Justice Page 5

  It didn’t make up for the fact that they weren’t there anymore. Nothing in the house had changed since they’d passed away. Billy still slept in his old room, even though it wasn’t very big and the bed wasn’t very big and he was a big, big man. Billy left their room the way it was, the way it had been. He’d never gone in there very much anyway, but sometimes he got really lonely and missed them and he’d go in and just sit on the bed for a while, pretend they were downstairs or just out for a drive or something. Billy wasn’t very good at pretending but it helped.

  The rest of the time he usually got better by spending time in the woods. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Billy didn’t have contact with many people. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them, it was just that they were either scared of him or said things behind his back, things that were just loud enough that he couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying but from the way they said them and the way they snickered afterward he knew were mean, bad things to say.

  Frank had never been like that. He’d been friends with Billy’s aunt and uncle because Frank’s parents had been friends with them. Now it seemed like Frank had changed, didn’t want to be around him anymore. Billy knew something was wrong, knew that people were saying mean things about Frank now the same way people had always said mean things about Billy. Billy wanted to help Frank but he didn’t know what to do.

  A lot of bad things had happened that Billy didn’t understand. He still had bad dreams about dead people and sometimes would just be sitting there in the house by himself and would get really scared and wouldn’t know why. Before all those bad things had happened Billy could always just walk across the field to Frank’s place, and they’d just sit there in Frank’s kitchen and talk about Billy’s aunt and uncle and if Billy had anything that was bothering him he could just tell Frank and Frank would listen and not make fun of him or say he was stupid.

  Billy knew he wasn’t very smart, knew that he didn’t understand people, especially women. He’d said that to Frank one night and Frank had just laughed, said he didn’t understand them either. Still, Billy had a roof over his head and enough money to buy groceries and he was healthy and he could remember a time not very long ago when he had none of those things. And he had Frank as a friend and knew that Frank would always help him if he could. Billy didn’t know anybody else he could ask to do that.

  Most of the time when Billy came over they’d hardly say anything, just watch sports on television and have a few drinks. Billy liked that because then they’d be sitting there like they were just a couple of buddies on the beer commercials and he’d feel like a regular person, not somebody who people stared at and laughed at behind his back and were scared of.

  One day he’d looked across the field and Frank’s truck was gone and it was still gone that night and still gone the next morning and it had stayed gone for what seemed like a long time.

  Then Billy looked across the field at Frank’s house one morning and Frank’s pickup truck was just sitting there in the driveway. He wanted to walk over, just say hello, but at first he held back and he wasn’t sure why. Finally he did, later that afternoon, but even though Frank’s truck was in the driveway there was no answer when Billy knocked timidly on the door. Billy had stood there for almost a minute, not knowing what to do. Maybe Frank was asleep or in the bathroom or something. Billy decided he’d better not bother him, turned away and went back across the field to where he lived. He did the same thing again the next day but Frank didn’t come to the door. Billy told himself that even though Frank’s truck was there maybe he wasn’t home at all.

  Billy didn’t try again, but in the next couple of days he kept looking across the field and finally noticed movement at the front of the house. It was just starting to rain when he saw Frank walk out into his front yard. It was a long way between their houses and it was hard to see what Frank was doing but it looked like he was carrying something. Billy watched as Frank stopped, close to the road, and stood up some kind of sign on a stake. He pounded the top of the stake into the ground with a hammer and then put his hand on the top edge of the sign and shook it back and forth like he was making sure it was in the ground far enough. Then he pounded it down a little farther and walked back toward the house.

  Billy was about to go over and see what he’d been doing when he heard Frank’s truck start up and then drive away toward town. He waited for a few minutes just in case Frank came back and then walked over to Frank’s. The sign was facing right out toward the road so he had to walk right in front of it to see what the sign said. Billy couldn’t read very well but he could read well enough to know what the letters FOR SALE meant. He stood there and looked at it for a while, then turned around and walked back.

  11

  The errand to the grocery store had been a big deal, one of the few outings she’d had since they’d released her from hospital. It was a measure of how bad things had been that both Emily and her mother had actually been excited about it. Something that had always been routine, a chore, had turned into a happy adventure for both of them.

  That had all changed when they saw Frank. At first Emily hadn’t recognized him, but she was still having trouble with things like that. There was a desolation about him that she thought must have had something to do with what had happened between he and Adrienne, something Emily knew she herself had caused.

  Emily had felt her mother’s body stiffen at Frank’s approach. He must have seen it too, because he’d stopped short a few feet away from them. The conversation had been brief and unnatural, her mother’s tone unrelenting and cold. Emily had wanted to say something, almost anything, because she could hear the ice in Adrienne’s voice and see that Frank was doing nothing to deserve it. The trouble was that Emily couldn’t think of anything to say that would make sense, even to her. She was getting better, but she couldn’t make words come out easily the way they used to, had to rehearse them in her mind before she could trust herself to say them. Then the moment was gone and Frank was walking away and her mother was guiding her into the store.

