Complete silence was so rare in the house that I was surprised by the noises that surfaced in the sudden stillness of the room. I’d never noticed, even in the deep of night in Tom’s frequent absences, how the pantry door slightly tapped against its wood frame when the heat kicked on; how the holly bush outside the east kitchen window flicked against the pane; even how the energy-efficient bulbs that were now so dramatically expensive at Target hummed in the black chandelier above the dining-room table. But I heard it all in that moment. The air even seemed unsure what to do, as if no one was bothering to breathe.
It was in the silence that sprung from my daughters’ astonishment, hearing me tell of my work with Steven Richards, that I knew I would not share everything. That would be for Tom and Tom alone.
“You … were a UFO researcher?” Kate asked at last.
“I told you, I wasn’t a Researcher, at first. I was only an office manager.”
“It’s going to take me a minute,” Stella said. “The guy who kidnapped William studies UFOs? And you used to be his assistant? And you went to his motel room tonight? What did he tell you?”
“He said … he was going to tell me what really happened to William. He doesn’t have William.” And what happened to William happened to me, as well.
“What do you mean ‘What really happened’?” Kate asked. “That William … was abducted by aliens?”
When I didn’t respond, Kate shook her head. “Mom, come on. Mom, are you kidding me?”
“Give your Mom a break, Kate,” Roxy scolded. “She’s been through a lot.”
“I know Steven isn’t responsible.”
“How could you possibly know that, Mom?” Kate walked to the edge of the table. “And do you care to elaborate on why he has such an obsession with you and this family?”
“Watch that East Coast tone when you talk to your mother, Kate Elizabeth,” Roxy warned.
“I know we’re not getting the whole story, Mom,” Kate said.
“I had to do whatever I could to try to find William.”
“Are we talking about getting answers from UFO researchers?” Kate asked.
“What if it helps us find William? And I can’t live with someone being punished for something he didn’t do—”
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” Kate said. “Why do you want to protect this man so much? Are you even listening to what you’re saying?”
“I saw the reports once, I knew them inside out. I worked hard on those cases, I made the connections. I wasn’t just some housewife—”
“Is that what this is all about? Trying to reclaim some past independence?” Kate said. “My God, Mom, you will ruin Dad. You will ruin this family—”
“I will not let this family be ruined.” A sob caught in my throat. “Don’t you see why I had to do this? Losing William, and Brian in the state he’s in now, will hang over us forever.”
“Mom, this is over.” Kate circled the table and knelt, unsuccessfully trying to get me to look at her. “You have to get it together. William … could be dead. We have to prepare for that. Listen to what the police are saying. To what the FBI is saying. I know you don’t want to let go of William, none of us do. They said they found his clothes.…”
“It’s not the truth. It’s not the truth even if Steven is charged. Even if he’s convicted. It’s not the truth.”
“Fine, Mom, fine. Buy into their crazy shit—”
“Kate, back off,” Stella said.
“I won’t back off. Good God, Mom, you aren’t even crying! William is dead—”
“He’s not dead! Steven said he knows where he is—”
“Don’t you dare say that to Anne or anyone else. I will not let your delusions give her irrational hope or make us the laughingstock of the country. Do you know what they’ll say? ‘Oh, that poor wife of Senator Roseworth, she’s so distraught she’s lost her mind.’”
“Jesus, are you always in PR mode? Have you ever known this woman to be delusional? Ever? For one moment in our entire lives?” Stella asked.
“Did you ever know that our Mom believes in aliens?” Kate motioned to me. “Or that she had an affair on Dad?”
“Kate Elizabeth!” Roxy stood.
“It’s so obvious. I’m done here.” Kate walked across the room and grabbed her purse. “But know for damned sure I’m not letting you do this, Mom. No fucking way.” She walked out and slammed the door.
“Go after her, Stella,” I said softly. “Let her smoke a bit, but don’t let her drive. She’s too upset.”
“I’m going to tell her where she can shove those cigarettes.” Stella lifted her coat from where it hung on a chair. “I have to be honest with you, Mom—this is really … hard to understand.”
