Page 38 of Haunted

“It’s already printed,” he continues. “It’s on the banner, it’s on the website, it’s on the thing the paper’s running. It’s ten days, Jonny. That picture went all over the country. It’s one of the signature images of the Fairhaven wildfires.”

“Then let me make you something else instead.”

“Something else like what?”

“I make films. That’s my work. I’ve got a channel with four hundred thousand subscribers and I shoot and cut everything myself.” I take out a card and put it on the table between us. “Let me make you a proper film for the anniversary. Interviews. The park dedication. People talking about who they lost, in their own words. Something that isn’t two frightened kids on a cot.”

Henry picks up the card and holds it at arm’s length to read it.

“Jonny on the Spot,” he says.

“It’s better than it sounds.”

“You’d do that for us?”

“I’d do it instead of the photograph.”

He isn’t listening to that part. He’s turning the card over excitedly.

“That would be wonderful,” he says. “That would be absolutely wonderful. They’re dedicating the Suzannah Drumm Memorial Park on the day, did you know that? Out where the school field used to be. A lot of people were asking if you were going to be there.”

I rock back on my heels. “Why?”

“Well, you were one of the most famous survivors.” He glances at the door, as if I might have sent Lance back to go and park the car. “How’s Lance? I assume you two stayed in touch.”

“I haven’t seen Lance in a long time,” I say. “I heard he got married, so—” I only know that because I was weak and looked him up a couple of years ago. Ancient history. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m cool.

“Did he? It’s a shame you fell out of touch. You two were thick as thieves.” He looks at me indulgently. “The anniversary’s bringing a lot of things to the surface for people. Eloise—do you remember her? From the gym? She killed herself about five years back. And we lost Randolph Dare the year after that.”

I put my hand on his arm. “I didn’t know.”

“Eloise, after Frank died, she just said life wasn’t worth living.” He shakes his head. “But happier things. I remarried about four years ago. Lydia Corley. Her husband died in a car crash and we bonded over losing our spouses, and one day I realized maybe it was my second chance.”

“Suzannah would have wanted that for you,” I say, even though I don’t remember her that well anymore.

He smiles. “There’s a whole community here that cares about you. We meet Sunday afternoons. And bring Lance, too, if you track him down. He’s one of us as well.”

The woman from the window has come over. She stands at the end of the table with her hands folded.

“Henry, before you go,” she says. “I want to raise the footage again.”

Something happens to Henry Drumm’s face.

It’s very fast. It’s there and gone in about the time it takes to blink, and if I hadn’t been looking directly at him I’d have missed it entirely.

“We’ve discussed this, Alice.”

“We haven’t, though. You’ve said no twice and walked off.” She says it without heat. “I filmed the whole street that morning. Denning Court, from the cul-de-sac all the way to the intersection with Hemingway Road.”

A piece of that autumn comes back, whole and out of nowhere. She offered it to me once before—at the wake, when I was seventeen and couldn’t stand up straight, and I told her no. Elliott was out in the front yard the whole of that morning, and if she came up that road with a phone in her hand, then my brother is on that tape.

Neither of them is looking at me, which is fortunate.

“It isn’t appropriate.”

“It’s the only moving picture of any of it.”

“It is not appropriate for a memorial,” Henry says, “and I am not going to sit in a room and watch it, and neither is anybody else.”