“The whole time they’re telling me this,” Sara said, “I just kept thinking, My God, that’s horrible. And then it just kept getting worse.”
I didn’t say anything. Horrible seemed to cover it.
“Poor Roger. I can’t imagine how I could keep living in the same house all alone. Can you?”
“Not really.” A brief image flashed in my mind, and I wished I could unthink it. “No.”
“Melody Seward told me that when the weather is nice, Roger takes a walk back in those woods nearly every day.”
I thought of our conversation last night. I guess anything can happen anywhere, I’d said. I thought of the way Roger had agreed.
“Wow,” I said.
“I just don’t know how you could bear it.”
I didn’t know either, but thinking about the tiny bunch of tissue growing in Sara’s belly, I couldn’t imagine a whole world of things.
I couldn’t imagine what it was going to feel like, the day this little surprise life joined ours. At thirty- seven years of age, I’d only just begun to imagine myself as a father; in no way could I claim to imagine what it would feel like to stand over the grave of my murdered child.
As the sports segment cut to commercials, something made me look at the television. The moment I did, I recognized what it was that had drawn my attention: our new neighbor’s voice.
Before you and your family leave to enjoy your summer vacation this season, Roger Mallory said, remember to ask a neighbor to pick up your mail.
Roger stood on the front steps of a cozy brick house between a flower box and a mail slot overflowing with circulars and bills. He looked good on camera: comfortable, casual, authoritative.
Or, arrange for your post office to stop delivery while you’re away. A growing pile of mail can send a message to criminals looking for an easy target. He pointed to the camera. For more summertime security tips, log on to www.saferplace.org.
The screen cut to a variation on the neighborhood watch logo most everyone knows, the familiar “ not- allowed” symbol over a prowler’s silhouette. An announcer’s voice said, This neighborhood safety message is brought to you by the Safer Places Organization.
Sara sighed and closed her eyes. She looked like I felt: exhausted, overwhelmed. I sensed a slight change in her posture, a new tension. When I squeezed her hand, she said, “I’m okay.”
“Can I do anything?”
She shook her head, but not in answer to my question. It was the same reflexive gesture I’d performed myself a moment ago, thinking of Clair Mallory, at my own mental picture of finding Sara lolling in a tub of bloody water.
“I swear,” she said, scooting closer, “every time I stop moving for five minutes, I remember what that guy’s breath smelled like.”
Besides being near just then, she’d wanted only one thing from me that day. It really hadn’t been much. We weren’t even fighting about it anymore.
But I still wished I’d gone to the meeting with her.
8.
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, as we settled in, found places to put everything in the new house, found a doctor for Sara, and found our way around town, we came to know our neighbors in Sycamore Court.
Pete and Melody Seward had celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary that June. Like us, they’d both been through divorces. Once upon a time, Pete had played football for Iowa State. Now he was a marketing VP for the local cable company. Though we insisted that we didn’t watch much television, he set us up with the premium channel package as a housewarming gift. Melody worked in the human resources department at the First State Bank of Clark Falls. She introduced Sara to her yoga instructor.
Trish and Barry Firth both worked for her father’s business, a commercial glass distributor, Trish in the employment office, Barry in sales. They had twin toddlers: a girl named Jordan and a boy named Jacob. Upon discovering that we were expecting— a fact Trish somehow intuited long before we’d chosen to mention it to anyone—Barry delivered to our house, under cover of night, four unmarked plastic storage tubs packed full of gender-neutral infant wear. He winked at Sara, chucked me on the shoulder, and said, “Congratulations, you guys. Mum’s the word.”
Michael Sprague lived in the rambling Craftsman between the Firths and Roger Mallory. He’d spent some time in our neck of the woods, having studied at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York. He’d returned to Clark Falls five years ago to take care of his ailing mother, stayed after meeting his partner, Ben, and now ran the kitchen at The Flatiron, an upscale restaurant on the riverfront.
We learned that Ben worked as a corporate trainer, and that he’d recently taken some kind of temporary contract job in Seattle. That was all we knew about that.
Michael had converted their backyard into a roaring vegetable garden; he kept the whole circle in fresh produce through the summer, plus a dozen different colors of squash in the fall. Visiting one night, he hugged each of us and thanked us for moving in.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Everybody’s terrific. You’ll like it here. I’m just saying that if we’d tilted any farther to the right my house might have fallen over.”
Sara invited Roger Mallory over for dinner to thank him for our new alarm system, brought to us courtesy of Sentinel One Incorporated, a local home security company. One call from Roger, and a crew showed up with spools of cable and power drills. They left us fortified with enough special wiring to lock down a minor military position, installing the whole works free of charge.
“Stop thanking me,” he told us, polishing off the last of the kebabs. “The owner and I were on the force together. I send him plenty of business. Besides, I got him free ad space in the Chamber of Commerce brochure. He owes me one.”
On a given night, you could leave our front door and find somebody out visiting with somebody else. You could watch the Firth twins playing in the common with little Sofia, Pete and Melody’s four- year- old. You could always have a chat with Roger, who seemed to preside over the goings- on in Sycamore Court like everybody’s favorite uncle.
