DRH: Nick, the man you saw in the garden was probably a descendant of the man in the picture.
NICK: That’s what I thought. Until I saw the last picture, and the letter up next to it.
DRH: Tell me what happened.
NICK: Yeah, well. The docent lady found me sitting on the floor just staring at the picture. She thought I’d had a fit of some kind. A seizure. She called an ambulance.
DRH: They took you to the hospital, didn’t they?
NICK: I guess they didn’t know what else to do. But Grams was on duty, and she found them asking me all kinds of questions while the doctors took my temperature and stuff, but I was just sitting there, nodding and not saying much.
DRH: Why was that?
NICK: I was just thinking, a mile a minute. They wanted to keep me there but Grams decided it was just the shock, the coincidence of seeing a picture that looked like Bee. So she took me home. I really was okay. After a couple days I went back to school, and that was sorta crap at first, but after a while the kids stopped teasing me about foaming at the mouth and stuff. Things are pretty okay now, I guess.
DRH: Why don’t you think it was a seizure?
NICK: I told you, it was me thinking hard. I guess it sort of was the shock, too. But I don’t think coincidence had much to do with it.
That last picture, on the museum wall? It shows that same man standing in the garden behind a bench. Which is still there—or it was, until the fire. He has his hand on the shoulder of a woman a little younger than him, who’s sitting on the bench, with her hair up and earrings and a little necklace. She’s looking straight at the camera this time, no blur at all, though I think the baby in her lap was kicking a foot, because the white blanket is kind of smeared-looking.
You want to know what the caption reads? I remember every word.
Marcus Weildman (30), Beatrice Weildman (24), and baby…And baby Nicholas. Taken by local photographer Ralph Kurzen, May 20, 1909. Marcus Weildman was killed as a soldier in France during World War One. Beatrice (maiden name Collins) arrived in town as an unclaimed orphan in 1899 and married Marcus Weildman in 1906. Their children were Nicholas (whose plane went down over the English Channel in 1943), Arthur John (who moved to Spokane in the 1930s), and Bonnie. Beatrice Weildman lived in the family home until her disappearance, as mysterious as her arrival, in 1959. She was 72.
DRH: That is indeed…intriguing.
NICK: Dr. Henry, we’re all there! Nicholas, Beatrice, AJ—even Bonnie, one of the Tim twins. And then there’s the letter they put beside it. The ink’s faded, but you can still read it. I know that handwriting. You want to know what it says? I memorized that, too.
My dear “cousin” Amy,
I send you a studio portrait of your cousin Marcus and his new family, to add to your wall, that you might assure yourself that he is well and happy with his peculiar, rootless wife. I thank you for your friendship, and know that you remain in my affections always.
The baby’s name, I should add, comes from a young boy who befriended me long ago, whose loss I regret, and whose memory I wished to honor.
Your cousin by marriage,
Bea
DRH: Nicholas, I agree this is a striking coincidence. But do you really feel that your Bee…ran away into the past?
NICK: It’s the only thing that makes sense. I still really hate her father. I hope he goes to prison. And I’m still going to miss Bee, every day.
But last weekend I got Mom to take me back to the museum. To “find closure”—isn’t that what those grief counselors go on about? I stood in front of that picture for a really long time, and I read that letter over and over. And I guess it worked.
DRH: I’m glad to hear that, Nick. But why—
NICK: Because you know what? In that picture? Bee looks just really, really happy.
9:07
Gordon
It wasn’t too long ago that a man could vanish merely by stepping away from home. However, as the twenty-first century wore on, the cracks one could slip into grew ever more narrow, and ever less secure.
Gordon found it a full-time job, keeping up with technology.
After the second-period bell, there was a lull in the library. While the sixteen volunteers who’d been fussing around the laden tables took this last opportunity to sit and drink some of their own coffee, Gordon wandered toward the cluster of computers at the back of the room, and settled into the wooden chair.
