I thought of Kate talking in hushed tones on her cell phone in the corner of the kitchen, on the rare weekends she was home from Washington. She had twice now booked earlier flights to return to the capital.
Of Stella’s resignation from the anchor desk and her agreement with her news director to take a pay cut to join the investigative unit. How she held the mic like a weapon on the six o’clock news tonight, thrusting it in the face of a minister who took money from his congregation then promptly closed the church and purchased two sports cars and a boat. “I need to nail some bad guys,” Stella said quietly last week, over lunch.
Of Anne, who slept away much of the day. Of Chris’s leave of absence from the law firm, spending his days poring over information on sex offenders in Nashville and pacing through the woods.
Of the alarm going off at 6:00 A.M., so I could be at Anne’s house by 6:30 to get Greg ready for school. Of 3:15, when I picked him up, took him home, and peppered him with questions about school. Don’t you think you should rejoin scouts? Don’t you think you should get back into flag football? He preferred to sit in front of the Cartoon Network instead. I didn’t mind. That programming was never interrupted with news updates, which occasionally pertained to our family.
Of Brian, vacant and wooden, staring out the window of the psychiatrist’s office, refusing to engage with the doctor or anyone else. He was unresponsive at school, so Chris and Anne had to pull him out and hired a tutor to come to the house to try and work with him. Yet every day I brought Greg home, the tutor only shook her head. Chris had flown into a rage on Monday, screaming at Brian to tell them what he saw. Brian had gone into his room and laid on top of his bed. I hurried in, hoping to find him crying. His eyes were dry.
Of Tom’s absence from the neighborhood Labor Day parade, which just last year he, Brian, Greg, and William had led, the boys tossing candy from Tom’s 1990 soft-top Jeep Wrangler. How he disappeared into his library to stare at a photograph of the four of them, each holding a Jolly Rancher in their teeth and grinning like hyenas. He emerged smelling like smoke and whiskey.
Of our family’s offer of $500,000 for any information that led to the safe return of our grandson. Of the hundreds of false leads that followed.
Of the flowers in the garden that I had abandoned at the end of the brutal summer. I felt like I had done the same to William, in denying that I remembered where I had first heard the words.
The lights took him.
I have a difficult relationship with memories. I still remember how it felt to be five and know nothing. How I stiffened when Daddy went to hug me, until I was convinced he was, indeed, my father. My hesitantance to eat broccoli until I believed what Daddy had told me, that I did in fact love it cooked, but not raw. Forgetting memories is a task I have yet to master. Max Riddle lifting my skirt in front of the junior-high football team. What it was like to have three daughters, each with the stomach flu. The early morning call from Roxy about the cancer diagnosis for her husband.
Pushing aside memories, I have found, is easier. They’re sneaky, though. When someone says to me they’re so sorry about William, that they wish there was something they could do, memories start to sneak in. When Chris shares his latest research on his detailed spreadsheet of all the known sex offenders in the five surrounding zip codes, they try to dodge around the protective barrier I’ve put in place.
I’ve tried, I thought as I rolled over in the bed, seeking a cool spot on the pillow. I can’t pretend anymore like I don’t know.
The lights took him.
It seemed like it was always cold in the days I first heard those words.
The landscape had slowly altered outside the window of the Oldsmobile Cutlass, from the still-green trees in Nashville, to the relative lushness of Kentucky and Southern Illinois. I will like it here, I remember thinking. It looks like home. Three hours later we entered the cornfields of Central Illinois standing beneath the gray skies.
Tom, my husband of two weeks, had smiled sheepishly and kissed my cheek. “If I told you how terrible it is, you’d never have agreed to come.”
We arrived in the town of Champaign-Urbana, the home of the University of Illinois. As picturesque as the university appeared, it still paled in comparison to my alma mater, Vanderbilt, which I’d only been able to attend thanks to a full academic scholarship. When we found our new apartment, I followed the landlord into the building and was nearly struck by the swinging door. It was the first time in my life a man had not held the door for me.
By Christmas, the snow piled high, along with our bills. My father never had much money, but I had never been this truly poor. It soon became apparent that Tom’s life would have to become the law if he were to pass the bar. He was gone most of the day in class and was often away at night, studying at the law library. He wasn’t on scholarship, and there wasn’t time for a job. Tom’s mother was dead, and he wasn’t close to his father.
That meant I had to find a way to make money if we were going to eat. Stopping all attempts at writing my first novel, I took a job as a waitress at a late-night diner. I had a degree in English and graduated with honors, and I was serving up coffee.
When we returned to Nashville for Christmas, I went straight to Daddy, who took my face in his hands and told me that this was just part of marriage; that my home was in Illinois now and coming home wasn’t an option; and that through the plant circuit, he knew a professor in the university’s agriculture department who might be able to find me a job.
A few weeks later, I got a call from the university, thanking me for my interest in an office-manager position and saying that I had been given a job. It was decent money that would pay the bills, with a little left over for used books and cheap wine. I wasn’t thrilled, but it meant using my brain, and I was proud that I was the sole breadwinner for my little family. I was given directions to the building and instructed to start work the following Monday.
At first, I thought I had the wrong building. But sure enough, there was an office manager job not in agriculture studies, but in the astronomy department, of all places. When I reacted with surprise, the dean of the department said he could certainly offer the job to someone else, but I quickly lied that I had always been interested in the stars. Once I had even located the Big Dipper, even though I had no idea how to find it again.
Yet the professors in the department didn’t care. They were thrilled that they now had a full-time office manager. At first, I thought it was strange that a department with only five professors would even need such a position, but soon I came to understand why. There were, of course, the demands of students and scheduling, but there was also need to proof articles for industry publications, and near constant requests to book time in the university’s planetarium. I took all of the tasks in stride, quietly enjoying being among the academics who seemed to constantly push up their horn-rimmed glasses above the bridge of their noses and thank me for completing even the smallest task. They had long dealt with bored undergrads assigned to man the front desk as part of their student work programs.
The only exception was Dr. Steven Richards. The young professor never picked up his messages from his students, never made eye contact with me as he walked briskly from his classes, and always kept his office door closed, even when he was inside. No one beside him ever entered. Sometimes, as he shut his door, I swore he lingered, staring at me while I typed.