In All Deep Places (22 page)

Then the memory evaporated.

The sounds of Norah yelling, “No!” while she lunged for the rifle in Nell’s hands, and of Kieran screaming, “Mommy!” as he dashed in front of his mother, and the deafening crack of the rifle shooting a bullet all seemed to meld into one sound. And then there was no sound at all except for the reverberation of a gunshot.

Kieran made no sound as he fell to the ground at his mother’s feet. The bullet wound in his back quickly turned the grass red
around Belinda’s sandals.

I
was given a waiver for my final exams, and it was a full
week before I felt mentally able to take them. By then there were only a few days left before graduation, and the diplomas had already been made out. It was assumed I would pass them all.
And I did. But just barely.

The last week of school was a blur. Later I would only re
member bits and pieces of the last four days I spent as a student
at Halcyon High School. But in the end I didn’t really care. I
didn’t really care he would never be able to adequately remember my high-school graduation or my eighteenth birthday.

What I wanted to forget and simply couldn’t was the image of Kieran falling at his mother’s feet. Nor could I forget the pitch
and tone of Norah’s sobs, nor the timbre of Nell’s horrific wails. I
couldn’t forget how the flashing lights of the ambulance and the
squad cars merrily mocked the desperation of that awful afternoon.
I couldn’t forget how the handle of the policeman’s gun poked
out of its holster while he questioned me, and how the squad car’s
radio kept squawking as I answered questions.

And what I wanted to forget most of all was that strange
obligation I had felt since I was twelve that I was somehow destined to watch out for Norah and Kieran, that I was their
strong protector, that I was meant to be a shield to them from the
trouble that seemed to haunt them. I wanted to forget it because it had all been for nothing. There was no getting by the Janvik curse. It didn’t really matter that Norah didn’t have Janvik blood in her veins, that Belinda was already pregnant with her when she moved in with Darrel Janvik. Norah was a Janvik nonetheless and the curse had welcomed her.

It was this desire to forget that kept me from expending any
energy trying to find out where Norah was, how she was coping, or
even thinking about her. Concerned about my apparent numbness,
my parents made several counseling appointments for my with my
youth pastor. But I only went to one of the appointments. I didn’t want to talk about what I saw. I wanted to forget it.

My father’s headlines kept me semi-informed of Kieran’s sur
vival, and that he had been airlifted to a children’s hospital in Des Moines but that the bullet had severed his spinal cord and he was
now paralyzed from the waist down. Nell’s agonizing defense at her arraignment was that she had never meant to fire the rifle; she’d only wanted to scare Belinda away with it. She’d never intended to
shoot anyone, she had moaned. “It’s that girl! If she hadn’t tried to get the gun away from me, this never would have happened!”

That girl. Norah.

Several days later, Nell had a mental breakdown in jail and was
put on a suicide watch.

My mother sent a bouquet of balloons to Kieran at the hospital in Des Moines the week after the shooting, signing the card
with all of our names. She did not offer to drive me down to Des
Moines to see Norah and Kieran. My dad did, but I declined.

Three weeks after the shooting, I came home from buying
a used car to the message that Norah had called and asked for me. She left a phone number but I did not recognize it. After pacing in my room for half an hour, I tried to call her back, though I
was amazed by how much I didn’t want to talk to her. But there was no answer and I decided not to try again. I didn’t know
what to say to her. I unwillingly kept replaying the shooting in my mind, over and over. Norah had grabbed for the gun to wrest it away from Nell and it was within the struggle between Norah and Nell that the gun went off, sending a bullet into Kieran’s spine. What could I say to her? What could anyone say? It was a horrible accident. But I knew that Norah would feel somewhat respon
sible for what had happened to Kieran and I didn’t want to share her anguish. Not any more. I was through with it. Through with
the Janviks and their alliance with suffering. I waited to see if
Norah would try to call me again. She didn’t.

As I prepared to leave for Iowa City the third week in Au
gust, the
Halcyon Herald
bore the news that Nell, who had been charged with attempted murder among other things, had been found incompetent to stand trial. She had been remanded to a psychiatric hospital in Davenport to be held until able, if ever, to participate in her own defense.

