Текст книги "Shelter"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

chapter 4

I MET UP WITH EMA three blocks away.

“That,” she said, cracking a smile for the first time since I’d known her, “was awesome.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“So where do you want to break into next?”

“Funny.” And then I couldn’t help but smile.

“What?” she said.

I started laughing.

“What?”

“You,” I said. “Selling Girl Scout cookies.”

She laughed too. The sound was melodious. “What, you don’t buy me as a Girl Scout?”

I just looked at her—in the black clothes, with the black nail polish and silver studs in her eyebrow. “Yeah, nice uniform.”

“Maybe I’m the goth Girl Scout.” She lifted up her cell phone to show me. “Oh, I typed in the license plate number of that black car. I don’t know what you can do with it, but I figured what the heck.”

I had an idea about that. “Can you text it to me?”

Ema nodded, typed a little, hit Send. “So what are you going to do now?” she asked.

I shrugged. What could I do? I couldn’t call the police. What would I tell them? A man in a dark suit walked into a garage? For all I knew he lived there. And how would I explain to the police my being inside the house in the first place?

I told her about the photograph, the butterfly emblem, and the light in the basement. When I finished, Ema said, “Whoa.”

“You say that a lot.”

“What?”

“ ‘Whoa,’” I said.

“Actually, I don’t. But hanging around you, well, it seems awfully apropos.”

I checked the time on my cell phone. It was time to meet Spoon so we could break into the main office. If I made it through today without going to jail, it would be a miracle.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Thanks for the adventure.”

“Thanks for being the lookout.”

“Mickey?”

I turned and looked at her.

“What are you going to do about Bat Lady?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What can I do?”

“She told you your dad is alive.”

“Yeah, so?”

“We can’t just let that go.”

“We?”

Ema blinked and looked away. There were tears in her eyes.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Her saying that to you,” Ema said. “It’s so mean. We should egg her house—except then it would look and smell better.” She wiped her face with the tattooed forearm. “I better go.”

Ema started walking away.

“Wait, where do you live?” I asked. “Do you need me to walk you home?”

She frowned. “Are you for real? Walk me home? Yeah, right.”

She hurried her step and vanished around the corner. I thought about chasing after her, but she’d dig into me about the fat girl needing protection and I didn’t have time for that. Spoon was waiting for me.

I jogged back to the school and found him alone in the parking lot. I pushed away all images of the Bat Lady and her house. I was still riding the adrenaline wave—might as well see where it led me. Spoon was sitting on the hood of a car.

“Hey, Spoon.”

“Guess what?” He jumped down from the hood. “Beyoncé’s favorite makeup is mascara, but she’s allergic to perfume.”

He waited expectantly for me to reply.

“Uh, interesting,” I said.

“I know, right?”

I should have nicknamed him Random instead of Spoon.

Spoon led the way toward the side door of the school. Using the card in his hand, he swiped it through the magnetic reader. There was a click, and the door opened. We entered.

There is no place more hollow, more soulless, than a school at night. The building had been created for life, for constant motion, for students rushing back and forth, some confident, most scared, all trying to figure out their place in the world. Take that away and you might as well have a body drained of all its blood.

Our footsteps in the long corridors echoed so loudly I wondered if our shoes were amped up. We headed for the main office without speaking. When we reached the glass door, Spoon had the key at the ready.

“If my dad finds out,” Spoon whispered, “well, no revival of Guys and Dolls for me.”

He looked back at me. I guess I should have given him an out here. But I didn’t. Maybe because I was that desperate. Or maybe because I don’t like Guys and Dolls. He turned the key, and we stepped into the office. The front desk was tall enough so you could lean on it. Three school secretaries sat there. Going behind the desk was, of course, strictly offlimits, so I confess that I got a thrill when we did just that.

Spoon took out a penlight. “It’s darker in there. We can’t turn on any lights, okay?”

I nodded.

We stopped at a door that read GUIDANCE. I always found that term wonderfully vague. The dictionary definition of the word is “advice or information aimed at resolving a problem.” In short, an attempt to help. But to us students, the word—this office—is far more frightening. It conjures up our college prospects, growing older, getting a real job—our future.

Guidance seemed more like a term for cutting us loose.

Spoon fished out another key and opened the door. The school, I knew, had twelve guidance counselors. Each had a small private office within this larger office. Most of the doors were unlocked. We entered the first private office. It belonged to a young guidance counselor named Ms. Korty. Like most people, she had left her computer on for the night, settling for “standby” mode.

