With his and Gracie’s future so uncertain, everything he read seemed ironic and dead serious. He tossed the newspaper back onto the table and stood again. This time he stared out the window at the way the sun filtered through the changing leaves in the hospital courtyard. One word hovered, like a prayer, inside his mind: please.

  “Mr. Radhauser.”

  He turned to find Dr. McCarthy standing inside a small doorway behind the volunteer’s desk. The doctor was wearing green scrubs. A surgical mask dangled around his throat like a necklace. “Follow me.”

  The doctor led Radhauser into a small conference room with a round table and four chairs—not unlike the one where he received the news of Laura and Lucas’ deaths. They seated themselves.

  “Everything went well. I believe we got all the cancer and the surrounding tissue appears healthy. But we’ll have to wait on the lymph node biopsies. The preliminaries look good.”

  “When will you have them?”

  “By the end of the week if we’re lucky. I’ll call you. And we’ll talk again then. Node biopsies are the best prognosticators for long-term survival.”

  Long-term survival. There it was again—that awful fear lurking like a monster in the closet. The last few days, loving someone with cancer, had been a roller coaster of emotions.

  “And the baby?”

  McCarthy smiled. “We had your wife’s obstetrician with us in the OR, just in case. She and the anesthesiologist monitored the fetal heartbeat. Your son was a trooper, Mr. Radhauser. He didn’t miss a beat.”

  The roller coaster climbed and Radhauser could barely contain his pride at his son’s first compliment. Way to go, Jonathan Lucas Radhauser. To his surprise, it had been Gracie who’d wanted to include Lucas as the baby’s middle name. She claimed it was a way for their son to honor the brother he never had a chance to know. He thought about the fight they had over the clemency hearing and how Gracie said she was tired of living with ghosts. He smiled to himself at her inconsistency. One more reason to love Gracie.

  “Do you think we made the r
ight decision? Do you think my wife will be okay?”

  McCarthy appeared to ponder the questions for a moment. “Because of the aggressive nature of this cancer, I’d feel slightly more comfortable if we could start chemotherapy in a couple weeks, followed by radiation. But we’ll do a course of both once the baby is delivered. It’s hard to come between a mother and her child. And I think her chances are good, especially if the lymph nodes are clean.”

  “Will she be able to carry the baby to term?”

  “We may decide to induce a few weeks early or take the baby by cesarean if the nodes give us any reason for concern.”

  “Can the fact that she has had breast cancer hurt the baby?”

  “There are no studies showing that breast cancer itself harms the unborn fetus.”

  Radhauser stood and shook McCarthy’s hand. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “No thanks necessary. I’m just doing my job.”

  “May I see her now?”

  A nurse led him to the recovery room. Gracie’s eyes fluttered open when he rubbed the back of his hand across her cheek. She was lying on a gurney behind a thin, flowered curtain in a pale blue room that smelled of something antiseptic. A monitor above her head displayed her blood pressure and heart rate. A plastic tube carried fluid from a bag hooked over a metal tree into a catheter in her vein.

  He pulled the chair close to her bed and watched for the rise and fall of the sheet that covered her body. When he was certain she was breathing normally, he stepped outside the room, phoned Gracie’s mother to tell her the good news, then stood in front of a small window at the end of the corridor.

  It, like the waiting room window, looked down on the hospital courtyard where the trees were brilliant with crimson, orange, and gold. In this heightened state of awareness, he saw every leaf on every tree. Birches bright as lemon peels. The sun was high in the afternoon sky and it was all so beautiful. He felt the air entering and going out of his lungs. Gracie and their son were okay. It was such a relief and such an amazing feeling to be alive, as if someone had loosened a belt from around his chest—a belt cinched way too tight. He made no effort to hold back his tears—simply allowed himself to weep with relief and gratitude. This last week put his angst over the clemency hearing into perspective. Maybe he’d mail his victim impact statement and not appear in person.

  An hour later, Gracie was transferred to her room. When the dinner tray came, she opened her eyes, smiled at him, and told him to eat. “Then get out of here. And go to work. Before Murphy has a heart attack. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Her eyes closed.

  As he ate a few bites of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, he wondered if Vernon had found Monty Taylor and brought him in for questioning. He pushed the case out of his mind for a few minutes and sat by her bed, watching her sleep. The light over her head was a focused beam that fell on her dark hair in a way that formed a halo. For a moment, Gracie looked like an angel. A case where illusion was so much larger than truth.

  * * *

  When Radhauser discovered Montgomery Taylor, a new resident in Ashland, had been charged with the molestation of his two-year-old nephew in Indianapolis, Radhauser’s pulse quickened. Maybe he was finally onto something that could lead to an arrest. Encouraged, he found Taylor’s address. Baum Street, very close to Lithia Park and the Bryce house on Pine.

  It was dusk when Radhauser arrived. The house, one of the many Victorian beauties that graced Ashland, was newly painted a Wedgewood blue with dark burgundy trim. He rang the bell.

  A woman answered. She appeared to be in her late seventies, dressed in a flowered skirt, bright pink blouse, and ballet slippers. Through the screen door, he caught the scent of mothballs and roses.

