The Deepest Secret (28 page)

“Nothing.” She stands beside him in the garage and he punches the button. The door slowly starts to lower.

“How are you doing?” She’s wearing that adolescent mask, his little girl who used to be so wide open with him, leaning close, confiding.
I want to be famous when I grow up. Cauliflower looks like brains. My teacher wore a purple dress today
. He hates to admit it, but sometimes he tuned her out, focused on whatever he was doing, fixing the lawn mower, replacing a light bulb. Now he’s lucky if he gets a couple of syllables out of her, the tiniest glimpses of what was going on in her world, the softest brushstrokes depicting who she was and who she was becoming. He wishes he could reach back in time and shake himself, force himself to stop and actually listen. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It’s okay.”

She doesn’t want to talk about Amy. He understands. He knows how fragile life is. Not everything has to be put into words.

The door slides down, darkness creeping in all around them. He can barely see her in the gloom. Her heart will be broken, too, by some boy, at some time. He wishes he could stop it from happening.

“Those reporters won’t be back, will they?” she asks.

“Have they been bothering you?”

She shakes her head. “No, but they just make everything worse.”

“Things will settle down.”

“When?”

Melissa has such a concrete mind. She believes there are discernible parameters to everything. As a little girl, she wanted to know precisely where the earth’s atmosphere ended and outer space began. If he said he loved her, Melissa wanted to know how much, without
the least bit of coyness, as if something like that could be contained. So when she asks
when
, what she really wants to know is whether there will come a time when she won’t feel sad and confused and lost, and he knows the answer to this is
no
. There are events in everyone’s life that mark it and leave a permanent impression that can never be rubbed away. But of course he can’t tell her that.

“Soon,” he promises her.

The garage door hits the concrete floor with a soft thud. The darkness is complete, making them invisible to each other. His little girl. She could be twenty-one, thirty-one; she could be older than he is now and she’ll always be his child. He opens the kitchen door and they step across the threshold into the dim, waiting light.

He’s in the kitchen slicing tomatoes when he hears the garage door shudder against its tracks. A moment later Eve comes through the back door. “You’re home.” She crosses toward him and slides her arms around him, puts her head against his shoulder. He hugs her with his free arm. He can’t help thinking of how much slighter Eve is than Renée, the top of her head reaching his chin. It’s not fair to compare them, but he finds himself doing it anyway. “I ran into Albert just now,” she says, moving away. He feels the loss of it. “He says he caught someone looking into the Farnhams’ windows last night.”

“He sure about that?” Albert’s getting on in years. Ever since Rosemary’s death, he’d gotten a little eccentric, letting his yard go, keeping odd hours, and wearing the strangest collection of hats. “Could it have been a reporter?”

“He doesn’t think so. The police found a flashlight. Larry swears it’s not his, and they fingerprinted it.”

“We’d better keep our drapes closed, just in case.”

“I hate to do that.”

“We could set up motion detectors,” he suggests. She likes to keep the drapes open in the evenings, to make up for keeping them closed during the day.

“Aren’t they more trouble than they’re worth, going off all the time?”

“I don’t like the idea of you and the kids home alone while someone’s creeping around.” Another reason why they need to live in the same city. She hears this, too. She goes to the stove and lifts a pot lid. “Dinner smells good. What are you making?”

“Pasta puttanesca.”

They used to laugh at the fancy-sounding name for what is essentially a spaghetti sauce assembled in haste from ingredients they have on hand. It’s clear Eve hasn’t been shopping in days. He should run to the store, do a load or two of laundry. He’d gone in to dump his dirty clothes and found he could barely push the door open, there were so many clothes on the floor.

“Hey, listen,” he says. “You remember Renée?”

“Your running buddy.” She’s at the counter now, going through the mail.

That, so simple. “She broke up with her boyfriend. I told her she could stay in my place over the weekend.”

“That was nice of you,” she says, her distraction plain, and just like that, they slip through this thorny discussion unsnagged. She hesitates at the credit card bill and looks over at him.

He nods. “We’re going to have to hold off charging anything for a while, at least until we catch up.”

“What if we make the minimum payment?”