We found ourselves doing all of these things, and it didn’t take long before we felt at home.
Nobody is going to care about Michael Sprague’s vegetable garden. Nobody will care what our neighbors do for a living, or how many channels we get on our television. Nobody will care that Sara and I lost a baby in August.
From here on, the only thing anybody will care about is me and Brit Seward.
“Are all these boxes full of books?”
That was the very first question she asked me, the Monday morning after the emergency meeting of the Ponca Heights Neighborhood Association. Melody, who didn’t work Mondays, had sent Brit over to deliver a hand- labeled DVD containing our news broadcast, which Pete had somehow procured through the cable company. Sara had gone to campus to meet with the dean; I was at home, still unpacking. I’d only asked Brittany inside because the guys from Sentinel One were busy working on the front door.
“All books,” I said.
“All of them?”
“That’s exactly what the movers said.”
She put her hands on her hips and scanned the rampart of boxes stacked four high along the length of one dining room wall. “OMG.”
Oh my God. The teenagers in Iowa spoke the same language as the ones in Boston. “LOL,” I said.
She laughed out loud. “Cool.”
“That’s not what the movers said.”
“I love to read. What’s your favorite book?”
“You mean out of all of them?”
“I used to be into Harry Potter when I was a kid. Now I’m kind of all over the place.”
“Oh yeah? What’s the last book you read?”
She thought about it. “I just read Bridge to Terabithia. That was pretty good. Except I already saw the movie two years ago, so I knew the end. The book was better. Did you read Da Vinci Code?”
I couldn’t say that I had.
“Me either. I’m read
ing this book now, I checked it out from the library. The title made me think of Ponca Heights.”
“Wuthering Heights?”
“That’s it! Have you ever read that one?”
“Once or twice.”
“It’s sort of hard.”
“And a little depressing,” I said. “But stick with it. It’s pretty good.”
“Talk about depressing, I’m grounded all week. That’s depressing.”
I was happy to talk books, but I didn’t know what to say to that. Thankfully, the foreman of the Sentinel One crew stepped into the house and waved me over. I excused myself and went to answer his question, which involved the placement of the “master console” in the entryway. I told him that he was the expert. He agreed.
When I returned to the dining room, I found Brittany Seward peering into an open box, head tilted, scanning book spines.
“Well,” I said. “It was nice talking to you, Brittany. Let me know when you finish with Heathcliff and Catherine.”
If she heard me, she made no indication.
“Tell your mom we said thanks for the DVD, okay?”
Still nothing. She appeared to be lost. I liked her already. But what was I supposed to do with her?
Looking again at the daunting stack of boxes along the wall, thinking for maybe the hundredth time about how little I relished the thought of dragging all of them upstairs, unpacking them, realphabetizing everything I’d packed out of order in the first place, I had a flash of inspiration.
Roger Mallory had stopped by first thing that morning to check on the workers from Sentinel One. He’d brought with him a copy of the Ponca Heights Neighborhood Directory, which consisted of a few photocopied pages of telephone numbers stapled together in a booklet. It had local fire, police, and emergency contact information organized up front, a Safer Places logo printed on the back cover. “We’ll get these updated if you and Sara want to list your number,” he’d said.
I looked up the Sewards’ phone number. Sara had introduced me to Pete and Melody the previous morning; she’d gone jogging with Melody before sunrise, then invited the two of them over for coffee afterward. We’d all seemed to get along fine, certainly well enough that I felt comfortable looking up their number and dialing it.
“Hello?”
“Melody,” I said. “This is Paul Callaway.”
“Oh! Hi, Paul. I just sent Brit to your place. Is she not there yet?”
“No, she made it,” I said. “Thanks for the disc.”
“We thought you might like to have a copy.”
I didn’t need a copy, and I doubted Sara did either, but it seemed like a thoughtful gesture. “We appreciate it. Thank Pete for me, will you?”
“I sure will.” A four- year- old voice clamored for attention in the background; Melody’s voice disappeared, then returned. “Sorry, it’s a little nuts here, as usual. Say, Paul, when did Brit leave?”
“Actually, she’s here now.”
“Really? Still?”
“That’s why I’m calling.” I moved a few paces into the kitchen, out of sight of the dining room, and quickly recounted our Wuthering Heights conversation. “She’s a big reader?”
Melody chuckled on the other end of the line. “We went to the Grand Canyon last summer, but I doubt she could tell you what it looked like. She had her nose in a book the whole trip.”
She’d just described me as a teenager. “Well, talking about books,” I said, “I’ve got a couple thousand of my own that still need unpacking over here.”
“Did you say thousand?”
“A couple thousand, yeah.”
“Wow.”
“She’s been browsing titles for the past ten minutes or so.”
“Paul, I’m sorry. She’s not exactly shy. Just tell her I said to come home, will you?”
“No, not at all, it’s perfectly fine, I was just going to ask. Does she have a summer job?”
“She watches her little sister in the mornings,” Melody said. “And she sits Trish and Barry’s twins whenever they ask. But that’s about it. Why?”
“Well, I was thinking I’d be willing to pay her if she wanted to help shelve this mess. That is, if you and Pete think it would be okay.”
