Light of Day (18 page)

“I like you, Jack. Especially tonight.”

“Why especially tonight?”

“You don't hold me accountable for my behavior.”

“You're behaving perfectly fine.”

“That's what I mean.” She held him tighter.

Sometime after eleven, they all went to the carnival. Jack won a stuffed bear for Maggie at the shooting gallery, and a gold-plated rhinestone bracelet, which she put on immediately and promised to wear until her arm turned green. They rode the Tilt-A-Whirl and threw cream pies at a clown and ate salty French fries out of paper cones. Then everyone drove down Third Street, past the trucker bars and the gas stations and the motels' neon signs, to the Little Slipper, where they listened to the jazz trio do better-than-passable work on standards. Maggie and Jack sat close to each other in the booth near the back. Lois sang “You Go to My Head,” deep and hot and throaty. Jerry and Joy harmonized softly on “My Heart Stood Still.”

Jack remembered that Maggie talk-sang “The Very Thought of You.”

He remembered when Maggie showed up for her first softball game and he shouted across the diamond to Danny, “I want you to meet someone,” and Danny came hustling over, glove tucked under his arm, cap on backwards.

“This is Maggie Brighton,” Jack said. “The scouting report says she plays a decent first base. If Gary doesn't take her, I suggest you make her one of your picks.”

Danny gave her a stern looking over.

“I'm not all field and no hit, either,” Maggie said, “I've even got some power to the opposite field,” which made Danny smile.

It was blue skies all day and the ball field over by the fairgrounds looked like candy. Maggie knew how to play softball; in the first inning, she dug out a low throw and Danny gave her a high-five coming off the field, and she knew how to dress for a ballgame as well, wearing old baseball pants that she'd fixed to fit like pedal pushers, a cast-off baseball shirt she'd found at a flea market, black Chuck Taylor high-tops and a black cap with her red hair tucked inside.

Leading off the bottom of the ninth, her team down by a run, Maggie legged out a slow roller to short. She wound up on third with two outs, danced off the bag, juking and swishing her hips, waving to Jack and shouting, “I'm running on contact. I'm comin' home.” Unfortunately, she was stranded at third and never scored the tying run.

After the game, as he helped set up the picnic along the foul lines, Jack watched Maggie run over to him, propelled, it appeared, on the strength of her laughter. “Danny told me I could ‘really pick it' at first base,” she said. “He's wonderful, Jack. I made sure to tell him that, and that he's an excellent second baseman, too.”

“He can't hear enough of it.”

“And neither can you.” She hugged his arm and laughed some more.

They circled the old beach chairs in the shade of the trees and the picnic was on. Sandwiches and salads, beers and sodas, smoke from the barbecue grill swirled with the aroma of burgers and hot dogs and sausages. While the adults ate and talked about their summer plans, the kids hurried through the food and chose up teams for another softball game.

That was the summer he rented the house in Maine with Nick and the boys. Danny was what, ten? No, he must have been nine. Maggie came to his tenth birthday…

Maggie supplied the magician and a “gypsy” fortune-teller for Danny's tenth birthday, Jack remembered. But in that softball game she was stranded at third with the tying run.

Jack thought about Maggie and felt the regret he'd felt before, it seemed to belong with all the other regrets he was feeling, and she belonged with all the other people he missed and who were gone. “Noble
Dr. Owens,” she'd called him, but that was just a joke, that was before what happened happened.

It started to rain. Jack got up to close the bedroom window.

He remembered that Maggie had laughed about it later, about dancing off third base. “Doing my baseball bossa nova.”

There was always lots of laughter when she was around. Maggie Brighton. She made things bright.

On the Saturday nights that Danny spent at Rick's house, or Brian's, Jack would stay with Maggie in Bloomington, where she lived in one of the smart neighborhoods near campus. The first time he stayed over, it was raining, like tonight, only it was late September and cool. They sat on the floor, a tray of hors d'oeuvres in front of them, and listened to Chet Baker and Mose Allison.

“Did you always want to be a teacher?” she asked.

“Except in the eighth grade, when I wanted my own talk show.”

“That's not too far removed from teaching.”

“And you?”