  Their pathetic little expedition into normalcy had been ruined, even though her mother had said nothing more about it. Emily knew anyway, knew from the faint brittle edge that had come into her movements and her voice. They hadn’t stayed long—steering a cart was out of the question when Adrienne insisted on keeping one hand free in case Emily needed her support—so she just hooked a plastic basket over her arm and filled it with inconsequential items that they probably didn’t need anyway. It was all just an excuse to get Emily out of the house, and even though Emily recognized it for what it was she was grateful for it.

  As short as it had been the trip to the store had been exhausting. When they got back to the house Emily went into the living room while Adrienne put away the few things they’d bought and emptied the dishwasher. Emily could tell she was still upset. Dishes and cutlery rattled a little too much, cupboard doors weren’t exactly slammed but closed more firmly than they had to be. She could picture her mother’s set, tight expression, knew her movements would be abrupt and filled with coiled anger.

  Emily felt like a different person now, diminished and afraid, content to stay cocooned in the same house that had once felt cloying and claustrophobic. All the maturity and reckless self-assurance she’d once felt had just vaporized and left her feeling like an insecure little girl instead of the headstrong young woman she’d been.

  She’d betrayed her mother and she supposed she’d even betrayed Frank Stallings. She knew her mother too well. At some point Adrienne would have ended the relationship anyway. Emily had seen it happen, with her own father years before and then with the few other men who’d followed. Adrienne Simmonds would stay with them only so long and then push them away or more likely just walk away herself, leave before her own feelings threatened her overriding instincts of self-preservation and independence.

  The men never understood that, either got angry and just left or more often just pushed harder, eventually sho
wed up at the door the way Frank had. That had never worked, not for any of them.

  Emily could remember all that, but the exception was what had happened with Wellner. That was time out of her life cloaked in horrific darkness and she didn’t want that memory back. The police had asked her about it, their questions pushing at the edges of her memory, and the more they pushed the more terrified she had become, everything inside her closing down to a tiny pinprick of light that flickered into a black hole and then went out entirely. The next thing she knew her mother was almost shoving the cop and his female partner out of the house, furious with them in a way she’d never seen before.

  The problem now was that somehow their questions and the passage of time had admitted a sliver of light that she just couldn’t close. At night she was assailed by vivid scattershot bursts of recall that robbed her of sleep.

  “Are you alright?”

  Her mother was standing in the doorway. She looked worried, concerned the way she’d become since all of this had happened. Emily had been lost in her own thoughts, couldn’t think how long Adrienne had been there.

  “I’m seeing things. Things are coming back to me.”

  “What do you mean? What things?”

  “About Jimmy, awful things about Jimmy. I thought they were dreams or something. But they’re not, they can’t be. They must be real. We have to tell Frank.”

  Adrienne shook her head, walked to the couch and sat down beside her. At first Emily thought she was angry at her mention of Frank, but instead she wrapped Emily tightly in her arms and stroked her hair, a habit she’d fallen into in the last few months. After what had happened with Terry Wellner Emily had been virtually catatonic, and their relationship had rocketed backward in time, back to that of a mother and her little girl. If Adrienne had done the same thing before all of that had happened Emily would either have laughed at her or pushed her away, but the truth was that her mother would never have done that a few months ago. She hadn’t done that since Emily was very young. They stayed like that for what seemed like a long time, until Adrienne pulled gently away, only far enough to look her daughter in the eyes.

  “We don’t ‘have’ to do anything, Emily – not after what you’ve been through. It’s all over with, anyway. And I’m not letting you anywhere near Frank Stallings.”

  That was something else Emily wanted to get over and done with. Her mother had seen what she’d written, knew what she’d done, but they’d never talked about it. There hadn’t been time, and all the time in the world probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Adrienne had convinced herself that Frank was to blame for what had happened. The alternative was to believe Emily had betrayed her. In spite of what she’d read on Emily’s laptop Adrienne had created an alternate reality where her daughter was blameless and innocent. Maybe she needed Emily that way so that she could take care of her, and for that to happen she needed to assign all the blame to Frank. Emily tried to gather her thoughts, put the words in the right order so she’d get them right. She’d be too exhausted to try again. Finally she looked up at her mother.

  “I have to tell you what happened with Frank.”

  She could feel her mother pulling away. Adrienne looked back at her and for a moment Emily saw the same coldness in her eyes that Adrienne usually reserved for lesser mortals.

  “I know what happened with Frank,” Adrienne said, her voice flat. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “It was my fault. It was dark and he thought it was you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “That’s what happened. He thought the two of you were alone in the house. I was away that night, remember? That’s why he was there. You had the house to yourself so you brought him into the house so you could fuck him.”

  Adrienne disengaged from her daughter, started to stand up. Emily put a hand on her arm.

