Three

Quite apart from not letting go of the matter, it soon reached out and grabbed Faith, as well.

Tuesday morning after spouse and progeny had departed, Faith left the house herself for a whirlwind round of errands, the repetitive kind, which don’t bring the satisfaction of a job well done, because in the near future, you’ll have to do them again—the dry cleaners, gas station, post office, market. It had gotten to the point where she could almost negotiate the aisles of the Shop ’n Save blindfolded. Familiarity bred speed, though, and before too long, she was back home, pulling into the driveway to put the food away before going to work.

As she got out of the car, Faith congratulated herself on the skill with which she had once again managed to avoid the Canadian hemlock hedge while leaving the parsonage shingles intact. The drive combined the challenge of a ninety-degree turn from the street with the width of a footpath. Struggling up the back stoop, keys out, she was puzzled to notice that the door was wide open, the storm door, too. She let the grocery bags slide to the ground and stared straight ahead. She’d locked the door only an hour ago. Maybe Tom had come home for something he’d forgotten—not an unusual occurrence. The Reverend Thomas Fairchild was quite absentminded.

“Honey?” she called. Her voice sounded very loud in the still morning. Mounting anxiety was making her stomach queasy, her skin damp. “Honey, are you home?”

One of the brown paper bags toppled over, and as she bent to straighten it, further queries died in her throat. There were shards of wood on the mat. She jerked her head up and saw the marks on the door, the frame. Forced entry. The house had been burglarized. Like Sarah’s.

Apprehension instantly became fury. She kicked the top step over and over, swearing out loud, “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Then she turned and raced next door to the Millers’ to call the police.

Only a few seconds had passed since she’d seen the splintered wood; a minute or two since noting the open doors. It seemed longer. The bright sun, blue sky, and Pix’s front garden full of blooms mocked her as she pounded furiously on her neighbor’s door. “Pix,” she cried, “where are you? Don’t be out, please!” She was starting to run to the next house when Pix Miller came to the door.

“Faith, what on earth is the matter?”

“My house has been robbed! I have to call the police!” She pushed past her friend, grabbed the phone, and punched in the numbers.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure. Hurry up!…No, I don’t think anyone is still there. There was no car outside and the garage was empty.”

She hung up and stamped her foot on the floor. She wanted to punch the wall, punch someone. Pix was staring at her friend open-mouthed. Faith’s face was red, her eyes glazed. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, her hands balled into tight fists.

“The garage was empty! I didn’t close the doors!” she cried. “I could see right in. Anyone could see right in!” She was hardly aware of Pix. Her thoughts careened wildly. Had she locked the back door? Her mind went blank. She was almost positive she had, but maybe she hadn’t. She simply couldn’t remember. Suddenly, the Millers’ hall looked strange, as if she was seeing it for the first time, as if she was watching a movie. She flashed back to her kitchen door, the deep gouges on the frame.

She felt Pix’s arm around her shoulder and the touch brought her back. “Faith, are you sure about this?” Pix steered her in the direction of the kitchen. “You need to sit down. I’ve got coffee on.” The suburbanite’s panacea.

Faith twisted out from under her friend’s well-meant gesture, not bothering to respond to the question. She was sure, and Pix would see soon enough. Faith didn’t need to sit down. She needed to do things. One thing especially. “I have to call Tom!” she said, picking up the receiver. One corner of her mind was entering the familiar number; another was still berating herself mentally for not closing the garage doors. “I have to tell him what’s happened.” Once she reached him, she wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee. Her throat was so dry, she could scarcely swallow. She hoped Pix wasn’t experimenting with “European” flavors again. The hazelnut ginger had been truly loathsome.

There was no answer at the church office. “Where is he? Oh, merde, I forgot. This is his day at the VA hospital; he’ll be on his way out there, but his secretary should be picking up.” Faith had taken to swearing in French since Benjamin, at the age of twenty months, had displayed a precocious ability to recite his parents’ every word.

She drummed her fingers on Pix’s hall table, leaving little smudges in the Old English shine as she listened. Tom had hired a new parish secretary two weeks ago. Her name was Rhoda Dawson, and Faith had been subjected to nightly reports about how lucky he was, what a treasure Ms. Dawson was, and the like. She let the phone ring a few more times. Still no answer. So, where was this treasure now?

She hung up, coffee forgotten. “Come on. The police should be there by now.”

“Do you want me to stay and keep trying?” Pix asked.

It was the logical thing to do, but Faith didn’t want to go back to the house by herself. She grabbed Pix’s hand and pulled her toward the front door. “We can try again later. I want you with me.”

They walked rapidly into the next yard. The police had not arrived yet. The house seemed unnaturally quiet. For a moment, the two women stood silently, looking at the gaping doors.

