by Alex North
He nodded once. “Can I come in?”
“Jake’s asleep.”
“I figured. But it won’t take long. And I’ll be quiet, I promise. I just wanted to give you an update on where things are at.”
A part of me was reluctant to let him in, but that was childish—and anyway, he was just a policeman. When this was all over with, I’d never have to see him again. The fact that he seemed so beaten down, almost deferential, helped as well. Right now, in fact, I felt the more powerful of the two of us. I opened the door wider.
“All right.”
He followed me upstairs and into the living room.
“We’re finishing up at the house,” he said. “You and Jake will be able to go back home tomorrow morning.”
“That’s good. What about Norman Collins?”
“We’ve charged him with the murder of Dominic Barnett. He’s confirmed that the remains in the house belong to the victim of Carter’s we never found. Tony Smith. Collins knew all along.”
“How?”
“That’s a long story. The details don’t matter for now.”
“Don’t they? Well, what about Neil Spencer? And Collins attempting to abduct Jake?”
“We’re working on that.”
“That’s reassuring.” I picked up my wine and took a sip. “Oh, I’m sorry—where are my manners? Would you like a glass?” It was a test.
“I don’t drink.”
“You used to.”
“Which is why I don’t now. Some people can manage it, and others can’t. It took me a while to realize that. I’m guessing you’re a man who can.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “I also guess that, with everything that’s happened over the years, it must have been hard for you. But you seem like a man who can do a lot of things well. That’s a good thing. I’m pleased about that.”
I wanted to fight back against that. Not just him having any right to pass judgment on me, but the words themselves. He was utterly mistaken—I couldn’t do anything well, and I wasn’t handling life at all. But, of course, there was no way I was going to display any kind of weakness in front of my father, and so I said nothing.
“Anyway,” he said. “Yes. I used to drink. There were lots of reasons for that—reasons, not excuses. I struggled with a lot of things back then.”
“Like being a good husband.”
“Yes.”
“Like fatherhood.”
“That too. The responsibility of it. I never knew how to be a father. I never really wanted to be. And you were a difficult baby—much better when you were older, though. You were always creative. You used to make up stories even back then.”
I couldn’t remember that.
“Did I?”
“Yes. You were sensitive. Jake seems a lot like you.”
“Jake’s too sensitive, I think.”
My father shook his head. “There’s no such thing.”
“There is if it makes life difficult.” I thought about all the friends I never made, or who never made me. “And you wouldn’t know. You weren’t there.”
“No, I wasn’t. And like I said, it was for the best.”
“Well, that’s something we can agree on.”
With that, it seemed like there was nothing left to say. He turned around, as though about to leave, but then he hesitated, and a moment later he turned back.
“But I was thinking about what you said last night,” he told me. “About seeing me throw the glass at your mother before I left.”
“And?”
“You didn’t,” he said. “That didn’t happen. You weren’t in the house that night. You were having a sleepover at a friend from school’s.”
I was about to say something, but then stopped. It was my turn to hesitate. My first instinct was that my father was lying—that he had to be, because I remembered that night so clearly. And that I hadn’t had any friends. But was that really true back then? And whatever my father had once been, it didn’t strike me that he was a liar now. In fact, as much as I didn’t want to allow it, he had the air of somebody who had become scrupulously honest with himself about his faults. That perhaps, over the years, he’d needed to.
I turned the memory over in my head.
Glass smashing.
My father shouting.
My mother screaming.
I could see the image with absolute clarity in my head, but was it possible that I was wrong? The picture was more vivid than any other childhood memory I could think of. Was it too vivid? Could it have been more an emotion than an actual recollection? A summing up of how I felt rather than a specific event that had actually occurred?
“But actually, that was more or less how it happened,” my father said quietly. “To my eternal shame, that was what I did. I didn’t throw the glass at her, because the stupid thing is, it was the glass I was angry with. But it was close enough.”
“I remember seeing it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Sally told you.”
“She never spoke badly about you.” I shook my head. “You know that, right? Even after everything.”
He smiled sadly. It was clear that, yes, he could believe that, and that it had reminded him of how much he’d lost.
“Then I don’t know,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you something else too, for whatever it’s worth now. Not much, but still. You said it was the last time I ever saw you. That’s not true either.”
I gestured around. “Obviously.”
“I mean back then. Your mother threw me out, and that was for the best. I respected that. I was almost relieved by it, to be honest, or at least it felt like what I deserved. But there were times afterward, before the two of you moved away, when if I was sober Sally would let me back in. She didn’t want to disrupt you or cause any confusion, and I didn’t either. So it was always after you’d gone to bed. I’d come into your room when you were asleep and give you a cuddle. You never woke up. You never knew. But I did do that.”
I stood there silently.
