Tell Me You're Sorry (17 page)

“Fine,” she said. “I'm fine.” As they taxied toward the runway, she tried to focus on the instructions from the tower—that little man jabbering inside her head.

“You don't look so hot,” John was saying. “And you're shaking . . .”

She made an announcement, talking over him: “We are third for takeoff, and should be off the ground in about five minutes.”

Her voice echoed—as if it were someone else speaking. All these voices were talking to her at once. The lines on the runway were weaving. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She felt like she'd been drugged.

Then she remembered that man at the table beside her who had left in such a hurry. Had he put something in her coffee?

She could almost hear J. B. Church talking above all those other voices: ”You're a little paranoid . . .”

Maybe it was some kind of panic attack. All she had to do was breathe. If she could just get them off the ground, then she could go to autopilot. “Cabin crew,” she announced, hating the little tremor in her voice. “Prepare for takeoff . . .”

“Stephanie, I'm concerned,” her copilot said. “You look really out of it—”

“I'm fine, goddamn it!” she snapped. But she knew she wasn't. She never talked like that to a coworker. The black box was picking that up. What was she doing? Her judgment was off. This wasn't a panic attack. She was hallucinating, for God's sake.

All at once, she could see the brunette woman who had approached her in the café. Stephanie remembered the designer glasses and the friendly smile. “Have a nice trip,” she'd said.

“Twelve eighty-four, you're next for takeoff,” the tower told her.

“No, we're not, traffic control,” Stephanie heard herself say. It felt like her heart was about to burst out of her chest. “Ah, we—we need to turn around.”

With tears in her eyes, she looked at her copilot. “John, can you get us back to the gate?”

They would tell her later it was the last thing she said that made any sense.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

 

“W
ould it be okay if I looked at your yearbook?” his grandmother asked sheepishly.

Ryan sat in a tall director's chair at the kitchen's butcher-block counter bar, eating the grilled cheese sandwich she'd just made for him. “Of course,” he said. He pushed the book across the counter toward her. “You don't have to ask, Grandma.”

“Well, I just wanted to make sure.” She put on the glasses that hung from a silver chain around her neck. She opened the book's royal blue and gold cover. “I mean, one of your friends could have written something very personal in here.”

“Except for several cheerleaders thanking me for all the great sex this year, there really isn't anything too personal in there.” A part of him loved shocking his grandmother.

She clicked her tongue against her teeth and shook her head. “Funny man . . .” She started paging through the book.

His grandmother's kitchen was cozy. She had modern stainless-steel appliances—and a fondness for roosters. There was a framed poster of a rooster on the wall, a rooster napkin holder, cookie jar, trivet, salt and pepper set, and rooster dish towels. “Every time I step into your grandmother's kitchen, I have to stifle all the cock jokes that come to mind,” Billy once said.

At the end of the counter, a small TV had
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
on at a low volume. With her nose in the yearbook, his grandmother settled in the director's chair across from him. Ryan gratefully ate his grilled cheese. He was hungry. It had been the last day of school, and he'd skipped lunch to meet with his teachers about taking makeup exams for the time he'd missed after his family was killed. During one of his free periods, he'd also talked with the principal, who wasn't sure Ryan could return to school next year, since he'd no longer be living in the Lake Forest School District. The coach was trying to figure out a way for him to stay on so the school wouldn't lose its star quarterback.

Meanwhile, all Ryan's classmates were pumped about the start of summer vacation. Many of them had caught him in the hallway between classes, asking if he was coming to this party or that party tonight. Ryan had told them all he wasn't sure. They'd asked him to sign their yearbooks. He'd obliged, but hadn't invited anyone to return the favor. What were they going to write? “Sorry you had such a shitty year” or “Maybe I'll see you next year . . . maybe not . . .”

So the yearbook his grandmother was now looking at had no inscriptions in it. And Ryan had no plans for tonight—except to study for his makeup exams.

“My goodness,” his grandmother declared, gaping at the back of the yearbook. “Look at all the page numbers after your name in the index. Your parents would be so proud—well, they are, I know they are. You're the spitting image of your dad in these pictures. I feel like I'm looking at his yearbook from nearly thirty years ago.”

