The Missing Place (18 page)

Shay couldn't speak. Paul Mitchell, who her son had befriended, who he had called his
best
friend, was more than just the sweet-faced, shy boy in the picture his mother carried. He was capable of violence, and he'd lost control before.

“The lawyers laid it out for us. With Paul being a minor, we didn't have a chance, especially because the school had just started this huge antibullying campaign and there were a number of kids and teachers willing to testify that Darren and the other kid, who was way worse, had a clear and demonstrable habit of taunting Paul. And the Mitchells had their lawyers, I swear to you, before you could
blink. They threw money at this like . . . and the other boy's father was out of work and they didn't have money for a defense, and Darren ended up needing some therapy that our insurance company wouldn't cover. My husband . . . the Mitchells' lawyer was offering to pay for everything, all his therapy, they promised to make Paul go to anger management and quit the football team, and the school worked it out so the boys would never even have class in the same wing.”

“Sweet holy Mary,” Shay said weakly. “Did he ever do it again? To anyone else?”

“Not that I know of, but who can say? His mom watched him like a hawk after that. Look. I'm not saying, you know . . . I mean, it's her son, what's she going to do? But she never contacted us, never an apology. My husband says we have to let it go, because of all the legal stuff, but I've seen her at Safeway, she turns her cart around and walks away, she won't even look at me. First her son almost kills Darren and then it's
my
fault?”

“I . . . appreciate you telling me this. I won't mention your name.”

“Thank you. Can I ask, what set him off this time?”

Shay thought fast. She couldn't afford to raise any more suspicions. “My son was friends with a boy named Taylor. They were popular on the rig, kind of the ringleaders. I guess they pulled some sort of harmless prank on Paul, and he reacted badly.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Nan said bitterly. “Look, I'm as sorry as the next person for the kids who don't fit in. But it doesn't make it the fault of the ones who do, does it?”

AT SEVEN THIRTY,
Colleen was wondering if it was too early to wake Shay. She'd already made up the bed and packed her bag for the showers and tried to read the book she'd brought, but she'd been up for an hour and a half and hadn't been able to get through more than a few paragraphs.

Someone tapped softly at the door. Colleen jumped off the vinyl bench, her heart pounding. She opened the door and found Roland's girlfriend standing outside, her breath making clouds in the sunless morning air.

“Nora, right?” she said. “For heaven's sake, come in, it's freezing out there.”

“I'm so sorry to just show up like this. Oh—I didn't realize—”

Colleen followed her gaze. Shay was propping herself on her elbow, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“No, please, it's okay. Shay, Nora's here. Roland's girlfriend.”

“Uh-huh.” Shay's voice was throaty from sleep.

Colleen shut the door behind Nora and they sat at the dinette table. Colleen was glad she'd tidied up, but the close quarters smelled of sleep and morning breath, and Shay's clothes lay on the floor where she'd shucked them off.

“I'll only stay a minute. It's just that there's something I think you should know. I didn't hardly sleep last night, trying to figure out if I should tell you.”

“If you can help us, I don't care if you move in.” Shay pulled the covers up over her shoulders, her hair clinging to them, charged with static electricity.

“Look, Roland doesn't know I'm here.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Actually . . . there are a few things Roland doesn't know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, look. Before I explain, because you're going to think I'm a horrible person, there's a few things I have to tell you. My ex is out of work, and Roland sends just about every penny home to
his
ex after he pays his bills. You know I don't make much money teaching. And I can't switch jobs, not if I want to be there for Ellie. So a while back, when my rent went up almost double what it was, one of the other teachers, someone I've got close to, told me about a way to make some money.”

She dropped her gaze to her lap, her hands twisted together tightly. “Her husband works on the rigs too. What happened was, he got pulled into this mess where a guy was threatening to sue the company for an injury he said was caused by failure to install the right equipment. My friend's husband went on record saying that wasn't the case. He was just telling the truth. But then . . . well, a guy came out to their house and handed him an envelope. Said the company really valued his integrity and wanted to thank him, and to let them know if there were any other . . . areas of dissatisfaction where the company could do a better job of meeting its workers' needs. Right? Like, using really vague language. And in that envelope, there was five thousand dollars in
cash.
Well, he wasn't stupid. He knew exactly what they were looking for. He gave over a couple of names, a few details.”

“You're saying that he turned in his coworkers who were . . . what, threatening to sue?”

“Not even that, necessarily, just the ones who were potential problems, either because they complained a lot at work, or talked about filing complaints or contacting lawyers or the news. Anything, really. They wanted to know who the ‘troublemakers' were”—she made air quotes—“and then they handled it. My friend said the guys her husband turned in ended up being let go before too long. They just got jobs on other companies' rigs, but management didn't care because they weren't
their
problem anymore.”

“So you're saying that Roland—”

“Not Roland,” Nora said fiercely. “
Me.
I made the call. I met the guy in a Starbucks over in Minot and all I had to do was pass along a few names that Roland mentioned to me. He promised that nothing would go on their permanent record, that there were a dozen different ways they could be let go and they'd be working again in a week, somewhere else. I made seven thousand dollars in one afternoon. That's how I paid for Christmas and caught up on my rent. I even flew my mom up here.”