  “Stay here, Mom.”

  Adrienne shot her a quick, unguarded glance. Emily called her that only rarely, even now, and it was still unaccustomed to them both. Emily could see her eyes soften, just for a moment, and then the ice was back. It was as if there was no connection between them at all.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Adrienne said. “It happened.”

  “It does matter,” Emily told her.

  “Why?” Adrienne asked. “So you can feel better? You saw that I had something that you didn’t so you had to have it too? So you could just wreck something, destroy it?”

  “Why not?” Emily snapped, not caring anymore. “You would have destroyed it anyway.”

  12

  Going out to the woods usually made Billy feel better but it didn’t this time. The rain had stopped overnight but water was still dripping from the branches overhead and the path he usually took was still wet and muddy, the ground soft. The path was narrow enough and Billy was big enough that his head and shoulders kept brushing against the leaves and branches on either side of the path. He was soaked by the time he’d gone half a mile. He’d taken his fishing stuff with him. There was a stream back there and it was one of his favorite places.

  The trees and branches and brush were all really close to the banks of the stream so there wasn’t any room for even a normal sized man, let alone Billy, to reach back and cast. He’d been coming here for years, though, so it was automatic for him to put the old rod together, bait the little spinner with one of the worms he’d dug up and just toss it in the water. He was still feeling sad about Frank driving away and not even telling him about the sign. He was feeling something else too, something that he wasn’t used to, and it took a while for him to figure out what it was. He was feeling like he was mad at Frank and he didn’t like that feeling at all.

  He was still thinking about it when the first trout hit. It was too small to keep so he threw it back, but after that nothing happened for nearly an hour. It was still nice there, though, nice being outside, and it was warm enough that he didn’t feel like being anywhere else or going home. The second trout came just as he was dozing off and he nearly missed the strike. This one was bigger, big enough to keep, and he did what he’d always done, swung it over onto the bank and then picked up a rock, banged it on the head to kill it. Even as he brought the rock down he felt something strange, but by then he’d already done it. A flick of his massive wrist and the trout was dead. He looked down at it, saw the flat deadness of its eye and thought he could see the colors on its flanks already fading. There were grains of dirt and mud on it from where it had landed on the bank and he suddenly felt like he’d done something terrible, something wrong, taken something out of the middle of its life and put it somewhere dirty. He wanted to throw it back into the clear, cold water and see it swim away, back into the life that it had been living only a few seconds ago, but even Billy knew it was too late for that, knew he’d wasted its life for nothing.

  He stayed on his knees for a long time, just looking down at it, then scrabbled a small hole in the ground with his fingers and gently laid the trout in it. He thought of something and cupped his huge hands and leaned over, reached into the stream and filled them with water and then, holding his fingers tightly together so all the water wouldn’t drain out again, he went back to where the trout lay and gently opened his fingers little by little over the trout until little beads of water glistened all up and down its side. Then he couldn’t look any more and hurriedly covered it up. He felt suddenly colder and even more alone than he had before. He stood up and looked around him, then picked up his gear and started back to the house.

  13

  “You should have called me, Frank.”

  At first he hadn’t recognized her. He’d stopped downtown only long enough to go to the bank and he was on his way back to the truck when he saw an attractive redhead in a business suit walking toward him. She was carrying a slim briefcase and flashing a big smile at someone. It took a moment for Frank to realize the smile was for him.

  Frank didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. He and Angela Lowry had a histor
y, but what little there was of it had ended four years ago. She’d been the one who’d ended it after only a few weeks, losing her temper one night and angrily telling Frank she was tired of taking second place to his job as police chief.

  Frank had heard that one before and he hadn’t argued with her, was in fact secretly relieved. She had taken dead aim at him, one of the few single men in town who had a responsible job and was over thirty, but in spite of spectacular and exhausting sex had finally concluded that their relationship wasn’t going to work, wasn’t going to go where she wanted it to go. He was still trying to get used to the Chief’s job, not to mention moving back to the town he hadn’t lived in for over twenty years .In the end there hadn’t been any rancor on either side, just a kind of weary recognition that her expectations were different from his. Since then she’d reinvented herself as a real estate agent, and from the way she was dressed Frank could tell business was good.

  “I can sell it for you, you know,” her smile was bright but professional, not much warmth in it. “And I can get more for it than you ever would.”

  Frank finally caught up. She’s seen the sign.

  “The house?” he said finally.

  “Of course, the house,” she said, opening her handbag and handing him a business card. “What did you think I was talking about?”

  The wry smile on her face told him she knew exactly what he thought she’d been talking about.

  “Angie, I just put the sign up.”

  “You can’t get away with anything in this town, Frank. You know that.”

  Frank flinched in spite of himself. She saw it, had the grace to blush.

  “You know what I mean, Frank. I was out there this morning with a client and I noticed when we drove by. You should have called me.”