Hiding Place (9781101606759) (26 page)

So what did Michael want?

The night was dark. Her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, which meant she could see about twenty-five feet in front of her.

“Michael,” she said, “I don’t like this place.”

He looked down at her in the darkness. He reached out a comforting hand, placed it on her upper arm again. “I know,” he said.

“Then why are we here?”

“We’re here because I learned something in therapy about confronting things from our past. Janet, did you ever talk about this with a therapist?”

“They made me talk to a school counselor when Justin died,” she said. She remembered the hours spent in the small office, the counselor a well-meaning but past-his-prime man with white hair and a polyester tie that Janet knew even at that young age was too far out of date. She told him what she thought he wanted to hear because she thought it would release her from the sessions sooner.
No, I’m not having nightmares. No, I don’t obsessively think about my brother’s death. No, I’m not scared in the dark.
And it worked. The sessions stopped, and Janet began the project—mostly on her own—of trying to be a normal kid again.

In the darkness, Janet studied Michael’s eyes. Despite his touch and his smile, his eyes looked nervous and afraid. After all the years she’d known him, Janet couldn’t reconcile the two images—the smiling golden boy she’d known both in fact and in memory and the man standing before her, a man in his early thirties who’d been a little battered by life. That one had become and fed into the other Janet understood on an intellectual level, just as she understood that the defensive seven-year-old determined to soldier on through her brother’s death had become the
woman at the head of the path. A little fearful and nervous and uncertain about how the events of the last few days were going to turn out—and what it all was going to mean to her.

“I need to do this, Janet,” Michael said. “A therapist I saw in California encouraged me to come back to this spot. To be in it again. You know, I haven’t been here since that day?”

“Is that why you’re back in Dove Point? To do this?”

“I’ve been circling the issue for years,” he said. “After California, I moved to Chicago, then Columbus. I kept getting closer.”

“Why do we have to do it in the dark? Justin didn’t die in the dark.”

If he died at all.

“I need to share it with you,” he said. “And this is our chance to do it without interruption.”

Janet looked down the path again, then up at Michael.

She nodded her head, and they started into the woods.

They moved down the narrow path single file, with Michael going first and Janet following, holding on to his hand. Janet knew that kids came to the park to have sex or drink or escape from the adult world that held them back, and it wasn’t lost on her, as they walked through the woods, that if this scene were playing out sixteen years earlier—the two of them holding hands in the darkened park, heading to an isolated place—her entire body would have been thrumming with the electric pulses of desire. Even under the current circumstances, Janet felt some of that. She and Michael were together. They were touching. They were sharing something, just the two of them.

But Janet knew enough—had lived enough—not to give in to that feeling. Bigger things were happening. Much bigger.

Branches and twigs brushed against her arms and pant legs as they progressed down the path. Despite the heat and recent lack of rain, the foliage in the woods remained thick and lush. In the darkness, the leaves shifted and moved in the light breeze, their shadowy outlines tricking Janet’s eyes with their movement, giving the impression of the presence of animals or people where there were none. She smelled the rich earth, felt the buzzing of flying insects that nipped at her face and exposed arms.

She couldn’t turn back. Michael needed her. And maybe he was right. Maybe she needed to face this place again.

Michael turned back to her. “It’s right up there,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“How do you even know where to go?” Janet asked.

“There’s only one path through the woods over here,” he said. “Besides, I can just feel that this is the place. I know. Don’t you?”

Janet didn’t say it out loud, but she agreed. It did feel like the place. It really did.

Michael’s pace slowed a few moments later. He came to an almost complete stop and shifted to the right, his hand still holding Janet’s. She saw the dark outline of the little pond to the left, smelled the stagnant, boggy water. And then she saw the opening ahead of them, felt herself guided by Michael to the edge of the clearing where he stood by her side.

It looked the same as the last time, which had been how long? She tried to remember how old Ashleigh had been that day they walked down to the place her brother died. Ashleigh must have been about nine, which meant it had been six years since Janet had been to the spot.

“It’s weird to think about, isn’t it?” Michael said.

“What?”

“Someone died here. A life ended on this spot, and there’s
nothing to indicate that it ever happened. Anyone could walk through here. People probably do, and they just don’t know the ground they’re walking over.”

“There’s no need for any marker,” Janet said. “Everywhere you go someone’s died there. Or had a relationship end or received bad news. If we marked all those places, the world would be full of nothing but awful reminders.”

Michael looked over at her, his face puzzled. Janet recognized that her statement revealed a calmness and rationality that she didn’t completely feel. But she did believe the sentiment she expressed. Why should the rest of the world have to be reminded of what happened to her family? Why shouldn’t the high school kids be able to roll around on the ground and make out without having to think about a death that happened years earlier?

“Well,” Michael said. He took a step forward, expecting Janet to move with him.

Janet resisted. “No.”

“What?”

“I’m okay right here,” she said. “On the edge of the clearing.” She saw a flat rock to her left and sat down on it, letting go of Michael’s hand. “I’m okay here.”

“But—”

“Michael, I guess I’m starting to wonder if this is a good idea. Being here. What are you trying to achieve?”

He studied her for a moment in the dark, his facial features obscured by the shadows. “I’ll show you,” he said.

He moved out into the center of the clearing. Janet thought he was going to stop in the middle, as close as he possibly could get to the spot where Justin’s body was found. But Michael didn’t pause. He walked past that point and over to the far side of the clearing. There, he turned back to Janet and faced her through
the murky darkness, his body practically just another shadow among the shadows.

“This is where I was,” he said.

Janet waited for an explanation, and when he didn’t offer one, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“I think this is where I stood that day. The day Justin died.”

Michael closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and he crouched down in the darkness, bending at the knees until he was in a squatting position. He covered his face with both of his hands.

