Chapter 11
11
My sleep had been deep and dreamless. If the orange Crocs weren’t sitting there by the door, I might have thought I imagined everything that happened yesterday. But when I sit down at my table, master binder open in front of me, I keep seeing the woman’s face. Her eyes wide and staring. The mask of blood. Like my mind saved my nightmares for morning. I try to push the image into my mental box, but find I can’t.
What are the chances that I’d be the one to find her, in that spot, so close to where Tommy drowned? It’s as if, in searching for Tommy, I found the woman’s body instead. Like I caused her to be there somehow. It’s a crazy thought. And yet, there it is.
I take out the black-and-white photo of the children standing beside the boat. The nun’s face is indistinct, as if I’m looking through thick fog, but her thin white fingers are in perfect focus, clasped together in front of her. I know exactly the place they’re standing now. I recognize the wooden clapboards of the boathouse I saw from the window of Coram House. That places them a few hundred yards from the cove where I found the body yesterday. So much death hiding in those waters. But it’s a melodramatic thought—people die everywhere all the time.
The living room’s beige walls press in on me, pulsing a little, like they’re breathing. I need to get out. I put the photo back in the box and get dressed.
The day is cold, but not bitter. Now that I know the feeling of my eyeballs freezing in their sockets, I can recognize the difference. A gray sheen covers the brick sidewalks, moisture frozen to a slippery skin. Still, in my ridiculous sleeping bag parka and furry boots, I move through downtown as if I’m wrapped in a warm cocoon.
I don’t have a particular destination in mind, so I wander north, past the little cemetery, and down a hill. I pass a red-brick library with a modern glass addition on one side. It’s closed, but I make a note to come back. I’ve always loved libraries—and, who knows, maybe I’ll find something useful. But I know it’s wishful thinking.
For two weeks, I’ve buried myself in dusty archives and stared at historical records online until my eyes throbbed. I’ve searched the empty halls of Coram House and found nothing. Tommy isn’t there. And even if I did find some record of his existence—what then? It wouldn’t tell me what I need to know: Did Tommy drown that day? Is Sarah Dale’s memory sharp and true or is she telling tales? The answers I need lie in the memories of people who have been dead for a decade.
The road leads past a thrift shop that shares a building with a church supply company peddling gifts, cards, and religious artifacts. I imagine a glass case bearing a dead saint’s bones on a pillow. That’s probably not what they mean, though. I pass an auto shop and cross a set of train tracks. The road abruptly turns to dirt—as if someone decided the city ends right here.
Fields of snow stretch ahead, pierced by rows of cut stalks, the tips just high enough to catch the sun. I wonder if I should go back. If I should be here. In the distance, a smudge of red floats between the alternating rows of golden stubble and deep blue shadow. Not floating, gliding—a cross-country skier. They disappear into the fringe of trees on the far side of the field. I keep walking.
Soon trees close in again. A river winds below, down a steep embankment lined in tall, dried plants with feathery tips. Everything is dead and dried, painted in sepia tones that make me feel like I’m walking through time. I could be inside one of those photos in the mildewy shoebox. But maybe I don’t need to go back in time to get answers.
I think of the conversation I had with Lola just a few days earlier. Change the channel. Maybe she was right—just not in the way she thinks. Not everyone who was there that day is dead. Fred Rooney is very much alive.
It seems crazy to reach out to Rooney directly. But maybe it’s not. He would have been a minor when Tommy drowned, so there’s no way he’d be prosecuted, even if he was involved. If I can make it clear I’m here to tell his story too, he just might talk to me. Yes, he makes my skin crawl, but if talking to him is the only way to get answers, it’s worth it.
All of a sudden, I’m aware of my aloneness. The skier is long gone. The only sound is wind rustling dead things. A woman, alone in the woods. A limp hand floating in the water. A face covered in blood. I turn and retrace my footsteps, shivering and not stopping until I’ve crossed back into the world.