There was no real reason to use the computers at school—anyone who tracked him to those would soon find his front door. Still, it felt like less of a betrayal to use a public machine rather than Linda’s own.
A year ago, his checks had been perfunctory—habit, merely. But after his name appeared on Linda’s list, alongside the innocent volunteer mothers and grandparents, he’d renewed his warning bells.
After thirty years, would that police background search make a ping on TaylorCorp’s radar? TaylorCorp was big-time now, on a par with Blackwater and Halliburton, only more deeply in the shadows. Would a multinational, billion-dollar security firm give a damn anymore about one Gordon Hugh-Kendrick? Memories faded, records got lost. His name had never been officially linked with the murders of its three employees. And under the name Kendrick, in a part of the world that he’d never visited, married to a person who appeared on no one’s record of his time in PNG? He’d come here himself in an almost random accident: an online search of half-remembered names, followed by the whim of a desperate man.
Still, John Taylor had been the founder’s son and heir, and Taylor senior had made his name out of being a vicious and unrelenting force. Early on, Gordon had got in the habit of covering his tracks. He’d never spent four years in one place before, never been legally married before—and never given his name for a police background check.
He nearly left town back in October when he’d learned of the slip. That he stayed was due in part to the cushion of three decades, but mostly because he did not want to cause Linda pain. She’d been distraught when she’d realized her mistake—absently typing his full name onto her volunteers list. Were he to vanish now, she would know she was to blame. And yes, it was her fault, but it was also his.
So he stayed put, and buried his dread under hard runs and grocery shopping and volunteer duties. Weeks went by, months. He began to breathe again—but he also continued to check those distant alarm triggers, each and every day.
Glancing around to make sure no one had followed him to the library’s back corner, Gordon went through the cumbersome log-in for his anonymous account, and did his usual quick and methodical run through a decades-long roster of friends and informants.
Only this time, it wasn’t so quick. He sat back slowly in the chair, staring at the screen.
Thirty years on, Gordon caught the faint whiff of a predator on his trail.
9:08
Brendan
The teacher wrote a bunch of figures on the board, the average cost in San Felipe of rent, food, insurance, car payments, all that kind of thing. You were supposed to come up with a list of other stuff related to your “Dream Job”—things like uniforms and special equipment or land (like if you were a farmer) or business (if you were going to run a car repair place).
But jeez, the whole idea of “the practical side of the future” was about a million miles from where Brendan was right now. Might as well be researching tutus and space shuttles.
9:15
Chaco
Chaco stared down at the page the teacher had handed out, a long, long list of things an adult had to pay for. He knew things like electricity cost money, but fuck—a dollar a day just to connect a cellphone? No wonder he couldn’t have one of his own.
Still, Chaco really didn’t think these were the kind of prices his people paid. His mother couldn’t be paying $1,300 a month for the hole they lived in. He heard a brief echo of Tío’s voice in his ear ($11.12 times the 26 hours she worked this week equaled living on the street) and shook his head to get rid of
that trap, then read on.
No wonder people sold drugs and held up stores. What choice was there, faced with a list like that?
9:42
Linda
The guest speakers had arrived, most of them. The Parents’ Club’s coffee was surprisingly good, the croissants plentiful, and the conversation nicely punctuated with exclamations of surprise at the crossing of paths and discoveries of similar taste.
Linda’s eyes kept circling back to Gordon. Standing between the firefighter and the architect, he nodded and made the occasional reply, but she could see he was distracted. More than distracted: he looked like a sprinter in the blocks, braced for the gun. The paper cup in his hand might have been a stage prop. What had happened since they’d separated in the parking lot?
“Now, that’s a handsome trio.”
The voice at her elbow nearly made Linda slosh coffee over her blouse, but she caught herself, showing Olivia a smile she hoped wasn’t too strained. “Isn’t it, though? Surely there must be some firefighters who don’t look like gym ads?”
“I think I’ve seen that one on a calendar. And the guy next to him looks like a model.”