“Really?”
“I’m sure she’s got better things to do with her summer.”
“Not this week, she doesn’t. She’s grounded.”
“So I heard. Maybe it’s a bad idea?”
“I think it’s a great idea, Paul. We’re pulling each other’s hair out over here. I should pay you.”
After hanging up, I ran the idea past Brittany, who said, “You’d pay me?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“How much?”
“How much do you charge?”
She seemed to think about it. “Twenty bucks an hour.”
“I was thinking more like five.”
Brittany narrowed her eyes. “Five bucks an hour, and I get to borrow whatever I want.”
“Done.”
She had a pretty smile. “Cool.”
As she was leaving, I said, “Hey, Brittany. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Brit,” she said. “What’s the question?”
“How come you’re grounded, anyway?”
She waved her hand in the air like the whole thing was too boring for words. “I bought this bikini with my allowance. Dad and Melody told me to take it back, but I didn’t. Melody caught me wearing it at the pool.”
Melody, I thought. As in, not Mom. I said, “Oh.”
“Yeah. What’s the big deal, right?”
It didn’t seem like an especially big deal, but I wasn’t the one to say.
“Melody thinks I can’t wear a two- piece until I’m sixteen. It’s super- cute, too. They’re so uptight.”
That made me pause. I said, “Can I ask you another question?”
“Sure.”
“When do you turn sixteen?”
“In forever,” she said. “I’ll be fourteen in January.”
Jesus, I remember thinking. Poor Pete.
My mother would have called Brit Seward an early bloomer. Bikinigate suddenly made a whole new kind of sense. I’d already noticed the way the Sentinel One guys had traded grins and glances when Brit arrived, her sun- lightened hair up in a ponytail. She’d been dressed for hot weather that day: denim cutoffs, flip- flop sandals, a snug- fitting tank top which stretched in ways that create problems for everyone. I’d noticed the way the workers kept stealing glances.
Had I stolen a couple myself?
“Do me a favor,” I said.
“Sure, maybe.”
“Don’t buy any swimsuits with the money I pay you, okay?”
She laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Your dad looks like the kind of guy I wouldn’t want mad at me.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s totally harmless.”
“If you say so.”
“Melody’s the one you don’t want mad at you.”
“I don’t want either of them mad at me.”
“Fine,” she said. “I promise I’ll only use the money you pay me to buy drugs.”
“Terrific,” I said.
“And condoms if I run out.”
“I appreciate that.”
She grinned. I grinned. We seemed to understand each other. Brittany went home, and I went back to work.
By the time Sara returned from her meeting on campus, Sentinel One had finished installing the new alarm system, which included magnetic strips on all the windows, pressure plates on all the doors, keypads wired directly to the Sentinel One response center, and motion- activated exterior lighting all the way around the house. Which now seemed, we both agreed, like a much safer place than it had before.
9.
I WAKE UP IN A PANIC, disoriented, unsure where I am. I’ve been startled by a noise, but I don’t know what I heard.
For a moment, I sit paralyzed by the vague yet urgent sensation th
at I’m in immediate physical danger. When my chest begins to ache, I realize that I’m holding my breath.
On exhale, the fog in my head begins to dissipate. Little by little, my pulse recedes, and as my surroundings slowly bleed into focus, I become aware of the hard iron bunk frame behind my knees. I’m awake. I recognize, my sense of irony apparently intact, that in terms of immediate physical danger I really couldn’t be safer.
My cell looks just the way I remember it. Actually, that’s not true. A deposit has been made. This must have been what woke me up: the sound of the hinged plate covering the food slot in the door pushing open, dropping closed again. I see a gray plastic tray waiting for me on the shelf.
I feel like I’ve slept on a sidewalk. There’s a hot stitch in my neck, a deadened nerve in my hip, muscles knotted in the middle of my back. My bladder is bursting, but I also smell food. Aiming my stream into the steel bowl of the toilet feels a little bit like taking a whiz at the breakfast table. I haven’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday, and even over the rising smell of warm frothy urine, the smell of breakfast makes my stomach growl.
Breakfast turns out to be a fried egg sandwich that comes in a grease- spotted take- out sack from Petrow’s, a ‘ 30s- style train car diner across the square from the courthouse.
Something about this amuses me, even lifts my spirits. What are they eating for breakfast at the big county facility north of town? Briefly I imagine sweaty guards dragging tin cups along jail cell bars. I imagine bleary- eyed men in denim shirts shuffling into a chow line at dawn. It doesn’t matter that I’m picturing something straight out of Cool Hand Luke; the point is, they must not even have a kitchen here. This isn’t where they keep the real prisoners. I’m only at the temporary jail.
I can’t remember a fried egg sandwich ever tasting as good as this one. In the bottom of the sack there’s a hash brown potato patty shaped like a football. It’s cold by the time I get to it, and a little on the stale side. I could eat four more just like it.
Next to the sack is a lidded paper cup filled with lukewarm orange juice, still foamy on top. After using the toilet I’m inclined to leave the juice where it sits. I could use a cup of black coffee instead, or a gallon bucketful.
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