“When I was seven, I used to force my little sisters to play school with me. I'd make them sit in and recite Dr. Seuss and A. A. Milne.” She smiled. “It's goofy, I know, but I always loved the
sound
of reading poetry out loud. My family has a little cottage on Lake Wawasee and when I was in high school I used to sit on the dock by myself and read Emily Dickinson. We should go up there, Jack, in a couple of weeks, Danny, you and I. It's beautiful in the fall. I can take you both to the Olympia Candy Kitchen in Goshen, for hamburgers and malts. We'll go on foliage hikes around the lake and build a fire at night and make s'mores and tell ghost stories.”

Jack still remembered how nervous—anxious, really—he felt when Maggie invited them. “I think we'll run into a few logistical problems,” he said.

“Logistics?”

“Sleeping arrangements.”

“I think we can manage to keep our hands off each other for a weekend,” she said, and then, “Is that all?”

“No. I'm also very careful about Danny not getting too attached to
women I go out with. Not that there've been that many, but—”

“He has to get to know me, I understand, and get comfortable with everything. Right?”

“That's right.”

“Does he know that you stay here?”

Jack shook his head. “I think it would be very confusing for him.”

“Where does he think you are?”

“Oh, he knows I'm with you,” Jack said, not defensively, “he knows all about you. He just doesn't know that I sleep over.”

In October, they drove up to the cabin by Lake Wawasee and did all the things Maggie said they would. Jack and Danny slept in bunk beds. Danny got the top bunk.

When they drove back to Gilbert on Sunday night, Danny said he'd had a good time. He said he liked Maggie. He told Jack, “We should invite her over to our house for supper.”

Maggie came for supper. Sometimes she came for lunch on Saturday afternoons, stayed for supper and slept over, in the guest room. If she was bothered by that arrangement, she never said so. Sometimes Jack and Danny would drive to IU and meet Maggie at her office. She would listen to Danny's stories and his jokes. She'd tell him a few jokes of her own. Some nights, they all ate supper at a restaurant, some nights they ate supper at her house, where she would coax Danny into playing the piano, or she would play, and when Danny got to feeling more comfortable around her they would play duets. She used to make Danny laugh with silly rhymes and verses. “One of the perks of teaching kiddie-lit. Plenty of doggerel.”

Jack thought about the afternoon just after summer vacation, when Maggie and he sat on the porch swing, Maggie barefoot, wearing shorts, her skin brown from the sun, her sleek, angular face relaxed and rested. It wasn't raining but the air felt thick and damp. The crickets and cicadas and frogs were going crazy in the deep dark of the crops and in the woods by the creek.

“I suppose you always loved movies,” she said.

“Actually, I loved sitting alone in the dark, and watching movies was
a very acceptable way of doing it.”

“I think you're telling me more than I want to know.” When she laughed her entire face laughed and her body laughed and it made Jack laugh.

 

It had been a long time since he'd laughed like that.

After the rain, in the early morning, the sun burned through the clouds and there was the smell of ozone in the air. The grass was still damp and nothing had changed except Jack was not alone. He sat on the back porch drinking coffee with Stan Miller, who had dropped by to say hello and to make sure Jack was ready to be Dr. Owens again, not that Stan would have been so insensitive as to ask. He wouldn't have risen to chair of the department without a large share of tact and the intelligence not to ask the obvious or state it, which is a winning combination anywhere, Jack thought, ungraciously, for he was not in a gracious mood this morning.

He didn't want Stan there. He didn't want to be reminded of who Stan thought he was talking to, who he expected, had every reason to expect, would show up the first day of fall semester. After all, Stan had a department to run and only a small cadre of teachers with which to run it, and if Jack wasn't up to the job, if he was going to turn in his application for emergency leave and avoid the carnage, or what Jack feared would be the carnage once he walked into the classroom and looked at the ten faces, sympathetic, apprehensive, wondering if Dr. Owens would give them their tuition's worth—while he wondered the same thing, himself, wondered if he would look at his students and think only about Danny, who had not lived to be their age. And would they see that in his face?

If Dr. Owens wasn't up to the job, he'd better say so now.

But Stan didn't need to ask this. They'd been colleagues for ten years, they had the same friends, their sons had played together. All Stan needed to say was, “How have you been doing, Jack?” while the birds took flight across the field, the mourning doves cooed like heartbreak, the sunlight grew and the shadows tiptoed their silent retreat.

