The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  Her dreams were never big, yet still somehow not quite small enough to accomplish.

  Failure to advance. Inconsistent improvement. Struggling. These were the words that came after a year of three- to four-hour therapy sessions a day. He needed more, Linda explained. Nate put his foot down, do they just want more money? Why would we do more if what we’re doing isn’t working?

  So here they were. Three to four hours every single day, and progress had stalled with Gabe knowing maybe a hundred to two hundred words. Alecia could see improvement in his communication; he now pointed to things or used his words. There seemed to be fewer breakdowns. The improvement was slushy and gray, too nuanced for Nate to see it, and sometimes Alecia wondered if they were actually just standing still.

  “Horse!” Gabe yelled, his chair cracking on the hardwood floor as he jumped up excitedly.

  Linda laughed, a honking duck noise. “You always get the horse!”

  “What’s this?”

  Gabe threw is hands in the air now, laughing. “Cow!”

  “What’s this?”

  “Rooster!”

  “Alecia, he finally got rooster!” Linda clapped her hands and whooped and Alecia pushed her fingertips against the bridge of her nose. She wanted to yell back, big fucking deal. They’d only been working on rooster for two weeks. Two weeks for the word rooster. Besides, how was it valuable? They weren’t farmers. He’d probably never even see a real, live rooster.

  She felt pushed to the brittle edge.

  If she could focus on anything but that hat, the muddy coach, Nate and the vision of him sliding down that embankment, losing his hat and running after the girl with the white hair, to what? To do what? Did he catch her? Kiss her? Kill her? Alecia had no idea. Then there was the way Bridget looked at her, like she was some kind of monster. The idea that they were all this close to their lives falling completely apart.

  She did not for one second care about rooster. She didn’t have the stamina in her to even summon the enthusiasm for whatever small measure of progress Gabe managed. Following closely behind the fatigue was a crushing guilt that she should care. The knowledge that he would only advance if she cared, and that maybe the reason he was struggling was because she hadn’t quite done enough. Felt enough. Tried hard enough. Pushed herself far enough.

  Linda appeared in the doorway.

  “I read the paper, honey. No one could blame you for being distracted today.” Linda helped herself to a glass of water, running the tap and flicking the water stream with her fingertips to test for temperature.

  “I’m not distracted,” Alecia said, slamming her own glass of iced tea down on the counter so hard it sloshed over the side. “I just don’t see the point in all of this. He’s not getting better. He’s not going to get better.”

  Linda filled her water glass and took a long drink. She carefully set the glass on the counter next to Alecia’s and retrieved a paper towel, mopping up the water spill and discarding the towel before she spoke. “This is not a destination trip, Alecia.” She stopped, tapped her index finger against her lips. “He may or may not get ‘better,’ but I think it’s high time you looked at what your definition of ‘better’ is. Your son is a wonderful little boy, exactly how he is. What we are hoping to unlock is his potential. We are not going to fundamentally change who he is. I think you want the latter, not the former. Until you adjust your expectations, you will always feel like we’re standing in still waters.” She stepped closer to Alecia, her voice low, towering over her, and placed a large, weathered hand on her shoulder. “You measure his success here, based on three hours a day, with a limited ruler. You define him by whether or not he knows the word rooster and how fast he knows it.”

  “He has less than one year to be ready for kindergarten.” Alecia heard the shrill in her voice, the panicky pitch.

  “And so what? What if he doesn’t make it? What if he’s not ready until he’s seven?” Linda’s hand pushed down.

  “He has to be ready when he’s six to go to public school. With his friends.”

  “He doesn’t have friends, Alecia.”

  Alecia winced. She’d meant the kids in their development, the ones who paid Gabe no mind, not even to say hello. The ones who rode bikes in the cul-de-sac and watched Gabe run a cement mixer down their front steps for three hours at a time, up and down, up and down, up and down, never once asking him to play.

  Linda sighed. “I think you’ll find if you open your narrow view of Gabe’s world and really look at him, you’ll find that you have plenty of options. There are other schools, you know.”