Spoon handed me the penlight and nodded for me to go ahead. I sat at her desk and started typing. As soon as I hit the keys, the following prompt popped up:

USER NAME:

PASSWORD:

Damn! I hit the return key several times. Nothing. I sighed and looked back at Spoon. “Do you have a clue?”

“The user name is easy,” Spoon said. “It’s just her e-mail. Janice Korty, so it’s JKorty at the school dot e-d-u.”

“And the password?”

Spoon pushed the glasses up his nose. “That’s going to be a problem.”

I tried to think. “How about paper files?”

“They’re kept off-site. And if Ashley is a new student, she probably doesn’t even have one yet.”

I sat back, defeated. Then I let myself think about Ashley. My shoulders relaxed. I thought about the way she nervously played with a loose thread on her sweater. I thought about the way she smelled like wildflowers and when I kissed her, she tasted gently like berries. I know how corny this sounds, but I could kiss her all day and never get bored. Barf, right? I thought of the way she would look at me sometimes, like I was the only person in the universe, and then I thought that this girl, the one who looked at me like that, had just vanished without a good-bye.

It made no sense.

I had to think harder. Ms. Korty was young—the youngest guidance counselor at the school. Something about that triggered a thought. I turned to Spoon. “Who are some of the oldest guidance counselors?”

“Oldest? You mean, like age?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Humor me.”

“Mr. Betz,” Spoon said without hesitation. “He’s so old he teaches a class on Shakespeare because he knew him personally.”

I had seen Mr. Betz in the corridors. He used a walking stick and wore a bow tie. I thought about it—he could definitely be my man. “Which office is his?”

“Why?”

“Just show me, okay?”

When we got back into the hallway, Spoon pointed to the office in the far corner. As we headed toward it, I peered quickly into each office we passed, glancing at the computer monitors for Post-it Notes. No luck. Mr. Betz’s desk had antique-globe bookends and a matching pen holder with his name engraved on it. There was an old Swingline stapler and several Lucite awards.

I sat at his desk and turned on the computer. The same prompt came up:

USER NAME:

PASSWORD:

Spoon looked at me and shrugged. “What did you expect?”

Exactly this. I opened the drawer on the right. Pens, pencils, paper clips, a box of matches, a pipe. I moved to the middle drawer. I looked inside, smiled, and said, “Bingo.”

“Huh?”

While it never pays to generalize, those who appear not to be the most computer literate often rely on keeping old-fashioned notes so that they don’t forget stuff like user names and passwords. There, on a classic three-by-five index card, Mr. Betz had written the following:

GLOBETHEATRE1599

If that wasn’t a password . . .

Spoon said, “Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was originally built in 1599. It was destroyed by fire on June 29, 1613, and rebuilt in 1614 and closed in 1642. A modern reconstruction of it was opened in 1997.”

Terrific. Mr. Betz’s first name was Richard. I typed in the RBetz user name and typed GLOBETHEATRE1599 in as the password. I hit the return button and waited. A little hourglass spun for a second before a screen came up:

WELCOME, RICHARD!

Spoon smiled and held up a palm. I high-fived him. I clicked the link for student files and then typed in the name: Kent, Ashley. When her photograph came up—the one we’d both taken for student IDs the first day of school—I felt a hand reach into my chest and squeeze my heart.

“Man,” Spoon said, “no wonder you want to find her.”

If you were creating a graphic dictionary and needed a definition of demure, you would use her expression in this picture. She looked pretty, sure, beautiful even, but what you really felt was that she was quiet and shy and somewhat uncomfortable posing. Something about it—something about her, really—called out to me.

Her file was brief. Her parents were listed as Patrick and Catherine Kent. Their home phone and address on Carmenta Terrace were there. I grabbed a pen from Mr. Betz’s holder and found a scrap of paper.

“Fingerprints,” Spoon said, pointing to the pen. “For that matter, your fingerprints are probably on his keyboard.”

I made a face. “You think they’re going to dust for prints?”

“They might.”

“Then I choose to live dangerously,” I said.

I jotted down the address and phone. I scanned the rest of the page. It said: TRANSCRIPT PENDING. I guess that meant that they didn’t have anything from her old school. There was a list of her current classes, but I already knew those. The rest of the screen was blank. I was tempted to check out my own file—just out of curiosity, I guess—but Spoon gave me a look to hurry. I carefully put the pen back in its place, pretended to wipe away all my prints, and followed Spoon out.

Once outside I checked my phone. Another voice mail from Uncle Myron. I ignored it. Darkness had fallen now. I looked up at the stars in the ink-black sky. It was a clear night.

