Somebody Else's Music (25 page)
Read Somebody Else's Music Online
Authors: Jane Haddam
The news got through, even though it wasn't supposed to. Coming downstairs to open the shop, Emma couldn't even remember who'd told her, although there had been enough phoning back and forth during the night, and enough getting up one last time to turn the television on and see if there was just a little more news. Emma had even called the girls, late, to make sure they were all right. It made her cold to think of what went on in the world. She was sure it had not been that way when she was growing up, not even if you took into account what had happened to Michael Houseman. At least Michael hadn't been left with his guts spilling out onto the ground in broad daylightâand it had to be broad daylight, Emma thought, because the man on the news said the body had been found at just about six, and it was still light at six. The details had been dancing through her head all night. She had lain awake next to George for at least two hours, thinking odd things that there was no point to: that she should have gone to the junior-senior semiformal that first year with somebody besides Carl Pittman; that she should have let Tiffany get a second piercing in her ears when she'd first wanted it, when she was fifteen; that Chris had become snobbish and annoying in the years since high school. The images would not go away, no matter how hard she tried to make them. Chris in the Volvo out by the farmer's market stand on Hawleyville
Road. Chris in polo shirt and golf skirt buying a paper at the register in JayMar's. Chris checking her eighteen-karatgold bought-from-the-Tiffany-catalogue watch for the fifteenth time, as much to make sure everybody saw what she was wearing as to check the time.
Road. Chris in polo shirt and golf skirt buying a paper at the register in JayMar's. Chris checking her eighteen-karatgold bought-from-the-Tiffany-catalogue watch for the fifteenth time, as much to make sure everybody saw what she was wearing as to check the time.
Somewhere around three, Emma hadn't been able to stand it anymore. She'd gotten out of bed and gone into the living room at the front of the apartment. There wasn't a bar or restaurant open this late anywhere in a hundred miles. Even the Sycamore shut down no later than one on weekends. On weekdays, it closed at eleven.
At five o'clock, Emma took a shower. She had to be very careful to lift and wash under the thick folds of flesh that hung off her torso like garlands on a Christmas tree. If she didn't lift each one and wash under each one, they smelled, the way armpits did, and people in the shop would step back away from her and smile in that odd, strained way that meant they knew something discreditable about her. She got out of the shower without bothering to wrap a towel around herself. The lights were all out in the apartment, except for the one in the bathroom itself. She walked back to her bedroom stark naked and started dressing in clothes she pulled out of a thick oak wardrobe that had belonged to her mother. Her underclothes bit into her flesh and left red welts.
At seven o'clock, restless and with nothing else to do, Emma went down to open the storeâwell, not to open it, but to get everything ready for the time when she would open it, even if that was a couple of hours away. She set up the cash register and counted the money in the drawer. She spread furniture polish on the counter and wiped it down. She straightened the yarn and muslin dolls on the shelves at the front. She thought about Chris with her guts spilling out across Betsy Toliver's backyard. Years ago, Chris wouldn't have been caught dead in Betsy Toliver's yard, but things changed. It was really disturbing the way things changed.
At seven-twenty, she couldn't stand it anymore. The
alarm clock next to the bed upstairs wouldn't go off until eight. George wouldn't be up until then. She couldn't open the store to customers before nine. She checked her wallet and found $6.27. She wondered what it looked like when intestines spilled out of a body. Were they white, the way they looked in the book in biology class? Were they green? In the movies her brother used to watch when she and he were children, guts were always green. Red blood on a green lawn just made her think of Christmas.
alarm clock next to the bed upstairs wouldn't go off until eight. George wouldn't be up until then. She couldn't open the store to customers before nine. She checked her wallet and found $6.27. She wondered what it looked like when intestines spilled out of a body. Were they white, the way they looked in the book in biology class? Were they green? In the movies her brother used to watch when she and he were children, guts were always green. Red blood on a green lawn just made her think of Christmas.
She let herself out the front door and locked it behind her. She went down the steep steps to the sidewalk and watched as a garbage truck stopped for a pile of boxes somebody had left out in front of Dan Barr's office. She wondered what Dan would do now that Chris was dead. He was off somewhere, at a convention in Seattle. At least he wouldn't be a suspect.
