They got lost on the back roads of Cale. Brian had the map spread across his lap in the backseat, and he and Dennis had a spat when it was determined that they’d missed their turn and gone five miles out of their way. Dennis, sighing in an exaggerated manner, turned the Lexus around in a gravel turnabout and made his way back into town.
Finally, they found During Street, its sign bent and nearly shrouded by a weeping willow that was growing beside the road. If there is such a place as the “backwoods,” they were there. During Street was a tree-shrouded lane, and from the road you could see the blue expanse of the Thatch River. The vegetation was thick-river foliage, dark leaves and dark soil, kudzu falling in torrents all around. A few cabins, probably only used in the summer, were falling into disrepair here and there.
Brian claimed that he would know the couple’s house by the field that Bethany Cavendish had described to him. And there it was, just ahead on the right, a simple Cape Cod with an American flag flying out front.
“Polly’s house,” Mary said, referring to the transparency they had seen in Williams’s class the first week.
An old man answered the door. Dennis, because he looked the part of a salesman, was appointed their speaker. “We were wondering,” Dennis said through the mesh of the screen door, “if you wouldn’t mind talking to us for a few minutes about the girl who used to live here.” Although Brian would not have used such honesty, Dennis’s tactic seemed to work. The old man opened the door for them and let them inside.
“We find some of her stuff sometimes,” an old woman explained once they were sitting at the kitchen table. Her name was Edna Collins. She fixed them instant coffee and they sat around the table, drinking and listening. The couple, just as Bethany Cavendish had said, was happy to see them. Lonely, Mary thought. They’re just aching for company.
“People come by here all the time,” the old man said. “Tourists. Taking pictures. This is a famous site, isn’t it, Edna? We’re local celebrities.” He laughed-a hearty, deep laugh that was larger than his small frame.
“Just the other day I found a doll out in the field. I told Norman, ‘I bet you it come from that girl.’ We find little things like that all the time out in that field-trinkets, toys, all sorts of objects. Possessions she may have had. All down the hillside, down to the river, we find stuff. Why, I bet you could go out there right now and find enough to fill a house.”
“They hide out there sometimes,” the old man put in. “Kids. We’ll see them out there in the field with their flashlights. God knows what they’re doing. Once they were having some kind of ceremony, some evil thing. Wicca, I reckon they call it. I went out there with my gun and told them to stop. We don’t mind pictures being taken of the house. We knew what we were getting into when we moved in. But I have to draw the line when you’re bringing Satan onto my property.”
“She was so sweet,” Edna said. “I never did meet her, of course, but I’ve seen pictures. Just a little thing. Deanna. Such a sweet name. How old? Seventeen? Eighteen? Such a tragedy. Even now we look for things from our front porch. We watch to see if there’s anything suspicious going on. I always thought they could have taken her down to the river, slipped away in the quiet, you know. How easy that would have been.”
They, thought Mary.
“Do you know this man?” Brian asked, showing Edna the photograph of Williams that was on the back of A Disappearance in the Fields. They all watched the woman for anything, any tic of deception, but she studied the photo seriously, pulling her bifocals down and pondering it as if the picture were of a long-lost relative she was trying to place in the family tree.
“I don’t suppose I do,” she said. She handed the book over to her husband, and he also said that he didn’t recognize Williams. As far as Mary could tell, they were both sincere.
When they began talking again, reminiscing about their years in the home, Mary excused herself. She followed Edna’s directions to the bathroom, shut the door, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dark, and her hair, always unruly, the curl prone to frizz and flyaways, was wilder than usual. She turned on the faucet and splashed some water on her bare face. She heard the whir of a motorboat down the hill on the Thatch, and she wondered about Dean Orman’s wife again and her story of being accosted on the boat. Does it all fit together? she wondered. Is the river the connecting theme?
She left the bathroom and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen. She could hear Edna in there, talking about a family reunion they were planning to have if they could find all the family. She stopped at the end of the hall and looked at the pictures Edna had hung: nieces and nephews, Mary assumed, daughters and sons, all of them light-haired and fair-skinned. She felt a breeze at her feet, and she turned to see if the front door had come open. It hadn’t. “It was just fantastic,” Edna was saying in the kitchen off to Mary’s left. “And they had a fireworks exhibit after the show.” Mary looked at these relatives, the kids gap-toothed and their parents too polished somehow, too perfect. One girl was wearing a Cale Central High shirt, and the picture looked to have been taken in the 1980s. Mary assumed that it was Edna and Norman’s daughter, as she showed up in later pictures with her family. She wondered if this girl had gone to school with Deanna Ward.
Then she felt it, that breeze again against her ankles. It was cool and sharp, definitely outdoor air. She walked back down the hallway, trying to find its source. She stood outside the first door and registered it, stiff, against her feet.
Mary cracked open the door and peered in.
The room was empty. The windows were blindless and raised an inch or two, and the walls were half-painted. Paint cans rested here and there around the room. Swaths of blue tarpaulin were laid out on the floor, yet there was no carpet to protect, just the bare board lying across two-by-fours.
Mary shut the door and went to the next room. She opened that door and found the same thing. A bare room, paint cans. There was no tarpaulin here, and the painting had not yet begun. Some stray paper blew around in the breeze. Mary felt her heart tugging at her again, pleading to her to get out of this, to stop it somehow.
She went to the third room. The carpet had been stored in this room, wide rolls of it that were still in their cellophane. She was just about to step inside when she heard a voice behind her: “What are you doing?”
It was Norman Collins. He was looking at her solemnly, as if he were disappointed in her.
Laughter exploded from the kitchen.
“I was just-” Mary began, but she couldn’t go on. Lying had never been easy for her. She dealt in truth, and that is what had drawn her to Dennis in the first place.
“We’re doing some work,” Norman explained. His steely eyes were still on her, probing. He smelled like the outside, like sun and breeze, like her own grandfather.
“I like the paint,” Mary managed. He nodded, still searching her with his eyes, his jaw tensing as he breathed.
He was about to say something more when Dennis appeared in the hallway. “I think it’s time that we go,” he said. Mary slipped by Norman and went to the door, and the three of them thanked the Collinses and walked down the landing steps to the Lexus. Mary could feel Norman watching her walk away, and her heart boomed with each step she took. She got in the car and exhaled loudly, sinking down in the seat beside Dennis.
“What’s wrong?” Brian asked from the back. His hand was on Mary’s shoulder, and she liked it there, liked the comfort it afforded her.