by Lisa Unger
“The original structure was built in 1855,” said Claudia. “But it’s been remodeled a number of times since then.”
She was embarrassed to admit that was all she knew about it. She remembered her father saying that the house was “unexceptional” but that the land was worth something, which was why he’d bought it. That word had stayed with her; maybe that’s why she hadn’t done more research.
Claudia felt a little pulse of excitement suddenly. She turned around a couple of times, trying to orient herself. If there were a tunnel here, where would it be?
She started walking the perimeter of the large space, skimming the cold, rough surface of the walls with her fingertips.
“What are you doing, Mom?”
She walked the whole way around until she found herself standing beneath the staircase. She hadn’t noticed it because of all the debris and junk piled high in front of it. But now she realized for the first time that the empty space beneath the stairs had been drywalled in, with no access to what would have been a lot of area within.
“Help me get some of this stuff out of the way,” said Claudia.
The three of them started shoving and lifting boxes, hefting them off to the side. The beam was a bigger problem; it took all three of them to shift it over even a few feet.
The basement itself was not finished, the concrete blocks of the walls exposed. In most unfinished basements, one wouldn’t bother to drywall in just the space under the stairs—unless you were trying to create an enclosed storage area. It was just something to get moldy, to be damaged if the basement flooded, which she knew this one sometimes did. In fact, now that she’d moved the boxes, she could see the water damage down near the floor, a black and orange discoloration. No, there wouldn’t be any point in the effort or expense—unless.
“Mom,” said Raven. “What are you thinking?”
Claudia looked back and forth between the kids, who were both watching her.
“Feel like doing a little demo?” she asked.
“Demo?” said Troy, confused. “Like a demonstration? For your blog?”
“Like demolition,” said Claudia.
Raven smiled. “Where’s the sledgehammer?”
• • •
JOSH HAD TRIED CLAUDIA TWICE on her cell phone, then on the landline. Then, frustrated, thinking, he went to the workshop to finish up the chair he was repairing for Mrs. Crabb. He’d called Todd, who said he would go over to keep working on the town houses. Josh promised to meet him. Todd was a good guy, did meticulous work, but he was slower than molasses when he worked alone. Working on the chair helped him manage the hard pulse of anxiety. An hour passed, two. She didn’t call back.
Rhett appeared in the doorway.
“Tick tock, little brother.”
twenty-six
About a month after my parents were killed, Paul and I went back to the house. There were things there that we needed. We pulled up in the old Suburban, and Paul and I just sat there while Catcher whimpered, desperate to get out and run around his yard. When he started to bark, Paul opened the door and the dog bounded toward the house, started scratching on the door.
Catcher was Mom’s dog. He loved romping through the woods with me and Dad, but it was Mom he followed from room to room. It was beside her that he slept. He’d been pining, not eating, pacing Paul’s apartment with the limp he had now, restless and howling at every siren. Now, it was me from whom he never wanted to be apart.
Paul unlocked the front door and Catcher ran inside, tore through the house. I stood on the porch, hands dug deep in my pockets, and looked at the flat gray sky, the black dead trees, the white field of snow.
“It’s been—” Paul started. He took a hard swallow and stared off into the middle distance so long that I didn’t think he was going to finish. “Cleaned up.”
I knew he had been there a number of times. I wondered if he’d been the one to clean the place—the kitchen where my mom’s blood had pooled, the basement where my dad had been shot.
I nodded but didn’t follow him inside right away. He left me to find my own way in, which was the way I needed to do things. Finally, I stepped into the foyer. What got me was how normal everything seemed. It could have been any day. Things were just as they had always been. Mom’s house shoes were still by the door, these blue embroidered tasseled things that her world-traveling friend had sent from a distant land I couldn’t even name.
Catcher came loping down the stairs, exuberance lost. He padded into the kitchen where he stood whining at his empty bowl. I couldn’t even look at him, so clear was his disappointment. He thought she was here.