She obviously wanted to say more, but instead walked out the door.
I stood and looked out the window. Stella chased after Kate, her hands rubbing her arms. “Clash of the Titans, there. Daddy’s girl versus momma’s girl,” Roxy said, coming to stand beside me. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Lynnie, you have to rest,” she whispered.
“I can’t—”
“It’s not a suggestion. Time to take an Ambien, or maybe one of Anne’s Xanax, if she left one lying around. I’m not kidding, Lynn. Tomorrow is going to be tough when word comes out about Steven. You are going to have to get some sleep.”
“How can I sleep? How can I sleep knowing what’s about to happen?”
“You don’t know what’s about to happen.”
“I have to tell Tom. He has to know.”
“In time you can tell him everything.”
“There isn’t time, Roxy. Don’t you see? They’re going to plant evidence in Steven’s house, to try to prove William is dead. How can I live with that?”
“Plant evidence? Really? Oh Lynn, why would they do that—?”
“They’ll arrest you for drug trafficking. They know about your basement.”
“What?” Roxy said in astonishment. Seeing my horrified look, she forced a smile. “So I’ll become a folk hero in East Nashville, big deal.”
“They’ll send you to prison!”
“Oh Christ, Lynn, I’m nearly seventy. They won’t prosecute me. Plus, even if they do, I’ll be out in a few days anyway. Some Colorado attorney will swoop in and save me.”
“I can’t live with that!”
“Well, I can’t live with you having a heart attack or a nervous breakdown, which is where you’re headed if you don’t get some rest. It’s been a terrible night, and there’s nothing you can do now. I’ll stay with you—”
“No, go home. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“I suppose I better go home and destroy the evidence.” Roxy rubbed her eyes. “I’ll go play referee with the girls. You, take some good legal drugs and knock out. Understand?”
I nodded, watching Roxy pull on her gloves, point towards my bedroom and then step out the door.
I slowly ascended the stairs to the dark bedroom. On the edge of the bed, green eyes flashed. The cat had all but vanished in the commotion, but Voodoo decided it was safe to resurface. As I laid down, he approached in the darkness and nuzzled my hand. I softly scratched his neck.
After several minutes, I heard Roxy’s pickup drive away. I didn’t hear the door to the house open, which meant the girls were still at it.
My lower back ached. My favorite flannel nightgown was still on the chair by my bed. Voodoo’s nuzzling was already making me drowsy. My eyes won’t feel so dry when I shut them. Kate was right; this is over. I will offer support. I will be stable. I will pick up the pieces of our family and put us back together in time. I will move us away from this property and fulfill Daddy’s last wish.
I closed my eyes, ready to let the darkness lull me away. But instead, all I could think of was a little boy. Not William, but Brian, lying in this very bed on the night William disappeared, after he had whispered the last words he would ever speak.
We lost two children that night.
I was on the stairs a moment later, hurrying to where my coat lay limp on the table. I quickly buttoned it up and looked out the window, seeing the embers from Kate’s cigarette flashing in the spitting snow as she and Stella argued near the back porch.
Keys in hand, I walked through the dining room and into the formal living room, exiting through the rarely used front door. I quietly locked it behind me and slowly walked down the front stairs, then rushed to the Volvo. I slipped in, fired it up, and tore down the driveway, embarrassed by the gravel I was kicking up.
In my rearview mirror, I saw the girls waving and calling out my name frantically. I hated that I would cause them to worry, on top of the news of William’s supposed death.
I reached over to silence the phone as the first call came in from Stella. I pressed the gas, knowing I would be long gone before either could get to their cars and hope to follow.
* * *
The late-night patrons at the Waffle House near downtown appeared even bleaker under fluorescent lights. It was nearly midnight, and the crowd from the honky-tonks on Lower Broadway wouldn’t start filing in until closer to three or four. I sat stirring my tepid coffee across the aisle from two drunk sorority girls and a furiously texting man wearing a cowboy hat. You can always spot the tourists, Tom always said, because they’re the only ones in town wearing Stetsons.