“Maybe you frightened them off. Maybe they didn’t get much,” Pix offered in a hopeful tone of voice. Faith looked at her dismally. It was an A. A. Milne kind of thing to say. An “It’s all right, Pooh” from Piglet. Except it wasn’t.

“They must have seen me leave, or noticed that the garage was empty! Oh, why did I choose today of all days to do my shopping! And why didn’t I close the garage door?” The thought had continued to nag at her since she first realized her lapse. She was sure now that she’d locked up good and tight, as the entire town had been doing since Sarah’s death, but then she hadn’t closed the garage.

“I might just as well have left a sign on the front lawn—HOUSE EMPTY, COME AND GET IT!” she said bitterly. She dug the toe of her shoe into the soft ground, disturbing the turf her husband was doggedly trying to nurture into something resembling a lawn.

“Don’t be silly, you couldn’t have known you’d be robbed, and those doors weigh a ton,” Pix said briskly in the no-nonsense tone she’d picked up from her headmistress at Windsor. It had worked with adolescent girls and sometimes worked with Pix’s own three children. It wasn’t working with Faith.

“Where are the police? It’s not as if they have far to come!” The parsonage was one of the houses bordering Aleford’s historic green. The police station was a few blocks farther down Main Street. What was taking them so long? She began to walk rapidly up and down the driveway. Little details were obsessing her. She’d found a brand-new book of stamps on the sidewalk in front of the library and had happily said to herself, This must be my lucky day. Luck. It all came down to that. Good luck. Bad luck.

Her overriding emotion was anger, and it was mounting as she waited. Faith was angry. Angry at the intruders, angry at the police, angry at her best friend and neighbor, whose house was intact, angry at the world. She turned to Pix. “Maybe you’d better go try to call again.”

Now Pix seemed unwilling to leave Faith alone. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, tell Ms. Dawson to get ahold of Tom—he should be at the hospital by now—and have him come home as fast as he can. I’ll be fine.” Faith spat out the word fine.

A police car pulled into the Fairchilds’ driveway as Pix was starting to leave. Patrolman Dale Warren got out. He was carrying a clipboard.

“The chief will be along in a minute. He had to get some stuff together. Now, what do we have here?”

“That!” Faith led him to the door.

Dale was a tall young man. One of his uncles and his grandfather had been cops, too. Law enforcement was his life. He solemnly inspected the damage.

“Was it like this when you left?”

Faith looked around wildly for some sort of blunt instrument, seized by an impulse to bludgeon Patrolman Warren to death. It was all she could do to stop herself from breaking out in hysterical laughter. As she walked toward her house, Pix caught Faith’s eye. This time, the headmistress trick worked and Faith took a deep breath.

“Noooo,” she said in an overly patient tone. “It was not like this when I left.”

Dale nodded and made a note of the reply. Next question. “What time did you leave the house?”

This, at least, made sense—more sense than the notion that she might have picked up a crowbar or an ax and whacked away at her own door.

“Shortly after Tom and Ben. Tom was dropping Ben off at nursery school and I was taking Amy to play group. It must have been around eight-forty-five.”

“Did you go back to the house during the morning?”

“No, I did my marketing, returned some books to the library, other errands.”

Faith felt the first tears of the day prick her eyes. They did not fall so much as sting. If she hadn’t gone to the library, if, if, if…

She’d wanted to go into the house since she’d first seen the broken door frame, and now, standing at the threshold, the urge was almost irresistible. Dale seemed to read her thoughts.

“Why don’t you come in and see what might be missing?”

He stood aside to let her step over the slivers of wood. His optimistic tone suggested, as had Pix’s earlier, that perhaps the Fairchilds’ door had been destroyed by someone desperate to grab a quick cup of coffee or just for the hell of it. Faith, of course, knew better. People only broke doors down when they wanted to get in and take something out. Something valuable. She started to step into the kitchen, then stopped.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Charley? Aren’t you going to want to dust for prints?”

“Oh yeah, sure. We’ll wait.” While steeped in the traditions of the force, Dale still got a little confused sometimes about procedure.

So they waited, an unlikely twosome standing in the Fairchilds’ backyard. Dale gazed up at the sky intently. Faith followed his glance. He seemed about to speak. She prepared herself for something meteorological, something cumulonimbus.

“These were not nice people,” Dale commented instead.

Was the whole day going to be like this? Faith wondered bleakly, her anger ebbing. Improbables, idiocies, platitudes? “Was it like this when you left?…These were not nice people.” No, not nice at all. Dale didn’t seem to expect a response. She didn’t offer one. He was looking to the heavens again, an anxious expression on his young face. He seemed to be searching for an answer—or maybe he was planning to go fishing when his shift was over.

