White Picket Fences (22 page)

From across the open kitchen Delcey yelled good-bye as she sailed out the front door. Neil screwed the lid onto his cup as the front door slammed shut. Amanda turned to him. “That was really good how you handled that with Tally,” she said.

“You mean about the date?”

She nodded. “You got her to make a smart decision about it without telling her what we would or wouldn’t allow her to do.”

Neil pounded the lid to make sure it was on tight and shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know if it was that brilliant.”

Amanda folded her arms and leaned against the edge of the sink. “Yes, it was.”

Neil opened the cupboard above him and shrugged.

“I was all ready to tell her flat-out no,” Amanda said.

Neil smiled as he moved boxes of cookies and crackers. “I know you were.”

“I don’t care what Bart would’ve done.”

“Yeah, I know. Are we out of granola bars?”

Amanda reached up to the second shelf and handed Neil a box of fruit and oatmeal bars. “I just wish…”

Neil took the box. He waited for a second before saying, “You wish what?”

Amanda couldn’t tell him what she wished. She didn’t know where to begin. She just knew she wished things were different between Neil and Chase. Between Neil and her.

“Nothing.” She closed the cupboard.

“We’d better go or we’ll both be late.” Neil slipped the granola bar into his briefcase.

“Neil.” Amanda took a step away from the counter.

“Hmm?”

“Did you… Was Chase trying to tell us something last night?”

Neil blinked at her. “Last night?”

“When he kept insisting that my grandmother and father might’ve had secrets they felt they couldn’t tell anyone about.”

Neil zipped his briefcase closed. He didn’t look at her. “Like what?”

“Like maybe… I don’t know. Sometimes things aren’t what they seem.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Well, when he said that Eliasz could see in his dreams, and when Chase challenged that a blind man could see things that tried to kill him…”

“Amanda.”

“Neil, I think he was trying to let us in on something. Haven’t you noticed how distant Chase has been the last few weeks?”

Neil stared at her. “You mean since the barbecue, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Neil picked up his briefcase. “Chase is who he’s always been. That’s how all young men his age are. It’s how I was.”

“Yes, but…”

“Amanda, we agreed we’d drop this.”

Amanda ran her hand across the chair back next to her. “I didn’t agree.”

When she looked up at him, she saw pain in Neil’s eyes. “Have you forgotten what I told you?” he asked. “What Keith told the police?”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

For a moment, Neil said nothing. When he spoke, his voice sounded tired. “What is it you want, Amanda?”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“And you think I do?” He stood still in front of her as if standing his ground, waiting, it seemed, for her to challenge his motives. When she said nothing, he reached for his coffee mug. “I can’t be late this morning.” He moved past her.

Neil was out the front door the next moment and walking down the stone path to his car. From the window above the sink, Amanda saw him open the driver’s door of his Nissan. A man she did not know walked by with a dog, and Neil bid him a cheerful good morning.

The day passed quickly, but Amanda’s thoughts were a jumble. Everything in her life seemed to be mixed up.

Gary’s questioning stares from across the room did not help.
At a five-minute lull in the day, he had asked her if anything was wrong, and she had only minutes to tell him about the tense conversation around the dinner table the night before. About what Chase had said and what Neil had said.

A new set of students had come into the room before she could find out if she was right about what Gary would’ve said, had he been there.

When the last bell rang at a little after three and Amanda sent the last child off to catch the bus, she sank into her desk chair. Gary wasn’t in the room. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

There was something odd about how Neil had handled the situation with Tally this morning. Something that grated on her.

Despite his deft handling, it made her mad. No, not mad. Envious.

She wanted Chase to experience those moments of parental brilliance Neil had granted to his niece. A girl he barely knew. His own son should command that kind of attention.

Why couldn’t Neil be that way with Chase? Why couldn’t he sit down with his son, his own flesh and blood, and counsel him like he had counseled Tally?

She wasn’t being unreasonable. He was. She wasn’t the one distancing herself from their children. He was.

All those hours he spent in the woodshop, making beautiful things for people he barely knew or didn’t know at all. Those were hours he stole from her. From their kids.

They were drifting apart. And this thing with Chase was just fanning the sails, furthering the distance. She was becoming a stranger to Neil.

The moment this thought entered her mind, a feeble laugh seeped out from deep within her. Amanda felt tears spilling down her cheeks. It was too funny.

She was becoming a stranger to Neil.

“Just the sort of person he likes,” she whispered aloud as she wiped the tears from her cheek.

“Hey.”

Her wet eyes snapped open, and a jolt of embarrassment and fear coursed through her. Gary had come back into the room. She didn’t know when. He was standing right beside her. “Do you want me to call someone? Penny?”

She shook her head and laughed. “I don’t think a child psychologist is what I need right now.”

“I know it’s none of my business, but this thing with your son…”

Amanda interrupted him. “It’s not just about Chase.” She leaned forward onto her desk, resting her forehead in an upturned palm.

“Okay, so if it’s not…”

She turned her head to look at him. “I think you know it’s not.”

