White Picket Fences (25 page)

Amanda wondered why Neil needed a hammer this large; it seemed out of place. Unnecessarily big. Offensive, even, to the audience of silent, aromatic boards at her feet. She looked
around the garage. Near the door to the third stall, where Chase parked his car, sat the cedar chest. Amanda reached behind her and flipped on the light switch. Fluorescent bulbs sputtered overhead.

The chest glistened under the silvery white shop lights. Amanda walked toward it. The sides and top were embellished with carved blossoms and leaves. Honey brown swirls and twists decorated the trim and top like pulled taffy.

It was beautiful.

Amanda reached hesitantly with her free hand and touched a shimmering petal, expecting to feel sticky lacquer. But the sparkling bloom was dry and smooth. And as she did so, she realized she still held the hammer in her other hand.

A crazed thought skittered across her brain. With one blow she could smash the flowered trim. With several she could pound right through the top, especially if she put everything she had into it. If she just started hammering, she could destroy its beauty in mere seconds. That’s all it would take, the hammer and a few moments of raw determination. What had taken one person a hundred hours to create, another could obliterate in minutes. It was that easy…

The door for the third stall squealed and began to shimmy upward with a jolt. Amanda jumped and the hammer fell from her hand, landing inches from her toes. A burst of sunlight flooded her vision. Chase’s car came into view and moved forward into the garage. She stepped back, out of the deluge of light. She could see Tally in the front seat, looking at her quizzically. Chase too.

As the car moved slowly past her, Amanda knelt, grabbed
the hammer, and walked back to the table where she had found it. Chase cut the engine, and the two teens got out.

“What are you doing?” Chase was reaching into the backseat for his camera bag, but his eyes were on his mother. He looked angry, as if he had read her thoughts.

“Just looking at the cedar chest.” Amanda turned to Tally, eager to change the subject. “Tally, you’ve got an envelope inside from your social worker. A letter came to your grandmother’s house from your dad.”

“Really?” Hope colored Tally’s voice and nearly filled the room.

“It’s in the kitchen.” Amanda turned away from the work-table and Chase’s questioning eyes. She opened the door to the kitchen, and Tally and Chase followed close behind her.

Inside, Amanda handed the Federal Express envelope to her niece. The girl set her book bag down and tore open the envelope. She reached inside and drew out a single sheet of paper—a note from Nancy Fuentes that Tally barely glanced at—and a thin envelope stamped with unrecognizable postage. Tally studied the return address, which Amanda couldn’t see. But she saw her niece mouth the word
Ukraine
and felt her unease. It was obvious Tally had no idea what her father was doing in Ukraine. Tally opened the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper folded once. As she read, the hope that had filled Tally’s eyes began to dissipate and then disappeared altogether.

“He doesn’t know when he’s coming for me.” Disappointment was etched in every word.

Amanda took a step toward her niece, her motherly instinct pushing her forward. “May I see it?” Amanda held out her hand,
and Tally silently dropped the letter into her palm. Chase leaned in to read it over her shoulder. Bart’s script was messy and hurried, as if he’d written it on the back of a bouncing rickshaw.

Hey, Tally-ho,

I’ve run into a bit of a problem in Warsaw. Things haven’t quite worked out like I had hoped. I haven’t given up, but it wouldn’t be too smart for me to go back there just yet. I tried to call you last week at your grandma’s, but I must have written her number down wrong. The call didn’t go through.

Now I don’t want you to worry, Tal. Everything I’ve promised I am going to do. Just not sure when. In the meantime, I’ve met someone who needs my help. Don’t have time to go into it, but I know you’ll understand.

You’d even be proud of me.

I’ll come back for you as soon as I can, Tally-ho. Until then, you enjoy your time with your grandma. Be good to her, Tal. She’s deserved more of you than I’ve given her.

