The Guardians (28 page)

    "I'm
tired," he said, his voice the coach's again. "Jesus
H.,
am I
tired."

    There
would be repeated questions among us about this later. And because Ben was
already upstairs, waiting for me to join him, it was my memory that had to be
counted on.

    Before
I left, I put the gun back in the workbench drawer. I made sure the coach
didn't see me do it. Then I tied his hands tight to the post.

    I
swear it now as I swore it then. That's what I remember.

    That's
the truth.

    The
dawn is pink and smells of clean sheets and Play-Doh. The latter scent emanating
from the human figures that Kieran had apparently made some time ago, and that
his mother had refused to smush back into formless blobs. Smiling sculptures
where the clock radio usually sits.

    "He
calls it his family," Sarah says, stroking the hair off my forehead.
"But there's six of them. Aside from his dad, and my mother before she
died, he's never met a blood relative, so I'm not sure who he's thinking they
are." "He wants to be part of a clan." "Too late to give him
that." "He's got you. It's all he needs." "Really?"

    "One
good person to look out for you? I'd take it." "But it doesn't stop
him from wishing." "You can't stop anybody from that."

    She
kisses me. When my hand has trouble finding her cheek she places it against the
soft skin it was aiming for.

    "You
can stay here," she says. "For as long as you're in town. If you
want."

    "What
about Kieran?"

    "It's
not his room."

    "Would
it be, I don't know, confusing for him or something?"

    "You
can't protect kids from reality. My one piece of wisdom from my time down here
in Single Mom Land."

    "I
might be leaving tonight. I'm not sure."

    "It's
an invitation, that's all."

    I
consider this, my hand steadied by the firm line of her jaw. I thought this was
the one advantage of Parkinson's, selling Retox, withdrawing from the world's
excitements: no more desire, no more crests and troughs to unsettle the ride.
And now this sensible, good-looking woman—Sarah, object of my high- school lust
and daydreams of death-do-us-part—is inquiring after my wants as though I had a
right to them.

    "Thank
you," I say.

    "Don't
panic. I'm not asking you to be my date to the prom or anything." She taps
a finger against my temple. "We're just falling forwards for a day or two,
that's all."

    "Falling
backwards, in our case."

    "Backwards,
forwards," she says, rising out of the sheets. "You're saying you can
tell the difference?"

    I
want to outline her lips with a finger but I don't trust any of them, so I
remain still. As still as I can manage.

    "Sarah?"

    "Yeah?"

    "Why
are you doing this?"

    "Doing
what?"

    "Being
nice to me."

    
"Nice?
This isn't about
nice
."

    "I
just don't want you to be here because you think you're doing me some
good."

    "Like
a charity case?"

    "Something
like that."

    "Okay,
let's get this straight. I'm here because I want to be here. Because what we
did last night felt good. And because I've thought about you a lot for a long time,
since you were a boy. I'm curious about the man that boy has grown into. That's
all there is to it. I'm in this for
me
, understand?"

    My
request of the night before had been honoured. I had enjoyed ten solid hours of
thoughts uninterrupted by Tracey Flanagan, or the shapes that the terrible
hunger that has been awakened within the Thurman house has taken. But as I
watch Sarah get dressed for work, the early sun through the window tells me
that all bets are now off It's how Sarah's nakedness interchanges with
Tracey's, the two bodies losing their particularity, veering close to becoming
a lifeless composite. This, along with the mental stop-starts that throw me
from desire to fear and back again in the time it takes a bare arm to slip
through the sleeve of an undershirt.

    "Are
you all right?" she asks when her head pops up through the collar.
"You've gone all white."

    "I'm
nothing without my morning coffee."

    "You
look like you've had a bad dream or something."

    "Except
I'm awake."

    "Yeah.
Except you're awake."

    I
roll out of bed and do my best to pull my pants on and button my shirt without
asking for help, and Sarah knows enough about male pride not to offer it.

    "I
need to talk to Randy," I say.

    "What
about?"

    "We
were at Jake's the night Tracey Flanagan went missing.

    She
was our waitress. I spoke to the police about it yesterday." "You
know something?"

    "No.
But that hasn't stopped it from freaking me out." "Heather
Langham."

    My
fingers spasm open. The belt they were holding clatters to the hardwood.
"I don't suppose I'm the only one who's thinking about her right
now."

    "You'd
be surprised. Even in a town this small, people forget, or half forget."

    "Maybe
I'm just not as good at forgetting." "It's not that. It's that you've
been away." "It doesn't feel that way."

    "That's
sort of my point. You left after Grimshaw's last big tragedy, and now you're
here for its latest one. It's like the time in between got squished together.
It was another life. But for the rest of us, we've just got the one, and
there's been twenty years in the same place to muddle through." "I've
done my share of muddling."