  “You mean special-needs schools. Autism schools.” Alecia shook her head. “No. I just want him to be a normal boy.”

  Linda shrugged, her palms out, and gave Alecia a sad smile. “It’s hard to say; what’s so great about normal?”

  In the living room, she turned on the stereo, a loud country twang, and Alecia gritted her teeth. Gabe, for some godforsaken reason, adored country music. The guitar, the lament, the soulful crooning. Linda turned the volume up and she and Gabe danced around the living room, singing. Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers and Glen Campbell; the more Nashville, the better.

  Alecia texted the baby-sitter next door and got an answer back right away. She called into Linda, “Hey, Mandy is coming over for a bit. I’m going to run to the bank. You okay, buddy?” she asked Gabe, and he waved wildly.

  She let herself out the back door, just as Mandy was coming in. Alecia pushed a folded twenty-dollar bill into her palm and raced to the car, where she flipped on the air, the cold blowing in her face. She drove to the end of the block, parking the car in an empty church parking lot, where she closed her eyes and promptly fell asleep.

  • • •

  Avoiding public places seemed like a good idea, but Alecia had an insurance check in her purse pocket for two weeks, and with Nate out of work, they needed the money more than she needed her dignity. The bank seemed like a quick errand, and a decent escape. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes; a quick ten-minute nap had calmed her racing heart considerably. Linda’s little acceptance speech felt very far away, and that was a good thing.

  She avoided looking at anyone directly, instead studied the check in her hand, as if the signature on it, the logo held her utmost interest. When her teller called out next! she shuffled to the window and pushed her signed check across the marble top.

  She felt a stare, or maybe heard a giggle, or a whisper—it was hard to pinpoint what made her turn around, but she did. Bea Tempest and Jennifer Lawson stood together, looking her way, by the potted ficus inside the front door. She stiffened her back and pretended not to see, rummaging through her purse for something, anything—gum or candy or a hair tie—anything to look busy. She thought of Jennifer Lawson in that red dress, her green eyes quick and darting, that tongue sweeping the corners of her mouth. Your hubby, Saint Nate. No, no, no, no, no.

  Alecia was wrung out, the fight clean sapped out of her. She dug through her bag, made a big show of it, shaking her head, mumbling where is it under her breath, waiting for the teller to call next! For Jennifer and Bea to wave their French-manicured fingers at each other, byeeeeee, and go to their respective black SUVs.

  She was, in fact, so busy looking busy that she didn’t notice the front door open, the little bell above it chime. Alecia didn’t pay it any attention until she heard the dragging noise, some kind of huffing behind her. She looked up, and the first thing she saw was gray-white hair, slicked straight with grease. Thick, leathered skin. A mouth open like a gray-green O. Words, garbled and unclear.

  “Do you care at all that she’s missing?” He asked her, his voice warbling and dense, thick as he coughed.

  “Excuse me?” Alecia’s head snapped up then, the remnants of the bagel from breakfast slick and rolling in her stomach.

  “You all act like it doesn’t matter. A girl is missing, maybe dead, and no one cares.” His hand rolled around his forehead, dirty fingers pu
shing his shaggy hair to the side, slicking it against his eyebrows.

  Oh my God. It was Jimmy Hamm. Back from God knows where, and judging by the looks of him, nowhere good. Alecia opened her mouth to speak and found she had nothing to say.

  “Nonyas care!” Jimmy shouted, and spun around. Bea and Jennifer scurried out the front door, the sun gleaming off Bea’s blond hair as they tipped their heads together and watched the scene through the glass door. Bea whipped out her phone and made a call, her hand waving and pointing toward the door.

  “Next!” The teller called, oblivious, and Alecia scooted away from Jimmy, who’d started to pace, his foot dragging slightly behind him, step, whoosh, step, whoosh. Alecia closed her eyes. Jimmy reached from behind her and slapped the wooden counter, his hand wizened and black under the fingernails.

  “Why is no one looking for Lucia?” he demanded, and Alecia backed up, her hand behind her gripping the counter; she clutched her purse to her chest.

