Hiding Place (9781101606759) (9 page)

“You got out past the old man,” Michael said.

“Like being a kid again.”

Michael smiled. The tea came, and she took a tentative sip. It warmed her, but not as much as knowing that she and Michael shared a past, one that extended to the present. “He really never did know everything that went on right in front of him,” Michael said. “Out of sight, out of mind.” He shook his head. “I remember
the time he caught us taking a fifth of whiskey from his liquor cabinet. He acted shocked that we even wanted to drink.”

“I don’t think he’d care if you came over now,” Janet said. She opened two packs of sugar and dumped them into the cup. “It’s Tony he’s really mad at. You know, he still doesn’t remember to send Ashleigh a birthday card every year.”

“Do you ever talk to him about it?”

“No way. My dad is the closest thing to a male role model in Ashleigh’s life. He’s certainly not perfect, but he provides something. Some stability, I guess. He’s like a rock that’s always there. That’s part of the reason I moved back in with him. Of course, Ashleigh doesn’t seem to need much of anything.”

“She doesn’t see Tony?” Michael asked.

“She doesn’t even ask about him,” Janet said. “She understands who he is and the role he’s played in her life so far. I’ve raised her to be self-sufficient. Too self-sufficient sometimes.”

“And she never says she misses him or wants to see him?” Michael asked.

“She’s pretty strong-willed. And quiet. I’m trying to figure out if she has a boyfriend.”

“Really.”

“She has a guy friend she used to bring around all the time. They’d play games at the house, watch TV. Now they spend all their time together, but she never brings him to the house. Makes me wonder.”

“Maybe they’re just being teenagers.”

“Or maybe the kid’s afraid of my dad.” She stirred and sipped again. “How about
your
dad? How’s he?”

Michael’s face changed. Like someone dropped a curtain or threw a switch, the happiness that had been there since she walked in the door evaporated.

“We’re not really talking right now,” he said.

Janet studied his face longer, waiting for more. She noticed the flecks of gray at his temple, the sprinkling in the stubble on his chin.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine, you know,” he said, recovering some of the life in his eyes. “He and I just don’t agree about the world. We never have. I accepted it a long time ago. He just can’t get outside his world, you know? He’s trapped in it. He only sees the things right before him, this conventional life he leads as a bookkeeper. And anything outside of that is invisible.”

“A lot of parents are like that.”

“I was in Portland for a while.”

“Oregon?”

Michael nodded.

“Wow,” Janet said. “I’ve never been.”

“I met a lot of people out there who think for themselves, who aren’t hung up on all the little things people are hung up on here. People like my dad. Everything here is so stuffy. I don’t know how long I can stay.”

Janet felt her heart drop at the words. She took a drink of the still too hot tea. “Portland,” she said. “You know, it’s been a few years since I’ve even had a call or an e-mail from you. At least once a year I’d hear something from you, even just a lousy Christmas card. You even used to come back here from time to time. I was trying to remember how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. Wasn’t it Christmas about five years ago?”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. I’ve been distracted.” He smiled at her, and she knew he hoped that would make everything better. “I’m here now.”

“And how’s your mom?” she asked.

“She’s okay,” he said. “She’s lost weight, you know, a lot of weight, and she has high blood pressure.”

“I see her from time to time around town. She’s always so nice and asks about me and Ashleigh.”

“The years have been hard on her.”

“She’s never married anyone else, has she?”

“God, no,” Michael said. “The divorce ripped her up.” He shook his head. “She hasn’t been the same since.”

“My dad either,” Janet said. “Since Mom died.”

Some kids at the next table were playing a game. It involved stacking wooden blocks as high as they would go and then gently trying to pull out the ones at the bottom without toppling the whole structure. Jenga? Was that it? One of the kids sent the whole pile down, a great tumbling of wooden pieces across the table and onto the floor. They all groaned and laughed. And again Janet thought of Ashleigh. Such a serious kid. How often did she laugh like that?

“I couldn’t make it today,” he said. “I know you wanted me to see that reporter, but I couldn’t make it.”