There was no chance anyone I knew would come across me here.
I glanced at my dark phone, long since powered off, knowing Tom would be trying to reach me once Kate reported that I’d driven away. Are you on the road still, insisting on driving so Anne or Chris could sleep, even though neither will? Have you repeatedly called, now that you’ve had the time to piece together the fact that some man from our far-flung past will be charged with our grandson’s murder? Are you wondering why he would come after us? Are you surprised that you didn’t even remember his name?
Or, even worse, would you lean into the phone and ask quietly, “Did you love him back?”
Steven had actually been quite brave, standing in front of me as the agents burst into the room. I should have reached out to him, reminded him he was old and so was I, and it was an unnecessary gesture. I cannot bear to think of an old man in a jail cell because of me.
And had the agents found Barbara? Was she still on the run too?
It was all my fault, all of it. What I did decades ago was slowly taking down one life at a time. If I did tell people, even the local police, what I suspected, the story would eventually unfold in the papers, online, on television. The looks of pity I would get from customers, from friends. It isn’t your fault, Lynn, they would say. He was crazy.
I reached for my purse to open the envelope Steven had given to me, smoothing out the two pieces of paper tucked inside. One was an enlarged section of a map of Colorado from an atlas in the National Geographic magazine. The upper left-hand corner revealed a copyright of September 1960.
The other was a map of the stars.
I remembered what I learned during my time in the astronomy department, so I knew the placement of the constellations was comical. The Big Dipper was in the wrong place. So was Andromeda. Whoever did the map had skills in graphic design, but the artist knew nothing of the heavens.
There was only one true accuracy: my star, right where it should be.
“Look for your star,” he had whispered, softly enough that the recording devices in the room from the FBI couldn’t pick up his words.
And then, he had said something about Argentum.
Another ghost from the past. That theory that Steven dismissed when Barbara first mentioned it all those years ago. He’d said he didn’t even know what it was, and it was not worth discussing. I’d heard that again outside the motel room, when Steven and the Researcher had discussed going into hiding. Steven referred to it as an urban legend about aliens, without a shred of proof. He’d clearly been annoyed with it.
A quick Google search on my phone revealed only two explanations: that argentum meant silver in Latin and that a senior-living association had adopted the name.
I scanned the enlarged section of Colorado, dotted with the names of towns and counties. I’d have to dig out my reading glasses to attempt look at them all.
Again I returned to the star map. My star wasn’t the only one of a different hue. While most were a brilliant white, a few others were larger in scale and gold.
My fingertips were smudged from ink. Both documents had been recently printed.
I felt a flare of anger. I didn’t have time for this. Too much was happening, too much was at stake, to sit here and try to unravel a riddle. Just like those files, all those years ago, with all the blacked-out words that so infuriated me—
I stood so quickly I almost banged my knees on the table. I walked briskly to the counter.
“Excuse me,” I asked a ponytailed young man scraping burnt leftovers on the stovetop. “Do you have any tape?”
He laughed. “When your menus are this old, something has to hold them together.” He rummaged around under the counter. “Aha!”
I thanked him and hurried back to my table. Taking a deep breath, I placed the Colorado map on top of the celestial map, taping them together at the top and bottom so they would align and not slip.
The two fit nearly perfectly on top of each other.
An encryption. Just like all the blacked-out documents. The stars were in the wrong place because Steven had made the celestial map not for accuracy, but as a key.
I slowly raised both towards the light. The smaller stars didn’t show through the state map, but I could see the larger gold ones.
My star was harder to find because it was nearly lost in the Rocky Mountains. I squinted, seeing it match up at the base of the range. The star appeared to be in a gap in the mountains in the Colorado map.
I tore off the tape and separated the two pages, madly scrambled to find my glasses in my purse, and looked closely at where the star had rested in the state. That area was completely barren, void of anything except for the tiny name of one town, deep in the mountains.
The town’s name was Argentum.