A few minutes later, Charley arrived with two plainclothes cops, both carrying bulky cases. MacIsaac took Faith’s hand.

“I’m very sorry this had to happen to you.”

It was the right thing to say. And the right things started happening. Suddenly, the yard was filled with activity. They shot rolls and rolls of film—photographs of the doors, the steps, the unsightly yews to either side, which the Fairchilds had been vowing to replace since they moved in. They dusted the stoop, the frame, the doors for prints.

“Two good ones here!” the fingerprint man called over his shoulder, peering at the molding around the outside door. “Must have grabbed it when they were finished, after he took his gloves off. Maybe carrying something and missed his footing.”

“We’ll get them, Faith. We’ll get them.” Charley stood grimly watching. He had a patrolwoman checking the area surrounding the green and questioning the neighbors. All it ever took was one break. Someone glancing out the window. Someone strolling on Main Street, noting a car.

At last, one of the men motioned to the chief from inside the house. “We’ve taken all the pictures. Mrs. Fairchild can come in and tell us what’s missing. Just don’t touch anything. Ray hasn’t finished checking for prints.”

Faith had wanted to know the worst since she’d arrived at the back door, but now she was loath to find out. She wanted to turn time back. She wanted it to be yesterday. Please let it not be today; then this wouldn’t be happening. It was the way she had felt last fall when they’d lost a dear friend to breast cancer, the way it had been when Sarah Winslow died. If it’s never tomorrow, you’ll always be safe.

“Faith?” Charley put his hand on her arm. He’d been through this countless times. “Come on. Maybe they didn’t get much.”

But they had.

The kitchen was filled with false hopes. It looked exactly the way it had when the Fairchilds had left—chairs slightly askew around the big round table set in front of the bow window facing the backyard and, beyond, the church. The dishes were in the sink, and Faith valiantly made a joke. “You’d think they could have at least cleaned up the breakfast things.” She was valiant. She was plucky. She opened the door to the dining room. She was devastated.

“Oh my God.” She clutched at Charley. “Everything’s gone! They even took the drawer.”

The mahogany sideboard looked like a seven-year-old missing his two front teeth, only there was nothing to grin about and the tooth fairy was far away.

“Must have used it to carry the stuff. Pretty common,” the man with the camera said. He was watching his sidekick brush white powder all over the gleaming dark wood surfaces in the room. “Do you remember if the chair was pulled out like this?” He turned to Faith, who was still transfixed by the hole in her furniture.

“What? Oh, no.” She looked at the dining room chair turned away from the table, completely sideways. “They must have taken out the drawer and set it on the chair.” All the better to fill it up.

Patrolman Dale Warren was at her side with his clipboard. “Can you give us some idea of what’s missing? The quicker we do this, the quicker an APB can go out. You never know…”

Faith wished he would shut up. The car, van, truck—whatever they’d used—was long gone and all her precious things were probably out of state by now. But, she reflected, one speeding ticket and a glance to the rear…Suddenly, she was all business. She’d think about how she felt later.

It was a long list. Their wedding sterling, things that had come down in both their families. Sibleys and Fairchilds alike never seemed to have let a possession slip out of their thrifty hands, unless it was going to another family member. Family things. She’d lost all their family things. No, they’d been stolen. It wasn’t her fault. Her mind was muddled. Don’t think about it yet. The words were becoming a mantra. Keep talking, she told herself.

“A sterling silver sugar and creamer, a carving set with the initials TFP—Tom’s great-grandfather. He was named for him.” She was wandering. They had eaten in this room the day before yesterday. Sunday dinner. Their napkins were still on the table. Their napkins, but not their napkin rings. She swallowed hard. A thought seized her and she ran toward the china cabinet at the end of the room. She kept some silver there. The children’s christening mugs, a tray her parents had given them as an engagement gift. The tray was gone. The mugs were there. She felt a rush of happiness. They hadn’t gotten it all.

Charley was moving her toward the living room. Again there was the strange feeling that nothing had happened, that it was all a big mistake. Not a pillow was out of place, not a drawer even ajar.

“Pros,” one of the men commented.

“What do you mean?” Faith asked.

“They knew where to look. These weren’t kids. They didn’t trash the place. I’ll bet your liquor hasn’t been touched and that they took only the good stuff—and stuff not too identifiable. Left those mugs with the names.”

He was right. One of the drawers in the sideboard held a full service of silver plate that one of Tom’s aunts hadn’t wanted anymore. Faith used it for large parties. It was all there.

They moved on to Tom’s study.

“They really made a mess in here,” the photographer warned Faith.