    "You
told me. Preoccupations. But in your mind, Grimshaw is frozen in time. It's a
museum."

    "And
I remember every inch of it."

    "You
feel it more than you remember it."

    "Wait
a second. How do you know all this better than I do?"

    "I
always
knew it better than you did."

    I bend
to pick up my belt. Surprise myself by threading it through the loops on the
first try.

    Here's
the problem. Here's why I walk through the wakening streets of Grimshaw hearing
the birdsong as the nervous chatter of bad news: despite anything I might tell
myself, there is a line that runs through the past, the secret history of
Heather and the coach and the boy, right up to the more current events of Ben's
death and Tracey Flanagan pulled out of the world. I don't know where the line
started, or where it might find its end, but it's there, understandable to
itself, refusing to let common sense break its hold.

    Still,
as I walk into the Queen's Hotel and struggle up the stairs to knock on Randy's
door, I don't expect him to see this as I do. Indeed, part of me is hoping he
doesn't.

    "Look
at you," he says, wearing only boxers and a threadbare Just Do It T-shirt.
"Mr. I Got Lucky."

    "You
could at least make an attempt to hide your jealousy."

    "Why
bother?"

    "Come
to think of it, you always had a thing for Sarah, didn't you?"

    "Of
course. But I was the horniest teenager in Perth County. I had a thing for
Minnie Mouse and Natalie from
Facts of Life
and the lady who did the
weather on Channel 12."

    Randy
digs the sleep from his eyes. Steps closer.

    "What's
happened?"

    "Nothing,"
I say.

    "So
what are you doing here when you should be bringing Sarah breakfast in
bed?"

    "Does
the coffee machine in your room work?"

    "It
spits out brown stuff, if that's what you're asking."

    A
moment later I'm staring out the window, listening to the water hiss and
dribble into the glass pot.

    "I
told you," Randy says behind me, and I turn to accept his congratulatory
handshake. "I
told
you she was into you."

    "You're
acting like I just made out with somebody in a parked car."

    "You
did it in Sarah's
car?
"

    "How
old are you, Randy?"

    "Hey
now. Let's not be cruel."

    Randy
hands me a mug of coffee. "Did they find her?" he asks, slumping into
the room's only chair. "That's it, isn't it? They found Tracey?"

    "I
haven't heard anything about that."

    "But
this has to do with her, doesn't it?"

    "Yes."

    "So?"

    "I
think she's in the house."

    Randy
returns the pot to the warmer, where it sizzles off the coffee that had spilled
when he pulled it out. He watches it bubble for a moment as though recording
the observations of a science experiment.

    "What
makes you say that, Trev?"

    "A
feeling. I've thought I've seen some things, too."

    "Like
what?"

    "It
doesn't matter."

    "You're
relying on your feeling, then."

    "And
the way there seems to be some kind of pattern. Heather and Tracey."

    "Not
really much of a pattern. These things just
happen.
I wish they didn't,
but they do."

    "You're
forgetting Ben. He believed his watching the house was keeping something bad
inside of it. And then, after he's gone, something bad happens."

    Randy
sits down on the edge of the bed. "I thought you got the police to go in
there already."

    "I
don't know how hard they looked."

    "How
hard would they have to look?"

    "You
can miss places."

    "You
mean a secret room you can get to only if you pull on a candlestick holder and
the bookshelf spins around?"

    "I
mean a closet, under the floorboards. The cellar."

    Randy
looks up at the ceiling, as though reading a message in the plaster's cracks.

    "You
want us to go in there," he says.

    "I
can't go to the police again. So that leaves us."

    "Because
you think Heather is inside."

    "Tracey,"
I correct.

    "Right,"
Randy says. "You think Tracey is in the Thurman house."

    "I
only know that I won't be able to live with myself if I guessed right that
someone's in there and I didn't do anything about it."

    My
intention is to leave, but my legs aren't following orders. I'm standing by the
window, arms crossed, waiting for my engine to start.

    "You
sound just like Ben," Randy says.

    "You
don't think I know that?"

    "And
we remember how that turned out."

    "Yes.
We remember," I say. "But was he wrong?"

    Something
in the force of these words lubricates my joints, and I'm launched toward the
door. But Randy beats me to it.

    "You
figure Thiessen's Hardware is still open out on King?" he says. "Because
I'm guessing neither of us packed gloves and flashlights."

    Randy
suggested we wait to go in at midnight. Yet when I pointed out that it got dark
at seven this time of year and asked what was to be gained by waiting around
another five hours, he had no answer, other than "Isn't this the sort of
stuff you
do
at midnight?"