Hiding Place (9781101606759) (19 page)

“Are you looking for Michael?” Rose asked.

“I am. But I was also hoping to see you.”

“He’s not here, Janet. I don’t know where he is today.” She pointed vaguely toward the front door. “He said he had some business to attend to, but he didn’t tell me what it is.”

“Is he looking for a job?”

Rose’s face brightened considerably. “Do you think he might be? Here in Dove Point?”

Janet wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to give Rose false hope that her son might be home to stay. Janet knew well the difficulties of false hope.

“I don’t know, Rose,” Janet said, scrambling. “How are you doing?”

Rose smiled without showing her teeth. “I’m okay. I’m doing okay. I don’t work. I don’t do much, to be honest.”

“The house is clean.”

“I manage to do that. It’s an old habit I can’t let go of.” She looked around the small room with pride. “How have you been? You must be working still. Or did you…?”

Janet caught her drift. “No, I’m not married. I still work at
Cronin. I manage the dean’s office. I’ve been doing that the last three years.”

“And your daughter? Ashleigh, right?”

“Yes. She’s good. She’s very smart, and she knows it. She’s fifteen, and I imagine she’s as challenging as any fifteen-year-old can be.” Janet paused a moment thinking of all she had to protect Ashleigh from. Not just the usual stuff, but all the other things like the man from the porch. Janet had been crazily vigilant in the house the previous two days, making sure every door and window was locked. “We moved back in with my dad. He lost his job.”

“He did? You mean Strand laid him off?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. He was a company man. I thought he’d be there forever.”

“Times change,” Janet said. “Anyway, we’re all together in the old house now.”

Janet expected Rose to comment on that, to offer something about the good old days, but she didn’t. Maybe Rose wished she could have the same thing—Michael move in for good, a grandchild or two to look after and celebrate.

“Have you seen Michael since he’s been back?” Rose asked.

“We had coffee the other night. We just talked.”

“I kept telling him to call you when he came back, but he must have taken his sweet time. You were always such good friends. To be honest, I always hoped the two of you would…you know, get together at some point.”

Janet’s face flushed. She looked away for a moment.

“I’m sorry if I was rude—”

“Oh, no,” Janet said. “It’s not that.”

“I shouldn’t have said that. I embarrassed you.”

“It’s okay, Rose.” Janet looked back and smiled. “I always hoped the same thing when we were in high school.”

“I could tell. He had all those girls following him around. His groupies, I used to call them. He liked a certain kind of girl, you know. The showy ones, the wild ones. And there was the best one right under his nose. You.” She paused. “You don’t ever hear from that Tony Bachus, do you?”

“Not much. He sends money for Ashleigh when he can. Or when he feels like it.” Janet waved the thought of Tony away with her right hand. “I haven’t needed him.”

“You haven’t, that’s right.” Rose mirrored Janet’s gesture of dismissal. “He was never any damn good. I don’t even know why Michael was friends with him. He hung around with some real dolts in his time.”

Janet laughed.

“You know,” Rose said, “I sometimes wonder if he’s gotten any better. Did he tell you anything about what he was doing in Columbus?”

Janet recognized the position she was being put in. Rose wanted information, and since she didn’t think she could get it from her son, she intended to pry it out of Janet. Janet had to applaud the strategy. If Ashleigh brought any of her friends around, or if her few friends—besides Kevin—were less reticent and angsty, Janet might have used it herself.

“I thought he was working there,” Janet said.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I think he asked his dad for money a few times,” Rose said. “I don’t know, but that’s the impression I got.”

“Didn’t he lose his job?” Janet asked.

“Sure. But I don’t know when. I thought maybe you did.”

“We didn’t talk about it,” Janet said. “Is something wrong?”

Rose didn’t answer. She pressed her lips tight, as though she wanted to keep whatever she had to say bottled up.

“It’s okay if—”

“This phone call came here,” Rose said. “And I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Was it about his job?”

Rose shook her head. She lowered her voice when she spoke, even though no one else was around.

“Who was it?” Janet asked.

