In Search of the Rose Notes (25 page)

This is what happened, for anyone who cares about the truth.

Paul and Aaron and I were hanging out at Aaron’s. There was going to be a soccer party that night, we were hanging out there early. Paul had given me a ride.

The blue handwritten words had a familiar roundness to them, with telltale curlicues coming off the
a
’s and the
u
’s.

“It’s Rose’s handwriting,” I said.

“You remember what Rose’s handwriting looked like?” Sally asked, sounding skeptical. “After all these years?”

“It’s easy to remember, because—”

Charlotte glared at me over her coffee.

“Because we kept some things she wrote,” I explained. “Just silly kid things we had her write for us when she baby-sat.”

“What makes it hard to believe that it’s really Rose Banks’s handwriting,” Sally said, “is that it was sent in 1996, like Brian said. From Waverly.”

I continued reading:

We were thinking of ordering a pizza when the doorbell rang. And who should be at the door but Brian Pilkington and one other guy. I barely recognized him. I hadn’t seen him much since the ninth grade, since he started being shuttled half the day to that technical program.

The other guy was older and did most of the talking. We let him talk and talk and talk and took their
Watchtower.
Brian just kind of stared at us the whole time. Was he embarrassed? I don’t know. Probably just hoping nothing bad would happen, that Aaron would keep his mouth shut.

Which he did, miraculously, till they were done talking and the door was shut again.

After we all got over how weird it was, Aaron said something like, “I ought to go to
his
house and shove my religion down
his
throat.”

He didn’t really mean it. Just typical Aaron stuff. But somehow we started laughing about how funny it would be to go knocking on a Jehovah’s Witness’s door. Not for the reaction or the revenge, but just for the idea of it.

And Paul said, “Yeah, and we can give him this,” and he grabbed a
TV Guide
off the couch. And said something nerdy, like about the Church of Popular Culture or something. Suddenly we were all into it—this idea of following a Jehovah’s Witness home and knocking on his door. Probably all for different reasons. Paul to sound smart. Aaron to be jackass. Me? Well, I don’t know why now. I can’t remember. I wish I could.

Brian and his friend were parked up the street. And just as we were getting into the idea, they were getting into their car.

We all hopped into Aaron’s car. We followed them. Aaron did a good job at first, keeping his distance. Brian dropped off the other guy at Stop & Shop. We talked about not following through at that point. For some reason we’d been thinking we’d end up at the older guy’s house, not Brian’s. The older guy wouldn’t know our names. And we didn’t know his name either. To go to Brian’s would be meaner and less funny somehow than to some nameless Jehovah’s Witness’s.

But Aaron kept following Brian, and we talked about who would do the actual knocking and talking. I offered. Aaron wouldn’t do it right, and Paul would probably chicken out. It was then, as Brian headed out of downtown toward Route 5, that he seemed to notice us. He went a lot faster all of a sudden. Aaron sped up. I was laughing. I’m afraid now that’s part of what made him go so fast. I like speed—my dad never goes above sixty-five.

Brian was taking some of those curves really fast. Aaron was right on his tail. It was Datsun versus Dodge, clunker versus clunker. I liked to think that Brian was playing along, that for a secret moment he liked being a regular kid doing something crazy along with us. Not the Jehovah’s Witness, not the smart kid who got shunted off to technical school because his parents thought he should just sit tight and be a plumber till Armageddon, not the kid who needed to pretend he didn’t know us. Because I remembered him sneaking a cupcake when Lisa Owen brought them in for her birthday in second grade—I remembered that about him. I would always have that on him, and I loved him for it. I promise that was what I was thinking when we were chasing him at over sixty miles per hour. It doesn’t matter now, but for the record that’s what was in my head.

Paul was telling Aaron to stop, to leave Brian alone. This was a bad idea. We should wait and knock on the door of a Jehovah’s Witness we didn’t know, some other time. He was trying to stay cool, but I could tell the speed was scaring him. But we kept at it. I think the very tip of Aaron’s car tapped Brian’s bumper. That’s when Brian swerved.

