“I wanted him punished.”
“You’re getting your wish, aren’t you?” Janet said. “I talked to Detective Stynes, and he has Ray at the police station. He was hoping for a confession so it can all be over with.” Then Janet thought to add, “And he says they’re not really worried about pressing charges against you. I guess if you beat the crap out of a murderer they don’t worry about charging you for it.”
Michael didn’t look up.
“Do you understand what you did to me? To my family? You got our hopes up. That guy came to the house, and I…I thought he was Justin.”
“I didn’t make you think that.”
“But you set it in motion. I thought everything was going to be different. And that man, Steven, he could have been dangerous. How was I to know what he intended? We’re supposed to be friends, Michael. We’re supposed to care for each other after all these years.”
“What do you remember from that day, Janet?” he asked.
The question took Janet off guard. His voice sounded flat, wooden. It came out with a rasp, as though the words had passed through barbed wire.
“Your dad killed Justin,” she said. “Isn’t that what we’ve all found out?”
He didn’t answer.
“Michael? What is it?”
He still didn’t lift his eyes. He started to speak, stopped, and then said, “I heard my parents argue that morning. I could tell by the way they were fighting that it was different than other fights they’d had. They seemed like they meant it, like they were building up to something final. You know?”
“They were. Your dad was leaving your mom to be with mine.”
“I know,” he said. “They said one name over and over before they sent me out of the house. Can you guess what name they said?”
It took Janet a moment, but then she said it: “Justin.”
“Yes,” he said. “Justin. That name over and over. And it made me mad, Janet. Angry. I understood, at that time, that somehow Justin was the cause of what was going wrong between my parents. It just seemed that way to me.” He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “It makes sense now, knowing what we do about the DNA test. Why else would they be fighting about a four-year-old boy?”
“And?”
“So I was angry. Angry about Justin, even though I didn’t know why. And then he ran off into the woods and wouldn’t come back, when I came back here and told him he had to go back to the park with us…and he wouldn’t- I…”
Janet’s breathing shortened. She found herself struggling for air, as though something thicker than the surrounding humidity had been placed across her nose and mouth. She was choking.
“Michael…”
“He wouldn’t go back to the park, Janet. And his name, it was in my head.”
Janet opened her mouth. The words were slow to come.
“What did you do to him?”
He hesitated. “I pushed him. Shoved him. I took hold of his shirt with both of my hands and I shoved him down to the ground. This spot right here. I shoved him as hard as I could, and he hit his head on a rock.” Michael reached out and patted a stone, one that was half sunken into the ground. “It might be this rock right here for all I know. It might very well be.” He leaned back. “I could tell he was hurt. It knocked him right out, although there wasn’t any blood. Not that I could see anyway. I didn’t know what to do, Janet. I knew I’d get in trouble. I was scared.”
“What did you do?” Janet asked. Her words came out steady, but she felt the world turning beneath her, a great shifting of the ground beneath her feet. She thought she might topple over to the side.
“I wanted to run. I was going to. I guess I was hoping no one knew what I’d done, although, of course, they would have. But then-”
“Ray showed up.”
Michael nodded. “He was just there, all of a sudden. My dad. He stood over me-and Justin. It was like he knew what I’d done, and he came out to find me. I don’t know why he was there in the woods that day. It was like magic.”
“He was on his way to our house.”
“He told me to leave. He told me that he would take care of it, that it was an accident, but we couldn’t tell anyone, ever, what happened in the woods that day. So I left. I just left and went back to the playground.”
“And after that he told you to never mention being in the woods that day?”
“I don’t remember all of this clearly,” he said, his voice rising. “Remember that first night I saw you in the coffee shop? I told you about going to therapy and trying to remember things. I’ve been working on that for years, and some of it isn’t clear. Is it clear for you?”
“No.”
“See?” He threw out his hands.
“Why is this coming back now?” Janet asked. “Why are you saying these things?”
“I was angry, Janet. So angry. When I went to therapy and they asked me to remember that day, that’s what I felt. Not fear. Not sadness, really. Anger. Just anger. And it was always directed at Justin. Just Justin. And I didn’t understand why. I knew he ran off that day. I knew I was mad at him about that, but it didn’t explain the level of anger I felt sometimes. Gut-churning anger. It boiled just below the surface of my mind. I even thought it might be a form of grief, you know? I was mad at him for dying maybe. Does that make sense?”
“I understand.”
“But it was too strong for that. And it wouldn’t go away.”
“How do you know what really happened?”
It took Michael a long time to go on. Janet waited, her arms folded across her chest. Her eyes were completely acclimated to the dark, and she watched Michael, trying to be patient, trying to let him tell the story at his own pace.
“I came back here after I lost my job. I moved back to Dove Point, and I started coming out here.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I had a therapist who said that sometimes long-dormant or repressed memories come back if the person is placed in a situation similar to the original event. Maybe they return to the exact place where the memory was formed or maybe they experience a similar, intense emotion. So I came back here after I returned to town. And I felt it when I was here. The anger. The confusion, I guess.”
“Then?”
Michael didn’t answer.
“Then, Michael? What changed?”
“That night…the night I went to Dad’s house.”
“You lost control.”
“I wanted to kill him, Janet. I wanted to-to choke the life out of him. I can’t remember being that mad any other time…”
“Except?”
“My dad told me. He told me what happened that day in the woods. He told me I killed Justin. And that’s when I went after my dad. I would have killed him too if you hadn’t come into the house and called my name.”
Chapter Fifty-three
“I thought it was Ray all this time,” Michael said. “I really did. And here he was getting remarried and moving on with his life. He wanted to act like what happened in these woods didn’t happen. That we could all just go on with our lives and be happy.” Michael’s voice caught. “He was going to have a new wife and pretend like I wasn’t