She went down Grandview Avenue slowly, stopping only once, to look into the window of Emily's Cheese Shop. When she got to JayMar's, she pushed through the glass door and immediately began to shiver. The air-conditioning was turned up full blast. The men at the counter were all people she had known forever. They had copies of the newspapers and cups of coffee. At the very end of one side of the counter, Nancy Quayde was sitting by herself. She had a paper spread out in front of her.
“Hey there,” Emma said, sitting down next to her.
Nancy folded her newspaper into quarters. The headline on the page she'd been reading said:
Fatty Food, Stress, Chief Culprits in Heart Disease
. Joyce came down the counter in her white polyester off the rack uniform and said, “Coffee?”
Fatty Food, Stress, Chief Culprits in Heart Disease
. Joyce came down the counter in her white polyester off the rack uniform and said, “Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks,” Emma said.
“Oh, God,” Joyce said.
Joyce went back on up the counter. Nancy Quayde stared after her, annoyed. “She's been acting like that all morning. Like I'm some kind of a goddamned accident victim. She'll be the same way with you. Was it like this after Michael Houseman died?”
“I don't know,” Emma said.
Joyce was back with the coffee. She put the cup and saucer down on the counter in front of Emma and poured. “Isn't it a terrible thing?” she said. “Just terrible. You don't think things like that could happen in a little town.”
“It's not like it's the first murder we've ever had in Hollman,” Nancy said coldly. “Hollman is not Sunnybrook Farm.”
“I don't know where that is,” Joyce said. “People have been talking about nothing else since we opened up.”
“This is true,” Nancy said. “People have been talking about nothing else since I got here, but I haven't been talking with them. I mean, for God's sake. Chris is dead. What's there to talk about?”
“The police are going to have a lot to talk about,” Joyce said. “There's going to be an investigation. And state troopers. Kyle Borden can't handle something like this all by himself.”
“Kyle Borden has had his head up his ass since kindergarten,” Nancy said.
Emma put milk and sugar into her coffee, especially sugar. “I was out there yesterday,” she said. “At Betsy's house, I mean. I was out there sort of in the midafternoon. Belinda and I gave the son a ride from the library.”
“The son?” Nancy actually looked curious. Joyce looked so eager, she could have been a drug addict in partial withdrawal presented with a packet of unadulterated heroin.
Emma took a long sip of her coffee. “Yes, well. He's only fourteen. The son, I mean. Mark. And he was at the library, and he wanted to go home, but Betsy hadn't come for him yet. So we gave him a ride.”
“There are two sons, not just one,” Joyce said. “There's one that's fourteen and one that's seven.”
“This was the one that's fourteen,” Emma said. “Really, he looked sixteen. I was really surprised when I found out he couldn't drive. And he's immensely tall. Betsy isn't. He must take after his father.”
“God,” Joyce said. “Did you see anything? Was Mrs.
Barr there? Did you meet Jimmy Card? I'd absolutely die if I met Jimmy Card.”
Barr there? Did you meet Jimmy Card? I'd absolutely die if I met Jimmy Card.”
“I didn't see anybody,” Emma said. “There wasn't anybody home, not even old Mrs. Toliver, as far as I know. He said they were bringing his grandmother in to see the doctor.”
“It's all over town that he's here,” Joyce said. “He went into Mullaney's yesterday and bought a paper and a package of Mentos. Five or six people saw him.”
“I forgot to mention,” Nancy said. “When they're not talking about poor Chris being cut up like a salami, they're talking about Jimmy Card.”
“I'll just go put this coffee away,” Joyce said.
Emma's coffee was already cold, but that was probably because she kept putting milk in it. If she were completely honest with herself, she'd have to say she didn't like coffee at all. She only liked having something in her hand and something to sip when she was sitting and talking with people like Nancy, who made her nervous.
“So,” Nancy said. “What's he like? Not Jimmy Card. The son.”
“Mark,” Emma said. Then she shrugged. “He's nice, I guess. Good-looking. And tall, like I said. Very preppy, except, you know, not preppy like around here. Preppy like in those pictures of the Kennedys. Ivy League preppy.”
“He probably actually goes to a prep school.”
“Not yet. Next year. That's what he said, anyway. Right now he's in some private school near where he lives. Oh, and he reads strange stuff. Like Betsy used to. That's one thing he got from her.”
“What's strange stuff?”