He’d been going so fast. He drove off the road.

And yes, we kept going. I wish by writing this I could change the ending, but no matter how I write it, it comes out the same way. And I am so sorry.

Paul spoke first. I think he said “Oh, God.” But we kept driving. Aaron kept saying “Shit” and pounding the wheel. I didn’t say anything. Aaron took Chestnut Street around the back way to downtown. Paul called 911 from the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, but we didn’t stay.

After that we went back to Aaron’s. I don’t remember saying anything for the rest of the night. I feel like I haven’t really said anything since. It’s been three weeks now.

I don’t know what should happen.

But I wanted to be able to say it, and I want something to happen.

I won’t stay quiet. I won’t pretend I wasn’t a part of what happened to Brian.

I won’t live that way.

And I am sorry.

“You got this in 1996, you said?” Charlotte said, glancing at me.

I tried to quickly process what she was the thinking. The year we were juniors. The year I’d gone crazy. The year Rose’s dreams had appeared in the
Looking Glass.

“Yes,” Sally said.

Brian gestured toward the note with his hand. “So the account here. Is that basically what your brother told you, Charlotte?”

“Basically.”

“It’s essentially what Aaron told me, too,” Brian said.

“Aaron?” Charlotte looked stunned. “You talked to Aaron?”

“Yes. Several years ago.” Brian stirred his coffee so hard that some of it sloshed over the edge of his mug. “It seems Aaron grew a conscience around the time his first kid was born. That’s when he contacted me. I couldn’t forgive him, exactly. But I could tell him that my life has certainly improved since then. In some really unexpected ways. Things have happened that wouldn’t have under different circumstances, perhaps. And I hadn’t hated him—hadn’t even thought about him, really—for years. That seemed enough for both of us.”

“Did you ask
him
about the note?” Charlotte asked, a little sheepishly.

“Of course. He didn’t know what I was talking about. And I hope you’ll not take this the wrong way, if he’s still a family friend—but I don’t imagine him a great bluffer.”

“He’s not a family friend,” Charlotte said quickly. “And yeah, I know what you mean. Look, I’m sorry we couldn’t help you figure out where the letter came from. And more so, I’m sorry about my brother.”

Sally looked at her. “So—but no idea who this could’ve been, then?”

“My guess would be someone close to Rose,” Charlotte said. “How else would they have gotten this?”

“That’s assuming she wrote it,” Sally pointed out.

“True,” Charlotte said.

After that no one said anything else for a couple of minutes.

I don’t know what anyone else was thinking, but I was trying to imagine Rose writing this confession. The handwriting had me pretty convinced it was her. How was she feeling when she wrote it? Who did she give it to? And why? And what happened after that?

We all stared into our laps, and I wondered when this silence would end.

Thankfully, the baby began to babble after a moment, and Brian’s face lit up as he turned away from us and babbled back.

Phantom Encounters:

December 1990

Charlotte munched down about six Nilla wafers as I waited for her to finish the article I’d found for her in the books—“The Quest for Ghostly Voices,” about people recording ghosts with tape recorders. I held my breath. I knew that Charlotte would be interested. I just wasn’t sure she’d be willing to apply it to our current problem.

“I think we should try this,” she said finally, reaching into the box for yet another wafer.

I exhaled.

“We can use my tape recorder. The black one,” she suggested.

I nodded. “Good idea. So we’re going to see if we can hear Rose?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “No. We’re only going to see what’s out there. Record where she walked. Maybe record a little around her yard. Just to see what’s out there and what it can tell us.”

I nodded again. I didn’t really know what this explanation meant. Maybe Charlotte didn’t either. I couldn’t think of anything or anyone I’d want to hear from besides Rose. But still, this was a step in the right direction for Charlotte. Toward putting Rose to rest.

“You have a blank tape?” I asked.

“No. But there’s this one with some stupid Bon Jovi on it that I don’t want anymore.”

“Great,” I said.

It took us forever to get up to the woodsy lot near the top of Fox Hill. Charlotte kept pausing before each house on the way, tiptoeing onto people’s front walks, pointing the tape recorder at their doors, and pressing “record.”

