“Except you didn’t believe them, did you?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t push too hard. Okay? None of us did. We talked about it. Everybody in town was going to be happier if it was just some stranger who killed her. The kids had suffered enough, so we figured, let them get on with their lives.”
“An act of mercy,” Serena said.
“Exactly right.”
34
Tish parked on a dirt road two blocks from Finn’s house, sheltered by the sagging branches of a weeping willow. She dangled a cigarette outside the open window of the Civic while she waited. She knew she should quit, but she had spent most of her life alone and anxious since she left Duluth, and smoking was like morphine in her bloodstream, dulling the pain. Her cigarettes were always there with her. On a sailboat in the harbor in Dubrovnik, after the war ended and the tourists started coming back. In a mud and stone hut halfway up a Tibetan mountain. In Atlanta, crying in the parking lot of a Borders bookstore in Snellville, after the breakup with Katja. In Duluth, when Laura ran away and shut Tish out of her life.
If only she had stayed. Things would have been so different.
She felt the car shiver as a train snaked its way toward her from the harbor. The engine came slowly, snorting like an animal and cutting off her view of Finn’s house. Coal dust blew off the overflowing boxcars and settled in a grainy film across her windshield. The clattering, rattling, squealing thunder made her clap her free hand over her ear. When the last of the freight cars passed, she saw Rikke, in a navy blue dress, marching down the front steps of her house. It was the first time she had seen Rikke since coming back to Duluth. The years hadn’t been kind. Her austere beauty and her Amazon physique had both flown away with age. Even from a distance, she could see a lifetime of unhappiness in her face. Rikke clutched an umbrella in her hand and cut across the lawn to a tan Impala. She drove out of the weeds onto the dirt road and across the maze of railroad tracks, not far from the car where Tish was waiting.
Tish ducked low so that Rikke wouldn’t see her. She waited until the Impala was gone, then climbed out of her car and headed for Finn’s house. She picked her way through the bed of rocks between the tracks. Her T-shirt clung to her skin in the sticky air. Looking around, she felt as if time had stood still in places like this. The town, the dirt roads, the house, and the trains were like a snapshot from her childhood. It made her think of old things. Cold, sweating bottles of Mountain Dew. Wham-O Frisbees. Black-and-white television. It made her think of a time when people she loved were still alive.
She knocked on the door. When no one answered, she peered through the cream-colored lace on the window. She wondered if Finn was sleeping.
Tish turned the door handle, but the front door was locked. When she checked each of the window frames, she found one where the inside latch was undone. She slid the window open and climbed through the flimsy curtains into the living room. The house was silent and close. When she felt something brush against her leg, she jumped, then realized it was a cat pushing past her feet. She closed the window behind her.
“Hello?” she called. “Finn?”
No one answered.
She did a nervous survey of the downstairs space. The kitchen was small, with avocado appliances that hadn’t been replaced in years. The screen door to the backyard was tattered, its mesh hanging down from the corner. She pushed open a door and found a small toilet, no bigger than a closet, with a bare bulb hanging overhead for light and an empty pill bottle on the ledge of the sink. Tamoxifen. She felt a stab of sympathy for Rikke.
Back in the living room, she saw the narrow steps near the front door that led to the second floor. She hesitated at the base of the stairway.
“Finn?” she called again.
Tish climbed the stairs, wincing at the noise as her feet pushed down on the warped slabs of wood. Upstairs, she was faced with a closed door immediately in front of her. Without knowing why, she knew Finn was inside. She didn’t knock. She nudged the door with her foot and waited in the doorway while it swung open.
The room was dark, the curtains drawn, letting only cracks of daylight knife through the gloom in narrow, dusty streams. Her eyes adjusted. She saw Finn on the floor, sitting with his back against the bed, his arms hugging his knees. His forearms were swaddled in white bandages. He wore underwear but nothing else.
“It’s me, Finn,” she said. “Tish.”
His eyes were lost in the shadows. He didn’t look at her, and she wasn’t sure if he knew she was there. Then he spoke in a tired voice. “You should go, she’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t care.”
“She won’t want to see you.”
“I’m here to see you. How are you?”
“How am I?” Finn said. “I wish I was dead.”
“Don’t say that. You’re lucky.”
“Yeah. People see me, they say, there goes a lucky man.”
Tish sat down on the floor next to Finn and slid an arm around his shoulder. His bare skin was clammy. “Maybe you should be in bed.”
“I’ve been in bed for days. I pretended to be asleep so Rikke would finally leave me alone. She’s afraid of what I’ll do.”
“Does she have reason to be afraid?”
“You mean, will I do it again? I want to, but I’m a coward. How pathetic is that?”
“I feel guilty,” Tish told him. “Like I did this to you by coming back.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Then why did you do it?” she asked. “Was it because of Laura’s murder? Did you remember something more?”
Finn squeezed his eyes shut. A tear bloomed like a rose out of the corner of his eye and trickled past his nose to the corner of his mouth. “Everyone wants me to remember, but I don’t.”
“I think you do.”
Finn shook his head. “I never should have gone to the park that night.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I can’t stop!” Finn exclaimed. “Don’t you get it? I’ve never been able to stop.”
“Stop what?”
He clenched his fists. “Watching. That’s who I am. I’m a watcher.”
“You mean the young girls in their bedrooms?” Tish asked. “That was you?”
He put his face in his hands and nodded.
“Why, Finn?”
“You think it’s my choice? You think I want to be like this?” He stared at the floor and added, “Mom made me watch. I didn’t even know what was going on, but she made me watch. I hated her for that.”