The room was a shambles. Books covered the floor and papers were everywhere. It was a mess, yet Faith’s practiced eye immediately detected that it was Tom’s normal mess. Saturday’s frenzied finishing touches on a difficult sermon, the room not yet put back into the semblance that passed for order before he began the next. A bit bewildered, the police noted her assured response that nothing had been touched, and then they all left the room.

“We need to go upstairs now,” Charley said to Faith. He wished Tom were here. Where was he, anyway? Pros or no pros, MacIsaac was sure what Faith was about to see would not be a pretty sight.

“Who are these guys, Charley? State police?” Faith asked as they went upstairs. The icicle that had entered her heart was beginning to melt slightly and with it came the return of her very strong native curiosity.

“Auxiliary cops. Come when we need them for this kind of thing. Too damn often, lately.”

They passed Amy’s room. Nothing. Faith breathed a sigh of relief. Ben’s room, the same. Then she went into the master bedroom and crumbled against the wall. Her legs felt all wobbly, as if she’d run a marathon, and she slid onto the floor, her hand grasping the woodwork. She forgot she wasn’t supposed to touch anything.

Every drawer had been pulled out and emptied, every surface swept clean. The bedspread was on the floor. Both closet doors were open. Shoes were flung about. Clothes were pulled from the rods. Her garment bag lay open and empty. Slowly, she stood up, looking about as if she’d never seen it before, a somnambulist who’d wandered into someone else’s bedroom.

It was a large room, stretching across the front of the house. A prior occupant had papered the walls with a hand-print of poppies in rust on a warm cream-colored background. There was a roll of it left. Faith had draped yards of sheer fabric around the windows to hide the shades. The furniture was a hodgepodge of offerings from both families, plus a Judith McKie chest from Faith’s old apartment and Tom’s queen-size pencil-post cherry bed—a bed Faith had enjoyed teasing him about during their courtship, challenging his explanation that he liked having a lot of room to stretch out. Now when Ben and Amy piled in, the bed was almost too small.

It was a beautiful room, especially on days like this, when the sun streamed through the windows. A rainbow danced across the hardwood floor. Faith looked for the source. It wasn’t a diamond. A picture frame lay shattered, the sun sparkling through the broken glass, turning it into tiny prisms. Her parents’ smiling faces, torn in the wreckage, stared up at her. A leather jewelry box Tom and Faith had bought on their honeymoon in Florence had been kicked against the wall. It was empty. Empty. The room was full, but empty.

Instinctively, she reached up to her earlobes and touched the pearl stud earrings she had hastily put in that morning. She fingered the watch she was wearing. From France, a gift from Tom, it had the cartoon character Tintin and his dog, Snowy, on the face. They were in a plane and it was going down. “Help! We’re going to crash…” was what it said in the book. Crash. The earrings, the watch, her wedding and engagement rings—the sum total of all the jewelry she now possessed.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Dale Warren asked.

“No,” Faith said. “I want my stuff back.”

 

“Why don’t you come over to my house?” Faith turned at the words, walked to the door, and saw Pix coming down the hall. She had completely forgotten about her, but now the sight of her friend triggered the question that had been passing through her mind with greater and more urgent frequency since she’d entered the house.

“When is Tom coming?”

Pix was almost at the room. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon. Ms. Dawson left a message for him at the hospital. Holy shit, Faith!”

This was not the message. Pix stood in the doorway, wordless, immobile.

Faith seldom heard her friend swear. Things were as bad as she thought they were. She put an arm around Pix’s shoulder in a sudden reversal of roles.

Pix regained her voice. “Everything? Everything’s gone? All your jewelry?”

Faith nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

Dale, after recovering from the slight shock of hearing his sister’s former Girl Scout leader use foul language, resumed his list making.

“Can you describe some of the more valuable pieces for me, Mrs. Fairchild? The sooner—”

“I know, I know,” Faith said impatiently. She’d already run through them in her mind once she saw her garment bag on the floor. The garment bag—her safe hiding place. A pretty velvet jewel roll tucked in the bottom, its compartments filled with the gifts Tom had given her for anniversaries, birthdays, when the children were born. Some family pieces. She started describing the items, the words tumbling out. She was still talking and grasping Pix’s shoulder when Tom arrived, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Faith! Faith! Are you all right?” he called. She heard him and ran down the hall into his arms.

“Oh, Tom, we’ve been robbed!” She burst into tears and cried as if her heart would break.

 

It lasted only a few minutes, although to the police, particularly Charley and Dale, it seemed much longer. This was not the Faith they knew. Dale Warren looked down at his notes. Next to “Victim,” he’d written her name. He added Tom’s. The Fairchilds, victims? He wished she’d let him get her a cup of tea or coffee.

When Tom entered their room, his face lost all its color and he sat down heavily on the bed.

