“That’s okay.” He could not remember which one of the identicals she was. They were two halves of the same peach. Without expression, she simply waited for him to continue. “Did you see anything strange go by just now? Something as big as a man?”
She shook her head and started to close the door. Slick as a salesman, he stuck his foot in the opening. “Wait, let me at least have my guess this time. I’d say Edie, is that right?”
“No,” the girl said. “It’s Janie.”
“Ah, you’re right. I should have known by your obvious charm and intelligence. Tell me, Janie, were you just peeking through the curtains?”
A guilty smile spread from ear to ear. “No.”
“In that case, you better fetch me Miss Edie.”
The head disappeared, and the collie stepped into the void, sniffing him in the crotch. Tim pushed away the sharp muzzle, and then both twins appeared side by side on the threshold. “Hello, Edie. I’ve just come over to ask you girls a question.”
They stared at him, through him, waiting.
“Have either of you seen a man running around the neighborhood? A tall man, with white bare skin, with long hair and a tangled beard? I thought maybe one of you was spying from behind the curtains.”
The girls stiffened slightly and inched closer to each other.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I could be all wrong, just my imagination.”
The twins shook their heads in matching rhythm.
“Nothing strange at all?”
Edie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “We saw the police come to your house on Christmas.”
“That? It was about something we found on our beach, is all.”
Janie wiped her nose as well. “Did they arrest him and take him away?”
Tim bent down so his face was on their level. “Arrest who?”
“Jack Peter,” they said, and the certainty in their voices took him aback.
“Whatever gave you the idea that the police would come for my son?”
Each girl chewed on the inside of her cheek, one left one right, mirroring her twin. They stared past him to the house, where the two boys were playing.
“Our mother isn’t home,” Edie said. “And we aren’t supposed to open the door for anybody no matter what.” Janie closed it in his face.
One hard kick and the lock would break. Or at the very least, he could hammer with his fists until they opened up and answered his questions. Instead, he retreated without complaint, wondering the whole time what they must think about Jip. “Weird kids,” he muttered, exhaling each word in a cloud of condensation. In the few minutes he had been outside, the temperature had dropped by several degrees. Cold air from Canada rushed in, and if the weather folk were right, conditions were ripe for a nor’easter. Batten down the hatches, and, Lord, it was freezing. He walked out into the yard, wondering if he should try to track the white man. The wound at his throat throbbed, and he remembered the last time he had given chase. Besides, the thing was long gone, no doubt racing over the headlands or in some rocky hiding place. What kind of creature had come crouching from his dreams? Bone cruncher, throat slasher, nightmare vision.
Back inside his own house, Tim called upstairs to the boys, and Jip answered as if nothing had happened. Safe, in any case. He flipped through the pages in Holly’s ghost files. Bodies not found. Sailor (stranger). Perhaps she was right after all. Had some phantoms risen from the bones of a ship? Impossible.
The central heat cycled off and the blowers stopped, and within minutes, it was chilly enough inside for him to need an afghan to wrap round his shoulders. With a cup of coffee in hand, he nested in an armchair, staring through the window for signs of the white man prowling around outside. He brooded over the Quigley twins and their dark suspicions. Children had always found Jip strange, and they could be such emotional thugs. Even when Jip was just a little boy, the others chastised or shunned him, and Tim still remembered picking him up from his first day of nursery school to find him scowling and alone in a corner. As he grew older, kids called him retarded or stupid or crazy. No wonder he withdrew, no wonder he angered so easily.
Adults were no better, and in certain aspects, they were much worse than children. At least children had an excuse for the most blatant stares and finger-pointing, but catch an adult gawking at your child, and they would pretend to have not looked in the first place. But he knew. Questions were just on their lips: What is wrong with him? Why does he act that way? Strangers were bad, and friends could be unintentionally hurtful. Summers Jip used to join Tim on his rounds of the rental properties, back in the days when his son could still bear to be outdoors. Most of the annual vacationers or the owners of the grand houses would be too busy having their fun to pay much attention to such a quiet little boy. But some remembered him even when he no longer tagged along. The Schroeders, who had always offered lemonade, would make a point of saying “Tell your son hello.” Jeff Hook at the barbershop would often ask, “What happened to that boy of yours?”