There were no more headlines after that. Nell was gone. And
Belinda was apparently not coming back to get Norah and Kieran’s
belongings.

“I wonder where Belinda is taking Norah and Kieran?” I
quietly said to my dad the day before I left for college.

“They’re going back to San Diego,” Dad said. I looked up from placing a duffel bag in my trunk.

“She called here today when you were out with your friends, Luke.”

I stiffened. “She did?
”

My dad nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?
”

“I’m telling you now. She didn’t leave a number for you to call her back. I guess her mother has a friend there. Norah said it’s temporary.”

“What else did she say?” I asked, staring at the contents of my trunk but not seeing any of it.

“She didn’t say hardly anything, Luke. I didn’t even recognize
her voice.” My father sounded sad. “She left an address for you,
though.”

Dad reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a slip
of paper. On it was a San Diego address.

I looked at it and hesitated. I was reminded of the other
times in my life I had wanted Norah’s address and didn’t have it. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted it after all. But my father’s hand was
extended to me and finally I reached for the slip of paper. I said nothing as I took the paper from him and shoved it inside my shirt pocket.

Later that night, in the barrenness of my bedroom, I sat
at my nearly empty desk, staring at the piece of paper that bore
Norah’s address. Underneath it was a notecard and envelope that I had taken on impulse from my mother’s desk downstairs.

The address was my only tie to Norah, and in that moment, it
seemed the only tangible proof of our friendship. I stared at the
letters and numbers, written in my dad’s very recognizable hand,
wondering what I should do. Wondering why it seemed like I only had two choices and that neither one seemed the right one to make. I couldn’t make sense of why I had no desire to write to Norah and yet why I knew I must.

I pulled a pen from the middle drawer of the desk, one of
just a few I had left when I packed the contents of my room.
Just say something. Say anything,
my nudging conscience whispered.
I put the pen to the paper:

Norah,

I’m really sorry about what happened to Kieran. And to you. I wish I could change what happened. I wish I could change a lot of things. I’m glad your mom came back for you and that you are going back to California.

Tell Kieran hello from me. Tell him I am praying for him.

Luke

I read what I’d written. Twice. I placed the notecard in
the envelope and licked it shut. It felt a little odd writing “Norah
Janvik” on the outside of the envelope knowing what I now knew;
knowing that she wasn’t a Janvik. Not really. I looked at the
spot where my new return address should go and paused, surprised
at my desire to leave it blank. I raised his head to my bedroom
window and stared for several long minutes at the dark and empty
tree house on the other side of the glass. Then I stood up, tucked the slip of paper with Norah’s address into my pants pocket and
went downstairs. I took a postage stamp from my mother’s purse
and placed it on the envelope.

I stepped outside into the cooling night and put the en
velope in my parents’ mailbox, raising the flag before I walked away.

The next afternoon as I drove away with my dreams for
the future, and as my mother cried and waved, I tried to picture Norah on a sunny, San Diego beach, in front of a cozy hotel, chatting with her guests. I tried to picture Belinda sitting in a lounge chair nearby, reading a novel and drinking iced tea. I tried to picture Kieran sitting in a wheelchair at the surf’s edge, breathing in the salted air and not feeling bitter about his dashed hopes of swimming with whales.

I tried to picture it.

But I could not.

I sped away from Halcyon wishing things were different. I
wished Nell had gotten rid of Darrel’s gun the first time it had become an invitation to disaster. I wished Norah hadn’t tried to
grab the rifle. I wished the bullet had hit Belinda’s car or a tree or a streetlight. I wished there had been nothing between me
and Norah but the simplest of times with no sorrows, no rescues, no kiss. Nothing agonizing or complicated or even breathtaking.
But I knew wishes were only for children at birthday parties. This was the real world. And sometimes it was ugly. I would have to find a way to counter the ugliness. I would have to discover a way to create my own happiness, follow my own dreams, and bury
the dead things of my childhood as surely as I had helped Kieran bury Tommy.

