“I’m trying to find someone who used to live around here,” I say.
The woman frowns. “Who? Not many people move away from this street.”
“His name is Ethan McCready.”
The woman pauses, hovering over the pile of leaves she’d been reaching for. “Why on earth is a girl like you looking for Ethan McCready?”
“I think he knew my sister,” I say. “I wanted to ask him something.”
“He lived over there.” The woman points past the house where the kids are playing soccer, at the ranch-style at the dead end. “His mother was such a doll. It’s terrible how quickly the disease took her.”
“That’s awful,” I say. “I heard he didn’t have a father either.”
“Oh, he had one.” There’s scorn on the woman’s face. “Left Kathleen when she was pregnant with Ethan. They were never married.”
“So where did he go after she died?” I say.
“One of her cousins took him in. Hate to say it, but it was a relief when he was gone. He really put everyone around here on edge.”
“Because of why he got expelled?” I press.
“Well, that. And his walking the neighborhood at all hours.” The woman picks up her rake. Leans on it, crossing one ankle over the other.
I don’t know why, but the thought of Ethan McCready walking around with no place to go depresses me. “Does he still live with the cousin?”
The woman strips one of her gardening gloves off and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. “He lasted a few weeks there.” She points down the street. “He was friends with James Montick, the boy who lived on the corner. His mother caught Ethan sleeping in their basement shortly after that. Told him she’d call the cops. Poor kid. No one ever seemed to want him.”
So what the hell happened to him?
“You haven’t seen him since then?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Beats me where he is now. Could be anywhere, I guess.”
Something in me deflates. I didn’t expect to waltz right into the neighborhood and learn that Ethan McCready never left his dead mother’s house and find him sitting in front of his TV watching the afternoon news. And what would I do if I had found him here?
“Thank you.” I hand the woman the garbage bag, suddenly desperate to leave. “I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.”
“Don’t be silly.” The woman lifts her free hand. Hesitates. She rests it on my arm and gives me a gentle squeeze. I think maybe she’s going to say more, admit she knows who I am, but she turns back to her rake.
I get back on my bike. I pedal past the kids kicking around the soccer ball and keep going until I’m out of sight of the woman, slowing when I reach the house where she said Ethan McCready used to live.
I stop in front. It’s small and looks well cared for. There aren’t any Halloween decorations up, but a wooden heart hanging in the front door reads BLESS OUR HOME. To the left of the house is a small yard boxed off by a white fence. To the right there’s a Dead End sign and a patch of woods.
I walk my bike down the path dividing the trees. When the creek comes into view, I pause, remembering Carly’s words: The two of them, like, went off into the woods together all the time.
I picture Jen sitting on the rock jutting out of the creek, a book in her lap. She always had a book with her, was always coming out here to read. If I tried to tag along, she’d announce that she didn’t want to hang out by the creek anyway.
Was she trying to get rid of me so she could meet Ethan in private? Had Susan seen them?
I hook right and head toward the edge of the woods. After a couple hundred feet, the trees thin out and my old backyard comes into view.
My toes curl in my shoes at the clear view of our house. On the windowsill of the second-story corner room, someone has arranged a row of stuffed animals in a neat line and painted over the purple walls with dark blue. My old room.
I keep walking, staying close to the edge of the woods. Head all the way down to where I can get a look at the Berrys’ old backyard. The renovators tore out the pool and installed a stone patio with a fire pit. Inside the house, at the sliding glass door leading onto the back deck, sits a white cat, its tail flicking back and forth like a metronome. Eyes locked on a squirrel balanced on the deck railing, grooming itself.
I picture Ethan standing where I am now. Prowling through the woods, doing whatever he did back here at all hours of the night. Did he watch Susan and Juliana in the house through the glass door that night? Was he waiting here on purpose…waiting here, keeping an eye on the house of the girl who got him expelled?
Daphne’s words return to me: There weren’t any signs of forced entry at the Berrys’ house that night.
Juliana wouldn’t have let Ethan McCready in the front door, and it wasn’t like the Berrys to leave the back door unlocked. If they’d been leaving Susan alone, they would have taken every precaution to make sure the house was secure.
I let myself imagine an alternate scenario. One where Ethan never went inside the house that night—one where he was standing right where I am, the whole time, watching a scene on the deck unfold.
Someone coming to the back door to meet Juliana. Someone she or Susan had been expecting. Ethan would have seen Juliana with the person in the house.
A person who was definitely not Jack Canning.
I know it wasn’t him. It had been Ethan all along. Not threatening Tom, but warning him. Ethan thought he saw the real killer that night.
I walk my bike out to the street and hop on. Pedal home as fast as my legs will allow me. I let myself through the garage, propping my bike against the wall next to Mom’s car. I’ll deal with putting it away properly later; right now I have to text Ethan McCready the message I composed in my head on the ride home.
His response comes right away, as if he were waiting for this moment, for me to put enough of the pieces together.
There’s no school Thursday and Friday because of staff development. The holiday starts at sundown on Wednesday, so Coach has to cancel practice.
It’s ten minutes to three. Ginny and I are in her mom’s car, parked in the lot behind the Millerton Public Library. We sit in silence, watching a girl toss a trash bag into a dumpster with PROPERTY OF COOL BEANS COFFEE & TEA painted on the side.
“I don’t think this is safe,” Ginny says.
I know exactly what she thinks about meeting up with Ethan McCready, because she’s mentioned it about a thousand times since I called her on Sunday to tell her everything I learned in my old neighborhood.
When I told her that he wanted to meet up this afternoon at Cool Beans Coffee & Tea, she was silent for a solid minute.
“I mean, he’s obviously not…well,” she’d said. “Saving that note from your sister all these years and keeping track of where you live?”
“He can’t do anything to me in a public coffee shop,” I said, determined. “And besides, I have to hear what he has to say.”
Ginny insisted on coming. I didn’t mention this to Ethan when I agreed to meet him. I want him to think I’m coming alone.
We climb out of the car. Ginny locks it and we head down the alleyway. Outside Cool Beans, two guys are standing inches apart, one with his back against the brick wall. Facing each other, hands intertwined.
I can’t tear my eyes away from them, warmed by the intimacy of the scene. Two guys engaged in PDA is the type of thing that would raise eyebrows in Sunnybrook, where people still substitute the term good old days for before those liberals took over. I’ve heard that at the high school in Millerton, they were allowed to put on a production of Rent. At my school, a ninth-grade English teacher got fired for playing a DVD of Romeo and Juliet that showed an actor’s naked butt.