On the refrigerator hung my math test; I’d earned an A—a big deal for me in math. On the whiteboard were scribbled Mom’s notes about milk and the book she needed to get for her book club, the date of my upcoming English test—a test I never took. I didn’t know when I was going back to school.
Aborted. Our lives had come to an abrupt and brutal end. I was the only unlucky one still breathing.
I made my way upstairs to my bedroom. It was full of things—cards, stuffed animals—things that came to the hospital that I didn’t remember receiving and which must have been moved home. Paul had retrieved my clothes, some books, my stuffed unicorn Mr. Emma that I’d been sleeping with since I was little. I’d been dragging the poor thing around everywhere since the beginning of time. It was practically a rag, ripped, sewed and sewed again, chewed on by Catcher, limp from lost stuffing.
I drifted from room to room. My mother’s purse sat on her dresser, keys beside it, like she was getting ready to head out to the store. The bed was unmade. They’d been woken in the night, never returned to this room. There was a glass of water by my father’s bed. Half-empty.
My parents didn’t have anything. That’s what was weird. My mom had some jewelry from her mother—a pair of small diamond earrings, a strand of pearls. They sat unworn in the black velvet box in a drawer. I took out the box and sat on the bed with it, opened it, and took those pieces out.
“She’d want you to keep those, of course,” Paul said, coming into the room. There was a hundred dollars in the box, too.
“Take it,” he said. I shoved it in my pocket. It felt like stealing.
“Are you okay?” he said.
My throat was swollen with sadness; my stomach ached with despair through my center.
“Yeah,” I said.
The jewelry, the cash, our photo albums, a framed picture of the three of us at Disney, a red cashmere scarf, the rest of my clothes, other stuff from my room—yearbooks, my laptop, my diaries. The things I wanted from the house filled about four boxes. When we loaded it in the Suburban, it looked like a sad collection of junk.
“That’s it?” asked Paul. “You’re sure that’s everything you want?”
“What else?” I asked.
He shrugged, shook his head, and looked back at the house.
“What happens to the rest of it?” I wanted to know.
“I’ll come out next weekend. Some of the guys are going to help me do an estate sale.”
I had no idea what that was, but I didn’t ask.
“We’ll sell what we can,” he said. “Those earnings will go into your college fund. Everything we can’t sell, we’ll donate. Mr. Bishop said we can store whatever else until after probate. He said he won’t even try to rent the place for a while.”
“What about the money?”
He blinked at me. We hadn’t talked at all about that night, though he’d been present for all my police interviews. So he knew everything that happened.
“What about it?”
“Is it here?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“He didn’t steal it, like they’re saying, and hide it here? He wasn’t dirty?”
That’s the thing, well, one of the things, that had really been eating at me. My dad was a hard-ass, but I always knew he was a good man, someone I could trust, rely upon to be there. He told me the tr
uth about things. He’d never missed a day of work, was never sick. He was upright and strong. If he wasn’t? If he wasn’t, then the very foundation of my world was made of sand.
Paul came in close and put strong, heavy hands on my shoulders, looked at me deep and long.
“Your dad didn’t do that, Zoey. Don’t believe it for one second. He would never do that to you, to your mom. If he knew where that money was, he’d have given it up in a heartbeat to save you.”
“Maybe he thought once he told them, that they’d kill us anyway. Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell.”
“No,” said Paul. “Your dad was not a dirty cop. I know he was hard, kid, and that you two had your problems. But I swear to God, he’d have lain down his life for you. He loved you and your mom. Believe that.”
His eyes filled with tears and then they spilled over. He bowed his head so I wouldn’t have to look, but to be honest I was relieved to see him cry. If it was bad enough for him to cry, then it was okay that I did little else.
