“Okay.”
“You’ll talk to him?”
“Yeah. I’ll let him know.”
I just hope he’ll listen.
***
When Brian arrived home around noontime for Christmas break, Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, someone she could talk to. She’d been avoiding her mother’s curious scrutiny all morning. Over sandwiches, Brian talked about school (“It’s okay”), how he thought his grades went (“Okay, I guess”), and how he’d been feeling (“Okay”).
He didn’t look nearly as good as he had the last time she’d seen him. He was pale, with the pallor of someone who seldom ventured outside the library. Though he claimed exhaustion from finals, Sarah wondered how it was really going at school.
Inspecting him closely, she thought he looked almost like someone who’d gotten involved with drugs.
The sad part was, as much as she loved him, it wouldn’t really surprise her if he had. He’d always been sensitive, and now that he was on his own with new stresses, it would be easy to fall prey to something like that. It had happened to someone in her dorm her freshman year, and the girl had reminded her of Brian in a lot of ways. She’d dropped out before the second semester started, and Sarah hadn’t thought about her in years. But now, staring at Brian, she couldn’t escape the fact that he looked exactly the same way the girl had looked. What a day this was turning out to be.
Maureen, of course, fretted about his appearance and kept adding food to his plate.
“I’m not hungry, Mom,” he protested as he pushed away his half-eaten plate, and Maureen finally gave in and brought the plate to the sink, biting her lip. After lunch, Sarah walked out to the car with Brian to help him bring in his things.
“Mom’s right, you know-you look terrible.”
He pulled the keys from his pocket. “Thanks, sis. I appreciate that.”
“Tough semester?”
Brian shrugged. “I’ll survive.” He opened the trunk and started unloading a bag. Sarah forced him to put the bag down and reached for his arm. “If you need to talk to me about anything, you know I’m here, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m serious. Even if it’s something you don’t think you want to tell me.”
“Do I really look that bad?” Brian raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“Mom thinks you’re on drugs.”
It was a lie, but it wasn’t as though he’d head inside and ask his mother. “Well, tell her I’m not. I’m just having a tough time adjusting to school. But I’ll manage.” He cracked a crooked smile. “That’s the answer for you, too, by the way.”
“Me?”
Brian reached for another bag. “Mom wouldn’t think I was using drugs if she caught me smoking pot in the living room. Now, if you’d said that she was worried that my roommates were making things hard for me because I was so much smarter than them, I might have believed you.”
Sarah laughed. “You’re probably right.”
“I’ll be fine, really. How are you doing?”
“Pretty well. School will finish up this Friday for me, and I’m looking forward to a few weeks off.”
Brian handed Sarah a duffel bag full of dirty clothes. “Teachers need a break, too?”
“We need it more than the kids, if you want to know the truth.” After Brian shut the trunk, he reached for his bags. Sarah glanced over his shoulder to make sure her mom hadn’t come out.
“Listen, I know you just got in a little while ago, but can we talk?” “Sure. This can wait.” He set down the bags and leaned against the car. “What’s up?”
“It’s about Miles. We kind of had an argument today, and it’s not something I can talk to Mom about. You know how she is.”
“What about?”
“I think I told you the last time he was here that his wife had died a couple of years ago in a hit-and-run. They never caught the guy who did it, and he really had a hard time with that. And then yesterday, new information surfaced and he arrested someone. But it didn’t stop at just that. Miles went a little too far. He told me last night that he came close to killing the guy.”
Brian looked taken aback, and Sarah quickly shook her head. “Nothing bad happened in the end-well, not really. No one was actually hurt, but…” She crossed her arms, forcing the thought away. “Anyway, he got suspended from the department today for what he did. But that’s not what I’m really worried about. To make a long story short, they had to release the guy, and now I don’t know what to do. Miles isn’t thinking all that clearly, and I’m afraid he might do something that he’ll end up regretting.”
She paused for a moment, then continued. “I mean, this whole thing is complicated by the fact that there’s already a lot of bad blood between Miles and the guy he arrested. Even though Miles was suspended, he’s not going to give up. And this guy… well, he isn’t the kind of guy he should be messing with.”
“But didn’t you just say they had to let the guy go?”
“Yeah, but Miles won’t accept that. You should have heard him today. He wouldn’t even listen to anything I was saying. Part of me thinks I should call his boss and let him know what Miles said, but he’s already on suspension and I don’t want him to get in any more trouble than he’s already in. But if I say nothing…” She trailed off before meeting her brother’s eyes. “What do you think I should do? Wait and see what happens? Or should I call his boss? Or should I stay out of it?”
Brian took a long time before answering. “I guess that comes down to how you feel about him and how far you think he’ll go.”
Sarah ran a hand through her hair. “That’s just it. I love him. I know you didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him, but he’s made me really happy these last couple of months. And now… this whole thing scares me. I don’t want to be the one who gets him fired, but at the same time, I’m really worried about what he’ll do.”
Brian stood without moving for a long moment, thinking. “You can’t let someone innocent go to prison, Sarah,” he said finally, looking down at her.
“That’s not what I’m afraid of.”
“What-you think he’ll go after the guy?”
“If it comes to that?” She remembered how Miles had looked at her, his eyes flashing with frustrated rage. “I think he just might.”
“You can’t let him do that.”
“So you think I should call?”
Brian looked grim.
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
***
After leaving Sarah’s house, Miles spent the next few hours trying to track down Sims. But like Charlie, he had no luck.
He then thought about visiting the Timson compound again, but he held off. Not because he ran out of time, but because he remembered what had happened earlier that morning in Charlie’s office.
He didn’t have a gun with him anymore.
There was, though, another one at his house.