Love ya,

Dad

Amanda looked up from her brother’s letter, and her eyes met Tally’s frustrated stare. Whatever it was Bart was mixed up in, it had to be illegal. No matter what Tally had been told. She was simply going to have to convince Tally to tell her what Bart was after. The time for keeping her father’s secrets was over. Perhaps tomorrow she’d be able to get the truth out of her niece—after
giving her some time to get used to the idea that Bart wasn’t coming home yet.

Anger at her brother’s cavalier approach to parenting and life in general rose within her. Amanda reached for Tally, stretching her arm across the girl’s shoulders. “If he knew what had happened, he would’ve been on the first plane back. I’m sure of it. He thinks you’re with your grandma and that all is well.”

Tally barely nodded. She held out her hand, and Amanda returned the letter.

“I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon.”

Her niece said nothing.

“And we love having you here with us. We really do.”

Tally slowly folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. She looked toward the staircase, then the open door to the garage, a glance toward the family room, and another long look at the staircase.

“Just go up to my room,” Chase said.

Tally hesitated.

“I can hang downstairs for a while. Just go.”

Tally moved to the stairs and jogged up. A door opened and closed, gentle and slow.

Amanda turned to her son, amazed he knew without a word that Tally needed a few minutes alone. But his face startled her. He looked like he carried a burden on his shoulders that far outweighed the camera bag he’d slung over one arm. The unspoken compliment froze on her lips.

“Uncle Bart is an ass,” Chase said, moving past her and heading for the family room.

“Chase!”

“He is, and you know it.”

Her son disappeared into the family room. A moment later audio from the television floated into the kitchen.

Amanda stood unmoving as too many thoughts somersaulted in her head. Gary’s nearness. Delcey’s annoyance. Tally’s disappointment. Chase’s pain. And Neil. She had always thought Neil and Bart were polar opposites. But that wasn’t true at all. They didn’t have the same attitude toward duty, but they sure shared the same approach to trouble—if you don’t see any, don’t ask if it’s there. They both liked to assume everything was fine at home and had no inclination to find out if they were wrong.

If Neil only knew how alike he and Bart were in that respect. He would never admit it, of course. Never.

As if on cue, Neil’s car pulled into the driveway. He was early. Probably came home to deliver the cedar chest to the Loughlins and their dying daughter. Amanda watched him walk up the steps to the front door, losing sight of him for only a moment as he crossed the threshold in the entry. She heard the front door close. Neil rounded the corner and their eyes met.

“Hey.” He seemed surprised to find her in the kitchen doing nothing.

“Hello.” Amanda watched him put down his briefcase and travel mug.

Neil glanced at her before his eyes traveled past her. “Is there a reason that the door to the garage is open? You bringing in groceries or something?”

“I haven’t brought groceries in from the garage in four years, Neil.”

Neil swallowed. She could tell it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if something was wrong. But she knew he wouldn’t ask.

“Well, it needs to be kept closed, remember?” Neil walked past her and grabbed the handle of the door, pulling it shut. Amanda turned to the hall that led to the laundry area and the sewing room.

“Did you hear me?” Neil called after her.

“I did.” She kept walking.

“Where are you going?”

“To empty out the sewing room.”

“What for? What’s going on?”

Finally he asked. Kind of.

“Tally might be here for a while.”

thirty-one

C
hase’s room was bathed in quiet, the only light coming from his laptop screen, which displayed a news archive from the
Orange County Register,
dated 1995. The headline: “Baby Dies in Fire at Day-Care Provider’s Home.”

It was the only other hit on his Internet search, other than the legal brief, that offered him a glimpse of what Ghost had done with a little bit of freedom. He hadn’t had time to read the news article at school. The final bell had rung as Alyssa’s name clanged in his head. The computer lab supervisor had to touch his shoulder to tell him study hall was over. It wasn’t until after a silent meal with his family that he’d been able to resume the search in his bedroom.

The article named the baby-sitter’s son as Ghost’s unwitting partner. The fire began in the son’s room after he’d lit a cigarette. The teenager claimed innocence, saying he and his cigarette were outside on a balcony when Ghost embraced the house like a jealous lover. But the teen had lied about everything. First he said he wasn’t even home when the fire started. He said he never lit a cigarette or even had a lighter to light one. No one believed him when he said he was finally telling the truth.