Gary looked away. Then he stood, walked a few paces, and came back. He leaned against her desk, his left hand just inches from hers. A moment of silence passed.

“You need to talk to somebody,” Gary said. “Trust me on this.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she murmured, but she did not look at him.

“Amanda.”

She slowly turned her head toward him.

“You and Neil need to see a counselor.” Gary’s eyes shined with unspoken thoughts.

“Neil won’t go,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “He thinks everything will be fine if I just let this go.”

“Then go alone.”

“Go alone,” she echoed.

“Yes, if you have to.”

His closeness, his confidence, even his compassion taunted her. Reminded her of what she longed for from Neil.

“Is that what you did when your marriage was in trouble?” she said. “Did you go to a counselor? Did your wife go with you?” The unkind edge in her voice surprised her. It seemed to surprise Gary too.

He paused a moment before answering. “It’s what we should’ve done.”

“Would she have gone?”

Again he paused. “I waited too long to ask her.”

“I see. So it’s your fault she left you. Is that it?” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Gary stiffened. She felt heat on her cheeks.

“Wait. I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Gary looked away, nodding.

“Gary, please. I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Gary lifted his head to look at her. “There were some things I could’ve done differently. Should’ve done differently. You don’t
want to be the one to give up on your marriage, Amanda. Don’t be the one to give up.”

She studied his face, and her eyes traveled to his Superman tie. Superman. The hero who saves strangers.

“Do you hear what I’m saying?” he said.

Her eyes locked onto Superman’s outrageously big torso, the muscles practically bursting from his royal blue cartoon leotard. “Neil would rather spend time in the woodshop than with me. Or our kids.”

“If that’s true, then he’s telling you something,” Gary said gently. “I’m not excusing what he’s doing or not doing; I’m just telling you he’s trying to tell you something.”

“What am I supposed to do?” she exclaimed. “I’m not a mind reader!”

Gary waited until she looked up at him. “If you want this thing to work, you’re going to have to find a way to hear each other.”

He stood up, picked up his briefcase, and left the room.

Amanda sat for several long moments, lost in conflicting thoughts and vaguely aware of Gary’s footfalls down the long hallway of the school building. In the silence that followed, she heard her cell phone beep from inside her purse. She withdrew it automatically, hardly caring who was calling.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Amanda. This is Nancy Fuentes at Pima County Human Services in Tucson.”

“Oh. Yes. Hello, Nancy.”

“Look. The post office received a letter addressed to Tally in care of Virginia Kolander. There’s no return address, but the
postmark is from Ukraine. I had it overnighted to Tally. You should get it today. If there’s anything in there about Bart Bachmann’s whereabouts, can you call me?”

“Oh! Of course.”

“Right. I gotta run. I’ve got court in two minutes.”

“All right. Bye.”

Amanda stood up and reached for her book bag and purse, vaguely wondering what in the world Bart was doing in Ukraine.

twenty-eight

T
he computer lab hummed with the sounds of clicking keys and cooling fans. Chase chose a work station far from the door and the rest of his study hall classmates. None of the other students would be interested in what he planned to research, and the school’s higher-ups only cared if the visited sites were pornographic, violent, or anarchist. Still, it was no one’s business but his own what he wanted to look up. He wanted privacy.

Chase had spent the better part of the morning mulling over why he hadn’t thought to scour the Internet for details of the fire. But the fact was, it wasn’t until the last few weeks that his fear was being replaced by a desire to master it. He wouldn’t have thought to research the details of the fire before. It would’ve brought him too close to an entity whose power and form he couldn’t grasp. But that was changing.

Ghost was no longer a shapeless monster from his past. Ghost was becoming his opponent. Something to be beaten. A foe to vanquish. His dream had showed him that much—that he and Ghost had unfinished business.

He would do what the men at Treblinka had done, those men who decided one August day to steal their enemy’s weapons and wage war upon them.

His recollection of the day Ghost got its name was far more complete than his memory of the day the baby-sitter’s house burned down. The day had been warm, the air still. His mother was in the garage—back then it was still a garage—sorting boxes. Delcey was napping. He was in the backyard playing with the garden hose, painting his name on the back fence with a fan-shaped sprinkler while he waited for Delcey to wake up. His mother said she’d take them to the beach after Delcey’s nap. He was bored in the house, and it was too hot to be in the garage.

A verdant, sloping lawn sprawled across the backyard, edged with dirt peninsulas of sago palms, birds of paradise, and several swaying jacarandas that tossed purple confetti-like blossoms onto the flagstone patio every June. A tiered wooden play structure with a curling yellow slide and monkey bars occupied one corner of the yard. In the other, a vegetable garden that would one day be replaced by a swimming pool. The back gate that opened to undeveloped land beyond was usually latched. Chase wasn’t allowed in the field: it was home to rattlesnakes, coyotes, and wild cactus. And the mere thought of tangling with any one of those things was typically sufficient motivation to obey his parents. But on that afternoon he’d heard the mewling of a cat on the other side of the wooden fence while he painted a fat, loopy
s.
And when that sound caused him to look up, he saw that the metal catch was merely resting atop the locking slot. Then he heard the cat again.