White Picket Fences (17 page)

“What?”

“We keep so many secrets. And we pretend they’re all for the best.”

Her aunt seemed to be talking to herself. Tally didn’t know if she was expected to respond.

“My grandmother had her secrets. My father had his. You have yours. And I…” Amanda’s voice drifted away. She wrapped her fingers around the stem and brought the glass to her mouth. When she set the glass down again, she turned to Tally. “What do they really accomplish, anyway? I mean, think about it. What secret did anyone any real good? Can you think of one?”

“I promised,” Tally said softly.

“I’m not asking you to tell me your secret. I’m just asking you what good comes from keeping one.”

Tally pursed her brows together, wondering if her aunt truly expected her to give her an answer. She could think of one time when a secret did a great deal of good. “Sometimes you can save someone,” Tally said.

Amanda blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Josef and Eliasz smuggled twenty-five babies out of the ghetto. Those babies probably would’ve died if they hadn’t gotten them out. There was no food, no medicine. Josef told us a hundred thousand people died there.”

“Babies…,” Amanda echoed.

“Yes. Twenty-five babies. But they had to do it in secret. And when their secret got out, they got sent to the concentration camp. They could’ve saved more if their secret had stayed safe. But someone told on them.”

“So it was a good secret,” Amanda said softly.

“Well, yeah.”

“I wish I knew if he was okay,” Amanda said, after another long pause.

Tally assumed she meant Bart, but her aunt’s tone seemed vague.

“You’re not worried, though, are you?” Amanda continued. “You wonder but you don’t worry.”

Tally said nothing. Her father told her once that worrying about something that hadn’t happened yet and probably wouldn’t was stupid.

The two women sat in silence. Amanda picked up a picture of a dark-haired woman in a long white dress and ran her finger along the edge. “I don’t know who this is.”

When Tally said nothing, Amanda went on. “You know, I met your mother once,” Amanda said languidly. “She and your dad were in Los Angeles to see a friend of theirs or something. Neil and I lived in Orange County then. My parents drove down from Simi Valley.” Amanda turned her head toward Tally. “She was pregnant with you. You could just barely tell.”

There weren’t many people who’d ever met her mother-that she knew of, anyway—so there hadn’t been many times in her life when she’d been able to ask what she was like. She would’ve eventually asked her grandmother if she’d had more time with her.

“Did you like her?” Tally said.

Amanda nodded. “Your mother was so… so beautiful. Stunning, really. But not like a model or a movie star. In fact, I didn’t think she was beautiful when I first met her. Her eyes and the shape of her mouth were kind of hard… I don’t know how to describe it. But the more I looked at Janet, the more I realized how striking she was. And Bart was over the moon in love with her.”

“Did she love him?”

Amanda shook her head gently. “I really don’t know. I don’t think she was ready to meet any of us. It was Bart’s idea, I think, to come see us. And after we were all together in the same room, even he seemed to wish he’d never told me they were in town… He and my dad. You know. They couldn’t have a conversation without arguing. Janet and I didn’t talk much. I wanted to get to know her better, but she just wasn’t a talkative person. Well, not to me, anyway.”

Tally closed her eyes, wanting to drink in the image of her mother shaking Amanda’s hand, saying, “Nice to meet you,” and Amanda holding Chase, who would’ve been just a baby then.

When she opened them, her aunt was looking at her. “I can see her in your eyes, Tally. But there’s more Bart in you than anything else. And my dad too, actually. I can see my dad in you.”

Another set of silent seconds ticked by.

Tally reached for the photo of her great-grandfather. “May I borrow this photograph? I’d like to show it to Josef.”

Amanda looked down at the photo of Aron Bachmann. “How come?”

“Because Josef and Eliasz told us there were many Jewish doctors in the ghetto helping them smuggle the children out. They gave up their sleeping powders and pretended that the babies who came to see them had died.”

Amanda tipped her head. “And you wonder if Aron Bachmann was one of those doctors.”

“He could’ve been.”

Amanda again glanced at the picture in Tally’s hand. “I suppose he could have. It would be something if they knew him, huh? You’ll ask them?”

Tally nodded.