“Don’t!” Faith cried. Tom jumped to his feet, puzzled. Surely, Faith didn’t expect the police to get prints from the rumpled linens.

“I have to wash everything. Everything they touched.”

Tom held his wife close. People he’d known in these circumstances talked of feeling violated. Raped. He looked at their pillows. One of the cases was missing.

“Damn it, Charley, what kind of a world are we living in?” He gestured around the room, finishing with his arm flung imploringly toward the police chief. Tom felt completely and utterly helpless.

Charley knew Tom didn’t want an answer. At least not now. What he wanted was action. So did Charley.

“You’ll have to go down to the station with me and let us take your prints, so we can eliminate them. The kids’ are so small, we won’t have any trouble recognizing those.”

The kids! It was almost time to pick them up. Where did the morning go? Faith said to herself in conscious irony. And the Lexington gallery reception. She had completely forgotten about work. Niki must be wondering where she was.

“I don’t want Ben and Amy to see this mess. We have to…” she started to say.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them and take them to my house,” Pix offered. “After Amy’s nap, they can come watch Samantha’s softball game with me.”

Pix Miller took motherhood seriously—and joyfully. She’d been the room mother for all of her children’s years in elementary school, the aforementioned Scout leader long after her own left the ranks, chaperone for innumerable trips to the Science Museum, the Aquarium, and virtually every other educational Boston landmark. She was the one who drove, who collected, who called. Watching the two Fairchild children for the afternoon was a mere blip on the radar screen of Pix’s far-flung activities. Her husband, Sam, had tried in vain to teach her the magic words Sorry, I can’t. Maybe he hadn’t tried all that hard. He was pretty dependent on her himself.

“And I called Niki. She said she can handle everything with Scott and Tricia.” These were a young couple Faith employed part-time. “Don’t worry about a thing,” Pix again reassured the Fairchilds, realizing how totally stupid it sounded. She blushed, then headed for home.

The police left the room, too. Tom and Faith were alone.

“I don’t know what to do, where to start,” Faith said. She could hardly bear the thought of touching her things. Lingerie and other clothing had been tossed all over the floor. It looked like Filene’s Basement ten minutes after the doors opened for the Neiman Marcus sale.

“I do,” Tom said firmly. He kissed her—hard—and went to the phone. The light-colored handle was covered with black powder. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it off.

In rapid order, he called the couple who came to help clean the house, the handyman to repair the back door, or at least secure it, and Rhoda Dawson. At the close of their conversation, he felt obscurely obliged to assure her, a newcomer, that this type of thing was not the norm in Aleford.

Or was it? Besides Sarah Winslow’s, the local paper had reported five break-ins in the last few weeks, two of them at night. He sighed. Why hadn’t he worked at home today? But then he’d had to go out to the VA. It would have happened anyway. He sat down on the bed again. He was exhausted. Happened. Anyway.

Faith listened to her husband make the calls, grateful for his assumption of responsibility. She’d be okay once the house was cleaned up. It was all this mess. Out of control. Once everything was under control…This was what was getting to her. She’d be okay. She shivered, but she did not reach for one of her sweaters lying so conveniently at her feet. Instead, she wandered downstairs. The police were packing up and getting ready to leave.

“You’re going to need a new door,” Ray, the fingerprint specialist, observed. “Looks like they used a crowbar. Would’ve popped your dead bolt, if you’d had one.”

The Fairchilds hadn’t gotten around to installing a dead bolt. Before last week, Faith often didn’t even bother to lock the door at all. Not now, though. Not ever again. She’d been bemoaning the lack of a dead bolt—and the open garage door. It made her feel better to hear that one omission wouldn’t have mattered.

“Place like this should have an alarm system.” Ray was chatty now that the job was done. “You’re in full view of everyone and his uncle out front, but once you’re back here, no one would be likely to see you on a weekday, except from the cemetery.”

It was true. The parsonage was separated from the church by the backyard, the ancient burial ground, and the church driveway. The long sanctuary windows looked toward the parsonage, but the church offices were at the rear of the church. Ben’s nursery school was in the basement. In any case, at this time of year the thick hedge and other shrubbery formed a substantial barrier. It had been installed at various times in the house’s history—perhaps by ministers’ wives, seeking, like Faith, the illusion of private life.

But an alarm system? In Aleford? In the parsonage! The enormity of the crime became defined by Ray’s well-meant suggestion. The silver was gone. The jewelry. The drawer. But most precious of all, the intruders had stolen the Fairchilds’ peace of mind—the security and calm they’d taken for granted all these years. Charley was looking at Faith, but before he could say anything, she spoke.

“I should have stayed in New York!”