“It was a detective from the Columbus Police Department. She called here looking for Michael. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about when I asked. She just said she’d call Michael back.”

“When was this?” Janet asked.

“A few days ago.”

A few days ago.
Before
Michael came and saw Janet at work.

“Did you ask him about it?” Janet asked.

“I gave him the message, but he just grunted. Then he went outside and used his cell phone.”

“To call the detective?”

“I assume.”

Janet leaned back. “Maybe it was just something simple. Maybe someone broke into his car or something.” Even as she said the words, she doubted they were true. He’d come to her worked up about his dad’s possible role in Justin’s death—and this happened after he spoke to a detective. “It’s probably nothing,” she added, hoping her voice sounded convincing.

“I hope you’re right.”

“Michael’s never been in trouble.”

Again, Rose pressed her mouth shut.

“Has he?”

Rose reached up and fiddled with one of her bobby pins. “You know, things didn’t always go well for Michael when he was out on the West Coast. His jobs…well, he still didn’t tell me everything, of course, because he didn’t want me to worry. But he had rough times.”

“Really?”

“He tried more than one thing, more than one career.”

“A lot of young people do that. They try to find themselves.”

“I guess. What do I know? I’ve always been here. But a mother worries, you know?”

“Sure.”

Janet tried to process what Rose told her about Michael’s life out west. She tried to make it match with the picture she had carried with her since high school graduation and Michael’s departure from Dove Point. In that picture in Janet’s head, Michael worked in an exciting job and lived close to the beach. He was carried along by a tide of good times and good friends, and yes, Janet had to admit, she always imagined a swarm of good-looking California women. Liberated, tan, educated. And not tied down in Dove Point, Ohio. Even having the information that contradicted that picture didn’t change the way Janet thought about Michael’s time in California.

“You’re not saying Michael was in trouble with the police out west, are you?”

“If he was, I wouldn’t know.”

“Was he? Do you know something?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said again. “But when the police call the house looking for your child, you wonder.”

Janet thought of Ashleigh. Of course, Janet thought. She knew exactly what Rose meant.

“I understand why you’d be worried,” Janet said. “If I talk to him, and if it seems natural, I’ll ask him about it.”

“I’m not asking you to spy—”

“I know,” Janet said. “I want to talk to him again anyway.”

Rose’s face looked a little dreamy. Janet wondered if she was falling asleep or losing focus because of her age. But she spoke through the dreamy look.

“You know,” she said, “Ray was the golden boy too when we met. Football player and all of that. Everybody’s friend, everybody’s drinking buddy. Lots of girls wanted him, but I got him…”

Her voice trailed off, even though there seemed to be more to say. Janet leaned forward.

“And?”

“Michael and his father have a lot in common,” she said, her eyes still distant. “Sometimes I worry about how much they have in common.”

A pull-down ladder at the end of the hallway provided access to the attic. Janet hadn’t been up there for a few months. Every so often, a wave of nostalgia and regret washed over her—took hold of her really—and at those times she comforted herself by looking at old photos of Justin and her mother. It eased her mind knowing the mementos were stored just above her, like a savings account she only occasionally withdrew from.

Janet always worried she wouldn’t be able to pull the ladder down by herself. She came home from Rose’s feeling more tired than usual. The past few days’ events—the encounter with the man on the quad, the trip to Rose’s house—had left her drained, and she resisted the urge to crawl straight into bed with the TV for company. She needed a pick-me-up, a little lift, so she gave the short pull string two good tugs and brought the ladder down with a groaning, whining protest. She unfolded the wooded contraption, breathing in dust, and hoped—like she always did when she stepped onto it—that it would still hold her weight.
I’ll never reach Memory Lane if I break my neck on the way…

She started to climb. More than simple, painful nostalgia drove Janet forward. A sharp purpose guided her to the attic—she wanted to look at pictures of Justin and her mother and even her father as a young man and determine if a resemblance really existed between them and the man from the porch. She
needed to study those pictures, to contemplate them. She couldn’t trust her memory to do the work for her anymore. Her memory—her heart—wanted it to be true so bad she couldn’t rely on it.