“Take it.” Her aunt scooped up the photos scattered on the table and dropped them back in the box. “Let me know what they say.”

Amanda rose from her chair, put the lid on the box, and set it on top of the buffet table behind her. “Well, I’ve papers to grade,” she said. She pushed in her chair. As she left the dining room, Amanda asked Tally if she would like a nice cup of hot cocoa.

twenty-one

A
manda leaned against the railing of the indoor tree house Neil had made, looking up at the nine-year-old in the far corner who held a copy of
The Incredible Journey
in his hands. The boy’s lips moved as he formed the sentences with his mouth. The afternoon bell had rung. All but one other student had already left the classroom.

From her vantage point she could see Gary huddled in his Thinking Corner with a curly-haired girl and a math book. The girl was frowning. Gary said something that made her smile.

Amanda turned her attention back to the boy in the tree house. “Time to go, James,” she said softly. “You don’t want to miss your bus.”

The boy looked up at her and then snapped the book shut. He clambered halfway down the five-rung ladder and jumped to the floor. “I’m taking it home with me.”

“That’s great.” Amanda watched him as he grabbed his book bag off his desk, shoving the novel inside. He yelled goodbye as he sprinted out of the room.

A few feet away Gary got to his feet. “You’ll get this, Madison. You’re already getting it. Don’t give up, okay?”

“All right,” the girl muttered.

“See you tomorrow.”

The girl sauntered out, and Gary turned to face Amanda. “Man, the natives were restless today,” he quipped.

“Yeah. I guess.”

Gary studied her for a moment. “How’s it going?”

Amanda lifted and lowered her shoulders. “Good.”

Gary began to put workbooks away in the cabinet behind his desk. “You seemed kind of far away today.”

She thought she’d put up a fairly good front. Amanda opened her mouth to deliver a witty comeback, but no words came out. She closed her mouth.

He took a step toward her. “What’s up? Is it about Chase?”

Amanda opened her mouth again to answer him, but a wave of frustration crested in her chest.

Gary moved in closer and leaned against her desk. “Do you want to talk about this?”

She blinked back hot wetness from her eyes and cleared her throat. “No,” she said, and her voice sounded funny in her ears. She slid into her desk chair.

“Sure.” Gary pulled a tissue from a box on his desk, and it made a soft sneezing sound as it came away in his hand. He handed it to her and then started to move away. She reached out and stopped him.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m really sorry. I can’t believe I’m acting this way.” Amanda dabbed at her eyes with her other hand.

“Hey, it’s not a sign of failure to admit how you really feel. If I learned anything from my divorce, it’s that.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, folding the tissue into a neat square. “I don’t know how I really feel,” she said.

“About what? Did you guys go see that psychologist? Did he tell you something you weren’t ready to hear?”

Amanda leaned forward on her elbows and rested her head in upturned hands. Her arms were just inches from Gary’s waist. She could smell his cologne. “No. A psychologist didn’t tell me anything. Neil did.”

Gary bent to make eye contact with her. A warm flutter coursed through her. “What did Neil tell you?” His voice was as gentle as summer cotton.

Amanda bolted from her chair and began to pace the carpet behind her desk. “I just hate this. I hate guessing. I want to know the truth. Neil says I don’t. But I do. I’m not like him. I can’t hide behind a pile of lumber and be content to only wonder what really happened!”

“What do you mean, what really happened? Are we still talking about the fire? about Chase?”

Amanda massaged her forehead and continued to walk the patch of carpet. “Yes. It’s about the fire.”

“What about it?”

“Neil says… Neil… He said the baby-sitter’s son told the police he caught Chase in his room handling the lighter just minutes before he lit the cigarette.”

Gary waited a second. “So?”

“So then Keith shooed Chase back to the bedroom next door where he was supposed to be napping.”

“Okay.”

Amanda sighed and stopped pacing. She stood a foot away from where Gary stood, still leaning on her desk. “Keith told the police he lit the cigarette in his room, but then he tossed the lighter on his bed and went onto his second-story balcony to smoke it so his room wouldn’t smell like cigarette smoke.”

Gary blinked. His eyes widened just a tad.