I pass a deli with a long line of college students stretching out the door, waiting for bagels. I go inside, buy food I don’t really want, relieved to be somewhere warm with its smell of coffee, lulled by the hum of other people’s conversations.
When I get back to the apartment I kick off my boots and head for my computer. A sharp pain in my heel and two beads of blood appear like a snake bite. A staple, hidden in the carpet. I staunch the puncture with toilet paper and, one-handed, type Fred Rooney’s name into the Yellow Pages search. No number listed. Disappointment hollows my stomach. I was counting on anyone with white hair having a listed landline. I could go back to the construction site, but my instincts tell me I’ll have better luck if I catch him off guard.
I try the number for Campbell & Sons. The girl who answers the phone sounds about fifteen.
“Hi,” I say, keeping my voice bright. “I’m looking for Fred Rooney.”
“Sorry, he’s not here,” she says. “He’s on site today.”
“Oh, shoot. Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Well, they usually finish around three? But he doesn’t always come back to the office after.”
“Maybe you can help me, then?” I say before she can offer to take a message.
I give her a story about a package that was sent back to me and could she just confirm if his address is 19 or 17 Ivy Lane, Burlington. She’ll look it up, she says. But the address she has isn’t in Burlington at all, she says in confusion, it’s in Huntington and it’s not Ivy Lane either. I laugh and say that explains it, and she laughs too and reads out the correct address. I thank her and hang up, feeling a pang of guilt. It’s always women who give you more than they should.
Forty minutes to his house, according to my phone. If I leave at three, I should catch him just as he’s getting home. For the rest of the afternoon, I work my way down the list of potential interview subjects. Several have died and more have disappeared with no address or phone number on record. I do track down a few people. Hal Stevenson hangs up on me when I tell him I’m calling about Coram House. Cedric Shepherd gives me a polite but firm no. And Violet Harrison agrees to think about it, but I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to get me off the phone. I leave another message for Karen Lafayette, with no real hope there either.
By then it’s nearly three. I forage for something to eat, but all I find in the fridge is the dried remains of hummus and some old carrots, slightly soft so they bend when they should break with a snap like bone.
I arm myself in professional attire. Slacks. A turtleneck sweater. My blush has gone missing, so I use lipstick. My face stares back at me from the mirror, a red slash on each cheek. Suddenly, I see the woman’s face streaked with blood. I close my eyes. When I open them again, the face is my own.
The drive is beautiful, the snow-frosted peaks framed in my windshield like a postcard of a New England winter. The road dips and curves, so sometimes the mountains are hidden and then reappear from a different angle, huge and surprising. My phone directs me to take Exit Eleven and drive south.
After five miles, the pavement disappears and the road narrows. It occurs to me that I should have told someone where I’m going—Stedsan or even Officer Parker. I glance down at my phone. No service. Of course. I pass a few small houses, most with a pickup parked in the driveway. Then a barn with a perfect circle punched in the roof, as if it had been hit by a meteor. A dull pressure in my ears tells me the road is still climbing.
A mile past the barn, I pull into the driveway of a square single-story house. It’s painted white with no shutters and has a new front porch, the fresh wood still yellow as unweathered bone. Two round cement planters, now just mounds of snow, flank the front walkway. It’s Scandinavian in its bareness. I’d been expecting trash in the yard or a rusted car on cinderblocks outside the garage. I feel a flutter of shame. Fresh tire tracks lead to a black pickup parked beside the house. So much for beating him home.
Before I even turn off the car, a door slams and Rooney is there, standing on his front porch. He crosses his arms and looks at me. Suddenly, I want to back out the drive. This was a bad idea. Instead, I get out.
“Afternoon,” I say.
“The writer,” he says, as if he’s been expecting me. Rooney has a piece of gauze taped to his cheek and a bruise on his forehead, folded in among the wrinkles. Scratches on his neck. He sees me looking and smiles. “I like it rough.”
I’m glad for the thick coat, the scarf covering the flush of my neck.
