Part 44 (2/2)

”That's what Chief Bradley told me. He wasn't more specific, and I didn't care enough to ask questions.”

”Well that,” I said, ”that isn't the response I was hoping for.”

”I really doubt we could have had anything to do with it, Andrew,” my father said.

”Just because you don't think you could have killed him --”

”Not just me. I don't think any of us who knew him could have done it. Including Gideon.

Besides, Gideon wasn't desperate for our mother's love. The only love Gideon ever needed was Gideon's.”

”There are other reasons for killing someone.”

”Like revenge?” My father shook his head. ”Gideon has the same problem hating people as he does loving them -- in order to feel that strongly about someone you first have to think of them, and Gideon would rather think of himself.”

”He seems to do a pretty good job of hating you.”

”Only because he can't ignore me. If we weren't trapped in the same head together. . .”

”What about money?” I said. ”Xavier told Penny he was going to Michigan to collect an inheritance.”

”Well,” my father admitted, ”it's true that Gideon wanted me to take the house in Seven Lakes.

That was the catalyst for our last fight.” He looked at the scar on his palm. ”I'd thought I had Gideon settled down, ready to accept his place in the geography, but then we got that phone call. When Gideon found out I'd told Chief Bradley I didn't want our mother's property, he was furious. He said that the property was rightfully his, and I had no business refusing it.”

”And that's when he tried to take over?” My father nodded. ”And what about before then?” I asked. ”Is it possible that sometime earlier on, while the stepfather was still alive, that Gideon might have gone to him and tried to demand, I don't know, some kind of advance on his inheritance?”

”. . . and then killed him when he said no?” My father was skeptical. ”That's hard to imagine. I told you --”

”Maybe he didn't do it personally. Maybe he called out somebody else, somebody new, to do it for him. That could be what Xavier was for.”

”I don't know. I don't know anything about Xavier, and I'm embarra.s.sed that I don't, but --”

”Do you know where we were, the day the stepfather had his accident? I mean, is it even possible that we were in Seven Lakes that day?”

”I don't even know the exact date he died. I never asked.”

”Father!”

”I didn't care about that, Andrew! I was glad to hear he was gone, but the questions I had for Chief Bradley were all about our mother.”

”Do you know approximately when --”

”Late spring of 1991. Which was a pretty chaotic period for us. That was when I had my big blowup with Dr. Kroft.”

”Dr. Kroft. . . so there's a chance we were locked up in Ann Arbor when the stepfather had his accident.”

He nodded. ”It depends on the date. For most of April that year things were pretty stable; I lost some time, a couple hours here and there, but no really big chunks. Then on April. . . 29th, I think. . . I had a session with Dr. Kroft where we tried a forced fusion, and the next five days are all lost time, although the last three of those days we were in lockdown in the Psychiatric Center. They let us out on May 6th, and then the next day I went back to the Center for what turned out to be my last session with Dr. Kroft. That was the session where I lost my temper -- and then for the next two weeks, more or less, we were back in lockdown.”

”More or less?”

”The last two weeks of May are a complete blank,” he told me. ”When I blacked out on the 18th -- or maybe it was the 19th -- I was still on the ward. When I woke up on June 2nd I was on a Greyhound bus, on my way to Seattle.”

This was a version of events I hadn't heard before. ”You woke up on a bus? But I thought. . .

you always told me you decided to leave Michigan.”

”Well I did,” my father said. ”I mean I could have gotten off the bus in Chicago and turned back.

But when I checked my wallet, I found a cas.h.i.+er's check for what looked like my entire savings, and a number to call to have my possessions forwarded. . . so I had a pretty good idea that if I went back to Ann Arbor, I wouldn't still have an apartment waiting for me, or a bank account -- and I was sure I didn't have a job anymore. And besides, there just didn't seem to be any reason to go back. I was done with Dr. Kroft, done with that whole chapter of my life; it was time to try something new. So I decided -- I decided -- to stay on the bus and keep going.”

”But. . .” I stopped myself. This was definitely a topic to be explored in more detail later, but for now it was a side issue. ”So two whole weeks are missing. May 18th or 19th through June 2nd.”

”Right.”

”Which is not good.”

”Well, that depends on what day the stepfather died. . . You could look it up on his tombstone, I suppose. The cemetery's just outside Muskegon, so it's practically on the way.”

”You know where the stepfather is buried?”

”I know where our mother is buried. They had adjacent plots.” He gazed out at the mist on the lake. ”If you do stop there. . .”

”You really want to say good-bye to her?”

”She was our mother,” he said.

We talked a while longer, then sat, not talking, longer still. Eventually my father stood up and said he was going for a walk in the forest. I offered him back the funeral program, but he didn't want it. ”Keep it yourself,” he said, ”or throw it in the lake.”

”Keep it where? I can't just leave it lying out, and I'd rather not bury it. . .”

”If you really want to hang on to it,” my father said wearily, ”you can put it up in my room.”

He turned away and disappeared; I went into the house. As I climbed the steps to the second floor I was struck by how quiet it was. Usually there are at least four or five souls in the common room, or up in the gallery. Today there were none. It felt as if the house were empty, though I doubted everyone could be outside; probably a lot of them were just hiding in their rooms.

A soul's own room is an intensely private s.p.a.ce -- as private, in its way, as a singular person's whole mind -- and ordinarily permission to go inside, especially unaccompanied, is a sign of great trust. In this case, however, I think my father was just too tired to worry about me poking around. Not that there was much for me to poke around in. My father's room is the definition of Spartan: four walls and a bed pretty much describes it.

It was this very simplicity that inadvertently led to me being nosy. I had to find a place to put the funeral program. It was obvious that my father didn't want to have to look at it, so just dropping it on the floor or on top of the bed was out. If he'd had shelves or trunks or a filing cabinet I could have stuck the pamphlet in there, but he didn't, so that left only one place: under the bed. When I reached beneath the box spring, though, there was already something else down there. I grabbed onto it, meaning only to s.h.i.+ft it aside a little -- I swear -- but ended up pulling it out to look at it.

The something was a painting. Oil on canvas, like the kind Aunt Sam did, but in a very different style than hers. The painting showed a woman hugging a little girl. There was no background, no sense of location; just the two figures. The girl's face was hidden, pressed to the woman's breast, but the woman's face -- the most detailed part of the portrait -- was aglow with love, and even if I hadn't recognized her from the photograph in my wallet, her ident.i.ty wouldn't have been hard to guess.

I slid the painting back beneath the bed, and the pamphlet along with it. Resisting the temptation to hunt around under there some more, I got up to go. . . and that's when I saw the Witness standing out on the gallery, staring in at me. She was one of the older Witnesses, a girl of eleven or twelve.

”What do you want?” I asked her brusquely, embarra.s.sed to be caught snooping.

She didn't answer, only turned and walked out of my field of view. I stepped to the doorway, but by the time I got there she was all the way across the gallery. She disappeared into the nursery.

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