  “Hey!” The teller leaned forward, finally realizing Jimmy was there and there was about to be a scene in the bank. “Jimmy Hamm!” she called. “Where you been, honey?” She was older, in her sixties. Everyone looked familiar in Mt. Oanoke, but Alecia couldn’t have produced her name.

  Jimmy swayed on his feet, his eyes fluttering back then snapping on Alecia’s face. Her heart thudded in her neck. “You’ve seen her, though, eh? I read the paper. I usedta know your husband, back when he’d come to the Quarry Bar. He do something with my little girl?”

  Alecia shook her head, her tongue swollen in her throat.

  “What do you know about it? Or is the wife always the last to know?” He cackled and inched closer. He smelled like mildew and smoke, whiskey and something fetid, his teeth gray and glistening.

  “Hey now, Jimmy,” A voice from the door and Jimmy whipped around. A uniformed officer was silhouetted in the doorway. He moved slowly, his hand on his waistband, a deceptively easy smile on his face, and Alecia sagged back, relieved. “Ronnie from the QB called me and said you were in town. That your Chrysler out there?” The cop motioned to the parking lot, where Bea and Jennifer still huddled. Behind them a gray, paint-stripped Chrysler station wagon sat idling, the engine still running, the air thick with diesel.

  “I don’t want no trouble.” Jimmy walked slowly past the cop, toward the door, his hand on the push-bar when the officer stopped him.

  “I can’t let you leave here, Jimmy. You’re drunk as a skunk at ten in the morning. You can’t get in your car and roll back out of town as fast as you rolled in. You wanna come with me and sober up in the tank? Just for the day. Have a meal on the county?”

  Jimmy thought about it. A decent meal, even one as gluey and greasy as he’d get in the drunk tank, seemed better than what he could scrape together at the QB. Alecia held her breath, praying he’d say yes.

  “Nah, I’m okay, man. I’ll just walk around.”

  “Hey, have you seen Lucia around?” the cop asked.

  “Not since last year.” Jimmy’s voice was low, his back against the door blocking the entrance.

  “Where you been, Jimmy?”

  “Had a job at Fizz’s.” Jimmy’s voice trailed off. Fizz was the soda bottling plant about thirty miles south, in Allentown. Alecia saw, for the first time, what shutting down the paper mill had done to the town and the people in it. She wondered about the Mt. Oanoke of Nate’s youth, the one he used to talk about, with a thriving industry, a stable economy, enough jobs for people to stay.

  “You still got that job?” he asked softly, and Jimmy shook his head.

  “Why’d you come back here?” The officer reached out and gripped Jimmy’s elbow gently, and Jimmy let him.

  “I read the paper. This town’s gone to shit.” Jimmy whirled around to Alecia and the teller and said, “I sent them money, you know. Every month until a few months ago. Ever’one thinks I just skipped out on ’em. I sent money. No one knows that.”

  Alecia thought about Lenny and how that money probably went right into his veins or his lungs and wondered if Lucia had even been aware of it.

  “I ain’t a shit father,” Jimmy yelled again, and this time the cop guided him out to the waiting car in the lot. “Ever’one thinks I am but I ain’t.”

  The car pulled away, its lights whirling just once, out of the parking lot, and Bea and Jennifer scurried to their cars and drove off. The only people who remained were Alecia and the bank teller, the lobby so silent that Alecia could hear the seconds tick from the clock on the wall.

  “Hon, you still want that check cashed?” the teller asked from behind the counter. Her name tag read Yolanda. Alecia realized she still held the check, and with a shaky hand, passed it to her, along with the deposit slip. She counted money, her eyes flicking to Alecia’s face every so often, until she handed fifty in cash across the gate.

  She pushed the two twenties and a ten into the pocket of her purse and barely mumbled good-bye. Yolanda shook her head, her mouth pursed like a lemon. “That Jimmy,” was all she said, but Alecia didn’t reply.

  She stumbled out of the lobby and into the bright May sun, shining like it was any other day, the rays hot on her skin even though for the life of her, Alecia couldn’t get warm.

