A Stillness of Chimes (28 page)

“Okay. I’ll keep you posted.”

But Laura had already ended the call. She never ended a call so abruptly. She must have been about to start crying.

She wasn’t the only one. Cassie’s insides were a muddle of worries. She wanted Drew to help her sort things out, but he was so tied down to his
business that she couldn’t keep him on the phone long enough for a meaningful conversation. He cared. Of course he cared. He was just too busy to talk to his wife.

Her dad had been too busy for his wife too, for years. If all entrepreneurs were that way, Sean would be too busy for Laura. They’d be better off without each other.

“Give up on the matchmaking,” Cassie whispered. Marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Sniffling a little, she practiced a happy face for her mother’s benefit and walked back inside.

It was only late afternoon but Laura was so short on sleep that she could have sworn it was midnight. She and Sean had eaten an early supper because they’d both forgotten to eat lunch. Finished with the cleanup, which meant throwing away paper plates and a pizza box, she peeked out the kitchen window.

Sean stood at the porch railing, looking up at the mountains. After a nearly windless day, a healthy breeze streamed through the gap, playing with his wild-man hair that lay straight and long on his collar. His shirt nearly matched the shade of his faded jeans.

He’d stood there a long time. Either he expected to see her dad stroll out of some little hollow, or he thought it was a good spot to play bodyguard.

He took the role seriously. Except for a quick trip to pick up the pizza and to grab a few things from his house, he’d stayed all day, obsessing over the locks and the security lights while she sorted her mom’s belongings.

Blocking Mikey’s escape route with her foot, Laura stepped onto the
porch. She hoped the stiff wind would blow itself out before dark. She didn’t want to spend another night with her imagination making footfalls out of every gust and her dad’s voice out of every scraping branch.

Sean hummed some sad tune as he studied the mountains. She’d always loved to watch him when he was wrapped up in a song, his eyes dreamy. She could have stood there all night, listening.

He had always been there for her. He’d stuck up for her, from the playground in primary school to the halls of the high school. Sure, he tried to act like he was her boss—then and now—but that went both ways. In spite of their eternal power struggle, they would always be friends. Maybe they could be more than friends again, someday. Somewhere far from Dale.

She recognized the melody Sean was humming—an old Scots ballad about crows watching a man die in the wilderness. It had been funny in a macabre way when her dad sang it, years ago. Now? Not so much.

“That’s a gruesome song,” she said.

“Yeah. Sorry.” He looked at her, looked at her hard. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Go on home, Sean. Nothing has happened all day, and nothing’s going to happen all night. I’ll be fine, especially now with the new locks and the security lights.”

“I’m staying. Deal with it.”

Laura didn’t argue. Deep inside, she didn’t want to be alone.

She joined him at the railing. Scanning the hills, she imagined her dad home again. She could almost remember his voice. Almost.

“What’s wrong?” Sean asked.

Drat him. He read her too easily.

“It has been kind of a tough day,” she said. “And maybe it’s just because I’m so tired, but I can’t seem to get Dad’s face out of my mind, but I can’t
quite remember him either. Not clearly. Not his face, not his voice. It’s all muddy.”

“I know what you mean.”

“And it’s like my heart is divided. One part hopes I can have him back. The other part is afraid I can’t—or I’ll have him back but he’ll be too changed.”

Sean only nodded, leaving her to sort out her fears in silence. Even if her dad was alive, even if he came back, he might be beyond mending. He might as well have died. Yet she still hoped.

Fear and hope. Like tectonic plates, those opposing forces shoved against each other, building pressure. Something had to give.

Let him go
, said one voice in her head.
He’s gone already
.

Another voice said:
Hang on. Keep the faith. Keep believing
.

It was like straddling a fault and waiting for an earthquake to hit. On one side of the fault, her dad still lived and was, somehow, fixable. Could be restored to his old life. Could be loved and comforted, at least. On the other side lay a plane where she’d never have her dad back—at least not the way she’d known him. But she couldn’t decide which side of the fault to stand on, and she couldn’t arrange the outcome, anyway. She could only try to brace herself for the coming cataclysm.

“I know you must cry in private sometimes,” Sean said matter-of-factly. “You can cry in front of me too, honey.”

She let out a puny laugh. “You really want me to cry, don’t you? You think it would be therapeutic.”

“Yes ma’am. Would you just shut up and cry, please? Stop fighting it.”

“I’m not fighting anything.”

“You’re fighting a normal reaction to all the stress you’re under. You’ve
lost your mom, you want to believe your dad is back, and now you’re dealing with your mom’s indiscretions. Alleged indiscretions, that is. Then there’s your trespasser—”

“My dad isn’t a trespasser, Sean. This is his house.”

“Laura, at some point you might have to face the fact that he really isn’t back, can’t come back, ever.”

Suddenly she’d decided where she stood. “That’s not a fact. It’s an opinion. I believe he’s alive, and I believe he’s not beyond help.”

Sean had no quick comeback this time. His expression had changed in some subtle way, as if he’d tuned her out.

“Listen,” he said abruptly. “That’s it. That’s the hole in the night.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When I drove over at three in the morning, I noticed but I didn’t understand. Just listen. Then tell me what you hear.”

A distant siren, miles away. Birds. The wind, rushing through millions of green leaves and brown branches.

Laura held her breath. Something was missing.

