In Things Unseen Read online

  “I was just sitting here wondering the exact same thing,” Carrillo said. “Because you don’t believe a word I’ve said to you, do you?”

  “Well, you have to admit—”

  “I changed my mind because you’re my only hope of finding out what’s really going on. Everyone else is either lying about it or doesn’t care enough about the truth to look for it. If I do what everybody wants me to do and keep my mouth shut, act like everything I remember about the last eight months is just a figment of my imagination, then I really will lose my mind. Don’t you see that?

  Allison was too slow to answer to suit her.

  “No. You don’t. Of course you don’t. I was a fool to think you might.”

  “Wait a minute,” Allison said. “Cut me some slack here. This is a lot to absorb in one sitting and I could use a little time to think it all over.

  “Besides,” she went on, “I’m not sure I know what you’re asking me to do. It’s not my job to prove who’s right or wrong in all this. It’s just my job to report it, as honestly as I possibly can.”

  “Weeks or months from now. After you’ve done a thorough investigation.”

  That had been the one stipulation Carrillo had set on her agreement to talk to Allison: that she not write a story for immediate release. Carrillo’s desperation to get back in the classroom was palpable, and she probably knew any rush job on Allison’s part would do her far more harm than good. She would worry about the ramifications of what Allison eventually wrote about her later.

  Allison had agreed to her terms, but only because she’d already decided the teacher’s story was too big for the web or the dailies. There was far more to exploit here than that. It was a feature for a major periodical at the very least, one that would take weeks, if not months, to put together. Even a book was not out of the question. Allison wasn’t going to piss that kind of potential away just to see her byline on a published piece sooner than was necessary.

  “Yes,” she answered Carrillo now.

  “Then that’s all I’m asking for. A fair shake. No one else has any interest in asking the questions I need answered. They’re all content to believe I’m delusional and leave it at that. If you can’t get to the bottom of what’s really happening here, nobody ever will. And I’ll be branded unfit to teach for the rest of my life.”

  That this last was true, Allison had no doubt. Whatever chance Carrillo had of salvaging her teaching career probably depended upon Allison, and whatever explanations she could find for the bizarre tale the teacher had just told that did not involve her needing years of psychiatric help.

  It wasn’t a burden Allison wanted to carry, and yet she found herself hoping she could. Laura Carrillo did not strike her as someone who deserved the sorry fate that had befallen her.

  “I’m not going to write anything intended to hurt you,” Allison said. “But more than that, I can’t really promise.”

  * * *

  Laura was looking for a greater commitment from Allison Hope than she’d just been given, but she could see she wasn’t going to get it. She smiled, a small flag of surrender. “Thank you.”

  Hope stood to leave and Laura walked her to the door.

  “Who will you talk to next? Diane Edwards, I expect?”

  “Probably. Either her or her husband, I haven’t decided.”

  “Both will only tell you the same thing. Assuming either will speak with you at all. I’d suggest you try to find Weinman instead. He knows what the truth is. At least, his part of it.”

  “If he still remembers it, you mean.”

  Laura couldn’t tell whether or not Hope was trying to be funny, so she let the comment go. They reached the door and Hope stepped out into the hall. “Adrian’s mother is a lovely woman,” Laura said. “You’ll find her quite charming. But don’t be fooled. She’s not the innocent she seems.”

  Hope took that in. “And Adrian? What about him?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Well, is he what he appeared to be at Yesler Tuesday? Can you say for certain the boy you saw really was Adrian Edwards?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I can,” Laura said, and now the tears she had refused to let Hope see could not be held back.

  From the moment he had walked into her classroom two days ago, she had wondered if the child she saw could be anyone other than Adrian Edwards. Sending an uncanny double to school that day would not have been beyond the scope of the elaborate hoax she’d become certain the boy’s parents were perpetrating. But no. It had been Adrian. He held a place in her heart no other student could claim. She knew how he walked and how he spoke, the way his eyes peered deeply into her own without the slightest hint of guile. Even in the few minutes they had been in her classroom together on Tuesday, Laura had seen all of this in the boy before her. He hadn’t merely resembled Adrian—he was Adrian.

  And therein lay the only semblance of joy Laura had been able to derive from the last forty-eight hours.

  Adrian Edwards was alive again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU OKAY?”

  It was Bud Levitt, the senior tech Michael was working with today. Michael had retreated to the little parking lot behind Mighty Dynamo recording studios to be alone, forgetting Levitt was a smoker who liked to come out here on his breaks.

  “That obvious, is it?”

  “Well, that last take was fucking awful and the six before that were worse. Not to be too blunt about it or anything.”

  Levitt was right. The takes had been shit. The band whose tracks they were laying down was no second coming of Nirvana, but neither their music nor their drunk, overbearing producer had been the problem. The problem had been Michael. He was working the board this morning like a driver asleep at the wheel. The controls felt heavy in his hands, and he seemed to miss half of everything that came over his headphones.