  She couldn’t stop shivering.

  CHAPTER 29

  Bridget, Tuesday, May 12, 2015

  “I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Peterson, Officer Harris.” Harper leaned forward, adjusted his glasses on his nose, his mustache twitching. “This video is disturbing, there’s no doubt. I’m not convinced it has bearing on the case. On Mr. Winters’s case. There’s never been a question that Ms. Hamm is a troubled teenager.”

  “This isn’t a video about a troubled teenaged girl,” Bridget said, the hair on her neck rising, and Harper’s brows furrowed at her tone. “This is a video about a troubled teenage boy. Maybe more than one. There has been bullying at the school. The kids call Lucia a witch. They almost set her on fire.”

  Harper shook his head. “Then go to the school, Ms. Peterson. Go to Bachman and tell him about it.”

  “I intend to, but I really think there’s something else going on here, that Lucia’s disappearance maybe has nothing to do with Nate at all.”

  Tripp stood stoically behind her—she could feel the heat of him less than a foot away—but he stayed silent. Infuriatingly so. She wanted him to get angry, speak up for his friend, protest Harper’s steamroll, despite his job being at stake. She knew he wouldn’t, that simply standing there was enough for him, and it should probably have been enough for her.

  “You may think that, Ms. Peterson, and I can’t even say for sure that you’re wrong. But it’s simply not compelling enough to chase it down the rabbit hole. Now, what I will do is send it over to Clark Mackey, the other detective here in town, to look into it as a separate case. There’s no doubt that the video is disturbing.”

  “So a rape investigation?” Bridget pressed, and she might have imagined the sharp intake of Tripp’s breath behind her, the way he shifted his weight. The way so many men were inherently uncomfortable with the word rape, like just saying it invoked some unspoken appraisal of all men. She’d found less bristling among cops, who’d seen the worst of the worst, the dregs of humanity on a daily basis. But she’d found it among the kids. Being a creative writing teacher gave her a sort of latitude not employed by her colleagues. She could plunge the depths of her kids’ minds, or as deep as they’d let her in, broach subjects like abuse and rape, consent and sexuality, all under the guise of writing. In previous years, she’d used it to her full capacity, and her desire to understand the new generation was worth the price of an occasional talk with Bachman about appropriate classroom content, and concerned parent phone calls.

  “I said maybe,” Harper stressed. His face slacked, his eyes softened. “I have a teenage niece, do you know that? She’s fifteen, lives up north a bit. Social media, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Yik Yak, Kik, it’s all terrifying. I get that. You see it every da
y, you live with the effects of it day in and out. I understand that, Bridget.”

  “Then help me. Help them,” Bridget said, even though she knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  “I can’t spend my days policing teenage behavior,” Harper said. “As much as I’d like to. We have a heroin problem around here, did you know that? I’m tied up in that most days.”

  “Is this because of who it is? Andrew Evans? Porter Max? The baseball heroes of Mt. Oanoke?”

  Harper’s face hardened, his eyes narrowed. “Ms. Peterson, I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. I’m not saying this video isn’t incriminating. I just think it’s not ironclad proof of a crime. There’s no sex, he said on the video himself, ‘You called me up here.’ There’s consensual drinking, that much is obvious. But I can’t chase down an underage drinking charge.”

  “It depends on your definition of consensual. Just because she said yes means she consented?”

  “Isn’t that what consent is?”

  “Not if she’s so drunk she’s passed out. All she hears is ‘say yes’ and she says yes.”

  “Who are you angry at? Who are you fighting for?” Harper asked Bridget quietly, leaning forward.

  She thought about this—it was valid question. “I don’t know. The truth. I don’t think Nate did anything to this girl. He loves his students.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem, do you think?” Harper reached behind him to scratch his back, his armpits wet and yellowed. Bridget realized how hot it was in the station, the sweat trickling down her neck. “I’m done, Bridget. Okay?” He stood up, ending their meeting. “If Lucia walked in here now and reported a rape, I’d have a different answer.”