His smile drops away. “So what do you want?”
At least he’s not going to invite me inside. “I want to talk to you about Coram House.”
He gives me a look like I’m trying his patience. “What about it?”
“I’m interviewing the children—anyone who was connected with Coram House—for the book I’m writing. I’d like to tell your story if you’re willing.”
It’s not much of a pitch, but I feel more nervous than I expected. I’ve never been good at confrontation.
“That why you came all the way out here? To see if I’m willing.”
He emphasizes the last word— willing— in a way that makes it sound dirty. I have to stop myself from taking a step back.
“Yes.”
He rubs his chin in a pantomime of thinking it over, but his thumb catches on the edge of the gauze and he winces. “What’s in it for me?”
This, at least, I’m ready for. “I can’t pay interview subjects, if that’s what you mean. It would make life easier, but it’s not how it works.”
“And who decides how it works?”
“If I pay people for their story, it might change the story they tell. Or at least look that way.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to think about it, then. I’m a busy man, you see.” He holds out his arms, showing the expanse of his domain.
I don’t know what I was thinking coming here. Of course he wasn’t going to talk to me.
“I understand.”
I hold out a business card. He takes it, but holds on a beat too long before letting go. I catch of whiff of something sharp. He’s been drinking. “Call me if you’d like to talk,” I say.
“Don’t worry. I know where to find you.”
I take a few steps back toward my car, but desperation to get something, anything, from him claws inside my chest. “Mr. Rooney—could I ask you a question?”
“You want a freebie?” He looks amused, but motions for me to go on.
“When you were at Coram House, did you ever know a boy named Tommy?”
His expression shifts into a look of interest—like a cat that’s been playing with its food and the mouse just did something unexpected. “Maybe,” he says. “What’s it to you?”
“He would have overlapped with you. I’m not exactly sure when, but sometime after 1965. I’m not sure of his exact age, but probably five or six years younger than you.”
“You’re not ‘exactly sure’ of much, are you?” His tone is mocking. “Especially for someone that’s probably dug to the bottom of Alan’s files by now. Did you come to ask me if he ran away? Then you’re stupider than I thought.”
My heart speeds up. He’s getting angry and people say things they don’t mean—or that they don’t mean to say—when they’re angry.
“A number of the other children talk about Sister Cecile,” I say.
“No surprise there.”
His tone is nonchalant, but there’s a flicker of something in his face.
“How she locked children in the attic. Hit them. That it’s her fault Tommy drowned. That there was another child in the boat that day. Maybe someone too young and scared to come forward.”
Rooney’s face darkens. “Right. ’Cause everything Sarah Dale says is the gospel.”
“You were a minor, Mr. Rooney. Whatever happened—wouldn’t it be better to tell your side of the story?”
There’s a long pause, like he’s thinking this over. “You mean like how she said ‘Hold him under, Fred’ and I did?”
He laughs, his expression pitying. My stomach sinks.
“Look at the face on you. That’s what you want me to say isn’t it?”
Heat creeps up into my cheeks.
“Maybe I was there that day, maybe not. But I can tell you I never touched that boy.”
“The others said you were a particular favorite of Sister Cecile’s,” I say quietly. “That she loved you.”
Fred Rooney’s face shuts down like someone turned out the light. “Well, I guess you’d have to ask Sister Cecile about that.”
The surprise knocks me back a step. He used the present tense.
After Coram House closed, most of the nuns had gone to convents or retirement homes for members of the clergy. And now all the ones I’d found were dead, except for the one nonagenarian with Alzheimer’s. I’d assumed Sister Cecile had died too, probably at some convent back in Quebec. Why?
With a sinking feeling, I know. Because, when I read Sister Cecile’s deposition, I’d pictured an elderly nun. And that blurred face in the photo from the sixties—my mind had filled in a sturdy middle-aged woman. Finding Sister Cecile hadn’t been a priority because I’d imagined her as old, all nuns as old. But if she’d been young, say somewhere between twenty and thirty, I do a quick calculation—she’d be in her seventies or eighties now.