 

“But why is our door all broken? Why is Mr. Kelly nailing it shut? How will I get out to play? Why did someone break it, Mom? Why?” Ben Fairchild was firing questions at his mother even as he stood captivated by the handyman, who was indeed systematically nailing the door shut. Mr. Kelly was Ben’s hero and he wanted to be exactly like him when he grew up—with all those neat tools, a truck, and a dog named Shamrock. Shamrock had been Ben’s suggestion almost two years ago for what to name his new sister. He thought it was some kind of jewel and argued that people named girls Ruby and Pearl, prompting Faith to ask Miss Lora, his nursery school teacher, what she was reading to them lately. Even the discovery that the word shamrock referred to vegetation, albeit lucky, did not dampen Ben’s ardor and he thought Amy a poor and distant second choice.

“The thieves who came into our house when Mommy was out and took some of our things broke it. Remember what Pix told you?” The two women had worked out ahead of time what to say to this little inquiring mind.

“Yes,” Ben replied, “but why didn’t you leave the door open and then they wouldn’t have wrecked it.”

It made a certain kind of sense.

“Well…” Faith was losing steam. They’d been going over this terrain for a while now and would be for the foreseeable future. “I didn’t.”

Tom’s head appeared at the window of the back door, then disappeared abruptly. Bewildered, Amy’s smile of welcome vanished and she twisted around in Faith’s lap to look at her mother’s face. It was still there. “Daddy?”

Daddy walked into the kitchen. “Forgot I couldn’t get in that way,” he said ruefully. “I’ll go out to Concord Lumber tomorrow and order a new door. The sooner the better.”

Faith agreed. She was consumed by a desire for action—and a return to normalcy. The sound of the washer and dryer was calming. She’d already done several loads and there was a mountainous pile still left on the laundry room floor. She could also hear the vacuum as the cleaners worked to erase all signs of intrusion and investigation. The fingerprint powder was proving difficult to remove—and it was everywhere. Black on light surfaces, white and rust on dark.

When the children had come home, Ben, although reassured by Pix that nothing of his was missing, raced to his room. Faith followed him, carrying Amy. He was burrowing in his Lego bag and triumphantly held a small chamois pouch aloft.

“It’s still here! The robbers didn’t find my coin collection. Boy, would they be sorry if they knew.” Ben’s coin collection—a few francs, Canadian money, and the prize, a 1950 silver dollar. Intact. Lesson number one, Faith said to herself: Hide your best jewelry in the Legos or Lincoln Logs. Forget adult hiding places. Better still, place in Baggies and have your child create Play-Doh sculptures around them.

“The prints will be ready tomorrow. They put a rush on them.” Faith blinked and tuned in to what Tom was saying. Prints? Fingerprints? No, the photographs of their silver and jewelry that Tom’s Dad had been insistent they take a couple of years ago when he did his own. “Believe me,” he’d said, “I know insurance companies, and God forbid you should ever need these, but if you do, it will save a lot of aggravation.” Well, they needed them now. Tom had taken the negatives down to Aleford Photo to have enlargements and multiple copies made.

“They’re selling bowling balls.”

Faith put her finger to her lips. She’d told Ben the one with the blue sparkles was long gone. “Yes, dear. We can talk about it later,” she told Tom.

Tom didn’t get the hint. This happened a lot in child rearing. “The guys at Aleford Photo—they’ve got a table with all sorts of stuff on it, ancient Polaroid cameras, light meters, a pair of snowshoes, a paint sprayer, a kerosene heater, and a bowling ball.”

Faith gave up and laughed. Maybe what they needed right now was a sparkly bowling ball.

“I know. I’ve seen it. Recently, they’ve added arts and crafts—macramé and beadwork. They knew all about the break-in, right?”

“Of course.” Either Bert or Richard—Faith could never remember which—was an auxiliary cop—crowd control on Patriot’s Day and traffic duty during holiday seasons for greater Boston’s pilgrimage to Aleford’s popular farm stand for a fresh turkey, tree, or first corn. The police scanner, which was on all the time, substituted for elevator music at the camera shop. People had long ago formed the habit of dropping in to catch up on the news. And now, Faith thought, they can satisfy a host of passing whims, as well—like a sudden urge to bowl a few frames.

“Can we get it, Dad?”

“Get what, sweetheart?” Tom picked Ben up and sat him on the counter, eye-to-eye.

“The bowling ball.” He leaned around his father and said sternly to his mother, “You said it was gone.”

“It must be another one,” Faith said, matching his expression. She had no intention of letting her five-year-old get the upper hand.

“It is a nice one.” Tom caught Faith’s eye. “No nicks. Looks brand-new. A steal at five bucks.”