I felt in my pocket for the slip of paper with Norah’s ad
dress. I withdrew it, keeping one hand on the steering wheel as
I unfolded it and stared at the letters and numbers. What possible good could come from writing to her? Kissing her had been foolish enough; perpetuating my physical attraction to her by writing to
her would be ten times worse. We had no future together. And our shared past was nothing to keep alive. It was time to end it. We would both be better off. She could move on, I could forget.

I crumpled the paper into a ball and held it out the car
window. A rushing current of air tugged at the wad in my hand. At
the moment I was about to let it go, I suddenly withdrew my arm, bringing my hand back in the car, the crumpled paper safe in my closed fist. I reached over to the glove compartment, opened
it, and tossed the ball of paper inside. For a split-second, I glanced
away from the road and stared at the wad of paper now resting on a folded road atlas of the United States—a recent graduation gift. The little ball of paper looked small, insignificant, and useless sitting there.

I turned back to the road ahead of me, slamming the com
partment shut as the Halcyon city limits fell away behind me.

L
uke’s hands fell away from his laptop and he leaned back
against the bed pillows, closing his eyes. Téa stirred beside
him.

He looked down at his wife’s sleeping body, her hair against the
pillow, her form curled into an “S” next to him. It was a little after
one o’clock in the morning and he had been writing for three hours, unable to pull himself away from the manuscript. The memories
had been tumbling out of him almost faster than he could write
them. And now he had written all he could. All that he knew.

Téa turned over and cuddled next to him, draping an arm across his knees. When she and the girls arrived in Halcyon two weeks
ago, he was buried deep in responsibilities; the paper, his father’s recovery, and the writing of his memoir. But he was surprised at
the relief and peace he felt when his family arrived the day before the Wooden Shoes Festival. Téa and the girls were exhausted from the long drive across several states, but they were as glad to see him
as he was to see them. It had been a long six weeks of separation and so much had happened.

His father had made remarkable progress in rehab in that amount of time. Jack Foxbourne had regained some control over the right
side of his body and was now walking, though unsteadily and with
considerable effort, using a walker. He was able to produce sen
tences, though he had to squeeze the words out as if they were too large for the size of his mouth. His frustration was obvious, but
so was his determination. The doctors were already discussing his
release from the rehabilitation center. And with those discussions came other, less joyous talks.

Luke’s father knew before his mother that he would not be returning
to the paper. When Jack and Luke sat down with her and tried to
discuss putting it up for sale, she left the room in anger. When she
came back an hour later she told them it was not the time to talk about it. Jack eventually convinced her, with dogged determination in his unwieldy voice, that it was time to think about what was best for Luke and his family. And at this, MaryAnn finally relented.
Luke contacted a newspaper broker the next day. Four days later,
the publisher of the Carrow newspaper called him. The meeting to discuss the sale had gone well. It had been held in the staff meeting room at the rehabilitation center and ended with handshakes and
an intent to buy.

Once the paper was pried loose from MaryAnn’s heart and
head, it was surprisingly easy for her to discuss with Luke the sale of the house in Halcyon and the move to join Luke and Téa in Connecticut. Jack and MaryAnn had stayed in the guest cottage
often when they visited. It was the perfect solution to the problem
of Jack requiring a one-level home and MaryAnn’s need for assistance with Jack at just a moment’s notice. With the newspaper
sold, there was no compelling need for Jack and MaryAnn to stay
in Halcyon. And having her granddaughters playing on the floor
by her feet while they discussed this plan also soothed the ache of having to say goodbye to so many things.

Téa and the girls had been a huge help in getting the house ready to sell and helping his mother choose what to keep and what
to leave behind. And though he was nearly a month past his July I
deadline, Luke was feeling a sense of calm for the first time in two
months. The worst of his dad’s troubles were behind them, he
would soon be out from underneath the weight of the newspaper, he had a nearly complete manuscript to show Alan and he even had
some answers to his own private questions.

But he knew the manuscript was not finished.

And he knew there were still questions that begged for answers.