I wanted, in that moment, to tell him what I hadn’t told anyone. That one night, a couple of weeks before the murders, I’d seen my dad leave the house after 1:00 a.m. It wasn’t unusual. I hadn’t heard the phone, but I didn’t always hear his cell. He came back just after 3:00. I watched him heave a bag out of the car, listened as he came in and headed down to the basement. I drifted off again while he was still down there.
I had forgotten all about it—until the night when the men came. That’s why I thought to say that it was in the basement. I wanted to tell Paul, but something stopped me. Because what did it mean? That my dad was dirty, that he had stolen the money, that he let my mom and me be tortured rather than give it up? No. It just didn’t make sense. Anyway, maybe it never happened. Maybe it was a dream. Everything was so jumbled and confused in my mind, time was so twisted and weird.
We were about to get in the car when Seth came out from the trees. Catcher ran to greet him, nearly knocking him over.
He knelt down to pet the big dog, to hug him.
“Hey,” I said, approaching. He rose, looked at me. He looked so tired, so sad. I already knew what he’d done, how he called the police and probably saved my life. But I couldn’t bring myself to thank him. He seemed like a stranger. I tried to remember that I had been a girl who had a crush on him, who wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Those two kids seemed like other people. He pulled me into an awkward hug, which I couldn’t return.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I was late to meet you. I couldn’t get out of the house. If I had . . .”
It was weird to me that he thought he had anything to do with it. It still is, how he allowed the event to define him, drive the rest of his life. Even now, he thought this mystery was his to solve.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You called the police. If not, I don’t know.”
Above us, some crows circled, calling out. The house looked like a gray shell, something that could crumble and fall. Seth was a ghost. I don’t remember how that encountered ended. I think I just got in the car and let Paul drive me away.
• • •
NOW, I SAT IN THE Suburban—the very same vehicle. I tried to coax it to life in the parking garage, the attendant giving me a skeptical look as the ancient gas guzzler coughed and groaned. Paul had mentioned that there was a problem with the car. I thought he should sell it, but he wouldn’t let it go. He hadn’t driven it in a year, and I rarely drove it unless I was running errands for him out of the city—usually food errands.
I turned the key again, pumped the gas.
“You’ll flood the engine,” my dad said unhelpfully. “Give it a minute. It’ll start.”
I leaned back and sighed. I was a wreck. The blows I took were all aching hot patches of pain. Nothing broken. There’s a sharp, breathless, nauseating pain that comes with a break or a fracture. And I didn’t have that, which was not surprising since I had taken far worse blows. Either the guys who jumped me were weak, or they were taking it easy because I’m small and a girl. But broken or not, my ribs, my jaw, and my hip (I guess where I first hit the ground) were all a dark purple and aching in a kind of unpleasant misery chorus. Probably someone else would have been out of commission, but I was used to discomfort from years of sparring.
“Pain is just an inconvenience,” Mike always said. “Unless it doubles you over or you pass out, just try to ignore it.”
He’d been calling since last night, and I’d been sending his calls to voicemail. I didn’t want to listen to the voice of reason. The time for lessons was over.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was right—when I killed Didion, I’d tipped a domino, one that had been poised and waiting for more than a decade. The energy that had been gathering since my parents’ murder had shifted from stasis to kinesis. Now was the time to follow the trail to its conclusion, no matter how ugly. You could not reverse the fall of dominos.
How often had I wished that I had died with them that night? There was a part of me that thinks I should have, or that maybe in some real sense I did. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t muster any real gratitude for Seth. If not for him, I’d be where I belonged.
“She wanted you to live,” said my dad. “More than anything, that’s what she wanted. She lived her whole life for you. She wouldn’t be happy with the choices you’ve made.”
I tried the engine again, there was a loud coughing grind that echoed off the concrete of the parking garage walls.
“Where are you going anyway?” asked my father, frowning.