  Diane was going to meet Milton Weisman at Lakeridge Park this morning, and it appeared Weisman remembered his running Adrian over there last March as clearly as Michael, Diane, and Laura Carrillo did. Weisman’s son-in-law had called Diane last night, and today she’d heard from Weisman himself. When she’d called Michael at the studio a little over an hour ago to report she’d agreed to meet the old man at the park, Michael had tried to dissuade her. He couldn’t see what good could possibly come from it. They needed the poor devil to keep his memories of Adrian’s death to himself, and engaging with him would hardly encourage him to do so. But Diane was going to see him in spite of all this.

  Worrying over how the meeting was going, Michael had been present in the booth in body only this morning. He could have directed the recording session by phone, from home, and been just as effective.

  “Sorry,” he told Levitt. “Guess my mind’s been wandering a bit.”

  Levitt drew in a lungful of smoke, tilted his head back to blow it out. “Trouble at home?”

  “No. Quite the contrary.”

  He watched Levitt smoke. The tech was a redhead in his mid-twenties who wore the beard of a lumberjack and the ponytail of an ingénue. Three years earlier, he’d come home to Seattle after two tours of duty in Afghanistan, missing none of his good humor but almost all of his right leg. His prosthetic was so good, Michael only heard him complain about it when something reminded Levitt of basketball and how well he used to play it.

  “I have a question for you,” Michael said, moving to where Levitt stood.

  “Okay.”

  “Strictly hypothetical.”

  “Uh-oh. One of those.”

  “Think of something impossible but wonderful. Something you’d give anything to have happen that you know, intellectually, never could.”

  “Never?”

  “Let’s just say it would defy all the laws of the known universe if it did.”

  “Huh.” Levitt thought about it, dragging his cigarette do
wn to a nub. “Like if I could suddenly fly or something?”

  “No.” Michael searched for a delicate way to say what came next, decided there was none. “Like if you suddenly had your leg back. You woke up one morning and there it was and no one cared. Everyone acted as if you’d always had two legs because that’s what they remember.”

  “When you say ‘everyone’—”

  “I mean everyone. Friends, family, the people you work with. Me. Everyone. No one would have any memory of your injury at all.”

  “Except me?”

  “Except you.”

  Michael had Levitt’s full attention now. The tech crushed his cigarette out with the boot on his prosthetic foot, said, “Okay. I’ve got it. Next question.”

  “How would you explain it? To yourself, I mean. What would you attribute it to?”

  Levitt shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “God, man. What else?”

  “God?” Michael couldn’t remember him ever using the word before.

  “Hell, I got my right leg back, no strings attached. I didn’t have to sell my soul to the devil or any shit like that. Right?”

  “Right. But—”

  “And I’m not dreaming.”

  “No.”

  “Well, what else is that but divine intervention? Blind luck? Mike, I miss my leg. I miss the things I used to be able to do with it. I’ve learned to live with this piece of shit instead”—he rapped on his artificial thigh with his knuckles—”but I miss my leg. And every now and then—on my bad days—I go to bed wishing like hell I still had it.

  “So now you say I’ve got it back. This thing I’ve been wanting more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. One day it’s gone and the next day it’s there, like magic. What, I’m supposed to think that’s just a wild coincidence?”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Because coincidence doesn’t go to all that trouble just to answer one man’s prayers, man. Sure, holes open up in the space-time continuum and change shit all the time, but the results are a lot more random and benign than what you’re talking about. I get my leg back and everyone else has their memory wiped, and for what? So one man can have his greatest wish come true?” He shook his head. “That ain’t coincidence.”

  “Okay. Maybe not. But God—”

  “Is a mythical creature, I know. But you asked a hypothetical question and I gave you a hypothetical answer. The way I would explain something happening that was both wonderful and utterly impossible is, I’d give credit to the most wonderful and utterly impossible being there is: God.” He gave another shrug.

  “So you’d become a believer, just like that. You’d suddenly accept the existence of something you’d once thought ‘utterly impossible.’”

  “Hey, I didn’t say that. I’m sure, over time, I’d figure out something else more rational. Ours suddenly merged with a nearly identical, parallel universe and. . .you know, some metaphysical voodoo like that. But would I consider the God option, too, at least for a minute? Hell, who wouldn’t? Because what you’re describing is a miracle, Mike. Old and New Testament stuff. Seas being parted and sight being returned to the blind. You show a man a miracle—his own private miracle—and he’s got no choice but to wonder if God ain’t real. Right?”

  Michael nodded, satisfied with Levitt’s answer.

  “So, what’s the deal, anyway? What’s got you pondering such heavy questions so deeply this morning you can’t set a damn mic level right? You didn’t see one yourself?”

  “See one?”

  “A miracle. Water turned to wine, a dead man walking. . . .”

  “No,” Michael said. “Nothing like that.” Levitt was waiting for him to elaborate. Michael wondered now how wise it had been to say anything to him at all. “Just something I came across online last night. Two people going back and forth in the comments section, arguing about faith and religion. I guess it got me thinking.”

  “Yeah. A good flame war can do that sometimes. But do me a favor, huh?”

  “Stop thinking until this session is over?”

