Gun Lake (15 page)

“Hello?” said a voice, different from Harlan’s.

She breathed in and walked to the door and opened it up.

“Miss?”

She nodded at the tanned, short, middle-aged man who stood holding a purse.

“I think you left this in the office yesterday,” he said, a smile on his congenial face. “We didn’t notice it until the shift changed, and we tried a couple times last night but you must’ve gone out.”

Those Tylenol PMI took must’ve really knocked me out
.

Norah looked and realized the purse was hers. Or one like hers. She turned around and checked the little table inside the room, thinking her purse must be there, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, thank you. Yes. I must’ve left it there.”

“No problem.”

He handed it to her and then wished her a good day.

Norah shut the door and breathed in and out and let herself try to relax.

You have to stop thinking he’s right around the corner
.

But Norah knew it would take a while before she could.

“Twenty-seven-year-old Rita Samson was arrested today on suspicion of aiding and abetting the Stagworth Five, thought to be responsible for the three deaths at—”

“Hey,” a voice interrupted the darkness of the living room.

Michelle looked up from the evening news and noticed her husband standing in the entryway.

“I thought you went to bed.”

“Are you going to be long?” he asked her.

She shook her head in a gesture that could have been interpreted as either a yes or a no. He ambled into the room and sat next to her on the couch.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, this time meaning yes, but she wasn’t sure if her husband bought it.

“Are you sure you want to do this?’

“Yeah. I’ve got to.”

Tomorrow Michelle would be leaving for Gun Lake with a dejected, angry Jared. Jared had spent the last few days in a cycle of pleading with his parents, in particular with her, then getting angry and furious at them, then feeling sad and dejected, then again trying to plead his case against going to the lake. Michelle had convinced herself this was exactly what he needed—being taken away from his friends for a whole month of the summer. Jared knew that there would be nothing to do up at the lake, no one to hang out with besides his mother, and not even all the distractions their home in Naperville provided. He couldn’t take his Sony PlayStation 2 or the DVD player or any of the countless DVDs they owned. She said there was a DVD player in the cottage and that he could rent movies, but this didn’t interest him in the
least. Jared could take some CDs, but he would be leaving behind his room and his little private world where he went to escape.

He was going to plug back into the real world, Michelle thought. Not the MTV
Real World
, which he loved to watch, but this real world, the Meiers’ real world. The real world of being responsible for your actions, of caring for others and being a part of a family. Of possibly, possibly trying to remember that there was a God who cared about what you did.

“I’m going to try to make it up there in a couple of weeks.”

Michelle nodded, then felt Ted’s big fingers clasping hers.

“Hey, M,” he told her, using his pet name for her, “it’s going to be okay. Jared just needs to figure some things out and grow up a little.”

She knew he was just trying to cheer her up, trying to give her some small dose of hope. And it did help. They’d always been a pretty good team—Ted strong and steady, Michelle energetic and determined and a little anxious. Until recently, she would have said they were doing all right as parents. Obviously, she was wrong about that.

“Grow up?” she said. “He’s already an adult. He might be only sixteen, but he might as well be twenty-five for how he thinks and acts. Jared’s smart, Ted. When he’s not high or being stupid, he knows what he’s doing and knows the consequences, and he just doesn’t care.”

“Maybe he will.”

“Can you force someone to care?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m just afraid we’ll get up there and he’ll keep hating me more and more and we’ll come back and nothing will have changed.”

“That could happen.”

“Then what?”

“Then we try something else.”

The tears began to form, and they were nothing new, just par for the course. It didn’t take a lot these days for her to get emotional and anxious and feel like the world was toppling in over her. Sometimes she wished she could punch something, but
when she couldn’t, the tears came. Ted had seen pools of them in recent years, and they didn’t faze him anymore. He just waited quietly, his hand warm in hers, while Michelle struggled to gain control.

“You go and try to establish a relationship again.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Michelle said.