Her voice had taken on a defiant edge. Colleen waited for Shay to blast her for what she'd done, but Shay merely watched her, twisting her hair around her finger.

“Look, I'd never have done it if I thought anyone would get
hurt.
And honestly, I don't think the company's doing anything, you know, real bad. I
don't
believe they would ever hurt any of their employees, for what it's worth. But I thought you should know, okay?”

She was already standing up, tugging her purse strap over her shoulder.

“I . . . thank you for coming to us,” Colleen said.

“You're not going to say anything to Roland, are you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Good. Thank you. And I . . . I'll be praying for you.”

As the door closed, Shay lay back down and pulled the covers up over her head, her voice muffled as she said, “Amazing how easy it is to buy people these days.”

SHAY SAID LITTLE
during their drive to the truck stop, breakfast, the wait for the showers. Colleen figured they both were entitled to silence when talking didn't suit them, but when they finally were on the road again, headed for the rig, she couldn't stand it anymore.

“Is there anything I can do? Do you want to talk about it?”

Shay said nothing, staring straight ahead at the road. The sky was a vivid, clear blue and the sun blazed down on the wintry landscape, softening the top layer of snow despite the temperature hovering around ten degrees. Her mouth seemed tight, her profile especially tense. Colleen was about to ask a second time when Shay let the car drift over on the shoulder, braking slowly until they came to a stop. The landscape was eerily uniform on all sides: endless rolling fields of white, weed stubble poking through here and there, snow crusted with grit piled at the edge of the row.

Colleen was digging in her purse for tissues, getting ready to offer comfort, when Shay said coldly, “I know about Darren Terry.”

Darren Terry.
The name was daggers, ice picks, chain saws. Colleen had worked so hard to bury the memory that its invocation was like a rock shattering glass, leaving shards everywhere. Neither she nor Andy had spoken that name aloud since they met in their attorney's office to countersign the settlement four years ago.

They had talked about moving away from Sudbury, and sometimes, when Colleen glimpsed Nan Terry driving around town in her little BMW or running along the Blue Hills trail, she still wondered if it would have been better if they had. But that would have meant
forcing Paul to start over at another school for his sophomore year and finding all new therapists and a new psychiatrist, just as he'd finally gotten comfortable with the current ones. And besides, no one knew, besides the Mitchells and the Terrys and the lawyers and the school administration, which was the whole point.

No one knew. But Shay, who had known her less than forty-eight hours, was staring at her with revulsion and fear, just like Nan Terry had looked at her at the Safeway last fall the one time Colleen broke her own rule and didn't make the trip over to the Norfolk grocery, just in case.

“How—”

“
Fuck
how,” Shay snapped, cutting her off. “Tell me
exactly
what Paul did and why.”

“He . . .” Colleen's mouth moved, but nothing came out. How many times had she had this conversation with herself? How many times had she told herself this story in an attempt to find some new angle, some softening, some abatement—to soothe herself?

“Paul is severely dyslexic, and he has ADHD. And he also used to suffer from oppositional defiant disorder.”

“Oppositional
what
?”

In that word was reflected all the skepticism Colleen herself had ever felt, every bit of Andy's resistance, every conversation with Paul's teachers through the years when she pleaded for a little extra understanding, a second chance, a do-over.

“I know it sounds . . . made up, but it's a real diagnosis. It's often linked with dyslexia and attention deficit. For kids like Paul, ordinary schoolwork can be incredibly frustrating. Especially in adolescence. Everyday things we take for granted are really difficult for—”

“Lots of kids are frustrated,” Shay said, her voice thin steel. “Lots of kids suck at school. And they don't have half of what you
were able to give your kid, and they still don't go around beating the shit out of other kids.”

“You don't understand,” Colleen said, feeling the remainder of her composure crumpling. She was having trouble breathing, her gut tightening. “They teased him. Every day of his life since kindergarten, someone was always picking on him. Ever since they started learning to write and Paul began to understand that he was different. All through school, and we come from an incredibly competitive district, the kids are attuned to the expectations—”

“
My
kid got teased.
Every
kid gets teased. All through fourth grade Taylor got called Shrek because he was tall and his ears stuck out. But you just tell them to
deal
with it.”

“It's . . . it's something you're born with,” Colleen continued doggedly. “He was . . . he didn't hurt Taylor. That's what you're thinking, isn't it? That he hurt him?”

Tears flooded her eyes, making her vision blurry. Her hand found the tissues in her purse, and she pulled out a clump and pressed them against her face.

“How can you say? After he nearly killed that boy? Over a little teasing?”

Colleen twisted in her seat so she could look directly at Shay. “It wasn't just a
little
teasing! It was every day at football, every single day. Calling him a retard. A
monkey.
Darren and the other kid, Tanner, he was even worse. It wasn't even about the dyslexia, anyway, it was over a girl Tanner had been interested in, this girl Paul took to the homecoming dance, and he'd known Paul since back in grade school when Paul used to have a specialist shadow him in second grade. I mean, it had been almost a
decade
, but when Tanner got upset about this girl, he just brought it up again like it was yesterday, and Paul reacted.”

She knew that Shay must have heard the evasion, the desperate denial in her voice. “And Paul and Taylor were
friends.
You said it. You said Taylor told you about Paul. That they were—that they were close.”

“But Paul never told you about Taylor. Right?”