***
Later that afternoon, Charlie received two telephone calls. One was from Sims’s mother, who asked Charlie why everyone was suddenly interested in her son. When asked what she meant, Sims’s mother answered, “Miles Ryan came by today asking the same questions you did.”
Charlie frowned as he hung up the phone, angry that Miles had ignored everything they’d talked about this morning.
The second call was from Sarah Andrews.
After she said good-bye, Charlie swiveled his chair toward the window and stared over the parking lot, twirling a pencil.
A minute later, with the pencil broken in half, he turned toward the door and tossed the remains in the garbage.
“Madge?” he bellowed.
She appeared in the doorway.
“Get me Harris. Now.”
She didn’t have to be asked twice. A minute later, Harris was standing in front of the desk.
“I need you to go out to the Timson place. Stay out of sight, but keep an eye on whoever goes in and out of there. If anything looks out of the ordinary-and I meananything -I want you to call. Not just me-I want you to put it out on the radio. I don’t want any trouble out there tonight. None at all, you got me?” Harris swallowed and nodded. He didn’t need to ask whom he was watching for. After he left, Charlie reached for the phone to call Brenda. He knew then that he, too, was going to be out late.
Nor could he escape the feeling that the whole thing was on the verge of spinning out of control.
Chapter 28
After a year, my nocturnal visits to their home ceased as suddenly as they’d started. So did my visits to the school to see Jonah, and the site of the accident. The only place I continued to visit with regularity after that was Missy’s grave, and it became part of my weekly schedule, mentally penciled into its Thursday slot. I never missed a day. Rain or shine, I went to the cemetery and traced the path to her grave. I never looked to see if anyone was watching anymore. And always, I brought flowers.
The end of the other visits came as a surprise. Though you might think that the year would have diminished the intensity of my obsession, that wasn’t the case at all. But just as I’d been compelled to watch them for a year, the compulsion suddenly reversed itself and I knew I had to let them live in peace, without me spying on them.
The day it happened was a day I’ll never forget.
It was the first anniversary of Missy’s death. By then, after a year of creeping through the darkness, I was almost invisible as I moved. I knew every twist and turn I had to make, and the time it took to reach their home had dropped by half. I’d become a professional voyeur: In addition to peering through their windows, I had been bringing binoculars with me for months. There were times, you see, when others were around, either on the roads or in their yards, and I hadn’t been able to get close to the windows. Other times, Miles closed the living room drapes, but because the itch was not satisfied by failure, I had to do something. The binoculars solved my problem. Off to the side of their property, close to the river, there is an ancient, giant oak. The branches are low and thick, some run parallel to the ground, and that was where I sometimes made my camp. I found that if I perched high enough, I could see right through the kitchen window, my view unobstructed. I watched for hours, until Jonah went to bed, and afterward, I watched Miles as he sat in the kitchen. Over the year, he, like me, had changed.
Though he still studied the file, he did not do it as regularly as he once had. As the months from the accident had increased, his compulsion to find me decreased. It wasn’t that he cared any less, it had more to do with the reality of what he faced. By then, I knew the case was at a standstill; Miles, I suspected, realized this as well. On the anniversary, after Jonah had gone to bed, he did bring out the file. He didn’t, however, brood over it as he had before. Instead he flipped through the pages, this time without a pencil or pen, and he made no marks at all, almost as if he were turning the pages of a photo album, reliving memories. In time, he pushed it aside, then vanished into the living room.
When I realized he wasn’t coming back, I left the tree and crept around to the porch.
There, even though he’d drawn the shades, I saw that the window had been left open to catch the evening breeze. From my vantage point, I could glimpse slivers of the room inside, enough to see Miles sitting on the couch. A cardboard box sat beside him, and from the angle he faced, I knew he was watching television. Pressing my ear close to the window’s opening, I listened, but nothing I heard seemed to make much sense. There were long periods where nothing seemed to be said; other sounds seemed distorted, the voices jumbled. When I looked toward Miles again, trying to see what he was watching, I saw his face and I knew. It was there, in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth, in the way he was sitting. He was watching home videos.
With that, recognition settled in, and when I closed my eyes, I began to recognize who was speaking on the tape. I heard Miles, his voice rising and falling, I heard the high-pitched squeal of a child. In the background, faint but noticeable, I heard another voice. Her voice.
Missy’s.
It was startling, foreign, and for a moment I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. In all this time, after a year of watching Miles and Jonah, I thought I had come to know them, but the sound I heard that night changed all that. I didn’t know Miles, I didn’t know Jonah. There is observation and study, and there is knowledge, and though I had one, I didn’t have the other and never would. I listened, transfixed.
Her voice trailed away. A moment later, I heard her laugh. The sound made me jump inside, and my eyes were immediately drawn to Miles. I wanted to see his reaction, though I knew what it would be. He would be staring, lost in his memories, angry tears in his eyes.
But I was wrong.
He wasn’t crying. Instead, with a tender look, he was smiling at the screen.
***
After that visit, I honestly believed that I’d never return to their house to spy on them. In the following year, I tried to get on with my life, and on the surface, I succeeded. People around me remarked that I looked better, that I seemed like my old self.
Part of me believed that was so. With the compulsion gone, I thought I had put the nightmare behind me. Not what I had done, not the fact that I had killed Missy, but the obsessive guilt I had lived with for a year. What I didn’t realize then was that the guilt and anguish never really left me. Instead they had simply gone dormant, like a bear hibernating in the winter, feeding on its own tissue, waiting for the season yet to come.
Chapter 29
On Sunday morning, a little after eight, Sarah heard someone knocking at her front door. After hesitating, she finally got up to answer it. As she walked toward the door, part of her hoped it was Miles.