“Yes you can. The first few days, maybe a week even—you know how he’ll be. So you weather the storm. You let him come around.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then he doesn’t. But sooner or later, Jare’s gonna learn. He’s gonna find himself in over his head, and he’ll learn. We all have to do that. That’s part of the way God teaches us.”

“I’m just afraid—I don’t know—I get this picture of something really bad happening—”

“You always do,” Ted said, still holding her hand.

“No, but this time it seems real. Like he’s going to get in an accident and hurt someone. Maybe not even himself but somebody else and then just ruin his life. Just like Evan did.”

There was a silence for the moment.

“We gotta pray that doesn’t happen,” Ted said.

“I’ve been praying all the time, and the prayers seem to be bouncing off some sort of iron curtain in the sky.”

Ted put a big arm around Michelle and told her things would be okay.

“And what about Lance. And Ashley?”

“They’ll be fine. Truth is, I’m kind of looking forward to spending more time with those guys.” “I just feel like they’ll start—

“M.

“What?” Michelle asked.

“I love you—you know that?”

She nodded through tears. She knew he loved her, was glad he loved her. But it didn’t help her feel any more hopeful.

“Are we bad parents?”

Ted let go with a gentle chuckle. “We’re no worse than any other set of parents.”

“Then why are we having all these problems? I mean, this isn’t happening with the Dicksons or with the Bergs.”

“You don’t know what’s happening with them, any more than they know what’s happening with us.”

“I just—I keeping feeling like God is blaming us for something—”

“M, come on, don’t do that.”

“Then why? Why is Jare so hell-bent on making life a living nightmare for himself and for his parents?”

“He’s a teenager,” Ted said.

“So? We were teenagers once.”

“It’s a lot harder being one today.”

“Are you taking his side?” Michelle asked.

Ted clamped his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. “You know I don’t do that. I just don’t want you to keep on thinking we’re bad parents.”

“I know I am.”

“You’re taking your son to Michigan for a month to try to reach out to him. That’s not a sign of being a bad mom.”

“But then we’re sending him off to a boarding school.”

“We agreed on that. It’ll be good for him. Get him away from bad influences, help him grow up.”

“I’m just—I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” Ted asked.

“That it might be too late.”

IN THE MUSTY BATHROOM of Ossie’s apartment, Sean glanced at his long dark locks in the mirror. It’d taken him a year to grow it this long, all one length, like the mane of a lion.

He should’ve been a rock star. How cool would that be? He had the looks, but that wasn’t what really mattered. Playing music
didn’t really matter. What mattered was attitude—outsider attitude. Flippant, rebellious, shove-this-in-your-face attitude. Attitude was a lifestyle, and you played hard and loved life and enjoyed its pleasures and died young. Jim Morrison, the original Lizard King, sat at the top of the iceberg in the ocean of the sinking Titanic of deceased rock gods—Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and Jon Bonham not far below him. Those were all from the sixties and seventies. But every generation had somebody there. The Gen Xers had their Kurt Cobain and others, like that sad sack from Blind Melon and the INXS singer. All embracing the same song: Love life and die young.

He pulled his hair back into a ponytail, then picked up the scissors.

When he was a kid, Sean always loved to buy an album and lock the door and crank up the volume and just
get away
from all of it, from the sham they were putting him through—they being all of them, the various idiots who acted like his parents when they really weren’t. Teachers and counselors, bosses and adults in general who didn’t know jack. Even his mom, back in those days. Adults who would finally leave when he turned up the rock and listened and dreamed he was on stage with his long hair and beard with women shouting and screaming and mouthing the same words he’d spent so long composing.

Oh, he couldn’t sing, couldn’t write lyrics, couldn’t play an instrument, but he had the
attitude
. No reason he couldn’t live like a rock star, drink hard and enjoy women and be a rebel and possibly die young.

Why fear death? He didn’t fear death, just like he didn’t really fear being caught. He just wanted to do what he had set out to do. The consequences didn’t matter.