Janet didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She still didn’t understand what Michael wanted from her. She waited while Michael remained in that position, his face hidden, his body quiet. Someone who stumbled upon him that way would think he was praying—or grieving. And maybe he was.

He finally shifted his hands from over his mouth and said, “I can see it, Janet. That day.”

“I can see it, too. Always.”

“No, Janet.” His voice sounded harsh, impatient. “I can see that day, of course. But I can see this spot. This very spot.” He slid his hands all the way off his face and shifted his weight. He leaned forward and rested on his knees, his body kneeling in the soft dirt. “Remember, I followed Justin into the woods when he chased after that dog.”

“Sure.”

“And this is where he came. To this exact spot.”

“Are you saying you were here? You came this far into the woods?”

“Something’s happened to me since I’ve been back in Dove Point. It’s exactly what my therapist told me would happen. Since I’ve been here and living in this place, a flood of memories
has come back to me. Everything. Smells and sounds and sights. I’ve been a little overwhelmed.”

“It’s hard for me to really understand,” Janet said. “I never left like you did.”

“Trust me. Memory is a powerful force.”

For a long moment, there were only the night sounds. Then Janet said, “You told me in the coffee shop that you think you saw your dad in the woods that day. Did you see him here? In this clearing?”

“I went to our old house today, the one we lived in when I was a kid. You know, Dad has it on the market. I made an appointment with the real estate agent. I didn’t tell Dad that I was doing it. He was at work while I went through with the agent. I’m not going to buy it, of course, but I wanted to see what the old place was like.”

“I didn’t know he was moving.”

Michael made a bitter laughing sound. “He’s getting married. Did you know that? He’s marrying his fucking secretary. Some girl younger than us, and he’s marrying her.”

Janet thought of her own dad. She couldn’t imagine him marrying again, or her reaction to it, but there were days she would gladly have accepted a twenty-five-year-old stepmother if it brought the old man out of his funk.

“It’s been a long time for him—”

“No,” Michael said. “No. I don’t want to hear excuses for him. He left my mother. I know you went to the house the other day. I know you saw how she lives.”

Janet understood. She didn’t know the particulars between Ray and Rose, but she understood that Michael would believe his mother had got the shaft. On the surface, it certainly seemed that way.

“So you went through the house?” Janet said, hoping to steer Michael away from the anger at his father and back to what he had to say about his memories and the clearing.

“I did.”

“You didn’t tell your dad?”

“We’re not really talking right now. I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Okay.”

“It’s funny. You’re back in your house, and I went back through my house. Did we ever think we’d be doing that when we were sixteen?”

“We figured we’d be in New York or LA. At least one of us made it out.”

He made the bitter laughing noise again. “For a while. Anyway, when I went through the house, a lot of things came back to me. The way I felt as a kid. The way I felt about my father. I opened up the medicine cabinet and saw his aftershave. I sat in the recliner he always sat in. I didn’t tell the real estate agent who I was or that I used to live there. She probably thought I was nuts, wandering around so lost in my thoughts. And then, at the end, I just left. I didn’t take her card or the sheet about the house. I just left.”

He scratched his nose. “I feel like it made a lot of sense to go there like that. It served as preparation for the other things I needed to do. A warm-up exercise, if you will.”

“And what were you warming up to?” Janet asked.

“When I left the house and the real estate agent behind, I walked over to the park. I followed the exact course that he would have taken to get here. Out our backyard, through the neighbor’s yard, and over to the path into the woods. I walked all the way back here, right to this spot.”

“And what did you find?”

“He was here, Janet.”

“Today?”

“Then. That day. He wasn’t just in the woods. He was here. Right here.” He closed his eyes again. “I can see him. I can see him in this clearing.”

Janet shivered. The sweat on her body seemed to have suddenly cooled. “With Justin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would your dad be here in the first place?” Janet asked. “Why would he just be walking through the woods in the morning?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if my dad was involved somehow. If he
did
something.”

“But what reason would he have for doing anything to Justin? Why?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know, Janet. I don’t know any of it. I just know that something is wrong with my dad. He walked away from my mom. He walked away from his responsibilities as a father.”

“It doesn’t make him a killer,” Janet said. “And there’s a guy claiming to be Justin running around town—”

“And the convicted killer says he’s innocent,” Michael said. “So if Dante Rogers is innocent, that means someone else committed the crime. Someone who was here and close. And my dad was here.” Michael pointed at the earth. “He was right here.”

Something snuck up on Janet, a memory of her own. Except it wasn’t from years past. It was from earlier that day.

“My dad,” she said.

“What about him?”

“I just found out today that my dad was home the morning Justin died. Not only was he home, but he…I don’t want to say he lied, but he…”

“He what?”

“He told the police one thing about where he was that morning, and my mom said something else. But he was home that morning when he was supposed to be at work. Why would they both be home in the morning? Did you ask your mom about this?”

Michael shook his head. “I can’t. She’s too fragile. She’s not over the asshole yet. It’s pathetic.”

Janet wrapped her arms around her body. She looked at the ground where her brother supposedly died. “What happened here, Michael?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t even know if I’m supposed to trust these memories you’re having,” she said. “I can’t remember what I did last week, and you’re asking me to believe that you can remember something that happened twenty-five years ago, something you haven’t clearly remembered until now. I don’t know what to do with all of that. And the truth is I don’t want to believe you. I don’t want to believe that your father or my father had anything to do with Justin’s death. I want to believe he’s still alive, that the man claiming to be him is really him.”

Michael stood up. He came over, and Janet scooted to her left so he could sit on the rock next to her. Their legs touched, the fabric of their jeans rubbing against each other. Michael took her hand in his. “That’s what I’m here to find out. That’s why I came back here.”