Page 97 of Haunted

“Do we?”

He looks pained. “There were some…unfortunate allegations about excessive force that we should discuss. Nevertheless, I believe—and I’ve said exactly this to the Chancellor this morning—that your actions were more than justified. Now, the country club has a fantastic lunch,” Rex says. “I’d be honored if you’d be my guest.” He leans forward. “Have I ever told you about my double eagle? Hole seven at Meadowbrook. Most beautiful shot of my life.”

I look at my desk drawer. The Kermit bracelet is not in there. It’s in my jacket pocket. He threw it away—after ten years, he threw it away—and I’m the one who couldn’t let it stay gone. I’m not sure what that says about either of us.

I won’t chase him. But I look at the man across my desk—the man who knew Nash had fixed on Jonny and sat on it, who let him walk backstage into seven minutes alone; who calls me son and once wired twenty thousand dollars to a single mother to make a boy disappear; and who is, I am increasingly sure, three feet and a golf trophy away from a woman with her skull caved in on a boathouse floor. Nash is cleared. Whoever did that to Alice is still out there, and my best guess signs my paychecks every two weeks.

I can’t guard Jonny anymore. He won’t let me. I can’t even make him press the charges that would keep Nash in a cell—he wants all of it gone, and I have to stand here and let a thing I hate happen. But this, I can do. I can sit across a table from this smiling son of a bitch and let him think I’m grateful. I can get close enough to know exactly what he is—and if he is what I think he is, close enough to make him pay for every piece of it.

It isn’t letting go. I know that even as I tell myself it is. It’s just the only way I’ve got left to stand between Jonny and the thing that’s hunting him.

“I’m looking forward to it,” I say.

Chapter thirty-four

Jonny

I’ve been avoiding it since I got back. But now I have to see Denning Court for myself. Not in a picture or a news item. In the actual street, feeling the same wind that blew through the place where I grew up.

Or maybe I just can’t sit still with what’s in my head. Because somewhere between the police station and my aunt’s driveway, I did the thing I’d been putting off, and I typed his name into my phone. Rex Harlow. Married thirty-one years. One wife, the same one, smiling beside him in gala photos going back decades. Which means that for the three years between my birth and Elliott’s—longer, probably—my mother was his mistress.

And I can’t stop turning the questions over, each one uglier than the last. Was it steady, or did he blow through every few months when he felt like it? Did he love her, or was she just convenient? When Elliott came and the diapers and the formula ate every cent, did he set aside even a single penny, or was the twenty grand via Albatross a one-and-done event? I want to ask him. I want to stand in front of him and make him answer for every unpaid year.

But how do you get anything true out of a man you despise this completely? And worse—how do you get it out of a man who might have killed to keep it buried?

So no. I can’t sit still. Rex, Lance, Fairhaven itself—all of it can go straight to hell. I just want to stand on the one piece of ground that never lied to me about what it was.

I let myself drive on autopilot, down roads I remember, not really caring about the route. The driving itself is calming. I pass the junction with Morris Mountain Road and instinctively avert my eyes from the spot where my family’s car was found. I quickly drive on.

And then I’m slowing down at the curve. Old Oak Court, a short cul-de-sac right before mine. And now, Denning. I put my right-turn blinker on.

The houses are all different, but their locations are the same. As if someone had taken a blue house and put it where a brown one should go, and set a house with red shutters where there were once gray ones. There is a two-story where the ranch on the corner had been. I still expect to see it marked with the tire tracks from Lance’s truck.

And the third one on the right, where I used to live, is now painted sunshine yellow. It has used the footprint from the old foundations, but that’s about it. The front yard is manicured with rose bushes in pebbled plantings. The lawn has been mown into neat plaid patterns.

I stop the car and stare at it. I knew when I sold the land that someone else would build on it. But until this moment, a part of me was expecting to see the bones of the blue-painted front porch where I used to do my homework to get away from the house when I didn’t have to babysit.

It’s all gone. My childhood has been erased. Painted over in sunshine yellow by a family who will never know whose floor they’re walking on.

I drive to the end of the cul-de-sac and turn back. The Cadwalader house has a big FOR SALE sign in the yard. I pull up and sit with the engine running, staring at the sign. Alice lived here. Alice, who walked to that boathouse to tell me who my father was. Alice, who died because I left her alone for thirty seconds.

I take a breath, get out of the car, and knock on the door.

A woman about my age, dark-haired, opens it and looks at me with the brisk efficiency of somebody who assumes I have come about the house. “Can I help you? Are you interested in the property?”

“I’m sorry. I used to live on this road. Before the fire.”

She studies my face. “Oh my God. It’s you. The Bishop boy from down the street. I’m Rita. Alice’s girl.”

“Rita. Of course. My condolences on your loss.” I have only a dim memory of her—a girl a few years older than me.

There is an awkward silence as we both register our connection. Her mother died coming to meet me.

“How can I help you?” she asks. She’s not friendly, but at least she hasn’t slammed the door in my face.

“Your mom had a video that she took the day of the fire. She also had information about who my father was, but I figured that out myself. I don’t really care about that. I just want to see my brother’s face again.”

She softens slightly and looks inside the house. The living room is half in boxes. They are stacked against the walls. “She was proud of that video. She said that people should see what they lost.” She steps aside. “Come in. Let’s see if we can find it.”