Page 110 of Haunted

“And if she isn’t?”

“Then we wait. We don’t do anything stupid.”

I look at him. “Define stupid.”

“Jonny.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

He gives me a look that says he doesn’t believe me, and honestly, I don’t blame him.

Rex Harlow is under the awning shaking hands with somebody from the Lieutenant Governor’s staff. He sees us and smiles—that controlled, benevolent smile. My father. The man whose jaw I wear. The man who paid my mother twenty thousand dollars and never came to find me.

He doesn’t come over. Of course he doesn’t come over.

Margaret Vane is in the second row. Bree and Jackie are somewhere behind her. Aunt Shelley texted that she’s running late. Lydia Drumm is at the end of the front row in a good coat, holding a program with both hands, and I have to look away from her.

Henry has put Lance on the stage with the speakers, because Lance is the other half of the photograph and Henry has never once passed up a photograph. There are five chairs up there. Henry’s, mine, the university president, a woman from the county, and Lance, on the end, directly behind the lectern.

My phone buzzes on my knee.

Joe Ishikawa

Boss @ golf tournament @ Hilton Head on the day u asked about. Was a PITA about it for two weeks beforehand. Called the hotel. They have him on camera at breakfast + the 8th tee.

Sorry, can’t put him in jail for u yet. But if u ever need 2 push him down a well, I'm your guy.

I read it twice. Then I look over at the awning, at a silver-haired man laughing at something a stranger has said. So he didn’t kill her. I don’t know why, but I’m a bit relieved about that. I’m not a murderer’s son. I like those odds. He’s just a man who did nothing for twenty-seven years and got away with it. There’s no law against that, and there never has been.

My phone vibrates again.

Rita Cadwalader

Found it. Suzannah Clemmons-Drumm, October of that year. Alice, I don’t know how you did it but they’ve approved the whole twelve weeks. You have no idea what this means to us. S.

Us.

And then, thirty seconds later, from a number I have only had in my phone for three weeks:

Det. Morgana Van Hoek

Analysts confirm the object on the hallway floor is consistent with a human hand. Position consistent with where the body was recovered. He knew. We are on our way.

I turn the phone so Lance can see it. He reads it. He doesn’t say anything at all. He puts his hand flat on my back for about two seconds, and then he takes it away and sits up straight.

Henry takes the lectern and I have to control my rage.

He’s in a dark suit and tie, his silver hair combed back, his face composed into an expression of dignified sorrow. He thanks the sponsors. He thanks the Lieutenant Governor for making the drive. He thanks the Governor’s office for the proclamation. He thanks the Phoenixes for their tireless advocacy. He thanks Alice Cadwalader, whose absence leaves a hole in our hearts that will never be filled.

I watch him say her name and feel my stomach turn.

Then two men in coveralls draw the cloth off the wall, and thirty-one names come out into the light at once. Four hundred people make a sound I will hear for the rest of my life before bursting out into applause.

I don’t look for my mother. I don’t have to. I know exactly where she is, third from the left in the second row, because I have been looking at the plans of this wall on a website for three weeks like a man checking a seating chart for a wedding.

“Suzannah must surely be up there looking down on us today,” Henry says, when the sound has died away. His voice breaks with practiced emotion. “Sending her blessings to each and every one of you. She would be so proud of what we’ve built from the ashes.”

Applause. Somebody two rows back is crying. Margaret dabs her eyes. The cameras find Henry’s grief-stricken face and hold on it, and behind him, on that wall, with his wife’s name on it, is a park he has spent two years building for her.