On Friday afternoons he taught art at an adult continuing education program in Charlotte, a forty-five-minute drive from his home, but one he gladly made. It wasn’t about the money—the sales and commissions for his sculptures provided a nice living. He genuinely liked encouraging students. Some were there pursuing a long-deferred dream, some just discovering a latent talent. Every once in a while someone came through his class who had real promise. That made him work harder, smile more.
As he exited the classroom he waved goodbye to his students and wished them a good weekend. He didn’t give much thought to what his students got up to on the weekends. He assumed that whatever they did was far more exciting than what he typically did. As he walked to the parking lot, he thought about the pretty new student in the third row, imagined asking her to have drinks on the weekend. Then he imagined her saying yes. He went a step further and let himself envision the two of them at a bar, in public, living without reproach. This, he knew, was a step too far.
When he reached the parking lot, he spotted a woman loitering near his car. He recognized her from a distance, and his reaction was immediate. His heart raced, his breath grew shallow, his blood heated. He didn’t want her to see that she had affected him, but it was too late. She was looking right at him from her position at the hood of his car, crouched and waiting to spring, those familiar yellow-brown eyes fixed on him.
He’d shifted under that gaze more than once since she started as a reporter years ago, looking for a Big Story, intent on that Big Story being him. She was a piranha, just waiting to pick his bones clean. The closer he got to her, the more he thought she did, in fact, resemble a piranha: that underbite, those oddly set eyes. She seemed like one of those people whose career was all she had, which made her desperate and therefore dangerous.
“Gordon,” Monica Allagash said as he walked within earshot.
He despised her use of his first name, as if they were familiar, friendly. He was betting she thought it would disarm him, open him up. So she could go for the kill. But this wasn’t a new game he was playing; it was a game he’d been forced to play for half of his life.
Game. Just the word took him back to that night. The kids were playing games, their shouts echoing across the dark fields.
Fresh out of college, he hadn’t been that much older than them, at times still feeling like a kid himself. He’d heard them through his open windows. It had been a mild night, the air cooling after the sun went down. Not cold but no longer hot. Perfect, really. There’d been no indication that it was anything but a normal night. He’d had no warning, no sense at all that his life was about to change forever.
He walked past Monica Allagash as if she were invisible. He bent to unlock his car, but his fingers betrayed him and he fumbled with his keys. He wished he had one of those little fobs that unlocked the door from a distance. Then he could click a button and gain access to the sanctuary of his vehicle, slam the door in her face, and race away.
She sidled up to him and stood so close that he could smell her cloying floral perfume. Flustered, he lost his grip on the keys and watched helplessly as they fell to the asphalt. He and Monica stared at the keys for a beat, then in unison raised their heads to regard each other. He could see that his recall was accurate: her eyes were indeed a golden-yellow color with brown flecks.
He wondered why her parents hadn’t sprung for orthodontia. Why she hadn’t as an adult. He found himself wanting to render her likeness, to sculpt his version of her. He would put ink—and blood—on her grasping hands. He would take away her underbite, remove the brown flecks from her eyes and make them simply yellow. He would make her all that she could be, yet exactly who she was. That was what he did best. Or at least, that’s what the critics said.
She reached down and retrieved the keys before he could, then dangled them in front of him. He started to take them, but she moved them out of reach, clutching them to her chest. Now her awful perfume would permeate his leather keychain.
“I need my keys,” he said flatly. He was a child in the schoolyard and she was the bully who’d snatched his lunch.
“One thing first.” She arched a single eyebrow over a yellow-brown eye.
He sighed. “What?”
“Give me a comment on today’s discovery.”
He’d been in class all afternoon. He’d seen no news, received no calls. He’d thought of nothing but his students. He’d been, he thought now, happy that way. He stared past her shoulder at the building, wished he could go back inside, back to a place where whatever discovery she was alluding to didn’t exist. Here we go again.
“I’m not aware of any discovery.”
She smirked in response and crossed her arms, his keys disappearing into her bosom.
He held up his hands like a man surrendering. “I swear. I’ve been teaching. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The smirk morphed into a smile as she realized that meant she got to be the bearer of bad news. At least, he assumed it was bad news since she was there.
“They found Davy Malcor’s jacket,” she said. “Over at the old Oxendine place.” She paused, studying his face for a reaction he hoped he was keeping at bay. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “They’ve started a formal search. Dogs, police, backhoes. You name it, they’re bringing it in.”
Her eyes scanned his face as if she were reading a book. He could tell from the look on her face that she was finding nothing. He tried thinking of something else: the sculpture he was in the middle of, the thank-you note for the gallery owners he still needed to write, what he would eat for dinner. Anything but what she’d just told him.
“You familiar with that property?” she asked, another attempt.
He said nothing. It was too late and he was too tired to grill himself a burger as he’d planned. He would swing by the Chinese place for takeout instead.
“What are they going to find there?” she asked.
“Please give me my keys,” he said.
“Are they going to find Davy there?” she responded.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Please just give me my keys or I’ll call your editor.” This time he didn’t bother to keep the irritation from his voice. “You might consider yourself a professional reporter, but this is far from professional behavior.”
She thrust the keys at him with a huff. “I’m just the first, you know. There’ll be more. I thought I’d give you the chance to talk to someone local, not some stranger. But suit yourself. This is just the beginning. You’ll see.”
As Gordon watched her stalk away, he saw it all unfolding, a movie playing just for him right where he stood in the parking lot of a school that would surely fire him as soon as the press amped up its coverage. They would flash his photo on television and print it in the newspapers, exactly as she’d promised they would. His name would be mud again, the little bit of freedom he’d grappled for destroyed once more.
They hadn’t just dug up Davy Malcor’s jacket. They’d dug up a past that, try as he might to bury it, never stayed that way.
Aloud he said, “I didn’t do it.” But Monica was too far away to hear him.