Emma concentrated. “The story about the bug. By the German guy. I forget his name, but we had to read it in senior year lit class and it was gross. And
The Color Purple
. I remember that because of the movie. Oprah was in it.”
The Color Purple
. I remember that because of the movie. Oprah was in it.”
“Right,” Nancy said again.
“There's no point in getting snippy,” Emma said. “I
never did see the point in books. You can get anything interesting on television or go to the movies for it. Do you remember all that stuff Betsy used to read when we were in school? Aristotle. And what's his name, the French guyâ”
never did see the point in books. You can get anything interesting on television or go to the movies for it. Do you remember all that stuff Betsy used to read when we were in school? Aristotle. And what's his name, the French guyâ”
“Jean-Paul Sartre.”
“That one. What good did it do her?”
Nancy looked astonished. “She's about thirty seconds from marrying Jimmy Card, for God's sake. She's on television.”
“She's still odd,” Emma said. “You can tell, even when she's on television. What's the point of being on television if you're so odd nobody can stand you?”
“Oh, Christ,” Nancy said. “You're incredible. Has this situation even penetrated your head yet? Chris is dead.”
“I know.”
“Chris's husband was out of town. Way out of town. Which means that unless you think he hired a hit man, he's not a suspect. Which means that everybody else in town is. Including all of us.”
“I don't see why,” Emma said. “It's more likely that he did it. The son. He was there. He must have seen Chris come in.”
“Betsy's son Mark killed Chris Inglerod Barr.”
“Why not?”
“What for?”
Emma fluttered her hands in the air. “He's odd, I told you. Just like she was. And you know what they do when they're odd these days. Columbine. And that place in California. They kill people. So, you know, maybe he saw Chris come in and there he was with a, well, whatever you need to cut somebody's guts out, andâ”
“Jesus,” Nancy said.
“You don't have to go all superior on me,” Emma said. “He really could have killed her. Or Betsy could have. It's more likely to be one of them than one of us.”
“It's more likely to be one of them than one of us because they read Kafka? You're delusional.”
Emma drained the last of her coffee. It was stone-cold by now, and almost entirely milk. “It's more likely to be one of them than one of us,” she repeated stubbornly. “There's nothing wrong with any of us. We're all normal as the day is long. They're the ones who are odd.”
She got her wallet out of her pocketbook and three quarters out of her change purse. She put the money down under the bill and got off her stool. Her ass hurt.
“You ought to make more sense than you do,” she told Nancy. “You're the one who's supposed to be the principal.”
She went back down the length of JayMar's to the front door and out again onto Grandview Avenue. This was all she ever did: went in and out of buildings, went up and down Grandview. For a split second, the vision was appalling. In the end, it was comforting. It was
normal
. Nothing could be more normal than Grandview at breakfast time with the lights glowing in the deep long recesses of Mullaney's, and the little red signal light blinking at the end of the platform at the train station, and the dresses on mannequins in the window at Elsa-Edna's. This was what people did with their lives. They graduated from high school and got jobs and had families and lived in towns where they knew most everybody and everybody knew them. They gained weight as they got older and took snapshots of their grandchildren to show their women friends when they met them once a month or so for lunch. That was
normalnormalnormal
, and normal people did not take knives to their childhood friends and spew their intestines all over somebody else's backyard.
normal
. Nothing could be more normal than Grandview at breakfast time with the lights glowing in the deep long recesses of Mullaney's, and the little red signal light blinking at the end of the platform at the train station, and the dresses on mannequins in the window at Elsa-Edna's. This was what people did with their lives. They graduated from high school and got jobs and had families and lived in towns where they knew most everybody and everybody knew them. They gained weight as they got older and took snapshots of their grandchildren to show their women friends when they met them once a month or so for lunch. That was
normalnormalnormal
, and normal people did not take knives to their childhood friends and spew their intestines all over somebody else's backyard.
