“Did you tell Dad we were leaving?” she asked.
“I told him I wanted to get you out of the house and take you to Portland on a real date.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘There’s five hundred dollars in cash in the top drawer and don’t you dare show your face until morning.’”
“I take it he approves?”
“You could say that.”
Thora agreed to come home and watch Dr. Capello while they were out. She said she’d watch their dad day and night as long as they brought her Little Big Burger from Portland. An easy promise to make and keep. Allison and Roland got into her rental car and headed east down the tree-shrouded highway that linked the city to the coast.
“I’ll never get over how green it is here,” she said as they drove in and out of shadows.
“It’s not going to stay green much longer if it doesn’t start raining. We’re overdue.”
Roland wasn’t looking at her but staring out the car window. She saw the reflection of his face in the glass and his expression was grim.
“You’re worried about your dad,” she said.
“He tells me everything,” Roland said. “I’m the oldest. I’ve always been the one in charge when he was away. I’ve always been the one he told the bad stuff to, even when he didn’t tell Deac or Thor. It doesn’t make sense he’d keep this from me.”
“He is very protective of his kids.”
“I get not telling me when I’m sixteen or seventeen or even eighteen. But I’m an adult,” Roland said. “I can handle bad news now.”
“I’m sure he has his reasons. Medical confidentiality, maybe?”
“He did operate on Oliver. Maybe that’s it.”
“I wish I remembered Oliver better,” she said.
“He was with us about six months,” Roland said. “Came after Christmas, left in June.”
“Killed himself in October,” she said. “I can’t imagine why... And at fourteen?”
“Teenagers do risky things,” Roland said. “Maybe he didn’t even kill himself on purpose? Maybe he was just playing with a gun.”
“Maybe,” Allison said. “Although McQueen called it a suicide, not an accident.”
“We’ll see what his mom says. She’ll know.”
“Do you really think it was an accident? Or are you just hoping that because you’re Catholic?”
“Catholics aren’t fans of suicide,” Roland said. “But I don’t believe in a God who would send a troubled child to hell for one bad decision. I believe in a God who says, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ Santa Claus is the guy with the nice and naughty list for children. Not God. Not my God, anyway.”
Allison thought that was possibly the loveliest thing she’d ever heard him say, and she put her hand on his knee and squeezed it. Roland smiled, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, and though she wasn’t much of a believer, she said a little prayer that maybe there was an abbey out there that would be short one monk come Christmas.
Afterward, they drove across the bridge into Washington. They found the house without too much trouble—a small blue bungalow that had seen better days. It seemed Kathy, too, had seen better days. It was a shell of a woman who answered the door—thin and pale with sunken cheeks and sunken eyes surrounded by dark circles. Though Kathy didn’t smile once when they introduced themselves on the porch, Allison didn’t find her unfriendly—simply too worn out to contort her face into an expression she wasn’t used to wearing.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Collins,” Allison said. “We’re really sorry to bother you.”
“Kathy, please,” she said. She pointed to a faded floral print sofa in a cluttered living room. Allison and Roland sat and Kathy took her seat on the matching ottoman. “You were with Oliver when he lived at that house?”
“We were,” Allison said. “Oliver left about a week before I did actually. He did leave in June of 2002, right?”
“Right, that’s right.” Kathy nodded. “My husband, Oliver’s father, left me when Oliver was eight. He couldn’t be in the same house with him anymore. I lost my job after that, and nobody in the family would help me with Ollie. He was too much. I couldn’t do it anymore. Had to let the state have him.”
“Too much?” Allison asked. “You mean he had behavior problems?”
“That’s a way of putting it.”
“Most of us did,” Roland said. “Until Dad helped.”
“Well, your dad certainly tried,” she said, and Allison saw Kathy try to smile. She didn’t do it, but she got closer than she had before.
“Can I ask what sort of behavior problems he had?” Allison said. She’d never pried into people’s private lives like this before and it felt as strange to her as smiling probably did to Kathy.
“You don’t know?” Kathy asked Roland.
“We had a rule at the house,” Roland said. “Dad’s rule. Don’t talk about the old life. He wanted us kids to get past our pasts.”
“There are some things in your past you can’t ignore,” Kathy said. “That was Ollie’s trouble even after your father helped him. I guess you don’t know that he...he killed my baby.”
Allison couldn’t manage a response to that. She looked at Roland, whose eyes were wide but who also remained silent in the face of this news.
Kathy dragged a ragged hand down her face. She seemed more exhausted than sad at this point. “He threw his baby brother, Jacob...he threw him against the wall. Killed him.”
Allison gasped, covering her mouth with her hand in shock. Kathy had spoken the words in monotone, without flinching, barely blinking. In her hands she clutched a rolled recipe magazine. As she spoke she twisted the magazine until the pages ripped, then folded it over and twisted it again.
“Jacob cried a lot,” she said. “So, I had to be with him all the time. Ollie was very jealous. But that wasn’t Ollie’s fault. Your father—” she nodded at Roland “—he explained that Ollie had a problem here...” She tapped the side of her head. “A tumor. Made him act out.”
“Dr. Capello operated on Oliver, yes?” Allison said, composing herself.
“I called his office because some lady at child services said Dr. Capello was a miracle worker with kids like Ollie. And we needed a miracle. He agreed to see Ollie and he fixed that tumor. Didn’t even charge me a dime. And it was...” Kathy paused, waved her hand like she was waving a magic wand. “Night and day after.”
“What do you mean?” Allison asked.
“Oh, before Ollie was a hard kid to live with. He lied all the time. He stole all the time. You couldn’t punish him. He’d laugh it right off. And he’d mess with your head, too. He’d...play games. Ugly games. One second he’d kiss me and say, ‘Mommy, I love you, I love you, I love you...’ and soon as I said I loved him back, he’d stab me in the arm with a fork.”
Allison felt her stomach roil. Kathy held out her arm to show an old scar, an inch long, pink and white and ugly.
“He’d never been a normal boy,” Kathy said. “Not since he was born. Never cried much. Your father, he said that was a bad sign. Crying meant a baby was feeling what he was supposed to feel. And he was always like that, even as a boy. Too quiet. Intense. Like a time bomb, you know. But after the surgery, he wasn’t like that anymore. The first week when he was in the hospital, he barely talked at all. Just ate and slept. One afternoon he asked for a Sprite and I got him a Sprite and he said, ‘Thank you, Mommy.’ And I waited for him to turn on me, but he didn’t. He just drank his Sprite. Then a couple days later he said he was sorry for what he did to Jacob. He’d never...” She pursed her thin lips. “He’d never apologized before for anything in his life. Not even stabbing his own mother in the arm. I wanted to take him home, but your dad said Ollie needed time away to really heal. The house, me, everything would remind him of what he did. He needed a new start. So he went to live with you all at that house. Maybe I should have left him there. Bringing him home sure didn’t help, but I wanted my son back. I wanted...I wanted both my boys back. But I’d take what I could get.”