In Things Unseen Read online

  “Daddy, there is no little boy. You’ve never lost your driver’s license. You drive yourself everywhere. To the bank, to the market, the dry cleaners. . . .”

  “In what? My car was destroyed! How would I drive myself anywhere without a car?”

  Milton knew Janet hadn’t meant to wear her pity for him on her face; she wasn’t that cruel. But it was there for Milton to see just the same. It occurred to him his daughter may have dreaded this moment as much as he. After all, what could be more devastating for a child than an elderly parent whose mind was unraveling? Or, perhaps even worse, had reverted to the irate, unrepentant alcoholic he once had been?

  “Stop looking at me like that!”

  “I can’t help it. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janet said. “Look in your wallet, Daddy. Go look at your keys. Your driver’s license and car key are right there where they’ve always been. Your car’s parked downstairs in the garage. Go ahead and look.”

  Milton had no intention of looking, the thought of what he might find chilling him to the bone. But he got up and went to the little table near the door, grabbed his wallet, and flipped it open.

  There behind the clear plastic window, where nothing had resided for almost six months now, his own face stared back at him from a Washington State driver’s license. It was a photo he’d always hated, his head tilted slightly left like a door off one hinge, his eyes nearly closed. He had been sick that day and could barely take a breath without sneezing.

  He closed the wallet and glanced at the five keys on his chain. Five? One was for the lock on his front door and another for the deadbolt above it, one fit his mailbox and a fourth opened his safety deposit box at the bank. But the fifth was a key that shouldn’t have been there: a Honda car key. Specifically, the Honda car key he had once used to unlock the doors and turn the ignition on his old silver 2007 Accord, before the car’s mangled remains were towed out of Lakeridge Park to a police impound yard in Renton, never to be seen by Milton again.

  He wondered how he could have missed the key before, until he remembered what a mess he’d been earlier in the day. His computer’s lack of cooperation last night had put him in a foul mood, the expense of a new machine looming, and he’d headed out for his breakfast with Lisa in a dither. Who had time to pay attention to the keys on his chain? And when he’d come back from the diner, in far worse shape than he’d been when he left, it was all he could do to unlock his front door and let himself in without screaming for help. He would have missed a human skull hanging from his key chain then, let alone the key fob to an old Honda sedan.

  “Daddy?”

  Janet offered to walk Milton out to the garage so he could see the Honda for himself, but he had no interest and even less need. He knew the car would be there, just as she said.

  There was nothing he could do now to get her to leave. He was crying and his distress had only intensified her own. She followed him from room to room, treating his pleas to be left alone with total disregard, bombarding him with questions he was disinclined to hear and ill-equipped to answer. She saw the wreckage of his laptop on the table in his bedroom and gasped, one hand flying to her mouth. She started to call his personal physician right then and there, but he clawed the phone away from her ear until she gave up the idea. Not for good, he knew, but for the time being.

  “Daddy, you need help,” Janet said, with more compassion than she generally showed him. “If you’ve started drinking again, it’s not the end of the world. We can get you help.”

  “No! I haven’t been drinking, goddamnit! Do you smell alcohol on my breath? Do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “I don’t need anyone’s help. I just. . . .” What? What did he need if not help? No answer came to him.

  He had been to the boy’s funeral. He had watched one of Adrian’s classmates run from his grave, black pigtails flying behind her in the rain. Or. . .wait. No. That wasn’t right. That was something he had dreamt the night before.

  He dared not mention the dream to Janet.

  “I’m going to stay with you here tonight,” his daughter said. “I’m going to have Alan bring me over some things and we’ll all have dinner together, and then I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom. Don’t bother arguing with me because I’m not going to change my mind.”

  He argued with her anyway. He liked her husband well enough; Alan was a short, barrel-bellied insurance salesman with a relaxed manner and an uncanny ability to tell jokes that were actually funny. But Milton didn’t want to see him tonight. He didn’t want to see anyone. He was confused and frightened and other people in the house would make him only more so.

  Janet would not be swayed, however. There would be no peace for him tonight.

  SIXTEEN

  IT BECAME REAL for Michael only after he’d held Adrian in his arms.

  The fear that it was something other, a fevered dream or extended lapse of sanity that was soon to pass, did not leave him until that moment. The boy had seen Michael standing in the carport, waiting, and taken off running toward him, wearing the wide grin Michael had seen in his sleep a thousand times since last March. With the reckless abandon he had always reserved for his father alone, Adrian threw himself into Michael’s embrace and laughed. And that was when Michael knew. This was his son. This was Adrian.

  When he could bring himself to let the boy go, Michael loaded him into the car and drove him home. During the drive, they talked about nothing important, just the usual trivialities they used to exchange regarding Adrian’s day at school. Laura Carrillo’s name didn’t come up, nor did the subjects of death and the afterlife. If today was different from any the week before for Adrian, the indicators were lost on Michael.

