Chris hopped up and down on his toes as if working out his calves. He rolled his neck around on his shoulders. “Speaking of quitting,” he said. “Why’d you quit soccer, man? We suck now.”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I sometimes wonder the same thing.”
After this, a teacher named Mrs. Kornegay came up to our line and blew a whistle and so we all shuffled forward into the gymnasium, where the pep squad was singing our fight song. I didn’t speak to Chris Garrett for the rest of that day and, when orientation was over, I walked home alone.
When I got there, my mom was a wreck.
I found her sitting in my bedroom, holding the confiscated black-and-white photo of Lindy that caused me trouble so long ago. Her hands were shaking and she had been crying, I could tell, but as this was a common occurrence since my sister’s death, I had no idea its source. She could have been crying about Hannah, of course. She could have been crying about Mrs. Simpson or Lindy, and it was also possible that she could still be crying, even all these years later, about my father. Or it could have been me.
“Mom,” I asked her, “what’s going on?”
She didn’t even look up.
“I need you to tell me,” she said. “I need you to tell me about this photo.”
So, I finally did.
I told her in greater detail what I had only mentioned when she was first overwhelmed by the collected perversions of my lockbox. I told her about what had happened at Jason’s house that day, about how he had a stack of these photos tucked away in his closet. I told her how I saw pictures of other people from the neighborhood in there, as well, including her. People driving cars and playing in the yard. People watering their gardens and spraying for whiteflies. I said that most of the photos that I saw were of Lindy, though, and as I recalled this scene to my mother, it took on an entirely new meaning for me. Now that I was removed from that moment, now that I wasn’t maniacally focused on making sure Lindy didn’t find out about my secret, I began to understand how strange it all looked from the outside, this black-and-white photo of Lindy singing to herself as she walked, taken from the closet of a troubled household. It was not celebratory, this picture. It was not a snapshot to be shared among friends. It was not even, on the surface of it, lewd. There was by all conceivable measure no good reason for the photo to exist. I understood then that it was not for my eyes to have seen, nor any child’s, as it was not to have been taken in the first place. So the horror of it all simplified for me in the way it must have for my mother so long ago, and I felt sick with guilt.
After I finished explaining, my mom asked me, “Did Jason take these pictures?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I don’t think so, either,” she said.
My mom then placed the photo on the bed and took me by the shoulders. “Listen,” she told me. “I don’t want you to ever go to that house again. Do you understand me? I don’t want you to talk to Jason or to his father. Just stay away from them.” She looked serious and afraid as she said this, and I felt embarrassed, like I was being counseled by a stranger.
“Mom,” I said, “what’s going on?”
“Shh,” she said. “Did you hear that?”
I did.
Someone was on our front porch. We could hear their footsteps.
A large shadow passed my bedroom window. My mom looked at me.
“Did you lock the door when you came in?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She sprang off the bed and I followed her. We ran to the front of the house, where we stopped and stood like statues in the foyer. I had no idea what was happening. The dead bolt and chain were both fastened, so we kept our distance, watching a shadow so big that it could only be Mr. Landry’s behind the frosted glass that surrounded our door frame. After a minute of standing there, oddly quiet, Mr. Landry rang the doorbell.
My mom squeezed my hand.
“Don’t open it,” she whispered.
He rang the bell again.
“Kathryn,” he said through the door. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
I looked up at my mother. She stared at the door as if it required her attention to remain shut, and her hand was hot over mine. She motioned for me to watch the door as well, and when I did, I saw Mr. Landry trying the knob, turning it gently from side to side. When this didn’t work, he reached to the top of the door frame to check for a key. We heard him bend and look under the mat. Woodland Hills was a generally safe place, remember, and so the key was indeed out there. We kept it in a fake birdhouse, a small replica of our own home that hung maybe ten feet from where Mr. Landry was standing. What luck, I think now, that he didn’t think to check there. What blessing prevented him from seeing it? How much of our lives, when we think back upon them, are owed to these minor miracles?
Are any miracles minor?
My mom leaned over to me. “Lock the back door,” she whispered. “I’m going to call your father.” She then turned and ran to her bedroom as I watched the large shadow move past our door and across the porch. I followed it to the side of the house, where I could eventually see Mr. Landry from around a corner, shading his eyes to look in through our kitchen window. He had a bandage on his hand and stood there for a long time. He did not appear angry or passionate or vengeful, and so I had no idea the source of our panic, yet I also did not doubt it. My legs were shaking. I could smell myself sweating. As soon as he left my sight, I ran to the back door and flipped the bolt and laced the chain.
I hurried to my bedroom after this and grabbed a baseball bat that I had not touched since Little League. I crouched next to my window and raised one of the blinds to see Mr. Landry, dressed in slacks and a short-sleeved dress shirt, plodding back across our lawn. He walked past the Stillers’ and to his house, where he climbed into his old Jeep Scout and drove away. When I got to my mom’s bedroom to tell her that he was gone, she was on the telephone and nearly hysterical.
“What do you want me to do, Glen?” she said. “I know what I saw.”
We then heard the gate to our back patio swing open, and my mom looked at me as if her life had drained away. I readied the bat and peeked through her bedroom window to see Rachel walking in from the carport, fumbling with her keys.
“It’s just Rachel,” I said, and my mother began crying.
“Hurry,” my mom said. “Go let her in.”
For reasons that make sense to me now, I was kept out of the loop that night.