We didn’t all sit around the same table. It was informal. You grabbed a drink, scooped out a heap of lasagna and some salad on a plate, and ate it wherever you wanted. In the kitchen, in front of the TV, whatever.
“You’re back to work?” I heard Trixie ask Sarah from across the kitchen.
She nodded. “I took a week, went back. But Zack and I, we’re thinking maybe of taking a vacation.”
I stopped chewing so I could hear more.
“Maybe a cottage, maybe even a week in Paris.”
“That would be fabulous,” Trixie said. It sure would, I thought.
Earl came up to me, kept me from hearing anything else. There was a bit of tomato sauce on the cigarette he had between his lips. “So you’re sure you kept me out of it?”
“So far,” I said. “What if I have to tell at some point?”
Earl shrugged. “Thing is, I’m thinking of moving on. Let the Asians get somebody else to run the house. I don’t own it. I can walk away. Chances are, by the time you have to tell all, I won’t be around.”
I smiled. All I could think to say was “Yeah.”
Angie strolled by, rubbed her hand on my shoulder. I’d noticed both the kids were more physical lately. A hug here, a pat on the back there. I touched her hair as she passed me.
Paul, his plate heaped with lasagna and two rolls, came around the corner.
“Man of the hour,” Earl said.
Paul grinned. “For once, I didn’t get reamed out about leaving my backpack at the top of the stairs.”
Earl blew out some smoke, shoved a piece of bread into his mouth.
“You still going to help me with the yard?” Paul asked. “I want to put in some rosebushes, maybe.”
“I don’t know, sport,” Earl said. “I don’t think I’m the kind of guy your dad wants you to associate with.” I had, once the dust settled, told the kids how Earl made his living.
“Jeez, Dad, they’re going to legalize the stuff any day now.”
I felt awkward. “I think Earl’s thinking of moving on, anyway. Maybe I’ll have to learn a little about yard work myself. Or you can teach me, and I’ll just push the wheelbarrow around.”
“You know, Dad,” Paul said. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”
I eyed him warily. “What?”
“The way I see it, if it hadn’t been for me, you and Mom, like, you probably wouldn’t be here now. So I was thinking some kind of reward was in order.”
I ran my tongue around inside my cheek. “Like what?”
“I think you should let me get a tattoo.”
“No way.”
“Come on! Look, if that guy had-” and he paused here “-killed you and Mom, I’d have been able to go ahead and do it anyway.”
“Too bad things worked out the way they did.”
Now he was frustrated. He hadn’t meant anything like that, and I was instantly sorry that I’d made the crack. But Earl seemed to find the exchange amusing.
Paul said, “You’re screwing up my words. I guess I’m saying, I mean, couldn’t I just get one? Remember I told you how people you know have them, and they’re not bad people? Like my math teacher, Mr. Drennan?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what about Earl here? He’s got one. Do you think he’s a bad person?”
Earl’s smile vanished. “Hey, Paul, don’t go dragging me into this. This is strictly between you and your parents, okay?”
“But the thing is, you’ve got one, and here you are, talking to my dad and all, and I don’t think he thinks any less of you because you’ve got one.”
“Of course I don’t,” I said to Paul. “But Earl’s an adult, and you’re not.”
“Just show it to him,” Paul coaxed Earl.
“I don’t think so, really.”
To me, Paul said, “It’s so cool, although I’ve only seen it once. Remember, Earl, we were putting in those shrubs, and you took off your shirt that one day, it was so friggin’ hot?”
Now I was curious. “What is it, Earl? A naked lady, I’m guessing.”
“No,” said Paul. “It’s way more cool than that. It’s a watch.”
Earl took a very long drag on his cigarette.
I said, “You might as well show me, Earl. Paul’s going to hound you until you do.”
Earl put his plate of lasagna down on the counter and slowly rolled up the right sleeve of his black T-shirt. He got it up above his shoulder and took his hand away.
It was a watch. But not a normal watch. It looked like a pocket watch, no strap, and it was melting, just like in that Salvador Dali painting.
He gave us a second to look at it, then rolled the sleeve back down.
“That’s quite something,” I said, and Earl’s eyes caught mine.
29
“YOU COMING TO BED?” SARAH SAID. There was nothing in her voice that said she wanted me there for any other purpose than company. These days, Sarah definitely didn’t want to sleep alone.
It was after midnight; our guests had left several hours ago. Trixie, as I mentioned, had to work, and Earl left much earlier than planned. I had retired to my study, and was sitting at my desk when Sarah appeared in the door, leaning, one hand propped up against the frame. She was in a long nightshirt featuring a big picture of Snoopy in karate garb.
“Soon,” I said. I had a folder in front of me, stuffed with newspaper clippings.
“Okay,” she said, and turned to go.
“I heard you tell Trixie,” I said, and she stopped, “that we might be going away. For a trip.”
Sarah said nothing for a moment. “I guess I did.”
“Were you just saying it, or would you like to go?”
She pressed her lips together, ran her hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I think, sometimes, that I would. I let myself stop being mad at you for a while, and I like the idea. And then I get mad again, and stop thinking about it.”
I nodded. I sat there, and she stood in the doorway, and about a minute went by.
“What if I could get our house back?” I said.
“What?”
“What if I could get our old house back? Move back into the city.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about moving. Back into our old neighborhood. It might, it might not be the same house. Not the exact same one. But something in that neighborhood, on Crandall, or maybe a street over. We could shop at Angelo’s again, and you could get cannolis, and the kids could go back to their old school. It would be like we never lived out here at all.”
Sarah bit her lip and looked away for a moment. She took a finger and wiped at the corner of one eye.
“I could call somebody, get this place assessed, put this place on the market, see what we could get for it. I mean, we’d probably have a mortgage again, it’s going to cost us more to buy down there, but I could go work for a paper again. Cover city hall, take pictures, whatever.”
Sarah sniffed, took a tentative step into the room, then a couple more. When she was a foot away, I leaned forward in my chair and slipped my arms around her thighs, pressed my face into her stomach. We remained that way for a while, and then I said, “I’m not sure this house is a place anymore from which to make good memories. And I know we have lots more to make.”
She nodded, sniffed again, looked at the folder of newspaper clippings on my desk.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just some stuff,” I said. “Why don’t you go to bed, and I’ll be up in a bit. And in the morning, we can talk some more about what we should do.”
WHEN SHE LEFT, I CLOSED the door and returned to my desk and opened the folder. Back when I had first collected these clippings, with the idea of possibly doing a book on the case someday, I had arranged them in chronological order.
The first story, dated October 9, carried this headline: “Police Comb Neighborhood for Girl, 5.”
My recollection was that this story hadn’t made the front page. It had been splashed across the top of page three, six columns, with a picture of Jesse Shuttleworth. It was a blurry photo, no doubt blown up from a cheap snapshot, and the larger it got, the poorer the definition. She had curly red hair, brown eyes, a smile to melt your heart. The story rated about fifteen inches. The editors probably hadn’t wanted to go crazy with it. Not yet. She would only have been missing a few hours by the time the first edition closed. She could be at a friend’s, she might be lost. You didn’t want to go and put it on page one, then, just as the paper hit the streets, have people hear on their car radios that she’d been found at a sleepover. So you hedged your bet, you put it on three.