  Diane was waiting for them in the driveway when they pulled up. Michael stood back while she and Adrian shared a hug, then he went to her himself and pulled her close, burying his face in her hair as the tears came like rain. Neither of them said anything for a long time. They just stood there, holding on to each other as if for dear life, occasionally daring to laugh at something they imagined was relief.

  Gratitude came later, after they’d gone inside and settled in the kitchen. Diane was starting dinner while Michael watched from the dining table, his attention divided between his wife and Adrian, who was stretched out on the floor of the living room reading a book. To Michael’s eye, Diane looked like the woman he’d taken vows with almost nine years ago, her eyes full of light and her face aglow with serenity.

  “I’m afraid to breathe,” Michael said.

  Diane peered over her shoulder at him. “Because you’re afraid you’ll wake up?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know. I felt the same way at first.” She turned back to the stove. “But it’s okay to breathe. This isn’t a dream.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I’ve never been this happy in a dream.”

  Michael went to her, slipped both arms around her waist. They stood like that for a while, until Michael said, “There’s a question I’ve been asking for hours now. I expect you’ve been wondering the same thing.”

  “Why us.”

  “Yes. Why us? Why our son, Diane? Why your prayers and not someone else’s?”

  Diane wriggled free from his grasp and resumed the business of putting dinner together. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Does it matter?” Michael asked, surprised. “Of course it matters.”

  “Why? What difference does it make why He did it? It should be enough for us that He did, Michael.”

  “Diane—”

  “Questions are for people who need answers in order to believe. Is that what you’re saying? That you still don’t believe?”

  “No. No! But—”

  “But what?”

  “But
what happens now? What are we supposed to do? You and I were leading separate lives only yesterday. Do we just pick up now where we left off and pretend it’s always been this way, without having any understanding whatsoever about the point of it all?”

  “Yes. Why not? Would that be so hard? We aren’t meant to understand everything. Some things we’re just supposed to accept and be grateful for.”

  “I am grateful. I do accept it. I just. . . .” He went to the edge of the living room, fixed his eyes on their son. “I just want to know what we did to deserve this.”

  Diane slipped up alongside him and took his hand in hers. “We didn’t do anything. We don’t deserve it. We’re no different from anyone else in the world and neither is our son. He just chose us, Michael. I don’t care why and neither should you.”

  Michael turned to her, prepared to extend the argument. This wasn’t as simple as she was making it sound. Belief in the incredible, and the impulse to question it, was not something you could turn on and off like a switch. But Michael held his tongue. He knew Diane was right: they were owed no explanations. They were owed none and would receive none. Faith was nothing if not a contract with God to accept what He willed to be, no matter how great or small, in relative silence.

  Acknowledging his wife’s wisdom with a smile, Michael leaned down to kiss her. Adrian, seeing them, laughed, and his laughter so delighted his parents, they were moved to laugh themselves.

  * * *

  By the time Elliott got home, Laura had grown tired of lying in bed. She wanted dinner out and she wanted some air, so she talked him into walking up to their favorite Thai restaurant on Genesee Street. She put off all his questions about her day until they were out the door and on their way.

  “Now do you believe me?” she asked, after telling him about her visit with Diane Edwards.

  “No. I don’t believe any of it,” Elliott said, exasperated.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Laura, what do you want me to say? The woman is obviously either insane or incredibly cruel, playing along with you like that. A miracle? Come on!”

  “Playing along with me?”

  “Well, what would you call it? You go over there talking about her son being dead and buried and she agrees with you?”

  “She agreed with me because it’s what she wants me to believe! All that business about a miracle is nonsense, I know that. But everything else she said proves I’m not imagining it. She really did fake Adrian’s death. Or something.”

  “Or something?”

  “I don’t know what she did, Elliott. I’ve been trying to figure it out on my own, but I just can’t.”

  “And you think I can?”

  Laura stopped walking to turn to him. “You have to. You must. If I can’t find a rational explanation for what’s happening to me, I’ll never be able to teach again. They won’t let me.”

  “Laura, you already know what the rational explanation is. You had some kind of stress-related breakdown yesterday. You must be more tired and uptight than either of us realized and you simply broke down. Nothing Adrian’s mother told you today changes that fact.”

  “No.” Laura shook her head. “You aren’t listening to me! She said—”

  “Forget what she said. What did she prove? What evidence did she show you that Adrian died in a car accident, the way you insist he did?”

  “The papers! She showed me all his papers, all his schoolwork from. . .from after. . . .”

  “Exactly,” Elliott said. “All she proved with those papers was something everyone but you and she seem to agree on—that her son’s been in school, doing work for you in class, since last March, when you say he died.”

  He was right. Laura felt like a fool for not having realized it before. All Diane Edwards had done to corroborate Laura’s memory of Adrian’s death was talk, which was proof of nothing.

  “Her husband. She said her husband knows the truth, too,” Laura said. “We could talk to him. You and me, together.”