“We don’t need a bowling ball.” The moment had passed and Faith’s common sense had returned. She was forced to maintain a constant defense against Tom’s Yankee acquisitiveness, the kind defined by the words “Doesn’t cost much and could be useful,” as opposed to other forms of attainment, as in “Let’s browse at Bloomingdale’s.” She knew what Tom’s parents’ house was like, or, more specifically, their attic and garage. The garage had been too full to park in since 1962 and Fairchild cars had to suffer the vicissitudes of New England winters. No one seemed to care.

The story of the Aleford Photo indoor yard sale—true, though hard to believe even of them—was Tom’s first attempt to get back to the way their life had been that morning, before the break-in. And it felt like swimming in Jell-O. From the moment he’d seen Faith in the upstairs hall, he had begun to pray. Help me find the way back. And he had been repeating this and various other prayers ever since. Irrationally, he felt deeply upset that he hadn’t been able to protect his family from this crime. Closer to the surface, he was equally upset that Faith had discovered the burglary alone and had continued to be alone for much of the police investigation. Yet, he was also thankful—thankful she had not walked in on the robbery in progress. Unlike poor Sarah Winslow, Faith hadn’t been home. It was the first thing he’d thought of when he got the message. The relief he’d felt far overshadowed any feelings of loss.

He walked over to his wife and put his arms around her. Faith still looked stricken and she was holding Amy as if the baby were some kind of life buoy. We can’t let this get to us. Help me find the way back. He repeated it again.

But it was going to be hard. It was hard now.

There was a knock on the front door. Both adults jumped. Tom went to answer it, returning with a large shopping bag, held flat across his two hands.

“Another one?” Faith asked incredulously.

“Another one,” he answered, a warm smile crossing his face. He placed the parcel on the counter in front of him like an offering.

As soon as word got out that the Fairchilds had been robbed, phones started ringing and the casserole brigade sprang into action. Blissfully unaware that tuna noodle, even with crumbled potato chips on top, would be greeted by Faith as culinary crime, the housewives of Aleford reached for their Pyrex and got to work, offering solace the only way they could.

 

Earlier, Tom and Faith had followed Chief MacIsaac to the police station, where they waited on the uncomfortable vinyl-covered chairs while Charley got the fingerprint machinery ready.

“Just let your hand relax,” he’d told them, then held their wrists and swiftly pressed their fingers first over a roller of sticky black ink, then onto the paper. “Saw one of those new inkless machines the other day over in Lexington. Pretty nifty, but,” he’d added forlornly, “wouldn’t be worth the ink even to list it in my budget.”

After the ordeal that left Faith oddly feeling somewhat like a felon, she was all for Tom, a Town Meeting member, to demand the town vote in an inkless machine. The ink was impossible to get off, especially with the brand X liquid soap in the station’s tiny bathroom. “Out damned spot,” Faith had said as they washed up. She wasn’t joking. Her hands were red and raw from scrubbing. The soap in the dispenser smelled like Lysol. “Is this really happening?” she’d asked Tom.

“But I want a bowling ball. I never threw one. I want to do it!” Ben’s voice was tremulous. Faith stood up and sat Amy next to her brother. Amy, thank God, was young enough to be oblivious to the horrendous events of the day. As far as she was concerned, things had gone rather well. She’d played with her special friend, Nicholas, had lunch with her beloved Pix, and watched Samantha the goddess run around catching a little ball a lot. Yet, although Amy might not be old enough to know what had happened, she was dangerously adept at reading her mother’s moods, translating them instantly into her own replicas. Tired of doing wash, trying to restore order where none would exist for a while, and, most immediately, tired of the bowling ball argument, pained by what it actually represented, Faith was having a hard time controlling her emotions. She mounted a herculean effort not to let the tears so near the surface spill from her eyes or the angry words so close to her lips spew forth. She put her arms around both kids, kissing her frightened son. Ben would require a great deal of reassurance—and patience—but no bowling ball.

“Let’s go for a drive. I think this family needs to have some ice cream!”

“The farm?” Ben knew when to push his luck.

Great Brook Farm was in Carlisle, a bit of a drive, yet it happened to fall in with Faith’s other plans.

“The farm,” she said, and took Amy off to get her ready. “On the way, we can have a kind of treasure hunt. It will be fun, you’ll see.”

Tom looked mystified. “Treasure hunt?” He followed his wife out of the room.