“It doesn’t make sense. Not at those rates. We’re going to have to pull money out of Melissa’s account.”

“Her college fund? David, we
can’t
.”

Does she think he wants to? “Look, we can’t keep falling behind like this. Right now all we’re doing is paying off penalties.”

“But I’m not spending any money. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“We could cut Melissa’s riding lessons.” Four hundred dollars a month, not including her gear, which she goes through at an alarming pace.

“We can’t take that away from her. That’s the only thing she does. She loves riding.”

“We were two days behind on the mortgage this month. We bounced checks. Maintaining two households is expensive.”

She darts a look at him. “Maybe I can get more clients.”

“You could work eighty hours a week and it wouldn’t be enough.”

“It’d be better than nothing.” She glances at her watch. “Oh no. I should have texted Tyler to let him know he could come out.” She goes out into the hall and calls up the stairs. “Tyler, honey! It’s time!” She comes back into the kitchen. “I can’t believe I forgot. He was in there for fifteen extra minutes.”

She agonizes over every extra minute Tyler spends in his room. It’s exhausting. She used to be so lighthearted. She used to make him laugh. “It’s fifteen minutes, Eve. That’s all.”

“How can you say that?”

She’s got that self-righteous tone again, as if she’s the only one suffering. It sets his teeth on edge. “You’re so focused on the minutes that you’re not paying any attention to what’s really happening here. What kind of life is it if he spends his life watching the clock?”

“It’s the most life he has.”

“I know how much you’ve done. I know how hard this is for you. But sometimes I think he’d be better off if he wasn’t reminded all the time.”

“You’re blaming me for being careful?”

“Remember Jamal, Hanna? Their moms were careful, too. Tyler will never be in the clear.”

“You don’t know that.”

But he does know that, and, damn it—so does she. “I can’t do it, Eve. Pretend he’s normal, pretend everything’s fine. Every time I look at him … I just see the end.” He says this pleadingly, wanting her to understand, but her face is narrow with anger.

“
You’re
the one who’s taking life away from him.”

He takes a ragged breath. “Look. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we do need to talk to someone. Let’s try that guy, the therapist you found for Tyler. You said he had some experience with this sort of thing.”

“I can’t,” she says. “I just—I can’t talk to anyone. I’m going to go check on Tyler. He should be downstairs by now.”

Her footsteps sound down the hall. The sauce is burning. He turns off the flame and drops the pot into the sink, where it sizzles and smokes.

David had wanted to try for more children. There was only a twenty-five percent risk they’d have another XP child. And if the worst happened, they’d know ahead of time. They could take precautions from the very start. But Eve had refused, had poured all her attention into taking care of Tyler. She couldn’t even fathom having another child. That was the first door she’d shut on David. She’d been shutting doors ever since.

CLAWS

A
fter dinner, his dad hands him a slick yellow bag. “Surprise.”

It’s heavy, bulky with something that has sharp corners—a book called
Portrait Photography
and a camera, the same 35 mm Tyler’s been eyeing online for months. He pulls the camera from the box and turns it over in his hands. His parents are watching him.

“What do you think?” his dad says.

“It’s great. Thanks.”

“How’s your class going?”

“Okay. I have to shoot a roll of film.”

“Then we’d better practice loading it.” His dad opens a box of film and shows him how to pull out a few inches of the slick stuff and hook it into the back of the camera. By accident Tyler yanks out a long strip. “Happens to everyone,” his dad says. “We have more.”

His mom’s standing over by the window, looking out through
the heavy drapes. “Albert says he saw a Peeping Tom last night.” She turns and looks at them. “So let’s keep the drapes closed until the police find him, okay?”

“What’s a Peeping Tom?” Tyler asks.

“A creeper who looks through people’s windows,” Melissa answers.

Oh. His cheeks flame and he ducks his head. It’s a dirty-sounding word and he hadn’t meant to do anything gross. He’d just been curious.

“Don’t worry,” his mom says. “The police will find him. They got fingerprints off a flashlight they found.”

He’d been wearing gloves. But not all the time.