  “No,” Elliott said. “No way.” He started walking again, not appearing to care whether she followed or not.

  She hurried after him. “Elliott, please!”

  “This is crazy, Laura. I’m trying to help you, but you aren’t being reasonable.”

  “All I’m asking is for you to be in the room when I talk to him. You won’t have to say or do anything, just be there.”

  Elliott kept walking. Laura stopped.

  “All right. I guess I’ll have to talk to the reporter, then.”

  That brought her fiancé to a halt. He turned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Some writer is doing a story about what happened at school yesterday. Howard called to warn me not to talk to her. I wasn’t going to, but now I’m thinking maybe I should.”

  Elliott closed the gap between them. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m not crazy, Elliott, and I didn’t have a nervous breakdown yesterday.” She was choking back tears. “I swear to you, I remember what I remember about Adrian Edwards because it happened, or appeared to happen. All of it. And I need you to help me prove it.”

  “Jesus. . . .”

  “I don’t want to talk to that reporter but if no one else will listen to me—”

  “All right. All right!” Elliott threw up his hands. “I’ll go with you to talk to the father. But only on one condition.”

  Laura smiled, scraped the tears from her cheeks with the back of both hands. “Name it.”

  “If he tells us the same thing that I’ve been telling you—that this insane idea you have that a funeral was held for his son eight months ago is just that, insane—that’ll be the end of it. You won’t talk to any reporters, you won’t talk to me, you won’t talk to anybody else about this ever again except the doctors you need to see in order to go back to work. Is that understood?”

  Laura nodded. “Understood. Can we go tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “To see Michael Edwards. Adrian’s father. I’m sure I have an address for him somewhere. We could go after dinner.”

  She could see it was the last thing on earth Elliott wanted to do. This could not be the end of a long day at work he had hoped to forge. But he loved Laura and she was in trouble. Serious trouble.

  “Okay.”

  They went on to the restaurant, walking hand in hand.

  * * *

  Milton went to bed early, right after dinner. Janet had made roast beef and scalloped potatoes, his favorites, but he barely touched a thing on his plate. The table had grown stone-cold silent after he finally lost his temper and screamed to be left alone. Janet and Alan had been peppering him with questions about Adrian Edwards and the accident from the moment Alan walked in the door, and Milton was sick of it. They didn’t believe any part of what he had to say, especially his denials regarding drink, so what the hell was the point?

  He went to his room without bothering to clear his dishes or say good night, and they let him go with nary a word of complaint. Milton knew why. Any other time, Janet would be pleading with him to stay up a little longer, take a seat with her on the couch in the living room while she watched one of her insipid reality shows on television. But not tonight. Tonight, she was happy to see him turn in early, because she and Alan had bourbon bottles to search for, and important things to talk about that they couldn’t discuss with Milton around to hear them.

  Next June, Milton would celebrate his seventieth birthday, but as he crawled into bed, he felt much older than that.

  * * *

  Alan Berger had always had a calming effect on his wife, but Janet was beyond his powers of influence tonight. She was certain that alcohol or the ravages of time, or some combination of the two, had finally laid claim to her father’s mind, and she was already making plans to become his full-time caretaker. She started crying the minute M
ilton shuffled off to bed, and every effort Alan made to comfort her was for naught.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “Just the other day, he was perfectly fine!”

  “He’s still perfectly fine,” Alan said, with all the supreme confidence he could fake. “Poor guy’s just a little confused, that’s all.”

  “Confused? Did you hear him? He thinks he killed a little boy! He talks about it like something that really happened. Names, dates, locations. . . .”

  “Yes, I know, I heard the man. But maybe he talks about it that way because it is real. Or some of it is, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe a little boy really was killed in that park last March, exactly the way he says. Only he just read about it, or saw it on television. I can’t explain why he would want to hold himself responsible, but. . . .”

  “Momma. It’s his guilt over the way he treated Momma.” Janet nodded vigorously, embracing the idea. “Yes, that’s it. That must be it. He’s doing that thing they say people do when they have feelings about one person that they should really have about someone else.”

  “Transference,” Alan said.

  “Yes! Transference! He’s transferring his guilt over Momma to this little boy who was killed in the park.”

  Alan smiled, happy to have given his wife some reason to believe her father was not on the brink of madness or—despite their having found no evidence to support such an idea—back in the clutches of his once raging alcoholism. And yet, Alan had his own doubts.

  “Assuming there was such a little boy,” he said.

  “Assuming? But you just said—”

  “I was thinking out loud, sweet. Maybe the boy’s real and maybe he isn’t. If he is, then our theory’s sound. If not. . . .”

  Janet glowered at him.

  “It’s possible he made the whole thing up. Which wouldn’t make him crazy, of course, but it would suggest we’re dealing with more than transference here.”

  And just like that, Janet was crying again. Alan felt like an idiot.

  He watched her sob into a balled-up tissue and tried to think of a way to reverse the damage.