In the shadows, but very close?
I went through to the bedroom and put a change of clothes into an overnight bag. Then I walked up the stairs and unlocked the door that led to the garage.
Boxes of possessions, ours and those belonging to the owners of the property, stood in dusty, monolithic piles. Some contained objects that belonged to me, like my family’s photo albums, just about all that remained of my childhood now. It seemed hard to believe that I would ever feel the need to open them again.
I walked past all the crates and leftover pieces of furniture to the far corner, where I moved aside a heavy workbench. Behind it there was a cupboard built into the wall. I used two keys from the house key chain to unlock it.
Inside, wrapped in a cloth, was my gun.
It had been there since the day we moved in, like a memory pushed far back into the shadows of my head. It was something I’d carried every day for years, at work. It was something I’d carried one night. It was something I should have gotten rid of.
I picked it up.
Part III
At night when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.
—Chief Seattle,
excerpt of the 1854 speech,
from the original translation by Dr. Henry Smith
chapter
THIRTY
At LAX, I took a cab to Santa Monica. I got the driver to stop fifty yards short of the house, and I walked the rest. When I arrived, I found a boy in the yard outside, playing in an orderly fashion.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked up, checked me out. Didn’t say anything.
“Uncle Jack,” I added.
He nodded, head to one side, as if conceding the truth of my observation but failing to find that it rocked his world.
I walked past him up the path and knocked on the door. It opened immediately, as I’d expected. This kid’s mother wasn’t going to be letting him mess around in the yard in the early evening without keeping an eye out.
“Well, how about that?” she said, hands theatrically on hips. “You don’t see a Whalen for months, then bang—a full house. Must be some kind of astrological thing, right? Or biorhythmic? Is a comet due?”
I felt tense. Amy’s sister was hard work at the best of times. “How are you, Natalie?”
“Still not a movie star and a bewildering ten pounds heavier than I’d like, but otherwise in an acceptable place for my culture and type. I told you on the phone you missed Amy, right? Like, hours ago?”
“We’re meeting later. Just thought I’d stop by and say hi, since I’m in town.”
She looked at me dubiously. “I’ll alert the media. You want coffee while you’re doing this hi saying?”
I followed her inside. There was a big pot ready and waiting in the kitchen, as always when I’d visited Natalie’s house. It was one of the few points of congruence between the sisters.
She handed me a large cup, filled it. “So. Amy didn’t say you were gracing the area.”
“She doesn’t know. It’s a surprise.”
“Uh-huh. Tangled web you guys weave. Speaking of which, is it just me or has big sis been acting a little wacked recently?”
“In what way?” I said, careful to keep my voice flat.
“She drops by here today with no notice, then asks me if I have tea. Well, of course I have tea. I am the homemaker from hell, but I do try, and Don likes it first thing. Tea, I mean. But Amy? Tea? That’s a new one.”
“She’s been drinking it some recently,” I said. “Maybe she’s doing a campaign on it.”
“Okay. So I’ll tell Mulder and Scully to stand down. But here’s item two: Any idea what the date is?”
“Of course,” I said, reaching for it. “It’s…”
“Right,” she said. “Given a couple seconds, you could name the month and maybe even the day. That’s not what I meant. That’s Man Time. I’m talking Woman Time. In my people’s calendar, it’s Annabel’s Birthday Plus Six Days.”
“Annabel,” I said. “Your Annabel?”
“She was twelve last week.”
“Your point being?”
“Whalen card and gift conspicuous by their absence.”
“Christ,” I said. “I’m sorry. I—”
She held up her hand. “Jack, you couldn’t name my daughter’s birthday if your life depended on it. Mine either, or Don’s. You probably have your own written on the palm of your hand. So how come we always get cards?”
“Because Amy knows.”
Natalie drew a checkmark in the air. “Not just birthdays. When Don and I got married. When Mom and Dad died, their wedding anniversary. She lives the family chronology. Year in, year out, she gets the job done.”
“Did she mention this when she—”
“That’s the thing. She stops by without warning, drinks her tea, goes upstairs, comes back down, kiss-kiss, good-bye. She’s exactly the way she always is, which is mainly a sweetie, also slightly killable—but she neglects to mention forgetting her niece’s birthday, which by now she must have realized she’s done.”
“She went upstairs?”
“To her old room. It’s Annabel’s now.”
“Did she say why?”
Natalie shrugged. “Amy’s what—thirty-six this year? Maybe it’s a memory-lane deal. Gather up the past before the Alzheimer’s really kicks in.”
“You mind if I go take a look?”
“I already did. She didn’t touch anything, far as I can tell. Why would she?”
“Still…”
Natalie cocked her head to one side, and you could tell immediately how the boy in the front yard had acquired the habit. “What’s this about, Jack?”
“Nothing. Just intrigued.”
“Go nuts, Detective. Annabel’s at band practice. Second on the right.”
I left her in the kitchen and went upstairs. The second door along the hallway was slightly ajar, and for a moment I remembered Gary Fisher’s dream so clearly that I hesitated. But then I pushed the door open.
It would have been different in detail when Amy lived here, naturally. Posters of different bands. Merchandising goods associated with different movies that had now probably been remade twice. Otherwise it was archetypal.
It’s strange being in the childhood space of someone you love. Knowing her now is not the same as having known her before, and that pre-you person will remain a stranger even if you go on to die hand in hand. It’s odd to imagine someone so much smaller and younger, to see the shapes and angles through which she learned about the world. You hear echoes. You cannot help but wonder whether she now always feels most comfortable in spaces of similar size or height, or if the bedroom you share with her adult incarnation feels wrong to her for not having a window in that same position. You picture her sitting on the edge of this bed, feet neatly together, staring into the future with the acquisitive and slightly alien gaze of the child.
It didn’t take long for me to notice something Natalie couldn’t have been expected to spot. The room was in flux—it had been neat recently, and it would be again—and objects and clothes and bits of furniture were strewn around. But the rug that covered the center of the floor was at precise right angles to the bed, with no wrinkles at any point. I doubted that Annabel had left it this way.