“Do you know where Carmenta Terrace is?” I asked Spoon.

“Sure. It’s on my way home. Do you want me to take you?”

I said I did. And off we went.

Spoon was on my right, a good foot shorter than me. He watched his feet while he walked.

“In the morning,” Spoon said, “I’m making waffles.”

I smiled. “I know that one,” I said.

“You do?”

“Donkey to Shrek.”

“You play basketball,” Spoon said.

I couldn’t tell if it was a question or statement. I nodded. When you’re six-four, you get used to that question.

“Your name is Mickey Bolitar,” he said.

“Yep.”

“The name Myron Bolitar is all over the gym. He holds almost every basketball record at the school. Most points, most rebounds, most wins.”

As I knew only too well.

“Is he your father?” Spoon asked.

“My uncle.”

“Oh.” We kept walking. “The basketball team was eighteen and five last year,” Spoon said. “They lost in the state finals. The top six players are all returning. They’ll be seniors this year.”

I knew all this. It was one of the reasons I, a lowly sophomore, was keeping my own game under wraps for the time being. I hadn’t played in town yet, choosing instead to find more competitive pickup games in Newark.

We passed a football practice for kids who couldn’t have been older than ten. The coaches screamed like it was Division I-A. This town was big on athletics. The first week of school I asked someone how many pro athletes had come out of this high school. The answer was one: my uncle. And in truth he never really played pro basketball. He was drafted in the first round but blew out his knee in preseason. Boom, like that, his career was over. Uncle Myron never got to suit up for the Celtics. I thought about that sometimes, about what that must have been like, and I wonder if that explained the tension between him and my dad.

But it was still Myron’s fault—what happened between him and my dad. So I saw no reason to forgive.

“It’s up this way,” Spoon said.

The stone sign in front of what looked like a new development read THE PREMA ESTATES. The area reeked of new money. The streets were well lit. The lawns couldn’t have been greener without using an industrial-strength spray paint. The landscaping was almost too polished, like a show that had over-rehearsed. The sprawling mansions were brick and stone, trying to look old and stately but missing.

When we hit the top of Carmenta Terrace, I looked out at the Kents’ house and felt my heart drop.

Four police cars, all with spinning lights, were parked in front of it. Worse, there was an ambulance in the driveway. I broke into a run. Despite being a foot shorter, Spoon stayed with me stride for stride. There were police officers on the lawn. One was talking to what I assumed was a neighbor. The cop was taking notes. The front door of the Kent house was open. I could see a foyer and a big chandelier and a cop on guard.

When we reached the curb, Spoon pulled up. I didn’t stop. I ran toward the door. The cop at the door turned, startled, and yelled, “Halt.”

I did. “What happened?” I asked him.

Spoon came up next to me. The cop frowned his disapproval with everything he had. Not just his mouth frowned. All of him joined in. He had a unibrow and Cro-Magnon forehead. They frowned too. He glared at Spoon, then turned it back at me. “And you are?”

“I’m a friend of Ashley’s,” I said.

He crossed his arms over a chest that could have doubled as a paddleball court. “Did I ask you for a list of your friends?” he said with a gigantic sigh. “Or did I ask who you are?”

Oh boy. “My name is Mickey Bolitar.”

That got the brow up in the air. “Hold up a second. You’re Myron’s kid?”

He said Myron’s name like he was spitting something really foul out of his mouth. “No. His nephew. If you could just tell me—”

“Do I look like a librarian?” he snapped.

“Excuse me?”

“You know. A librarian. I mean, do you think I’m here to answer your questions? Like a librarian.”

I glanced at Spoon. He shrugged. I said, “No. No, I don’t think you’re a librarian.”

“You being a wise guy?”

“Me? No.”

He shook his head. “Smart mouth. Just like your uncle.”

I was tempted to tell him that I didn’t like my uncle either. I figured that it would bond us, like pulling a thorn from his paw, but no matter what I felt about my uncle, I wasn’t about to sell my family down the river to appease Mr. Cro-Magnon.

Spoon said, “Officer?”

He turned hard at him. “What?”

“You’re being rude,” Spoon said.

Oh boy.

“What did you say to me?”

“You’re a civil servant. You’re being rude.”

Cro-Magnon pushed his chest so it was right up against Spoon’s face. Spoon did not step back. Cro-Magnon stared down at him and then narrowed his eyes. “Wait a second. I know you. You were picked up last year, weren’t you? Twice.”