For at least an hour after the news had come on television the night before, things had been all right. They hadn't been greatâthings were never great when Stu was drinkingâbut they had been all right, and Peggy had sat by herself
on one of the small red chairs at the kitchen table and wondered if he just hadn't heard the news at all. It was one of those nights when everything was very clear to her, not only her marriage, but her house, too, and her face, and her life, as if she were looking at all of them through a magnifying mirror. The west wall in the kitchen was cracked. It had been cracked for at least a year or two. The vinyl on the floor in the entryway was peeling. When she came in after teaching, she tried to come in the back way so that she wouldn't have to see it. In the early days of their marriage, Stu had been good at fixing things. He had a whole wall full of tools in the garage to prove it. Of course, in those days he had also held a job for more than a couple of weeks at a time. He'd come home on Friday nights with two big steaks he'd bought at the Grill Center and a bottle of champagne, and she'd think he was wonderful, so optimistic, so exuberant, so happy with life. Sometimes now she thought about those steaks and wondered what they had cost. The Grill Center was the place where the people who lived out by the golf course went. Peggy had been in there once and seen swordfish selling for fourteen dollars a pound. It was probably a sign of manic depression that Stu bought the steaks there, or a sign of alcoholism, and she knew now that she should have worried once it became clear that he would hit the Grill Center every single Friday night. The problem was that she had wanted steaks from the Grill Center, too, and good china bought in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, and a house with three bedrooms and a family room with a fireplace where children could hang stockings. That was the kind of thing you aspired to when you grew up in Hollman. Peggy remembered sitting for hours with Emma and Belinda and Maris and Chris, pouring over her mother's old
House Beautiful
magazines and talking about what they would do, what they would have, how they would live once they were married. It was frightening to think of Chris there with them, her legs folded up underneath her, her hair pulled back from her face with clips. Was there some connection between the fact that
Chris was the only one of them who had managed to achieve a
House Beautiful
life, and the fact that she was dead? Peggy kept feeling that there had to be some connections somewhere. There had to be reasons for why things happened. She just couldn't think of what they were. It was nearly midnight. The news about Chris had been on at eleven o'clock. Peggy wanted to fall asleep right where she was, sitting up.
on one of the small red chairs at the kitchen table and wondered if he just hadn't heard the news at all. It was one of those nights when everything was very clear to her, not only her marriage, but her house, too, and her face, and her life, as if she were looking at all of them through a magnifying mirror. The west wall in the kitchen was cracked. It had been cracked for at least a year or two. The vinyl on the floor in the entryway was peeling. When she came in after teaching, she tried to come in the back way so that she wouldn't have to see it. In the early days of their marriage, Stu had been good at fixing things. He had a whole wall full of tools in the garage to prove it. Of course, in those days he had also held a job for more than a couple of weeks at a time. He'd come home on Friday nights with two big steaks he'd bought at the Grill Center and a bottle of champagne, and she'd think he was wonderful, so optimistic, so exuberant, so happy with life. Sometimes now she thought about those steaks and wondered what they had cost. The Grill Center was the place where the people who lived out by the golf course went. Peggy had been in there once and seen swordfish selling for fourteen dollars a pound. It was probably a sign of manic depression that Stu bought the steaks there, or a sign of alcoholism, and she knew now that she should have worried once it became clear that he would hit the Grill Center every single Friday night. The problem was that she had wanted steaks from the Grill Center, too, and good china bought in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, and a house with three bedrooms and a family room with a fireplace where children could hang stockings. That was the kind of thing you aspired to when you grew up in Hollman. Peggy remembered sitting for hours with Emma and Belinda and Maris and Chris, pouring over her mother's old
House Beautiful
magazines and talking about what they would do, what they would have, how they would live once they were married. It was frightening to think of Chris there with them, her legs folded up underneath her, her hair pulled back from her face with clips. Was there some connection between the fact that
Chris was the only one of them who had managed to achieve a
House Beautiful
life, and the fact that she was dead? Peggy kept feeling that there had to be some connections somewhere. There had to be reasons for why things happened. She just couldn't think of what they were. It was nearly midnight. The news about Chris had been on at eleven o'clock. Peggy wanted to fall asleep right where she was, sitting up.
It was the crying that started the trouble. Back in the kitchen now, with her dress torn and her eye so painful she knew it had to be black, she had to admit it to herself. It was the crying that started the trouble, and she was to blame for the crying, because it really made no sense for her to cry. Stu was always so rational about everything. Even when he was drunk and crazy, he was rational. He saw situations plain. She was the one who got things confused and made everything wrong and then did the worst possible thing. She was the one who somehow made it impossible for him to
function
. She was a ball-busting bitchâshe wasâshe wasâwhat?
