He looks at me now, the same glare. I meet his eyes and don’t move.
“I woke Diana up for school in the morning. I made her chocolate-chip pancakes every Wednesday. When she was a little girl, I took her every Saturday morning to the Armstrong Diner, just the two of us, and then we’d go to Silverman’s and buy ponytail holders or neon scrunchies or those tortoiseshell clips for her hair. She collected hair stuff. I was just the clueless dad, what do I know? All of that stuff was still there when I cleaned out her room. Threw them all away. When she had rheumatic fever in seventh grade, I slept in a chair at Saint Barnabas for eight straight nights. I sat in that hospital and watched her and begged God to never hurt her. I went to every field hockey game, every holiday concert, every dance recital, every graduation, every parents’ day. When she went on her first date, I secretly followed them to the movies because I was so nervous. I stayed up every night she went out because I couldn’t fall asleep until I knew she was home safe. I helped her work on college essays no one ended up having to read because she died before she could apply. I loved that girl with all my might every single day of her life, and he”—Augie practically spits the word out toward Tom Stroud’s house—“he thinks now we have something in common? He thinks, what, that he, a man who abandoned his son when things got tough, knows my pain?”
He hits his own chest when he says the word “my.” Then he stops, grows quiet. His eyes close.
A small part of me wants to say something comforting, something along the line that Tom Stroud just lost his son and so we need to cut him a little slack. But most of me gets exactly what Augie means and doesn’t feel the need to be that generous.
When Augie opens his eyes, he stares at the house again. “Maybe we need to look at this in a new way,” he says.
“How’s that?”
“Where was Tom Stroud all those years?”
I stay quiet.
“He claims he was out west,” Augie continues, “opening a fish-and-tackle business.”
“With a gun range in the back,” I add.
Now we both stare at the house.
“He also claims he came back every once in a while. Tried to bond with his kid, who rejected him.”
“So?”
Augie doesn’t answer for a moment. Then he lets loose a long breath and says, “So maybe he came back fifteen years ago.”
“Seems a stretch,” I say.
“It does,” Augie agrees. “But it might be a good idea to check on his whereabouts.”
Chapter Eighteen
When I arrive back home, the Walshes are outside. I give them the big Mr. Friendly smile. Look how harmless the single guy is. They wave back.
They all know your tragic story, of course. It’s legend in these parts, as they say. I’m surprised none of Westbridge’s wannabe Springsteens has written the “Ode to Leo and Diana.” Still, they all think that it can’t happen to them. That’s how people are. They all hunger for the details not solely because they are ghoulish—that’s part of it, no question—but more because they need to know that it can’t possibly happen to them. Those teens drank too much. They took drugs. They took foolish chances. Their parents didn’t raise them right. They didn’t watch close enough. Whatever. Can’t happen to us.
Denial isn’t just for the grieving.
I still haven’t heard back from Beth Lashley. That troubles me. I call the Ann Arbor Police Department and locate a detective named Carl Legg. I explain to him that I’m looking for a cardiologist named Beth Fletcher née Lashley and am getting the runaround from her office staff.
“Is she wanted in connection to a crime?” Legg asks me.
“No. I just need to talk to her.”
“I’ll head over to her office myself.”
“Thanks.”
“No worries. I’ll call you when I know more.”
The house is quiet, the ghosts all sleeping. I head up to the second floor and pull the handle. The ladder to the attic comes down. I climb up and try to remember the last time I was up here. I guess I helped bring your stuff to the attic, but if I did, that memory is gone. Maybe Dad spared me and did it himself. Your death was sudden. Dad’s was not. He and I had time. He accepted his fate, even as I denied it. By the time his body gave out, Dad had already unburdened himself and thus me of most of his worldly possessions. He gave away his own clothes. He packed up his room.
He tidied up before the Reaper arrived, so I wouldn’t have to.
The attic, no surprise, is musty and hot. It’s hard to breathe. I expect there to be a ton of boxes and old trunks, all the stuff you see in movies, but there is very little. Dad put down a few planks of wood, that’s it, so that most of the floor is pink insulation. That’s what I remember most. You and I would come up here as kids and we’d play a game of having to stay on the boards because if we stepped on the pink, we would fall right straight through the ceiling and land on the floor below. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what Dad always told us. I remember as a kid being scared of that, like the insulation was quicksand, and I would step on it and sink in and be gone forever.
You never run into quicksand in real life, do you? For something so huge in movies and TV, you never actually hear about anyone getting trapped or dying in quicksand.
This is how my mind is roaming as I spot the box in the corner. That’s it. One box, Leo. You know Dad wasn’t big on material goods. Your clothes are gone. Your toys are gone. Purging was part of his grieving process—not sure what stage that would be. Acceptance maybe, though acceptance is supposed to be the last step and Dad had a bunch more to go through after the purge. We know Dad was an emotional man, but his full-body sobs—the way his chest heaved and his shoulders trembled, his wails of thunderous agony—frightened me. There were times I thought he would physically break in half, that his ceaseless anguish would cleave his torso or something.
And, no, we never heard from Mom.
Did Dad reach out and tell her? I don’t know. I never asked. He never told me.
I open the box to see what Dad saved. Here is a thought I haven’t had until right this second: Dad obviously knew that you would never be able to open this box. He also knew that he himself would never open it either. That means whatever is in here, whatever he chose to save, would hold value only to me. Whatever Dad saved, he saved thinking that I might one day want it.
The box is sealed with tape. It’s hard to peel off. I take a key out of my pocket and use it to slice down the seam. Then I pull back the cardboard and peer inside. I don’t know what I expect to see. I know you. I know your life. We shared a room for your entire life. It isn’t like anything huge is unaccounted for.
But as I see the photograph on the top, I feel newly lost. It’s a snapshot of the four of us—you and Diana, Maura and me. I remember it, of course. The photo was taken in Diana’s backyard. Her seventeenth—and last—birthday. It was a warm October night. We’d spent the day down at Six Flags Great Adventure. Augie had a friend, a retired cop who now worked for a major park sponsor, and he was able to get us wristbands that gave us limitless access to the fast-pass lane. No lines for the coasters, Leo. Do you remember? I don’t have a lot of memories of you or Diana on that day. We broke off, you and Diana staying mostly in the arcade area—I remember you won her a stuffed Pikachu—and Maura and I went on the hard-core coasters. Maura wore a crop top that made my mouth dry. You and Diana took a goofy picture with one of the Looney Tunes characters. Which one? I bet it’s . . . yes, the second photo. I pull it into view. You and Diana standing on either side of Tweety Bird, the Six Flags fountain spouting water behind you.