Luke pressed the save button on his laptop and closed the program. He turned off the computer, clicked it shut, and set it on
the bedside table next to his parents’ bed. His mother had insisted
he and Téa sleep in the master bedroom after she gave up the little
apartment in Cedar Falls. Marissa and Noelle slept in Luke’s old room and his mother had taken over Ethan’s old bedroom. Luke leaned back against the pillow again, contemplating his next move. Instinctively he had reached down to caress Téa’s arm across his legs. He was both surprised and relieved that she had so enthusiastically encouraged him in his current writing project. Téa knew
a few things about his teenage experiences with the Janvik family,
but as Luke never wished to totally relive those days, he had never said much more than a few sentences here and there.

Téa had been reading the manuscript as he printed out the pages to proof and had told him it was a story that surely needed telling even though so much of it was sad.

“I do hope there’s a happy ending in store, though,” she had told him the day before when she handed back to him the latest pages. She had just read the part about the tornado. He hadn’t yet written about Kieran getting shot, but she knew it was coming.
But Luke appreciated Téa’s insight that the story couldn’t just be about despair. It
had
to be about hope, too, or there was no point in telling it. Which is why he knew the story wasn’t finished.

Luke’s touch on Téa’s arm awakened her and she looked up at him.

“Done for tonight?” she mumbled.

“I am as done as I can be,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

“Then you’re finished?” she said raising her head.

“No.”

She waited for him to explain.

“I need to know how it ends, Téa.” He moved his fingers
through her hair.

She blinked as she digested his words. “You re going to try and
contact her.” It was not a question.

“I have to. I can’t write the ending if I don’t.”

“I suppose you can’t.”

“I can’t end it here, with the last little bit I know,” he said. “And
I want to give you that happy ending.”

She smiled, but then the smile faded. “But what if there isn’t
one.” She lowered her head and laid it on his chest.

“But I control the story somewhat,” Luke said. “I’m in it. I
can do what I can to make the ending a good one.” And as Luke
said this, he saw himself at eighteen, tossing Norah’s address into
his glove compartment, seeing it from time to time over the next
few years, then oddly one day
not
seeing it—and being inwardly
glad he no longer knew where it was. Losing the address had eased away the guilt over never looking at it again. Never sending Norah another letter. A wave of subtle remorse now swept over him. “I think maybe I
should do what I can,” he added.

Téa was silent for a moment. “But Luke, what if you can’t do it?
I mean, you can’t change the past.”

Luke stroked the back of her head. “No, I can’t. But the future
hasn’t been touched yet. It’s a blank page, to use a trite metaphor. I can have a hand in what will be written there. I think there’s unfin
ished business between Norah and me.”

“Unfinished business?” Worry lined her face.

“Things I should have told her when I had the chance.”

“Like what?”

Luke stroked her back. “Like this world where we live out our
days is not all there is. This is not as good as it gets. Remember a
couple months ago, before all this happened and when I was stuck on my Red Herring manuscript and couldn’t write anything? Remember I said I felt like I had lost my edge—that even though I
had everything, I still felt incomplete?”

“Yes,” Téa said tentatively.

“I think that’s how it is supposed to be, Téa. I’m not supposed to find all my contentment here, in this time and place. None of us are. We’re all created to long for heaven. It’s wired into us. And it’s
a good thing, not a bad thing. That’s what gets us through the hard times. Knowing there’s more.”

“I suppose you will want to go see her if you find her,” Téa said, after a long pause. “Alone?”

Luke paused before answering. “It’s not that I want to go alone. I’d much rather have you with me. But I don’t know what’s in store for me. I think it would be best if you didn’t come. Besides, with the movers coming in a couple days, Mom’s going to need your
help. If I wasn’t so late already with this manuscript I would hold
off on going until later, but I need to finish it. I need to give Alan
something.”

“I know you do,” she said, looking up at him. “And I know even more that you need to know how it ends.”

He looked down at her, grateful for Téa’s sensitivity. She
understood him completely.

“So where will you start looking for her?” she said.

“Where I left off,” Luke said, turning to switch off the reading
lamp on the table next to him. “Right here. In Halcyon.”

Luke’s mother was pulling out the contents of a kitchen cupboard when Luke came downstairs the following morning.