“Tyler?” It’s Holly, standing on her porch. Tyler feels warm with the realization that she’s been waiting for him. He wasn’t even headed her way. He was going to the park to try out his new camera, but now he walks across his yard to hers.

She’s standing with her hands on the railing. The light from inside the house behind her outlines her body, shining through the thin material of her dress, revealing the curves of her legs.

“Could you do me a favor?”

She needs a favor from
him
? “Like what?”

“Could you watch the kids for an hour or so? I have to run to the store.”

“I’ve never babysat before.” He’s always been the one other people babysat.

“There’s nothing to it. Christopher is asleep. Connor’s watching TV. If he gets thirsty, you can give him some juice.”

Doesn’t she know any adults who could help her out? “Can’t you just take them with you?”

“No, that’s impossible. For God’s sake. I thought you were one person I could trust.”

He’s made her mad somehow. “You can,” he says hastily.

“It’s only for an hour. Come on.” She holds the door open.
“Please.”

He’s not supposed to walk into a room without his mom checking it with the UV meter first. But Holly’s standing there looking at him, so he does it. He steps right over the threshold. Nothing happens. He feels fine. He lets out his breath.

Her eyes are extra bright. “You know to keep the door locked, right?”

Ha
. If there’s anything he knows, it’s that.

Connor sits cross-legged in front of the TV, a fleecy blanket bunched up in his lap. He doesn’t look over.

She puts her fingers on his arm. Her touch blazes right through his sleeve to his skin. “I’m sorry about your friend. About Amy.”

“Thanks.”

She scoops up her purse from a hook on the wall and pulls out a ring of keys. “Mm,” she says. “You smell of coconut.” She pushes open the door and is gone.

He hasn’t been inside many houses. There’s Zach’s old house that’s now Sophie’s; Zach’s new house; Alan’s house; Charlotte’s, of course; Rosemary and Albert’s; and in first grade, he’d gone to the birthday party of Melissa’s friend’s younger brother. He’s never once been left alone in any house but his. Having two little kids there doesn’t count. If something happens, it will be up to him to deal with it.

The curtains hang open in the living room and dining room, revealing big blank panes of glass, and the windows have been pushed up so that the cool night air swims in, making the white drapes billow. The house feels fragile, as though one big gust of wind could blast it to pieces. He takes out his UV meter and presses the button, walking all around. The little black arrow doesn’t move. He takes off his gloves and pushes them into his pockets, then unzips his hoodie.

“Are you thirsty?” he asks Connor.

“Juice.”

The kitchen’s painted brown and has white cabinets. Dishes sit heaped in the sink and plastic bottles stand around the counters, some containing a murky yellowish liquid that looks disgusting. Cardboard boxes are stacked in a corner, marked KITCHEN in heavy black writing on the sides. There are photographs stuck to the front of the refrigerator. Holly in a bathing suit, laughing as sun spills across her face and makes her squint. Connor in a little jacket and pants, his mouth turned down and comb marks in his hair. A puffy-faced baby squints at the camera, just a bit of fluff for hair. A bunch of strangers, all different ages but everyone wearing white shirts and blue jeans, and grinning at the camera.
Hi from the Blakes!
He holds up his camera and presses the button. A photograph of photographs.

The refrigerator’s so bare he can see straight to the back. Ketchup, milk, salad dressings, yogurt, a plastic container of something pale green. He takes another picture.

“Where does your mom keep it?” he calls to Connor, but there’s no answer.

Maybe the pantry? But no, there’s nothing like juice in there, just some boxes of cereal, a couple cans of spaghetti, and a big plastic bag of potato chips closed with a purple clip that says
Neil Cipriano, DDS
—his mom has one, too. But Connor said he wanted juice not chips, so he slowly rotates and scans the kitchen once again. Then he sees it, an opened pack of juice boxes poking out from behind a cloth bag with blue dinosaurs printed on it.

“Here you go,” he says.

Connor takes the juice box. “Baby.”

That’s when Tyler hears the hiccup of sound, like rubber squeaking against glass. Christopher? But he’s supposed to be asleep. Holly didn’t say anything about what to do if the baby woke up. “What does he want?”