The article went on to say that smoke alarms in the house
were nonfunctioning and that two young boys napping upstairs had been rescued by a next-door neighbor who’d seen the flames from her own upstairs bedroom window. But neither the neighbor nor the panicked day-care provider could rescue five-month-old Alyssa Tagg, who was also napping upstairs. By the time firefighters arrived and could enter the room, the baby was dead. Two older children, who had been outside and across the street with the daycare provider, were unharmed. Charges of negligence were pending. Parents of the dead child were already hinting at a wrongful-death suit.

Another hit was a short archived obituary for Alyssa Rose Tagg. Just a dozen or so lines. The child had been alive for less than half a year.

Chase leaned back in his desk chair. The puzzle was nearly complete. The cast of characters was fully assembled. Keith, Miss Carol, the stained-shirt boy, the neighbor in pink who grabbed him off the hot carpet as he fought for air, the firemen with the black boots, his father at the ER, the doctor with the green cap and green shirt with no buttons. And Alyssa.

The scene was set. He could see the two bedrooms. Keith’s and Miss Carol’s. He could see Keith’s annoyed face. Pimples all over it. He could hear Keith yelling at him to get back to the other room where he belonged. Taking the lighter from him. He could see the blue mats and the crib. He could see Ghost swaying in the corner of the room, its long tail snaking out of the vent high on the wall above the crib.

He could see the smoke, feel it burning his lungs.

He could hear the stained-shirt boy crying and could see
him banging on the door while Chase lay in the way… could see himself trying to get out the door and the other boy pushing ahead of him, knocking him down.

He could hear Alyssa’s choked cries as the air in the room became a smothering blanket of heated fog and doom.

And he could also see himself back in Keith’s room. A second time. Before the smoke. But the memory was a mere snippet of time. A blink. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been there the second time, when he went back to his blue mat, or what he had done. One piece was still missing.

The one piece that mattered. The one piece that would explain everything and would surely reveal to him how to silence Ghost for good.

The truth would silence Ghost.

He ran his fingers through his hair. Eliasz showing up in his dream had needled him. As did the image of the tool bag in the burning room, the tool bag that Eliasz had used to smuggle babies out of the Warsaw Ghetto. In his dream, Eliasz told Chase not to forget the bag, as if Alyssa were inside it, waiting for deliverance.

Chase couldn’t rid himself of the notion that Eliasz was in his dream for a reason. He had to go back and talk to him.

He ran his hands over his face as he imagined what he would say.
Okay, so there was this fire at the baby-sitter’s house when I was four, anda baby died. The baby-sitter’s son was blamed for it, but he said he didn’t start it, and I remember holding his cigarette lighter and him telling me to get back to the room I was supposed to be napping in. I remember being back in his room a second time, but then I don’t remember going back to the room where the blue mats were. I just remember being on my blue mat and the room filling with smoke and the baby crying and not being able to breathe and calling for my parents and Ghost sliding down the wall and reaching for me.

“Who is Ghost?”
Eliasz would say, and Chase would realize he’d said the name out loud.

Ghost is the fire.

“Why do you call it by that name?”

Because it haunts me.

A soft knocking at his door startled him, and Chase’s eyes snapped open. The imaginary conversation vanished.

“Chase?” His mother’s voice. She sounded worried.

For a moment he said nothing. Had he said anything out loud? “What?”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He hesitated. “I guess.”

His mother opened the door and stepped into the darkness of his room. “Is it okay if I turn on a light?” Her tone was even more anxious now.

“I don’t care.”

She flipped on the light switch by the door, and the recessed ceiling lights around the perimeter doused the room in a soft glow. His mother wore a weak smile. He looked down at his computer screen as she walked toward him and quickly leaned forward to minimize the Internet browser.

“Am I interrupting anything?” She sat down on his bed, just inches from him. Her eyes were on his laptop, which now offered a view of Chase’s wallpaper: the Coronado Bay Bridge at twilight.