“I guess I won’t need all this Tupperware at the cottage,” she
said blandly. “Does Téa want some of this?”

Luke took a seat at the kitchen table and smiled. “She’s got a
cupboard of her own filled with it, Mom.”

“Oh, well,” MaryAnn sighed. “I’m sure Goodwill will take
them.”

She reached back into the cupboard and withdrew several ice cube trays.

“Mom,” Luke began, “Would you happen to know where
Norah and Kieran ended up after Belinda left with them?”

MaryAnn’s torso was half in and half out of the cupboard. Her
body froze as the question fell from Luke’s lips. She then slowly
backed out and turned to look at him. She flicked away a stray gray hair from above her eyes
.
“What brings this up?” his mother
said with a laugh. But it was a nervous laugh. She found nothing
humorous in his question; that was obvious.

Luke wondered how much he should tell her. She didn’t know
what he was working on when he sat for hours on end at his laptop. She just knew it was his latest manuscript. And he was late with it.

“I just need to know, Mom. I’ve been going over in my mind all that happened here, trying to make sense of it. I feel like I just
buried everything when I left Halcyon. And I’m thinking now I made a mistake.”

“No, you didn’t,” MaryAnn said quickly.

“Mom,” Luke said, ignoring her rebuttal, “I need to know where they ended up.”

MaryAnn blinked and swallowed. “Why?” she whispered.

“I want to know where Norah and Kieran are. I want to try and
contact them. I think I should, Mom. I think maybe I was wrong to just break off the friendship the way I did. It doesn’t feel right.”

His mother sat back against the door of the cupboard, looking
suddenly weary.

“Please just leave it be,” she said, scarcely audible.

Luke stared at her. It was like he was seventeen again and she was trying to keep him from danger. Trying to protect him from getting hurt, from getting lost in the Janvik abyss.

“I just want to talk to them,” he said, reassuringly. “I
don’t see the harm in that.”

“Please just leave it be,” his mother said again, louder this time.

Luke could tell she knew something that he did not.

“Mom, what is it?”

His mother looked long into his face before answering. “Luke,
please just let this go. Don’t go poking around in stuff that doesn’t
have anything to do with you anymore.”

“Why not? That was ages ago. What’s the big deal?”

His mother rose slowly to her feet, walked the few steps over to the kitchen table and sat down across from Luke. Her eyes were communicating something to him; he could feel it, sense it. Something had happened after Belinda took her children back to California. Something bad. And his mother knew what it was. Luke could feel something beginning to gnaw at the edge of his emotions. It was a strange mixture of dread and understanding.
He waited for her to tell him.

Finally she spoke. “Luke… Kieran died last year,” she said softly,
not daring to look at him. Two of the five words she spoke rico
cheted across Luke’s mind like darts.

Kieran. Died.

“What?” he exclaimed.

MaryAnn shook her head, obviously unhappy with how the morning was turning out. “He drowned. In the ocean.”

“Are you sure? How do you know this?”

“Because she buried him here! She—” but his mother broke
off.

“She? Belinda? Belinda buried him here?”

“No, not Belinda. Norah did. Belinda’s been dead for a few years. Drug overdose. All that money, and that’s all she could think
to do with it!”

“What money? They don’t have any money!” Luke stiffened.
“Mom, how do you know all this?”

“Because we got the fax at the newspaper about the interment, Luke. You didn’t see it because we didn’t run it. Dick Foshay from the funeral home called us and said it was sent in error. Dick said
Norah told him she didn’t want to run the death notice. She just
wanted a private burial. Here. In Halcyon. And as for the money,
well that was all over the newspapers!”

“What newspapers? What money?”

His mother brought a hand up to her forehead and rubbed
it. “The
San Diego Union Tribune,
other California papers, even Carrow got a hold of it. Dad didn’t run the story, Luke.”

“
What
story?” Luke said.

“The police initially suspected that Norah had killed her
brother. That she had gotten him onto that boat and then pushed him overboard because Kieran had half of Belinda’s estate.”

“Estate? Belinda had an
estate?”