Typical Michael. He wouldn’t apologize for not showing up. He’d just say he couldn’t make it.

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” she said, thinking back on Stynes’s words. She’d been turning them over ever since the detective left and coupling them with the words spoken by the man on the porch that night.

“I said I just couldn’t make it.”

“I don’t mean that,” she said. “I don’t care about that. The reporter was just a little college girl. She wanted to score some kind of big scoop, I guess. She was annoying and pretty.”

“Pretty?” Michael perked up.

Janet knew he was joking, but she still felt a twinge of envy.
He was free to come and go. If he wanted to give Katie College Girl a call and ask her out, he could. He wasn’t beholden to anyone, unlike Janet.

“I meant to tell you how good you look,” Michael said.

“Me? Right now?”

“You look young,” Michael said. “You haven’t changed that much since high school really.”

Janet felt her face flush. “Anyway,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about what you said today on campus. You asked me what really happened at the park that day, and I just wanted to know what you meant by that. Why did you ask me that question?”

Michael looked around, his eyes restless like they were in the parking lot. This evasiveness was a new trait. When they were kids, Michael didn’t look away from people. He didn’t avert his eyes from things. If you asked him a question, he answered it.

Janet waited until he was ready to talk, the clacking of the wooden Jenga pieces and the teenage conversation the only sounds she noticed.

“You think about that day a lot, don’t you?” he asked.

“I do.”

He looked away again, eyes restless still. “I do, too,” he said. “Almost all the time lately.”

“Why? Did something change?”

“My parents getting older, I guess. Thinking about that and the anniversary got me thinking about it. I can’t think about home without thinking of that day.”

“That seems normal to me.”

“I guess a lot of people around here think about it,” he said. “That’s why they did the newspaper stories, right? How did that go with the reporter?”

“It was a little tough talking about it,” she said. “I didn’t
expect it to be. I really didn’t. I hadn’t talked about it since the last parole hearing, I guess. I don’t talk about it with Dad. Or with Ashleigh.”

“Did you read the story about Dante Rogers?” Michael asked.

“Yes. Did you? Did you have the same reaction I had?”

“What was that?”

Janet tried to think of what she wanted to say, but there seemed to be only one way to say it. “I felt sorry for him.”

Michael was nodding. “Exactly,” he said. “I felt that, too.” He licked his lips and leaned in, lowering his voice. “And I couldn’t help but think he’s a victim, too.”

“How?”

“It’s the system, Janet,” Michael said. “A black man like Dante in a town like this—what chance does he have?”

“That’s what the reporter was asking about today.”

“Was she?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I’d been there now,” he said, shaking his head. The waitress came and brought refills. Coffee for Michael, hot water and a new tea bag for Janet. When the waitress was gone, Michael continued. “We put him there, Janet,” he said. “We threw him into that system.”

Janet had never thought of it that way. She told the truth to the police when she was a child. She saw that man in the park, and when they asked, she told them. She had never stopped to consider everything else that went along with it. She’d been a kid then, only seven. She didn’t think of the larger implications.

“I asked you that question on campus because I really wanted to know,” he said. “What do you remember from the park that day? What did you see?” Despite the importance of the question, he didn’t seem to want an immediate answer. He pressed
on. “I’m not sure anymore what I saw. I know what I told the police, and I know they acted on it. And I know they arrested Dante and put him on trial. But I’m not sure anymore if I remember what I saw, or if I remember what I think I saw. I don’t know if I can trust my own memory anymore.”

“Michael, I have something very important to say about that.”

“When I was in Portland and again in LA, I took some recreational drugs to try to regress my memories back there. I did some hypnosis, too, with a therapist, but I didn’t trust it. I didn’t think I could really get back to that place.”

Janet was ready to jump out of her chair. “Michael,” she said, “I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“There’s a man,” she said. “And this man came to my house. And he says he knows what really happened in the park that day.”

Michael froze in place for a long moment, his lips slightly parted. “What do you mean?” he finally asked.