“Do you suppose wearing a suit like that changes what you order for lunch? I’d be terrified by anything messier than carrot sticks.”
“Guy like him probably lunches on martinis. But your husband’s got the better tie. What’s the design?”
“Little tiny yellow Jeeps.” Linda realized that she’d just given Olivia the opening for a question—or, the opening to move closer to Gordon for a look—and hastened to throw down a distraction. “I talked to Tom Atcheson, for about thirty seconds. And I followed up with an email to say that if he needed to cancel, I would understand.”
“The DA hasn’t called him yet?”
“Would he do that? I mean, rather than just…well, go and arrest him?”
“He’d want as much evidence as he could get first. Once you’ve done the actual arrest, lawyers come trooping in and throw up fences. There’s also the grand jury to consider.” Olivia went on, but Linda was no longer listening. Gordon’s head had come up, and he was staring intently out the library window. She turned to look.
A shiny blue sedan was parked with one wheel on the lawn. Its driver, in such a hurry he’d left his door open, was stalking in the direction of the school entrance—then Linda’s coffee did slosh, over the table as she slapped the cup down to hurry toward the library’s outside door.
Señora Rodriguez happened to be standing at the end of the table, and Linda veered aside just long enough to say, “Could you please start moving our guests toward the gym?” And then she was outside.
“Mr. Cuomo!” she called. “Charlie, good morning, were you looking for me?”
The man, nearly inside the school entrance, immediately reversed direction, storming down the lawn with a handful of papers. Linda came to a halt outside the teachers’ lounge (Please, Lord, let it be empty!) and tried to hide her alarm at the approaching figure—unshaven, rumpled, and reeking of stale beer.
“Did you see these?” He thrust the pages at her face. “Have you done anything about these goddamn psycho kids who go to this fucking school?”
“Mr. Cuomo! I do not permit language like that in my school.”
Her schoolmarm indignation had no effect. “Have you looked at these?”
This time she took them: printouts of images she had seen connected to the #speakforbee tag, crude in all senses, from pornographic to merely childish. Some were even mildly amusing examples of adolescent humor—although she wasn’t about to say that to Mr. Charles Cuomo.
When Linda looked up, she found Sergeant Mendez standing on one side, Gordon on the other. She shot a panicked glance over her shoulder, but the library door was closed. No curious guest speakers had spilled out to witness the intrusion.
“Mr. Cuomo, I think you’ve met Sergeant Mendez. And this is my—”
There was a very fast blur of motion that Linda only deciphered when it was over. The enraged father had started to raise his hand at her—to hit her, or merely thrust a finger under her nose?—but as his arm came up, Gordon stepped forward, twisting the man’s wrist away and down.
Before Linda could do more than blink, Cuomo was bent over, with Gordon speaking into his ear. “Sir, I don’t think any of us wish to make threats today. Do we?” Cuomo’s jerk of protest, instead of throwing Gordon off, resulted in a gasp of pain. He stood very still. “No more threats?” The man’s bowed head swung rapidly back and forth. Gordon let go, and the man staggered away, cradling his right wrist. “Jesus, you broke my fucking arm!”
“Not quite.”
Olivia tore her astonished gaze away from Gordon and reached for Cuomo’s good arm. “Sir, I think you should come with me.”
But Linda put out her own hand in alarm. “You aren’t going to arrest him?”
“What, you want to invite him to the library for coffee?”
“No! But Olivia, he does have a point. He is being harassed. Mr. Cuomo—Charlie, do you think we could talk about this after school? Or first thing tomorrow? When things aren’t so terribly busy around here, and you’re not quite so…”
Olivia offered a word. “Drunk?”
“Upset.”
“I’m not drunk. And those damn kids are fucking up my life.”