“And released,” Spoon said. “Twice.”

“Yeah, I remember. Your father wanted to sue us for false arrest or some crap like that. You’re that old janitor’s kid, right?”

“I am.”

“So,” Cro-Magnon said with a sneer, “does your dad still clean toilets for a living?”

“Sure, that’s his job,” Spoon said, pushing up his glasses. “Toilets, sinks, floors—whatever needs cleaning.”

The guilelessness threw him. I quickly stepped in. “Look, we aren’t looking to cause any trouble. I just want to make sure my friend is okay.”

“Big hero,” he said, turning back to me. I saw now that he wore a name tag—TAYLOR. “Like your uncle.” Taylor made a big production of putting his hands on his hips. “Strange you two being out so late on a school night.”

I tried not to make a face. “It’s eight o’clock.”

“You being a wise guy again?”

I needed to get past this guy.

“Maybe you two should come with me.”

“Where?” I asked.

Taylor put his face so close to mine I could bite his nose. “How about a holding cell, smart guy? You like that idea?”

Spoon said, “No.”

“Well, that’s where you’re heading if you don’t start answering my questions. There’s this one we got down in Newark I think will be perfect for you two. I can put you in separate cells. Adult population. One guy we have in holding right now, he’s seven feet tall and got these really long fingernails because, well, he likes to scratch things.”

He grinned at us.

Spoon swallowed hard. “You can’t do that,” he said.

“Aw, you gonna cry?”

“We’re minors,” Spoon said. “If you arrest us, you need to contact our parents or guardian.”

“Can’t,” Taylor said with a smirk. “Your daddy is too busy scrubbing toilets with his brush.”

“He doesn’t use a brush,” Spoon said. “He uses your mama’s face.”

Oh boy.

Something behind Taylor’s eyes exploded. His face went scarlet red. I thought that maybe he was having a stroke. His hands formed fists. Spoon stood right there. He pushed his glasses back up his nose. I thought that Taylor was going to punch him. Maybe he would have, but a voice yelled, “Out of the way, coming through.”

A stretcher was heading toward us. We stepped to either side of the door. A man was on it. There were contusions on his face, but he was conscious. A few spots of blood clung to the collar of his white dress shirt. I would guess his age as early forties. Ashley’s father? A woman about the same age trailed him. Her face was ghost pale. She clutched her purse as though it could offer comfort.

She stopped, dazed. “Who are these two?” she asked Taylor.

“We, uh, found them loitering around,” Taylor said. “We thought maybe they were the perpetrators.”

For a second, Mrs. Kent stared at us as though we were pieces in a puzzle she couldn’t put together.

“These are boys,” she said.

“Yes, I know, but—”

“I told you it was a man. I told you he had a tattoo on his face. Do you see a tattoo on either of their faces?”

Taylor said, “I was just eliminating . . .” But she was already gone, catching up to the stretcher. Taylor shot another glare toward us. Spoon actually gave him a thumbs-up, as though he’d done a good job. Again, with that facial expression, you couldn’t tell if Spoon was goofing on him or sincere. Based on the mama line, I assumed the former.

“Get out of here,” Taylor said.

We headed back down the brick walk. The man I assumed was Ashley’s father was loaded into the back of the ambulance. A police officer was talking to Mrs. Kent. Two other cops were talking near us. I heard the words home invasion and felt my chest tighten.

Now or never.

I ran over before anyone could stop me. “Mrs. Kent?”

She stopped and frowned at me. “Who are you?”

“My name is Mickey Bolitar. I’m a friend of Ashley’s.”

She said nothing for a second. Her eyes shifted to the right, then back toward me. “What do you want?”

“I just want to make sure Ashley is okay.”

When she shook her head, I felt my knees buckle. But then she said something I never expected: “Who?”

“Ashley,” I said. “Your daughter.”

“I don’t have a daughter. And I don’t know anyone named Ashley.”

chapter 5

HER WORDS PARALYZED ME.

Mrs. Kent stepped into the back of the ambulance. The cops chased us away. When we reached the bottom of Prema Estates, Spoon and I split up and headed to our respective homes. I called the Coddington Rehab Center on my way, but they told me that my mother was in session and it was too late to talk or visit tonight. That was fine. She was coming home tomorrow morning anyway.

Uncle Myron’s car, a Ford Taurus, was in the driveway. When I opened the front door, Myron called out, “Mickey?”