Because, once again, I didn’t believe that my father was lying, and his words had shaken me. I remembered Mister Night, my imaginary friend from childhood. The invisible man who would come into my bedroom at night and hug me while I was sleeping. Even worse, I remembered how comforting it had been. How it wasn’t something I had been frightened of. And how, when Mister Night had disappeared from my life, I’d been bereft for a time, as though I’d lost an important part of myself.
“I’m not making excuses,” my father said. “I just wanted you to know that things were complicated. That I was. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
And then there really was nothing else to say. He started off down the stairs, and I was still too shaken to do anything but let him go.
Forty-one
The next morning, I made sure Jake was ready earlier than usual, so that we had time to check back home before I took him to school. My father was already outside on the street below, waiting for us in his car. He rolled down the window as we walked over to him.
“Hello,” my father said.
“Good morning, Pete,” Jake said gravely. “How are you today?”
My father’s face lit up slightly at that, amused by the overly formal tone my son could sometimes adopt. He matched it in return.
“Very well, thank you. How are you, Jake?”
“I’m fine. It was interesting staying here, but I’m looking forward to going home now.”
“I can imagine.”
“But not to going to school afterward.”
“I can imagine that too. But school is very important.”
“Yes,” Jake said. “Apparently so.”
My father started to laugh at that, but then glanced at me and stopped. Perhaps he thought interacting with Jake like this might annoy me. The strange thing was that, while it had annoyed me on that first afternoon in the police station, it didn’t so much now. I liked it when people were impressed with my son; it made me f
eel proud of him. Stupid to think that way, of course—he was a person in his own right, not some accomplishment of mine—but the feeling was always there, and, if anything, with my father it was stronger than usual. I wasn’t sure why. Did I want to rub his face in fatherhood, or was it some subconscious desire to impress him? I didn’t like what either option said about me.
“We’ll see you there.” I turned away. “Come on, Jake.”
The journey wasn’t a long one, but it took time in the morning traffic. Jake spent most of it in the back of the car, kicking the passenger seat aimlessly and whistling a tune to himself. Every now and then I’d glance in the rearview mirror and see him, head turned to one side, squinting through the window the way he often did, as though confused to see a world out there but only mildly interested in it.
“Daddy, why don’t you like Pete?”
“You mean DI Willis.” I took the turn onto our street. “And it’s not a case of not liking him. I don’t know him. He’s a policeman, not a friend.”
“He is friendly, though. I like him.”
“You don’t know him either.”
“But if you don’t know him and don’t like him, then I can not know him and like him instead.”
I was too tired for such contortions.
“It’s not that I don’t like him.”
Jake didn’t reply, and I had no desire to argue the point any further. Children pick up on atmosphere very well, and my son was even more sensitive than most. It was probably obvious to him that I was lying.
And yet, was it really a lie? Our conversation last night had stayed with me, and perhaps because of that, it was easier to identify with him now—to see him as a man, like me, who had found fatherhood difficult. Regardless, he was no more the man I remembered than I was still that child. How long does it take, and how much does a person have to change, before the person you hated is gone, replaced by someone new? Pete was someone else now. I didn’t not like him. The truth was that I didn’t know him at all.
We reached our house. There was no sign of police activity anymore—even the tape had been removed—and there wasn’t the media presence I’d been concerned might greet us: just a small group of people talking among themselves. They didn’t seem that interested as I parked in the driveway. Jake was, though.
“Are we going to be on television?” he said excitedly.
“Absolutely not.”
“Oh.”
Pete had been following our car the whole journey, and he parked sideways behind us now, then got out quickly. The reporters approached him, and I peered around to watch as he spoke to them.
“What’s going on, Daddy?”
“Hang on.”
Jake was straining to see as well.
“Is that—?” he said.
“Oh, fuck.”
There was a moment of silence in the car after that. I stared at the small group that had gathered around my father, dimly aware that he was smiling politely at them, explaining things with a conciliatory shrug, and that a few of the reporters were nodding. But my attention was focused on one of them in particular.
“You said the f-word, Daddy.”
Jake sounded awed.
“Yes, I did.” I turned away from the sight of Karen, standing among the reporters, a notepad in her hand. “And yes. That’s Adam’s mother back there.”
* * *
“Are we going to be on television, Pete?” Jake said.
I closed the front door behind us and put the chain on.
“I’ve already told you that, Jake. No, we are not.”
“I’m just asking Pete as well.”
“No,” Pete said. “You aren’t. Just like your daddy told you. That’s what I was talking to the people outside about. They’re reporters, and so they’re interested in what happened here, but I was reminding them that it has nothing to do with you two.”
“It sort of does,” Jake said.
“Well, sort of. But not really. If you’d known more, or were more involved, then it would be different.”