“Mr. Cuomo, please, I really do want to talk to you about this.” Linda leaned toward him with all the earnestness in her Midwestern soul. “Would you like to come in first thing tomorrow morning? Or anytime, whenever it’s convenient for you. I’m sure you and I can figure out the best way to approach this—”
If anything, her attempt at placation only made things worse. He raised his eyes to hers, clearly humiliated now as well as outraged. “This isn’t over.” He stalked away across the lawn, his shoulder coming a hairsbreadth from thumping into her.
Olivia watched the man’s retreat with narrowed eyes, judging his pace with a decade of traffic stops behind her. However, the smell of beer around the man had been far from fresh, and the path he cut across the lawn had no trace of a wobble.
He slammed the car door and started the engine, spinning his tires into the grass as he pulled away. Olivia relaxed the moment she saw him automatically glance over his shoulder at the empty drive, although Linda watched until his car had reached the road.
She blew out a breath. “Thank you. Both.”
But Olivia’s gaze had returned to Gordon, speculating. “That was a smooth move, Mr. Kendrick.”
He gave her a happy grin. “Twenty years of martial arts pop up at the oddest times. Linda, you should get back to the library. Shall I take those to your office?”
“Oh, please.” She handed him the unruly sheaf. “Put them in one of my desk drawers, maybe? And let Mrs. Hopkins know what happened. Tell her…tell her to keep an eye on the front of the school, in case he comes back.”
“Will do.”
She touched Olivia’s uniformed arm, both to distract her from Gordon and to get them both moving toward the library. “Thanks for not arresting that man. He has just lost his daughter. And some of those pictures must be extremely painful.”
Olivia shot a grim glance at the road. “Assuming the accusations are wrong.” She opened the door to the library, where they found Señora Rodriguez nipping at the laggards’ heels as she drove the guest speakers in the direction of the gymnasium.
Before they stepped into the breezeway, Linda stopped.
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Tomorrow? I’m afraid so.”
“I was thinking…You know, if someone wanted to…make a stink, the school assembly would be a prime—would be tempting.”
Olivia’s mind filled in the missing word: target. “I think he’s gone home to get drunk, and when you see him next, he’ll apologize and feel like an idiot. But you’re right. Look, you don’t really need to introduce me with the other speakers, do you? I could maybe hang around outside, just in case the gu
y decides to come back and start shouting.”
“I’d feel better. I should have hired private security for the event, I can see that.”
“No need to. This is my job.”
9:57
Dr. Henry
“…she looks just really, really happy.”
After Nick left, Cass Henry studied her notes and wondered what she was missing.
As his mother warned her back in January, Nick Clarkson believed that Bee Cuomo had been transported into the past. Sooner or later, either the girl would show up or her body would, and Nick’s world would come crashing around him. Cass Henry had to get her wedge under the boy’s—yes—delusions before that happened.
But there were things going on with Nick that she couldn’t quite figure out.
Nick was a small, dreamy outsider set down in a tough school. He had some of the developmental difficulties associated with fetal alcohol syndrome. His mother dressed him in the wrong clothes and cut his hair herself. His protective grandparents were too visible. He didn’t even own a cellphone. In a school like Guadalupe, Nick should have been kicked, tripped, and robbed every day. And yet in the past three weeks—three weeks!—she’d watched him go from so shaky he couldn’t talk without weeping to a kid who joked about being “looney tunes.”
Sudden mood changes set off all kinds of alarms in any psychologist, since a surface happiness is often the mask of a suicide decision. And yet, all her increasingly urgent (and increasingly puzzled) conversations—with the boy, his family, his teachers—uncovered no other warning signs, and nothing to suggest that Nick had linked up with (as had happened at Columbine) an aggressive and violent partner. He just seemed…happy.
Last week, she’d spent a couple of lunch hours sitting in her parked car observing the outdoor tables. When Nick came out, she expected to watch him hunch into a corner seat, as desperately unobtrusive as he could get—body language that invariably brought out the worst in tormentors. But instead, he paused by a table of the popular kids, including eighth-graders Mina Santos and Sofia Rivas, and simply talked for a minute before going on to eat lunch with his own sixth-grade friends. Yes: friends.