  She smiled. “What brings a handsome cowboy to my front door? Are you looking to rent a room?” She was a little hunched over and held a cane in her right hand. Her gray hair was cut short in the back, much longer at the sides where it brushed against her rouged cheeks.

  He introduced himself and showed his badge.

  “I’m Mrs. Carmichael, though the mister died more than twenty years ago.”

  “I understand Monty Taylor lives here.”

  “Yes. He rents rooms from me on the second floor.” She squinted and stared hard at Radhauser. “Has he done something wrong?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Radhauser said. “That’s why I need to see him. May I come inside?”

  She straightened her back as if bracing herself for something she didn’t want to hear. “He’s not home. But I’m sure he’s done nothing wrong. He’s studying to be a photographer. And sometimes he reads out loud to me.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “A poetry reading at the Medford library.”

  “Would you mind showing me his room?”

  She took a step back. “I don’t think I should do that without his permission. I have some problems with my hip and don’t climb the stairs anymore. Who would watch you?”

  “I have a warrant,” he said.

  She pulled in a sharp breath. Shock widened her eyes as she moved aside, so he could enter.

  “It entitles me to search his room, even if he isn’t home. And I don’t need watching.”

  “What has Monty done?”

  Radhauser didn’t want to frighten her by stating Monty was a possible suspect in a murder case. “I don’t know that he’s done anything yet. I’m early into my investigation. And his name came up.”

  He showed her the warrant.

  Her wrinkled face whitened and her rouged cheeks appeared ever brighter. She handed it back to him, her hands trembling.

  “Is Mr. Taylor your only tenant?”

  “At the moment,” she said. “But I’m advertising for one more. The extra money helps a lot with maintenance. And I enjoy the company.”

  She hobbled beside Radhauser to the staircase, propped her cane against the railing, and stood, wringing her hands. “I don’t know. This doesn’t feel good to me. What if he’s upset? Tenants expect some privacy.”

  “I won’t disturb anything,” Radhauser said. “And you don’t have to tell him I was here if it makes it easier for you.”

  “But what if he knows? Sometimes people can tell if a stranger has stepped inside their private space. It’s a vibrational thing.”

  Just what Radhauser needed, a new-age senior citizen concerned with vibrational energy. “What you tell him is your business. But I need to see the room. Now.”

  Her lips disappeared into a tight seam as she glanced at his briefcase. “What if you take something that belongs to Monty and hide it in your satchel?”

  Radhauser sighed, then opened his briefcase and took out his camera. “I’m required to leave an inventory of anything I take. But tell you what, how about I leave my satchel on the steps?” He set his briefcase on the bottom stair.

  “What are you looking for?”

  He had the sense she could see inside him and didn’t approve of what she found there.

  “It’s not right,” she said. “You should know what you’re looking for.”

  Radhauser was losing patience. “I won’t know until I find it.”

  “His room is upstairs, down the corridor, first door on the right. His darkroom was originally a nursery. But he said it was perfect because it didn’t have any windows. He’s serious about his photography and quite good. His bathroom is at the end of the hallway. You won’t find a mess. Monty’s a neat freak. A perfect tenant.”

  Radhauser took the stairs two at a time, hurried down the corridor and opened the bathroom door first. The room was clean and smelled like Pine-Sol. He found nothing in the medicine chest except over-the-counter antacids, cough syrup, and aspirin. Nothing that resembled Haloperidol.

  When he flipped on the light in the bedroom, he discovered another tidy room. The floor was hardwood and spotless. A camera with a very long telephoto lens sat on the desk. Hang a wooden cross over the bed and Radhauser would believe he was in a monastery.

>   There was a double bed neatly made with a brown-corded bedspread, matching pillow shams, and curtains at the room’s only window. It faced west and traces of brilliant orange and red sky showed through the spaces between the trees. A maple chest of drawers, a bookshelf filled with photography books, and a small desk and chair completed the furnishings.

  He snapped some pictures. His search of the drawers showed only stacks of neatly folded clothes. The closet was the same. All the hangers were plastic and pointed in the same direction. His shirts were arranged by color. All the blue ones hung together, then yellow, green and white. A clothes horse, Radhauser decided. With a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder. Probably the kind of man who never passed a mirror without stopping to look at himself.

  Monty’s darkroom revealed the usual tripods and shelves housing bottles of developer and fixer. It had a strong, unpleasant smell—like a combination of vinegar and bleach. Two stainless steel sinks were set into a cabinet in the middle of the small room. From the twine strung above them, photographs hung to dry by tiny clothespins. Six 8x10-inch pictures of a toddler in a baby swing like the ones at Lithia Park. And every available space on the walls of the stark room was filled with framed photographs. Many of them were disembodied parts. A toddler’s hand. One eye. Several of a toddler’s mouth. A close-up of a child’s ear.

  Interesting. And more than a little bizarre.

  Radhauser removed the pictures of the mouth and eye and compared the features with the ones still drying on the line. There was a dark spot on the toddler’s right eye, as if the pupil had somehow bled into the iris. And his top lip was much thinner than the bottom.

  Feeling a combination of disgust and excitement, he took pictures of the photographs, then rehung them. He needed to confirm with Bryce.

  But to Radhauser’s eye, this toddler looked a lot like Skyler Sterling.