“You never know,” she said, “who or what saw something, knows something. May as well see what we can pick up. Tension. Weird psychic energy. Whatever.”

After each house she’d murmur into the recorder, “That was 110 Fox Hill Road,” or whatever the address was, in case we heard something on the tape later that might require further recording and study.

“We’re now between 114 and 116 Fox Hill,” she whispered into the machine when we finally arrived. “We will be recording in the woods until a new address is announced.”

“Should we sit down?” I asked. “So we don’t make too much noise?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Charlotte sat on a rock, and I sat on a root and watched the tape’s wheels turn.

“Lots of dog poop around here,” Charlotte observed after a few minutes.

“What?” I whispered in disbelief. It seemed unlike Charlotte to break this scientific silence with such a pointless observation.

“Look—there, there—and there. Since this isn’t anyone’s yard and you can’t really see it from the other houses, people just walk their dogs here and don’t clean up.”

I shrugged. “Well, probably it doesn’t hurt anyone. But maybe we shouldn’t talk about it right now.”

“It’s actually okay for us to talk, I think,” Charlotte reasoned. “Like, in Jürgenson’s recordings there were birds. The ghosts talked
about
the birds, and their voices were different enough from live people’s that he could tell. So it’s okay to talk. The ghosts need something to talk about.”

“I don’t think the ghosts want to talk about dog doo, Charlotte,” I said.

“Dog
doo
?” Her face twisted in disgust at my babyish word choice. “Dog
DOO
?”

“I think the ghosts have better things to talk about.”

“How do
you
know?” Charlotte demanded.

“I just do.”

“Whatever, Nora.”

We were quiet again. I stared into the dull gray sky. It would be dark soon.

“Isn’t this where they found you that time you wandered off and your mom was freaking out?” Charlotte asked. “When we were little? When you were following a squirrel or something, right?”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t think of any reason she would bring this up now, except to make me look stupid. Yes, I’d been following a squirrel that evening. But it had looked injured, and I was trying to decide how I could help it. I was afraid that if I lost track of it, it would hobble off somewhere and die.

CRACK!

Charlotte jumped. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

CRACK!
Another snap of a twig, followed by a shuffle. Charlotte stood up.

“Probably someone walking their dog,” I said.

“Shhh,” she said.

The tape recorder hummed away, eating up our silence.

Just as Charlotte and I started to relax again, we heard a long, hissing breath coming from behind us. My heart thudded madly for a moment, but then the breath gave itself away.

“Nor-
aaaaaaa,
” it whispered, the final part of the vowel falling into a low, clumsy laugh.

I stood up and put my hand on my hip. “Toby?”

“Yeah?” he replied from inside an evergreen about twenty feet behind us.

Charlotte stopped the tape recorder. “I’m going to kill him. If he’s been there the whole time, the whole tape will be inconclusive.”

“I’ve only been here a few minutes,” Toby said, emerging from the tree, pine needles hanging from his Patriots sweatshirt.

“Well, that’s just great,” Charlotte snapped.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s something else for the ghosts to talk about.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Press ‘record,’ ” I insisted. “If you don’t, you might miss something.”

“Did I hear right,” Toby said, “that you guys are recording ghosts talking about dog crap?”

“No, Toby,” Charlotte said. “God! Just get out of here, okay?”

“Can’t I watch for a few minutes?”

“There’s nothing to watch. You—”

“Sure,” I interrupted, raising my eyebrows in an appeal to Charlotte. “You can stay as long as you shut up.”

Charlotte seemed satisfied that I’d at least spoken rudely to Toby. I settled back on my root as she hit “record.” Toby crouched in the leaf-covered dirt. We were all classroom-quiet. The cassette tape squeaked away, circling round and round, lulling me into a little daydream about my mom letting me get a dog and me walking it here in the trees. The dog would be a beagle, and I’d name him Chester or maybe Charlie.

“Hhhhhhh,” a slow, sickly breath jolted me awake.