White Picket Fences (32 page)

“Chase needs us, Neil. He needs you.”

Neil shook his head. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Amanda sought his eyes. “You’re wrong. He does want to talk to you, I’m sure of it. That’s what he wanted last night. More than anything. You know I’m right.”

“Last night? Last night was a…”

“A cry for help! I knew it, and I still walked away from him. He was begging you to open up to him, Neil.”

“He was accusing me of not being there for him!”

“He was telling you how much he’s missed you.”

Neil scanned the lot and looked down at his feet. “Do we have to talk about this here?”

“Well, when do you suppose we’ll talk about this, Neil?”

A second of angry silence hung between them.

Neil sighed heavily. “I don’t know what to say to him now. I don’t even know what came between us.”

Amanda closed her eyes.
“You
came between you and Chase. You and your need to keep alive this illusion that we’ve got the perfect life.” She opened her eyes. “I know, because I let the same distance come between you and me. We both did. And it’s nearly finished us, Neil.”

He’d been looking away, but he jerked his head back and studied her face. “What do you mean?”

“I began to imagine what it would be like to walk away.” Fresh tears spilled from her eyes.

“Walk away? You mean leave me?”

“I couldn’t handle imagining it, Neil. It felt like death. But I can’t see us staying how we are, either. I just feel this horrible spinning no matter which way I look. It’s like our world is crashing in around us, on all sides. That’s what I want you to stop. I want you to see it. And stop it.”

“Well, what if I can’t stop it?” Still the anger, still the fear.

“I’m not asking you to fix something that can’t be fixed! Just admit it’s broken. I can learn to live with broken.”

Neil paced a few steps away from her and then walked back. “I don’t know how to tell Chase about what I tried to protect him from. What if he can’t understand why I did it? What if we lose him?”

Amanda touched his arm. “Every day that we don’t talk about this, we’re losing him anyway. I’m sure of it, Neil.”

He sighed heavily. “All right.”

For several seconds, neither said anything. Neil looked over his shoulder at the gymnasium. “Do we have to go back in?” he said.

“I think it’s almost over,” she breathed.

Neil’s cell phone began to vibrate in his pocket.

“Probably Delcey wondering where we are,” Amanda said.

Neil pulled the phone out. “It’s not Delcey.” He flipped it open. “Yes?”

Even in the milky-white glow of the parking lot lights, Amanda could see the color instantly drain from her husband’s face.

“Is everyone out of the house?” Neil said. “We have a son-he’s seventeen. And our niece! Are they out of the house?”

Fear spiked through Amanda’s body. “What? What’s happening?”

Neil didn’t answer her. “We’ll be right there. We’re, uh… God, we’re twenty-five miles away. We’ll get there as soon as we can. Tell the fire department there could be two teenagers inside the house!”

Hot fear crashed against her. “What happened?” she cried.

Neil reached down for her purse on the ground and thrust it at her. He grabbed her arm and began to run toward their car. “That was our security company. Our smoke alarms have gone off.”

Amanda pictured the little white domes with their tiny scarlet lights scattered throughout the house. “Which ones?”

“All of them.” Neil threw open the driver’s door. “Call the house. Tell the kids to get out!”

With shaking hands, Amanda reached inside her purse for her phone. “Didn’t the alarm company call the house?”

“No one…no one answered,” Neil’s voice trembled. “Call Chase’s cell. Call Hal and Diana next door.”

Her fingers closed around her phone and she pulled it out.
“I missed a call! From the house!” Amanda slid into the car and slammed her door shut. She pressed the speed dial for her voice mail and waited breathless for it to connect. Neil started the car and shoved the gearshift into reverse. Seconds later she was listening to Tally’s agitated voice telling her to call home as soon as she could. It was important.

Something wasn’t right with Chase.

forty

I
t hadn’t been difficult to locate the cemetery where Alyssa Tagg was buried. A Google search at an Internet café produced the results Chase wanted. A death index for Orange County that dated back to 1940 was one of the first hits on his search. Alyssa Rose Tagg’s remains had been laid to rest at Whispering Cliffs Memorial Park in nearby Dana Point four days after the fire.

The decision to make the hour-and-a-half drive to her gravesite had been spontaneous, but once Chase left the house, he realized he’d wanted to do this from the moment he remembered what Ghost had done to the baby in the crib.

Chase’s dreams from the night before had sent him reeling from the house before the sun rose. He couldn’t remember the substance of the dreams, just how they made him feel. Alone. Afraid. Accountable. He’d grabbed the lighters and matchbooks strewn about his sheets and left the house in a daze of anger and fear. The missing minutes seemed within inches of his grasp, just on the other side of consciousness.

He’d driven downtown, parked his car in an Ace parking lot, and retraced his steps to the burned warehouse. For several crazed seconds he contemplated setting fire to the building next
door for the sole purpose of challenging Ghost to a battle to the death. A battle for the truth.

But the moment the thought crossed his mind, Chase could sense Ghost’s ardent willingness to happily meet him anytime, anyplace. He’d tugged at his pants pockets, removed the lighters and matchbooks, and flung them into the storm sewer. Then he sat on the curb in the shadow of the hulking ruin for the better part of an hour.

There had to be a trigger that would trip the latch on that door to his memory. And he had to find it.

For the next several hours he’d walked the streets downtown, wandering without aim, intent on finding a way to remember what had been hidden from him.

A few minutes after two o’clock, a mother walked past him with a baby in a stroller, and at that moment it occurred to Chase to visit Alyssa Tagg’s grave and, if nothing else, panhandle the heavens for forgiveness.

And if he didn’t get it, he’d go back the next day. And the next.

But he’d needed money and his laptop. Those were the only reasons he’d returned home first. Extra clothes were an afterthought.