“He said he was outside on the balcony when the fire started. He said he had closed the sliding door and had his back to it. When he smelled smoke, he turned around and saw that his curtains on the sliding door were on fire. If he’s telling the truth, then…” Her voice fell away.

“Then someone else started the fire.”

“And killed that little baby.” Amanda’s voice broke, and ready tears spilled from her eyes. Gary moved away from the desk and closed their classroom door. Then he walked over to her, gently took her arm, and led her back to her chair.

“Let’s just think about this for a minute,” he said as she sat back down.

“Neil thinks Chase did it,” she murmured. “That he went back into Keith’s room and saw the lighter on the bed… that he started playing with it. The fire marshal said the fire began on the bed. I’d always thought Keith had fallen asleep on the bed with the cigarette burning. Neil never told me what Keith told the police. The cops didn’t believe Keith because he lied to them about so many other things about that day, like where he had been before and during the fire. But Neil does believe him! He says he doesn’t, but he wonders if Keith was telling the truth. And that’s the same thing!”

“Hold on,” Gary soothed. But Amanda continued.

“Neil thinks that’s why Chase never talked about the fire after we moved here. He never mentioned the fire again. Not once! Neil thinks it’s because his subconscious knew he couldn’t handle the memory of it and blocked it out.”

“Amanda, you’re both making assumptions about things you simply can’t know,” Gary said softly.

“Neil says if we drag this out into the open and make Chase deal with it, the horror of what really happened will all come back to him. If Chase remembers he started the fire, he’ll know that baby died because of what he did!”

Amanda leaned forward on her desk, wishing she had said nothing. Wishing she knew nothing.

“Amanda, listen to me.” Gary’s soft voice was close. He was leaning over her. “Are you listening?”

She nodded her head.

“Even if your son started the fire, it was an accident. Think of all the things that contributed to his touching that lighter, if he even did it. He was supposed to be napping, but he was awake. Upstairs and unsupervised. Where was the baby-sitter when all this was happening?”

“Outside in the front yard with the other kids.”

“And how did Chase get the lighter, assuming—only for a moment—that he did start the fire. How did he get it?”

“Keith left it on his bed.”

“And why didn’t the smoke alarm go off?”

Amanda swallowed a sob. “Dead battery,” she whispered.

Gary reached out and rubbed her shoulder in a gentle caress
with his thumb. “So who’s really responsible for what happened to that baby girl?” His touch sent a shiver down her spine.

“But… but we told Chase never ever to play with matches,” she stammered. “He knew fire was dangerous…”

“But what did you tell him about lighters? You and Neil don’t smoke, right? Do you really think he’d ever seen fire come out of a tiny box before? Amanda, he was only four.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Amanda muttered.

Gary caressed her shoulder in consolation. “That’s right. You don’t know. You don’t know what happened. So it doesn’t do any good to speculate. You start saying, ‘What if?’ and you can imagine just about anything.”

“What should I do?” Amanda lifted her head. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, if it was me, I’d get professional advice from someone I trust. If you trust Penny, and it seems like you do, you’d probably be wise to do whatever she suggests.”

“I don’t want Chase to remember it. I want to know what really happened. But I don’t want him to.”

“And he’s the only one who can give you what you want, is that it?”

She nodded.

“Amanda?”

“What?”

“It was an accident. It wasn’t his fault that baby died. Even if he held the flame to the bedspread himself, it wasn’t his fault. He was a toddler left unsupervised in a house without a working smoke alarm and with access to fire. Your baby-sitter is the
one who bears the responsibility for this tragedy. Not your four-year-old child. No matter what really happened.”

A second round of tears began to fall. “I just don’t want it to be true.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Gary said, and on her shoulder his hand lingered.

twenty-two

T
he pink wingback chairs were already in place when Tally, Chase, and Matt arrived at La Vista del Paz to finish interviewing Josef Bliss and Eliasz Abramovicz on Wednesday.

“The guys didn’t want to finish the interview without them,” one of the nursing staff said, nodding to the chairs.

“In fact, we’ve ordered a set for our room,” Josef replied, as he slowly maneuvered his body from his wheelchair to one of the rosy-hued chairs.