Somewhere between the information I’d gathered last night, the beating I took on the street where I lost the key Paul had given me, and the dreams that colored my fitful sleep, I decided it was time to go back to the house and search the basement. I needed to go through what, if anything, was still left of my parents. I had no reason to believe that it wasn’t all long gone. I hadn’t set foot on the property since my last time there with Paul. But I’d read on that blog that the basement was largely untouched and filled with boxes. And I wanted to try to find what my father brought down there that night.
“What did you bring down there?” I asked him. But of course he was gone. He never gave me any new information. He only told me what I already knew or echoed my fears and insecurities.
Finally, finally, with my last attempt, the engine barked to life.
I had no idea how I was going to get into that house. But I had to try.
twenty-seven
The good thing about Rhett was that he was predictable. By the time Josh had finished up the chair, his brother was passed out hard on the couch. Rhett could ingest more alcohol than anyone Josh knew; he’d never show it except to get meaner, darker the more he took in. He never lost control, never got sloppy. But at a certain point, he’d just crash and be out of commission for hours. There would be no rousing him.
Josh stood in the kitchen looking at Rhett, his brother’s mouth agape, one leg sprawled wide, his breathing deep. Maybe he’ll die, thought Josh. Maybe he’ll choke on his own vomit. But no, that was never going to happen. People like Rhett never had the courtesy to die young. They stayed around creating damage as long as they could.
“I thought he was supposed to be helping you,” said Jane.
She was rinsing off Mom’s breakfast plates and loading them carefully in the dishwasher. Medicare paid for part of Jane’s salary; Josh paid part. And part, he thought, was just Jane looking out for Mom because they’d been friends since childhood. Jane’s kids were grown and scattered across the country. She liked coming here and helping with meals and such, Josh thought. He was grateful to her, though he wasn’t sure he ever said as much. Words didn’t come easily to him. They got jammed up inside, never came out right.
“Yeah,” said Josh. “I thought so, too.”
“Your mama’s blind when it comes to that boy,” said Jane, casting a disapproving glance at Rhett. From the couch, Rhett let out a long, grunting snore. Josh bit b
ack a flood of hatred for his brother, walked over to help Jane finish up. It wasn’t really her job to clean up, but she always did.
Jane’s glasses gleamed gold in the light that washed through the window. “He was always bad.”
No one knew what they had done, of course. Not really. But there was talk. There was always talk.
“But you’re a good boy, Josh,” said Jane. “Don’t forget that. You’re all she has, your momma. She needs you.”
Jane used to be the nurse at the high school and everyone was afraid of her. Unless you were really sick, and then she was an angel. Her hair had gone snow-white since then, but her face had hardly aged. To Josh, she looked exactly the same as she always had. Her dark eyes glittered with intelligence and something else, a kind of hard seeing.
“Don’t let him drag you into whatever trouble he’s got brewing,” she said. “You worked hard to get yourself right. You stay in touch with Lee.”
Jane’s husband, Ray, who was a master carpenter and helped Josh now and again on various jobs, was also in the program. Jane knew well the demon of substance abuse, how it could tear through your life if you let it.
“Can you stay awhile?” he asked. She only worked a half day on the weekends. “I have to go out, and I don’t want to leave her alone with him. Not like this.”
She looked at her watch, at Rhett, her face turning into a hard scowl. “I can stay till two if you need me.”
“I’ll pay you time and a half.”
She waved him away.
“Just text me if he wakes up?” said Josh.
She nodded. “You heard what I said, right? About not letting him drag you into anything.”
“I heard you, Miss Jane,” he said. “Thank you.”
She left the room, and he stood there a second, thinking. His eyes fell on Rhett’s car keys, the sound of his brother’s snoring growing louder. Rhett had showed up driving an old blue 1970 Barracuda. The thing spewed black smoke and was rusting along the bottom, but Rhett said he’d picked it up for less than a grand and it hadn’t broken down yet. Josh picked up the keys, as well as the single one, the survey, then walked over to where his brother lay. Rhett’s cell, an old flip phone, lay beside him on the coffee table. Josh pocketed that, too.