Chase had hoped to come home to an empty house, but Tally’s presence hadn’t complicated things like he thought it might. His cousin had instead unwittingly galvanized his plan to leave. An angry Tally swore to tell his parents everything he’d confided about the fire. Good. Finally, the silence would be broken.

Plus, his mother would see that the money in the tin was
gone if she intended to finish what she started. She would know he’d read her hidden letter.

Seagulls soared overhead, calling out to one another as Chase strode across the parking lot at Whispering Hills.

A scattering of other cars revealed that he wasn’t the only person needing to reconnect with the past. But there were no hearses, no long lines of cars shining in the sun; only diffused dots of humanity appeared on the gray and green landscape. The grounds were quiet except for the birds. A lone groundskeeper raked sycamore leaves into brown fringed piles.

Creamy stone pathways crisscrossed the shaded sloping lawns. Chase didn’t know where he’d find Alyssa’s headstone, so he started at one end of the park and traveled the rows, his eyes searching the names.

Ten minutes and four rows later, he came across a marble marker next to a giant oak. On the polished surface an etched lamb rested against a cross. Under the lamb, a name had been pounded into the stone.

Alyssa Rose Tagg
December 31, 1994 to May 19, 1995
Our beautiful baby girl —A bud to bloom in heaven

He read the epitaph over and over, wishing to sail away on the expectation that allowed Alyssa’s parents to think of heaven when a fiery hell had robbed them of their daughter.

Chase dropped slowly to his knees, staring at the headstone.

“Life sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” he whispered.

For several long moments he just knelt there, unaware of time and place, imagining what Alyssa’s parents looked like. He couldn’t remember them. He could only see the image of his own parents in his head.

It was oddly satisfying that his mother knew his outburst the night before had been a searing flash of transparency. She knew he remembered. And yet nothing had really changed. His worst fears were proving true.

Well, not his worst. Apparently his parents didn’t
know if
he started the fire; they just wondered if he did. He laughed under his breath as he contemplated which was worse.

“You and your little sister sharing a joke?”

Chase’s head snapped up. The groundskeeper, a rake in one hand and leaf bag in the other, stood a few feet away.

“Oh. She’s not… She wasn’t my sister.”

“Family?”

Chase said nothing. He knew the man would mistake his silence for an answer.

“She was so young,” the man said.

“Yes.”

“Was she sick?”

“There was a fire.” Chase said nothing else.

The man shook his head. “Oh my. That’s too bad. I always hate it when I come to work and see a new little one’s come to rest here. Doesn’t seem fair.”

“No.”

The groundskeeper cocked his head. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. You come here often?”

“I’ve never been here,” Chase answered.

The man dropped his bag, then squatted down by Chase and extended his hand. Chase shook it. “I’m Rudy Girard,” he said.

“Chase Janvier.”

The man broke into a grin. “Janvier! That’s French for—”

“January. Yeah.”

“My last name is French too. Not as interesting as yours, though.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s that interesting.”

“January’s a month for new beginnings.”

Chase blinked at the man.

“People think this is just a place where things stop,” Rudy said. “But I know it’s not true. Lots of things begin here. Good things. I’ve seen it happen.”

“All right,” Chase finally said.

“It’s true.” The man smiled for a moment and then said, “You look tired. You look sad. I just wanted you to know that.”

Chase said nothing.

Rudy Girard grunted and stood. He nodded toward Alyssa’s grave. “I see a man and his wife here at this grave sometimes. They have two daughters. One of them’s named Molly, I’m pretty sure. I’ve heard them say her name. Not so sure about the other one’s name. But you probably already know all that.”

The groundskeeper mistook Chase’s silent nod for a yes. The Taggs had two more daughters. Two.

“Okay,” Rudy said. “Well, maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Good-bye, Mr. Janvier.”

Chase swallowed and his Adam’s apple felt like a stone. “Bye.”

The man picked up the lawn bag and ambled off, whistling. Chase watched him walk away. Chase sat back heavily against the tree that canopied Alyssa’s grave. He tipped his head back against the trunk and stared at Alyssa’s epitaph. His eyelids felt heavy.

A bud to bloom in heaven.

Chase closed his eyes, sensing the awful nearness of Alyssa’s presence. He could see the bumper pads in her crib. The brown wooden rungs, twisted like long doughnuts. The smell of baby powder. The bluish hue of the room where they lay, curtains drawn, before the fire came.

Chase let his mind spin backward, placing himself in the room with the blue mats, back into the moments that he knew so far. He was supposed to be napping, but he couldn’t sleep. He remembered thinking he was too old for naps. He had gotten up from his mat and peeked out the door. Keith was in the bathroom. Keith had model cars on his dresser. He saw himself walking into Keith’s room and seeing something shiny on the bed. The lighter. Then he saw Keith coming into the bedroom. He yelled at him because Chase had the lighter in his hands. Keith told him the lighter wasn’t for little kids and sent him back to his room.

But Chase went back. He felt his body go slack against the tree as he let the memory play itself out.

The boy with the stain on his shirt followed him back to the
room.
Devin.
The name seemed to rush forward from a place in his mind that had been dark before. The boy’s name was Devin.

Devin was in Keith’s room with him, had followed Chase there. And followed him back a second time.

Chase fought to stay in the moment, but he was so tired. Restless sleep the night before, waking before the sun, walking the streets of downtown San Diego for hours, driving here, visually encountering Alyssa’s grave…

Sleep overcame him as he rested against the tree.

The images in his head seemed to freeze, and then slowly the pieces began to plunk down around him like pillows thrown down from twenty feet up. He saw the mats again and saw Devin standing at the closed door of the room where they were supposed to be napping. The lost minutes rained down on him, and he struggled not to gasp.