“Homework,” I said, hurrying into my bedroom in the basement to avoid him. For many years, including his stint in high school, the basement had been Myron’s bedroom. Nothing in it had changed since. The wood paneling was flimsy and stuck on with two-sided tape. There was a beanbag chair that leaked small pellets. Faded posters of basketball greats from the 1970s, guys like John “Hondo” Havlicek and Walt “Clyde” Frazier, adorned the walls. I confess that I loved the posters. Most of the room was like lame retro. But nobody was cooler than Hondo and Clyde.

I did my math homework. I don’t dislike math, but is there anything more boring than math homework? I read a little Oscar Wilde for English and practiced vocabulary for French. When I was done, I grilled myself a cheeseburger on the barbecue.

Had Mrs. Kent lied to me? And why?

I couldn’t fathom a reason, which led immediately to the next question.

Had Ashley lied to me? And why?

I tried to run through the possibilities in my brain, but nothing came to me. With dinner over, I grabbed the basketball, flipped on the outdoor lights, and started to shoot. I play every day. I do my best thinking when I shoot hoops.

The court is my escape and my paradise.

I love basketball. I love the way you can be exhausted and sweaty and running with nine other guys, and yet, at the risk of sounding overly Zen, you are still so wonderfully alone. On the court, nothing bothers me. I see things a few seconds before they actually happen. I love anticipating a teammate’s cut and then throwing a bounce pass between two defenders. I love the rebound, boxing out, figuring angles and positioning myself, willing the ball into my hands. I love dribbling without looking down, the feel, the sense of trust, of control, almost as though the ball were on a leash. I love catching the pass, locking my eyes on the front rim, sliding my fingers into the grooves, raising the ball above my head, cocking my wrist as I begin to leap. I love the feel as I release the shot at the apex of the jump, the way my fingertips stay on the leather until the last possible moment, the way I slowly come back to the ground, the way the ball moves in an arc toward the rim, the way the bottom of the net dances when the ball goes swish.

I moved now around the blacktop, taking shots, grabbing my own rebounds, moving to another spot. I played games in my head, pretending LeBron or Kobe or even Clyde and Hondo were covering me. I took foul shots, hearing the sportscaster in my head announcing that I, Mickey Bolitar, had two foul shots and my team was down by one and there was no time left on the clock and it was game seven of the NBA Finals.

I let myself get deliriously lost in the bliss.

I had been shooting for an hour when the back door opened. Uncle Myron came out. He didn’t say a word. He moved under the basket and started grabbing rebounds and passing the ball back to me. I moved through the shots in around-the-world fashion, starting in the right corner and moving to my left, taking a shot every yard or so, until I ended up in the opposite corner.

Myron just rebounded for me. He got it, the need for silence right now. This, in a sense, was our church. We understood respect. So for a while he let it go. When I signaled that I wanted to take a break, he spoke for the first time.

“Your father used to do this for me,” Myron said. “I would shoot. He would rebound.”

My father had done the same for me too, but I didn’t feel like sharing that.

Myron’s eyes welled up. They well up a lot. Myron was overly emotional. He was always trying to raise the subject of my father with me. We would drive past a Chinese restaurant and he’d say, “Your father loved the pork fried dumplings here,” or we’d go past the Little League field and he’d say, “I remember when your father hit a ground-rule double when he was nine to win a game.”

I never responded.

“One night,” Myron went on, “your father and I played a game of horse that went on for three hours. Think about that. We finally agreed to call it a draw when we both had H-O-R-S for thirty straight minutes. Thirty straight minutes. You should have seen it.”

“Sounds epic,” I said in my flattest monotone.

Myron laughed. “God, you’re a wiseass.”

“No, no, a game of horse. You and Dad must have been party animals.”

Myron laughed some more and then we fell into silence. I started for the door when he said, “Mickey?”

I turned toward him.

“I’ll drive you and your mom tomorrow morning. Then I’ll leave you two alone.”

I nodded a thanks.

Myron grabbed the basketball and started shooting. It was his escape too. Not long ago, I found an old clip of his injury on YouTube. Myron was wearing a Boston Celtics jersey with the horrible short-shorts they wore in those days. He’d been pivoting on his right leg when Burt Wesson, a bruiser on the Washington Bullets, slammed into him. Myron’s leg bent in a way it was never supposed to. You could hear the snap even in the old video.

I watched him another second or two, noticing the startling similarities in the release on our jump shots. I started to go back into the house when a thought made me pause. After his injury Myron became a sports agent. That’s how my parents met—Myron was going to represent the teen tennis sensation Kitty Hammer, aka my mother. Eventually Myron branched out to represent not just athletes but people in the arts, theater, and music. He even repped rock star Lex Ryder, half of the duo that made up the group HorsePower.