One of those feminists
, Stu said when he really got going. Maybe she was. Maybe she was
one of those feminists
, like Betsy, and she was dangerous to people, she was dangerous to Stu, if she ever had had a child she would have ruined it.
Christine Inglerod Barr was found dead at the home of
⦠Nobody ever called Chris Inglerod “Christine.”
function
. She was a ball-busting bitchâshe wasâshe wasâwhat?
One of those feminists
, Stu said when he really got going. Maybe she was. Maybe she was
one of those feminists
, like Betsy, and she was dangerous to people, she was dangerous to Stu, if she ever had had a child she would have ruined it.
Christine Inglerod Barr was found dead at the home of
⦠Nobody ever called Chris Inglerod “Christine.”
She had put her head in her hands and started crying without realizing it. She had been thinking about Chris being dead and the fact that none of the others had called her. Then she'd thought about the phone ringing and realized she didn't want that either. Stu hated to hear the phone ringing. She didn't know what she wanted. It seemed to her that everything she had ever wanted had been wrong.
The punch, when it came, had been a surprise. She hadn't heard Stu come into the kitchen. It hit her in her left eye and knocked her backward in her chair. The chair jumped on the floor and then tilted over backward. Peggy had found herself suspended in midair. The thought that
ran through her mind was:
Don't break anything I can't break anything I can't go to the hospital tonight
. It came and went without her conscious mind registering most of the words, and then she hit the floor, hard, with her back against the turned wooden spindles of the chair and the back of her head on the hard linoleum. She was breathless. It reminded her of falling off the side of the slide in Baldren Park when she was a child. You landed on your back and for a moment or two you couldn't breathe, and up above you the sky was bluer than it would ever be again. All that was up above her now was the light fixture. It had started out to be a modest chandelier, but three of the bulbs were out and one of the chandelier cups was broken. She could buy bulbs at the grocery store, if she remembered to bring one with her so that she could check the size. She could take the chandelier cups to the glass place in Johnstown and find out what it would cost to replace them. She might be able to get away with buying them someday when Stu was out of the house, and installing them someday when he was passed out drunk.
ran through her mind was:
Don't break anything I can't break anything I can't go to the hospital tonight
. It came and went without her conscious mind registering most of the words, and then she hit the floor, hard, with her back against the turned wooden spindles of the chair and the back of her head on the hard linoleum. She was breathless. It reminded her of falling off the side of the slide in Baldren Park when she was a child. You landed on your back and for a moment or two you couldn't breathe, and up above you the sky was bluer than it would ever be again. All that was up above her now was the light fixture. It had started out to be a modest chandelier, but three of the bulbs were out and one of the chandelier cups was broken. She could buy bulbs at the grocery store, if she remembered to bring one with her so that she could check the size. She could take the chandelier cups to the glass place in Johnstown and find out what it would cost to replace them. She might be able to get away with buying them someday when Stu was out of the house, and installing them someday when he was passed out drunk.
She felt the kick in her side as if she'd been hit by a car. Stu was wearing his shit-kicker boots, the heavy ones with cleats that he used in the winter when the driveway got bad. Peggy grabbed at her side and twisted away. The trick was not to cry and not to cry out. He kicked her again, higher, in her rib cage near her breast. She wrapped her arms around her chest and tried to roll away from him. She was stopped by the chair. She was still sitting in the chair, with her legs hanging off the seat, only she was on her back. Over her head, the chandelier swung and shuddered. The whole house was shaking. She had been crying before he ever walked in, and now she couldn't stop. He shot a kick to her pelvis and she cried out. Her voice in the room was oddly animal, too low, too anguished, too everything.
“Fucking
shit
,” he said.
shit
,” he said.
And then the boot hit her pelvis again and she did roll. She got off the chair somehow and rolled and rolled until she hit the wall, the cabinets near the sink, somewhere. He
was picking his boots up and grinding his feet right down on top of her. The cleats were tearing at her dress and the skin underneath it. She was wet with sweat and blood. She knew that all she had to do was to stay calm, stay calm, not cry out, not get hysterical. It was all her fault when he got crazy because she made him that way. She brought it on with her hysterics and her attempts to manipulate him. She brought it on when she cried.
was picking his boots up and grinding his feet right down on top of her. The cleats were tearing at her dress and the skin underneath it. She was wet with sweat and blood. She knew that all she had to do was to stay calm, stay calm, not cry out, not get hysterical. It was all her fault when he got crazy because she made him that way. She brought it on with her hysterics and her attempts to manipulate him. She brought it on when she cried.