She told him the story of the man coming in the middle of the night, appearing on the porch out of the blue and spinning his strange tale. Janet told Michael that she kept waiting for him to come back, to explain what he meant by his cryptic words, but that so far he hadn’t returned. While she spoke, Michael listened. He didn’t interrupt, and he didn’t ask questions. He just listened, his face rapt. Janet knew that not only would Michael be fascinated by the story, but he would listen to her without judgment. He wouldn’t laugh. He wouldn’t call her crazy. She knew this about him, and so he became the first person she had ever told.

“That man on the porch,” she said. “Sometimes I think he’s just like that day in the park. Sometimes I can’t really believe
that he came to the door. I’m the only one who saw him. I don’t know him. He didn’t give me anything. He appeared like a ghost. In fact, I know I’m overreacting, but I thought I heard someone in the yard when I left the house tonight. I almost didn’t come because of it. I thought it might be that man and maybe he meant to hurt someone. Ashleigh. Or me.”

“But you came.”

“I figured I was being silly. And I just texted Ashleigh in the car, and she’s okay.”

Michael shook his head. Just a little, but the shake was there. He looked surprisingly agitated. “See, you need to forget about this guy,” he said.

“Why?”

“He sounds like a kook. Aren’t you worried he’s dangerous? Coming to your house in the middle of the night? What if he is sneaking around the yard? What if he’s crazy?”

The same thoughts occupied Janet’s mind at least once a day. She wasn’t naive. She knew sickos got kicks from tormenting the families of crime victims. She knew strange men shouldn’t be knocking on the door in the middle of the night.

“I know,” she said.

“Did you call the police?” Michael asked.

“The guy said not to.”

Michael looked satisfied, his point made. “See.”

Janet felt uneasy leaving the house sometimes, wondering if the man watched what she did, making sure she didn’t contact the police. Did he see Stynes at the house that very day?

“Forget about this guy, Janet. He’s a creep. Tell me, answer the question—what do you remember from that day?”

Janet looked down. An oily sheen had formed on the top of her tea, swirling around in the wake of her stirring. Janet had
been asking herself this question—really asking it—for the past three months, ever since the man appeared on the porch raising questions of his own.

“It was hot. Very hot.” She looked up at Michael, and he nodded. So she went on. “And Justin and I were there first. We were playing in the park, and then a little while later you showed up.”

“See, I don’t remember that, but I believe you. I thought I was there the whole time.”

“It wasn’t long before you came,” she said. “I remember what you were wearing. I can see that. Shorts and a long belt.”

“I remember that belt.” He smiled.

“Yeah. It was goofy.” Janet paused a moment, then went on. “I saw Dante with Justin. I saw him talking to him. And I think I saw him carrying Justin on his shoulders. Way up high.”

“Right. I thought I remembered that, too.”

“But you don’t?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What do
you
remember?”

He paused a long time, drawing the moment out like a good actor would. He rubbed his chin with his right hand. “I think Justin ran away. Don’t you? I think I remember him running into the woods.”

“Are you sure? I don’t remember him running away. I don’t really remember anything that happened after he was on Dante’s shoulders. I don’t even know what order those memories come in.”

Michael had a look of focus on his face. He didn’t seem to hear Janet’s words. “I think he ran away and into the woods. There was a dog in the park, not much bigger than a puppy. And a bunch of the kids were playing with it. And Justin was fascinated by that dog.”

“He loved dogs,” Janet said. “I remember that. He wanted
one. We both did, but my parents didn’t want one. My dad always said he’d end up taking care of it.”

“That dog ran off into the woods eventually. And Justin went after it, trying to catch it. And I have a very clear memory of running after Justin, like I wanted to bring him back to where he was supposed to be.”

“Was it in the direction…they found him back there…?”

“It was,” Michael said. “He ran toward the woods where they found his body, and I went that way, too.”

“And what happened?”

“I went into the woods after him,” Michael said. “I remember going down that path, past that little pond, following him. I remember the voices from the playground growing fainter and more distant.”