The ladder shook and squeaked beneath her weight, but it held. A lone bulb on a cord illuminated the slanting roof, the thick tufts of insulation. Janet always feared bats and mice and bugs. She once heard a story about a woman in Dove Point who’d found a rattlesnake nesting in her attic. But that couldn’t be true, could it? The obvious irrationality of the story aside, Janet shivered despite the heat in the enclosed, musty space.
Quickly,
she told herself. Quickly.

Janet knew where the box was kept. She remembered the days and weeks after her brother’s funeral, waking during the night to the sound of creaking footsteps in the attic. Terrified, she’d pull the covers to her head, thinking the same man who had killed her brother had come into the house looking for her.

But it wasn’t a stranger. It was her mother. Eventually, Janet screwed up the nerve to investigate and she found the ladder to the attic pulled down. And she heard the sobs echoing in the unfinished empty space. Her mother crying over mementos of her murdered child. Photos, clothes, crayon drawings. When she was old enough, Janet made the trek up those stairs too—always when her parents weren’t home—and relived her brother’s short life through the contents of that one box.

She turned to the right, to the corner of the attic where the box always sat. She didn’t see it right away. She couldn’t imagine anyone else in the family had been up in the attic moving things around, certainly not her dad. Would Ashleigh go through these things? Janet pushed some boxes aside, felt a layer of dust against her skin. A small lump of panic rose in her throat, almost as though she had swallowed the very dust she was kicking up
as she moved around the attic. The box was always in that corner. Always. Before her mom died it had been there, and after her mom died it remained.

Janet moved around the room, her actions becoming more frantic and panicked the longer she looked. It couldn’t be gone because it held everything. Everything that was left—

She made a circuit of the room, opening every box. Then she did it again, and by the time she finished the second go-round she was crying. She wiped the tears away, felt them mix with the gritty dust that coated her face.

“No,” she said. “No.”

She must have missed it, must have passed it by as she tried not to lose control of her emotions. But something told her that wasn’t the case. She knew it was gone, gone, gone.

Janet stood still in the middle of the attic, the roof support beams just above her head. A bright spark of anger and frustration ignited in her gut. She left the attic, back down the rickety stairs, not worrying at all on the descent if the ladder would hold her weight or not. When she hit the bottom she went right down the stairs again to the first floor, where she heard the TV playing, the usual late-afternoon news drone that her father couldn’t seem to get enough of.

Sure enough, she found him in his chair, his eyes a little glassy from the tranquilizing nature of the TV set. He didn’t bother to look up when she came into the room. He kept his eyes on the screen as if Janet wasn’t there.

“Dad?”

He still didn’t respond.

Janet reached down for the remote and turned the TV off.

“Hey.”

“Dad, I need you to listen to me. I need to ask you something.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There was a box in the attic, a box of things from Mom and Justin.”

“I don’t—”

“You know goddamn well what box I’m talking about,” she said. “It’s been there forever. I know you like to pretend you don’t know about things like that, but I know you know what I’m talking about. I’m not the only one who used to hear Mom go up there at night and cry. I know you remember that.”

Her dad looked away, back to the blank TV screen.

“Dad, that box is gone. What happened to it?”

“It’s dark up there.”

“Dad, there are only three of us in this house. I know I didn’t move it and I know Ashleigh didn’t. So I’m asking you.”

He remained silent for a long time. Janet decided to wait it out, to stare him down and not give him a chance to turn away or say something off the subject. She just waited.

It took a long time, but her dad finally spoke.

“It’s gone,” he said.

Janet didn’t process the word. She waited another beat, then said, “Gone? Do you mean it’s missing?”

“I mean it’s gone,” he said. “I threw it away.”

Whatever anger Janet felt when she entered the room left as soon as her father’s words registered in her brain. In place of the anger, an emptiness grew, spreading through the inside of her body like expanding warm air, filling her and driving everything else away. She felt hollow.