She had somehow managed to roll in the wrong direction. When his boot came down this time it hit her straight in the gut. It knocked the wind out of her. When she got it back she screamed, and as she did she felt her sphincter releasing, and her bladder, too, everything, she was making a mess of herself and the floor and everything, everything, she was crying and she couldn't stop and he was kicking her so hard she thought she was going to die. She rolled herself up in a ball and turned the right way this time, pressed up against the place where the cabinets met the floor, and from then until she passed out she only cried silently, so that she couldn't even hear herself.
Now it was half past eight in the morning, and except for the black eyeâshe knew she had a black eye, even though she hadn't looked in the mirror. She never looked in the mirror anymore if she could help itâthe house was cleaned up. The kitchen looked normal. The only thing that might have seemed odd was the smell of soap and disinfectant, but kitchens always smelled like that when you cleaned them, and it was better to smell soap and disinfectant than to smell what had been in here before. She was, really, very calm, but she thought she had at least one broken rib, and there was the black eye. If she didn't go in to teach, she would be here in the house with Stu all day. There was always the chance that it would happen again. If she did go in, there would be the black eye, and the fact that she'd had to take a taxi because she hadn't been waiting at the door when Nancy drove into the driveway, and the fact that she was having trouble walking and having trouble breathing, and all the other things. Nancy would be
furious. Worse than that, she would tell the rest of them.
furious. Worse than that, she would tell the rest of them.
Christine Inglerod Barr was found dead at the home of a friend in the Mars Road section of Hollman this evening
â¦
â¦
She picked up the phone and called the school. She asked for Nancy, and waited. She was not going to stay in this house all day, no matter how much it hurt to walk. She wasn't going to wait in the kitchen with her hands folded until Stu woke up and figured out she had never gone in to work, because that would start him off again. It always did. He was scared to death that she'd lose her job.
“Yes,” Nancy said.
“It's Peggy. I'm sorry to call so late. I'mânot feeling very well today. It might be a good idea if you got a substitute.”
“It's eight-thirty.”
“Yes, I know. I seem to have slept through the alarm. If you'd knocked on the door, I might have heard you, but you must have realized when I wasn't outside and waitingâ”
“Realized what? That Prince Charming had been beating you into a pulp again?”
“I'm just sick, Nancy. That's all. I'm just sick. I'm nauseated and I've got a headache. And I'm a little ⦠confused ⦠about this thing with Chris.”
“What's there to be confused about? Somebody took a knife or a razor or something and eviscerated her. Her guts were all over Betsy Toliver's lawn.”
Peggy blanched. “Oh,” she said.
“Half the town has been on the phone to me, telling me they just know it was one of us,” Nancy said.
“Yes,” Peggy said, feeling a little desperate now. The students in her homeroom had to be already in their places with nobody to watch over them, and she knew what that meant. “There's homeroom,” she said carefully. “Somebody should go down to my homeroom and make sureâ”
“Oh, Christ,” Nancy said. “All right. I'll send Lisa. She can read announcements as well as the next person. You
don't need a teaching certificate for that. I can't believe you did this to me. I really can't. If you have to call in, for Christ's sake, do it at seven, will you please?”
don't need a teaching certificate for that. I can't believe you did this to me. I really can't. If you have to call in, for Christ's sake, do it at seven, will you please?”
“Yes,” Peggy said, yet again. It seemed to be the only word she knew. “Yes, Nancy, I understand that. I slept through the alarm. I didn't do it intentionally.”
“You stay with Prince Charming intentionally.”
“I'm going to hang up now and lie down,” Peggy said.
Nancy hung up instead, and Peggy found herself listening to a dial tone buzzing in her ear. She got up and put the receiver back in its cradle on the wall. Then she sat down again and put her face down on the palms of her hands. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. She counted to ten. She thought that when she began to feel a little less as if every bone in her torso was broken, she would take a walk to Grandview Avenue and have a coffee and English muffin in JayMar's and just sit there for a while, just
sit
, without thinking about anything, not even about the six of them, that night, gathered around Michael Houseman's body in the rain.
sit
, without thinking about anything, not even about the six of them, that night, gathered around Michael Houseman's body in the rain.
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