Ryan didn't exactly welcome comparisons to the old man. But he'd seen photos of his dad from late college, and he'd had a ruggedly handsome look to him, like a young Harrison Ford. Ryan was curious if they really looked that much alike when his dad had been in high school. But he didn't say anything. Finishing up his sandwich, he wiped his mouth, crumpled up his napkin, and tossed it on his plate.

“If you don't believe me, just check out his old yearbooks down in the basement. They're in a box in the storage room . . .”

“It's okay, I believe you,” Ryan said, working up a smile.

Five hours later, he was in the basement storage room, trying to find his father's high school yearbooks.

He was alone in the house. His grandmother had gone to her book club's potluck dinner. He'd practically had to push her out the door, because she'd been reluctant about leaving him alone. She was pretty active and usually had something going on two or three nights a week. It was never a problem. He never went hungry, and he liked having the house to himself. Why she'd been worried about him tonight in particular was beyond him.

He must have been sending out some kind of vibe, because Billy had called, telling him that he shouldn't be alone tonight. “Now, if you're over there by yourself having a porn marathon, then fine, go for it,” Billy had said. “But you're
studying
on a Friday night, the first night of summer vacation? I don't know why you feel like you have to punish yourself tonight . . .”

“God, you and that stupid psych class,” Ryan had lamented.

“I'm just worried about you, man.”

“I know. Listen, I'm not going to off myself, if that's what you're thinking. Okay? I wouldn't do that to my grandmother—or you.”

He couldn't really blame his grandmother and Billy for being cautious. First, his mom had hanged herself. Then his dad had shot everyone in the family, and put the last bullet through his own head. To Ryan, his father's actions—to avoid scandal and jail—seemed so typically selfish and hotheaded. But while his mom must have had a bellyful of the old man, her suicide six months earlier had been so unlike her. She wouldn't have done that to him or Ashley or Keith. It just didn't make sense.

Before saying good-bye to Billy, he reassured him they would get together tomorrow night. He polished off the rest of a chicken casserole his grandmother had made two nights ago. Then he tried to study.

But maybe part of him had been procrastinating, because suddenly he'd wanted to see his dad's high school yearbook photos.

Even with all the lights on down there, his grandmother's basement was still creepy as hell. A maze of pipes ran along the low ceiling of the main room. Near the washer and dryer and the big sink, garment bags hung from one of the pipes. A shelf along one wall held dozens of jars of homemade pickled vegetables and fruits. Those glass containers always reminded Ryan of an old
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
he'd seen on Nickelodeon in which some guy put his wife's head in a jar.

The basement also had an outside entrance, accessible by a cement stairwell along the side of the house. No one except a burglar or serial killer would ever use it. And the door had a stupid window in it—almost like it was just asking someone to break in. There was a flimsy chain lock across the bottom of that door, but one quick, forceful kick could take care of that in a matter of seconds. Sometimes, when Ryan heard noises downstairs late at night, he'd think about that stupid basement door.

Off this room was a storage room that held folding chairs, boxed Christmas decorations, old paint cans, tools, stacks of old vinyl records, and containers full of odds and ends. That included two large Marshall Field's boxes with “Brent” scribbled on them in laundry marker.

He set one box on the floor, opened it, and the first thing he pulled out was a beer mug with the Notre Dame logo on it. “Huh, wouldn't you know?” Ryan muttered to himself.

He took out a bobblehead Cubs figure, and then kept digging. He found several plaques and framed citations for his father's athletic achievements in high school. There were framed photographs taken during football games and track meets. Two yearbooks were near the bottom of the box:
New Trier Echoes—1987
and
Echoes New Trier High School 1986.

He opened up the 1986 edition and started to go to the index.

Suddenly he heard a noise upstairs. It sounded like the floorboards creaking. Ryan remained perfectly still for a moment. He looked out toward the shadowy furnace room—and the basement door. He didn't see anything, but wondered what he'd do if he spotted a man on the other side of it, staring back at him through the window.

The noise upstairs stopped. He told himself it was just the house settling. Why was he so jumpy tonight? He fearlessly confronted all sorts of intimidating hulks on the football field. Yet there was something scary about being down here while alone in the house at night. He came down to this basement for stuff while his grandmother was home, and it never bothered him. Did he think his 73-year-old grandmother was going to protect him or something?