I shot Jake a look at that, hoping he’d understand from my expression that this was not the time to say anything else about the boy in the floor. He glanced at me and nodded, but wasn’t about to let the matter drop quite so easily.
“Daddy did find him.”
“Yes,” Pete said. “But that’s not information that’s been released to the people out there. As far as they’re concerned, the two of you are not really part of the story. That’s the best way to keep it for now, I think.”
“Okay.” Jake sounded disappointed. “Can I look around and see what they’ve done?”
“Of course.”
He disappeared upstairs. Pete and I waited by the front door.
“I meant what I said,” he told me after a moment. “You don’t need to worry. The media won’t want to prejudice any trial. I can’t stop you from talking to them, obviously, but all they know is the remains were found here, so I don’t think they’ll be that interested in you. And they’ll be very careful around Jake.”
I nodded, feeling sick. That might be all the media officially knew, but I’d told Karen so much yesterday that it was hard to keep track of it all. She knew about the nighttime visitor attempting to abduct Jake. The fact that it was me who had found the body. That Pete was my father—my abusive father. And I was quite sure I’d said things I couldn’t even remember right now.
I’m good at finding things out.
At the time, it had just been a conversation with a friend; I hadn’t realized I was spilling everything to a fucking reporter. And it hurt. She should have told me. It had felt like she’d been genuinely interested in me, but now I wasn’t so sure about that. On the one hand, there was no way she could have known in the beginning that I was connected to the case. But on the other, at no point in our conversation had she suggested that she really wasn’t the person I should be telling everything to.
My father frowned.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
But I would have to check the damage from that conversation later. In the meantime, there was no way I was going to tell my father about it.
“Are we safe here?” I said.
“Yes. Norman Collins isn’t going to be released anytime soon, and even if he was, there’s nothing of interest to him here anymore. Not for any of the others either.”
“Others?”
He hesitated.
“People have always been interested in this house. Collins told me it was the neighborhood scary house. Kids would dare each other to come near it. Take photographs and things.”
“The scary house. I’m tired of hearing about that.”
“That’s just kid stuff anyway,” Pete said. “Tony Smith’s remains are gone. That was all Collins was ever interested in. Not you or Jake.”
Not me or Jake. But I kept thinking back to seeing Jake at the bottom of the stairs that night, with the man talking to him through the mail slot. I couldn’t remember the exact words I’d heard, but I could recall enough to know he’d been trying to persuade Jake to open the door, and I wasn’t convinced it had only been the keys to the garage he was interested in.
“What about Neil Spencer?” I said. “Has Collins been charged with his murder?”
“No. But we have a number of suspects now. We’re closing in. And believe me, I wouldn’t let you both come back if I didn’t think it was safe.”
“You couldn’t stop me.”
“No.” He looked away. “I’d certainly argue the case, though, especially with Jake living here. Neil Spencer’s abduction was opportunistic; he was out walking alone. This isn’t a man who wants attention. You should obviously keep an eye on Jake, but there’s no reason to think either of you are in any danger.”
Did he sound convinced? I wasn’t sure, but it was difficult to read him today. He looked exhausted. When I’d first seen him it had been obvious he was in good physical shape, but today he really looked his age.
>
“You look tired,” I said.
He nodded.
“I am tired. And I have to do something that I’m not looking forward to.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said simply. “What matters is that it has to be done.”
This whole case must have taken a toll on him, I realized, and that was apparent in his whole demeanor right now. What matters is that it has to be done. Before me now, I saw a man weighed down by so much, struggling to cope with the load. He looked like I often felt.
“My mother,” I said suddenly.
He looked back at me and waited, not asking the question.
“She died,” I said.
“You told me that.”
“You said you wanted to know what happened. She had a difficult life, but she was a good person. I couldn’t have asked for a better parent. It was cancer. She didn’t deserve what happened to her, but she didn’t suffer for long either. It happened very quickly.”
That was a lie—my mother’s death had been prolonged and painful—and I had no idea why I was telling it this way. There was no duty incumbent on me to make Pete feel better, or to ease any pain or guilt he felt. And yet a part of me was still pleased to see the weight on him lift a little.
“When?”
“Five years ago.”
“So she got to meet Jake?”
“Yes. He doesn’t remember her. But yes.”
“Well. I’m glad about that, at least.”
There was a moment of silence. And then Jake came downstairs, and we both turned slightly away from each other at the same time, as though some tension between us had snapped.
“It’s exactly the same, Daddy.”
Jake sounded almost suspicious.
“We do a good job of searching through things carefully,” Pete said. “And cleaning up after ourselves afterward.”
“Admirable,” Jake said. He turned and walked back into the living room.
Pete shook his head. “He’s a character, that one.”
“Yes. He is that.”
“I’ll be in touch about any developments.” He handed me a card. “But in the meantime, if you need anything—and I mean anything at all—my details are there.”
