CHAPTER 20

It is, after all, these small-town tragedies that truly bring a community closer together. That separate the outsiders from the ones who belong. That keep the gates closed, and the doors locked, and the evil of the wider world safely outside.

We don’t trust you if we don’t know you, and sometimes, we don’t trust you if we do. We band together; we circle the wagons; we peer out of our shuttered windows with weapons in hand and loved ones at our side.

When the blinds are drawn and the stakes are high, only the lucky few are allowed to come in.

Brendan Brooks had been cold in the ground when the questions finally came. Long after the body was pulled from the water in the faint, low glow of the setting sun; long after the somber Chief of Police had sat in an air-conditioned living room, a cup of coffee growing cold between his weather-worn hands, and tried his best to offer comfort; long after two parents had sobbed themselves into a fitful sleep where the words “massive head trauma” and “died instantly” echoed like schoolyard taunts. It was weeks later, with the scrim of exhaustion draped heavy over their bloodshot eyes, that Bob and Linda Brooks asked why nobody had warned them about the monstrous metal beast beneath the surface of the lake.

“Those boys,” Linda said, her voice high and wet with choked-back sobs, “they could have warned him. They were right there. Why didn’t they warn him?”

The last sentence a scream.

“Why didn’t you tell us?!”

Those she asked could only stare, and stutter, and turn away.

How could we explain? That nobody had been told because nobody had ever needed to be told; that to the minds of the boys at the bridge that day, the inviting pool below may as well not have existed; that without knowing why, they knew that on that side of the south shore bridge, you do not jump.

That those who live here knew—had always known—that a red Ford tractor with a long-armed front-end loader was hidden in the water at the south end of Silver Lake.

* * *

It was late in the summer when Linda Brooks came back. Alone and with a bare, pale band of skin on her left hand, in the place where her wedding ring had been. She moved back into the little house by the lake, spending her nights in the wood-paneled bedroom whose window now looked out on the place where her only child had died. Days, she could be found in town—pushing an empty shopping cart slowly up and down the aisles of the grocery, dragging her limp fingers over the fat jars of jam and store-brand canned peas in their even rows, fixing her red-shot glare on the shoppers who dared, as her son lay cold in the ground, to keep on as though nothing had happened.

The store became a tomb. People had always gathered at the butcher counter or around the long, gray refrigerator case lined with cold beer, filling the place with a low hum of chatter that rose and fell with the ringing of the register. But nobody could do that now—not with Linda Brooks pacing her grief up and down the aisles, her hollow eyes full of directionless accusations, blame for every single one of us, the thoughtless secret keepers who let her son die. Instead, the grocery stood empty, occupied only intermittently by furtive people who slipped in and out with their purchases as quickly as possible and who fled, at the sound of the mourning woman’s slow footsteps, to hide behind the produce. We ate every leftover in the fridge, ate canned beans and instant rice from our pantries, ate gas station crackers smothered in E-Z CHEEZ rather than risk encountering that stare, those steps, the plaintive whine of the cart’s wheels singing emptily down the fluorescent aisles. And as the cupboards grew bare, the tension grew thicker.

“Something has to be done,” people said.

“It can’t go on like this,” they said.

Until the evening in August, with the twilight deepening on the lake and the crickets singing in the brush, when three women drove over the bridge, past the watchful eyes of the entry guard, and through the southern gate of Silver Lake. They parked an ancient Jeep at the cracked mouth of the driveway where, just weeks before, Brendan Brooks had crossed the threshold. Where, for a few strange hours on a hot summer afternoon, the gap between moneyed visitor and resentful townie had ceased to exist. They walked up the shadowed drive with deliberate steps. Two wore nervous smiles; one held a pie.

And for once, no matter how much or who you ask, there is nobody in Bridgeton who will tell you what happened that night. Nobody will profess to having been there; nobody will claim to know someone who knows, for certain and without a doubt, the words that passed between the three women on the porch and the shadowy figure inside, as they stood on either side of a closed screen door. Nobody gossips quietly about what happened when the door opened, and the Jeep remained, and a dim, golden light shone from the living-room window for the first time in weeks and weeks.

In a small town, in our finer moments, we keep our secrets well.

The next day, the furtive few who dared to brave the grocery found it changed. No lurking shadow by the door, no slow squeal of the shopping cart, no mourning zombie to dare you, with her silent stare, to meet her eyes without choking on your own guilt.

The next night, the Jeep was back; the burning lamp, too, and another beside it. On the lawn of the little house, a golden square of light revealed four shadows, huddled close, barely bobbing with the rhythm of long-awaited conversation.

And when winter came, the light was gone, and so was Linda Brooks.

But you can find her here. In town, among us, another winter weatherer with drugstore highlights and a four-wheel-drive truck. In a tidy bungalow, on a quiet street, with a well-kept garden and an oak tree in the yard. You can see her in the market on Sundays, moving quickly, plucking items from the shelves and joking with the cashier, as they both pretend no memory of that terrible summer. You can see her smiling, with sad and shining eyes, at the young men—the four strapping sons of three brave women—who show up each winter to shovel her driveway, and mow her lawn twice a month when it’s warm.

And if you ask us, if you ask anyone, she’s always been here. Even though it’s clear, from her tailored jackets and silky voice and the unsullied glow of her rich woman’s skin, that her life was once lived elsewhere. Because she is a good woman, a fine woman. She has strong hands, a quick mind, a generous nature. In the summer, her rosebushes are heavy with blossoms, flourishing and fragrant like no others in the neighborhood; in the winter, her house is warm with the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg. And in her short time here, she’s given without measure. Cuttings from her garden. A recipe for lemon tarts, passed down and closely guarded, going back three generations. An open ear, a listening heart, from someone who knows what it is to grieve.

A boy, with an easy grin and gentle nature, lost forever on the cusp of manhood.

Bridgeton claims her as its own, for what she gives us. For what she gave.

For what we took from her.

We cannot give her son back, but we can give her what small towns give best: a fence to chat over. A seat at the bar. A hundred hands to hold in times of trouble; a hundred hearts to share in life’s small joys. And one day, when it’s time, a patch of sweet, green quiet in the ancient graveyard, where bones both old and new are all at peace beneath the rustling grass.

A place to live, and die, knowing that you were truly home.