Mom had known HorsePower. So had Dad. Myron represented them. And Bat Lady had their first album, which had to be thirty years old now, on her turntable.

I turned back to Myron. He stopped shooting and looked back at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you know anything about the Bat Lady?” I asked.

He frowned. “The old house on the corner of Pine and Hobart Gap?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Bat Lady. She has to be long dead.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I can’t believe kids still make up stories about her.”

“What kind of stories?”

“She was like the town bogeyman,” he said. “Supposedly she kidnapped children. People claimed they saw her bringing children to her house late at night, stuff like that.”

“Did you ever see her?” I asked.

“Me? No.” Myron spun the ball on his fingers, staring at it a little too intently. “But I think your father did.”

I wondered if this was yet another attempt by Myron to bring up my father, but no, that didn’t seem to be Myron’s style. He was a lot of things, my uncle, but he wasn’t a liar.

“Can you tell me about it?”

I could see that Myron wanted to ask why, but he also didn’t want to ruin the moment. I didn’t talk to him much and never about my dad. He didn’t want to risk me clamming back up. “I’m trying to think,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Your dad must have been twelve, maybe thirteen, I don’t remember. Anyway, we walked past that house our whole lives. You know the stories about it already, and you’ve lived here only a few weeks. So you can imagine. One time, your father and I, we were young then, he was maybe seven, I was twelve or so, we went to a horror movie at the Colony and we decided to walk back. It got dark and started to rain and we walked past some older kids. They chased us and started yelling how the Bat Lady was going to get us. Your father was so scared he started to cry.”

Myron stopped and looked off. He was fighting off tears again.

“After that night, your dad was always afraid of the Bat Lady’s house. I mean, like I said, we were all creeped out, but your father didn’t even want to walk past it. He had nightmares about the house. I remember he went to a sleepover party and he woke up screaming about the Bat Lady coming to get him. The kids teased him about it. You know how it is.”

I nodded that I did.

“So one Friday night, Brad is out with friends. That’s what we used to do back then. We’d just hang out at night. So anyway, it’s getting dark and they’re bored, so one thing leads to another and the friends challenge Brad to knock on Bat Lady’s door. He doesn’t want to, but your father was not one to lose face.”

“So what happened next?”

“He approached Bat Lady’s house. It was pitch dark. No lights were on. His friends stayed across the street. They figured he’d knock and then run. Well, he knocked, but he didn’t run. His friends all waited to see if Bat Lady answered the door. But that’s not what happened. Instead they saw your father turn the knob and go inside.”

I almost gasped. “On his own?”

“Yep. He disappeared inside, and his friends waited for him to come out. They waited a long time. But he didn’t come back. After a while, they figured that Brad was playing a trick on them. You know. The house was empty, so all Brad did was sneak out the back—trying to scare them by not coming out.”

I took a step closer to Myron. “So what did happen?”

“One of your dad’s old friends, Alan Bender, well, he didn’t buy that. So when your dad didn’t show up for two hours, he was terrified. He ran to our house to get help or at least tell someone. I remember he was out of breath and all wide eyed. I was out back here shooting, just like, well, tonight. Alan told me that he saw Brad go into Bat Lady’s house and that he didn’t come out.”

“Were Grandma and Grandpa home?”

“No, they were out to dinner. It was a Friday night. We didn’t have cell phones back then. So I ran back with Alan. I started pounding on Bat Lady’s door, but there was no answer. Alan said that he saw your dad just turn the knob and walk in. So I tried that, but the door was locked now. From inside, I thought I could hear music playing.”

“Music?”

“Yeah. It was weird. I started freaking out. I tried to kick in the door, if you could believe it, but it held. I told Alan to run to the neighbor’s house and have them call the police. So Alan takes off. And just as he does, the front door opens and your father walks out. Just like that. He looks so serene. I ask him if he’s okay. He says, sure, fine.”

“What else did he say?”

“That’s it.”

“Didn’t you ask him what he’d been doing for two hours?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“He never said.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Never?”

Myron shook his head. “Never. But something happened. Something big.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was different after that, your father.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. More thoughtful maybe. More mature. I thought it was just because he faced his fears. But maybe there was more to it than that. A few weeks ago, Grandpa told me that he always knew your dad would run off—that he was meant to be a nomad. I never quite bought that. But I think that started, that feeling that your dad was meant to wander, after he visited the Bat Lady’s house.”