She didn’t hear the random music that had always sung along with the wind. Something had stilled her mother’s wind chimes—or someone had taken them.

Only one person on earth would want those wind chimes.

Giddy with fear and hope, she turned toward Sean. “He’s back. He’s really back.”

Sean didn’t answer, but she saw the doubt in his eyes.

He opened his arms and drew her close. They had chosen different sides. Different tectonic plates. She clung to him anyway, while the wind ran around the little house like water around a boulder in a stream.

Sean stood in the living room and studied the rope he’d taken down from the little magnolia tree. The rope was thin, brown, discolored by years in the weather. It ended in a fresh cut, delivered by a sharp instrument. The center of the rope was white and clean.

Who would have gone into the backyard to cut down Jess’s wind chimes? If the house stood in town, close to other homes, a difficult neighbor might fuss about the noise and cut down the chimes out of spite. Out here, though, nearly in the country, with lots of room between houses? Nobody had ever cared. Elliott had given them to Jess one Valentine’s Day, long before he disappeared.

Laura’s theory was that Elliott had taken them. Sean wasn’t inclined to agree with her, but whoever it was, he’d used a very sharp knife. He was probably the same man she’d seen at her window. That was the night the new silence had started, but Sean hadn’t realized the chimes were gone until tonight.

He moved toward the couch, careful not to wake her. Even after their unsettling discovery, exhaustion had caught up with her.

At least she’d eaten a little. Not much, though. He wished Elliott’s old hound dog was still around to eat the leftovers. Geezer was long gone, though. After a couple of weeks of moping for his vanished master, the dog had disappeared too.

Fighting off the image of Elliott at the edge of the woods, whistling softly for his dog, Sean crouched beside Laura. He brushed a lock of hair off her cheek. She didn’t react.

He straightened. He had to talk things over with his brother—on the
porch, so his voice wouldn’t wake her. But the sensor had already kicked the security lights on, and he’d feel like he was on stage. An easy target.

At the back door, he hit the switch that killed those too-bright lights. Instantly, it was a normal twilight. He walked onto the porch and around the side where he could see across the road. In the fading light, the azaleas in the tall tin vase looked more purple than pink.

From this angle, looking across the hillside, the graveyard was like a little cityscape, the gravestones its skyscrapers and towers. The plots, divided by cement curbs, were city blocks. Even the flowers decorating the graves fit into the scene, looking like flowering shrubs beside the towers. A city of the dead. A city that awaited another new citizen.

Someone was going to die.

The notion settled on him like a blanket of ice. A premonition, he would have called it, if he’d believed in such things.

But everyone was going to die, someday. It was only a matter of time. Tonight, though, or tomorrow or next week, it had better not be Laura. He wanted to see her live to play with their grandchildren. Their great-grandchildren too, if they didn’t waste too much time.

He walked toward the far end of the porch. The side that looked out on mountains instead of graves. He settled into the chair, pulled out his phone, and tried to collect his thoughts. He had to swear Keith to secrecy and bring him up to date. He shouldn’t get involved unless he knew the whole story and what a mess it was. Adultery … maybe … and lies … maybe. And maybe there’d even been some bloodshed early on, if that car in the lake meant anything.

The conversation proved to be even harder than he’d anticipated. Keith blasted him.

“All this is going on, and you haven’t called the sheriff? Sean, that’s flat-out irresponsible.”

“Laura has her reasons for wanting to keep the law out of it.”

“Does she have a better answer than the law?”

“We just want to find Elliott before somebody else does. If he’s alive, that is.”

“Stop saying ‘if,’ okay? We’re going to play a little game of Let’s Pretend. Pretend he’s alive. He doesn’t want to be found, obviously. Even if he’s close to town, we could search for months and never find a trace of him—unless we get into his head.”

Sean fell silent, trying to drop his skepticism and be a willing believer. Just for a while.

Where would Elliott hide? How close to town? Where would he feel at home?

At his boyhood home. The old cabin. Out of town, but not too far. It was a falling-down wreck, but Elliott could create a shelter out of nothing.

“I think the cabin makes sense,” Sean said.

“I do too. It’s within walking distance of town. A long walk, but doable.”

“I should stake it out. Soon. You want to come?”

“I’ll think about it,” Keith said. In the background, there was a sudden crash, followed by the shrill wail of his youngest. “I’d better go rescue Annie. I’ll talk to you later.”

Sean put his phone away, resigned to doing his stakeout alone. Keith was a family man and a sensible guy who listened to his wife. Annie would tell him he didn’t need to run around the countryside chasing a phantom.

Night had fallen fast. The mountains loomed black against the dark sky, seeming closer than they really were. If Sean blocked off the lights of the
church with his hand, he could imagine himself in the midst of the Southern Nantahala Wilderness, miles from another living soul.

Night sounds gathered around him, took him in. Far away, a fox barked. Nearby, spring peepers and a whippoorwill made their racket against the backdrop of a constant wind.

A sudden yipping and yelping exploded in the hills. Coyotes. They sounded like a flock of demented birds. They usually saved their eerie ruckus for early morning, but something must have set them off. He was glad Mikey was safe inside.

Time to go in, before he started believing in ghosts and haunts. He went in and turned on the outside lights again. They threw the yard and the porch into stark, artificial daylight. He didn’t blame Laura for hating them.