  “Please.” Levitt started up the steps to the studio’s back door. “Those guys inside aren’t too bad, but if I have to hear that song about—ashes and silk curtains, was it?—one more fucking time, I’m gonna overload the board and torch the whole studio, I swear to God.”

  * * *

  Before he got back in the booth, Michael’s cell phone rang. It was Diane.

  “No,” he said when she told him what she’d done. “No way.”

  “Michael, we have to. We can’t say no.”

  “Yes. We can.” He hunkered down in a remote corner of the studio’s main hallway and lowered his voice. “Diane, we’ve already got enough trouble trying to keep Laura Carrillo quiet. Now you want to admit the truth to Weisman?”

  “He already knows the truth. He remembers everything, Michael, and he’s afraid. The poor man just needs some help making sense of it.”

  “The ‘poor man’?”

  “What he did to Adrian was an accident. It wasn’t his fault. You used to understand that better than I did.”

  “I do understand it. But—”

  “He deserves our forgiveness. He’s a changed man; the accident did something to him. He’s closer to God now than he’s probably ever been in his life, and we can bring him closer.”

  “By letting him see Adrian.”

  “Yes. God brought Adrian back as much for him as for us. I can see that now. He wants to see proof that Adrian’s alive, just as you did yesterday, and once he’s seen it, he’ll believe and be glad. And he’ll go in peace. He gave me his word. We have to do this, Michael.”

  Michael’s head was reeling. He didn’t know what to say. One minute, they were hell-bent on denying everything to everyone, and the next. . . .

  “I’ll take him,” Michael said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll take Adrian to see him. I want to be there when they meet.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Alone.”

  Diane said, “I don’t know.”

  “What? He already knows all there is to know, you said. There’s nothing I can tell him that you haven’t already.”

  “No, but—”

  “I’ll pick Adrian up after school and take him. The minute the meeting’s over, I’ll call you. Sorry, I’ve gotta go.”

  He hung up before his wife could object any further.

  * * *

  Right before recess, Howard Alberts decided to sit in on Laura Carrillo’s class. The district substitute who had taken over for Laura was Naeema Peele, an olive-skinned brunette in her mid-thirties nearly as tall as Alberts. Peele had subbed at Yesler only twice before, and for a single day on each occasion, so Alberts didn’t know her well. But it wasn’t the teacher Alberts wanted to observe today. It was Adrian Edwards.

  For two days now, he had been studying the boy from afar, looking for anything to suggest he was in some way different this week than in weeks or months past. More sullen, perhaps, or less willing to participate in class. Did he sound the same? Run and play the same? Was this the way he had always smiled, or. . .?

  Alberts had even taken the boy aside yesterday for a brief chat, to see how he would respond to a few general questions. How was it going? Did he like Ms. Peele? Had he and his parents talked to him about the incident at school on Tuesday? Adrian’s answers were succinct and uninformative, seemingly proving the boy was suffering no great ill effects from Laura Carrillo’s breakdown.

  If Adrian had done something to provoke that breakdown, something mischievous at best or cruel at worst, it would have marked a behavioral shift of epic proportion. Alberts’s trained eye could always detect clues signaling problem students in the making. And yet, Alberts could see nothing in this Adrian Edwards that had not been there before. The boy seemed as warm, b
right, and eerily mature as ever.

  When the bell sounded for recess, Alberts watched the children pile out of the classroom. He exchanged greetings with some and a silent nod with Adrian, then left his position at the back of the room to confer with Peele, who stood beside her desk waiting for him with what looked like mild apprehension.

  “How are they doing?” Alberts asked. Peele hadn’t been given any specifics about the scene Laura Carrillo had caused in her class two days ago, but Peele understood it had been traumatic.

  “Fine. I’ve seen nothing from any of them to be concerned about so far.”

  “Including Adrian?”

  “Yes. I’ve been keeping a careful eye on him as you advised, and he seems perfectly normal, and lovely, to me.”

  “Good.”

  “And Ms. Carrillo? Have you heard how she’s been doing?”

  Alberts wondered how far her curiosity went, considering how little he and Betty Marx had told her about the teacher for whom she was subbing.

  “I understand she’s feeling much better.” In a rush to change the subject, he smiled and added, “Don’t tell me you’re anxious to have her back already?”

  She laughed. It was a full, lighthearted laugh that Alberts recognized as the kind so many teachers started out with, only to lose as time wore on. “No. It’s not like that.” Peele turned serious. “I just hope she’s going to be okay.”

  And now Alberts saw it, the glint in her eyes that signified Peele knew more about Laura’s suspension than he would have preferred.

  “I’m sure she’s going to be fine,” he said.

  “I don’t know him that well, of course. I’ve only been with him today and yesterday. But I think I feel comfortable saying, whatever happened here Tuesday, Adrian didn’t do anything to precipitate it. He isn’t that kind of child.”

  “No? What kind of child would you say he is?”

  “Good. Decent. He’s no angel, no child ever is, but he’s empathetic. If he’d done something to upset Ms. Carrillo, I’m sure he would have admitted it to someone by now.”