Emily Kindler was sitting at the kitchen table. Behind her, his wife was making tea.
“Mr. Faraday,” said Emily.
He found that he was now able to smile at her. It was a small thing, but there was genuine warmth in it. There was no longer any hint of blame attaching to her for what had occurred, and now she seemed more like a link to his son, fuel for the fire of his memory.
“Emily,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess.” She could not look at his face. He knew that his rejection of her at the place of his son’s death had wounded her deeply, and if he had absolved her of all blame then she had yet to do the same for him. They had never discussed what had happened that day, so it was true to say that he had not made any recompense for it.
His wife came over and touched the girl’s hair gently with the palm of her hand, smoothing down some loose strands. Daniel thought that they looked a little like each other: both were pale and without makeup, and there were dark circles of grief beneath their eyes.
“I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving after the funeral.”
He was surprised. He struggled to find something to say.
“Listen, honey,” he said, “I owe you an apology.” He reached for her hand, and she allowed him to take it. “That day, the day they found Bobby, I wasn’t myself. I was just so hurt, so shocked, that I couldn’t…I couldn’t…”
Words failed him. He did not want to lie to her, and he did not want to tell her the truth.
“I know why you couldn’t look at me,” she said. “You thought it was my fault. Maybe you still do.”
He felt his chin begin to tremble, and his eyes grew hot. He did not want to cry in front of her. He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I apologize for ever thinking that of you.”
Now she gripped his hand tentatively as his wife placed three cups on the table and poured tea from an old china pot. “Thank you.”
“Chief Dashut came by earlier,” he continued. “He said that Bobby didn’t take his own life. He was murdered. He asked us to keep it quiet for now. We’ve told nobody else, but you, you should know.”
The girl made a small mewling sound. The little blood she had left seemed to drain from her face.
“What?”
“The injuries, they’re not consistent with suicide.” He was crying now. “Bobby was killed. Someone choked him until he was unconscious, then tied him up and forced him forward until he died. Who would do that? Who would do such a thing to my boy?”
He tried to hold on to her, but her hand slipped from his. She stood up, teetering on her low heels.
“No,” she said. She turned suddenly, her right hand trailing. It caught the nearest cup and sent it falling to the floor, where it shattered on the tiles. “I have to go,” she said. lrsq?she said.dquo;I can’t stay here.”
And there was something in her voice that caused Daniel’s tears to cease, and his eyes grew sharp.
“What do you mean?”
“I just can’t stay. I have to leave.”
There was knowledge in her eyes. Daniel saw it.
“What do you know?” he said. “What do you know about my boy’s death?”
He reached out to her, but she pulled away from him. He heard his wife say something, but it meant nothing to him. All of his attention was focused on the girl. Her eyes were huge. They were staring not at him but at the window behind him, where her face was reflected in the glass. She looked confused, as though the image that she saw there was not the one she had expected to see.
“Tell me,” he said. “Please.”
She did not speak for a time. Then, softly: “I caused this.”
“What? How?”
“I’m bad luck. I bring it with me. It follows me.”
Now she looked at him for the first time, and he shivered. He thought that he had never before seen such desolation in the eyes of another human being, not even in his wife’s eyes when he’d told her that their son was dead, not even in his own as he looked in the mirror and saw the father of a dead child.
“What follows you?”
The first of the tears began to fall from her eyes. She continued speaking, but he felt as though their presence in the room was immaterial to her. She was talking to another, or perhaps only to herself.
“There’s something haunting me,” she said, “someone haunting me, following in my footsteps. It won’t give me peace. It won’t leave me alone. It hurts the people I care about. I bring it down on them. I don’t want to, but I do.”
Slowly, he approached her. “Emmy,” he said, using his son’s pet name for her, “you’re not making any sense. Who is this person?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her head low. “I don’t know.”
He wanted to hold her. He wanted to shake her, to pummel the information from her. He did not know if she was talking about a real person or some imagined shadow, a ghost conjured up to explain her own torment. He wanted her to clarify it for him. An unknown entity had killed his son. Now here was his ex-girlfriend talking about someone following her. It needed to be explained.
She seemed to sense what he was thinking, for as he moved to take hold of her, she slipped away.
“Don’t touch me!” she said, and the ferocity with which she spoke caused him to yield to her.
“Emily, you need to explain yourself. You have to tell the police what you’ve told us.”
She almost laughed. “Tell them what? That I’m haunted?” She was in the hallway now, backing toward the door. “I’m sorry for what happened to Bobbyrha?ned to Bo, but I won’t stay here. It’s found me. It’s time to move on.”
Her hand found the door handle and twisted it. Outside, Daniel felt snow coming. This strange spell of warmth was coming to an end. Soon, they would be lost in drifts, and his son’s grave would gape darkly amid the whiteness like a wound as they lowered him into the ground.
He began running as Emily turned to leave, but she was too fast for him. His fingers touched the material of her shirt, and then he stumbled on the porch step and dropped heavily to his knees. By the time he got to his feet, she was already running down the street. He tried to follow, but his legs hurt and he had been shocked by the fall. He leaned against the front gate, his face contorted in pain and frustration, as his wife held his shoulders and asked him questions that he could not answer.
Daniel called the police as soon as he was inside the house. The dispatcher took his name and number and promised to pass his message on to the chief. He told her that it was urgent, and demanded that she give him Dashut’s cell phone number, but she informed him that the chief was out of town and had given orders that, for this night at least, he was not to be disturbed. Eventually, she promised to call the chief as soon as Daniel was off the line. With no other option, Daniel thanked her and hung up.
The chief did not call back that night, even though the dispatcher had informed him of Daniel Faraday’s call. He was having a good time with his family at his brother’s fortieth birthday, and he believed that he had earned it. He had not told Daniel Faraday and his wife of all that he had learned. That morning, one of his men had called Dashut’s attention to the base of the tree to which Bobby Faraday had been tied. Initials had been carved into its bark by the kids who had gone there to make out over the years, transforming it into a monument to love and lust, both passing and undying.
But something else had been hacked into the bark, and recently too, judging by the color of the exposed flesh beneath: a symbol of some kind, but unlike anything that Dashut had seen before.