“Screw this,” he muttered. He dumped everything back in the box—except for the yearbooks. Switching off the storage room light, he took one more wary glance at the basement door as he headed for the stairs.

Once upstairs, he shut the basement door, locked it, and set the yearbooks down on the breakfast bar. He stopped and listened for a moment—to make sure he didn't hear that creaking again. There wasn't a sound.

Now it was too quiet.

He switched on the small TV for background noise.
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
was on the Food Network. Ryan sat in one of the director's chairs with his back to the TV. He looked up his father in the 1986 yearbook's index. He took some satisfaction seeing that his dad had only five page numbers after his name—compared to the eight page numbers after his own.

On page 31, there was an individual portrait of his dad for some club called Tri-Ship—and indeed, there was a resemblance. Ryan had a hard time locating his father in a group picture of the varsity football team on page 44. So he scanned the names listed in the caption:

He finally spotted his father in his jersey and shoulder pads. Squinting in the sun, he sat on the third bleacher bench up—with his helmet in his lap.

In the next group photo on page 49, the faces of the guys on the track team were slightly blurry. Ryan thought he recognized his dad among the group, all in their sweats, lined up in front of a track. He double-checked the names of the guys in the back row:

 

(second row)
J. Martin, A. McMurray,
G. Donnellan, M. Scanlin, P. Joyce, R. Ingalls,
B. Farrell . . .

 

Ryan found himself studying the smug-looking, shaggy-blond-haired guy standing next to his dad near the end of the second row. Wasn't he sitting next to his dad in the football's team photo? R. Ingalls, why did that name seem familiar?

Flipping back to the football page, Ryan noticed that the same smug blond jock was indeed beside his dad. They must have been friends. But Ryan didn't recall his father ever mentioning this Ingalls guy—and the old man had talked about his high school athletic exploits plenty of times during all those football-tossing sessions.

Ryan kept wondering why he knew that name.

In his head, Ryan could hear the voice of that crazy woman from Portland over the phone: “Do you think your father could have known him—maybe in high school?” She'd mentioned her dead brother-in-law “. . . or Dick Ingalls . . . Dick Ingalls is dead, too. He and his family were killed in a house fire . . .”

Ryan quickly paged back to the index and looked up
R. Ingalls
. He found the guy's individual portrait on the same page as his dad's, for Tri-Ship and Intramurals. They were on the same teams and in the same clubs. They had to be buddies.

Classmates' notes and signatures were plastered all over the inside covers of the yearbook. It took Ryan a while, but he found the one he was looking for:

He tried to remember the name of the Portland woman:
Stephanie
something. Out of politeness, he'd called her the night of the burial. But then he'd ended up asking her to lose his number and leave him alone. During the following week, she'd phoned and hung up twice, leaving no message. His caller ID had caught the number—with the Portland area code. Was it 503? He'd scribbled down the number someplace so he could block it if that crazy woman ever tried to phone him again. But she never called back. The number was still on a Post-it note somewhere upstairs in his desk drawer.

In the cemetery, she'd given Billy a note to pass on to him. It had a link to a newspaper story about her sister's family in New York. They'd been shot to death last Thanksgiving. He wasn't sure if he'd thrown the note away or if he'd stashed it in his desk drawer, too.

His grandmother had a little writing nook near the door to the basement. Her old desktop computer almost sounded like a cement mixer every time it started up. Ryan moved over to the desk—and sat down in the chair, which had a rooster dish towel draped over the back of it. While the computer wheezed and clicked, he went onto Google. He typed in the words: Family Murdered, Thanksgiving, New York.

Hunched close to the monitor, he clicked on the first search result link. Over the monitor came an article with the headline:

He remembered reading all the horrifying details four weeks ago—the night after he'd buried his own family. But he couldn't remember the woman's brother-in-law's name. He found it in the second paragraph: “Scott Hamner, 43.”

He was the same age as Ryan's dad.

Ryan almost tipped over his chair when he got up and hurried back to the yearbook on the counter. He flipped back to the index and anxiously searched the H's. Hamner wasn't in the list.

Ryan reached for the other yearbook and opened it. Several loose photos and yellowed news clippings fluttered out from between the pages. Ryan ignored them. He kept thinking that perhaps Scott Hamner had been a new student during his dad's senior year. But he couldn't find a Hamner listed in the 1987 yearbook index, either.