“If I’m right, it’ll be pretty smack in the middle of the development.”
We drive around a little more. Dave charts our progress on the map on his phone, driving up and down streets until he swings a sudden left, pointing the rental at a modern glass and stucco building at the end of a one-way road. A Plexiglas sign above the double doors announces it as Neighborhood House. “Bingo.”
Dave finds a spot along the street, and we power through a stiff wind up the sidewalk. A glass-enclosed bulletin board to the left of the door announces an adult financial planning seminar, a jobs lab and the annual literacy drive under a United Way logo.
“Boom,” Dave says as we pass. “Social services. Told you it was HUD.”
I roll my eyes. “Such a cocky Realtor.”
He grins and opens one of the double doors, stepping aside to let me pass.
Inside, Neighborhood House is spacious and bright, a two-story windowed space flooded with natural and LCD light. Two women sit behind the reception desk in the very center, chatting with an elderly black man on the opposite side of the counter. They’re young, midtwenties or so, their faces fresh with eager smiles and philanthropic optimism.
“Welcome to Neighborhood House,” one of them says, her accent nasal and Midwestern. “Do you know the way or would you like a little direction?”
I step up to the counter, give her a friendly smile. “Hi, and thank you. I’m looking for information on a former resident, and I was hoping you could put us in touch with someone who was well connected in the community back before it was redeveloped.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” the man says, turning to us with a dentured grin. “And I know everybody. Who you looking for, sweetheart?”
Now that I’m closer, I see the man is not elderly; he’s ancient. Stooped posture and grizzled hair and droopy skin with a labyrinth of lines too deep to be described as wrinkles. And though his eyes are cloudy with cataracts, they’re intelligent and twinkling with warmth.
“His name is Will Griffith, though back then he went by Billy. He lived here with his family until sometime in 1999, maybe a year or two longer. I don’t know his parents’ names, but they—”
“Kat and Lewis,” the man says, and he’s no longer smiling.
“Was Kat the one who died in the fire?”
“Yes, ma’am. And she wasn’t the only one.”
Excitement revs my heart, and a tingly warmth rises in my chest. “She wasn’t?”
He shakes his head and studies me through squinted eyes. “Who are you, and why are you asking?”
“The son, Billy...Will, is my husband. Well, was my husband. He was on that Liberty Airlines flight from Atlanta to Seattle, the one that...”
Someone gasps, and right on cue, my throat closes up and my eyes fill with tears, my brain saturated with memories of my husband. Not the new Will, the one who lied about where he was going and where he came from, a past filled with anger and violence. He stays out of the picture, this new man I don’t know and can’t begin to understand. No, my tears now are for the old Will—the one who used to smack my butt whenever I got out of the shower, the one who asked me to marry him on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, by dropping to his knee in the middle of the breakfast aisle, in the very same Kroger where we began. That’s the Will I miss. That’s the husband I want back.
“Sorry,” I say, ducking my head. I’ve never been a pretty crier, and I hate crying in public, something I’ve been doing an awful lot of lately. “I didn’t mean to...”
One of the women plucks two tissues from a box and passes them over the counter. “Honey, you cry all you want. My God, your husband just died in a plane crash. I think everybody here will agree, you get a free pass.”
Her colleague nods in vehement agreement.
Only the elderly man doesn’t show a lick of sympathy. His lips, white-line thin, curl down at both ends, and his eyes, which when we first walked in glittered with joviality, are now as dark and stormy as the sky outside. The transformation bottles up my tears.
“You remember my husband, don’t you?”
He turns back to the women, slapping a stiff palm to the desk. “Ladies, you have yourselves a nice evening.” Without so much as a glance in our direction, he pushes past us for the door.
He’s stooped and slow, but he walks with a steady, if not flat-footed gait. I catch up within a few easy strides. “Sir, wait. Please. I’m only asking for a minute or two of your time.”
“No, what you’re asking is for me to dig up some old and unpleasant skeletons. Skeletons that are better left in the past.” Everything about the old man says he didn’t like Will then, and now, after I just admitted being married to him, he doesn’t like me much, either. He ducks his head and speeds up.
At the exit, he punches a button and a motor whirs, swinging the heavy doors open like they’re moving through molasses, only barely faster than the old man. It’s enough of a delay that we stop walking.
“Look, I understand Will was a troubled kid, but—”
He lifts a hunched shoulder. “This was the projects. Lots of kids were troubled.”
Even after all the lies, the impulse to defend my husband rises inside me like a tsunami, and I bite down on my tongue to hold the wave inside.
“What did he do?” Dave says, coming up alongside me.
The old man grimaces. “I already told you, let old bones lie. Nothing good can come of digging ’em up.”
The doors are open now, letting in an icy wind. Sometime in the past few minutes, the skies have begun dumping rain, and it falls in fierce, angry swirls. The man yanks his zipper higher and heads out into it.
Dave and I exchange a look, and he’s thinking the same thing I am, that this man is our best bet for information. I jut my chin in his direction, and Dave takes off after him.
“At least let us drive you to where you’re going,” he suggests as the old man’s shuffling down the ramp. “You shouldn’t be out in this weather. The sidewalks will be slippery.”
The old man is tempted. He pauses, glancing back over a shoulder.
It’s enough for Dave to give him an inviting grin. “Our car is warm and dry, and it’ll take you anywhere you need to go.”
The old man considers the offer for a second or two, his gaze sizing us up. He takes in my leather boots and cashmere scarf, Dave’s designer jeans under a Patagonia puffy coat. “Anywhere?”
Dave and I both nod.
The man’s scowl fades into something much more calculating. “I could eat.”
*
The old man’s name is Wayne Butler, and with his directions, Dave steers the rental to a halal joint on MLK Jr. Way. He takes in the neon signs and the faded red awning, and his shoulders droop, but he doesn’t complain, not even when Mr. Butler orders every curry on the menu, then steps aside so Dave can pay.
As soon as we’re situated at a table near the window, I use the same strategy that got Coach Miller talking: honesty.
“Mr. Butler, I know you’d rather not go excavating the past, but whatever Will did as a teenager, it can’t be worse than what he did to me, his own wife.”