My own blind spot. How stupid.
“I didn’t realize Sister Cecile was still alive. I’d love to speak to her. Do you have her contact information?”
I try to keep my voice calm but can tell how eager I sound, like he just put food in front of a starving person.
Rooney throws back his head and roars with laughter. He gently lifts the bandage so he can wipe away tears. “Freebie time’s over,” he says, smile gone. Before I can say another word, he slams back into his house. I’m left standing alone in the snow.
In the car, I grip the steering wheel, hands shaking. My heart thumps like a rabbit spotting the fox’s tail as it disappears into the bush. Fearful with the knowledge that I’ve been spared.
Back on the main road, the snowy fields glow orange with sunset. A few weeks ago, I would have said snow is white, but now I know it’s blue with twilight or the yellow of direct sunlight. White doesn’t exist at all.
My phone beeps to tell me I have a voicemail—Parker asking me to call him back. I pull over and turn off the car before dialing the station.
“Parker.” His voice is low and raspy, like he hasn’t slept.
“Hey. It’s Alex Kelley. I just got your message.”
“Oh, Alex. Hi.” His tone softens. “Look, I’m sure this is the last thing you want to hear right now, but I have to ask you to come back to the station.”
He’s right. It is the last thing I want to hear. “Now?” I hate the whine in my voice.
“Tomorrow is fine,” he says. “We’ve got a detective from state coming in.”
“Oh,” I say. “Does that mean— Do you know the cause of death? Sorry, I’m probably not supposed to ask that, but it’s, well, I got the sense you didn’t believe me. About what I heard—the sounds in the woods.”
I shove the heel of my palm into my eye socket, trying to dull the headache gathering there. I’m babbling. The conversation with Rooney’s thrown me off.
“Alex, we take all witness statements seriously,” he says. “And we treat every death as suspicious if there’s any reason to believe it might be.”
I hear the reprimand in his tone, but isn’t that exactly what he’d done? Dismissed me? Or maybe I’m being too sensitive.
“Alex, are you still there? You’re breaking up.”
“Sorry.” I raise my voice, as if that will help. “I’m out of town. Interviewing someone. For the book. Fred Rooney.”
I don’t know why I say it. An olive branch, I guess. I’d gotten off to such a bad start with Parker, but after yesterday—it feels like a bridge worth repairing.
“Fred Rooney?” There’s a hard edge to his voice, the fatigue gone.
“Is that—a problem?”
“I— Look, I’m sorry. It’s just—Alex, that guy is bad news. Stay away from him.”
I bristle. “What do you mean, bad news?”
There’s a huff of breath on the other end of the phone. “I can’t say more right now. But he’s dangerous. Just—don’t talk to him alone, at least—okay? I can come with you next time.”
“Yeah, in my experience bringing a cop along makes interview subjects open right up.” A prickle of irritation runs down my spine—what am I supposed to do with half information and cryptic warnings? He’s worse than Stedsan.
“Alex, listen to me. I can’t discuss an active investigation, okay?” Parker sighs like someone very, very tired.
No one asked you to , I want to say. But then I imagine the sleepless night he’s probably had. “Okay,” I say. “I appreciate the”—I search for the right word—“information. Anyways, what time do you want me there tomorrow?”
“Is nine okay?”
“Sure.”
There’s a long pause filled with muffled thumping—Parker tapping his pen against the desk. “Okay,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you then.”
But the line is already dead. I drop my phone into the cupholder.
The car splutters as I turn the key. For one horrible second, I imagine hiking back to Rooney’s house in the dark to use his phone, Parker’s warning ringing in my ears. Then the motor catches and rumbles to life. I navigate the car off the shoulder and onto the icy road. Night falls as I drive, the sky a little darker every time I glance in the rearview mirror. There are no streetlights here. No moon. Darkness is following me home.