“Trying to put things back together,” Jack answered. “Slowly.”

Stan could say slow was the best way. He could say, “Christine and I thought of you quite often this summer.” But he couldn't know that Dr. Owens had died along with Danny and all that remained was Jack, the ghost of Dr. Owens, rattling his chains and making noises, no more substantial than ectoplasm, and Jack didn't know if he could show up come September. He didn't know if he was up to the job. Not that that's the sort of thing he'd confess to his department chair; in spite of Stan's good manners, that would not be what he wanted to hear.

Jack knew that Stan didn't have time to waste listening to equivocations, he only wanted Jack to make his job easy. He only wanted to hear the word “yes” as he moved the mug of coffee around in his hand and took another look at the scenery beyond the backyard, giving his attention to the hawks circling above the field, and not saying anything. Maybe the task of saying what was on his mind put a strain on his wealth of tact, or maybe it was the words themselves, there aren't any strict guidelines for asking a father whose son committed suicide if he's capable of teaching, for saying: “Look, I know you're feeling like shit, but I've got my own corner of self-interest to consider. I've got a job to do. So what is it, Jack, can you or can't you?” But you can't ask that question and can't say what's on your mind, at least not if you're Stan Miller.

But Jack wasn't going to let Stan sit there looking alone and uncomfortable. He told him, “You don't have to worry about being blunt with me. You don't have to measure your words.”

Stan smiled and said he appreciated that. He said, “I apologize for not being very good at this, but if I have to replace you, I have to know now.”

“Sure.”

“I have to—” Stan stopped short when the doorbell rang. Jack got up and walked to the front of the house. It was Hopewell standing by the screen door.

“I don't mean to bother you, Dr. Owens, but I need to talk with you. Just for a couple of minutes.” Something about him had changed since that day in his office. He seemed edgier, unable to come to a full stop. His right hand flayed the air when he spoke. He stepped forward
and back, walked toward the swing, then pivoted on his heels, as though he'd just thought of something else to say, and came back to the door. Only he didn't say anything, but stuck his hands in his pockets and jiggled his keys and loose change. He was like a man on the run.

Jack looked over his shoulder in the direction of the back porch and closed the front door. “I've got company,” and he moved Hopewell down the front steps and away from the house. They walked to the road and stood next to Hopewell's car. The engine was still running.

The detective said, “I'm afraid I have some unpleasant—I'm going to have to ask you to look through your son's e-mail.” Only the detached, empty voice hadn't changed.

“Danny's
e-mail
?”

“Some sick creep's been getting into chat rooms—there's no nice way to talk about this. He's been going online with young boys—”

“Danny wouldn't get into anything like that.”

“I'm sure he wouldn't.” Hopewell did not sound convinced. “Just to be on the safe side—you see, guys like this, they're degenerate pederasts and predatory as hell. They can get their hooks into boys in very subtle ways.”

“Can you keep your voice down.” Jack looked back at the house.

“This guy's”—Hopewell lowered his voice—“been preying on young boys, mostly messing with their heads, but also trying to get them to meet him at secluded spots. He might've already been too successful at it…Maybe he lives in the area, maybe just close enough to drive here and far enough not to be traced.” Hopewell swiped a handkerchief across his forehead. The flesh on his face was pale and drooped against the cheekbones. There were dark stains on his shirt, around the armpits and where the flesh rolled over the belt. His body stank of sweat, not the sweat of toil, but the sweat of negligence.

Jack couldn't help but feel sorry for him, having to come to people's houses and say the things he had to say, and for a moment he was able to see past the things he knew about Hopewell, the ambition, the hunger for the big time. He could see how frightened the detective was, he could even understand the fear. The look on the face might appear to be cold cogitation but it was really a look of desperation. Hopewell wasn't
thinking about parents of dead children. He wasn't thinking about the dead children, either. He was thinking about his job and this case and the case waiting for him when this one was closed. He was thinking about the big-city department he craved to be a part of and the next ten years in his cramped little office on the Gilbert police force and all the things that held him back, all the things that had already passed him by. And Jack, the Coggins, even Marty, were only greasing the skids.