He didn’t want to fear anything. Never again. Never again. That was the point. Fear imprisoned you, Stagworth concrete or no. Those Bible bangers, like Ossie Banks, mouthing the same ol’ words week after week—they were slaves of their own prison. It looked and smelled prettier, sure, and it sounded better, but it was a penitentiary. And eventually, they’d die too. Everyone died.

Nothing matters
, Sean thought.
Except life and the love you make
.

Sean just wanted to live life a little more. To really live. To embrace the life he once had, for just a little while, before it all went bleak and awful. Yeah, he’d made mistakes. Everyone made mistakes. His were more brazen, more lazy, more cocky, maybe even more ignorant. He could admit that now. And he couldn’t change it.

But today.

Today is different
.

With the ponytail gone, he picked up the electric razor. The buzz began and he began cutting, shearing off part of his older, former life. Hair fell to the floor, and only a vague shadow was left to show where his hair once flowed down. He was leaving behind the Jim Morrison look, but not the attitude. Even with the Army chic buzz, the attitude was here to stay.

He was a new man. A free man. Ready to live. To love life. To live to its fullest. And, if necessary, to die a gloriously spectacular death people would remember, that they’d read about in dens of their own solitude, in family rooms of their own tortured, imprisoned, soulless existence.

Maybe they’d appreciate his plans. His schemes. His
deliberateness
. Maybe they’d understand just how brilliant he really was.

Sean decided not to shave the goatee, though he used the razor to sharpen the edges. He looked at the newly bald, square-faced man in the mirror. He smiled and lit a cigarette and made a pose that he could see making the cover of
Time
magazine.

The Lizard King himself would be proud.

THEY SAT CLOSE TO EACH OTHER, their fishing rods resting over the edge of the pontoon boat, the waters of Gun Lake placid
this morning. They could see only one other boat from this particular pocket of deep water.

The pontoon boat belonged to the big, blond-haired man, Steve Reed. Steve was a sergeant for the Barry County Sheriff’s Department and had worked there for over fifteen years. Last night, Steve had called a slightly sloshed Don Hutchence and invited him to go fishing.

“What for?” Don had asked.

“To get you out of that house.”

“What for?”

“It’ll be good for you.”

“I don’t need to go fishing.”

“I think it’d do you some good,” Steve said, his deep commanding voice used to issuing orders.

“What good is that, Steve?”

Don had a bit of an attitude on the phone, but it was justified. Who was Steve to call him and urge him to go fishing when they hadn’t been fishing in, what?—two or three years? He knew what this call was about, what the offer really meant.

“I know about Collette,” Steve said.

“Do you now?”

“Come on, just go with me tomorrow. I know you’re off.”

“Maybe I want to sleep in.”

“Maybe I oughtta drag you out of that empty bed.”

“Steve, Collette’s my business.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Don said.

“Well, your extracurricular activities are another thing.”

They didn’t need to name the elephant. It had been named before. Steve knew the signs, the symptoms, the rumors, the truths. He knew whom to ask and when to ask it. He’d seen Don these last couple of weeks and the weeks before. He was smart enough to know what was going on.

“What are you gonna try to do?” Don asked.

“Take you fishing.”

“And?”

“Catch some fish.”

And Don gave in, knowing he couldn’t say no to Steve, knowing the guy would come over and drag his out-of-shape body out of bed.

So he’d gotten up this morning around six thirty. They had been on the water for more than two hours. Steve had caught a couple of bass, but so far, Don’s luck had remained the same as it always was.

Nada
.

“What we need is a cold one,” Don said.

“It’s not even ten yet. Didn’t have enough last night?”

So far, they hadn’t talked about either the booze or Collette. Now Don reckoned he’d opened the door. It would have been opened eventually anyway. That was what this fishing trip was all about.

“What are you saying?” Don asked him, looking at the stocky, well-built man next to him.

“People are talking.”

“Like who?”

“Alex, for one,” Steve said.

Don cursed at the mention of the sheriff and shook his head, squinting at the sun’s glint off the water. “He’s one to talk.”