It is late afternoon when they leave, Lizzy and Katie running after the car, still arrrrring and waving as it pulls out the drive, McCluskey arrrrring as well, having spent the last five hours in the role of Captain Blackbeard.
But you don’t have a beard and your hair is all white.
Arrrrr, but fat beardless old guy is just my disguise. For I be a pirate with a price on his head, girls.
Hannah had been sitting at the kitchen table all the while, talking to Jen, drinking wine as the swashbuckling games spun around her.
Now she waves a final goodbye and winds up the window. Thanks for playing along, Mike, says Hannah.
No problemo, Aitch. But Christ, do those girls love a treasure hunt or what?
I thought you were going to keel over at the end of the fourth hour.
Nah, that’s nothing compared to having three boys. Plus, you know, with boys you gotta beat them at everything as well.
What?
Sure. You ever need to know the darker arts of winning Uno every time, I’m your man.
You cheated your own children at cards?
Fuckin A, Aitch. How else do you think those boys got their cojones of steel?
Their what? Tommy teaches pre-K.
Right, but he rules those four-year-olds with an iron fist.
Hannah tries to hide her laughter from McCluskey, turning to look out the window, the Swangums a white band on the horizon like a cloud bank that has sunk from the sky, the ridge seeming such an unlikely setting for nightmares right now, and then they drive past the park entrance with its twin millstones, on toward Main Street, and she turns back to McCluskey.
So, now that you no longer have to play Captain Blackbeard, tell me what happened with Matthew, she says.
McCluskey rubs his nose back and forth, and performs a long shrug. The guy offered me pancakes, he says, not dropping his shoulders until he’s done speaking.
Pancakes? says Hannah. Anything else?
Sure, says McCluskey. You know, it’s complicated, Aitch.
Mike, come on, you’re stalling. Just say it.
McCluskey starts to act like he’s interested in reading all the store signs they’re passing, finally speaking at the end of another long shrug. So there was this old guy in the house, he says, and the guy was just a friend of his, right? Only it turns out this friend has Alzheimer’s, and Matthew’s paying a nurse to look after him full-time.
Hannah sighs. What was the old guy’s name? she says.
I dunno, says McCluskey. Pete—something like that.
Hannah crosses her arms, hugging herself at the ribs, feeling herself beginning to burn at the memory, her body tensing up.
What’s wrong? says McCluskey, glancing across at her. You know this guy? Pete?
Something like that, says Hannah. Anyway, what’s your point, Mike?
I dunno, says McCluskey, gripping the wheel tighter and taking a few heavy breaths. Look, he says, don’t forget I’m Team fuckin Aitch all the way, right?
Just tell me.
And remember, this Matthew comes anywhere near you, I’ll drop him on the spot, I swear.
But…?
McCluskey starts checking his mirrors, rearview, side view, and scratching his ear as he says to her, Look, I think when the guy apologized to you this morning, Aitch, I just think, you know, maybe he was being kinda genuine, that’s all. And then McCluskey’s voice rises halfway to anger. Goddammit, he says, I didn’t want to have to fuckin say that, OK? And he glances across again, Hannah making herself small in the passenger seat. You mad at me, Aitch?
No, I’m not mad, she says. But just give me a minute, Mike, can you?
McCluskey swallows hard, and keeps on driving, until at the end of Main Street they join a line of traffic, everyone waiting to make the turn toward the bridge, while Hannah hugs herself as she remembers, picturing it all over again and wondering all the while, What did I really see through that window?
Because sometimes when she thinks about it, she can see it one way, through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl feeling crushed, and there he is, the boy who on the last day of school put three kisses at the end of his note to her, now with his head bobbing in the lap of the man who chairs cement meetings at her family’s home, or gives nature talks at their school, and seeing is believing, isn’t that how the phrase goes, and she believed what she saw. Only sometimes she can picture it differently, because what if the phrase can be flipped around, what if you believe something strongly enough, and you make yourself see it, an optical illusion, a trick of the mind?
Soon they are crossing the bridge, the traffic starting to flow faster as they pass through the outskirts of Roseborn, the road carrying them up from the floodplain, and whatever she saw or didn’t see, she couldn’t have known Matthew’s father would overhear her, and didn’t she try to make things right later on? Or at least she tried to make everything a little less wrong, because when she woke up in that hospital bed, the left side of her face covered in bandage and gauze, she could have told the police right then that Matthew was guilty of more than one crime, and years later when she thought about it, she couldn’t remember if she didn’t tell because she was scared of being guilty of something as well, guilty of concealing a murder, or whether she didn’t tell the police anything because whatever Matthew did to her while she was tied to that tree, he had killed his own father because of something she’d said, it was all because of her, whether she meant for it to happen or not. It was her fault.
Whatever she said to Matthew when his father was listening in, and whatever she said to him later on, just a few moments before he tied her to that tree, after she thought she could go through with it, thinking that she owed him something, but was just too young for that thing, and of course she regrets saying it, is ashamed of what she said, the memory of that word still burning her cheeks, and whatever she said, nothing can justify what Matthew did to her that day. Nothing.
For years she has wanted to tell someone the whole story, but maybe she thought she still had to keep Matthew’s secret, or maybe it was because of the burning shame of what she said to him that day, August 18, 1982, and whatever the reason, she has never told anyone, the guilty feeling coming to her sometimes after she wakes with a scream, another one of the nightmares, pistols and rifles, airplanes falling out of the sky, the darkness that will be with her forever, the left side of her world always in shadow, and she has never told anyone what happened that day. Never.
Now they are passing through open farmland, past grain silos and barns, driving away from the ridge, and she knows it is time to admit what she did, to admit it to someone, let go of the burden, so she uncrosses her arms, and she takes a deep breath. Hey, McCluskey, she says, there’s something I want to tell you, something that happened before Matthew did what he did to me.
McCluskey looks alarmed. Aitch, wait now, you know you don’t have to tell me anything, I’m Team fuckin Aitch no matter what.
She stares distantly out through the windshield, a red barn in a wildflower meadow, a car about to turn from the end of a dirt track onto the road. No, she says, I want to, Mike, I think I need to … but something about that car, a blue car, stops her from finishing the sentence as it pulls onto the other side of the road, turning toward Roseborn, its driver obscured by sunlight, Hannah staring hard at the license plate as they pass.
Wait, she says. McCluskey, wait, that’s our car, the blue Audi that just went by, it’s ours.
McCluskey looks in his mirror. What? he says. You sure?
Positive, she says. It must be Patch. What’s he doing up here?
McCluskey has to wait for a farm truck to pass before he can pull off the road, spinning the wheel hard to turn around, stopping at the dusty edge of an orchard right behind where another car is parked, but pausing before he shifts to reverse. Aitch, you recognize that? he says, pointing at the black Mercedes.
Wait, is it Matthew’s? she says.
Fuckin A it is, Aitch. I made a mental note of the plates so I could check a few things later on. McCluskey squints into the distance, the blue car already out of sight. You get any more messages from your husband? he says.
A few, says Hannah. But none that I’ve opened.
Yeah? says McCluskey. Well, maybe you wanna take a look now.