“I want to look in a couple of Dumpsters. It’s possible that they’ll get rid of the stuff they don’t want, like our drawer.” She had heard this was a common practice. Pull over, go through the things, and winnow out. She’d suggested to Charley that the police make a search and he’d said they would, but from his slightly skeptical tone of voice, she wasn’t sure he’d follow through with the kind of diligence the task required. He’d probably have Dale check the Dumpster behind the market and call it a day. She decided she’d better do it herself. She also wanted to check out a wooded area on the Aleford-Byford line where kids hung out. The police had said “pros,” but Faith didn’t intend to eliminate any possibilities at this point, when the trail was so fresh. Hey, let’s ditch school and hit a house or two. The woods were a favorite drinking spot, and if she wanted to get rid of a drawer and maybe a charm bracelet or other less valuable jewelry, the woods would be where she’d go. A nature walk, as far as the Fairchild children were concerned. The start of her own sleuthing for Faith.

Many Dumpsters later and after combing the woods for an hour, the Fairchilds pulled back into their own driveway. They’d gone straight to the farm for ice cream first, but it had disappeared quickly and the kids were tired and cranky. Tom had gently suggested to his wife that they give up, and she had been forced to agree. It had all seemed so simple, yet she’d come up with nothing.

When they got home, the light on the answering machine was blinking. Faith listened to several heartfelt messages of commiseration accompanied by promises of yet more food before Charley’s voice pumped fresh adrenaline into her weary system. “Call the station as soon as you come in.”

The chief answered the phone himself.

“Oh, good, you’re back. Now don’t go getting your hopes up, but we called around to some of the places in the area that buy gold and silver, and a coin shop in Arlington said someone had come in with a bunch of gold jewelry this afternoon. They bought the lot. I can’t leave the station now, but when Dale gets back from supper, I’ll drive over so you can look at it.”

“I’ll be right there,” Faith said, and hung up. Calling explanations and instructions to Tom, she grabbed her purse. By the time she reached the police station, she was testifying in court, identifying her property, Exhibit A, for the judge.

But it wasn’t her property. Not even close.

Charley spread out the contents of the Ziploc bag on top of his desk. Faith felt a dull, leaden sensation start in the pit of her stomach and invade the rest of her body. She pawed through the tangle of gold chains, dented hollow bracelets, and assorted charms for form’s sake. She was examining a large pendant with a diamond chip and the word Bitch ornately engraved on it when Charley asked in a hopeful tone of voice, “Any of it yours?” She tossed the pendant on top of the rest of the jewelry and said snappishly, “I don’t think so.”

Extremely disappointed didn’t even come close to describing how she felt. She supposed it would have all been too easy. But then, why not?

Dale came back, looked at Faith’s face, and knew enough to keep his mouth shut, nodding solemnly in her general direction. Charley walked her to her car. “Look, it may not be today, or tomorrow, but we’ll get them. I’m sorry, Faith. I wish these had been your things. We do find things sometimes, you know,” he added in what Faith later described to Tom as “a fart in a windstorm kind of way.”

“Don’t tell me this. I have to think it’s all gone, get used to it. I know how rarely stolen goods are recovered.” She felt a sudden rush of contrition. If the pendant fit…Charley was doing everything he could. His big, square, kind face was crumbled in concern. “Thanks for calling us, and anytime you get anything for us to look at—I don’t care if it looks like a bag of lanyards somebody made at camp—let me know right away. You’ve been great, Charley.” She gave him a swift hug. He wasn’t the hugging type.

“I’m just glad you didn’t walk in on them, when I think about it…. Anyway, they’re only things. Take it from me—in the long run, things don’t matter at all.”

She nodded and got in her car, closed the door, and waved good-bye. It wasn’t until she was pulling into her drive once again that she softly whispered her reply, “But they do, Charley. Unfortunately, they do.”

By eight o’clock, all the Fairchilds were in bed. One bed—Tom and Faith’s. The room had been cleaned and straightened. If it had not been for the fact that several of the surfaces had empty spots, no one would have suspected that anything untoward had happened. Faith tried very hard not to picture hands pulling drawers open, feet walking down the hall. Running down the hall. The police said they had probably been in the house for a very short time. Faith’s unimaginative hiding places and lack thereof—a silver chest out in the open, for example—had made their job simple and quick. Not like Sarah’s house, where objects obscurely hidden suggested more to find. Faith shuddered and pulled the blanket covering the four of them up over her shoulders. She was lying on her side, the two children nestled close. Tom was reading a book from Ben’s current favorite, the Boxcar Children series. She could use those little Sherlocks now, Faith reflected, although they’d probably make her crazy. They were so good, even the mischievous one, Benny, whatever his name was. Tom’s voice was soporific. Amy had been asleep for a while and Faith knew she should put her into her crib. It was late for Ben to be up, too, but it wasn’t inertia that kept her from moving.

She didn’t want to let them out of her sight.

Rational or irrational, one thought seeped its poison into every corner of her brain, driving all else away: Person or persons unknown had entered their house with intent to harm—and they could be back.